Free The Good Lord Bird by James McBride Page B

Every redshirt within a hundred miles is rolling these plains for him. You can’t go back to Dutch nohow.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œDutch ain’t stupid. He’ll sell you south and git his money for you while he can. Any nigger that’s had a sip of freedom ain’t worth squat to the white man out here. High-yellow boy like you’ll fetch a good price in New Orleans.”
    â€œDutch wouldn’t see me sold.”
    â€œYou wanna bet?”
    That gived me pause then. For Dutch weren’t too sentimental.
    â€œYou know where I can go?”
    â€œYour best bet is to go back to Old Brown. If you ain’t lyin’ ’bout being with his gang and all. They say they’re fearsome. Is it true he carries two seven-shooters?”
    â€œOne of ’em does.”
    â€œOoh, wee, that just tickles me,” he said.
    â€œI’d rather blow my brains out than run around dressed like a girl. I can’t do it.”
    â€œWell, save yourself the bullet and go on back to Dutch, then. He’ll send you to New Orleans and death’ll be knocking shortly. I never heard of a nigger escaped from there.”
    That done me in. I hadn’t considered none of that. “I don’t know where the Old Man is now,” I said. “I couldn’t find him by myself nohow. I don’t know these parts.”
    Bob said slowly, “If I help you find him, you think he could lead me to freedom, too? I’ll dress like a girl for it.”
    Well, that sounded too complicated. But I needed a ride. “I can’t say what he’ll do, but he and his sons got a big army. And more guns than you ever saw. And I heard him say it clear, ‘I’m an abolitionist through and through, and I aims to free every colored in this territory.’ I heard him say that many times. So I expect he would take you.”
    â€œWhat about my wife and children?”
    â€œI don’t know about that.”
    Bob thunk on it a long moment.
    â€œI got a cousin down near Middle Creek who knows everything in these parts,” he said. “He’ll know where the Old Man’s hideout is. But if we set here too long, another posse’s gonna roll up, and they might not be drunk like the last. Help me tie that wagon wheel back.”
    I hopped to work. We rolled a fallen tree stump under the wagon. He harred the horse up so it pulled the wagon high enough to free the bottom, then tied the rope to a tree and harred the horse up again, creating a winch. We piled planks and stones under it to keep it up. I searched the thickets and found that cotter pin and helped him put the wheel back on and chink it in. The sun was near to noon when we finished, and we was hot and sweaty by the time we got the thing done, but we got that wagon wheel spinning like new, and I hopped aboard the driver’s seat next to him, and we was off in no time.

6
    Prisoner Again
    W e didn’t get two miles down the road before we runned into patrols of every type. The entire territory was in alarm. Armed posses crisscrossed the trail every which way. Every passing wagon had a rider setting up front with a shotgun. Children acted as lookouts for every homestead, with Pas and Mas setting out front in rocking chairs holding shotguns. We passed several wagons pulling terrified Yankees going in the opposite direction, their possessions piled high, hauling ass back east fast as their mules could go, quitting the territory altogether. The Old Man’s killings terrified everyone. But Bob got safe passage, for he was riding his master’s wagon and had papers to show it.
    We followed the Pottawatomie Creek on the California Trail toward Palmyra. Then we cut along the Marais des Cygnes River toward North Middle Creek. A short way along the river, Bob stopped the wagon, dismounted, and tied off the horse. “We got to walk from here,” he said.
    We walked down a clean-dug trail to a fine, well-built house on