The Old Man was standing nearby, mumbling and murmuring deep in prayer, his eyes closed, babbling on, but one of his eyes popped open when he heard that. “What kind of confusion?”
Just as he said that, there was a loud knock on the door.
“Who’s inside there?” a voice shouted.
The Old Man runned to the window, followed by the rest of us. Outside, at the front door of the engine house was two white fellers, railroad workers, both of ’em looked drunk to the point of sneezing gut water, probably had just walked out the Gault House tavern on nearby Shenandoah Street.
The Old Man cleared his throat and stuck his head through the window. “I’m Osawatomie John Brown of Kansas,” he declared. He liked to use his full Indian name when he was warring. “And I come to free the Negro people.”
“You come to what?”
“I come to free the Negro people.”
The fellers laughed. “Is you the same feller that shot the Negro?” one asked.
“What Negro?”
“The one over yonder in the railroad yard. Doc says he’s dying. Said they saw a nigger girl shoot him. They’re plenty hot ’bout it. And where’s Williams? He’s supposed to be on duty.”
The Old Man turned to me. “Someone shot over there?”
“Where’s Williams?” the feller outside said again. “He’s supposed to be on duty. Open this damn door, ya fool!”
“Check with your own people about your man,” the Old Man shouted back through the window.
O.P. tapped the Captain on the shoulder and piped up, “Williams is in here, Captain. He’s one of the armory guards.”
The Old Man glanced at the guard, Williams, who sat on a bench, looking glum. He leaned out the window. “Pardon me,” he said. “We got him in here.”
“Well, let him out.”
“When you let the Negro people go, we’ll let him out.”
“Quit fooling, ya sawface idiot. Let him out.”
The Old Man stuck his Sharps rifle out the window. “I’ll thank you to take your leave,” he said, “and tell your superiors that Old Osawatomie John Brown’s here at the federal armory. With hostages. And I aims to free the Negro people from their enslavement.”
Suddenly Williams, the armory guard who was setting along the wall bench, got up and stuck his head out a window near him and hollered, “Fergus, he ain’t fooling. They got a hundred armed niggers in here, and they got me prisoner!”
I don’t know but that them fellers saw one of their own yelping out the window, or if it was what he said ’bout them armed coloreds, or if it was the Old Man’s rifle that done it, but they scattered in quick time.
In ten minutes, fifteen fellers was standing out there at a safe distance, mostly drunks from the Gault House saloon across the street, haggling and arguing among themselves, for only two of ’em had weapons, and in every building they’d run to inside the armory gates to fetch a gun from, they found a rifle pointed out the window at them with someone tellin’ them to get the hell off and away. One of them broke off from the rest gathered out front, tiptoed close enough to the front door of the engine house to be heard, and shouted, “Quit fooling and let Williams the hell out, whoever you is, or we’ll fetch the deputy.”
“Fetch him,” the Old Man said.
“We’ll fetch him, all right. And if you so much as touch our man, you cracker-eatin’ snit, we’ll bust a hole in you big enough to drive a mule through.”
Stevens growled, “I had enough of this.” He stuck his carbine through the window and busted off a charge over their heads. “We has come to free the Negro people,” he shouted. “Now spread the word. And if you don’t come back with some food, we’ll kill the prisoners.”
The Old Man frowned at Stevens. “Why’d you say that?”
Stevens shrugged. “I’m hungry,” he said.
We watched the men scramble out the gate, busting off in every direction, running up the hill into the village and the heights of jumbling, mashed-up houses that set beyond it, hollering as they went.
