Sycamore Promises

by Paul Colt

  The men nodded. Those toting shotguns climbed down the hole.

  The ground threw open with a heavy, wooden thud. Shotgun blasts flared into the darkness. Horses bolted, shattering the thin Union line behind the cabin into disarray. Quantrill’s guerillas poured out of the ground and scattered into the woods. The Union cavalry fired wildly at shadows backed by the orange glow of firelight. Muzzle flashes peppered their ranks as fleeing guerillas paused to cover their escape.

  The night turned still, save the crackle of flames eating at the cabin timbers. The scout sent an orange tinged black stream to the ground, chuckling to himself. Blue coats ain’t never gonna find them boys in their home wood.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  Franklin, Missouri

  July, 1862

  David Atchison stepped onto the porch fronting his spacious home. He filled his lungs with morning air, a fresh prelude to the heat of the day. Birdsong floated on a soft breeze, rustling the trees and plantings adorning the yard and house. He took to his favorite rocking chair and spread open his copy of the Missouri Democrat.

  Congress Approves Pacific Railroad

  Central Route Will Take Years to Complete

  The headline sealed the fate of slavery for westward continental expansion. The South might preserve itself if it could somehow prevail in the current conflict. They’d had early military success, though they’d not been able to achieve decisive victory. The South needed swift victory to survive secession. Slowly the Union massed industrial muscle to the fight. Defensively, they’d managed to prolong the conflict. A war of attrition and naval blockades would slowly bleed the Confederacy’s agrarian economy beyond its scarce resources.

  Preserving the Confederacy and winning territorial expansion would prove two different things. Some reasoned Texas with its vast lands would bode well for the cause; but this railroad represented the strong arm of commerce. Commerce would determine the future of the nation, giving the industrial North the pearl of westward expansion and, with it, free-soil populace.

  The war in the West was fast deteriorating into guerilla skirmishes with little or no strategic direction. The South could mount no effective military campaign in the West, while the Union found little need to defend it. The full weight of the Union fell on the eastern theater.

  It hadn’t taken long to move the railroad forward once southern opposition departed the Senate. Commercial and political pressures favoring the central route were substantial. As a practical matter, setting aside his southern sympathies, the proposed rail routing would grace Missouri and Kansas with wealth and prosperity. Wealth and prosperity made a comforting balm to soothe the abrasion of losing their cause.

  Sycamore

  Caleb’s hand whittled crude dolls. Outfitted in calico scraps and a little imagination, they were all the girls needed to amuse themselves. Elizabeth, seven, and Rebecca, almost six, played on a blanket in the shade of the old sycamore down near the creek. Their giggles punctuated the buzz of summer insects and the trill of lark song. Miriam rocked on the porch, adding a quiet creak to the lazy summer symphony as she read a week-old newspaper. Caleb sat on the porch, chewing a straw, keeping watchful eye on the young ones.

  “Congress give ’em the money,” she said. “They gonna build a railroad clean to the Pacific Ocean. Can you imagine?”

  “Micah be right. He been sayin’ that since before he settled here. Someday that railroad gonna ship our wheat clear across the country.”

  “Not right off. Says here they figure it to take four, maybe five years to build.”

  “Likely longer. Such things usually do.”

  “Such things like what? Nobody never tried nothin’ so grand as this afore.”

  “Oh, I don’t know—they got from Baltimore to Ohio and Chicago. That be pretty grand. I don’t doubt they’ll do it. It just might take a little longer, that’s all. Look at them two peas in a pod.” He pointed at the girls with his straw. “You suppose things gonna change when Lizabeth go to school this fall?”

  Miriam set down her paper. She knit her brow. “Not if Becca goes with her.”

  Caleb cut his eyes to his wife. “School is for white folks, Miriam. You knows that.”

  “Why? I learnt to read. So can my daughter.”

  “Then you best teach her like Miss Clare taught you.”

  “I can’t teach her ’ritin’ and ’rithmatic. I don’t know.”

  “Now, don’t you let yourself go thinkin’ like that. You take that chile up them schoolhouse steps it won’t do no good but cause a whole passel of trouble.”

  “Caleb, you ever wants to own this land? You ever wants to vote? None of that gonna come of stayin’ put down. You gotta make your opportunities. No one gonna do it for you.”

  “Who gonna let you make those kind of opportunities?”

  “Good folk, that’s who. As for Becca goin’ to school, I think I’ll see what Clare has to say.”

  “Me ’n my big mouth. I should never a’ brought it up.”

  Bright morning sun filtered through the trees, laying a carpet dappled in light along the wagon lane to the Masons’. Miriam and Rebecca crossed the yard to the house hand in hand. Elizabeth burst out the door to the porch with her doll. The girls skipped off toward the sycamore, their morning play under way.

  “You stay away from the river,” Miriam called after them.

  Clare stood in the door, wiping her hands on her apron. “Fresh coffee’s brewed. Care for a cup?”

  “That’d go real good. I need a little advice to go with it.”

  Clare raised a brow. “Advice is free. Worth what you pay for it, though.”

  Miriam laughed. “I’ll take my chances.”

  Clare poured two steaming cups and carried them out to the porch, in earshot of the girls’ squealing. They sat on the porch step.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “School. School for Becca. You think they’d let Becca go to school with Elizabeth?”

  “Hmm.” Clare sipped her coffee. “It’d be a first, far as I know.”

  “Caleb said it’d be nothin’ but a passel of trouble.”

  “It might, though I don’t know why it should. Children go to school to learn. I don’t see the harm in that.”

  “Most white folks don’t think like you. Ole Massa Morgan Walker used to say book learnin’ make Negro folks uppity.”

  “Morgan Walker isn’t here.”

  “No, he’s not. Here’s my thinkin’. Black folks don’t improve our lot none by stayin’ down. If we wants to vote and own property and such someday, we need to know things like readin’, ’ritin’, and ’rithmetic. You taught me to read, and now I know things. I could teach Becca that, I s’pose, but I don’t know none of them other things. She gonna better her lot than mine, she gonna need to know cipherin’ and such. If that makes me uppity, maybe Ole Massa Walker was right. But that don’t make me wrong now do it?”

  “No, it doesn’t. The least we can do is talk to Miss Allen.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Cora Allen is the young woman they hired to teach school. She’ll be gettin’ the schoolhouse ready to start in a week or so. Why don’t we take a ride into town and see what she has to say.”

  “You mean you’d go with me?”

  “Of course. They’re our girls, aren’t they? Besides, the territorial constitution says we women get a say in such things.”

  “White women.”

  “Then I guess I best speak for the both of us for now.”

  “It’s settled, then.”

  “Well, maybe not settled, but we’ll sure give it a try.”

  Lawrence

  Schoolhouse

  Chalk, dust, and books. Clare recognized the smell imported from a one-room school house she remembered back home in Ohio. Bright morning sun and a warm breeze blew through the open windows. The one-room schoolhouse would be warm in the early fall.

  Miriam took in the neat rows of desks, facing
a blackboard and the teacher’s desk. She wondered what it would be like to have learned to read on one of those uncomfortable looking benches. She recognized the familiar alphabet above the blackboard with the unfamiliar ciphers ordered beneath them.

  “May I help you?”

  The voice was soft and pleasant. A pretty young woman in a gingham dress with golden curls errant in the heat. Blue eyes met them as she straightened up from behind her desk, arms full of books.

  “Miss Allen?”

  “I am.”

  “Clare Mason.” She strode up the aisle and extended her hand. “My daughter, Elizabeth, will be attending your first-year class this fall.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Mason. I recognize the name from my registration list.”

  “This is my friend and neighbor, Miriam Madison.”

  Cora smiled and extended her hand.

  Miriam took it for a good sign. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Allen.”

  “Madison, now there is a name of historic import.”

  She turned back to Clare. “What can I do for you this morning?”

  “Actually, it’s Miriam you might be able to do something for.”

  “I’m sorry. Miriam, what can I do for you?”

  “I was wonderin’, ma’am, if my daughter, Rebecca, might attend your first-year class, too. She and Elizabeth is like two peas in a pod. They’d help each other with their lessons.”

  “I see. That would be something of a departure from the way things are done, though I am sympathetic to your desire for your daughter to receive an education.”

  “I know schoolin’s for white folk, but Mr. Madison’s rights don’t say nothin’ ’bout rights bein’ for whites only. I know that’s how things is done now, but that don’t make it right, and it don’t mean things is always gonna be done that way.”

  “I understand your point, Mrs. Madison. In fact, I’m inclined to agree with you. If it were up to me, I’d allow it. Unfortunately, a decision such as that is not up to me. It’s a matter for the school board. Are you familiar with that?”

  “I am. It’s the only office white women gets to vote for.”

  “It is. I’m impressed.”

  “You didn’t get that vote without askin’ for it. I helped. I signed the petition to the constitutional convention.”

  “And we won. I respect your right to ask that your daughter be admitted to school. Let me talk to some members of the school board and see what we can do.”

  A tear welled up in Miriam’s eye. “Thank you, Miss Allen.”

  “I can’t promise anything more than I’ll try.”

  “I know. God bless you for tryin’.”

  Sycamore

  A stylish Cabriolet drawn by a sturdy Morgan chestnut wheeled off the town road and up the wagon road to the Mason house. Cora Allen drew the carriage to a stop and stepped down. Late summer heat hung heavy in the yard. Clare stepped onto the porch to greet her.

  “Where might I find Mrs. Madison?”

  “Miriam’s home is up the wagon road there past the barn. I’ll show you if you like.”

  “That is very kind of you.” She gathered a bundle off the carriage seat and fell in beside Clare as they set off up the rutted track.

  “How did it go with the school board?”

  Cora shook her head.

  “I feared as much.”

  “How will Mrs. Madison accept it?”

  “She’ll be disappointed, though I doubt she’ll be surprised.”

  “As am I.”

  “It was good of you to try. It can’t have been easy.”

  “No. While I might have found a sympathetic ear or two, most were shocked at the very suggestion.”

  They climbed the porch step. Clare rapped on the door. Miriam answered, wiping her hands on her apron. She looked from one to the other.

  “They said no, didn’t they?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Cora nodded.

  “You tried, Miss Allen. For that I thank you.”

  “There is something more we can do.”

  “There is?”

  “Yes.” She patted the bundle with a smile.

  “Please, come in.” Miriam led the way inside. “Might be best to sit at the dining table. We ain’t got much in the way of a parlor.”

  Cora laid her bundle on the table and took a seat.

  “It’s true the board said no to your daughter attending classes, but I got to thinking there is a little something we can do.” She untied the bundle and removed the cloth wrapping to reveal three books, a slate, and chalk.

  “What’s this?”

  Cora spread out the books. “Reading, writing, and arithmetic,” she said.

  Miriam picked up the reader and thumbed the pages, running a finger over the words.

  “Do you read?”

  Miriam nodded.

  “Splendid. Then you can help Rebecca with her lessons. The slate and chalk are for exercises. I’ll send assignments home for her with Elizabeth. Elizabeth can help her, and I’ll come by from time to time to see how she is progressing. We’ll do our best to help her keep up with what is going on in class.”

  “You’d do that for my Becca?”

  Cora nodded.

  A tear trickled down Miriam’s cheek. “I don’t knows what to say. Thank you don’t seem near enough.”

  “I’m a teacher, Mrs. Madison. Students learning is thanks enough.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Miss Allen,” Clare said. “I’ll talk to Elizabeth. She’ll be happy to help. Might make her own studies better if she knows she needs to teach her lessons, too.”

  Cora smiled. “It might, indeed.” She turned to Miriam. “Rebecca will be ready when the doors to school are rightfully opened to her.”

  “God bless you, Miss Allen. God bless you.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  * * *

  Sycamore

  January, 1863

  Miriam read the week-old news account for the second time to the howl of the wind in the eaves. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Caleb threw a log in the stove and bundled a blanket about his shoulders to ward off the chill.

  “Does you s’pose it really mean what he say?”

  She put the paper down and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “Pre-si-dent Lincoln say it do. The paper say he e-man-ci-pated slaves with the stroke of a pen he call a proclamation.”

  “Can he do that?”

  “He be the pre-si-dent.”

  “I know that. But can he do that?”

  “He did.”

  “My, my. What do you s’pose be comin’ of it now?”

  “All them folk in the South be free now just like we.”

  “We ain’t been free. We been well hid runaways.”

  “We ain’t no more. We free now.”

  “Them runaway slave laws?”

  “Ain’t no slaves to run away.”

  “Them Confederacy states see it that way?”

  She pursed her lips in thought. “I s’pect not. Not until they lose the war least-wise.”

  “So them runaway slave laws ain’t gone for everyone.”

  “They gone for us and all those livin’ in free-soil states.”

  “What about ownin’ property and votin’ an’ such?”

  “Paper don’t say nothun’ about them.”

  “Free may be free, but it ain’t equal yet.”

  She set her jaw with a nod. “All in good time. All in good time.”

  Blue Springs

  Jackson County, Missouri

  March 1863

  Quantrill and his men made their base camp at the headwaters of the Little Blue River east of Kansas City. The densely wooded area provided an abundance of fresh water, concealment, and escape routes, should the need arise. The camp comprised a small village of scattered dugouts and tents nestled in the wooded hills above the river.

  Evening settled through the trees swallowing the smoke rising from cook fires. Quantrill sat by a fire, cleanin
g a brace of revolvers. A splash broke the slate-gray surface of the river. The clatter of hooves on the stony bank brought him up from his work. A lone horseman rode into camp under the watchful eyes and muzzles of a half-dozen guns. Cole Younger swung down. Other men moved in to hear the news.

  “They’ve arrested my sisters. Yours, too, Bill.”

  Bill Anderson scowled. “Who’s arrested ’em?”

  “Federal garrison in Kansas City. They got ’em locked up in that two-story brick building on Grand Avenue between Fourteenth and Fifteenth.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Anderson turned to go.

  “Where do you think you’re goin’, Bill?” Quantrill said.

  “You heard Cole. They got my sisters. I’m goin’ to bust ’em out.”

  “Forget it, Bill,” Younger said. “Don’t you think I would have tried? They’re bein’ held under heavy guard. You’d never get near the place without getting yourself killed.”

  “What’s the charge?”

  “Don’t need no charge. They’re our sisters. The federals are lockin’ up any womenfolk suspected of tending to our needs.”

  “They can’t do that.”

  “They can, and they did.”

  Anderson turned to Quantrill. “What are we gonna do about that?”

  “I’m not sure, Bill. We’re not gonna ride in there and take on the whole federal garrison; that much I know. We need to get the lay of the land. Maybe we can do something quiet-like.”

  “Figure it out if you must, William. Just figure it out fast.” Anderson stomped off into the gloom.

  Sycamore

  May, 1863

  The chestnut Morgan stood in the Cabriolet livery traces, browsing in the shade of a tall oak. Caleb sat on the front porch step, whittling on a lazy spring afternoon, biding time before Sunday supper. Their guest tutored Rebecca on her arithmetic lesson while Miriam paid rapt attention, learning along with her child.

  “Now try this one.” Cora passed Rebecca a slate with two numbers written in chalk.

  “Fifteen plus six,” Rebecca read. “Five plus six is . . . ” She thought. “Eleven.” She wrote “one” in the sum.