Soon Be Free Page 5

  “We’ll handle it, Mr. Weaver,” Will said.

  Pa nodded, but looked right past Will. “Does thee understand, son? James?”

  “Yes, sir,” James said with a sigh.

  Pa pressed fifty dollars into his hand and gave Solomon fifty dollars as well, but Solomon protested. “Dr. Olney staked me, sir.”

  “Would thee decline money borrowed from Mrs. Weaver’s cookie jar? She’d not let me back in the house, friend.”

  Solomon smiled and tucked the money in his black coat pocket.

  There was a great rustle and cascading of skirts as a lady tried to hoist herself up into the coach. The driver actually had to shove her from behind.

  “Fresh man!” she squealed. Her skirt, with hoop and bustle, just about filled what was left of the space. “Oh, I see the cabin’s occupied.” Then she spied Solomon. “Well! My daddy didn’t rear me to ride with the likes of him.”

  “Madam,” Pa began, but Solomon slung his pouch over his shoulder and said, “I’m just settling the boy in, ma’am. Don’t mind me. I’ll be riding up with the driver.”

  James had no wish to travel with this rude woman, but Solomon had climbed onto the seat next to the driver, who was calling for departure, and now Pa was firing a volley of last-minute instructions:

  “Be careful. Don’t talk to anybody unless thee knows they’re trustworthy. Heed Solomon’s advice, but use thy own head. Send thy mother letters as often as possible. She’ll be worrying, son. Take care, Will. Thee might write thy mother, as well.”

  Pa shook their hands and tipped his hat to the lady. He dropped one foot behind him onto the step of the coach and said, “James, mind thee isn’t drawing pictures when thee needs to be alert.” Gravely, he added, “Son, thee will need to be very alert.” He stepped down and slammed the door shut.

  James lurched forward as the coach took off. The bench was plenty wide enough for him and Will both, but he didn’t dare look at Will because they’d both burst out laughing at the woman across from them with her grin that cracked her thick makeup. James smiled at her. Her eyes flared, and she kept that grin fixed on James until he thought he’d spit. Doesn’t she ever have to blink? He glanced at Will, who was already dozing, and at the red velvet walls and the black leather seats, but there wasn’t much to study in this small coach since she took up most of it.

  “What’s happened to your friend’s leg?” she whispered.

  “Lost it,” James said simply. No point in giving her the grisly details.

  “Rather careless of him, wasn’t it? You seem like a nice enough boy. Going back to school in Philadelphia? One can’t possibly learn letters and numbers out here in the wilds.”

  “No, ma’am. I’m headed for St. Louis to see a doctor. Him, too.”

  She looked at James sharply, a handkerchief pressed to her painted lips. “Surely you’re not sick. You look positively hale and ready to tame a stallion.”

  James took off his hat and tapped his temple. “It’s in here, ma’am.” He made his eyes wide and wild and pulled his hair into spikes like short wheat stalks. “I’m stark-raving mad!”

  “Oooh,” she gasped. “Wouldn’t you just know it. I’m to ride all day to Kansas City, thirty-five countless miles, over these primitive pioneer ruts, with a lunatic, a cripple, and a darky. I ought never to have left Philadelphia. God preserve.”

  James bared his teeth, which were none too straight and were a little scary even on a good day. He watched her shrink into a corner of her bench, with her hoop standing straight up.

  Sure now that she wouldn’t talk him to death, he took out his sketchbook and one of those amazing eraser pencils and began to draw the countryside streaming past him. Will snored.

  Chapter Fifteen

  SAMUEL STRAIGHTFEATHER

  Odd little symbols like suture tracks dotted the blueprint of our house. I really wanted to slip that blueprint right out of the room. But they’d find out soon enough and have a fit, and I’d be in capital Trouble with my parents, so I put all the papers back and refastened the envelope. Sliding it under the clothes, I felt something that was fat and squishy—a small book packed in thick Bubble Wrap. Who could resist? I popped a couple of those bubbles while I argued with myself, but I lost the argument and ended up unwrapping an old book called Delaware: Land and People. Bits of sparkly brown dye from the binding came off in my hand as I opened the book. Its yellowed pages had hairline tears. The book had to be at least a hundred years old, although there was no copyright date on the title page.

  Now, why would the Berks be carrying an old book about Delaware? Did they plan to pawn it or sell it to an antique dealer? I carefully turned page after page, corners crumbling to powder in my fingers. If I wasn’t careful, the book would end up filling a mayonnaise jar. It fell open in the middle for a glossy picture of the author, Samuel Straightfeather, in full Indian dress. He was surrounded by a bevy of white men wearing old-fashioned business suits and bowlers. The caption read, STRAIGHTFEATHER PLEADS FOR HIS PEOPLE’S LAND AMONG PRESIDENT BUCHANAN’S AGENTS. LAWRENCE, KANSAS, MARCH 1857.

  Not Delaware, the state; Delaware, the Indians! But what were they to the Berks—kin? I tried to reconstruct the Berks’ faces in my mind, scanning for signs of a square jaw or high-colored skin or sleek black hair. No, they seemed like they could be my relatives, not Samuel Straightfeather’s.

  But obviously this book was important to them. What did it have to do with their prowling around our house? Were they actually on Indian business and not James Weaver business? What kind?

  There was a key in the lock, and the doorknob was turning. I stuffed the book back into the suitcase, but there wasn’t time to slip it into the Bubble Wrap. Just as the door swung open, I yanked the sheets off the bed like one of those tricks where you whip off the tablecloth and leave all the dishes and glasses in place.

  “What are you doing in here?” Mr. Berk asked. His harsh voice rocked me back on my heels.

  “Just tidying up,” I sweetly replied, but my heart was pounding.

  Mr. Berk put on his exaggerated limp for my benefit. “Listen, just leave the fresh sheets and towels. Me and the missus will take care of it ourselves.”

  “But it’s part of the bed-and-breakfast service; it’s our pleasure—”

  “Yeah, well, my pleasure is to take a long, hot shower to clear out my sinuses and go back to bed. I’m coming down with it.” He stepped forward and coughed directly in my face. “Sorry.”

  I glanced at the suitcase. The book was showing. I dropped to the floor. My left hand stuffed the book back under the magenta sweater, and my right closed over something stiff and clammy under the bed. Holding my breath, I said, “Oh, look, your socks, Mr. Berk.”

  Close call! I didn’t breathe again until I could take a refreshing whiff of the potpourri on the hall table.

  As soon as I could get away, I’d go to the library and read up on the Delaware Indians. Kiowa I knew about, and Pawnee and Shawnee and Apache, but I couldn’t remember one single thing about the Delaware.

  But I should know about them, because James did, and he and I had some weird, coppery-wire link that stretched from his century to mine.

  What did the Delaware Indians have to do with James Weaver?

  Chapter Sixteen

  March 1857

  DELAWARE WOMAN

  The coach bounced along the rutted road for about half an hour, until James thought his brains were sloshing around inside his head. Across from Will and him, Miss Farrell, the lady, was green, even with all that makeup. Her jowls flapped in the jarring rhythm of the coach.

  All day like this, James thought, and then disaster—or was it luck?—befell them. The four-horse team refused the urging of the driver to bypass a mighty pothole, and they tore straight ahead into it. James felt the soft earth suck them in until the two right wheels were up to the hub in mud and the horses on that side were up to their flanks. James was practically lying on his right side, Will smashed against him, while Miss Fa
rrell jammed one hefty boot across the bench to brace herself.

  But two wheels and two horses weren’t stuck, and those horses were chomping to get going. All four were whinnying at one another. The mud-deep horses won the battle. They simply lay down on a hard patch of ground and pulled the wagon over until horses and passengers were caddywampus and the baggage and Will’s crutch were thrown into the bushes that were just bursting with new spring greenery.

  Miss Farrell landed on top of James and Will, and her hoops just about swallowed them up. “I never!” she cried as they tried to push her off, but she probably weighed more than the two of them combined.

  Now Solomon and the driver were pulling on the horses to stand the wagon back up, but all the animals were spooked and the coach was a hopeless wreck. A wheel had broken off and rolled into a ravine, and the door hung by one hinge like a flap of skin.

  “I quit!” yelled the driver. “Two months driving this thang until my kidneys is loose in my belly, and they don’t pay me but a slave’s wages, which ain’t enough to keep my dogs any meat on their bones, let alone my wife and children. Out, all of you.”

  James and Will and Miss Farrell tumbled out onto the solid earth. James helped Will up and propped him against a tree. The driver collected their baggage, kicked a wheel coated with mud, handed Will his crutch, and pointed through the trees. “Yer in luck. Through there’s the river, and they’s a Frenchman’s got a Delaware wife runs a flatboat across the river.” He handed them back the three and a half dollars they’d each paid and grinned mischievously. “Have an elegant trip, folks!”

  James and Solomon carried their trunk between them, and Solomon also dragged the lady’s trunk while she showed fat limbs by lifting her skirts out of the mud and thistle.

  Will outdistanced them quickly and reported back. “Look yonder, the flatboat.”

  The flatboat was tied to a cottonwood tree on the north bank of the Kansas River, and to another tree on the south bank. A system of pulleys and winches got that contraption across, helped along by the force of the river current.

  The flatboat owner gladly took their money and loaded the four of them on the boat.

  “He expects me to sit right out here under God and the sun?” Miss Farrell asked. She pulled the rim of her hat over her face, as though her hide would molt if it got a little sun. But at least she wasn’t upset anymore to be riding with Solomon, for she gladly clung to his arm as the pulleys cranked and the boat started moving.

  Suddenly a man streaked through the redbuds and cottonwoods and grabbed the rope that anchored the boat. He waved a bowie knife; sunlight gleamed off of it in blinding flickers. “The Frenchman, he ain’t got no charter to ferry people crost this river. I do, two miles down.”

  His throat just inches from the knife, the Frenchman yelled in his own language. He was probably cussing, but his English was better than the ferryman’s. “My wife’s people are the Delaware, and they own the land this side of the river, friend.”

  “Ya ain’t own the south bank,” the ferryman said, using that knife as a pointer.

  “No, sir,” the Frenchman said, calm as could be. “Not anymore. But if you have a right to Delaware Trust Land on the north bank of the river, then the Delaware have a right to white man’s land on the south. Fair play?”

  “Listen, mister, I got the charter from the U.S. government, and you ain’t even a citizen or a red man. You four on that boat, I’m warning you, load off or I’m cutting the rope that ties this piece of cork you’re floating on, and y’all will drift downstream, want to or not.” He raised the knife to the rope, and Miss Farrell screamed.

  “Throw down that knife!” An Indian woman came into the clearing, aiming a shotgun right at the ferryman.

  “Whoa,” he yelled, backing into the trees.

  “Nice to see you, darlin’,” the Frenchman said as his wife climbed aboard and tucked her shotgun under a blanket. The Frenchman yanked on the rope and sent them all floating across the Kansas River to the grinding sound of the pulleys. Not twenty minutes later, he and his wife were smooching on the north bank.

  “Look at those two,” Will grumbled. “Kinda makes you sick at your stomach.”

  • • •

  Hundreds of people waited with James and Will to board steamboats and to see travelers off on their journey along the Missouri River, which was nicknamed “the Big Muddy.” Solomon stood away from the crowd, even apart from the other Negro passengers, and a quick glance told James he was plumb scared to venture out of Kansas Territory. James had never known Solomon to be scared, even that time he’d been dragged off by a slave catcher, and it pained James sorely now. Why, Solomon was just about the best friend he had.

  Miss Farrell entertained the crowd with a tale about her French poodle, demonstrating how Pierre pranced on his spindly legs; her hoops and skirts swayed like wheat in a storm. James watched Solomon relax a bit with Miss Farrell’s silly prattling.

  The steamboat would be heading for St. Louis, where the Missouri joined the Mississippi and flowed from there to exotic southern ports James had only heard of, like Natchez and New Orleans.

  James hooked his coat on his thumb over his shoulder, as the day had grown warm and humid for March. He watched passengers from the Western Star languidly disembark on the Missouri shore. People greeted them with hugs and handshakes, and for a flash James felt a pang of homesickness, even for the bratty Rebecca.

  Then Will said, “Psst, James, over here.” Will had caught sight of a very different sort of greeting as immigrants from the east claimed their wagons and oxen. A band of Missouri Border Ruffians held the men at bay with pistols while their confederates smashed locks on the trunks and crates. They slashed baskets and bags. Flour poured like water. Beans and rice clattered onto the dusty ground. Sewing notions and medicine bottles and gimcracks of every kind tumbled out and rolled all over while the owners gasped at the wreckage of their life’s accumulation.

  “No way are you Yankees bringing this stuff into Kansas,” one frenzied man yelled, and another said, “Hobie, look. I found me a cache of Beecher’s Bibles.”

  James recognized the code name for Sharps rifles, repeating guns meant for the defenders of Lawrence.

  A third man held a billowy red dress up to his torso and did a little dance. “Molly Ruth’s gonna look right pretty in this, reckon?”

  One of the men guarding the owners yelled, “Quit your sporting, men, we’ve got work to do.” They began herding the passengers into a tight circle like sheep.

  “Go get your women and children if you want to wake up anything but dead tomorrow. Y’all are taking another trip, back east.”

  One brave soul shouted, “We’ve come across the country, and we mean to settle in the Free State of Kansas.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Dry earth rushed up and blinded the men when one of the ruffians fired a couple of shots into the ground. More shots ricocheted off the ground, and the Eastern men ran for cover.

  Will tamped the ground around those gunshots. “Who put you men up to this?”

  Oh, no! Why did he have to open his mouth?

  “What did you say, boy?”

  “I asked, who are you working for?”

  A big man with a buffalo mane of white hair stepped forward and hung his huge frame over Will. James’s heart jumped as he inched closer, but for what? He didn’t know the first thing to do as the pot began to boil.

  “You soft on slavery, boy?”

  Will stood his ground, that sack of leg swinging just as if a light breeze rocked a porch chair. “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “Well, listen here, boy. If you’ve got a mind to steal you a few Nigras from their rightful owners and haul them over the border into Kansas, well, boy, you can count on this: Me and a thousand like me will be here waiting for you.”

  The buffalo man seemed to notice James for the first time. “You, sissy-boy, you a fancy slave-stealer, too?”

  “No, sir,” James said. Lying didn’t come easily to him,
but he remembered Ma saying, “One man cannot own another,” and so what they’d be doing with the runaways couldn’t be stealing. “I’d never steal property. Sir.” Again, Ma’s voice: “James, people are not chattel. They are human beings, with souls that belong to God.”

  The mean man glared at Will. “This boy your friend?”

  Will pivoted on his heel. “Who, him? I never saw him in my life.”

  James swallowed a lump in his throat the size of a crab apple.

  The man waved his gun. “Git, both of you, go on.”

  Will raced his crutch to the end of the loading dock, and James made himself walk slowly, as if he had nothing to hide. But he did have something to hide: a huge ball of fear knotting in his stomach like the eye of a storm.

  Will found him when they were out of sight of the brigands. “Well, you didn’t get all lily-livered back there with that wild man.”

  “Felt lily-livered, though.”

  “Who cares what you feel, James? It’s what you show that counts.”

  “I’m never going to have thy kind of courage.”

  Will pulled an apple out of his rucksack. In three massive bites he was down to the core. “Come on. We’re about ready to board our gentlemen’s ship. Might as well have a good time while we can, ’cause one thing’s for sure: We’ve got some rough days ahead.” Will swallowed the sinewy core, seeds and stem and all. “Sure will take a long time. Months, maybe.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  NO HULA HOOPS

  “Hello, Dana?” Mike had put on his telephone voice, which was a full octave lower than his school voice. “Listen, this isn’t about a date or anything.”

  My heart somersaulted. “Who said anything about a date?”

  “It’s just a Bat Mitzvah thing.”

  “You’re not Jewish, Mike.”

  “My cousin Sarah is. She’s having a huge party at the Doubletree in Overland Park.”

  “So, what’s the not-a-date part?” I was filing a rough spot on my thumbnail, and the raspy sound made me feel squeamish. Or was it the conversation?