Free The Warriors by John Jakes

hear?”
    Silence. The black’s eyes wandered down to the turtle, which appeared to be dead.
    Even more sharply, Jeremiah said, “And lead me up to the house. I told you I have an important paper for your mistress. The colonel gave it to me before—”
    Abruptly, he held back from breaking the news of Rose’s death. The colonel’s wife and daughter deserved to hear it first.
    Price looked indifferent. God, what were those wicked Yanks in Washington City thinking about, granting freedom to men like this?
    Of course Jeremiah knew very well what they were thinking about: the possibility that the blacks might rise up against their masters and aid the Northern war effort. Lincoln’s detested proclamation in the first month of 1863 hadn’t been so generous as to free every black man in the land, not by a damn sight. The President and that vicious pack of Republicans he served had only declared blacks were free in the rebelling states.
    Lieutenant Colonel Rose had commented caustically on that limitation one time. “Old Abe has enough trouble on his hands without antagonizing the border states. Besides, I’ve read some of his speeches. He doesn’t believe nigras are the white man’s equal. He’d just as soon ship them all to Liberia and be shed of them. He’s freeing our nigras to make it hotter for us, that’s all. He’s no humanitarian, he’s a cheap politician who’ll use any available trick to beat us down.”
    Jeremiah had accepted that as gospel; it jibed with all the anti-Northern talk he’d heard as a boy. Lincoln’s proclamation was merely one more example of how dishonorably the enemy was conducting the war. Let the North—and nigras like this one—praise Abe Lincoln as a high-minded emancipator; Jeremiah knew that wasn’t the truth at all.
    With a move that rippled the muscles of his right forearm, Price reached up to flick sweat from his shiny blue cheek. He grinned, his eyes still mocking. “You don’ finish a lot of your sentences, mister soldier.”
    Sentences? That was a mighty fancy word for an ordinary field hand. The realization confirmed his feeling that this was a dangerous man. Price probably knew how to read and write—had no doubt learned in secret, in defiance of the law.
    “That’s my business.”
    The smile remained fixed. “Guess it is. You say you got a paper from the colonel ’fore somethin’ happened to him?”
    “Before I left him. Also none of your affair. You take me to the house—right after you tell me something.” He swallowed hard, trying to stand steady. Price cocked his head, waiting.
    “You tell me what happened to my musket.”
    Price blinked twice, his expression deliberately blank. Jeremiah wanted to hit him.
    “Musket?” Price turned his head right, then left. “Don’t see no musket anyplace round here—”
    “I had my Enfield and my cartridge box with me when I passed out! They’re gone.”
    “Can’t help that. I didn’t spy any such ’quipment when I come onto you lyin’ there. Guess somebody must have stole it during the night.”
    “Who the hell would wander through a place like this during the night?”
    “Oh, mebbe some of the other niggers from the neighborhood, mister—ah, Corporal,” Price corrected himself with an obviously forced politeness. “No, I surely can’t tell you what happened to that gun and that box. You didn’t have ’em when I found you, and since I was the only one awake right about then, guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.”
    Jeremiah took a step forward, almost falling. “You stole them. You hid them someplace. Didn’t you?”
    Price’s gaze admitted it. But his face grew pious. “Now that’s a frightful thing to ’cuse a man of, Corporal. Me, a field buck, steal a white man’s weapon an’ hide it? Why, I could be whipped half to death for such a thing, if Miz Catherine was the kind who whipped her niggers. No, sir, I jus’ don’t know what become of those things you’re talkin’