“I’ve heard those stories too,” said Seth, “especially about the caves being haunted.”
Richmond nodded with a chuckle. “The caves were always involved in the spookiest of the rumors. How much of his own past Brown divulged at the time he came to Dove’s Landing, I don’t know, but I later came to be aware that he was a Cherokee who, for reasons my father never completely knew, saw danger approaching for his people and decided to leave North Carolina and relocate farther to the north. So he came here, bought land, built a house, and established himself, then began farming and became friends with his nearest neighbor, who was my father, Grantham Davidson. One curious thing, however—and this will interest you, James,” he added, turning to Waters, “—my father had the feeling, when he arrived here for the first time, that Brown had actually come from the North rather than from North Carolina.”
Richmond paused reflectively. Waters, too, had grown quiet, turning many things over in his mind.
“It turned out that Mr. Brown was right,” Richmond went on after a moment. “Trouble did come to the Cherokee nation. He had possessed as much prophetic foresight about events that would befall his people as we always thought he had regarding the weather. Who knows but that his coming here may have saved his life, though, as it turned out, the trouble eventually followed him here.”
“What kind of trouble?” asked Cherity.
“A man by the name of Andrew Jackson,” replied Richmond.
“Andrew Jackson… the president!”
Richmond nodded.
“What did he do? Everyone calls him a great leader—at least that’s what we were taught in school.”
“That is the white man’s version, as I imagine Mr. Brown would have said,” replied Richmond. “But he was the Cherokee’s worst enemy. He was elected in 1828, the same year gold was discovered on Cherokee land in North Carolina.”
At the word gold, Cherity glanced toward Seth with wide eyes, as much as if she were silently saying, I told you so! Quickly she returned her gaze back to Seth’s father.
“Why did that make Jackson their enemy?” she asked.
“Some say he wanted their gold, others their land, still others say he was simply determined to remove the Cherokee nation from the Eastern Seaboard, gold or no gold, and would have used any means necessary to achieve his purpose. And he was successful in the end.”
“That’s terrible. How could he do that—it was their land, wasn’t it?”
“All this land once belonged to various Indian tribes. But the U.S. government can do anything it wants, even change its mind—especially when a minority people is involved.”
“Like Indians and Negroes,” said Cherity with annoyance.
“I’m afraid so,” nodded Richmond.
“So what happened, Dad?” asked Seth.
“Whites flocked to the region and the first gold rush of the United States was on. They treated the Cherokee land as if it were free for the taking and the government in Washington did nothing to stop the injustices toward the Indians that followed. Andrew Jackson decided that there was no longer room for the Indians in their ancient homelands. It was in 1830, if I recall correctly, when his Indian Removal Act was passed in congress.”
“What did it say?” asked Cherity.
“That all Cherokees had to migrate to a reservation in the Oklahoma Territory. Any Cherokees who refused to leave were forcibly taken to Oklahoma by the army of the United States.”
“Was that the Trail of Tears?” asked Cherity.
Richmond nodded.
“What does all this have to do with Mr. Brown?” she asked.
“My father thought that Brown probably saw the handwriting on the wall years earlier and suspected what would eventually come to his people. So he relocated here to Virginia before the worst came.”
“Maybe he brought gold here so that Andrew Jackson wouldn’t get his hands on it!” said Cherity.
“Mr. Brown moved here years before gold was discovered in North Carolina.”
“Oh, yes… I forgot,” said Cherity, obviously disappointed.
All throughout the discussion, James Waters had remained strangely silent. The others were so caught up in the events of the past that none noticed.
“My father did say that Mr. Brown was different after Jackson’s election, that he was anxious about the future, even, my father thought, concerned for his own safety. Sometimes he would leave for long periods of time, and some said visitors came to see him, coming and going at night so as not to be seen.”
Cherity’s eyes were wide at the intrigue of what she was hearing.
“And then came a time when he asked my father to his house.”
“What happened?” asked Seth.
As Richmond began to recount what he knew of his father’s meeting with Brown, his listeners became uncommonly quiet. Within minutes Cherity had crept up the stairs of the porch and was sitting nearly at Richmond’s feet. Seth sat beside her on the veranda, legs crossed. Both listened as intently as if they were hearing a ghost story around a campfire at midnight. Carolyn, not hearing anything from the others in a long while and going to investigate, stood in the open doorway, as fascinated as the young people, the dish towel in her hand long forgotten.
“The deed to the land wasn’t all Mr. Brown gave my father that night,” Richmond went on. “He also gave him another piece of paper.”
“What was it?” asked Seth.
“A hand-drawn map—,” replied Richmond.
A whispered gasp escaped Cherity’s lips.
“A portion of a map, I should say,” added Richmond. “For my father’s first words upon seeing it were, ‘But it is torn in pieces.’
“Brown explained that there were two other segments to the sheet that he intended to entrust to others, and that all three had to be placed together at the same time for the map to reveal its secret.”
Again Richmond stopped, seemingly finished with the story.
“But what happened… what happened!” said Cherity excitedly. “You can’t leave it like that, Mr. Davidson. What was it a map to?”
“I don’t know,” replied Richmond. “Neither did my father.”
“Mr. Brown didn’t tell him what the map was for?” said Seth.
Richmond shook his head. “And the very next day Mr. Brown disappeared, to all appearances taking his secrets with him.”
“But where is the map now, Mr. Davidson?” asked Cherity. “If Mr. Brown gave it to your father, what did he do with it?”
“He said he put it in the safe with the deed, but that it later turned up missing and he never saw it again.”
“Oh no!” exclaimed Cherity. “And it’s still never been found?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“That’s terrible!”
“Then a month or so later my brother went out for a ride and didn’t come home, and when the next morning his horse was found, still saddled, beside the corral, a search was begun. They found Clifford’s body that afternoon at the bottom of a small precipice about a mile from Mr. Brown’s house.
“Of course my father and mother were disconsolate,” said Richmond. “They notified me, and I returned from England. My father never heard anything of Mr. Brown again. Nor have I. After Brown’s disappearance, Denton’s father sought to annex the Brown land to Oakbriar. My father was forced to step forward and produce the deed. He registered it and took official title to the land. The Beaumont camp squawked and forced a complex legal proceeding—during which the question was raised by Denton’s father that, if my father possessed the deed to the Brown land did not that make him a prime suspect in Brown’s disappearance?”
“Like father like son,” muttered Carolyn.
“In any event,” concluded Richmond, “the transaction between Brown and my father was upheld, though my father continued to consider the land Mr. Brown’s, and instructed me to deed it back the moment any of Brown’s relatives should appear to claim it.”
Fourteen
The runaway man and wife, their four children, and the young man Silas spent three days and nights in safety at the farmhouse where Silas’ directions had led them.
They occasionally heard the baying of hounds in the distance from the direction of the river. They suspected that the barge had probably been found and a shoreline search instituted along the riverbank. But no one traced their steps up the small stream by which they had moved inland from the river without leaving a scent, and they seemed safe enough for the present.
On the third day they heard a wagon rumble into the farmyard. Ten minutes later, the barn door opened and the farmer walked inside into the dim light.
“Those second-class tickets you wanted,” he said. “They’ve come through—your train’s here.”
An hour later the runaways were jostling along a bumpy back road on a bed of straw in the back of a rickety farm wagon, eight or ten bales of hay and straw piled in such a way to create a sort of fort that they hoped was sufficient to conceal them.
Their guide deposited them around dusk in a clearing in the middle of a dense wood through which ran a small stream.
“You’ll have to wait here until your conductor comes,” he told them. “It may be tomorrow, it may not be for several days. So make these provisions last.”
He tossed down a bag of fruit and dried venison.
“You will be safe here. There is plenty of water and we are miles from any farm or plantation.”
“How will we know the conductor?”
“No one else ever comes to this place. When he says ‘Follow me,’ do what he says. You can trust him.”
On the afternoon of their third day in the clearing in the wood, suddenly footsteps sounded and a man appeared. The black man rose to meet him.
As the stranger approached, a gasp escaped his wife’s lips. He turned and saw an expression of shock and surprise on her face. Before he could utter a word, she ran forward and began speaking in her native tongue. In astonishment he listened as the man, as surprised as the woman had been a moment earlier, replied also in the old tongue of their common heritage. For the next several minutes they spoke feverishly with one another as if they were old friends.
Listening in bewilderment, Silas walked up from behind.
“What all dat talk?” he asked in a low voice. “I ain’t neber heard nuthin’ da likes er dat!”
“As far as I can tell, Silas,” replied the woman’s husband, “they are speaking in the old native dialect.”
“You mean Indian talk! Why dat?”
“Because my wife is an Indian.”
“I knowed she looked different, but I neber knowed she wuzn’t no nigger like us!”
The woman now turned and walked toward them with a smile.
“He is from my tribe!” she said. “I recognized him from years ago. He didn’t remember me… I was just a child. But he knew my mother before she died and my father and many of the others from the old days.”
“What is he doing here?” asked her husband.
“He is a conductor on the Underground Railroad. He has been helping blacks and Indians ever since the removal displaced most of our people. He was sent to lead us to the next station.”
For the rest of the day’s journey, well into the night, and halfway through the next day, the woman and their Indian guide talked almost constantly. She learned much about the fate that had befallen her people since her own enslavement.
Wherever her husband had been expecting their curious Indian guide to lead them, he was further surprised to find themselves welcomed into what was obviously a home of substance and refinement, even a degree of wealth, and greeted by a white farmer and his wife who spoke old-fashioned English. He had heard of the Quakers, but this was his first exposure to them. From an Indian guide to another white safe house… why were these people helping escaping black slaves! As at war with one another, in a sense, as the three races occasionally were, here they were joining as one in a remarkable display of unity, making common cause together on behalf of freedom.
The Indian conductor, after a parting that brought tears to the woman’s eyes, disappeared, leaving them in the care of the white couple. They never saw him again.
In the days and weeks that followed, they marveled time and again at the types of men and homes which linked the Underground Railroad in such powerful but invisible bonds of sacrifice and service. Taken by a full-blooded native to the home of a wealthy white Quaker couple, they were led from there two nights later by a black man still a slave himself who was obviously taking great risks, though of a different kind, by having to return to his own plantation every night and work fourteen or more hours the following day.
“Why are you doing this?” the runaway asked their new conductor as he led them from the Quaker home to their next destination. “Does your master know?”
“He don’t know nuthin’,” replied the slave.
“Then why don’t you escape too?”
“I don’t got no complaints. I gots a good master—he trusts me. I ain’t got a bad life.”
“But you help others escape.”
“Dey gots it worse’n me.”
“Have you taken any of your own master’s slaves north?”
“I wudn’t do dat to him. We all love our master. But I know dere ain’t many dat are kind to dere niggers. So I’ll do what I can ter help who I can.”
“But your master doesn’t know?”
“Nope,” said the man shaking his head.
“What would he do if he found out? Would he punish you? Would he make you stop?”
“I don’t know. I doubt he’d du dat. He knows slavery ain’t a good thing.”
“But he keeps you as slaves?”
“He treats us kindly.”
The man sent them on their way in the morning, leaving behind more questions than answers.
Two more black men followed, untalkative and from whom they learned nothing. Then appeared a black woman who could not have been more than twenty-eight or thirty, but with daring to make up for her years. She was leading out a man even younger whom they learned was her brother. She had already escaped to the North, but had returned at great danger to herself, all the way to Alabama, and was now leading him out the same way she had come.
They remained with her a week, moving nightly from one station or hiding place to the next with perfect safety. Gradually they learned the codes and passwords and secret signals and signs that passed along the railroad line. Then the woman and her brother were gone. The next night mysteriously appeared yet another to lead them.
Their trek continued. Slowly their steps drew ever nearer that promised land of Pennsylvania… north they went, ever north.
A great storm slowed progress to a halt. They were forced to remain in a barn in North Carolina more than two weeks. Other runaways and vagabonds came and went, and others, like them, remained to wait out the weather with the cows.
Silas continued as their constant companion. Questioned, he had no more specific destination than they—north to freedom.
They continued to be astonished at the variety of homes where, at great peril to themselves, they were hidden, fed, and sent on their way—from Quaker homes to poor farmhouses, from white to black, from homes of obvious wealth to the shacks of slave villages, from the basements of churches to the attic lofts of more barns than he could count. Always another came—men, women, old, young, rich, poor, slave, free… their only motivation to help the desperate travelers who dreamed of a better life a few miles farther along the route to liberty—conductors, as they were called, on this strange human railroad where freedom was the only destination.
Why did they do it? Why did they risk their lives for people they had never seen before and would never see again? What was it within them that inspired such heroism, such deeds of sacrifice to bring freedom to an enslaved people? How arose within them the courage and selflessness to change a country? It was clear that they were part of something wonderful, so
mething huge, something historic.
As much evil as slavery produced, one could not escape the corresponding innate goodness of humanity that hard times and suffering produced. In the midst of terrible injustices and cruelty, brother yet sacrificed for brother.
What did it all mean? What did this enterprise of freedom say about humanity? How could such evil and such good coexist within the human heart?
It was a puzzle the leader of the small band could not entirely resolve. Even within himself he observed the dichotomy of both forces pulling him at once. He was, in a sense, giving—even, perhaps in a certain way, sacrificing—for Silas. The poor man was so inept and wool-brained that he probably could not have survived a week on his own. At the same time he was still haunted by the pleading words of the boy he had left behind: “Take me wiff you.”
Yet he had refused.
What higher meaning existed in it all? And if so many strangers were willing to risk their own lives for him, for Silas, for his family… what obligation did that place on him toward others in need?
What did the fellow members of a common humanity owe one another? Was the precious thing called freedom to be found by individuals alone, or by the race of humanity as a growing interconnected whole?
Fifteen
The weather throughout Virginia warmed again. As soon as was possible, the wheat harvest at Greenwood resumed, and Cherity, now a full-fledged member of the women’s crew, refused to be left out of a single minute of it.
When the work did not beckon or was finished for the day, during every free moment possible, sometimes early, sometimes as dusk was falling, and as the wheat fields gradually became bare and the harvest complete, she and Seth could be seen riding somewhere together—on the ridge, along the river, or on their way up toward the high pasture for a gallop.
Cherity’s goal was to ride every one of the Davidson horses before she and her father returned home, and before the harvest was complete she was well on her way to accomplishing that goal. Seth had been concerned in two or three cases, for not all the animals were of gentle temperament. Two or three in particular had taxed all his and Alexander’s combined patience and skill even to partially tame. But thus far there was not a creature in their stable that Cherity could not handle.
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