Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

Father grabbed at my sleeve. “Come, Owen,” he said. “I know what you feel, son. Come away. We cannot help them,” he said, and I turned reluctantly from them and followed my father and the four Negroes into the forest.

Shortly before dawn, we emerged from the deep pine woods on the road just below our farm, where Mr. Fleete parted from us to return to his cabin in Timbuctoo. He would not be joining us for the next stage of our journey, from North Elba to Port Kent, nor would Lyman, for our route would carry us through several villages and a generally more settled region than the wilderness of the pass between North Elba and Tahawus, and we did not want to attract undue attention to our wagon, as would surely occur if we were in the company of even one of “Gerrit Smith’s North Elba niggers,’ as the settlers of Timbuctoo were called by the local whites. While there were indeed a number of white abolitionists residing in the region, the Thompson family foremost among them, also the Nashes, the Edmondses, and some others, anti-Negro feeling was starting to run high here, amongst the small farmers in particular, who believed that, thanks to Mr. Smith’s land grants and now Father’s survey, the Negroes had obtained unfair access to the better part of the tablelands. This resentment fed on the usual racial prejudices of poor and ignorant white farmers and was fattened by the oily words of land speculators and politicians working to please the money-lenders. Father’s association with the Negroes was, of course, well known, and the several Sunday sermons that he had given at the invitation of Mr. Everett Thompson, who was a much-respected deacon in the North Elba Presbyterian Church, had enflamed many of the local people against us, and consequently we had begun appearing in public with Negroes whenever possible. “We must not act in the presence of our neighbors as men who are ashamed of doing the Lord’s work,” the Old Man had insisted, when I counseled caution. “We must force them to confront us, and from that they will in time confront their own consciences, so that when the spirit of the Lord enters them, they will know what is right and will act accordingly.”

But Father was no fool, and he knew that it would be dangerous all around to invite any such confrontation while transporting escaped slaves in our wagon, and thus he was obliged to dissuade both Mr. Fleete and Lyman from traveling on with us. Mr. Fleete seemed almost grateful to be let off from it, but Lyman was not. “You might wish I was along, Mister Brown, if some slave-catcher come upon you,” he said, as we walked along the road to our farm. The sun was rising full in our face, cracking the horizon just south of the notch. Father and Lyman marched in front, and Mr. and Mrs. Cannon and I came wearily along behind. The long hike through Indian Pass from Tahawus had taken several hours longer than the walk over the night before, as the fugitives were not shod as well as we and, despite the rigors of their flight, were not used to tramping at such length through rough terrain.

“You may be sure that Owen and I can ably defend our cargo, if need be,” Father said to Lyman. I myself was not so sure. At that time I had not yet fired my gun at another human being, and to my knowledge the Old Man hadn’t, either.

As we rounded the bend before our house, Father suddenly halted and drew back and hurried us all into the chokecherry bushes by the side of the road. He bade us get down out of sight and silenced us with the flat of his hand. “We have visitors,’ he whispered. “Two horses at the front of the house.”

There was a narrow gully that ran back from the road into a dense thicket of silver birch, and Father instructed the fugitives to hide there. “Do not move until one of us comes for you,” he instructed them, and at once the man and woman slipped away from us into the gully and out of sight. Then he, Lyman, and I approached the house.

There were two men lounging at the door, one of them known to us — Caleb Partridge from Keene. The other was a long, leathery fellow with a patchwork gray and black beard on his face and the squint and facial color of a man who spent most of his time outdoors, although the clothes he wore belied that — a brown suit and waistcoat and a tall black felt hat. He wore strapped to his waist, in stark contrast to his clothing, a holstered Colt Paterson, a five-shot revolver, the sort of sidearm one usually associated with a police officer or Pinkerton agent. He was a manhunter. The other fellow, Partridge, although unarmed, looked to be his assistant today, or perhaps his guide.

As we approached them, Partridge smiled. Watson and Salmon were just setting out the cattle and sheep to graze in the near meadow, and I saw Oliver in the distance behind the barn, carrying water and grain to the pigs and feed to the fowl. Annie and Sarah were at play with their husk dolls on a stump in the yard beside the house. Ruth and Mary and Lyman’s wife, Susan, were nowhere to be seen, probably inside preparing breakfast.

Father stopped a few feet before the visitors, who had gotten slowly to their feet. He cradled his old Pennsylvania rifle, the one with the maplewood stock, loosely in his arm and said, “Mister Partridge.”

“Good morning, Mister Brown. How d’ ye do? You’ve been off in Tahawus, your wife tells us.”

“Yes, we have. You will introduce your companion to me.”

“Been hunting, Mister Brown?” the man said. His teeth were rotted and stained with tobacco. “Looks like you come up empty.”

“I do not know you, sir,” Father said. At the sound of his voice, Ruth and Mary had come to the window and peered out at us. The boys had stopped their work and were watching us from a distance. Only the little girls went on as before, as if there were nothing out of the ordinary happening.

“Billingsly,” the man said. “Abraham Billingsly. Of Albany.”

“I take you to be a bounty-hunter, Mister Billingsly. A slave-catcher.”

“I am an agent. I am an agent hired to return lost or stolen property to its legal and rightful owner. I have a contract,” he added, patting his breast pocket.

“I do not permit slave-catchers to stand on my land, sir. Nor do I permit those who associate with slave-catchers to stand on my land,” Father said to Partridge. “You will both have to vacate these premises. Immediately.”

The tall stranger took a step forward and smiled and stopped, as Lyman and I moved to either side of Father and let our muskets be seen. In a sleepy drawl, the slave-catcher said, “I merely wanted to make some inquiries of you, Mister Brown. That’s all. Your niggers is safe enough. I already seen the wench inside. Her and this one with you, neither of them is lost or stolen, leastways not so far as I know. Matter of fact, your good neighbor here, Mister Partridge, he vouched for them himself. I don’t give no trouble to what you call ‘free’ niggers.”

“I’m running you off my property, sir!” Father declared. “Leave now, or we will shoot you dead!”

“No need to get upset!” Partridge said. “This here fellow come by my house yesterday and requested me to take him over here to North Elba. That’s all! He’s after some nigger couple from Virginia that’s killed a man down there and took off for Canada, pretending they was escaped slaves. They got a arrest warrant out for them.”

“He has a contract, not a warrant,” Father said.

The slave-catcher said, “I heard there was escaped slaves passing through here, Mister Brown, and that you might have something to do with handing them along. You and your family are well-known, Mister Brown. And I heard there was a nigger couple staying in your house. Seemed unusual, so I thought I’d just have me a look at them. I see now that they ain’t but field-niggers, though. The ones I’m looking for is a little yellow gal and dark-skinned boy about twenty years old. House niggers, Brown. Not flatfoot darkies like yours.”