Cassy was at the wagon, holding weakly to the door, her head hanging. I hopped over to her, grabbed her round the waist and swung her off her feet.
“Oh, you wonderful nigger!” I shouted, spinning her round. “You little black beauty, you! Bravo! Two at one stroke, by George! Well done indeed!” And I kissed her gleefully.
“Set me down!” she gasped. “In God’s name, set me down!”
So I put her down, and she shuddered and sank to the ground, all of a heap. For a moment I thought she’d fainted, but she was a prime girl, that one. With her teeth chattering she grabbed up her dress, pulling it down over her head, which seemed a pity, for she cut a truly splendid figure in the firelight. I patted her on the shoulder, telling her what a brave wench she was.
“Oh, God!” says she, with her eyes tight shut. “Oh, horrible! I didn’t know … what it was like … when I drew the knife from his belt and …” She put her face in her hands and sobbed.
“Serve him right,” says I. “You’ve done him a power of good. And the other one, too—couldn’t have done better myself, by jove, no, I couldn’t! You’re a damned good-plucked ’un, young Cassy, and you may tell ’em that Tom Arnold said so!”
But she sat there, shivering, so I wasted no more time but searched Tom’s pockets for the keys to our fetters, and soon had us both loose. Then I went through their pockets, but apart from fifteen dollars there was nothing worth a curse. I stripped George’s body, because it struck me that he was about my size, and his togs might come in handy. Then I looked to their guns—one musket, two pistols, with powder and ball—saw that the wagon horse was all to rights, and all the time my heart was singing inside me. I was free again, thanks to that splendid nigger wench. By gum, I admired that girl, and still do—she’d have made a rare mate for my old Sergeant Hudson—and while I heated up some coffee and vittles left by the late unlamented, I told her what I thought of her.
She was crouched by the fire, staring straight ahead of her, but now she seemed to shake herself out of her trance, for she threw back that lovely Egyptian head and looked at me. “You remember your promise?” says she, and I assured her I did—assured her twenty times over. I can see her now, those wonderful almond eyes watching me while I prattled on, praising her resource and courage—it was a strange meal that, a runaway slave girl and I, sitting round a camp fire in Mississippi, with two dead bodies lying by. And before it was done she had thrown off her fit of the shakes—after all, when you’re new to it, killing is almost as disturbing as nearly being killed—and was telling me what we must do next. My admiration increased—why, she had thought it out all beforehand, in the wagon, down to the last detail.
It had been my remark about slave-catchers not touching a white man that had set her thinking, and shown her how she could make a successful run this time, with me to help her.
“We must travel as master and slave,” says she. “That way no one will give us a second thought—but we must go quickly. It may be a week before Mandeville discovers that this wagon never reached Forster’s place, and that these two men”—she gave a little shudder—“are missing. It might even be longer, but we dare not count on it—we dare not! Long before then we must be out of the state, on our way north.”
“In that?” says I, nodding to the cart, and she shook her head.
“It can take us no farther than the river; we must go faster than it will carry us. We must go by steamboat.”
“Hold on, though—that costs money, and these two hadn’t but fifteen dollars between them. We can’t get a passage on that.”
“Then we’ll steal money!” says she, fiercely. “We have pistols—you are a strong man! We can take what we need!”
But I wasn’t having that—not that I’m scrupulous, but I’m no hand as a foot-pad. It’s too risky by half, and so I told her.
“Risk!” she blazed. “You talk of risk, after what I have done this night? Don’t you see—we have two murders on our hands—isn’t that a risk? Do you know what will happen if we’re caught—you will be hanged, and I’ll be burned alive! And you talk of robbery as a risk!”
“Holding someone up will only increase the danger,” says I, “for then we would be hunted, whereas if we go our way quietly there’ll be no hue and cry until these two are found—if they ever are.”
“Whoever we robbed could go the way these went,” says she. “Then there would be no added danger.” By God, she was a cold-blooded one, that. When I protested, she lost her temper:
“Why should we be squeamish over white lives? D’you think I care if every one of these filthy slave-driving swine is torn to pieces tomorrow? And why should you shrink from it, after what they would have done to you? Are they your people, these?”
I tried to convince her it wasn’t principle, but pure lack of nerve, and we argued on, she waxing passionate—she hated with a lust for revenge that frightened me. But I wouldn’t have it, and eventually she gave up, and sat staring into the fire, her hands clenched on her knees. At last she says, very quietly:
“Well, money we must have, however we come by it. And if you will not steal for it—well, there is only one other way. It does not add greatly to the risk, but … but I would do almost anything to avoid it.”
Possibly I’m a natural-born pimp, for I jumped to the conclusion that she was thinking of whoring her way upriver, with me as her protector, but it was something far grander than that.
“We must go to Memphis,” says she. “It is a town on the river, not more than fifty miles from here, so far as I can judge. That would be for the day after tomorrow—perhaps another day. That in itself is no great risk, for we have to go to the river anyway, and if God is kind to us none of Mandeville’s friends, or people of Forster’s, who would know me, will cross our path. And when we are there … we can find the money. Oh, yes, we can find the money!”
And to my astonishment she began to weep—not sobbing, but just great tears rolling down her cheeks. She dashed them away, and then fumbled inside her dress, and after a moment she produced a paper, soiled but very carefully-folded, which she passed to me. Wondering, I opened it, and saw that it was a bill of sale, dated February 1843, for one Cassy, a negro girl, the property of one Angel de Marmalade (I swear that was the name) of New Orleans, now duly sold and delivered to Fitzroy Howard, of San Antonio de Bexar. There was another scrap of paper with it which fluttered down—she made a grab, but not in time to prevent me seeing the words scrawled on it in a coarse, lumpy hand:
“Wensh Cassy. Ten lashys. Wun dollar,” and a signature that was illegible.
She drew away, and spoke with her head turned from me.
“That was my second bill of sale. I was fourteen. I stole it from Howard, when he was drunk and I ran from him. They caught me, but he was dead by then, and when they auctioned me with his other … goods, they didn’t bother to look for the old bill. I kept it—to remember. Just to remember, so that when I was free, and far away, I should never forget what it was to be a slave! No one ever found it!—they never found it!” Her voice was rising, and she swung her head round to stare at me, her eyes brimming. “I never thought it might serve to win my freedom! But it will!”
“How, in heaven’s name?”
“You’ll carry it to Memphis—you’ll be Mr Fitzroy Howard! No one knows him this far north—he died in Texas four years ago—four years he’s been screaming in Hell! And you’ll sell me in Memphis—oh, I’ll fetch a fine price, you’ll see! A thousand, two thousand dollars—maybe three, for a choice mustee wench, fancy-bred, only nineteen, and schooled in a New Orleans brothel! Oh, they’ll buy all right!”
Well, this seemed first-rate business to me, and I said so.
“Three thousand dollars—why, woman, what were you ever thinking of highway robbery for? Half that sum will see us rolling upriver in style—but wait though! If you’re sold—how’ll you get away?”
“I can run. Oh, believe me, I can run! The moment you have the money, you’ll buy passage
s on a boat north—we’ll have decided which one beforehand. Leave it to me to run at the right time—we’ll meet at the levee or somewhere and go aboard together. You’ll be what they call a nigger-stealer then, and I a runaway slave—but they won’t catch us. What, Mr and Mrs Whatever-we-choose-to-call-ourselves, first-class passengers to Louisville? Oh, no, we’ll be safe enough—if you keep our bargain.”
Well, it had crossed my mind, of course, in the last two seconds, from the moment she’d reminded me of the nasty stigma of nigger-stealing, that it would be a sight safer to catch a different boat, all on my own, with the three thousand dollars, and leave Miss Cassy to fend for herself. But she was as quick as I was.
“If I didn’t get out of Memphis,” says she, slowly and intently, leaning forward to look into my face, “I’d give myself up—and tell them how we had run together, and you had killed two men back in Mississippi, and where the bodies were, and all about you. You wouldn’t get far, Mr—what is your name, anyway?”
“Er, Flash—, er, Brown, I mean. But, look here, my dear girl, I promised not to desert you—remember? D’you think I’m the kind to break his word? I must say—”
“I don’t know,” says she, slowly. “I only tell you what will happen if you do. It may cost me my life, but it will certainly cost you yours, Mr Flash-er-Brown.”
“I wouldn’t dream of leaving you,” says I, seriously. “Not for a moment. But, I say, Cassy—this is a top-hole plan! Why didn’t you tell me before—it’s absolutely splendid!”
She gazed at me, and took a deep breath, and then turned to gaze into the fire.
“You would think so, I suppose. Perhaps it seems a little thing to you—to be placed on a block, and auctioned like a beast to the highest bidder. To be pawed over and fumbled by dirty hands—stripped even, and gloated over!” The tears were starting again, but her voice never shook. “How could you even begin to imagine it? The hideous shame—the humiliation!” She swung round on me again—a habit of hers which I confess made me damned jumpy.
“Do you know what I was, until I was thirteen? I was a little Creole girl, in a fine house in Baton Rouge, with my papa and two brothers and two sisters, all older than I. Their mother was dead—she was white—and my mother, who was a slave mustee, was mother to them as well. We were the happiest family in the world—I loved them, and they loved me, or so I thought, until my father died. And then they sold us—my loving brothers sold me, their sister, and my mother, who had been more than a mother to them. They sold us! My mother to a planter—me to a bawd in New Orleans!”
She was shaking with passion. Something seemed called for, so I says:
“Pretty steep work, that. Bad business.”
“I was a whore—at thirteen! I ran away, back to my family—and they gave me up! They put me in a cellar until my owner came, and took me back to New Orleans. You saw that other paper, with the bill of sale. Do you know what it is? It is a receipt from a whipping-house—where slaves are sent to be corrected! I was only thirteen, so they were lenient with me—only ten lashes! Can you understand what that did to me? Can you? For they make a spectacle of it—oh, yes! I was tied up naked, and whipped before an audience of men! Can you even begin to dream what it is like—the unbelievable, frightful shame of it? But how could I make you understand!” She was beating her fist on my knee by now, crying into my face. “You are a man—what would it do to you, to be stripped and bound and flogged before a pack of leering, laughing women?”
“Oh, well,” says I, “I don’t really know—”
“They cheered me! Do you hear that—cheered me, because I wouldn’t cry, and one of them gave me a dollar! I ran back, blind with tears, with that receipt in my hand, and the she-devil who kept that brothel said: ‘Keep it to remind you of what disobedience brings.’ And I kept it, with the other. So that I shall never forget!”
She buried her head on my knee, weeping, and I was at a loss for once. I could think of one good way of comforting us both, but I doubted if she’d take kindly to it. So I patted her head and said:
“Well, it’s a hard life, Cassy, there’s no denying. But cheer up—there’s a good time coming, you know. We’ll be away to Memphis in the morning, raffle you off, collect the cash, and then, hey! for the steamboat! Why, we can have a deuced good time of it, I daresay, for I’m bound for the east coast, you know, and we can travel together. Why, we can—”
“Do you swear it?” She had lifted her head and was gazing up at me, her face wasted with crying. God, she was a queer one, one minute all cold steel and killing two men, and then getting the jumps over ’em—and from that she was plotting calmly, and suddenly raging with passion, and now imploring me with the wistful eyes of a child. By George, she was a handsome piece—but it wasn’t the time or place, I knew. She was too much in a taking—I’ll wager she had talked more that night than she’d done for years. But women have always loved to confide in me; I think it’s my bluff, honest, manly countenance—and my whiskers, of course.
“You do promise?” she begged me. “You will help me, and never desert me? Never, until I’m free?”
Well, you know what my promises are; still I gave it, and I believe I meant it at the time. She took my hand, and kissed it, which disturbed me oddly, and then she says, looking me in the eyes:
“Strange, that you should be an Englishman. I remember, years ago, on the Pierrepoint Plantation, the slaves used to talk of the underground railroad—the freedom road, they called it—and how those who could travel it in safety might win at last to Canada, and then they could never be made slaves again. There was one old man, a very old slave, who had a book that he had gotten from somewhere, and I used to read to them from it—it was called Nore’s Epitome of Navigation, all about the sea, and ships, and none of us could understand it, but it was the only book we had, and so they loved to hear me read from it.” She tried to smile, with her eyes full of tears, and her voice was trembling. “On the outside there was a picture of a ship, with a Union Jack at its mast, and the old man used to point to it and say: ‘Dat’s de flag o’ liberty, chillun; dat de ol’ flag.’ And I used to remember what I had once heard someone say—I can’t recall where or when, but I never forgot the words.” She paused a moment, and then said in a whisper almost: “‘Whoever stands on British soil, shall be forever free.’ It’s true, isn’t it?”
“Oh, absolutely,” says I. “We’re the chaps, all right. Don’t hold with slavery at all, don’t you know.”
And, strange as it may seem, sitting there with her looking at me as though I were the Second Coming, well—I felt quite proud, you know. Not that I care a damn, but—well, it’s nice, when you’re far away and don’t expect it, to hear the old place well spoken of.
“God bless you,” says she, and she let go my hand, and I thought of making a grab at her, for the third time, but changed my mind. And we went to sleep on opposite sides of the fire, after I’d stoked it up and shoved Little’s body into the bushes; deuce of a weight to move he was, too.
It took us two full days to Memphis, and the closer we got the more uneasy I became about the scheme we had undertaken. The chief risk was that we would be recognised by somebody, and if looking back I can say that it was only a chance in a thousand—well, that’s still an uncomfy chance if your neck depends on it.
I was in high enough spirits when we set off from our camping place at dawn, for the glow of being free again hadn’t worn off. It was with positive zest that I hauled the corpses of Little and George well into the thickets, and dumped them in a swampy pool full of reeds and frogs; then I tidied up the tracks as well as I could, and we set off. Cassy sat in the back of the cart, out of sight, while I drove, and we rolled along through the woods over the rutted road—it was more like a farm-track, really—until I came to a fork running north-west, which was the direction we wanted to go.
We followed it until noon without seeing a soul, which I now know was pretty lucky, but soon after we had cooked up a fry and moved on we c
ame to a small village, and here something happened which damped my spirits a good deal, for it showed me what a small place even the American backwoods can be, and how difficult it is to pass through without every Tom, Dick and Harry taking an interest in you.
The village was dozing in the afternoon, with only a nigger or two kicking about, a dog nosing in a rubbish tip, and a baby wailing on a porch, but just the other side of town there was the inevitable yokel whittling on a stump, with his straw hat over his eyes and his bare feet stuck in the dust. I decided it was safe to make an inquiry, and pulled up.
“Hollo,” says I, cheerily.
“Hollo, y’self,” says he.
“Am I on the road to Memphis, friend?” says I.
He thought about this, chewing and polishing up one of those cracker-barrel witticisms which are Mississippi’s gift to civilisation. At last he said:
“Well, if y’don’t know for sartain, you’re a damfool to be headin’ along it, ain’t you?”
“I would be, if I wasn’t sure of direction from a smart man like you,” says I.
He cocked an eye at me. “How come you’re so sure?”
It’s like talking before salt with the Arabs, or doing business with a Turk; you must go through the ritual.
“Because it’s a hot day.”
“That makes you sure?”
“Makes me sure you’re thirsty, which makes me sure you’ll take a suck at the jug I’ve got under my seat—and then you’ll tell me the road to Memphis.” I threw the jug at him, and he snapped it up like a trout taking a fly.
“Guess I might sample it, at that,” says he, and sampled about a pint. “Jay-zus! That’s drinkin’ liquor. Ye-ah—I reckon you might be on the Memphis road, sure enough. Should git there, too, provided you don’t fall in Coldwater Creek or git elected guv-nor or die afore you arrive.” He threw the jug back, and I was about to whip up when he says:
“You f’m Nawth? You don’t talk like ol’ Miss, nor Arkinsaw, neether.”
Flashman Papers Omnibus Page 160