The Good Lord Bird

“If you say another word about my friend Onion here, I’ll bust a charge in your chest,” he said.

The sound of the Old Man’s voice stopped him. “Frederick!”

Fred froze, pistols drawed out.

“Leave him be.”

Frederick stepped away. The Reverend huffed and glared, but he didn’t pull his metal, and he was wise not to, for Owen had stepped out the crowd, and so had two of Brown’s other sons. They was a rough bunch, them Browns. They was holy as Jesus to a man. They didn’t swear, didn’t drink. Didn’t cuss. But God help you if you crossed ’em, for they didn’t take no backwater off nobody. Once they decided something, it was done.

The Reverend gathered his rifle and things, got on his horse, and hit off without a word. Peabody and two others followed. They rode north out the campgrounds, the way the Captain told ’em to do.

The Old Man, Ottawa Jones the Indian, and the Jew Weiner stood together and watched Reverend Martin and his men leave.

“You ought to duck-hunt that Reverend in his back while you got the chance,” Weiner said. “He won’t be out of sight five minutes before he turns south and heads to Dutch’s Crossing. He’ll hoot and holler to Dutch loud as he can.”

“Let him holler,” the Old Man said. “I want everyone to know what I aim to do.”

But he made a mistake letting the Reverend go that day, and it would cost him down the line.

4. Massacre

The Old Man’s plan to attack Osawatomie got delayed, like most things he done, and we spent the next few days wandering the county, stealing from Pro Slavers so we could eat. The Old Man was always broke and delayed in everything. For one thing, he had a lot of men to feed, twelve in all. That’s a lot. I sometimes reckon that Old John Brown wouldn’t have started no trouble at all if he didn’t have to feed so many people all the time. Even at home he had twelve children there, not to mention his wife and various neighbors who throwed in with him, from what I’m told. That’s a lot to feed. That’ll make anyone mad at anything. Weiner fed us at his trade store in Kinniwick. But after two days, his wife was done with the slavery fight and throwed us out. “We’ll be slaves ourselves once this is done,” she growled.

Them first few days of wandering the territory gived me time to get a read on things. From the Old Man’s side of things, new atrocities was occurring all up and down Kansas Territory, the business in Congress being the last straw. From his point of view, the Yank settlers was being plundered regular by the Kickapoo Rangers, the Ranting Rockheads, the Border Ruffians, Captain Pate’s Sharpshooters, and a number of such bloodthirsty, low-down drunks and demon outfits bent on killing off abolitionists or anyone being suspected of being one. Many of them types was personal favorites of mine, truth be told, for I growed up at Dutch’s and knowed many a rebel. To them the Old Man’s Yanks was nothing more than a bunch of high-siddity squatters, peddlers, and carpetbaggers who came west stealing property with no idea ’bout how things was, plus the Yanks wasn’t fighting fair, being that they got free guns and supplies from back east which they used against the poor plainsmen. Nobody asked the Negro what he thunk about the whole business, by the way, nor the Indian, when I think of it, for neither of their thoughts didn’t count, even though most of the squabbling was about them on the outside, for at bottom the whole business was about land and money, something nobody who was squabbling seemed to ever get enough of.

I weren’t thinking them thoughts back then, of course. I wanted to get back to Dutch’s. I had an aunt and uncle back there, and while I weren’t close to them, anything seemed better than starving. That’s the thing about working under Old John Brown, and if I’m tellin’ a lie I hope I drop down a corpse after I tell it: I was starving fooling with him. I was never hungry when I was a slave. Only when I got free was I eating out of garbage barrels. Plus, being a girl involved too much work. I spent my days running around, fetching this or that for these young skinflints, washing their clothes, combing their hair. Most of ’em didn’t know their heads from their arses and liked having a little girl to do this and that for ’em. It was all, “Fetch me some water, Onion,” and “Grab that gunnysack and bring it yonder,” and “Wash this shirt in the creek for me, Onion,” and “Heat me some water, dearie.” Being free weren’t worth shit. Out of all of ’em, only the Old Man didn’t demand girl chores, and that’s mostly ’cause he was too busy praying.

I was done in with that crap and almost relieved when he announced after a few days, “We is attacking tonight.”

“You ain’t gonna tell us where it is?” Owen grumbled.

“Just sharpen your broadswords.”