Daniel Webster Jackson & The Wrongway Railroad Read online

  DANIEL WEBSTER JACKSON

  & THE WRONGWAY RAILROAD

  by Robert W. Walker

  Copyright © 2010 by Robert W. Walker, www.robertwalkerbooks.com

  Cover copyright © 2010 by Stephen Walker, www.srwalkerdesigns.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Robert W. Walker.

  ONE

  A DEVIL'S ERRAND

  November 17, 1852 in Hannibal , Missouri

  The campfire lit the circle of boys, their eyes wide, as they listened to the storyteller. The flames rose and sank with a shifting wind that threw dry leaves into Old Black Billy's face. Old Billy stood over the circle, telling one of his famous "true" ghost stories. Behind the group stood black empty woods and the Negro quarters where most of the boys slept. Here and there among the black people, Daniel Webster Jackson and Joe Grier recognized a white face—other boys from town, who joined them in risking their skins to hear some of the old man's tales. Old Billy had a reputation in Hannibal.

  The storyteller suddenly thrust his face toward Daniel's and howled with a blood curdling scream. "That was the cry Colonel Halverston heard when he got back to the place in the woods where them witches waited for him!" the old man said, pausing for a breath before adding, "Colonel man stared up into that big oak tree to find the witches, but colonel's horse reared up scared and throwed him off!" Old Billy jerked his hand upward to bring home his point, moving quickly around the circle.

  From where Daniel sat, he could see the well-lit, four- story white house that belonged to the mysterious Colonel Halverston. It was an old mansion with large columns and great bay windows. Across the top floors, a line of windows offered a view of the land. The white walls looked green in darkness, thought Daniel, and he wondered if the colonel had really encountered witches in the nearby woods as a young man.

  "It was a trap!" shouted one boy in the crowd.

  "Can't trust devil-women!" cried another.

  Old Billy kept his tale spinning, shouting over the listeners: "Colonel knew what he was about! He wanted to speak with Miss Amanda just once more, and the only way he could was by trusting in them witches! But Colonel, he protected himself with the riddle and his Bible, from which he took the riddle!"

  A flurry of questions from Billy's anxious audience followed.

  "What happened next?"

  "What come of Miss Amanda?"

  "Why didn't the colonel shoot 'em all?"

  "There come giggling from up in that tree, them witches sounding just like school children, when one of them says to colonel smart-like, 'Why Colonel, you'll catch your death going about in your nightshirt on an evening cold as this!'" Again Billy paused for effect. "But Colonel, he stood up and said, 'Will I go back to my home and tell other men that the promises of a witch are false? For I will return and my tongue will be my own....'"

  Suddenly, a large, black woman came up the embankment behind the storyteller and his audience. She came directly from the slave quarters, shouting, "Old Billy, you stop this here spook tale right now! You young'uns, get home!"

  "What's the matter with you, Mattie?" asked Old Billy. "Can't you see we's all enjoying ourselves here?"

  "Look up yonder, Billy." She pointed toward the big house. "Looks like the sheriff over to Hannibal's coming to hang you for your fool stories, old man."

  Daniel saw torches and men descending the hill.

  "My Lord, what could it be?" Old Billy wondered aloud.

  "Colonel Halverston's done heard you clear from the house, telling that he's had doings with the Devil and witches, is what!" suggested Mattie as she took several children by the hand to start them homeward.

  One boy, perhaps eleven, stopped to ask, "Are they going to sell you South, Mr. Billy?"

  Old Billy grinned, tuffs of white hair lifting over his forehead. "Ain't likely, son. Go on with Mattie now."

  "Better get them white boys home, too," Mattie called over her shoulder. "Them torches mean to get mad. They'll not take kindly to those white boys being out here."

  But Daniel saw that Billy paid the boys no attention at all. Instead, Billy went to several men who had been sitting in the circle and whispered to them.

  "Your colonel has joined them," one man shouted to Old Billy.

  Daniel and Joe stared for a moment at one another, and then Joe pulled Daniel away, saying, "Let's get clear of here. My pap'11 kill me if he learns I'm out here."

  Daniel and Joe had only to take twenty paces to be completely hidden in the surrounding blackness. They rushed without running through the tall grass, careful not to stumble. "Come on, Daniel, we'll take the lower river trail."

  But Daniel dropped to his knees. "Wait! Let's see what's up."

  Joe crouched next to Daniel. "What are you doing?"

  Daniel only crawled back toward the firelight filtering through the high grass. "Let's get out of here," urged Joe.

  "Want to see what happens to Old Billy?"

  "I ain't sure I do."

  "Let's just see."

  "Not me! I'm heading for town, Daniel. You get caught, you only have more chores. I get caught, my pap'11 give me a walloping."

  Daniel slowly looked over his shoulder. Joe was right there beside him, just as curious. Daniel was glad Joe hadn't run off and left him alone.

  Colonel Halverston and Sheriff Brisbane from down at Hannibal, and a posse of sixteen tobacco-chewing Missourians, all carried long guns. The colonel and the sheriff argued loudly as they approached.

  "A whole lot of slaves make it free, sheriff." Colonel Halverston sounded angry, his deep voice floated out over the tall grass where Daniel Webster Jackson and Joe Grier lay.

  "You go about here shooting off your guns and running them noisy dogs up and down the Mississippi River and making like you catch all the runaways. You tell everybody in these parts only a scant few get away. You doctor all the numbers on the subject, you and the town council, because it doesn't look right on record that too many Negroes are running off, and it loses elections if too many are getting free! And you men looking through the bush and my slave quarters every time a neighbor loses a slave he's mistreated is getting to be a mighty nuisance!"

  "Beggin' the colonel's pardon sir, " began the sheriff. "You got no idea the nuisance me and my boys have been put through tonight. Five of 'em run off from Mr. Grimes' place over to Coleson County. Besides, you don't understand."

  The colonel went right at the sheriff again, saying, "I understand this much: I look out my window, and I see you men here stretched across my land with torches. For all I know, it's a bunch of night riders, ready to set fire to my barn. You come in here unannounced, without a warrant, carrying guns!"

  Below a leafless ash tree with a four-yard reach-around trunk. Sheriff Brisbane held up a hand now to the colonel when they stood before Old Billy. The tree's bark was shining from the torchlights held by the sixteen deputies.

  "Colonel," began Sheriff Brisbane, his stomach barrel-round up to his chest was outlined against the night, "you just don't understand. Some folks been saying that more than not, they lose the trail of the runaways right in these parts, right here on your land! Oh, sure, I don't believe you got anything to do with it, but yonder's the Mississippi and yonder's Seaton woods, and beyond that the territories. Some folks think them runaways are disappearing right
here! Now, I never believed a word of it, till tonight!"

  "You think my man. Old Billy, and some of the others here are harboring runaways?" asked Colonel Halverston, staring up at the top of the tree.

  "You know I do. I told you them Blacks just disappeared! Right over them hills there." He pointed toward the river.

  "Get your search over with, sheriff," answered Colonel Halverston. He was a slender, tall and stiff-backed man who stood straighter than the tree beside him. "I'll tell you this much, sheriff. Judge Hatcher'11 hear about this. You know what he thinks of such goings-on. He feels the same as I do about searching a man's home, invading and confiscating a man's property. You won't find a single man in those shacks who doesn't belong on this plantation."

  "Colonel, sir. I ain't saying you'd harbor any slaves, nor steal any," pleaded Brisbane. "That's not what I'm saying."

  "A man's got a right to privacy in this country, sheriff, even a black bondsman or slave, even Old Billly here— that's guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, that's why we fought the Revolutionary War!"

  "Revolution?" asked Sheriff Brisbane. "Oh, yeah. Well, I don't know nothing about history or the constitution. All I know is that the law tells me I got to run slaves if they run off! You heard of the Fugitive Slave Law, haven't you? Well, that tells me if Missouri's going to continue as a state, then we gotta honor our part of the bargain, and keep the slaves in the state."

  "That's what the law says, does it?" asked the colonel.

  "The way the law reads to me, it's all right we have a slave state same as Illinois has a free state, so long's we keep control on our slaves and don't have 'em running North and causing problems with the abolitionists!"

  "Colonel talks like an abolition man to me," said one of the deputies at the sheriff s side. He ended by spitting tobacco juice onto the colonel's boot.

  A long silence fell over the men while Colonel Halverston stared at the deputy. Then he walked up to the shabbily dressed man, who stood as tall as Halverston. With one swift movement, the colonel snatched off his white hat and slashed the man across the face with it. The deputy swung out with his fists, but Halverston stepped aside, grabbed the deputy's arm and pushed him right over.

  "You watch your filthy tongue! Call me an abolitionist!" shouted Halverston.

  Brisbane and the others looked at the colonel with respect, and no one helped the deputy off the ground.

  "Search, sheriff!" the colonel ordered.

  Old Billy stood beside the colonel, conferring in whispers. As the men began to search, the sheriff raised his hands while approaching the slave quarters. The sheriff continued his apologies for the benefit of several angry women who protested being roused from sleep. The black men stood in silence, dejected, turning their heads and eyes away from the white men with torches. The deputies went from man to man, searching each face with their roaring torchlight. The sheriff exclaimed, "Disappeared, phoof! Like smoke, I tell ya!"

  At this. Old Billy rushed alongside the sheriff, saying, "Just like them tales I told you about. Master Brisbane, sir. You remember, about how the ground just opens up when a black man runs away? How I told you, how he stands there before this great big black hole that's come open in the dirt and staring out at him! And right then and there's when he may make free or be caught, 'cause he's given the choice."

  "What's he talking about, sheriff?" asked the tobacco chewing deputy.

  "Just foolishness, Lem," replied the sheriff.

  "Ain't hardly foolish—it be the Devil's business," said Old Billy.

  "Devil's business?" asked Lem.

  "Like as not!" Billy answered with a wide grin. "How else you going to explain a thing like that? I mean disappearing like that?"

  "Took my dog. Little Boy with 'em," complained the sheriff. "Sweetest little dog I ever owned. His first time out."

  Lem added, "Little Boy was hot on their trail, too! No more'n half a mile from here. Swallowed up, them runaways were, along with Little Boy. Seen it with my own eyes, 1 did."

  Old Billy had that look on his face that Daniel recognized—the same as just before he would end a story. Billy walked among the white men, shaking his head and saying, "Story has it that down in that big hole what swallows 'em up, they get to choose if they get caught or they go free."

  "That's crazy," said another deputy, "how?"

  "Devil has 'em sign over a paper. Makes 'em his slaves. They've got to sell their souls to make free in this world—woe to them! There they be slaves all over again—Satan's slaves!"

  "Then the Devil's a gawl-dern abolitionist," said Lem, astonished at the thought.

  "Hmmmpf!" The sheriff shook his head and waved off Billy's notion, disbelieving.

  Some of the deputies got together and mulled it over. One of them went to Lem, who spoke up: "Wait a minute, Billy. That don't take into account them who make it free and are caught up North and brought back."

  Old Billy only shrugged. "There're some who think they can outsmart even Satan! They sign another man's mark. But the Old Gent gets 'em in the end anyhow!"

  "Listen to this," Daniel whispered to Joe in their hiding place, "that last line of Old Billy's is the grabber."

  "What?" asked Joe.

  "Old Billy, he just caught up the sheriff s men with a real whopper of an end to his tale."

  Joe nodded now, understanding. "We'd best get outta here before we're mistook for them runaways and shot down."

  Daniel and Joe crawled along the ground on their bellies. Somewhere they became separated, and Daniel stood up to have a look around. Suddenly, he was yanked to the ground and a hand covered his mouth. He was unsure who had hold of him; he knew it couldn't be Joe Grier. The man whispered in a hoarse voice, "Don't yell out, boy!" Daniel felt the large, black man's sweat as it dripped onto his. "I got a knife, and if you so much as make a sound, I'll cut your heart out."

  Daniel began to sweat more. He had a vague sense that a dog came alongside them, panting and patient, but he could not see. He wondered if he'd be alive for the new year of 1853. It was November. He was fifteen. His heart was pounding. He continued sweating even as he felt the powerful arm loosen its grip on him. The night wind chilled him as it whined through the blades of tall grass where they lay.

  "Are you...one of them—them runaways from over...to Coleson County?" Daniel stuttered.

  "Shhh, boy!"

  Daniel decided the man was one of the Coleson runaways and that he'd best do as told. He lay there and eyed the black man, who couldn't be more than twenty years old himself. The runaway watched the deputies observing every face, every detail. Daniel studied the runaway's features. He seemed to be short but bull- shouldered, with arms so thick and powerful as to resemble tree limbs. His round face shone in the moonlight, covered with sweat. A tuft of mustache sat beneath flaring nostrils. He had a high forehead, the man's cheekbones showed prominently below his white-yellow eyes. His hair, thick and curled as wire, looked rust-colored in the dark.

  "You're one of them runaways they're chasing, aren't you?"

  The black man stared again into Daniel's face. "You gotta lot of nerve. I tol' you to shut up." He showed Daniel the knife, a ten-inch blade extending from the hilt, and he placed it again at Daniel's throat. The boy swallowed, which made the blade tickle his Adam's apple.

  "Keep yourself still as a rock, and you won't get hurt," hissed the stranger. "Don't move, don't speak no more."

  Daniel did as told.

  Resting his long gun against the tree under which the men had earlier stood. Sheriff Brisbane was making apologies to Colonel Halverston. Daniel could barely hear their talk now, but then the sheriff shouted, "We'll take out yonder way, men." The next moment men and dogs headed right for Daniel and the runaway, and Daniel felt the vice-like grip of the stranger tighten on his wrists. Rising only to a crouching position, he pulled Daniel along toward the slave quarters. Again a dog ran with them, and Daniel wondered aloud, "Is that Sheriff Brisbane's dog?"

  "Quiet!
" came the reply, and again, they ducked below the tall grass, breathing hard.

  "Down!" whispered the runaway, shoving Daniel's face onto the ground and lying over him, almost suffocating him.

  To his left, from out of the corner of his eye, Daniel saw the grass moving. He heard the posse pass close by. Then he felt the relief in the man who lay over him. The big man spoke, after another minute, as if to himself, "I shoulda took my chance with the Devil. I shoulda stayed with the others and gone down in that hole."

  "Can I get up?" asked Daniel.

  "Yes, but stay low, boy."

  "Whataya mean when you say the others went down in the hole, and you shoulda taken your chances with the Devil?" asked Daniel.

  "I ain't never seen nothing like it," began the man, shaking his head. "Ground just cracked open, and all of us yelled and scattered. But up pops someone from the hole and says, 'This-a-way!' and the others rushed right in there, more a-feared of the dogs than the Devil, I guess. But me, I was too scared! I couldn't! I couldn't let Satan have me. I take slavery before I take the Devil!"

  Daniel shook his head over this, unsure what to say or believe. He had heard Old Billy's tale, but he'd taken it to be just another of his stories. Yet, here sat a man who'd seen the hole and the slaves go in and not return. Satan had even spoken to him!

  Daniel looked up to where Old Billy still stood beneath the ash tree. He saw two black men climb down from the tree. Surprised, he watched intently. Colonel Halverston waved Old Billy off, and he now stood halfway between the slave quarters and the house. Does the colonel see these newcomers too? Daniel recalled how, earlier, the colonel had stared directly up the very tree in which these men had been hiding. If they were in the tree, hiding from the sheriff, they must be runaways, and if they are runaways, why didn 't the colonel pointed them out? How could the colonel have missed seeing them?

  Confused, Daniel turned back to the big man beside him. Both the stranger and the dog were gone.

  "Where in tarnation you been?" asked Joe when Daniel reached the river road where Joe'd waited for him.