Before I could argue the point, the Old Man snorted. “God is no respecter of men over women, good Bob. If a man can’t meet the needs of his own women or children, why, he’s just half a man. You stay here with the rest, for the thousands of Negroes that will flock to our stead will need you to calm them and keep them from pounding the bushes until our war starts, for they will be anxious to go at it. Me and Onion will lay the groundwork, and then you, sir, will be our ambassador to welcome them into our army of men.”
Bob sulked and stayed back and kept his peace, which, as it turned out, weren’t long, for two weeks after we got back east, a letter come to the Captain that Bob had run off.
We took a train that hauled us from Chicago to Boston, which is what the Old Man said his plan was. Rolling behind that steam engine was a slam-banging, bumpy, clickety-clackety situation, but it was righteous warmer and more comfortable than the prairie. He traveled variously as “Nelson Hawkins,” “Shubel Morgan,” or “Mr. Smith,” depending on what he could remember, for he often generally forgot his fake names and often asked me to remind him which one he was using. He made various attempts to comb out his beard without success, but with me traveling incog-Negro, posing as a consort, he weren’t tricking nobody. I looked raggedy as an old knot rope from weeks on the prairie, and the Captain was famous as bad whiskey. The Pro Slavery passengers cleared out the car when they saw him, and anytime he professed a need for food or drink on the train, why, the other Yankee passengers ponied up whatever food they had for his pleasure. He took these gifts without a blink. “These is not for ourselves, Onion, but rather in the name of our Great Haymaker and for the cause of liberty of our enslaved brothers and sisters.” He ate only what he could eat and not a drop more. That was the ironical thing about the Old Man. He stole more wagons, horses, mules, shovels, knives, guns, and plows than any man I ever knowed, but he never took anything for hisself other than what he used personally. Whatever he stole was for the cause of fighting slavery. If he stole something and didn’t use it, why, he’d run it back to the poor drummer he stole it from to return it, less’n course the feller was disagreeable, in which case he’d liable to find himself dead or roped to a pole, with the Old Man lecturing him on the evils of slavery. The Captain enjoyed lecturing captured Pro Slavers on the evils of slavery, so much so that a couple of ’em said, “Captain, I’d ruther you plugged me now and get it over with than lecture my ears one more second, for your words is drowning me. You is killing me here.” Several prisoners quit the game altogether and dropped off to sleep as he lectured, for many of ’em was drunk, only to wake up sober to find the Old Man praying over them, which was even worse torture, being that they was now sober and the Old Man carried on his prayers longer when he had an audience.
It was on the train that I learned that John Brown was a poor man. He had a large family, even by prairie standards he birthed twenty-two children altogether with two wives. He outlived the first wife and still had the second one living in Elba, New York, along with twelve children, them that weren’t killed off through sickness and disease. Most of his young’uns at home was knee-high children or girls, and he constantly scooped up small items and remembrances for them on the train to Boston, such as colorful paper and spools of thread he found tossed about on the passenger car floor, saying, “I’ll give this one to Abby,” and “This would delight my little Ellen.” It was there that I come to understand how guilty he felt for my Pa getting kilt when he first kidnapped me two years prior. He’d given me a store-bought dress he’d got for his own daughter Ellen. The Old Man never bought his goods in any store. That store-bought dress had long wore out by then. I was sporting a fine embroidered number I’d gotten from Pie when he found me in Pikesville. But that gived way on the plains to trousers, undergarments, shirt, and hat, all stolen, course, which I was allowed to wear on account of the fierce weather. The Old Man seen I took to that clothing and it delighted him, for he figured me as being a tomboy of sorts, which generally amused him. Rough and gruff as he was, he was kindhearted to every child he come across. Many a time I seen him set up all night with a colicky colored child who was part of whatever exhausted band of runaway Negroes he was slinging along to freedom. He’d feed her as her tired parents slept, pouring hot milk or soup down her throat, and sing her to sleep. He pined for his own little children and wife, but seen that his fight against slavery was more important than them.
