With This Peace

by Karen Campbell Prough

  “No, he not do that.” Giggling, Amos ignored her warning, and the calf escaped Hannah’s arms. Amos jumped off the fence and ran after the fleeing calf. “Come back!”

  “Poor thing.” Ella pressed her forehead against the soft side of the cow. She started milking the animal as she prayed. “Amos never gives up. Lord, help me be like my son. This ain’t the life I wanted. It wasn’t my idea to move south—to this blisterin’ hot, swampy land. I feel I cain’t take my eyes off my children, an’ how can I go on alone without my husband?”

  Hannah ran after her brother. “No. Mama said, no!”

  Ella sighed and finished her prayer, “Oh Lord, remove this weight of fear from my heart. Give me peace an’ protect us. Amen.”

  “Stop it, Amos,” the little girl yelled.

  Amos was determined to trap the calf by the crumbling fence.

  Ella raised her head. “Amos, are you a problem child like your Uncle Duncan?”

  Puzzled, the little boy turned toward her. The calf trotted toward its mother, promptly pushed in front of Ella, and began nursing.

  “Dun—can?” Amos asked. The absent uncle had all but slipped the boy’s young thoughts.

  She laughed. “Yes, remember your redheaded uncle?” She stood, gathered Amos in her arms, and whirled him in a circle. “Oh, baby … you’re no problem! Give me a hug.” She squeezed him and reached to hug Hannah. “I love you both—so much.”

  Hannah studied her face. “Will Uncle Samuel find us?”

  “Of course …” Ella patted Hannah’s head. “Hmm, look at those angry clouds.”

  A restless wind whipped around them, and they both shivered.

  “Little girl, I need to start bein’ more of a mama.” Ella pushed strands of dirty hair out of her daughter’s face. “”I’ve let many things fall by the way, with … your papa gone to Heaven. You’ve been so good through everythin’. I love you as much as I loved you the night you were born.”

  “When was I born?”

  “When?” She watched the darkening sky roll toward them. “Well … durin’ a storm. It were a lightnin’-filled night. Granny Hanks came to help. You arrived all rosy in color, an’ you didn’t even whimper.”

  “I didn’t?”

  “No, an’ I was so happy to have you.”

  Ella recalled cuddling her baby girl. After the pain of childbirth eased, she had marveled at the perfect infant she held against her breast. In the child’s wide forehead and determined jaw, she saw her husband. In Hannah’s large, round eyes and softly curved cheeks, Ella had seen her own delicate mama.

  That night, up in the mountains, as the wind-driven rain battered the log walls of their cabin, Ella wrapped her arms about the precious bundle of life. Hannah had been part of the mama she lost as a child and part of the husband she wed. She loved them both—the most important people of her life rolled into the miniature being in her young arms.

  Two years later, Amos dropped into their lives like a mountain rockslide. He was a determined child right from birth. Sturdy-bodied, he took after Jim’s father and three brothers with his physical stamina. He went nonstop from morning to nightfall, crawling, exploring, and seeking trouble. However, his enormous blue eyes were like hers, and he conquered the trick of turning on the charm.

  Such blessings God had given her!

  “Mama?” Hannah tugged on her skirt.

  “I’m sorry, I were thinkin’.” She tapped Hannah’s nose. “We must go eat.”

  “Will the people come back?”

  “No.” Cold raindrops fell around them. Ella straightened up and shivered, but held her fingertips out to the splattering touch of the rain.

  The rain instantly brought the scent of wet soil. Shutting her eyes, she let the chilly rain flow over her. The children chased each other, ignoring the icy spatters. There was no lightning, only a steady downpour of water washing her from head to toe.

  “Thank you, Lord,” she murmured, raising her hands to wipe the dampness from her eyes. Shivers tightened her shoulders.

  “I say the same.”

  With a gasp, she turned. Luke had walked up without them hearing him.

  “Ella, take the children inside. When I hid from that wagon, I spotted horses and white men headed for the river. The riders didn’t see me, but I’m worried they might circle this way.”

  Ella swiped the rain from her face and placed a hand on Amos’s cold, naked shoulder. “Stop, son. Quiet.” She shivered and motioned for Hannah. “Come quick.” With the rain beating on them, they ran for the secluded cabin.

  Luke trotted at her side and scooped up Amos when they neared the steps. He deposited the child on the porch and waited for Ella and Hannah to go ahead of him. “I counted four men.”

  Ella shooed the shivering children inside. “Find dry clothes.” She turned to Luke. “Who do you su’pose they are?”

  “Not soldiers,” he muttered, wiping his face. Rain dripped from black curls hanging over his forehead. “Rough lot. Don’t light a fire. The one by the tree will now die out.”

  Ella rubbed her cheeks and sighed. “We need a fire after gettin’ wet.” She gazed down at her soaked blouse and skirt. “What else should we do?” She pushed damp hair out of her face and felt the remainder of it slip from the hairpins. The weight of the wet hair tumbled down her back.

  “Hush the children—stay quiet.” He cleared his throat, his gaze switching to her unbound hair. “I’ll stand guard tonight and slip out in the morning … to see if they’ve moved on. I hope they don’t follow that wagon’s tracks. It’ll lead them here.”

  “Those people who stopped were northbound … leavin’ Florida. I wished to go with ’em,” she whispered.

  “Perhaps you should’ve. I’m thinking we must leave and head west of here, even try the direction your men rode—the village, Tampa. There’s plenty of people there. They will take you in … until a way north can be mapped.” His intense amber gaze flickered over her face. “I can’t chance someone spotting me. I can get you close to Tampa. That’s all.”

  Ella nodded. “Yes. It’s best we go. I fear Samuel will never find us. I left the trail signs but—”

  “Those streamers of blue material could direct an Indian or worse into this clearing.”

  Ella stared up him without blinking and understanding took her breath away.

  She stammered, “You—you removed ’em? When?” Angry tears joined the dampness on her face. “Then—then how can Samuel find me—us? You shouldn’t have done that!”

  “I couldn’t leave them waving a flag to everyone who chanced upon that trail … good or evil.” He backed away and turned for the steps. Raindrops dripped and ran down his scarred back and into the waistband of his ragged trousers. “I’ll put the cow and calf in the barn.”

  Oh, God! There’s no hope, now. We’re alone with only a runaway slave to trust. Samuel won’t find us. He’ll suppose the worst!

  Chapter 19

  Thursday, November 4, 1847

  Samuel backtracked to the last faded piece of material. He hadn’t located another one. A couple trails converged and then faded out of existence.

  He stared at the flat Florida terrain. Where had they gone?

  Though she tried to hide her irritation, it was a week before Ella’s anger at Luke dissipated. They started to talk of the hazards and hostile Indians they might encounter while traveling to the village of Tampa. Without Luke, she felt they couldn’t make it. But her dependence on him meant his brief stretch of freedom might be at stake.

  The morning sunlight signaled a beautiful, cool day, but fear haunted Ella’s dreams every night.

  “Amos, yesterday you were noisy an’ wandered too far from the porch. Today, I want you both to play inside. Luke’s gone huntin’.”

  Hannah sat and rubbed at one bare foot. She scratched at the ankle of her other leg. “Can we take my dolls for a walk to see the calf?”

  “No. Go inside. Don’t scratch. Please, put your boots on.”

>   “They don’t fit no more.”

  There was a movement behind the barn. Ella gripped Hannah’s shoulder, but it was Luke skirting the high grass and dense scrub. Across his wide, naked shoulders hung a yearling deer, its head bobbing with his long strides. A bow was carried over his left shoulder. Ella went down the steps and could see where blood dripped from the deer’s slit throat.

  “A deer!” Amos joined her and pointed. “Look, Mama!”

  “Shh! Yes, it’s smaller than some dogs.”

  Luke grinned at Amos’s big smile. “When it left an oak thicket, I couldn’t resist. We need rich meat. Eating snared rabbits gets old. It was either chance a wasted arrow and shoot the deer, or wrestle and stab a gator.” His hearty laugh was contagious. “I don’t usually hunt with a bow, but I thought it best to do so.”

  Ella smiled. “I cain’t say as I’d like chewin’ on a reptile’s tail. And I didn’t know you had a bow or hunted with one.”

  “Learned as a child. I’ll hang and gut him. Do you have a longer rope?”

  “I’ve left the best rope stored in the wagon. It’s wound around a barrel of dried corn.”

  “Can you get it for me? I’ll be under the trees, where there’s a low limb to string him up. Let me get him gutted and the hide pulled off, then I could use your help cutting the meat. That is … if you can help.” His broad smile showed the gap on the right side. “Take the bow off my arm?”

  Ella lifted the weapon. “I can help you. The children will stay on the porch.”

  “Ma … ma!” Hannah wailed.

  She shook her head. “No, your brother needs you to watch him, so he stays out of trouble.” She ran to get the rope for Luke.

  Moments later, Ella watched Luke throw the rope over a branch and pull down. He lifted the deer’s swinging, upside-down body free of the leaf-strewn ground. Its hind legs were spread with a branch put through slits cut between bones in the lower legs. He made one more pull with the rope and tied the end of it around a sapling. The deer swung head down.

  Luke hauled water, stacked fresh kindling, and situated the iron tripod over the wood. As he waited for Ella to return with some twine, he went back to the smoldering fire pit by the cabin and carried hot coals to the new spot. Hate to send smoke signals upward, but we got to eat.

  He thought of the immediate concerns. Ella hadn’t known of the twenty-mile rule—about living near the river. It was an unmarked barrier between the Indian reservation, the river, and persistent, land-seeking settlers. Any day a group of soldiers could ride in and demand she move on.

  “And if I stay, I’ll be in danger of capture.” He talked to himself as he gutted and skinned the deer and draped the hide over a low branch. “I got to get her to that village called Tampa.”

  He spotted her walking toward him with arms swinging freely at her side. The November sun glinted off her hair, and he saw she had changed clothes.

  Instead of the skirt she wore earlier, she now wore a loose, wool shift. No belt or tie pulled it in at her slender waist. He could tell the dress was old. Its original color had faded to a pleasant sage green, which blended with the late fall surroundings of Florida. The hem skimmed the yellowed grass, making a soft swishing noise.

  “I brought your iron pots out here and the iron stand,” he said. “I thought we’d cook a meal while smoking some.”

  With only a slight nod, she laid a ball of twine on a log. She banked the fire and used her boot to scrape the thick layer of dead leaves away from the burning logs. The exposed sandy soil would serve as a firebreak. She set up her iron tripod, shoving its legs into the sandy soil.

  While he skinned the deer, Ella attended to the fire, laying green sticks and crisscrossing them with dry limbs. She hung an iron pot above the snapping flames. Without looking up, she accepted the meat he handed to her and soon stirred chunks of backstrap in a simmering, rich brown gravy.

  “Go feed the young ones. I’ll continue here,” he murmured.

  Two hours later, most of the venison was either trimmed into strips or cooking in a kettle. Luke carried a bucket of water to the fire pit, so they could wash their hands. Several times, Ella walked to the cabin to check on the children. Luke noticed her deepening silence each time she returned.

  By crowding the wooden frame, tied with limber oak splits, Luke placed thin-sliced meat on the sagging rack. With the mild autumn day and the hot fire, sweat poured off his face and body. He knew the sunlight, filtering through the tree branches and leaves, reflected off his scarred back. He saw the unspoken query in the young woman’s troubled blue eyes, before they darted away to look at the fire or watch a bird in the tree.

  Luke knew what she saw—thickened, discolored skin covering places where a burr-ridden metal rod had torn four grooves into his flesh. Three scars went sideways on his upper back, between his shoulder blades, and the fourth scar descended across the other three. Fellow slaves told him it resembled a tattoo, a brand, or an evil cross. His gentle mama had wept bitter tears when she was forbidden to salve his raw skin.

  “You shudder.” He tossed meat on a board taken from the back of the wagon and faced her.

  “I do?” She waved her hand at the persistent flies and went back to slicing the meat.

  “I saw you.”

  “How long will this keep?” The young widow wiped her forehead with her arm. Her sleeves were rolled above the elbows, exposing untanned skin, lightly sprinkled with honey-colored freckles.

  “Months—if dried.”

  She sat on a crooked oak limb, which had grown in bends and curves until it threatened to converge with the sandy ground. It bounced as she moved. There was a wagon board in front of her, balanced on the cut tops of two tree trunks, which someone chopped off a few feet from the ground. It formed a narrow table and allowed her to sit while working.

  “If we could chance a smoky fire, we could dry the meat hard, as the Indians do, and bind it in small bundles. It’d keep for a time and be good on the trail to Tampa.” He tossed wood on the hot fire.

  “An’ let the mud daubers build huts on it?”

  Luke chuckled, appreciating her sense of humor. “Not ’til spring.”

  Her blue eyes twinkled. Luke found himself enjoying the picture she made, with the sunlight fingering her hair. He blinked in surprise and tried to squelch the longing he felt.

  More flies buzzed around the meat. She brushed them away. “I don’t know how to understand this land. It is fall an’ the leaves haven’t changed. One day it’s cold, the next warm. Cain’t keep nothin’ cold. Bugs are everywhere—gnats, sand fleas, midgets, mosquitoes—an’ those brown insects crawlin’ into food.” Her bottom lip pushed out in a pout. “I hate ’em. Plus, there was a rat in the cabin last night—not to mention the raccoons prowlin’ underneath the floor all night!”

  Luke moved away from the fire’s heat and squatted on his heels. He rested his wrists on his knees and let his bloody hands hang limp. Wrinkling his brow, he studied the hazy sky. A few clouds built and pushed over the horizon.

  “A person gets used to it …”

  “I won’t,” she muttered. “We had a smokehouse back home.” Using the back of her hand, she pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “We packed pork in a salt trough. We had a cache.”

  “Same in Virginia. Pork can be salted here, too. It’s done. Smokehouses are used. The Indians build them.”

  Behind them, in the trees, a shrill, trilling chorus started, and soon, the late afternoon air was deafening with the reverberating noise. Ella laid aside her bone-handled knife. “Now, that reminds me of home! They fill the woods with noise. I always slept sound when they kept it up ’til after dark.” She tried to see up in the tree.

  Luke nodded. “The bug with large wings …”

  “Yes, that’s the one.”

  “Only the unusual warm weather has kept them singing. Where’s home?” Luke found pleasure in the lilt and resonance of her clear voice.

  She sighed. “Beckler’s Cove
… Georgia … ’til now.”

  “You miss it.” He stood and went back to the fire. He pushed a narrow green branch through some meat. When she spoke of the mountains, he heard the unhidden melancholy.

  “Yes.” Her curved lips slipped into a sad smile. She gazed at the flat Florida surroundings. “Mountains, green valleys, an’ beautiful streams—oh, I miss it. An’ the waterfalls!” The longing in her voice came close to a sob.

  “I come from Virginia, south of Richmond.” His dust-covered toes pushed at the leaves and sand. “She may as well be dead, now. I’m never going back. My mother … I mean.”

  “You were treated badly.”

  “Not at first, not until I set store against overseeing. Oh … I could do it, but I didn’t do like they wanted. I couldn’t bring myself to hit the workers. And I yearned for books. I sat up nights reading, whenever I could.”

  “You read?”

  “Yes. But it didn’t keep me out of the fields.” He looked away. “You ever seen a plantation worked with slaves?”

  “No. I only know of slaves who escaped. They helped my husband’s brother, Samuel. Saved his life when he was almost pulled down a mountain by a mule that fell.”

  “I ran away twice.” Luke bent over the fire and pushed a hunk of meat sideways. “The slaves work even if they’re sick.” He fought bitterness as he continued, “Ole Jake didn’t pick out his row one day. He left beans in place. He’d been sickly. They told me to punish him—send him back to the field. I refused. They beat me and him. Made me do his job after the beating. I ran … left that night. They caught me the next afternoon when I crossed Longmire Creek … cut my back to mark me and dragged me back with ropes.”

  Ella’s face went pale. He watched her hands shake as she wiped away tears.

  “Go on,” she whispered.

  He shrugged. “I planned better. I wasn’t going to be caught. Here I am. Joined the Seminoles, hid from soldiers and slave hunters.” He shrugged. “At first I hated it here, but I don’t know if I feel the same, now. I’m free. I love the winters, but with the white soldiers using slaves to trick the Indians—things are changing. Some of the slaves go back and accept pay to lead the way to hidden villages.”