Mo reached out and his kids readily met his embrace, the oil lamb between them, the diamond in Belle’s hand. She handed it to her father, wanting very much for him to be the one to present it to Hannah as its discoverer. This was what he’d searched for his whole life, some validation and vindication of his struggle. He’d found more success than most others of his station, a good home for his children, a productive and well-paying position for himself working for people of merit, or decency, godly people and God-fearing people. But he’d dreamed of more for himself and for his name and now he would have it.
The mountain started to shake again, a low and deep rumble that rose fast. It’s the spirits, Belle thought, they want to be free too, they won’t let us leave without them!
They ran, the sound louder until it was almost deafening, the ground shaking as if conspiring with the dead to trap the living, that none should have what the others could not. The mountain demanded a high price, the highest, now that she’d given up her secret, the slaves demanding payment for their services at last, credit for their toil, satisfaction for their ages of rot and rage.
Don’t be angry with us, Belle silently pled as they ran through that cavern, the sunlight breaking out of the darkness at its merciful end. Please just let us go!
The roof of the shaft caved in above them, chunks of rock falling all around as only luck and providence kept them alive. “Keep running,” Mo shouted, “don’t you stop! Go on ’n run!” Belle did, eyes fixed forward, Joseph barely in the corner of her eye, her father’s presence lagging behind her.
She turned to confirm the fact. “Keep runnin’, chil’,” he said, waving her forward, “don’t you stop! You get ‘cher bro’v’r out ‘dis cave!”
Belle’s body did as it was instructed, obeying years of enslavement and the instinct to survive. She grabbed Joseph’s hand and ran, that shaft crumbling as it shook, the entire mountain feeling like it was clamping down around them like some huge beast, its jaws closing shut to swallow them all forever.
With the crash and crumble of rock behind her, the force of the mass pushing her forward with a gust of sudden pressure, Belle could only spin around a mere few seconds too late. A new wall of rock and soot already filled the tunnel behind them, a mountain of mud and rock that had to be thousands of pounds. Mo’s lifeless hand reached up out of the dark earth, fist still clutched around the diamond.
Belle and Joseph stood horrified, paralyzed, compelled to run for their lives but unwilling to leave their father behind; overwhelmed by so much sorrow that they were unable to mourn or think or do practically anything at all but stand there and join him in the grave.
Joseph ran to the new hard wall and clawed at it, sobbing as he dug at the dirt, little stones falling away. But Mo’s arm was motionless, and Belle knew that God’s plan for him had been fulfilled, at least as far as his part in it was concerned.
No, Belle told herself, that … it is not what he wants, not why he died! He’s holding it out, telling us to take it, so he didn’t die for no reason, so the message of Hannah’s great power could be revealed and her mission of freedom forever fulfilled.
But Belle could hardly summon the strength to reach out and take it, her father’s corpse so close, her nerves holding her back. She summoned her strength and took one step closer, hand extended.
But the mountain shook again, hard and fast with a sudden strike of energy, more rocks falling in front of Mo’s hand, sending Belle and Joseph stumbling back and covering his hand forever, the diamond along with it.
Belle grabbed Joseph’s hand and turned to drag him running out of the mine before it collapsed in on them as well. It tore Belle’s heart in two to leave her father, but she knew he was with their mamma, with Jesus and God, and that what he would want for them was to get out of there safely.
And they hadn’t made it yet.
The walls shook, the low ceilings caving in fast. The lamp was far behind, buried with their father, with no time or breath or power to do anything but run and hold onto that little hand in hers, hold on with all her might.
His feet slipped and Joseph almost slipped out, but Belle shouted as she held tighter and kept running, dragging him out and into the sunlight as the mountain fell in around them. But they still were not safe, with rocks falling down from the face of the foothills, higher above them, rolling down from steeper climbs. Belle didn’t look back, her bible and her brother’s compass lost with their father in that mountain, still seeming to groan out its dissatisfaction.
Belle had lost her bible and Joseph had lost his compass. But neither would ever lose their faith or their sense of direction again, though even that didn’t seem to matter.
They’d lost their father to the mountain and were returning empty-handed, orphaned, likely enough to become outcasts for having brought so much misery onto such a gracious and giving household.
The mountain grew quiet behind them, the spirits having one more to their number to aid in that ceaseless, thankless toil. And to make it even more bitter in Belle’s mind and in her heart, the diamonds were there and the spirits knew it, laying with those priceless and powerful gems in the very palms of their rotting hands, yet unable to do the very thing a miner was meant to do, bring them up to the surface.
Belle and Joseph turned for one last look, a new wall of rocks covering the newly exposed entrance, and behind it a filled tunnel of solid earth and stone.
The miners had been thwarted by the earth once again, and it seemed that they always would be.
*
Belle was quiet for the next week, saying little more than Joseph did. She didn’t say anything to Hannah about the diamond or about why they were in the mine, though she didn’t really need to. Hannah seemed to understand the reason, if not the result, and she seemed ready to accept some of the blame for encouraging such a desperate treasure hunt. But she didn’t blame the children, and her promise for them to stay became her decision to adopt them as legal children of her own, if such a thing were even legally possible. If not, she would raise them as her own just the same, and told them she’d be honored if they took her names as well.
From the day of their father’s funeral, their names would be Belle and Joseph Robinson Alexander Kincaid.
And Belle had also decided not to mention anything of the diamond they’d found, of the promise held for Hannah. Because it also carried a great price. Belle knew with certainty that the miners’ spirits did inhabit the mountain, that they’d taken her father, and taken back the diamond they’d found and he’d been holding. There seemed to be a curse on the head of anyone who dared try to shatter the mountain’s secrets, and Belle couldn't bear to think that Hannah might one day pay that price herself, with her own life. And Belle knew Hannah would try if she had such knowledge of how close she was. Belle knew Hannah would not be able to resist, because Belle couldn't either, and they were very much the same in so many ways. So Belle decided to do as the Daughter of the She Bear would do and protect the ones she loved, from others and from themselves.
Belle swore that her papa would be the last life that mountain ever took, the last new member of that terrible eternal crew.
Belle looked at the two graves, her father’s next to her mother’s, though empty his body remaining buried in the mountainside. The words of the old song rang in her memory.“Beyond the two hills lay the big river … ”
Belle could see then that her parents’ graves were the two hills the song spoke of, for her life at least, and that the rest of her life, the big river, lay somewhere beyond, vast and far ahead of her. But Belle knew it was rooted in that estate, and that that’s where she and her brother would stay, for as long as such a thing was possible.
Hannah’s enemies were closing in for the kill. Belle knew death, then more than ever before. And she knew trial, and challenge, she knew both fight and flight. And she was ready to fight for her home, her family, for the clan of the She Bear.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Hannah p
aced around the room with the summons in her hand, Jack watching from near the end table, Belle and Joseph on the floor nearby.
“A summons,” Hannah said, “to appear in court? Can they even do this?”
Jack glanced at Belle and Joseph. “Maybe we should excuse the kids for this?”
But Hannah didn’t seem to give it a second thought. “No. They should know what’s going on from day to day. What better way to educate them about life than for them to see it firsthand?”
“You don’t want to frighten them.”
“Perhaps they should be frightened,” she said, seeming to recall a moment from her distant past. But the events pressing upon her present and immediate future demanded her full attention. “Can they even demand this of me?”
Jack scratched the back of his head. “It’s only because you are who you are, your money and connections, that they’re going through this formality and not railroading us straight in, I’d guess.”
“And what if I just don’t show up?”
“We’ll be arrested and dragged in. And they can sure put us on trial if they feel like they got a legal right. And that’s gonna come down to who paid who more, whose desk is bigger than whose.”
Hannah shook her head. “No, Jack, I’m telling you, the really fat cats don’t care about me, they don’t care about any of this. It’s Chisholm who wants the land, and he’s just pulling as many strings as he can. He’s probably blackmailing half the people who’re bringing down all this misery on us.”
Jack winced as he thought about it. “Why’s Chisholm so fired up to get the land back? The coal mines are nearly stripped out, don’t tell me he's the sentimental type—”
“It’s the diamonds, Jack, the diamonds.” Jack rolled his eyes, but Hannah went on. “He wants the land because he wants to find that lost diamond mine.”
Belle looked at Hannah in a new light, knowing in that moment that she herself intended to find those diamonds. Belle strained with the urge to tell her, to take her there and show her that she already had the greatest prize of all right in her midst. The stories were true, the diamonds were there, victory was theirs!
But the curse held her back, her promise to herself to protect Hannah from ever being the one to pay the mountain’s terrible toll.
There would have to be another way.
“Diamonds,” Jack said, “then he’s half-crazy as well as greedy and stupid. But that’s all the more reason to be wary. We better get Ericsson in from New York double-quick.”
“The hearing’s the day after tomorrow.” Hannah took a few steps around the parlor while she reasoned things out. “A notice to appear … it’s a hearing though, not a trial.”
“A hearing to decide if you should go on trial, Hannah. If they decide you should, they’ll slap you in irons right there in the courthouse and hold you over for trial, maybe even send you down South to be tried down there.”
“Right, tried. They’d hang me from the nearest tree.”
“Us, Hannah, they’d hang us.” Jack turned to read Belle and Joseph’s frightened expressions. “See? We are scaring the kids.”
“They must have some kind of evidence against us, something they think will prove we’ve been part of the Underground Railroad.”
“It’s Milton, I’m telling you. I never trusted him.”
“Jack, he was involved in all this before we were.”
“It doesn’t mean they didn’t get to him! Think about it, Hannah. The office gets ransacked under his care, then he disappears—”
“He had to go into hiding—”
“So he claims. But he’d have more than enough to bury us if he turned coat, face it.”
“Then why aren’t we in chains right now?”
Jack had no answer, taking his own turn at pacing around the room while Hannah sat and gave the kids a big, reassuring hug. “Maybe it’s just a trap, a way to lure us off the property so they can raid it—”
“So what if they do?”
Jack turned to indicate the kids once again, answering Hannah’s question. She said, “Oh no, Jack, we had that ghastly thing to blot out the old brands, that has to be enough, it has to be! Anyway, they could raid the place with us here and make sure we’re killed in the doing, that would serve everybody’s purpose to a much greater effect.”
“Not ours!”
Hannah pulled the kids close, but her attention was elsewhere, lost in the maze of her challenge, a search for diamonds of a different kind.
Belle thought again to mention the diamond she and her father had found, as she’d thought of it several times since that amazing and awful day. But the price that Hannah might have to pay would simply be too great. Belle and Joseph glanced at each other, both swearing to keep their silent pact.
Part 3: Hannah & Belle
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Hannah and Jack faced the Honorable Carl Calvert, old and swollen and pent forward with years of dubious deed and backdoor deals. He slammed his gavel as if their hearing were a trial, and stared down Hannah and Jack as if they were already found guilty and were ready for sentencing and a quick execution.
But Judge Calvert was hardly the most vocal of her adversaries, as Henry Chisholm himself paced to and fro in front of the bench, one hand waving and the other hand tucked under his suspenders. His black beard was graying even more than before but was still well-trimmed, his posture straight as ever.
“It’s not merely out of a sense of duty to my forefathers,” Chisholm said, “to my own dear father Cyrus Chisholm, who founded our homestead on that very land. My father improved the land and owned it by right, and after chasing off interlopers, which is all that can be said of Miss Kincaid’s lineage, cruel fate turned him out again. But whatever we discover here today, and in the events that are sure to follow, our true goal can only be to follow and serve the law! In both letter and spirit, that is our duty here in this nation, and upon this earth. That is what makes our young nation different and in fact better than the other nations which came before it, incomparable to them, I would say. And the law in this case is clear!”
The crowd of locals, newspaper reporters, friends and distractors looked on, muttering and mumbling to each other as the judge banged his gavel.
“We haven’t broken any laws at all,” Hannah said, the crowd reacting in different ways at varying levels, but everybody was getting more and more keyed up as the hearing went on, voices getting louder before the bench, lives increasingly at stake.
Chisholm spun, pointing an angry finger. “You’ve been harboring escaped slaves, running an underground railroad straight up to through Lake Michigan and past the Canadian border!”
“You can’t prove that,” Hannah was quick to snap back. “I am a taxpaying and law-abiding citizen, a champion of commerce and free trade. Is that what rankles you, Mr. Chisholm, that I'm a woman who has bettered you at your own game … in every respect?”
The crowd’s murmuring increased yet again, the judge’s gavel increasingly unable to contain or restrain them.
Hannah went on. “My businesses have been harassed, my laborers murdered! There are crimes here, no doubt, but they can be laid squarely at the feet of Henry Chisholm, Sheriff Wendell Slaughter, and anyone in their wicked employ!”
“That’s slander,” Chisholm said, “slander! I’ll see you in the highest court on that charge alone!”
“How many times can you hang me, Mr. Chisholm?”
He smiled through that graying beard. “Once will be entirely satisfactory as far as I am concerned, madam.”
Jack said, “Enough of this ridiculous blood feud! Your honor, this is clearly nothing more than a longstanding, irrational, and illegal grudge that Mr. Chisholm has against my wife! He’s been harassing us for years. He’s got the sheriff in his pocket, and that kind of corruption cannot be allowed to go on in this great nation of ours!”
The crowd harrumphed their agreement, heads nodding as the farmers and business people of Marion County consider
ed the wrongs done to them by that corrupt regime.
“We’ve put a few Negroes to work, of course, lots of businesses in the area have. But we've never knowingly hired any slaves.”
“The bear marks leading to your estate, what are those all about?”
“As we’ve told the sheriff, we haven’t a clue.”
All eyes fell on the sheriff, who shrugged and sank down a bit farther in his chair.
Chisholm stepped across the courtroom to face Hannah. “Yet you’re applying for legal adoption of two Negro children, isn’t that so?”
The crowd’s support seemed to turn instantly against her. Hannah said, “It is. And what of it? The children have no recognizable brands. It’s my right to do with them as I please. Isn’t that the way you believe the relationship between the whites and the Negroes should be?”
Here the judge stepped in, saying, “Indiana is a free state, Mrs. Kincaid.”
“Precisely why I wish to adopt them legally,” Hannah said, “to give them every legal right to my inheritance. There’s no law against that.”
“Unless they are truly escaped slaves,” Chisholm said with a wicked smile. “Perhaps that can be proved without a proper brand! And if it can, then you are in fact guilty of at least two counts of being in possession of escaped slaves and failing to return them! And it’s further proof that you have, in fact, been sheltering like slaves for months, perhaps years, and have become perhaps the most infamous engineer yet of this so-called underground railroad!”
The judge’s gavel barely managed to quiet the maddened crowd.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Belle sat nervously reading from the new bible Hannah had given her. Both she and Joseph felt terrible about losing the gifts they’d received, but each also knew they received far greater gifts from the Kincaids; family, love, freedom.
And both kids shared a desire to help them, to return that generosity and kindness, but Belle knew that there was little they could do but pray and hope for the best. Belle thought about going back to the mine, to find a diamond and bring it to Hannah to prove the wealth she had, the power she could really wield, but for the terrible price it would extract. Belle was almost ready to pay the price herself, for her own life would surely have been forfeited the year before were it not for Hannah and Jack. But Belle knew the secret would remain buried with her, that her sacrifice would be for nothing. She even thought briefly about taking Joseph with her and trusting that he could carry the diamond back when the mountain finally took Belle's life. But she couldn't be sure then that Joseph wouldn't be the one left behind, and that would be something Belle could not allow and would have no part of.
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