Mo and the others nodded, and the man gave them a stern nod, a wordless agreement that he wasn’t to be disobeyed, and that they weren’t to be betrayed. But their safety was still anything but guaranteed. And there was also the prospect of a long cart ride under cover of hiding, with the possibility of being discovered, not to mention a long boat trip on possibly cold and dangerous waters. The next leg of their journey could easily prove just as deadly as the ones before it, and could still be their last.
But it only occurred to Belle then that the words of that faithful tune had proved right again. Surely these two whites, the beautiful Daughter of the She Bear and her dutiful husband, were the two hills the song spoke of, at the end of the river, and beyond them lay yet another river, one they had yet to cross to reach safety. But if they followed the drinking gourd and trusted in this mysterious white woman, clearly a person of power and resource, survival and even freedom were still in the offering.
But Belle also knew that time was running out, that the events of the recent past were still hounding them. No number of Chippewa warriors could stop that tide from washing upon those northern shores to wipe everything away; the present, the future, everything and everyone that was good and decent in that sin-encrusted land.
But there was new hope, and a new future in the likes of this woman and her kind. Belle felt refreshed with a new view of the white, of her chances among them. She tried to ignore the bitter aftertaste which hope usually brought her and savor, just for the moment, the peace and safety of that basement, warm and dry, her belly filled, her family safe, for however long that would last.
It would have to be enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Belle slept more soundly than she had in months, perhaps even her whole life. She still woke up several times during the night as she always did, looking around for any sudden danger, the invasion of one of the white laborers from the plantation.
No, Belle told herself, we’re not on the Robinson plantation no more, won’t never go back there. Maybe up to heaven, maybe down to hell, but we ain’t g’wine back there no how.
They spent the morning carefully listening to the action above and around them. There was activity, muttered voices, often there were stretches of dead quiet. The house cook, who introduced herself as Betsy, brought food to the basement, boiled eggs, freshly baked bread, various cheeses both sharp and mild, hard and soft, apples from their orchard, strips of bacon so recently off the griddle that the bubbles of fat had barely stopped bursting on those crinkled strips.
Belle and her family remained in the basement as they’d been instructed, waiting to leave for Lake Michigan the following morning. But as the day moved on, a sense of foreboding overtook Belle, heavier footsteps landing on the floorboards of the little house, creaking above the Robinson family hiding, watching, and listening from one dank corner.
“Not sure how many,” the man said, close enough for Belle to hear the creaks in the floorboards indicating that he might have been standing just above them, only a few feet away. “Maybe up from the Robinson place, who knows? But there was another Chippewa strike against some slave hunters, which means their query must have made it this far, maybe even farther.”
The woman’s voice, which Belle already recognized to be that of their hostess, the Daughter of the She Bear, was calm and reasonable as Belle and her family sat silent and strained to hear her.
“That’s just awful, Sheriff Slaughter. Are you sure it was the Chippewa?”
“Sure as we need to be. But don’t you worry, we’ll settle those savages’ hash soon enough. No reason for you to be fearful of them, ma’am.”
“How lucky we are to have a man of your … abilities and integrity,” she said, and even in the basement, one floor beneath then, Belle could sense the woman’s teasing lack of truthfulness.
“Good of you to say so, Mrs. Kincaid,” the sheriff said, and Belle was certain that he was just as insincere. But the moments crept by with the sheriff lingering, stepping around the room above the basement. The longer he was there, the more danger Belle and her family and their hosts were in, Belle was well aware. Every second with him so close by tempted fate; a sneeze, a cough, just a turn of the sheriff’s mood could bring him down to the basement, and none of the Robinsons were sure what would happen then.
But it wouldn’t be good and somebody, at least one person, would wind up dead as a result.
Another pair of feet stepped into the little house near him. “No sign of ‘em, Sheriff,” another man said.
The Daughter of the She Bear, now known to Belle as Mrs. Kincaid, said, “You’ve been searching my property?”
“Much as we can,” the sheriff said.
“You don’t have any right to do that,” another man said, his voice familiar to Belle as the Daughter of the She Bear’s husband, who could only be called Mr. Kincaid to Belle’s reasoning. “This is private property!”
“Not what can be seen by the naked eye, Mr. Kincaid, not out in the open.”
“Then get back out into the open and do your job and leave us alone,” Mr. Kincaid snapped.
But his wife said only, “Jack, please. Sheriff, we haven’t seen any slaves, escaped or otherwise, and I don’t travel with the Chippewa, as you can see.”
A doubting moment passed. “Odd how they never come around here.”
“I don’t hear of them harassing any of the local homesteaders,” she said. “The slave traders, well, that’s another story. You know how it is with the savages, they have an affinity for the Negroes, and none at all for the white man.”
“I know all I need to know about those animals, of whatever color or stripe.” A few more footsteps creaked above Belle’s head, dust wafting down from the floorboards. “Nice little place here, right off the smithy.”
“S’for the iron workers while they work on the carriages.”
“Uh-huh.” The footsteps ceased, just over the Robinsons’ heads. “You got a basement?”
“Of course we do,” she said.
“That’s a good place for an escaped family to hide, wouldn’t you say?”
“It might be,” Mr. Kincaid said, “if we didn’t have armed guards on patrol around the clock —”
“Guards who can be fooled,” the sheriff said. “These critters are tricky, cunning, not nearly as dumb as a lot of folks down south seem to think. Can’t take nothin’ for granted.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry,” the woman said. “I was just down there a few hours ago, and there’s nobody there.”
Another moment passed before the sheriff asked, “And what kind of business would bring a woman like you down to the basement of the smithy house of your estate?”
Belle’s stomach turned with a sudden strike of nerves and nausea.
But the woman calmly answered, “My cook, Betsy, came running into the main house, claimed she saw a ghost.”
“A … a what?”
“I know it sounds absurd,” she said. “Who’d ever believe such a thing. But you know how they are, suspicious like that.”
“Tell me about it,” her husband added.
“And with the rumors of the hills, she was sure she saw one of the ghosts from the mine.”
“And you came all the way here to the basement on such a report?”
“Well what was I supposed to do, Sheriff? My cook was hysterical. She wouldn’t stop screaming, never mind get back to work! I’ve got dozens of workers here, and even more in the coal mines, and they’ve got to be fed, Sheriff. I couldn’t have my cook out of her head like that. So I came out here just to show her, to calm her down.”
Another moment passed, and Belle knew the sheriff was measuring the woman’s lie, trying to sense the truth of it. But her mind and spirit were obviously stronger than his, Belle could tell. She wasn’t sure she’d ever met anyone, the vicious masters of the Robinson plantation and even Beau Robinson himself, could have stood up to the Daughter of the She Bear.
“All t
he same,” the sheriff said, “we’ll have a look in the basement.”
“That you will not,” his unwilling hostess said.
“And why not,” the sheriff said, “if you got nothing to hide?”
But it was Mr. Kincaid who answered. “As a matter of principle, and of the law.”
“You presume to tell me the law, Mr. Kincaid.”
“I think it’s about time somebody did! We’re not gonna stand for having anybody in the government force their way into our premises. That’s just what the Revolution was about, we’re not gonna stand here and let you trample our U.S. Constitution!”
“Mr. Kincaid —”
“Don’t you try to placate or threaten me. We have connections in Washington well beyond your connections in Atlanta. Time is on our side, we’re on the right side of history here—”
“And we’re on the right side of the law,” Sheriff Slaughter said. “Now let me tell you a few things, Mr. Kincaid, both of you. Even in a free state, escaped slaves are criminals, or they would be if they were actually people, they’re barely over a half of any white, even a cutthroat or a Jew. But helping them is a criminal offense, and that’s a crime usually leveled at a white person, even one of considerable power.”
“Why tell me that?” she asked. “You know the businesses I’m in. They’re many and varied, that’s true. I have my coal mining operation, the orchards, some farming and bit of ranching on the side. But I don’t trade in human beings, Sheriff Slaughter.”
“Not for trade,” the sheriff said, “for sport, or for the pure rebellion of it, maybe even for some confused and misplaced sense of decency. Haven’t you heard about the slaughter down at the Robinson place?”
“I hear nobody knew who or what started it, but there wasn’t any doubt that there were as many slaves killed as whites.”
“What does that mean, Mrs. Kincaid?”
But a mean silence passed. “Only to refute the notion that events in Kentucky, or anywhere, were the result of some inherent and inhuman violence on the part of the negro.”
Mr. Kincaid added, “Hard to say what I’d have done if I’d been in their position.”
“The slaves or the whites?” the sheriff asked.
“Either one,” was all Mr. Kincaid had to say. Belle’s heart beat faster as she pulled Joseph closer to her, his own arms wrapping around hers.
The footsteps resumed, heavy, the sheriff’s as he took a few idle steps around his hosts without heading toward the exit of the little house just above the Robinsons’ heads.
“What about the marks on the trees, Mrs. Kincaid?”
“What marks?”
“Four strikes, heading downward. They pop up on trees in the area, and there’s one on a tree just outside your property.”
Belle knew the answer, of course, and her ears were clinging to the words that would come out of her hostess’s mouth. “I don’t know,” she said. “You think I know every little part of every tree on my plantation? I own well over two hundred acres and another several miles of mountain ridge just beyond that. What do I know or care about some tree? Maybe it’s your friends, the Chippewa. Why don’t you go ask them?”
“Oh, we intend to, Mrs. Kincaid, I promise you that. We just thought you might know something about it.”
“You’re mistaken.”
Mr. Kincaid interrupted again. “Why are you wasting our time like this, Sheriff? What’s worse, you’re wasting your own time! Didn’t you say you had an escaped slave family to find? Don’t you realize they’re getting farther away every second you stand around boring us with your threats?”
Another step or two was the only pause before the sheriff said, “I’m not threatening you, Mr. Kincaid, it’s just a warning. You might be rich and powerful, and that’s fine. But others are just as rich and maybe even more powerful. And can’t none of you outrun the law, no matter how rich or how poor, how black or how white.”
“Or how corrupt,” Mr. Kincaid said.
Just then another pair of feet entered the little house, these at a quick pace, the voice both familiar and urgent.
“Mrs. Kincaid,” he said, Belle knowing him to be the horseman who’d found them out on the edge of the property when they first arrived. Mrs. Kincaid called him Don. “One of my men report seeing two Negroes about a mile east of shaft thirty-two.”
Mr. Kincaid snapped at him, “Why didn’t he bring ‘em in?”
“Our man was out on his own, wasn’t sure how many he’d find once he chased ‘em out of the grass.”
“All right, well … isn’t this your department, Sheriff?”
“Indeed,” Mrs. Kincaid said. “Aren’t you going to do your job and bring those wayward Negroes in to face justice, send them back to their proper owners?”
A very brief pause passed before Mr. Kincaid said even louder, “What would you do, wait for them to break in here, kill me and rape my wife?”
“What of all your armed guards? They don’t seem very effective.”
Mrs. Kincaid snapped, “Then get out there and show us all how it’s done!”
Belle could only imagine, but it was easy to envision the sheriff staring the pretty woman down, and then backing off as his footsteps resumed and headed toward the door. “Let’s ride,” was all he said, the second set of footsteps joining him and out of the house.
Belle only then realized that she hadn’t allowed herself to breathe, and she let out a long, stale lungful of air. She leaned into Alice’s side, Mo wrapping his arms around them all, squeezing them with the full thrush of his gratitude.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Later that day, Belle and her family tensed with the knock on the basement door, three little thumps in quick succession. The door opened slowly, carefully, and the fat cook, Betsy, stepped down the stairs, Mrs. and Mr. Kincaid following her down to the floor of the basement.
Mrs. Kincaid said, “Thank you for your silence earlier. That was a close call, but you did very well.” She looked at Belle and Joseph. “You two especially. But we wanted you to be sure not to worry about the sheriff. He won’t be back here until long after you've gone, and by then you’ll have nothing to worry about.”
Mo nodded, Alice doing the same. Belle smiled and Joseph looked up at their hostess as if she were some angel from the afterlife, his eyes wide, in awe. She smiled, reached out with her pale white hand and touched his dark cheek and chin, gently stroking them with the back of her fingers.
She said, “I feel badly. I know your names … I’m Hannah, and this is my husband Jack…”
Jack halted his wife with caution. But Hannah said, “They already heard our last names, Jack, what’s the difference?” She turned back to Belle and her family. “It’s not something I’d like you to bandy about, of course.”
Mo was quick to say, “No, ma’am, no, won’t speak a word of it, not a word to nobody, ma’am.”
“See that you don’t,” Jack said with more than warning in his tone.
Hannah smiled at Belle. “All right then, I just wanted to reassure you, and to wish you all the best.”
Jack said to them, “Our man Don here will see you into the carriage bottoms tomorrow before dawn and our drivers’ll ride you out to the mines. It won’t be an easy trip, but the coal won’t fall in on you, and the bottoms won’t fall out. So just breathe easy and let the drivers do the work.”
“You’ll be seen to when you arrive at the dock at Michigan City,” Hannah added. “Our man Milton will see you into the boat, so don’t get out of the carts on your own.”
“You do that,” Jack went on, “we’re all dead. Got it?” Belle and her family nodded.
Hannah said, “Good luck to you then, and godspeed.”
They turned, but Alice said, “Ma’am?”
She turned. “Please, Alice, call me Hannah.”
Stammering for a minute, as if struggling to get the name out, Alice said, “Hannah?” Alice reached out her hand and Hannah stepped up to take it.
�
��Yes, Alice?”
A single tear rolled down her cheek as Alice said, “Thank you, Hannah. And God bless you please, Hannah, God bless you!”
Hannah nodded and pulled her hand gently from Alice’s. Glancing at Belle and the rest of the Robinson family, she said only, “He already has.”
With that, she turned toward the stairs. But Mo called her name again, once more stopping the Kincaids and their domestics. They waited, Mo glancing at Alice and his children before turning back to Hannah and Jack.
“I … you been so kind, done saved our lives! We got’sta thanks y’all somehow, just got’sta!”
“Go and be free,” Hannah said, “be happy.”
“And keep yer traps shut,” Jack added, offering Belle a little smile to take the edge off his warning.
“Can’ts we stay and help, ma’am?” Mo stood, posture straightening slowly. “I can’t do much but work hard and do what I’m told—”
“You’re an escaped slave,” Jack said. “You may not be very good at either one.”
“D’at be sho’ ‘nuff so, Massah Jack—”
“Don’t call me that,” Jack said, “don’t ever call me that.”
Mo nodded eagerly, Belle and her mother and kid brother looking up at him in confused silence. “Whatever you say, sir, but … I just know’d the Lord Hisself sent me t’helps y’all somehow, me and mine to help you’n yers, s’what I mean.”
Jack said, “And how do you presume to do that?”
Mo bent forward a bit as he considered. “Likes I said … Mr. Jack, I can’t do much—”
“Such as think worth a damn,” Jack said with an impatient snap in his voice. “You know how close you just came to getting us killed? We’ll all be better off once you and your little brood are on your way. The longer you’re here, the more dangerous you are.”
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