Free Sarny by Gary Paulsen

soldiers around us set to whooping and hollering. We had a new escort. Miss Laura she had another letter from another general. Lucy she said without thinking, “You must know ’bout every general there is.”
    “And many who aren’t generals,” Miss Laura said, smiling. “Yet.”
    The officer in charge of the escort stopped and talked to the soldiers who were hollering and then came back to the carriage.
    “Great days,” he said. “The war is over. They’ve signed a peace at Appomattox.”
    “Who won?” Miss Laura asked.
    “Why, we did, of course.” The officer smiled. “It was a foregone conclusion, wasn’t it?”
    “Of course.” Miss Laura smiled up at him. “Of course it was—how could you be beaten? I was just joking.”
    And I thought she’d have said the same thing was she talking to a Southern officer and they had won but I didn’t say anything. Woman knew how to live in her own time and make the best of it.
    The travel went better after that and we made twice as much in a day and in two more days we came to New Orleans.
    Wasn’t so much. By the time we got to New Orleans we’d been through so many towns I couldn’t remember their names. Big ones and little ones. Some of them Miss Laura she would keep the curtains closed on the carriage and sometimes we went through two towns in a day. Most of them were smoking and broken with people trying to pick up the pieces.
    Finally we came around a bend in the road and Bartlett tapped on the side of the carriage top and said, “There’s home.”
    Miss Laura she opened the curtains and pointed ahead. “There’s New Orleans.”
    So I looked but didn’t see much but another town on a good-sized river. River kind ofcurved around from the side and the town tucked in down to the edge and I was some excited but not by the town.
    Thought on little Delie and Tyler. They were here. Turned to Miss Laura. “When can I get my children?”
    She nodded. “Ahh yes. I had forgotten Mr. Chivington and your babies. Let me see—it’s late afternoon now and will be evening before we get there. Chivington needs to be handled delicately—he’s a fussy man, as I remember him.”
    “Doesn’t he give me my children I’ll kill him where he stands.”
    Miss Laura smiled. Small, tight. Nodded. “Yes. I understand. But it’s possible that he doesn’t have your children. He may have given them to somebody else or sold them or sent them off for one reason or another.”
    “He can’t sell them. Slavery is against the law now. Done.”
    She sighed. “Yes. Slavery is illegal now. You’re right, Sarny. But I’m afraid it isn’t necessarily finished. There will always be slavery in some part of the world and always be men willing to buy and sell people.”
    Like a cold blade through my heart. All the fighting, the battles we saw to stop it and she says slavery will still be there. Sell my babies. No. He couldn’t do that.
    “Don’t worry just yet. He hadn’t had the children long, and the war just ended three days ago. It’s simply that we must handle it carefully so we don’t alarm him. If he feels threatened, he might never tell us where they are. We have to be nice.” She stopped smiling. “At least at first …” She thought on it for a time, looking out the window. “I’ll throw a welcome-home party for myself day after tomorrow and invite him along with others. It’s short notice, but I think we can succeed. Once we get him relaxed and happy, we’ll go to work on him. Can you wait two more days?”
    “Have to.” She was smart, smartest person I’d ever seen and trying to help me and I’d do anything she said but it cut bad, deep, having to wait.
    Town was all noise, crowded with people, but there wasn’t a sign of war. I found later there wasn’t much fighting going on here. Bartlett he had to pull the carriage down to a slow walk and it took us near a half hour to work through the streets until he stopped the horses and Miss Laura she opened