Chapter 3: On to Independence

Jan 20, 1857

In the morning, Madison joined Dawn and me again. A light mist began falling just before we mounted up, so we pulled out our canvas ponchos to help keep the rain off. Madison didn’t have a warm hat, but Dawn hurried back to her wagon and returned with the new hat she’d made for me from the bobcat pelt. I traded and gave Madison my rabbit fur hat, getting a smile bright enough to rival a beautiful sunrise.

We made good time since we didn’t have to hunt today. The rain got heavier as the day progressed, so we settled on a camp that was fifteen miles away rather than the usual twenty or so. We gathered as much semi-dry wood as we could find and put a tarp over it to keep it from getting wetter. Then we spent time off the road on the way back looking for a place to hunt tomorrow.

About two miles from our chosen campsite, I saw four wagons pulled off the road in a small clearing. Wary of more bandits, I approached cautiously. Dawn and Madison helped cover the wagons as we approached. We watched for a few minutes as people began exiting the wagons. It looked like a slave owner and his slaves at first as the white man was ordering two Negro men around. “Isn’t Illinois a free state?” I quietly asked Madison. She nodded.

A few minutes later, another white man pushed a naked Negro woman out of one of the wagons and followed her out while buttoning up his pants. It was obvious that they’d just had sex. “Get a fire going and fix dinner,” he shouted angrily at her as he backhanded her. Suddenly, one of the two male slaves bolted for the woods, headed our way.

“Darn blackies is too stupid to learn that we’ll always catch ‘em,” one of the white men laughed. While another of the white men saddled his horse, the first man released a hound dog chained beneath one of the wagons where it had been sheltering from the rain. By now, we could see four white men, four Negro women, and six Negro men. All but the lone Negro who ran had their legs shackled to keep them from running.

I motioned for Dawn to use her bow on the dog. I didn’t want it catching the escaping slave or giving away our presence. When the dog suddenly yelped and then went quiet, the man who released the dog spun towards where the dog had been baying. “Drag his black hide back here so I can flay the skin off his back for hurting Runner,” he shouted angrily at the man saddling the horse.

I motioned for Dawn to use her bow on the rider, too, but she was way ahead of me. She let him get just beyond us before dropping him with an arrow in the back. A second arrow made sure he was dead. She ran over to catch and tie up the horse since it stopped when the rider fell off. She also retrieved her three arrows.

The three of us aimed our repeating rifles since we were less than a hundred yards from the wagons. When each of us had a target, I hollered into camp, “Drop your weapons, and live.” Diving for the ground, the slaves showed that the three white men were the stupid ones. All three of the white men spun towards my voice, raising a rifle, or pulling a revolver. Our three rifles fired almost simultaneously, and all three men dropped.

We watched for a minute until one of the slaves crawled over and checked them. “Theyahs all dead, Suh,” he shouted in my direction.

Leaving Madison and Dawn to cover me, I walked in cautiously and checked the men again. They were dead.

“What chew you gonna do wif us?” the slave asked.

“I’m not going to do anything with you. This is Illinois; it’s a free state, so you’re all free. If you want to take the horses and wagons and start a life on your own somewhere, that’s fine. If you’d rather, I can ask the group I’m with if they will let you join us. We’re going to Council Bluffs in Iowa to ranch and farm. If they agree, you can work for us and we’ll pay you a fair wage,” I offered.

I could see that they didn’t believe me. “Our wagon train (I realized it really was big enough now to be considered a small wagon train) will be along in a couple of hours. We chose a camp about two miles south of here. Come by and join us if you want,” I offered, and turned around and left.

I wasn’t even halfway back to Dawn and Madison when the man hollered again, “Suh, we’d like to go wif yew.” When I turned back around, one of them had secured the key from one of the dead men and was hurriedly unlocking his shackles.

“Do you men know how to hitch the mules and drive the wagons?” I asked.

“Yes, Suh. We’s been doin’ dat already,” he answered.

“Let us get our horses, and we’ll ride with you,” I said. “By the way, my name is Jim, not Sir,” I added.

“Yes, Suh, I mean Jim,” he commented. I could tell by his grin that he’d done it intentionally, and I grinned back at him. Dawn and Madison rode out of the trees, bringing me Thunder. There was a minor problem at the wagons. A second hound chained up beneath the wagon didn’t like Negroes. He had no problem with me approaching him and petting him. I guess I had a hound, not that I knew how to hunt with one. They told me his name was Bounder.

We got back to our chosen campsite about an hour before the rest of our wagons. Since it had rained all day, everyone was glad to see a fire going when the wagons arrived. I made a mental note to keep several dry pieces of firewood in the wagon with the braziers so we’d always have dry wood and kindling to start a fire, even if the rest of the wood was wet.

Despite the rain, I secured the two new meat hooks on the frame I had built yesterday. Madison and I made the rounds of all the families, explaining that the Negroes had either been emancipated, or had successfully escaped to Illinois. The men captured them illegally to take back to Kentucky to sell. Everyone agreed to let them join us and work for wages. I warned the Negroes that we might have to pretend they were slaves while traveling through Missouri.

“Yes, Suh, Massa,” the one I learned was named Mingo answered with another grin. He also caught me alone during the evening and asked what we planned to raise. After I told him our plans, he agreed that it was a good plan.

“Hey, Mingo, what happened to your lousy grammar?” I asked.

He grinned again. “We’s learned tuh act stupit aroun white folks,” he laughed.

“You don’t need to act stupid around us. As long as you work as hard as everyone else, you’ll be fine,” I told him. He just gave me one of his lopsided grins.

Madison and I were wet, cold, and miserable from the rain all day when we crawled into the wagon for the night. Somehow, my wives made us forget that we’d been miserable, and I fell asleep warm and dry with a smile on my face.

Jan 21

The rain stopped sometime before dawn, but it was still cold and muddy outside. All four women decided they wanted to join us this morning, so Dawn beat me out of the wagon, and then we had to wait for the women. Dawn just grinned knowingly at me. By the time the women were ready, I had managed to get some of the almost-dry wood to catch from the banked coals and stacked wet wood around the dry, so the rest of our group could cook breakfast.

The first creek we came to was wider than we’d seen lately, but only two or three feet deep and the bottom was solid. At the second creek, something caught my ear over the noise of the rain and flowing water, and I turned Lightning upstream. About a hundred yards upstream was a muddy area surrounded by heavy underbrush. I heard the noise again and warned the girls to back away. I climbed into a bare tree and had Dawn and Madison take trees near mine. The other girls took the horses away for us.

Ten minutes after the girls left with the horses, the wild pigs came out of hiding. I gasped when I saw the size of the boar. He was huge! The sows were good sized, too. Motioning to the women, we each picked a target and fired, using the larger caliber Enfields.

The girls returned with the horses, but we continued waiting. Ten minutes later, several of the smaller wild pigs were checking out the three dead ones. There were at least a dozen “small” pigs, small being in the one hundred-fifty to two hundred-fifty-pound range. I figured they were from this last year’s and the previous year’s litters. This time the other three girls got in on the action, too. Each of us used a repeating rifle, choosing a target and firing at the same time. Penny fired a second after we did, missing her target as the remaining pigs scattered again.

This time it took nearly half an hour before they came out to explore again. When it looked like they were all back, we tried again. Each of us hit our target this time and the few remaining pigs scattered once more.

Figuring that the remaining small pigs would leave me alone if I went down there, I had Dawn and Madison cover me while I tied rope to the hind legs of the largest three pigs and had the mules drag the bodies a hundred feet away. Penny, Emma, and Flo hurried back with the mules and the ropes, and we did it several more times until we had dragged all fourteen pigs into the open. Dawn and I made three travois to carry back the biggest three since there was no way to lift them onto one of the mules without cutting them into quarters. I loaded one of the smaller ones on each of the six mules we had.

Dawn rode with the three girls as they headed back to find the wagons. Madison and I waited in the trees, watching over the remaining five pigs. “Why did you shoot so many pigs?” Madison asked while we waited.

“I didn’t want them attacking me while I was trying to drag the three big ones out. I also wanted to see if more big ones would show up to check things out,” I explained.

The women were back just over an hour later. “Guess what we’re having for dinner tonight?” Emma teased.

“Venison?” I riposted.

We took the last five pigs and headed north to find a campsite. The girls reported that the wagons weren’t having any problems fording the creeks, so we rode through the town of Opdyke before searching for a place to spend the night. When I asked a farmer, he was happy to let us spend the night in his field, so we gave him one of the small pigs. When he heard how many we had, he suggested selling a couple to the inn and the mercantile in nearby Mt. Vernon. The restaurant might even want one.

Once we had a fire going, we started two of the pigs cooking. Emma and I took the other two back into town. They sold quickly, and as people heard we were selling them, we had orders for every pig I wanted to sell. We could have sold twice as many, but, with so many mouths to feed, I wanted to keep two besides the ones we had cooking.

We rode to meet the wagons and hauled the promised pigs back to town on mules. I could see that the women in the wagon train were relieved that we sold most of the pigs. It would have been a lot of work to deal with fourteen of the suckers. Now, they only had two left. We did trade in town for a lot of dried apples and peaches, and a bunch of other foodstuffs the women were happy to get. We even found another cast iron bread oven and several more bread pans.

One of the women that we traded with overheard a comment about extra mouths to feed now and asked about it. When I explained about freeing the Negroes, she asked if I was interested in more Negro workers. She knew of a campsite along the creek just east of town where several Negroes lived. They couldn’t afford housing, so they lived in shanties made of old scraps of lumber, branches, and thatched grass. She had no idea what they ate.

Once again, I spoke with everyone in the wagon train. They all concurred, knowing that we’d need a lot of workers to get crops planted and buildings done when we got there. I was grateful that nobody in our group had issues working with Negroes, or with Dawn, as many whites hated Indians worse than they disliked Negroes.

Mingo and Abram went with me. Mingo already knew where the camp was since he’d lived there. The men had captured him while he was walking back there from a local farm where he had spent the day working.

An hour later, all eleven people from the campsite joined us. Aside from the four men and six women, there was a six-year-old girl named Mima. I noticed that Mingo seemed to be the de facto spokesperson for the former slaves. I was glad that we hadn’t sold any of the extra wagons yet. I also noted that Mima and her mother seemed to be very close to Mingo.

With the farmer’s permission, we decided to spend another day here, going to Mt. Vernon to get more supplies so we had enough to feed the sudden influx of people that had almost doubled our group over what we had started out with. Tonight, the women descended on the slaver’s wagons to see what was in them. This time, my mother brought me a small wooden box with six hundred forty dollars in it. I had her give it to Dad so he could buy anything we needed in town tomorrow. I asked him to look for more of the repeating rifles, shotguns, S&W revolvers, and Navy Colt revolvers, as well as holsters for anyone who wanted or needed one.

The slaver’s four horses were superb. All four of the slavers had a long rifle like my old one, as well as a Navy Colt revolver to add to our collection of firearms. I had no idea what else was in the four wagons. The women in camp were still inventorying them when I went to sleep, alone. I was exhausted from dragging and lifting the pigs today.

Jan 22

My cuddle mates were there when I woke up. Madison said she’d rather go to town than go hunting this morning. Dawn was already putting wood into the fire pit, so it would be burning when everyone else got up.

Hoping for a repeat of yesterday’s abundant game, we headed south of Mt. Vernon to the swampy area. We took a dozen pack mules, as well as the three travois from yesterday. Our poor mounts struggled through the swampy ground for half an hour before I heard them. Dawn heard them, too, and grinned at me in recognition.

It took another hour to get the boar and three large sows. With just the two of us, we could have been there for two days trying to get the smaller pigs. While I stood next to her with both Colts at the ready, Dawn tied the feet of the three sows and the boar. She tied the other end of the ropes to the mules. We pulled them into a clearing and rolled them onto the three travois from yesterday, and a fourth travois Dawn made while I was loading the first three.

We were cold, wet, and muddy when we got back to camp. Mr. Wilkes told us to go bathe in the stream and he’d stand guard. I know my mouth was hanging open at his suggestion. “Jim, Dawn already told me what a gentleman you were when you rescued her. What you don’t understand is that her people have no problem with nudity. She wouldn’t have cared if you’d stared at her. Now go get clean so you can get warm before you catch your death from the cold. We can’t afford to lose you,” he nearly ordered.

I did what I was told, enjoying the occasional glimpse of a naked Dawn. She was a beautiful woman, and started teasing me, causing Mr. Wilkes to crack up. “You hide a rifle in pants? No wonder you have so many happy wives,” Dawn chuckled, pointing at me. I blushed darker that I ever had before, while wondering how I could possibly get hard in water so cold I was shivering. It was nearly an hour later before I managed to stop shivering.

The people who went to town came back shortly afterwards. I was surprised to see the men start building a third frame with meat hooks on another wagon and then realized that we might need it to feed so many people. The men who stayed in camp had used a block and tackle to hang the four pigs from sturdy tree branches and started butchering them. The two uncooked pigs left from yesterday were already cooking. When I checked, there was a healthy supply of dry firewood inside the cooking wagon, and someone had set up the third brazier like the first two.

All three cooking tripods were already set up near the fire for the women to cook in when they got back. The women had bought three more tripods and more cast-iron pots. When they started to explain about everything they bought, I waved them off. “I’m not worried about it. I’m sure it was all things we needed,” I told them. They seemed to relax after that. They had even managed to refill our empty coal barrel cheaply. I had no idea that coal was so plentiful in Illinois and learned there were coal mines all over the state.

Knowing my penchant for the Navy Colt revolvers and the repeating rifles, they bought the two repeating rifles the gunsmith had for sale, and three more from the mercantile, as well as six of the Navy Colt revolvers and three more shotguns. They even found one of the S&W revolvers, and more of the cartridges for it.

Each of the former slaves insisted on thanking me personally for everything, promising to work hard and to help in any way they could. I suffered through it gamely, not expecting to be thanked for doing what was right.

Hearing how cold I had been earlier, my three wives (god, but it sounds weird to think that) insisted on making sure I was thoroughly warmed up before letting me go to sleep and I enjoyed every minute as much as they seemed to.

Jan 23

All four women wanted to go hunting with us this morning. I was surprised when they were up and dressed quickly. I even beat Dawn out of the wagon this morning and was stoking the fire when she climbed out of her wagon. The smile on her face could mean only one thing, so it was my turn to grin at her. She didn’t even give me the satisfaction of blushing, simply smiling innocently at me.

We headed north along the road to the town of Dix this morning. The farmer whose field we stayed in told us there were usually deer in the woods anywhere north of the first creek we had to ford. He was right, although it took us three hours to find enough as we could only find one or two at a time. After dropping off the four deer we shot, we headed north again, headed for Dix, where our route would turn west. I know, because I always asked people in towns we went through for directions to St. Louis, as well as about the current condition of the roads. Everyone else in our wagon train just seemed to know the right way to go, but I had to ask so I didn’t end up going the wrong way.

Once again, we found a place to stop near our twenty-mile daily average. I was glad we had decided to use mules, as the oxen would have slowed us down to about fifteen miles a day. We sold the oxen we got from the bandits in Mt. Vernon, although they had managed to keep up with our pace for a short time because they weren’t pulling a wagon.

This camp was in the middle of a copse of trees. The clearing was big enough for our wagons and livestock, and the trees shielded us from the road. With the noise and smoke, anyone would know we were there, though.

The fire was burning, and we had the four deer skinned and dressed out when the wagons arrived. The women quickly had bread baking in the portable bread ovens. Evidently, they planned to cook four batches tonight, two for tonight and two for lunch tomorrow. I was amazed at how they coordinated making each batch of dough so it would rise enough to cook right when the previous batch was finished cooking. I noticed them using their new cast iron bread ovens and loaf pans.

I guessed that they had purchased clothes, as well as cloth and sewing notions in Mt. Vernon since all the Negro women now had heavy coats and wore new dresses instead of the tattered rags they had worn before. Mima ran to me and jumped on me, exclaiming excitedly that she’d never had a new dress before, thanking me for her dress and the dresses for the other women. I gave her a kiss on the forehead and told her that she was welcome right before she scampered back to her adopted mother. I wasn’t sure which of them had adopted the other, but it was easy to see that they both cared about the other. If I hadn’t learned that Mima was an orphan, I would have thought the woman really was her mother.