Preacher's Peace

by William W. Johnstone

  Shortly after nightfall, as Art was laying out his bedroll, he became aware of eyes staring at him from the dark. With the hair on the back of his neck standing up, he slipped his pistol from his belt and stared into the black maw that surrounded his camp.

  “Who’s there?” he called.

  There was no response.

  “Who’s there?” he called again, and this time he augmented his call with the deadly click of his pistol being cocked.

  A low, frightening growl came from the darkness.

  “Are you a wolf?” Art called. Thinking to lure the animal from the darkness, he took a piece of rabbit and held it up. “Come on in, boy. Come get this meat.”

  Tossing the meat about ten feet in front of him, he raised his pistol, ready to shoot the moment the wolf showed itself.

  It wasn’t a wolf, at least not a full-blooded wolf, though the dog clearly had many of the markings and features of a wolf. The animal walked into pistol range, growling, its eyes locked on the mountain man while it was moving toward the proffered morsel.

  Art lowered his pistol and watched the big dog use its powerful jaws to pull the meat away from the bone. The dog fascinated him, not only by its size and power, but also by the way it carried itself. It clearly showed no fear of him.

  When the dog finished the first piece of meat, Art threw another piece out—this one closer than the first. The dog came for it. By the time he threw the last piece of meat, the dog was quite close—close enough for Art to touch, and he did so, rubbing the dog behind its ears.

  “How’d you get way out here in the middle of nowhere?” Art asked.

  Though the dog didn’t snuggle against Art’s hand, it was friendly enough to be nonthreatening; the growling had ceased.

  The dog slept near Art that night. When Art got ready to leave the next day, the dog jumped onto the boat with him.

  “Shoo,” Art said, waving his hand. “Get off.”

  The dog walked to the front of the boat and sat there, staring at Art with penetrating eyes.

  “What are you doing? You can’t go with me.”

  The dog made no effort to leave.

  As a young boy, Art had once owned a dog. He remembered that Rover would go fishing and hunting with him, and he smiled.

  “I guess you would be good company at that. All right, you can stay,” Art said.

  The dog came much closer.

  “So, what shall I call you? How about Rover? I used to have a dog named Rover.”

  The dog growled.

  “You don’t like Rover? How about Skip? That’s a good dog name.”

  The dog growled again.

  “All right, suppose I just call you Dog and be done with it. If you even are a dog . . .”

  The dog made a few circles on the deck of the boat, lay down with his nose between his paws, and closed his eyes. Art laughed. “All right, you seem to like that name, so Dog it is.”

  Over the next several days, Dog proved to be more than just good company. One night, as Art was making camp, Dog disappeared. Art thought that he had run away, but a short while later Dog returned to camp, carrying a rabbit in his mouth. He dropped it at Art’s feet, providing them with their dinner for the night.

  * * *

  House of Flowers, St. Louis, Tuesday, June 22, 1824

  Jennie was in the kitchen, taking inventory of her food items. She had to keep a well-stocked kitchen because most of her girls not only worked there, they slept and ate there as well. She was measuring the flour, trying to determine how much she would need, when a girl came in.

  “Miss Jennie?”

  Turning, Jennie saw Carla. Though Carla lived there, she wasn’t really one of Jennie’s girls, in that she wasn’t a prostitute. She worked as a waitress at LaBarge’s Tavern, and paid for her room and board at the house, though Jennie charged her far less than the going rate.

  “Yes, Carla?”

  “Deputy Constable Gordon is here to see you.”

  “Thank you, Carla. Would you tell him I’ll be just a minute?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Or if you want to, you can go talk to him and I’ll put things away in here.”

  “Would you, Carla? That’s sweet of you,” Jennie said. Taking off her apron and making a quick adjustment to her hair, Jennie went into the parlor. Deputy Constable John Gordon was standing in the foyer, rolling his hat in his hands. Jennie smiled broadly as she approached him.

  “Why, John, I didn’t expect to see you here this time of day,” she said. “You don’t usually come until it’s quite late.”

  “Uh, sorry, Miss Jennie, but this ain’t exactly a business call.”

  “John, you know I don’t like to treat my callers as customers. I would hope that all of your calls are more social than business.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but, well, this ain’t social either.”

  “Oh?” Jennie replied, her face registering her curiosity. “If it isn’t business nor social, what is it?”

  “Sort of duty, you might say,” Deputy Constable Gordon said. “The chief constable would like to see you down at his office. He asked me to come get you.”

  “All right, John. Just let me get my portmanteau and I’ll be right with you.”

  Because he had ridden a horse down to Jennie’s, Deputy Constable Gordon waited for Jennie’s driver, Ben, to bring her carriage around. He rode alongside the carriage as Ben drove Jennie to the chief constable’s office.

  “Shall I wait here, Miss Jennie?” Ben asked.

  “Yes, Ben, if you would, please,” Jennie said.

  Jennie had no idea what the visit was about until she stepped into the office. There, she saw Mrs. Abernathy and two other women, all of whom greeted her with sour expressions.

  “Miss Jennie,” the chief constable started.

  “Do you feel it is necessary to address a colored woman as Miss?” Sybil Abernathy said. “Because I certainly don’t.”

  In surprise, Jennie jerked her head toward Mrs. Abernathy.

  “Don’t look at me, girl, like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Mrs. Abernathy said. “Are you going to deny that you are a colored slave girl?”

  “Now, Mrs. Abernathy, if that is true, who does she belong to?”

  “She belonged to a man named Bruce Eby,” Mrs. Abernathy said.

  Surprised to hear the name of the man who had once owned her, Jennie looked down toward the floor.

  “Is that true, Miss, uh, Jennie?”

  “I used to belong to him. I’m a free woman now,” Jennie said.

  The constable stroked his chin. “Then, you are colored?” He shook his head. “You sure don’t look colored to me.”

  “I’m Creole,” Jennie said.

  “Creole, colored, it’s all the same,” Mrs. Abernathy insisted. “The point is, she was the legal property of one Bruce Eby.”

  “Was?” the constable said, looking at Mrs. Abernathy. “Even you are saying she was, and not is, the property of this man, Eby. Where is he anyway? Why isn’t he making a claim?”

  “He can’t claim her because he is dead,” Mrs. Abernathy said. She pointed to Jennie. “And she killed him.”

  “What?” the constable replied. He looked sharply at Jennie. “Is she telling the truth? Did you kill your master?”

  “No, sir, I did not kill him,” Jennie said.

  “If she didn’t kill him, she was the cause of his being killed,” Mrs. Abernathy said.

  “Is that right? Was he killed because of you?”

  “In a way, I suppose that’s right.”

  “When did this happen? And where?”

  “It happened several years ago,” Jennie said. “At Rendezvous on the Missouri River.”

  “And you were his slave?”

  “Not when he was killed. Another man won me, just before the killing. And he’s the one that set me free.”

  “Can you prove that you were set free, and don’t belong to the estate of the man you say was killed?”

  “I can,
” Jennie said. “I have a letter of manumission, given to me by the man who had just won me, fair and square, and signed by two witnesses.”

  “Where is this letter of manumission?” the constable asked.

  “I keep it . . .” Jennie started, then she glanced over toward Mrs. Abernathy “I’d rather not tell you where I keep it.”

  “Ha!” Mrs. Abernathy said. “You won’t tell us where you keep it, because it doesn’t exist. You don’t have a letter of manumission. You are a runaway slave.”

  “I am not a runaway slave! I am a free woman!” Jennie insisted.

  “Can you get that letter, Miss Jennie, and show it to me?”

  “Yes, I can do that.”

  “Please do so.”

  “Arrest her, Constable. Arrest her and put her in jail,” Mrs. Abernathy demanded.

  “I can’t do that, Mrs. Abernathy.”

  “What do you mean you can’t do that? You heard her confess that her master was killed because of her.”

  “Maybe he was killed because of her, and maybe he wasn’t. But that doesn’t give me any cause to arrest her. In fact, even if she killed him and it happened at Rendezvous on the Missouri, I still couldn’t arrest her, because that would put it way out of my jurisdiction.”

  “Am I free to go?” Jennie asked.

  “Yes, I can think of no reason to hold you.”

  “Wait!” Mrs. Abernathy said. “What about the fact that she is using girls from the orphanage in the House of Flowers?”

  “What?” Jennie and the constable asked in unison.

  “You heard me. Some of the girls who work for her now came from the orphanage house. Isn’t there some law that would deal with that? Because if there isn’t, there should be.”

  “Some girls? What girls?” the constable asked.

  “Carla Thomas is one,” Mrs. Abernathy said. To Mrs. Abernathy’s surprise, both the constable and the deputy constable laughed.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Mrs. Abernathy asked. “Do you find that funny?”

  “Yes,” the constable said. “Mrs. Abernathy, everyone knows that Carla Thomas just lives in the House of Flowers. She’s not a prostitute.”

  “Nevertheless, to even have a young girl living there is wrong.”

  “She’s nineteen years old,” the constable said. “And I reckon she’s old enough to live anywhere she wants. I don’t see as I have any right to tell her she can’t stay there.”

  Mrs. Abernathy glared at the constable, deputy constable, and Jennie for a long moment before she spoke.

  “I can see now that you aren’t going to do anything to rid us of this . . . this blight on our city, are you? You are going to allow this whore, and the whores who work with her, to continue to corrupt the morals of our young men.”

  “We have no laws on the books against keeping a bawdy house, Mrs. Abernathy,” the constable explained. “The only law we have is one that prohibits women from plying their trade on the street. And as far as I know, neither Miss Jennie—”

  “Miss Jennie? Why are you calling a colored woman Miss? Even if she was freed, she is still colored, and certainly doesn’t deserve being addressed as Miss.”

  Constable Billings sighed. “As I was about to say, neither Miss Jennie”—he came down hard on the word Miss—“nor any of her girls have ever violated that particular law. So, to answer your question, Mrs. Abernathy, no, I don’t intend to put her in jail, run her out of town, or even close her establishment. Now, if you ladies will excuse me, I have work to do.”

  Mrs. Abernathy pulled herself up to her full height, then looked at the two women she had brought along for moral support.

  “Come, ladies,” she said. “It is clear that we can expect no support from Constable Billings.” She stared at Billings. “Don’t forget, Constable, we have a federal marshal in St. Louis. Since you refuse to do your duty, I will go to him.”

  The constable looked back at Jennie. “Miss Jennie, you’re sure you can find the paper that proves you’re free?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m sure.”

  “You’d better go get it and bring it to me as quickly as you can.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I assure you, this isn’t over,” Mrs. Abernathy hissed. “I am a determined woman and I will find a way to rid our city of this filth.”

  The House of Flowers

  Back in her room, Jennie opened the chest that sat at the foot of her bed. In the bottom of the chest, under a quilt, there was a locked tin box. Opening the box, she removed a little packet, bound by a red ribbon. When she untied the ribbon, she saw what she was looking for: the all-important letter of manumission.

  Holding the letter in her hand, she let her mind drift back to the day it was signed, some six years earlier.

  Bighorn Mountains, Spring of 1814

  Jennie was tired. It was more than the bone-weary, back-sore tired that comes from working; it was the kind of deep-down tired that begins to tell on a person who has been through several years of “being on the line,” selling her body to trappers and tradesmen, soldiers, scouts, and anyone else Bruce Eby offered her services to. Furthermore, it was a tired that wasn’t ameliorated by any money she might earn. For Jennie was not only a prostitute, she was property—a slave owned body and soul by Bruce Eby.

  Eby had brought Jenny to Rendezvous, a seasonal gathering of fur trappers, mountain men, and traders, because he could sell her services for three times what the market would bear in a city. But even with the increased cost, Jennie—an exceptionally pretty young woman of nineteen—had been doing a brisk business. For three days and nights, the line outside her tent was unabated, interrupted only when Eby reluctantly gave her a couple of hours to sleep.

  Now, however, because of the excitement of an upcoming shooting match, Jennie was able to find a respite from her activities. Taking advantage of the break, she stood just in front of her tent, looking toward the gathering crowd of shooters who were preparing for the upcoming match.

  Some of the shooters were cleaning their guns, others were sighting down the barrels of their rifles at the targets they would be using. Some shooters just stood by calmly. In that group of quietly confident men, she saw and recognized a young man she had known from before—when he was a boy and she was still a young girl. No, she reminded herself. Art may have been a boy then, but she hadn’t been a young girl. She had never been a young girl.

  “Art?” she called. “Art, do you remember me?”

  Startled to hear his name spoken by a woman, Art turned to see who had called him. He saw a young woman between eighteen and twenty, with coal-black hair, dark eyes, and olive skin. For a moment Jennie could see the confusion in his eyes; then she saw that he recognized her.

  “Jennie? Jennie, is that you?” he asked.

  She smiled at him. “You remembered,” she said.

  “Yes, of course I remember.”

  Spontaneously, Jennie hugged him. He hugged her back.

  “Here, now, that’s goin’ to cost you, mister,” a gruff voice said. “I ain’t in the habit of lettin’ my girls give away anything for free.”

  Quickly, Jennie pulled away from Art, an expression of fear and resignation in her face.

  “If’n you want to spend a little time with her, all you got to do is pay me five dollars,” the man said.

  “You are Bruce Eby,” Art said.

  Eby screwed his face up in confusion. “Do I know you, mister?”

  “No,” Art answered. “But I know you. What have you got to do with Jennie?”

  “Ahh, you know Jennie, do you? Then you know she’s the kind that can please any man.”

  Art looked at Jennie, who glanced toward the ground. “He owns me,” she said.

  “What about it, mister?” Eby said. “Do you want her, or not?”

  “Yeah,” Art said. “I want her.”

  Eby smiled. “That’ll be five dollars.”

  “No,” Art said. “I don’t want her five dollars worth. I want
to buy her from you.”

  Jennie’s heart skipped a beat. Art wanted to buy her? Could he? Oh, please, Lord, that it be so, she prayed quickly.

  Eby took in a deep breath, then let it out in a long sigh. “Well, now, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout that. She’s made me a lot of money. I don’t know if I could sell her or not.”

  “You bought her, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I bought her.”

  “Then you can sell her. How much?”

  “One thousand dollars,” Eby said without blinking an eye.

  “One thousand dollars?” Art gasped.

  Eby chuckled. “Well, if you can’t afford her, maybe you’d better just take five dollars worth.”

  “No,” Art said. “I reckon not.”

  “On the other hand, you could come back next year. I ’spec she’ll be a lot older and a lot uglier then. You might be able to afford her next year.”

  Jennie looked at Art. For just a moment there had been a look of anticipation and joy in her face. Then, when she realized that her salvation was not to be, the joy had left.

  “I’m sorry, Jennie,” he said.

  “I am too,” Jennie replied. She fought hard to hold back the tears.

  “Shooters, to your marks!” someone called.

  Looking away from Jennie, Art picked up his rifle and walked over to the line behind which the shooters were told to stand. Jennie went over as well.

  Jennie stood in the crowd with those who weren’t in the shooting contest to watch. There were a few favorites, men who had participated in previous shooting contests, and the onlookers began placing bets on them.

  The first three rounds eliminated all but the more serious of the shooters. Now there were only ten participants left, and many were surprised to see the new young man still there. Even Jennie was pleasantly surprised to see that Art was still in contention, and privately she began pulling for him, hoping and praying that he would do well.

  “All right, boys, from now on it gets serious,” the organizer said. “I’m putting a row of bottles on that cart there, then moving it down another one hundred yards. The bottles will be your target, but you got to call the one you’re a-shootin’ at before you make your shot.”