by Vicky Saari
By this time, a small crowd had begun to form around the store. The sound of shots had even brought Jed and Caleb into the town. “Abner told me he was goin’ to check on Little Jed because he’d been gone too long,” said Jed as he arrived on the scene. Little Jed ran to his pa and sobbed deeply into the man’s shoulder. Jed took his son and went home to get his wagon to carry Abner back to the homestead. Caleb went to get Jessie so that she could patch up the one survivor, but his heart wasn’t really in it. Jonathan and Zeke debated for a few moments as to what to do with their prisoner. It was finally decided to lock him up in the stable, where Jessie could at least try and stanch the flow of blood. Meanwhile, with Seth being away, Martha had gathered her wits and straightened her clothes and sent young Todd to get Hiram Ross so he could get the sheriff again. The one dead man was rolled into an old bedsheet from the inn and carried into the store’s icehouse until the sheriff could come.
Zeke opened the stable door to allow Jessie and Little Jessie inside. He stayed with them to make sure nothing happened. However, the precaution was not necessary by the time they had arrived. The second man was rolled into another sheet and carried into the icehouse with his partner.
“How do you think they got out of jail?” was the principle question on everyone’s lips that evening. Zeke and Lucy had joined Martha and the rest of the family for dinner once all the excitement had settled down. “Dad told us when he went to the village, the sheriff said he was afraid he couldn’t hold the men much longer,” said Cindy as she poured fresh coffee for everyone. “He was afraid they didn’t have enough evidence to charge them with anything. After all, it’s not against the law to hunt slaves in Indiana. It’s just supposed to be against the law to own them.”
“I can’t help but think that Uncle Morgan had somethin’ to do with the slave hunters being around here,” mused Lucy thoughtfully. “I mean, he ain’t been back here since he took Jacob and Priscilla back home with him.”
“I got a letter from Priscilla a few months ago, and she wasn’t all that happy,” returned Cindy. “She’s really upset because it seems that Alice has taken to her new life even more than Percy’s own mom.”
“Pa said he got a letter from Jacob a while back, too, but he didn’t say much else,” Lucy added. Martha listened carefully to the conversation and swore there had to be a way she could help.
As the sun began to rise the following morning, Seth Hodges pulled his team to the side of the road near an old hollow tree. It was his third pickup in about a month. He had been told to park near the hollow tree, open the side gate to his teamster’s wagon, and wait until his cargo was loaded. He would hear four knocks from inside his wagon, at which time he was to pull away slowly to give his cargo time to get settled in the special compartment he had had Jed build under his wagon. He never really got a chance to meet or get acquainted with his cargo, and this was the one aspect of his new job that he didn’t like. Of course, it wasn’t a paying job. But it was the kind of work that could cost him everything if he ever got caught. For this reason, he had never even told his wife about what he was doing. The only other persons in the know were his hired man, Hiram, and his nephew, Jacob. Indeed, Jacob had become his principal contact. The one who told him when and where to be and what the destination was. He worked hard to time each of his trips with appropriate cargo, if only to help pay the cost of his clandestine activities. On this occasion he was to drive until dark, when he would camp by the road and feed his contraband, who would usually continue on foot at night to his or her next destination. His last trip had taken him to Fountaintown, where a man named Coffin ran a general store and kept clothes and foods of all kinds to help the slaves who came to them. The people in the area were mostly Quakers, like the men who had helped spirit away Big George, or Moses.
At the Hodges homestead, the day after the shooting, Hiram Ross had just returned from the sheriff’s office and was putting his saddle away when he saw the quilt that Seth had left in his keeping. He was to hang it over the fence outside the barn during the daylight hours as a signal to any runaways. It was supposed to assure them a safe haven. They had even built a hidden room in the barn loft behind the hay and feed, but so far, no one had used the room. Seth had even hidden some bedding and various dried foods in the room. If Mrs. Hodges or Luke knew about the room, they had never mentioned it. However, on this occasion, Hiram was surprised to see the quilt already hanging on the fence, for he had put it away just before he left for the village. He looked about but saw nothing. Luke and Martha were both in the house. He didn’t figure either of them had put it there. Again, he scanned the woods and fields surrounding him, and neither heard nor saw anything out of the ordinary.
It was after dark before Hiram had fed his mare and bedded her down for the night. He had just poured himself coffee and was sitting down to eat some warmed-over beans in his room off the barn when a knock came at the door. He looked out and found a dark man with a woman and two small children, about three or four years old, standing in the shadows away from the door. Quietly, he stepped outside the door and motioned them to follow him into the barn, where he lit a lantern and led them to the loft and the hidden room behind the hay stacked in front of the door. No one spoke a word until he had them settled. He went back to his quarters to see about fixing them some food when a second knock came at his door. Cautiously, he set his rifle behind the door where it would be in easy reach if needed, but he was surprised to see Mrs. Hodges standing there with a large pot in her hands.
“I had a feelin’ we might have visitors tonight,” she said quietly. “I saw a darkie this afternoon watching the barn from the woods, and I had a feelin’ he was lookin’ fer help. So I hung Seth’s quilt out on the fence.”
“How did you know about the quilt?” quizzed a stunned Hiram. She went on to tell him how she had never seen the quilt before until the night George was spirited away. Seth was carrying it when she met him at the inn. She went on to tell him how many of the people who stopped at the store on their way through town had talked about a secret society and how they used a variety of signals to show there was a safe place to get help. Then there were some days when she had seen it hanging on the fence, and then it was gone.
“Beside all that, I heard you and Seth doing a lot of hammering here in the barn but had never seen any sign of anything you’d built,” she went on. “So one day when you were both gone, I came out here and started looking around. When I found that hidden room upstairs, I knew what had happened to so many missing blankets and old clothes. How many people do we have here?”
“Well, it ’pears to be a man with his wife and two children. I wuz jest gittin’ ready to fix them some grub.” He looked at the heavy iron kettle that Miss Martha had in her hands.
“Well, I’ll leave the kettle with you unless you want me to take it up to them,” she offered. “What kind of dishes do you have to feed them in?”
Hiram reached into the cupboard and pulled out some tin plates and cups that Seth had bought just for this kind of situation. Martha set the kettle on his table and told him she would be back with some milk and a loaf of bread from her kitchen. When she returned, she followed Hiram into the barn and up the ladder to the loft. When Hiram opened the door, the man and woman inside were huddled on the bedding on the floor. Martha followed Hiram into the room carrying a candle; the couple moved closer together and pulled their children to them. Martha smiled and attempted to reassure the couple that they were safe as she set out four tin cups and poured milk into them. She handed two of them to the children. The mother smiled and nodded a thank you but said nothing. The husband spoke only to Hiram and explained that they were trying to get to safety in the North. He had been told that they could rest here for a day and would leave tomorrow night for another safe house in the town of Salem.
As the two men talked, Martha had taken charge of organizing sleeping places for the children. She made it cle
ar that men didn’t know much about fixing up a comfortable place for weary travelers. She made two more trips to the house to bring back extra bedding. When Luke questioned her, she told him that one of the mares was having trouble. He immediately offered to help, but she assured him that Hiram had things well in hand.
If there was one thing Luke knew about his mom, he knew she was a terrible liar. He didn’t question her, but he had a feeling it had something to do with that hidden room his dad and Hiram had built last summer. They were as bad as his ma at lying. He knew his pa was up to something. It had all started when his pa had driven him to Madison and, especially, since the night that darkie, George, had disappeared. There was also all that extra work he and Hiram had done on the wagons. Pa never let anyone but himself or Hiram drive either of the two wagons they had rigged up, even if they didn’t have any others to run. He’d heard a lot of talk about runaway slaves when he and Job took their coal to towns along the river and wondered if this was what his pa had gotten himself into. If this was the case, he wondered “What would his uncle Morgan say if he knew about it?”
At the Hogarths’, Jessie was returning from Jed and Sarah’s, where she had helped Sarah clean and prepare Abner for burial. Like many old-timers, Abner had built his own coffin years before, and it had been sitting in the corner of Sarah’s old cabin ever since. Jed and Brad both joked about Abner always being prepared as they placed him in it and carried him to the springhouse for the night. Little Jed sat stoically during this whole process taking in everything he saw.
On the way home, Jessie was still trying to console herself with the thought that she had lost another patient. Caleb and Little Jessie had tried to reassure her by reminding her that the man was already dead when she got there. They also reminded her that the man had killed Abner, but it still bothered her. She had spent her entire life trying to save lives. The first she had lost was Brad Parson that first summer they were living in Indiana. She’d then had sixteen years of good luck, but in the past two years she had lost the Maynard family, Minnie and Opal, and now this man, whose name she didn’t even know. As she strolled through the woods, she came to the clearing behind their barn and sat on a stump and looked up at the stars. There were so many trees about that she couldn’t see many stars; except those directly overhead, she found the Little Dipper and the North Star. It reminded her of the darkie, George. She had saved him after Little Jessie found him unconscious in the weeds along the creek. She thought of the men who had died today. They had come to Sethsburg intending to find George and carry him back into slavery, dead or alive.
Slavery ought to be a sin, she spoke to the night air and wondered what kind of people it took to buy and sell other people as though they were animals. Still, there were slaves in the Bible, and many churches seemed to think there was nothing wrong with slavery. She studied the night sky, and a shooting star raced across the horizon as she was wishing there was some way she could help people like George.
*****
Charlie was busy installing the basketball goal at the edge of the drive that the Parsons had called him about. Meanwhile, George and Dave were both busy cleaning up and putting the finishing touches to their individual jobs. When George stepped back to admire his work Dave pulled the piece of log out of his truck and lay it neatly among the shrubs. It was an interesting touch, blending the old with the new. Both men took great pride in their accomplishments. Charlie soon joined them, and they all agreed that none of them had had much hope of accomplishing half of what they had done. “The Parsons will be here tomorrow,” George told the other men.
Proudly, Hogarth attempted to put his best footer forward. He looked forward to seeing his family again.
Chapter 25
Luke woke early to hear his mother singing in the kitchen as she took a huge pan of biscuits from the oven of her ten-plate cookstove. She had cooked a huge platter of ham and was stirring up a large skillet of gravy. “You planning to feed an army, Ma?” he asked.
She had a place set for the two of them and reminded him to wash up for breakfast as she began pouring the gravy into a large bowl. “Are you expecting us to eat all this?” he asked again as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
“I expect your pa home sometime today,” she said absently. “Now aren’t you and Job working in your coal mine today?”
“Ma, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re trying to get rid of me. Is there something goin’ on that I ought to know about?” he quizzed her again.
“Whatever makes you say a thing like that?” She stopped her stirring and looked at him in surprise.
“Well, last night, you made a big pot of stew, and I saw you take it out to the barn. Then you got a jug of milk from the springhouse and came in here to get a loaf of bread and a pile of blankets. Is that enough?” He was becoming even more suspicious as he related to her his list of questions. “This doesn’t have anything to do with that hidden room dad has up in the barn …?” Before he could finish, Martha had dropped the heavy skillet she had just emptied.
“Look at the mess you made me make,” she snapped. “Quit asking so many questions.”
“So it does have to do with the room,” he pressed on for an answer.
“What do you know about a hidden room?” she asked. “What makes you think there is one?”
“Well, it’s simple. I went up in the loft last fall when Dad and Hiram were gone and found it. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, but then I remembered Pa taking me to Madison, and I just put two and two together,” he concluded. “Do you need me to help you carry this stuff to the barn?”
When the realization hit her of what her son had just revealed, she paused and sat down in her chair and began filling her own plate with biscuits and gravy. “Yes, you can. But you know we can never speak of this to anyone else,” she cautioned.
“How many people are there?” he asked thoughtfully. She then told him what had happened last night. She even told him about the quilt on the fence, which Luke already seemed to know about.
“How do you know so much about all this stuff?” his ma asked. Luke then went on to remind her of his trip to Madison with his dad, “the spiriting away” of the darkie and the blanket on the fence.
Soon after they finished eating, mother and son carried the rest of their breakfast to the barn. Hiram was already up and was just returning from the barn loft, where he had gone to check on their guests and had found the parents holding two very sick children. He didn’t know much about sickness, but he could feel how hot they were. The moment he saw Martha and Luke, he told them about the situation. Martha immediately handed the pan of bread she had been carrying to Hiram and turned to go in search of Jessie.
Jessie Hogarth had sat out under the stars for a long time before coming in the night before and hadn’t slept well afterward. It was already daylight when she finally awoke. Quickly she rose and stoked the fire in the fireplace before she began stirring up biscuits. Caleb came in carrying the day’s bucket of milk and teased her for being a sleepyhead.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” she grumbled as young Jessie entered the kitchen behind her pa carrying eggs fresh from the henhouse.
“Pa said you were up late last night, so we figured you might need the rest,” her daughter supplied.
Jessie had just put her biscuits in the oven built in the side of the fireplace when a nervous Martha knocked at the front door. “Jessie, can I talk to you in private?” she whispered as she looked over Jessie’s shoulder at Caleb and Mittens in the kitchen. Jessie stepped out the door onto the front porch. “We have some visitors at our place with sick kids, and I was wondering if you could come over and look at them,” she whispered. “I don’t want just anybody to know about them.”
Jessie was surprised and intrigued by her old friend’s manner. Never before had she been so secretive, and Jessie wasn’t quite sure how to answ
er her, but she knew it must be important. “Mittens, can you take care of the biscuits and fix your pa some ham and eggs? Martha needs me to help her,” she called over her shoulder as she went into her round room and swooped up her medicine bag. She wasn’t sure what she was going to need, but it contained her most basic potions and herbs.
As the two women rushed along the path between the Hodges and Hogarths, Martha explained the situation to Jessie. At first, Jessie was surprised to discover that her nearest friends should be involved in helping slaves escape the South. Then she thought of her wish last night and realized that perhaps this was an answer to her prayers. At the barn, Martha led her to the ladder into the loft, where Luke and Hiram stood waiting to help the two aging women up into the loft. Jessie was surprised when Martha took a pitchfork and swept hay away to reveal a hidden door. Martha introduced her neighbor as they stepped through the door and explained that she was a “medicine woman” and had come to help them.
“I think they might have the measles or chicken pox,” whimpered the mother as Jessie knelt beside her to look at the child in her arms. “They’d been some sickness going around the plantation where we wuz livin’.”
The light in the loft was dim, but Hiram came in and opened a shutter in the small room. The window didn’t have any glass or waxed paper covering it, but it allowed enough light for Jessie to see the children clearly. She felt their heads and arms and asked the mother to open their shirts and let her look at their chests. “Ah,” said Jessie, “that’s what I was lookin’ for.” She pointed to two small blisters that had erupted on the girl’s chest. “I think you’re right, Mother. I think they are having the chicken pox.”
She looked around the room, which might work well for a man overnight, but it was obviously not very comfortable for a whole family. She turned to Martha and said, “Why don’t you have Hiram bring them all over in the wagon, and let them stay in our cabin? It’s not been used since Moses left, and I think he’d be glad to see it used that way. I know Caleb wouldn’t mind. Besides, I’ll be close by and can help look after the little ones. Besides, you got your store, and Luke has his coal.”