Free Two Girls of Gettysburg by Lisa Klein Page A

reaching the red X that marked the plantation where Grace was kept. It was more than five hundred miles, all in rebel territory
“You’re not going alone?” I had heard about free Negroes being seized by vigilantes and sold back into slavery.
“I have my papers sayin’ I’m a free man, an’ I bought me a good fast piece o’ horseflesh,” he replied with confidence.
“Amos, I just had a thought,” said Mama intently. “I know of a Massachusetts man who is an experienced scout. He was injured at Ball’s Bluff and has been recovering with an uncle here in town. He plans to reenlist, but I think he could be persuaded to a different kind of adventure. Shall I arrange for you to meet him?”
Amos said he would be obliged to her.

When Frederick Hartmann came to meet Amos a few days later, I thought I had never seen a man so dashing and handsome. He had light brown hair that fell to his shoulders in curls. His blue eyes twinkled as he twirled the ends of his mustache between his thumb and forefinger. When I served him coffee after dinner, I couldn’t meet his eyes without blushing. Ben, however, wasn’t at all shy.
“Can I see your scars, Mr. Hartmann?” he asked. “How did you get shot?”
“Don’t be rude, Ben,” I murmured.
Mr. Hartmann just laughed. He tugged his shirt aside so that we could see the purplish dent where a ball the size of a marble had torn through his shoulder. It made me a little queasy to look at it.
“It was my own darn fault,” he said, leaning back and lighting his pipe. “You see, one night a party of nervous scouts, green as spring twigs, reported a Confederate camp near Ball’s Bluff. So the next morning our raiding party crossed over the Potomac only to find out there wasn’t any camp, just a row of trees, their drooping branches looking like tents in the fog. Well there we were, with nothing to raid. So we poked around closer to Leesburg and ran into some rebels there.” He tapped his pipe, letting the burned tobacco flakes spill onto the step, then blew them away.
“And then you were shot?” prompted Ben.
“Not yet, son. They chased us back to the bluff, where we were trapped with our backs to the ravine and the Rebel army coming at us. We’d no idea there was so many of ‘em nearby. Men leaped off the cliff just to get away and others surrendered. I jumped into the river just as a minié ball hit me, but I kept swimming till a buddy fished me out and put me in an ambulance. Lots of men weren’t so lucky; they washed up downriver, near Washington, dead.” He shook his head sadly.
“Why do you think it was your fault?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of my shyness.
“Because if I had gone out with the scouts, I could have told a tent from a fir tree, and we never would have set out to raid a copse of trees! About half our men fell that day, nearly eight hundred casualties.”
“Eight hundred men died?” asked Ben, wide-eyed.
“No, son, casualties is killed, wounded, missing, or captured. They took five hundred prisoners alone.” He fell silent for a minute, then slapped his hands on his thighs. “Well, Miss Lizzie, how about another slice of that apple pie? I tell you, it’s the best I ever tasted.”
In an hour, everything was settled. Mr. Hartmann would travel as aCarolina landholder, with Amos as his valet. Once they had freed Grace, she and Amos would pretend to be Hartmann’s slaves until they reached Pennsylvania again. Mr. Wills, a Gettysburg lawyer, had agreed to draw up the free papers for Grace and the false papers necessary for travel. The final matter was that of Mr. Hartmann’s fees.
“I already own a good horse, but I’ll require a dollar and fifty cents per day, plus food and such expenses. It could be a six-week journey,” said Mr. Hartmann. “A fair deal, I believe, given the considerable risks.”
Amos barely blinked, but I was stunned. That sum of money was more than Amos earned in three months. Mama offered him a loan against