The Man in Gray: A Romance of North and South Part 24

CHAPTER XIII

It was October, 1854, before John Brown's three sons, Owen, Frederick and Salmon, left Ohio for their long journey to Kansas. In April, 1855, they crossed the Missouri river and entered the Territory.

John Brown decided to move his family once more to North Elba before going West. It was June before his people reached this negro settlement in Northern New York. He placed his wife and children in an unplastered, four-roomed house. Through its rough weatherboarding the winds and snows of winter would howl. It had been hurriedly thrown together by his son-in-law, Henry Thompson. Brown had never stayed on one of his little farms long enough to bring order out of chaos.

His restless spirit left him no peace. He was now in Boston, now in Springfield, Ma.s.sachusetts, now in New York, again in Ohio, or Illinois.

He was giving up the work in Ohio to follow his sons into Kansas. He had planned to move there two years before and abandoned the idea. He had at last fully determined to go.

On October the sixth, his party reached the family settlement at Osawatomie. With characteristic queerness the old man did not enter with his sons, Oliver, Jason and John, Jr., and their caravan. He stopped alone on the roadside two miles away until next day.

The party on arrival had plenty of guns, swords and ammunition but their treasury held but sixty cents.

The family settlement were living in tents around which the chill autumn winds were howling. The poor crops they had raised had not been harvested. The men were ill and discouraged. There was little meat, except game and that was difficult to kill. Their only bread was made from corn meal ground at a hand-turned mill two miles away.

Brown's sons, who had preceded him, had lost all vigor. The old man was not slow to see the way out.

The situation called for Action. He determined to get it. He immediately plunged into Free Soil Politics without pausing to build his first shanty against the coming rains and snows of a terrible winter.

CHAPTER XIV

The race for the lands of the new Territories of Kansas and Nebraska was on to the finish. Nebraska was far North. Kansas only interested the Southerner. The frontiersmen were crossing the boundary lines years before Congress formally opened them for settlement.

After a brief stop in West Tennessee the Doyles had succeeded in reaching Miami County, just beyond the Missouri border, in 1853. They had settled on a fertile quarter section on the Pottawattomie Creek in a small group of people of Southern feeling.

The sun of a new world had begun to s.h.i.+ne at last for the humble but ambitious woman who had borne five strong children to be the athletic sons and daughters of a free country. Her soul rose in a triumphant song that made her little home the holy of holies of a new religion. Her husband was the lord of a domain of fertile land. His fields were green with wheat. She loved to look over its acres of velvet carpet. In June her man and three stalwart boys, now twenty, eighteen and fourteen years of age, would swing the reaper into that field and harvest the waving gold without the aid of a hired laborer. She and her little girls would help and sing while they toiled.

There was no debt on their books. They had horses, cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, turkeys. Their crib was bulging with corn. The bins in their barn were filled with grain.

Their house was still the humble cottage of the prairie pioneer, but her men had made it snug and warm against the winds and snows of winter.

Their farm had plenty of timber on the Pottawattomie Creek which flowed through the center of the tract. They had wood for their fires and logs with which to construct their stable and outhouses.

The house they built four-square with sharp gables patterned after the home they had lost. There were no dormers in the attic, but two windows peeped out of the gable beside the stone chimney and gave light and air to the boys' room in the loft. A shed extension in the rear was large enough for both kitchen and dining room.

The home stood close beside the creek, and the murmur of its waters made music for a busy mother's heart.

There was no porch over the front door. But her boys had built a lattice work that held a labyrinth of morning glories in the summer. She had found the gorgeous wild flowers blooming on the prairies and made a hedge of them for the walks. They were sending their shoots up through the soil now to meet the sun of spring. The warm rays had already begun to clothe the prairie world with beauty and fragrance.

The mother never tired of taking her girls on the hill beyond the creek and watching the men at work on the wide sweeping plains that melted into the skyline miles beyond. Something in its vast silence, in its message of the infinite, soothed her spirit. All her life in the East she had been fighting against losing odds. These wide breathing plains had stricken the shackles from her soul.

She was free.

Sometimes she felt like shouting it into the sky. Sometimes she knelt among the trees and thanked G.o.d for His mercy in giving her the new lease of life.

The new lease on life had depth and meaning because she lived and breathed in her children. Her man had a man's chance at last. Her boys had a chance.

The one thing that gave her joy day and night was the consciousness of living among the men and women of her own race. There was not a negro in the county, bond or free, and she fervently prayed that there never would be. Now that they were free from the sickening dread of such compet.i.tion in life, she had no hatred of the race. As a free white woman, the mother of free white men and women, all she asked was freedom from the touch of an inferior. She had always felt instinctively that this physical contact was poison. She breathed deeply for the first time.

There was just one cloud on the horizon which threatened her peace and future. Her husband, after the fas.h.i.+on of his kind, in the old world and the new, had always held political opinions and had dared to express them without fear or favor. In Virginia his vote was sought by the leaders of the county. He had been poor but he had influence because he dared to think for himself.

He was a Southern born white man, and he held the convictions of his birthright. He had never stopped to a.n.a.lyze these faiths. He believed in them as he believed in G.o.d. They were things not to be questioned.

Doyle had not hesitated to express his opinions in Kansas as in Virginia. The few Southern settlers on the Pottawattomie Creek were sympathetic and no trouble had come. But the keen ears of the woman had caught ominous rumors on the plains.

The father and mother sat on a rude board settee which John had built.

The boy had nailed it against a black jack close beside the bend of the creek where the ripple of the hurrying waters makes music when the stream is low and swells into a roar when gorged by the rains.

The woman's face was troubled as she listened to the waters. She studied the strong lines of her husband's neck, shoulders and head, with a touch of pride and fear. His tongue was long in a political argument. He had a fatal gift of speech. He could say witty, bitter things if stung by an opponent.

She spoke with deep seriousness:

"I wish you wouldn't talk so much, John--"

"And why not?"

"You'll get in trouble."

"Well, I've been in trouble most of my life. There's no use livin' at all, if you live in fear. I ain't never knowed what it is to be afraid.

And I'm too old to learn."

"They say, the Northern men that's pa.s.sin' into the Territory have got guns and swords. And they say they're goin' to use 'em. They outnumber the Southerners five to one."

"What are they goin' to do with their guns and swords? Cut a man's tongue out because he dares to say who he's goin' to vote for next election?"

"You don't have to talk so loud anyhow," his wife persisted.

"Ole woman, I'm free, white, and twenty-one. I've been a-votin' and watchin' the elections in this country for twenty odd years. Ef I've got to tiptoe around, ashamed of my raisin', and ashamed of my principles, I don't want to live. I wouldn't be fit ter live."

"I want ye to live."

"You wouldn't want to live with a coward."

"A brave man can hold his tongue, John."

"I ain't never learnt the habit, Honey."

"Won't you begin?"

"Ye can't learn a old dog new tricks--can they, Jack?"

He stroked his dog's friendly nose suddenly thrust against his knee.

"You know, Honey," he went on laughingly, "we brought this yellow pup from Old Virginia. He's the best rabbit and squirrel dog in the county.

I've taught him to stalk prairie chickens out here. I'd be ashamed to look my dog in the face ef I wuz ter tuck my tail between my legs and run every time a fool blows off his mouth about the South--"