When he told her that sometimes as many as a hundred ships lay off Matamoros, hungry for cotton, she asked: ‘Why doesn’t Lincoln sink them?’ and he cried: ‘That’s the arrow that we have in our quiver. What one thing could win the war for us tomorrow?’ When she said she didn’t know, he explained: ‘If England and France jump in on our side to ensure safe delivery of cotton. Lincoln doesn’t dare antagonize Europe. So he’s got to let English and French ships come to Matamoros and load up.’
Petty Prue walked up and down her wharf, studied the accumulating bales, then snapped her fingers: ‘I’m taking ours to Matamoros.’
Once the decision was made, she never looked back. With an energy that would have alarmed her husband, who had known her as a little wren of a woman, she worked almost without sleeping, and her enthusiasm ignited the imaginations of her slaves.
‘There are two ways we can go,’ she said at the beginning of the discussions with Jaxifer and Trajan. ‘We can cut west to Waco, where they’re assembling shipments, and sell to the government. Lose half our profit. Or we can drop in a straight line down to Matamoros, and sell our bales for maybe eighty cents a pound.’
The two men listened, then Jaxifer asked: ‘You goin’ wid us?’
‘It’s my cotton. My responsibility.’
A plan was devised whereby four extra-stout carts would be loaded, each with five bales of five hundred pounds each. If they could deliver the cotton to the Mexican side, it would bring eight thousand dollars, a gamble worth taking. But one night as she concluded the final plans for the bold journey, she had a frightening doubt, and ordering her carriage to be readied, she had Jaxifer drive her to Jefferson, where she asked the old man one question: ‘When we get to the Rio Grande, how do we get the bales across to Mexico?’ and he said: ‘If cotton is so valuable, they’ll work out a way.’
‘But they say there’s no bridge. No ferry could handle all the bales you speak of.’
‘If the world needs cotton, they’ll find a way.’
‘I’ll risk it, then.’
The old man grasped Prue’s hands: ‘I wish I had a daughter like you,’ but this farewell was dampened by the agitated arrival of a horseman from Lammermoor: ‘Missy, hurry! Miss Lissa, she sick bad.’
The old man insisted upon accompanying Prue to the plantations, and when they reached the kitchen at Lammermoor they found that Millicent had been working there with the slaves, making jelly and preserving fruit in the last moments before she died. Prue, looking at the scene she had shared so often with her cousin, did not weep or cry out. Slowly she slipped to the polished floor, and there she stared at the uneven patterns, for life had become too complex for her to unravel.
The old man proved to be most valuable, not because of anything he did, for he was frail and nearing his own death, but because of the sensible advice he gave and his shrewd analysis of alternatives: ‘Of course you could go with your cotton, Miss Prue, but what happens to the plantations if you do? What makes you think Somerset will ever return, if his wound was as bad as they say? With you gone, Jaxifer gone, Trajan gone, crows will tend cotton on this farm.’ Patiently he led her to the only sensible conclusion: ‘Would to God I could volunteer to manage your place while you go, but I’m too old.’ He fought back tears. ‘I won’t live to see the end of this war. If I did take charge and died while you were gone, chaos, chaos.’
‘What must I do?’
‘You have two treasures. These valuable bales. These valuable plantations. Surely, the second is more important than the first.’
‘But I’m going to protect both,’ she said stubbornly.
‘The only way, send your cotton south with Trajan and Jaxifer.’
‘Can I trust them?’
‘What choice have you? You’ve got to stay here, with that trustworthy slave Big Matthew. And pray for the best.’
Again, once the decision was reached she did not flinch. Inspecting the four wagons, she was satisfied from what Jaxifer told her that they would withstand the load and the six-hundred-mile trip. She watched as the men loaded each wagon, three bales crossways on the bottom, two perched on top, and satisfied herself that each wagon carried heavy grease for the axles, and when all was ready she asked the old man to deliver to each of the four slaves who would be driving the wagons a copy of a letter he had had the local judge prepare:
Jefferson, Marion County, Texas
21 July 1863
To Whom It May Concern:
This will certify that the bearer of this note, the slave known as TRAJAN, is on official duty for the Confederate government, delivering cotton to Matamoros in Mexico and returning home to his plantation, as above. The government will appreciate any consideration and protection you may give him while he is discharging this important assignment.
Henry Applewhite
Judge of the County Court
To travel six hundred miles to the Rio Grande with the heavily laden wagons was a journey of at least two months, for rivers had to be forded and forests negotiated. Also, the route had to be painstakingly deciphered, with rascals on every hand to belay and betray, especially when the men in charge were slaves. But Trajan was resourceful, forty-seven years old and afraid of very little, and with Jaxifer’s help he proposed to deliver this cotton to Mexico and earn his mistress a fine penny for doing it.
They had been on the trail about a week when Trajan saw, joining them from the west, a remarkable sight: two wagons, well loaded with bales but without drivers. ‘What can this be?’ he asked his fellow drivers in Gullah, and they could not guess, so he left his own wagons and started walking toward the mystery, but as he drew close he heard a child’s voice crying: ‘Don’t you come no closer,’ and when he looked up he found himself facing a very big gun in the possession of a very small boy. On the second wagon, with his own gun properly pointed, sat an even smaller boy.
‘What you doin’?’ Trajan asked, indicating that the boys should put up their guns.
‘One more step!’ the first boy warned, and Trajan realized that he meant it, so he stopped, held out his empty hands, and asked: ‘What you doin’, boys?’ And after a pause in which the first boy looked back to the second, they confessed that they were taking their family’s cotton to Galveston.
‘Where’s your father?’
‘Dead at Vicksburg.’
‘You got no uncles?’
‘They’re at war.’
‘Your mother?’
‘She’s workin’ the farm.’
‘Galveston is not the best—’
‘Don’t you take a step. They told me people would try …’
And then Trajan saw that the two boys were near to exhaustion, for the one in back had begun to cry, at which his older brother shouted: ‘Stop that, damnit. We’re bein’ held up.’ But the younger boy could not stop; these days had been too long and cruel, and now to be accosted by a bunch of slaves who intended cutting throats: ‘I want to go home.’
‘Course you do. So do I.’ And something in the way Trajan spoke softened the heart of the boy in front, and now he, too, began to cry.
‘Now, you hold on to your guns, boys. But you got to get some rest,’ and hardly had he led the two wagons to his four than the two young fellows were sound asleep. Trajan lifted them onto his wagon, and as they slept, the most powerful and confusing emotions swept over him, for the boys were about the age his son had been when he was stolen. Endlessly he had brooded about his lost son, wondering where Hadrian could be, and now he asked himself: Was he as brave as these two youngsters were in defending their bales of cotton?
When the boys at last awakened, aware that they were at the mercy of the strange Negroes, Trajan did his best to comfort them, but whenever he tried to explain why they must not go to Galveston, where the Federal ships prowled trying to steal Confederate cotton, they suspected trickery, so always the slave said: ‘All right, all right. We’ll go as far as we can together. Then you hie off for Galveston and the enemy.’
&nbs
p; The oldest boy, Michael, was eleven, and old enough to think that there might be something most suspicious about Trajan and his three companions, especially Jaxifer, who looked very black and ferocious.
Trajan himself had no clearer view of things, for he knew that in delivering cotton to Matamoros, he was aiding the Confederacy, which was determined to keep him a slave forever, and therefore what he was doing was stupid, but he also knew that through the years he had lived in moderate decency with the Cobbs of Edisto, and that they had not changed for the worse in moving to Texas. He suspected that within his lifetime all slaves would be set free, for he had heard through rumors and the surreptitious teaching of Methodist ministers that there were large parts of the nation where blacks were free and where food and clothing and medicine were just about as available as in Texas.
He had known perhaps a dozen slaves who had tried to escape to Mexico; most had been recaptured quickly with the aid of tracking dogs; others had returned of their own will, unable to cross the great expanse that seemed to encircle the little green paradise at Jefferson; and he had seen both groups savagely whipped for their attempt to escape bondage, but he also knew that a handful had either made it to freedom in Mexico or died in the attempt. He had never felt impelled to run away from the Cobbs, for they were about as decent as the system provided, despite Reuben’s hot temper at times, but he did know that if the new masters who might be taking over at Lammermoor proved brutal, he would flee.
Why, then, did not he and the other three plan at that moment to get as close to Mexico as practical, take the money for cotton, and run for freedom? They were restrained because all they knew, all they loved, centered on Lammermoor. In Trajan’s case there was another factor: he had been given a responsibility, and as a man of honor he must discharge it.
He was considering these conflicts, answers to which could determine his chance for freedom, when he was faced by a more immediate problem. ‘We want to go to Galveston,’ Michael said one morning as he and his brother faced the four slaves. ‘We think you’re kidnapping us and stealing our cotton, and we want our guns back.’
‘You have them,’ Trajan said. ‘You’ve always had them.’
‘Then can we go to Galveston?’
‘You’re going to Galveston. That’s always been understood.’
‘Where is it?’
Now Trajan asked the boys to sit with him, and as they perched beside the road, he had to confess: ‘I don’t know where it is. But the first person we meet on this road, we’re goin’ to ask.’
The boys could not believe that Trajan was telling the truth, and they wanted desperately to draw apart and discuss the trap into which they had fallen with their mother’s cotton, but they were afraid to do so lest the slaves kill them right there. So they were overjoyed when they saw coming at them from the south a group of riders, and they were especially relieved to see that they were white.
But when the riders reined in at the lead wagon, they were far less pleased, for the leader was a terrifying man, very tall, covered with hair, dirty, mean-looking, and topped by a panther pelt which he wore with the tail hanging down the left side of his face. ‘Sergeant Komax, Confederate army. On duty with these men to gather all cotton wagons headed for Matamoros and bring them in safely.’
‘Which way is Galveston?’ Michael asked very politely.
‘Don’t matter. Ever’body goes to Matamoros. You niggers, what you doin’?’
Very carefully, very politely, Trajan directed Jaxifer to show the paper which the judge had written; he certainly did not propose to show his copy lest the soldiers keep it. When Komax had one of his men read the safe-passage to him, he grunted: ‘We find a lot of slaves takin’ their plantation cotton south. Join up.’
Komax had little trouble convincing Trajan to agree, but when he turned to the two boys he found himself looking into the same cumbersome rifles that had stopped the slave. ‘We’re goin’ to Galveston,’ Michael said in his quavering voice, and he was supported by his brother, who cried: ‘You come closer, we shoot.’
To Trajan’s surprise, the big, hairy man halted immediately and withdrew: ‘Do somethin’ with them kids!’
‘You act as if they’s gonna shoot.’
‘At their age I’d of shot.’
So once more Trajan had to convince his two charges that going to Galveston was not only impractical but also forbidden. With the gravest foreboding that they might be slain or their cotton taken from them, the boys lowered their guns, but during the rest of this dangerous journey they remained close to Trajan, for Panther Komax terrified them.
By the end of that week three other wagons had fallen in line, and during the week after, four more. The plodding caravan had now passed Victoria and was about to skirt the dangerous port city of Corpus Christi, blockaded by Union ships. By the time Komax was ready to ford the shallow Nueces River, other Confederate scouts had rounded up a dozen or more creaking wagons, and Panther gave stern orders: ‘Yonder, the Nueces Strip. We keep together for three reasons. Benito Garza and his bandits might attack. Union troops comin’ at us from the sea might attack. And if you fall behind, you will perish for lack of water. Git!’
It was about a hundred and forty miles, in the hottest time of the year. The draft animals sometimes staggered in the blazing heat, and men fared little better, so that even the slaves, who were supposed to be impervious to heat, sweated and groaned. At times there seemed to be not a single living thing on the vast coastal plains, so flat they were, so devoid of pleasant vales and cool streamlets. The drivers wrapped rags across their faces and looked like ghosts gray with dust, but still the dreadful heat assailed them.
Water was rationed, and at the worst of the journey exhausted men and animals simply lay on the ground during the sunlight hours, sweating and jabbing at insects; there was no shade except under the wagons. It seemed stupid to be lying bathed in sweat, but the brief rest enabled the teams to travel through the cooler night. And then the miracle of Texas happened, because wherever in this vast state one traveled, arid and forbidding land finally ended and green pastures appeared. Komax had brought his caravan safely into the valley of the Rio Grande, that fragile paradise where a few industrious farmers were beginning to coax the waters of the river inland to produce the finest fruits and dairy cattle in this part of the world. Rarely were travelers more delighted to find shade and cool water.
At Brownsville the difficulty that Petty Prue had foreseen eventuated. Overland convoys like the one Panther Komax had brought through safely were arriving constantly, and with only one small, overworked ferry available for carrying the bales across the Rio Grande, a swirling confusion developed. Men with the loudest voices and the roughest manners preempted the ferry, and even though Panther was strong in both departments, he had learned that he had little chance of forcing the cotton of these slaves and their two small boys onto that precious craft.
‘Why wait?’ he said to Trajan. ‘You can swim it acrost.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes,’ Panther explained. ‘You lug them bales to that river’s edge, and then you shoves ’em in and you follow. And you kick your feet like a puppy dog, and pretty soon you’re on the other side.’
‘Not me!’
‘If you don’t do it, it ain’t gonna get done.’ He showed the slaves how to muscle the bales right down to the river, and then he demonstrated how Trajan must jump in after the bale and push it to the far side, but Trajan was terrified.
‘Cotton don’t float, and Lord knows, I don’t float.’
‘But it does float. Enough air locked in there, makes it a boat.’
‘Water hit cotton, it’s ruined.’
‘It’s packed so tight, water don’t penetrate quarter of an inch.’ Carefully Panther explained that perfect safety prevailed: ‘Cotton floats. You float. Nothin’ gets wet but your black hide. You ride back on the empty ferry.’
If Trajan was scared of the water, Jaxifer and the other two were paralyzed, and the
re seemed no way that the Cobb bales were going to be delivered to the people on the south shore who were eager to pay a fortune to get them. So, cursing all black men in words which ought to have shriveled Trajan’s skin but which affected him not at all, for he was not going into that river, Panther shed most of his clothes until he stood a forbidding, hairy ape at the side of the Rio Grande. Instructing the slaves how to get the heavy bale into the water, he swore and plunged in after it, but he had taken only the first few kicks when off to his right he heard a boyish shout: ‘It’s easy!’ and Michael was steering across the first of the many bales he would manage that day.
Swearing a new set of oaths, Komax crawled out of the water, grabbed Trajan by the neck, and thundered: ‘If he can do it, you can.’ And Trajan, trembling like an aspen, edged into the water, kicked, and found that it would require fifty strong men to sink that bale of air-filled cotton.
On the next trip, even the smaller boy, Clem, swam his bale across, but no one, not even Komax with all his profanity, could get Jaxifer and the other slaves into that river.
Returning on the ferry after each trip, Trajan and the boys got their entire cargo across, and then the slave offered the lads a proposition: ‘Clem, you the littlest, you swim over to the other shore and mind our cotton. Jaxifer, you stay here. Michael, you and me is gonna earn a fortune.’ And they did. Well practiced now in swimming, they invited cautious owners to shove their bales into the water, where they took charge, maneuvering them to the Mexican shore.
They charged for this service, and so jammed were the supply lines that after several dripping days, they had accumulated quite a few dollars and would have been willing to continue the traffic indefinitely, for as Michael said: ‘After you been without water in the Strip, this is fun.’
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