Dead water - Barbara Hambly [133]
January grinned, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, delighted that Bobby had made it that far. “He does,” he said. “He does indeed.”
“Gleet's keeping a lookout along the river,” said Bredon, “so they're moving inland through Tennessee and Kentucky. It'll be a slow trek for such a large group, and they'll have to split up to cross the Ohio in ones and twos. But I think they'll make it.” He nodded consideringly, and repeated, as if to himself, “I think they'll make it.”
January brought him a chair. Bredon hesitated, then shook his head. “Not just yet. You did us all a great service, for which, as I said, I—and all of us—are in your debt. And though I realize it's the worst kind of bad manners to impose on a man who has helped you, I'm going to.”
“Anyone on the Silver Moon,” replied Rose with a smile, “would tell us that that's exactly what one could expect of an Abolitionist, sir.”
And Bredon smiled back, relaxing as he understood the acceptance behind her jest.
“Will you help us?” he asked as simply as a starving man asks for bread. “Oh, not tonight,” he added as January's eyes widened in alarm. “Nor this week, or this month. But we need help. There's a lot of runners crossing along the borders, where the slave states lie alongside the free. Slaves in Kentucky and Tennessee, or in Virginia and Maryland—it isn't so far for them to travel, and there are enough people from New England and Pennsylvania and New York who've moved down into those states and who don't like what they see there, who're willing to let runaways sleep in their cellars, or who will put out food. In Kentucky and Missouri things aren't the same as they are deeper south. I know a lot of slaves, instead of trying to get north, will come to New Orleans and make their living as free men. . . .”
“As men who're free to be paid pennies because they don't dare ask for dollars,” said January. “Free to live in shacks on the outskirts of town because nobody will pay them much attention there. But yes, I guess it is easier than trying to make it all the way to Ohio.”
“More and more are trying it,” said Bredon. “As more and more laws are passed to control freedmen, to limit what free people of color can do. More and more rich men who make their living from slaves are getting scared. They keep pretending that once they get everything nailed down and set, things will go on as they have, with slaves in the slave states doing the heavy work and living like animals, and ignorant as animals, kept that way by men who don't dare let them learn to read.” His deep voice was level and quiet, but anger burned in the yellow wolf eyes.
“But things won't stay the way they are, no matter how hard the slave-holders try to make them. Thu tells me you were once a slave, sir.”
“As a child, yes,” said January. “My mother was bought by a wealthy sugar-broker who made her his mistress—that is the custom here. And as the custom is here, he freed me and my sister.”
“Then you don't remember slavery clearly?”
January said, “I remember it.”
There was silence then, in the deep shadows, silence like the hush of a Mississippi farm on a hot afternoon, like the dark stinking shadows of a slave-jail in Natchez.
“We need hideouts,” said Bredon at last. “We need places where runaways can come, until they can be taken north. We need places where they can sleep for a night, or two, or three. We need men—and women—who are willing to guide runaways on to the next stage; who are willing to take food to a hiding-place, or give clothing to help an escape.
“I watched you on the boat, Mr. January. I know you were pretending to be Sefton's valet, but it was clear to me who was doing the thinking. I watched you trailing that scoundrel Weems and Mrs. Fischer, and I watched you searching for the money Weems was supposed to have stolen. . . . Did you ever