by Chet Hagan
“Yes. That was my understanding when I drew the will for him.”
Lee grunted disconsolately. “A rather generous bequest, don’t you think, to a man of … specious background?”
Katherine glared at her husband. Dewey’s face was an impassive mask.
Exner struggled to maintain his professional demeanor. “The background of concern to Mr. Statler”—he searched the papers for the exact phrase —“was Mr. Dewey’s ‘loyalty and exemplary work.’ It was for that reason that he made the bequest. I doubt that he thought it overgenerous.”
“I find it hard to believe that he intended to give the Frenchman all of the stallions, leaving Elkwood without any.” Lee continued to speak of Charles as if he weren’t in the room.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that such was Mr. Statler’s exact intent,” the lawyer said firmly.
“I fail to understand how he—”
Exner cut him off angrily. “Were I you, Mr. Lee, I would recognize the other side of the coin, sir! His bequest to you—and to your wife, of course—is quite substantial. Quite substantial, indeed. In the matter of horses, you retain all those in training and all of the younger animals born since the drawing of the will. So I question that you’ve been duly inconvenienced in your equine business. I might have expected, sir, that there would be a show of gratitude on your part!”
Lee was silenced by the chastisement.
“Are there any other questions?” the lawyer asked.
Katherine got to her feet. “No more questions, Mr. Exner. I appreciate the service you gave our father and this family. And I thank you for it.”
When the lawyer had said his good-byes and had left the mansion, Funston snarled at Charles, “When can you remove the stallions from Elkwood property?”
Charles smiled. “The Frenchman,” he said, “will do that within the hour.”
“One other thing, Dewey—from this day I shall take over the running of the Elkwood horses. If there are any in training in your barns they should be returned immediately.”
“As you wish.” Charles made a mocking formal bow to his brother-in-law. “Your servant, sir.”
II
DEWEY had not yet completed his breakfast the next morning when Marshall Statler’s old butler, Samuel, was at his door.
“I believe that Mr. Statler told you,” Samuel said to him, “that I’m a freeman.”
“Yes, he did.”
“But you may not know that my full name is Samuel Wilkins.” There was a hint of accusation in the statement.
“No,” Charles admitted, “I didn’t know that.”
“Well, it is,” Samuel said forcefully, “and this morning I’m reclaiming that name! I’m free again.”
Dewey nodded. He didn’t know what he was expected to contribute to the conversation.
“I’ve left Elkwood for good,” the black man told him, “although Mr. Lee has said that I couldn’t.”
Hate burned in his eyes.
“Last night I told Mr. Lee that I intended to return to Philadelphia, and we had a … well, a bitter argument. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that no nigger at Elkwood is a freeman, and that if I wanted to keep my position at the main house, I’d have to understand that from now on. He threatened to turn me over to Mr. Caldwell, the overseer of the field hands.” Samuel shuddered at the thought.
“So you’re running away?”
“No, sir, not running away. Slaves run away. I’m just leaving, as any free man would leave a position he no longer wanted to hold.”
“I understand. You’re right, of course.”
“I was sure you’d understand,” Samuel said. “And that’s why I’ve come to you for help. I need a horse, sir.”
“You have it.”
“Thank you.”
“Is there any other way I can help you?” Charles asked.
“No, sir. When Mr. Exner was here yesterday for the reading of the will, he told me in confidence that Mr. Statler had left me a personal bequest of a hundred pounds in cash. And he told me I could have it any time I wanted to claim it at his office. I intend to ride to Richmond now, get the money, and then proceed on to Philadelphia.”
“Does Lee know you’ve left?”
Samuel shook his head. “I don’t imagine he knows it at this moment—I left the mansion before first light—but certainly he’ll know soon enough.”
“Perhaps you ought to make haste, then.”
“Yes, sir, I believe I should.”
A good riding horse was quickly saddled. Charles boosted the black man into the saddle and bade him farewell.
“I’ll send you money for the horse when I get to Philadelphia,” Samuel said.
“No need. Think of it as payment for the kindnesses you have shown me over the years.”
Samuel grinned. “I’ll accept that, sir, and thank you again.”
“God speed, Samuel … uh … Mr. Wilkins.”
The black man nodded to him, spurred the horse, and was gone.
Charles expected that Funston would come calling later in the day, inquiring about the butler. But the day sped by without his hearing anything more about Samuel Wilkins. He felt good about that. One Negro, at least, would not know Funston Lee’s boot again.
III
IT was noon when Samuel reached the Richmond law office, collected his money, and rode north toward Fredericksburg. He rode easily, not wanting to use up the horse. By nightfall, he had passed Fredericksburg and had reached Accotink, south of Alexandria.
Dismounting in a small wooded glade, he unsaddled the horse, tethering it where it could graze. He lit a small fire. As he began to prepare a place where he might sleep, his horse nickered nervously. Samuel heard the snap of twigs.
“Who’s there?” he called out into the darkness.
Two white men, leading their horses, came into the circle of light made by the fire.
“Well, well,” the taller of the two said, “what’s this? A runaway nigger?”
“No, sir,” Samuel answered firmly but politely. “My name is Wilkins. I’m a freeman.”
“Wilkins, eh?” The tall man laughed. “Would that be Samuel Wilkins?”
“Yes.” He fought against showing his sudden fright.
“Mr. Funston Lee’s Samuel?”
Now his fright was genuine. This white man knew who he was. “No, sir,” he said, trying to be calm. “As I told you, sir, I’m a freeman.”
The two men tied their horses to a tree and squatted down by the fire next to Samuel. Their actions were unhurried.
“Now, Samuel,” the taller man said quietly, “we been ridin’ after you all day an’ our asses is sore. So don’t give us no trouble. We know you’re runnin’ away from Mr. Lee. But, Mr. Lee, he’s a generous man. He told us just to find you an’ bring you back. An’ no more’ll be said ’bout this.”
“I’m not going back. I’m a freeman!”
“That ain’t the way Mr. Lee tells it.”
“Mr. Lee is mistaken,” Samuel insisted.
“You callin’ him a liar, boy?”
“No, certainly not,” the Negro said cautiously. “But Mr. Statler employed me some years ago in Philadelphia, and Mr. Lee may not have known the details of that employment.”
The shorter man spoke for the first time. “My, don’t this nigger talk nice? I declare, I think this boy’s been to school.”
“I have been,” Samuel said quickly, seeing an opening that might convince the men that he wasn’t a slave. “I was educated in Philadelphia, where Mr. Statler hired me.”
“That sure is a nice story, boy. But it don’t make no difference. Mr. Lee says you’re his nigger, an’ we was to bring you back. And that’s what we plan to do.”
“No!”
“You got a smart mouth, nigger!”
“Come on,” the tall man said, “let’s stop this nonsense an’ get on with it. Saddle up your horse, boy, an’ let’s get goin’.”
“I’ll not go back to Elkwood. I�
�m a freeman, I tell you!”
The tall man slapped Samuel hard across the face. “I heard enough, boy! Saddle up that damned horse!”
“No.”
Samuel came to his feet, backing away from them.
“Boy, don’t give me no trouble!”
The tall man advanced on him, smashing a fist into his mouth. Samuel staggered but managed to keep his feet. He lunged forward, grappling with the younger and stronger man, managing to get in several blows before they overpowered him. They struck him repeatedly until he was unconscious.
“Sonofabitch!” the shorter man snarled. He spat in the Negro’s face.
The tall man dropped to his knees, searching through Samuel’s pockets.
“Hey, look at here!” he said, holding up the money he found. “This nigger is rich!”
“Lee didn’t mention no money,” the companion said.
“He didn’t, did he?” Grinning, the tall man counted the money. “Goddamn! A hundred pounds! Now, ain’t this fortunate? Kind of a windfall, you might say.”
He divided the money equally, handing fifty pounds to the shorter one, who agreed, “Yep, a real nice windfall.”
He raised a hand then, in warning. “Maybe this nigger’ll shoot off his smart mouth ’bout the money when we get back to Elkwood.”
“The way I see it, a hundred pounds is better’n the ten pounds Lee was gonna pay us for bringin’ this nigger back.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Suppose we don’t bring him back? We ain’t gonna get the ten pounds from Lee, but we get to keep this hundred. Now, whatta you suppose we oughta do?”
“Ain’t but one thing we can do,” the shorter man said.
He drew a pistol and shot Samuel in the face. The impact of the point-blank shot blew the black man’s features away.
“That oughta solve our problem, it seems to me.”
“Yep, solves it real nice. ’Course Lee ain’t gonna get his nigger back.”
The murderer laughed. “Ain’t it too damned bad we couldn’t find him?”
“What are we gonna do with the horse?”
“Well, we don’t want him wanderin’ back to wherever the nigger got him. Somebody might start askin’ questions.”
The animal was dispatched with a pistol shot in the ear.
The white men mounted their horses, wheeled them about, and rode into the shadows.
In time, the small fire flickered out, the darkness of the Virginia night drawing a blanket over the horror of the scene.
Over Samuel Wilkins.
Freeman.
15
“THE soil here,” the letter said, “exceeds any expectation. Oats and barley flourish—flax, hemp, cotton, and tobacco grow luxuriantly. And no part of the nation can exceed this country for grazing grass for livestock. Indeed, livestock turned out for the winter can support themselves in the woods and fields and keep in fine order. The Cumberland is navigable for 500 miles for large boats, and I daresay that some seasons it has enough water to float a forty-gun ship.”
Dewey put the letter down on his desk, turning to gaze out of the window at a group of mares and their new foals grazing in the pasture. But his thoughts weren’t on the horses. He was thinking of the West.
The letter had just arrived from a gentleman named Patton Anderson. He had sent it from a frontier town called Nashville, hard by the Cumberland River. Anderson was an enthusiast for the area. He had written to Charles several times about the horse racing in the West, frequently mentioning a horseman-gambler-politician named Andrew Jackson.
Charles’s appetite for news of the western frontier was insatiable. He went to great lengths to learn everything he could about the far reaches of the nation, which now encompassed a vast area from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, from the Great Lakes to the borders of Spanish Florida.
In size, as great as all of Europe.
Four million people, unhappily including seven hundred thousand slaves, spread out over a domain of a million square miles. Room to grow. To prosper.
And the population was swelling every day as Europeans heeded the siren call of a country that promised fair wages, a long life, independence of action, and even wealth—untold wealth, perhaps—for anyone who was ambitious and industrious. All without concern for birthright or station.
Why, even the savages were being controlled. Hadn’t General Anthony Wayne signed a peace treaty with the Ottawas and the Shawnees and the Miamis and the Iroquois in 1795?
There was a dreamlike image in Charles’s mind of the forests and rivers and farmlands—the opportunity—that lay west of the Old Dominion.
He had followed, in his reading, the efforts of settlers in the western lands of North Carolina to establish the new state of Franklin. They had gone so far as to seek admission to the Union. That there were problems, that Franklin itself had come to naught, did not change the reality that there would be, someday, a new state in that region south of Kentucky.
Patton Anderson said that in his enthusiastic letters. And Dewey was certain that the West called to him. He had made himself an important man in Virginia. He was grateful for that. But he wanted more.
The West offered him more.
One question remained: When?
II
THE gray filly foal struggled to stand.
Charles watched her with half of his mind. That half told him the filly was big, healthy, energetic; the first daughter of Elkwood’s White she was. The other half was still contemplating the letter he had received that day from Nashville.
“She’s a special lady,” Horace said to him.
“What?” He pulled his mind back together. “Oh, yes, she is indeed. Very special.”
The two of them—the master of Fortunata plantation and the black jockey—watched as the foal finally got its footing and sought out the mare’s teats.
“Let’s get one of those small halters on her,” Dewey said.
“Ain’t none ’round, Mistah Charles. Had so many babies in this crop so far thet—”
“No mind. Get the housemaids to stitch up a few more in the morning, will you? The leather’s in the tannery, all cut and ready.”
“Yas, suh.”
Charles yawned. It was very late.
“It just occurred to me,” he said offhandedly, “that I left a couple of those small halters in a box in the loft at Elkwood.” He shrugged. “Oh, well…”
III
HORACE was coming down the ladder from the Elkwood barn loft, two foal-size halters in his hand, when Funston walked into the barn, lighting his way with an oil lamp.
“Here, boy!” Funston shouted. “What are you doing there?”
“Ah come fer halters…” He held them up for Funston to see. “… thet Mistah Charles lef’ heah.”
“So you just came here to steal them!”
“Ah ain’t stealin’ ’em, Mistah Funston. Ah’m jest takin’ ’em back ’cause Mistah Charles forgit ’em.”
“Put them down!” Funston ordered.
Horace dropped the halters to the barn floor.
Lee came up to the young black and slapped him in the face. “Do you know what we do here with thieves?”
The boy was frightened now. “Ah ain’t no thief, Mistah Funston, hones’ Ah ain’t!”
“Do these belong to you?” Lee asked, kicking at the halters.
“No, suh, but—”
“Then you’re a thief.” He bellowed: “Cephas! Jonas!”
Two black men came running to his side.
“Take this thief and tie him to the post!”
The slaves followed his orders without question.
“Rout everyone out,” Lee shouted to anyone who could hear him. “And build a couple of fires. I want everyone to see what we do with thieves!”
Rapidly, two bonfires were built near the whipping post, and in what seemed only a few minutes more than a hundred slaves ringed it. The fires cast weird shadows on the trembling Horace, who was lashed tightly to the p
ost.
“This boy,” Funston announced to his audience, “is a thief! He came to my farm, climbed into the loft of my barn, and stole these halters.” He displayed them to the sullen crowd of Negroes. “My halters!”
He was screaming. “Now he’s to be punished for what he clearly is—a common thief!”
Slowly, with great deliberation, Lee walked to a pile of firewood nearby and picked up an axe. Returning to the center of the lighted circle, he gave an order: “Hold his hand firmly against the post!”
No one moved.
“Jonas! You!”
The elderly black man shuffled forward, grasping Horace’s left arm several inches above the wrist and pinioning the arm against the post.
“Firmly, now,” Lee instructed, suddenly appearing very calm.
The axe was swung in a giant arc, thudding into the post, sticking there.
Horace’s agonizing scream echoed.
His severed hand dropped into the dust, soon to be made red mud by the bleeding stump.
There was silence, terrifying in its totality, broken only by the crackling of the bonfires.
Nonchalantly, Funston returned the bloody axe to the woodpile. He smiled. “Tie a rag around that mess and put him on his horse.”
The smile grew broader. “Point him toward Fortunata.”
IV
SOMEHOW, despite his pain and the loss of blood, Horace managed to guide his horse to the entrance of his master’s house, where another slave saw him and ran to take the news to Charles.
Weakly, the jockey mumbled his story.
“Tell the smith to heat up an iron,” Charles ordered, picking up the Negro in his arms and carrying him toward the blacksmith shop.
“I don’t want to have to do this,” he gently told the young man, “but you’ll die unless we stop the bleeding. And quickly.”
“Yas, suh.”
At the smithy’s Charles laid Horace on the ground. “Any whiskey around here?” An illicit jug was swiftly produced from under a pile of straw. Charles put the jug to the boy’s lips. “Drink, lad, as much as you can.”
Horace took several large gulps. He began to choke.
“Hold him down,” Charles said. He undid the bloody rag, nearly retching when he saw the ugly wound. Dewey gestured for the white-hot iron, and the smithy brought it to him. “Hold the arm as steady as you can. Courage, boy.” He didn’t hesitate; the stump had to be cauterized.
