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By Root 1832 0

so much trouble back in Illinois and went to the great desert with handcarts, but Mormons nonetheless. I kept a curious eye open for some, but there was no telling. I’d heard that they didn’t hold with slavery; perhaps some of the folks I saw passing in the streets unaccompanied by Negroes were Mormons. Well, it was a way to keep my eyes open and my feet moving. In my new stockings, both pairs, my boots were almost comfortable. I was well beyond Independence by midnight.

There is a rhythm to any long walk, I discovered, or rather, there is a rhythm, but there is also a movement. The rhythm is the beat of one’s footsteps on the road, their steadiness denoting progress. When I was tired or discouraged, I took solace from that beat—my legs seemed to work of their own volition. There were times when I thought my feet couldn’t take another step—my soles throbbed, or my boots rubbed my heels and toes raw, or the very bones ached—but somehow my legs walked me through those times: after a while, whatever had hurt no longer hurt but was deliciously quiet. Above this beat were the larger movements of the walk—morning, noon, nighttime, but also country and town, solitude and company, calm, boredom, fear, lively interest, discouragement. Sometimes I was thoroughly at home in my male costume, a boy marching along. Other times, my costume seemed to grate over me, or stand away from me, or interfere, and I was acutely aware of myself inside it, almost as if my person were trying to separate me from it. Yet other times, everything about me that I had been thinking of, including pain or discomfort, fell away. Here was something: there were times I was so fatigued that I didn’t think I could walk five more steps, and then, a moment later, I would be suddenly afraid and find myself almost running. And after that, I would be less tired rather than more. Truly, there was so much to discover in such a walk that you could not discover it all the first time. I got well away from Independence before I settled down for the night by penetrating a large haystack in a field and pulling some of the hay down over me. I reckoned that I would make Blue Springs sometime the following day, as it was not so far from Independence to Blue Springs as it was from Kansas City to Independence.

Under the hay, I lay awake, even though only moments before I had been stumbling about half asleep, looking for a spot to sprawl. I yearned to remove my boots, which were heavy and constricting, even though I knew that I would pay tenfold in the agony of putting them on again in the morning for the relief of taking them off right then. If I took them off, my liberated appendages would swell overnight so that putting them on again would be a time-consuming agony. If I left them on, only the first twenty or thirty steps would be especially painful. I had decided ahead of time what I would do and how it would be, but now that I was lying under the hay, I seemed to be all feet, and all of me was crying out to be released.

Over all of that long day—all of those new scenes and new folks—lay the pleas of that slave child. The Eltons, who had no slaves, who had given me food, and water for washing, had seemed to bely that child’s very existence, and after that there was Independence and more food, and all the miles between the early morning and this late night. My feet, of course, ached a constant assertion that there was no room in my thoughts for any idea other than boot removal. But nevertheless, in the quiet, fragrant, hidden darkness (I couldn’t even see the moon through my covering of hay), the child’s voice pierced me again, made me wonder what "could not" meant. I was certain that I could not have saved that child. On the other hand, I was carrying my pistol in my bag, and I knew how to use it. I had shot more than a few turkeys, which are much quicker and more suspicious than a man is. Had I kept a level head and not run off, had I reconnoitered instead of panicking, I might have gotten into some sheltered spot, loaded my pistol, and confronted Master Philip. In retrospect,