I reckon the agent had spied the show before, ’cause he knowed the Old Man was winding down, too. He saw the Old Man close his eyes to start his Bibling and quickly slipped off the back wall and worked through the crowd gathered along the side aisle of the hall, making his way to the front. I quick waved my feather at the Old Man again, but his eyes was shut tight as he gived the Lord ninety cents on the dollar. There weren’t nothing to do but move with the agent.
I came off the back wall and worked my way around the room behind him fast as I could. He was closer to the stage than I was, and movin’ quick.
The Old Man must’a smelled a rat, for in the middle of his proclamations ’bout immortal souls and the afflicted, his eyes suddenly popped open and he blurted out a quick “Amen.” The crowd hopped out their seats and surged to the front of the hall, making a beeline to commingle with their hero and shake his hand and get his autograph and give him coin donations and so forth.
They swarmed the agent as well, and slowed his progress. But he was still ahead of me, and I was but a colored girl, and the crowd pushed me aside in the scramble to shake the Old Man’s hand. I was being thumped ’bout by Yankees trying to swarm the Old Man. I waved the Good Lord feather again but I was drowned out by taller adults all around. I caught a glimpse of a little girl up front who beat the crowd to the Old Man, holding out a paper for him to sign. He leaned down to sign it, and as he done so, the agent busted through the crowd and made it to the front of the room and was nearly on him. I jumped into the pews and leaped over the seats toward the front.
I was ten feet off when the agent was within arm’s length of the Captain, who had bent down with his back to the agent to put his mark on the paper for the little girl. I crowed out, “Captain! I smell bear!”
The crowd paused a moment, and I do believe the Captain heard me, for his head snapped up and the old, stern, wrinkled face clicked to alertness. He stood and spun around in a snap, his hands on his seven-shooters and I ducked low, for that gun makes a powerful boom when it wakes up. He caught the feller cold. Had the drop on him, for the agent hadn’t quite reached him yet, nor gone for his metal. He was a dead man.
“Aha!” the Old Man said.
Then, to my surprise, his hands came off his seven-shooters and his tight face uncrinkled. He stuck his hand out. “I see you has got my letters.”
The stout feller with a mustache and bow tie stopped short and bowed low in his bowler cap. “Indeed!” he said. He spoke with an English accent. “Hugh Forbes at your service, General. It is an honor to meet the great warrior of slavery of whom I have heard so much. May I shake your hand?”
They shook hands. I reckon this was the “special interest” the Captain had waited on, the thing he had hung around waiting for back east before heading back to the plains.
“I has studied your great war pamphlet, Mr. Forbes,” the Old Man said, “and I daresay it is excellent.”
Forbes bowed low again. “You humble me, dear sir, though I do confess my military training duties are underscored by the many victories I experienced on the European continent under the legions of the great General Garibaldi himself.”
“Indeed it is pertinent,” the Old Man said. “For I has a plan that needs your military training and expertise.” He glanced around at the folks gathered ’round them, then at me. “Let us retire to the back room here, whilst my consort counts up the funds from tonight’s gatherers. There is doings of which I needs to discuss with you in private.”
With that, the two went into the back room of the hall while I collected the funds. What they discussed I weren’t privy to, but they commingled there the better part of three hours, and when they emerged, the hall had cleared out.
It was quiet and the streets was safe. I handed the Old Man the $158 collected from that night’s doings, our best take ever. The Old Man produced another pile of bills, counted them up, placed a total of $600 in a brown bag, just ’bout every penny we’d made from our three months of giving speeches and shows up and down the East Coast, raising money for his army, and handed the bag to Mr. Forbes.
Mr. Forbes took the bag and stuffed it in his vest pocket. “I am proud to serve in the legions of a great man. A general in the score of Toussaint-Louverture, Socrates, and Hippocrates.”
“I’m a captain, serving in the army of the Prince of Peace,” Old Man Brown said.
“Ah, but to me you are a general, sir, and I will call you thus for I serve under nothing less.”
With that, he turned and marched down the alley, military style, like a soldier, clickety-clack, erect and proud.
The Old Man watched him all the way till he reached the end of the alley. “I has been trying to find that man for two years,” he announced. “That is why we lingered here so long, Onion. The Lord finally brung him to me. He will meet us in Iowa and train our men. He is from Europe.”
“He is?”
