Soon Be Free (20 page)

“Or stolen,” Chiefs Cap suggested.

Mike said, “Suppose James knows something about Delaware land rights. Say he's friends with an Indian, or his father's the lawyer for some of the Delaware people, and there's a big mess over who owns what land and who's going to sell it to the railroad for a killing. Say James knows about the secret treaty, and he gives his buddy Flint some inside info.”

I shook my head. “The James I know wouldn't do anything so sleazy.”

“Oh, no, of course not,” Mike said. “Saint James Weaver.”

By now, Chiefs Cap was practically foaming at the mouth. “A treaty like that would be worth serious money in the hands of the Delaware people, because they'd be entitled to reparations from the U.S. government with about one hundred fifty years' worth of interest. Man, I wish I were on the Delaware rolls.”

Mike said, “But, on the other hand, if the treaty doesn't get to the tribe at all and lands in Washington first, it might just accidentally vanish and never resurface, right?”

“Possibly,” I said thoughtfully, “but it would also be worth a lot of money if it
never
turned up. Think. If the railroad's going to be built in Kansas, it's got to buy land from somebody, right?”

“Right,” Mike agreed. “And the land belongs to the Delaware Indians.”

“Or it would, if the treaty ever got ratified,” Chiefs Cap added.

Mike began tapping the desk furiously with his pencil. “Oh, man, what if Jedediah Morrison sells Indian land to the railroad?”

“How does he get it?” Suddenly another theory popped into my mind. “James and Flint go to school together. Let's say James knows about the treaty Mr. Prairie Fire was rambling on about. He tells his buddy Flint about the treaty. James wants to make
sure it gets into the right hands, like under the nose of a Delaware chief.”

Mike finished my thought: “But somebody steals it.”

“Flint Morrison!”

“And it's lost forever.”

“Until now!” I said, triumphantly.

A band tightened around James's chest as he saw panic replace the smile in Solomon's eyes. “These are my kinfolk,” Solomon told Lonny Brill. “I'm carrying them to Lawrence to help out the Olneys.”

“Good try, Mr. Free Negro Man, but I happen to know that four slaves matching the description of your
kinfolk
have gone missing out of Owensboro, Kentucky. An old lady, oh, I'd say about like this one. A big, strong buck. A young woman, lithe and pretty, and, what do you know, a girl said to be ten or eleven. Can you beat that coincidence?”

James said, “Sir, these people have been traveling with me. I can swear to thee that they're free citizens. Go after my father, please. He's a lawyer in Lawrence. He'll straighten this all out.”

“I don't care if he's Jesus walking on water, boy. These are now
my
Negroes, and they are worth a nice stack of dollars.” The man pulled out a gun. Homer tugged at Miz Pru's safety rope.

James and the others drew together into a tighter circle. How could they come this close to
victory and still lose? James saw that Sabetha was looking for a way to run. He flashed her a warning—no!—while his own mind raced through possibilities.

A tall, angular man with a curled mustache stepped forward. “How much are these Negroes worth to you, sir?”

“None of your business, unless you're buying,” said Lonny Brill.

“I have a proposition for you.” The man tugged at his white cuffs. He wore a wide-brimmed hat stained with sweat, but was otherwise immaculate.

James scanned the man's face; was he a true abolitionist, a Free-Soiler? Or was he offering to pay for the runaways only to sell them to someone else in the South for lots more money?

“Permit me to confer with the young man who appears to be their champion. Hold your fire on these unfortunate wretches, sir, until the boy and I can—shall we say—reach favorable terms?” The man led James aside by the elbow. “I scratch your back, you scratch mine.”

“Sir?”

“It's the American way of doing business, son. You have a commodity you wish to preserve, at any cost, am I right? Mr. Brill, there, has a commodity he wishes to possess so he can sell it to the highest bidder. Do you follow me so far?”

“I think so, sir.”

“Very good. I, as the third leg of this tripod, have
a document, a certain Delaware land rights treaty, that I wish to misplace until I can raise a little capital. I aim to purchase the land that already belongs to my family—by squatter sovereignty, by God—but that greedy Delaware near-savages claim as their own.”

Cringing at those harsh words, James asked, “Might I ask how thee came by this treaty, sir?” He was trying to piece the picture together, but it was all muddled in his mind.

“I happened to be at the unfortunate demise of a certain Bureau of Indian Affairs agent, a man of rectitude and resolve, but alas, he's just as dead today as a man of my own caliber would be under the same circumstances, which is to say, a knife to the heart.”

James's stomach tightened with the gasp he held in.

“On the Indian agent's last breath he thrust this document into my hand and entreated me to see it safely to Washington.” The man laughed heartily, not at all the response James would expect from someone honoring a deathbed plea.

“Now, I could simply burn this magnificent piece of parchment or watch it turn to pulp in the river. But I'm a good man at heart.”

James suspected he was anything
but
good as the man patted his chest in pride. “I trust you're a member of the Society of Friends, as the Quakers call
themselves, am I right? Conscientious folk, all of you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, understand me, I do not wish to finagle those poor Indians out of their land. I only want my share. I'll build a sweet little house, plant forty acres in corn, and live like the gentleman I was born to be.”

“Forgive me, sir, but I can't help wondering why thee's so keen on that plot of land when there's this vast prairie out here and room enough for everyone.”

The man looked at him as if he were daft. “Well, you're just a boy. I've got a lad about your age, and he's green as sapling, too. There's going to be a railroad come through here, right across that prime Delaware reserve. Right across
my
land. My very
valuable
land, if you're viewing it through the eyes of the Leavenworth, Pawnee, and Western Railroad.”

James swallowed a dry lump in his throat and realized he was no match for this man. If only Will were there. . . .

“Now, I am an excellent judge of character,” the man said. He looked James up and down as if he were fitting him for a suit.

“I'm losing my patience,” Lonny Brill shouted, waving the pistol he'd kept the runaways in line with.

“We're reaching the end of our negotiations,” the man called back, then turned again to James. “I trust you, with all your
thees
and
thous
, to hide this
document while I raise the money out east to buy a handsome passel of that land.”

“But, sir, the land belongs to the Delaware people. The U.S. government moved them out here to Kansas Territory and deeded them that land. My pa's a lawyer. He explained it all to me.”

“Quite right, son, until two, three years ago, when the government convinced those poor souls to sell cheap all but a ten-mile-by-forty-mile swath of that land on the north bank of the river. Haven't you heard about the Delaware Strip? Some call it the Delaware Trust Lands?”

“Yes, sir, I've heard those words,” James said with a sigh.

“Those fools should have known better than to
trust,”
the man said. “One of their chiefs woke up one fine Kansas morning and realized just what they'd given away for mere cents on the dollar, and he called for a new treaty. This piece of paper”—the man patted his breast pocket—“deeds them back a handsome patch of land. My land, I might add. Or, more precisely, it shall be my land as soon as I raise the sizable capital.”

“That land, sir, which ought to belong to the Delaware tribe, now's owned by the government?”

“Unless this treaty goes into effect. You see my dilemma. The Delawares, of course, would never sell it to me.”

“And the government aims to sell Delaware land right out from under them?”

The man shrugged. “We've all got our price, boy. You, too, I suspect.”

What would Will do?
Will always had the sure, right word ready to roll off his tongue. James glanced back at the band of his friends, sorely minus Will. All of their lives hung on these words. Callie had her arm around Miz Pru, and Miz Pru's empty eyes darted nervously as she chewed her gums as if they were a wad of tobacco. The spring air hung heavy with expectancy.

He could feel his own will bending. “And what of the treaty, sir?”

The man said, “I'm obliged to misplace the document, you see, because a certain officer of the law suspects it's in my possession. It wouldn't be, if it were in yours. Do you understand?”

James did
not
understand, but he waited to hear more.

“Oh, I suppose I could bury the document in a steel box out on the wild prairie, but somebody might strike it when they were turning sod. Well, a lesser man might take that chance.”

“It's a mighty big prairie out there,” James reminded the man again. He glanced over and caught Callie's pleading look.

“But, alas,” the man was saying, “it's in my best interest not to know where this document rests,
should anybody ask me. I'm a gentleman. I would not thrive behind bars, imbibing federal swill. Do I make myself clear, boy?”

“I believe so, sir.”

“We have an agreement, then? You promise me to bury the treaty and not let on to a soul?”

“And in return, sir?” The words tasted foul on James's tongue, milk gone sour in the sun.

“In return I pay Mr. Brill, there, the paltry sum he'd get for the Negroes—less his considerable handling expenses—you take the wretches home, and everybody's needs are served.”

“Except the Delaware Indians', sir.”

“Ah, yes, but in five years' time you'll mail that treaty document to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. You'll swear you've just located it, say, among some tornado rubble. Then the Delaware will get what's coming to them for their trouble, courtesy of Uncle Sam in all his bounty. The railroad will bring the outside world to the prairie. As for me, I will have sold my land to the railroad and will be living in the throes of luxury in a far-off state. I fancy New Hampshire. As I mentioned, everybody's happy.”

James bent over, stalling, tugging at his trousers, which were high over his ankles now. Straightening up, he said, “One thing still troubles me, sir, if thee doesn't mind my asking.”

The man twisted the diamond studs in his stiff, white cuffs. “Aye?”

“Does thee have so much as a care for these Negroes?”

The man turned his face to the clouds. A thick plum in his throat caught James's eye.

“My boy, I'm a practical man. Money, as they say, is money, and land is land. But even I have moral limits. Buying a man's body and soul to work your land, that's where I draw the line. Can I trust you, boy? Do I have your solemn word?” He twirled the tips of his mustache while his eyes, once playful, now gored James.

James remembered Grandpa Baylor saying, “Son, always remember, a man's word is as solid as a mountain. It can't be bent or splintered or broken.”

James had lied or played carelessly with the truth too many times on this trip, but only to save people's lives. Even Ma lied to save lives. Could he give his word to this evil man?

He couldn't abide the thought of
selling
human beings as if they were cattle or wheat. And yet the man's money would release the runaways James had so painfully traveled among these past weeks—sweet Homer; and tiny Miz Pru, padded with turkey feathers; and Sabetha, with her sharp tongue; and Callie, seeing things in her back mind; and Solomon, who'd been his friend ever since he'd come to Kansas. What could he do?

What
would
Will do? What would Ma do, if it came to trading one people's injustice for
another's? And what was the alternative?

He looked over at the assembled circle. Lonny Brill stood there with the sun glinting off his revolver and unfurled a length of nasty rope he meant to tie the runaways with.

James saw them each so clearly, so achingly: Solomon, trying to reason with Brill; Miz Pru, with the safety lariat still hanging from her waist, rolling on the balls of her bare feet while Sabetha whispered in her ear and held her in check; Homer, bent over, rocking, clutching his red ball; and Callie, with her snakeskin around her neck, stamping the new grass beneath her shoes and her eyes darting around like a cornered animal's. What if she took off running? She'd be shot in the back!

Suddenly he heard a wail of grief from Homer as his rubber ball made its wobbly roll right toward James. Homer broke free of the circle and rushed after his ball.

“Git back here!” Lonny Brill shouted, and he fired his gun into the air.

“Sweet Jesus, what happened?” Miz Pru cried.

In the confusion, the man slipped the treaty into James's hand just as Homer bent to pick up the rubber ball. He clutched the ball in both hands, lips quivering, and gave James a curious look.

James said, “Thee must get back and look after the others, Homer. Tell them everything will be all right now.”

“Then I presume we have a deal?” the man said.

Sick to his soul, James nodded his agreement. He and the tall stranger were in business. Dirty business. The man put out his hand, and James reluctantly shook it as Homer carefully passed his rubber ball from hand to hand.