A First Survey for the Underground Railway
AS though bell metal had been softly touched, a note of clear low mirth came to the ear. Irresistible chuckles, one after another, in purest glee followed. Gurgle upon gurgle of laughter was added to it. And Obadiah Holman, who never in his life had heard anything quite so musical or so funny, burst into sympathetic giggles before he was really awake or knew what it was all about.
He was curled up on a bundle in an emigrant wagon. He raised his head and peeped out of the round hole in the back of its canvas cover.
A hard day's ride had tired him. He had climbed into this wagon for a short snooze and had taken instead a heavy sleep of several hours. During that time his company of emigrants had been joined by another wagon-train which they were expecting from a detour to theeast, and all had gone into camp together for the night.
The boy looked out on such a curious scene that he asked of himself, "Where am I, Doby?" to be sure that he was not still in dreamland.
Against a purple sky, star-spangled, stood a solid bank of black-green forest. In front of this woodsy background were the white tops of the wagons. Silhouetted upon their canvases were the horses and the cows, picketed for the night inside the protecting wall of the wagon-beds.
In the center, under the red glow of after-supper fires, a few belated emigrants were finishing their tasks.
Among them Doby saw, what he had never seen before, what he had been expecting to see with this coming wagon-train, and what he was hoping for a glimpse of—black men!
Close to the tail-gate of the wagon, on a saddle which he was supposed to be cleaning, sat a youth who was the color of a "tar baby." There was a gourd in his hand. Out of his round throat came those sounds which had so delighted the boy. And every time he laughed he waved the gourd, threw back his kinky head, opened a tremendous mouth, and showed a double set of teeth perfect enough for adentist's sign. A mocking-bird might have envied the trill in his laugh.
He rolled up his eyes until only the whites showed. Doby clutched the canvas in alarm. What if they should not come down again?
"So that is a darky," he thought as he stared. "I can guess how he got the name."
Many a boy has seen a darky, but few have ever watched one with a gourd fiddle, the primitive African violin.
New England Doby did not approve of slavery. He had been taught that it was a dreadful thing. So it gave him something of a surprise to see what he had supposed would be a miserable, downtrodden captive having such a very good time.
Tuning his fiddle and swinging his bow, the negro began to play and to dance and to sing, drawing round him a dozen or so of other black boys who joined the dance and the song, giving themselves up to such utter enjoyment as Doby had never seen among any white people.
At first his Northern ears could not make out the words of the song. When he had guessed at them, he listened with his attention so divided between the syllables and the melody and the negroes' appearance and actions, thattheir full meaning did not come to him until long afterward.
Night wind in the trees, peeper frogs in the sedges, bare feet thumping on the turf, and the sweet obligato of the gourd strings accompanied the lyric tenor, who sang:
"Dar am a b'ar,A big, la'ge b'ar,He wave hes tail so high,He wave hes tail,Hes big, la'ge tailAt no'th star in de sky."Dar am a b'ar,A sma', wee b'ar,He wave hes tail so high,He wave hes tail,Hes sma', wee tailAt no'th star in de sky."All night he wave,Big b'ar he wave,And show de nig' what dar.He wave hes tail,Hes big, la'ge tail,'Til nigger see dat star."All night he wave,Sma' b'ar he wave,And show de nig' what dar.He wave hes tail,Hes sma', wee tail,'Til nigger see dat star."
"Dar am a b'ar,A big, la'ge b'ar,He wave hes tail so high,He wave hes tail,Hes big, la'ge tailAt no'th star in de sky."Dar am a b'ar,A sma', wee b'ar,He wave hes tail so high,He wave hes tail,Hes sma', wee tailAt no'th star in de sky."All night he wave,Big b'ar he wave,And show de nig' what dar.He wave hes tail,Hes big, la'ge tail,'Til nigger see dat star."All night he wave,Sma' b'ar he wave,And show de nig' what dar.He wave hes tail,Hes sma', wee tail,'Til nigger see dat star."
"Dar am a b'ar,A big, la'ge b'ar,He wave hes tail so high,He wave hes tail,Hes big, la'ge tailAt no'th star in de sky.
"Dar am a b'ar,
A big, la'ge b'ar,
He wave hes tail so high,
He wave hes tail,
Hes big, la'ge tail
At no'th star in de sky.
"Dar am a b'ar,A sma', wee b'ar,He wave hes tail so high,He wave hes tail,Hes sma', wee tailAt no'th star in de sky.
"Dar am a b'ar,
A sma', wee b'ar,
He wave hes tail so high,
He wave hes tail,
Hes sma', wee tail
At no'th star in de sky.
"All night he wave,Big b'ar he wave,And show de nig' what dar.He wave hes tail,Hes big, la'ge tail,'Til nigger see dat star.
"All night he wave,
Big b'ar he wave,
And show de nig' what dar.
He wave hes tail,
Hes big, la'ge tail,
'Til nigger see dat star.
"All night he wave,Sma' b'ar he wave,And show de nig' what dar.He wave hes tail,Hes sma', wee tail,'Til nigger see dat star."
"All night he wave,
Sma' b'ar he wave,
And show de nig' what dar.
He wave hes tail,
Hes sma', wee tail,
'Til nigger see dat star."
Several melodious baritones took up the air and a superb bass joined in. To this happy narcotic the boy gave himself up and went to sleep again.
Doby's place in the train was with Simon Kenton's group of mounted scouts. Many of them had belonged to Col. Richard Johnson's Kentucky regiment of rangers. From Boonesboro, they had accompanied this wagon party of Quaker emigrants northward on the road to Lexington.
The Quakers were a religious sect who did not believe in slavery. They had left the Carolinas, where it was practised, and were going north across the Ohio, where it was not allowed. They were opposed to war in any form and continually preached the gospel of peace.
Through the dangerous State of Kentucky, which was ever the battle-ground between the southern Creek and Cherokee, and the northern Shawnee and Delaware Indians, the rangers traveled with the Quakers to so intimidate the Indians that no fighting would be necessary.
The other wagon-train was from Virginia. It was made up of groups who had the greatest pride in family honor, worldly estates, and ceremonial government. They expected to found in the center of this fertile Kentucky new farms,and homes, where lavish hospitality and dignified elegance should imitate the easy life of the Old Dominion.
They were bringing their household goods, their slaves, and their domestic animals with them. All were armed and ready to defend their possessions and their views with vigor.
The Quakers, in serene self-denial, stood for the moral doctrine of freedom in body and mind and spirit. They wore plain clothes and used plain speech and practised plain living.
The common cause of keeping their scalps intact had linked these different peoples together for protection on the trip, just as the prospect of making a better living had driven them both northward through Cumberland Gap.
Oh, Cumberland Gap! That "high-swung gateway of the mountains!" What boy has not in fancy joined Daniel Boone when he held in his hand the key to this wondrous portal? When that famous frontiersman opened the gates and started on its course the most tremendous tide of emigration this continent had ever seen, and when as scout he went before his countrymen, he had more adventures than ever before fell to the lot of any one pioneer as he blazed for them the trail through the Middle West.
The spunky little settlements around the fort at Watauga, on the eastern side of the mountains, continually fought the Indians to keep them from extending their tribal lines north. By this bravery the Gap was kept open for travel. Henderson's land company secured home acres. Boone pointed out the acres and by the force of his splendid personality kept the scattered settlers loyal to the United States and to one another during the trying days of the Revolution.
Nothing could be better than the view from Cumberland Gap. Nothing much worse than the path through it. Rough, miry, stony, over-flowed, washed out, precipitous—all this and more! Every fault that a road could have this one displayed. Yet because it was the only road nature had cut through the mountains, Watauga guarded it and Boone's followers trod it as never road was traveled before.
Between 1775 and 1790 seventy thousand people sweated in the jagged up-hill climb to its sixteen hundred feet of height, paused for a moment to look at the sides of the mountains towering another thousand feet above the Gap, and then slid and scrambled down on the Kentucky side. In 1816 they were still coming over this wilderness road.
Doby was tired of the twice-told tales of its hardships. He wanted to make his rest-times as pleasant as possible, so on the second night he left the wagging gray-beards and in sheer exuberance he tried to run down a rabbit in the glade where they were encamped. All work and talk broke off to see him do it.
The younger the rabbit the easier to catch. With every day's growth of its hopping-muscles it waxes more enduring. Doby, having picked an older rabbit than he thought, was hard pressed to tire the lively creature out. He called for help. The older men instantly forbade the younger ones to join the hunt. The boy who began it must finish it to prove his right to the game.
He shouted to the darkies. They huddled in an excited bunch, but they did not come.
Then as a matter of honor Doby was obliged to catch that rabbit. So of course he did!
But he was over-tired, out of breath, and a little indignant as he said to the lyric tenor, "Next time, come and help." And he tried the grand manner of a Virginia slave-owner.
Such a bow and a scrape and a grin as he got!
"Yas, sir, nex' time, Mars'er Dob', yas, sir."
"Well, then, why didn't you come this time?"
"'Cause you is red-headed, Mars'er Dob'!" with a polite and complimentary flourish.
In anger too great for words, Doby stalked away. If he had had one of the Virginia whips he would have laid it on that darky then and there. Red-headed! He had pummeled many a chum for that one word.
"I amnotred-headed. It is the firelight that makes my hair look coppery. I don't so much mind being called tow-headed, because Iama little bit tow-headed," he conceded, "but red-headed, never!"
"Don't bother to dress the rabbit," said Simon Kenton to Doby.
"Why not?" asked the boy, putting back his stone knife as quickly as he had pulled it out, for Kenton's slightest wish was law to him.
"The niggers 'll steal it 'fore sun-up."
"Why?"
"Red-head for luck! That coon with a high voice needs a left hind foot, or I miss my guess."
"Why?"
"Watch and see," was the puzzling answer.
So Doby slept on top of his rabbit to save it. But in the morning it was gone.
He spied around.
About a freshly built knob of kinks on thetenor's head, the taint of over-warm rabbit fur was climbing above all other odors, as the tuneful one hummed, "Dar am a b'ar," with flagrant unconsciousness.
As an article of diet, Doby lost his interest in rabbit, but as a charm it might prove exciting, so he decided to keep still and "watch and see."
It is one of the results of slavery that the superstitions of the "quarters" creep into the "big house" where the master lives.
Thus it happened that when they came to Ashland, one of those splendid estates which slave labor made possible, in the neighborhood of Lexington, the lucky boy, Doby, who looked red-headed but was not, became one of the important persons invited with the Virginia "gentlemen," the scout "officers," and the Quaker "preachers," by the statesman, Henry Clay, to be his guest at dinner and to view his model house and grounds.
Some of the Virginians had known Henry Clay when, as the barefooted "mill boy" of the "Slashes"—a newly cleared region—he had ridden back and forth in the Old Dominion with grist for his widowed mother, and they now rejoiced in his self-made prosperity. Several of the scouts had worked with him in political changes and they were proud of his positions oftrust. Many of the preachers of the "Society of Friends," as the Quakers called themselves, had discussed with the great leader the evils and injustice of slavery; no one knew better than they how hard Henry Clay worked to influence the laws which were intended to help the blacks' condition and which tended toward final emancipation for them.
In the evening, by torch-light on the lawn, darkies played the banjo and danced and sang for the company.
Not one of them equaled the lyric tenor of the wagon-train, so Doby wandered away from the lawn and in curiosity strolled out through the quarters where the slaves lived. All the little whitewashed houses were deserted, for the servants were allowed to look on at all festivities and "minstrel shows." He was turning back when from one of the cabins there came a tiny sound.
Again he heard that never-to-be-forgotten chime of distant silver bells, that low gurgle of exquisite music. He would have known that voice any place. How did the Virginia slave happen to be here and not with the wagons? Why should that note of sadness creep into his sigh? Why was he weeping?
His sobbing rose, so touched with grief, sopoignant with despair, that Doby's heart-strings tightened. He could hardly bear to hear it.
Then some motherly creature began to croon, "Da, chil' honey, poo' chil' honey, don' you cry—"
The lyric tenor wailed in broken syllables: "My daddy—he whipped—he die—my mammy—she whipped—she run away. I want my mammy—"
"Da, chil' honey, poo' chil' honey, don' you cry—"
"I want my mammy—I don' want ole Virginny—I don' want this yere—I want my mammy—" The chant was torn with sorrow.
Then came the comforting, "Don' cry, honey," over and over again.
Poor Doby, listening in distressed sympathy, could not in the least make out this black thief of the rabbit foot, whose lilting laughter had turned to such bitter tears.
The boy who had heard both, stole away to hide in one of the wagons and to cry himself to sleep over a trouble he could not understand.
He was ashamed to worry his father or Simon Kenton with further questions about the slaves, who left them next day when the Virginians stopped at their prospective settlement north of Lexington.
With the picturesque and merry blacks went much of the zest of life in the wagon-train, and Doby was glad when the Ohio River came in sight and the journey was at an end.
Busying himself with the luggage behind some hogsheads on the wharf while the wagon-train was loading the ferryboat to cross the river, Doby heard a strange Kentuckian hiss to another in a stage whisper, "How many Quaker women in this company?"
He could not catch the mumbled reply, but the decision of the first Kentuckian, "We will speak to each one of those women and find out," held such menace in its tone that it made the boy uncomfortable.
These women of the Society of Friends, whom Doby had never thought of counting in all the time that he had been with them, had already gone aboard the ferry. Through the long hard trip they had managed to keep their calm appearance of perfect neatness and order in dress and possessions.
Their full gray skirts almost touched the ground. Their clean white kerchiefs were crossed surplice-wise on their gray waists. Snowy inner caps showed at the edges of their gray scoop bonnets. Long gray shawls were folded over their hands clasped primly in front of them.
They looked as much alike as doves in a cote.
It was an adventure for Doby to peer down into the tunnel of one of these bonnets. He never could tell whether he would find a kindly grandmother, an earnest matron, or a blushing maid, in the other end of its cavernous depths.
Why, then, since they were all so much alike outwardly, should these two rough men, who had sprung from the wharf, have reason to speak to any one of them? What difference did it make how many there were of them?
As he went aboard, they all looked as usual to him. Seated on the boxes and bales, they had as much serene dignity as though the noisy boat had been a bench in a silent "meeting-house."
It was plain, as the boat left shore, that the two Kentuckians meant to carry out their plan. Doby, close on their heels, heard them ask the same question of each in turn, "Are you going to Cincinnati?"
If she lifted her head as she gently answered, one man glanced sharply into her bonnet. If she did not look up, the other man stooped and stared into the bonnet. Between them they made sure of a view of every concealed face.
Mr. Holman whispered to Doby, "Sheriffand deputy," and Doby was more confused than ever. What were they hunting for?
He was so curious that he stood closer and closer to them, until one turned upon him with a harsh scowl and bade him "git!"
Baffled, he retreated to the bow, and was about to seat himself on a coil of rope on the up-stream side when he noticed another Quakeress standing behind some tall piles of boxes. She was without a shawl. Her bonnet strings were untied. Her arms were folded and her hands shoved out of sight in her surplice.
She was shaking as with a chill; her whole figure, in spite of its immaculate dress, had a hunched-up and miserable appearance.
Doby started toward her to offer help in case she was ill.
She was peeping round the corner of the pile of boxes and she drew back suddenly as the two officers came toward the bow. Although they had not yet seen her, they were sure to do so. But why should she be afraid of them?
They stepped forward briskly. She started violently and fell headlong into the river.
With a shriek for "Help!" Doby jumped to the rail. In the wild glance that he gave to locate the Quakeress before he dived to her assistance he saw the white soles of two barefeet, two long black legs in frog stroke, a bonnet sinking, a kinky head atop black arms, which came out freely from gray flowing sleeves.
With an expert movement, to make a turn and a neat dive, the figure went under the ferryboat. It was the lyric tenor! Sucked under by the current!
All this Doby noted in one flash, as, too late to check his own impetuous jump to the rescue, he also went into the river.
He swam upward against the current. That much of common sense was left in him, for all the surprise and horror of the darky's dreadful disappearance under the boat where the doomed creature could not rise, and where no one could rescue him.
There was a cry of, "Man overboard!"
Every person on the boat rushed to starboard. In Doby's ears there was great confusion and roaring. On the boat was the same thing. But one tidy Quakeress, without rumpling her surplice, made fast one end of the rope coil to the rail and threw the other end to Doby.
April is not a good month for swimming even in the friendly Ohio. Shirt and breeches of buckskin were very heavy; the chill of the water was unnerving. The current was stronger than he thought, and the nearing shore seemedmuch farther than it had looked from the deck of the ferry. So he was not too proud of his swimming skill to allow himself to be hauled on board. He was deeply grateful for the line.
There was too much help, Doby thought. His clothes were peeled off, he was rubbed dry, and dressed anew, with some dozen or so men, women, and children taking part in his toilet and the eyes of everybody on him and his unlucky ducking.
With the chill and the shock, his teeth chattered so that he could not tell them about the poor darky, try as he would.
So the two Kentucky officers went ashore, each grumbling to the other about some "miscount." And Doby was hurried to his own flatboat home, standing at the wharf, where a warm welcome and a cozy supper were given to them and their guest, Simon Kenton, by Doby's waiting mother.
Then, and not till then, did Doby's father indulge in laughter long and loud. But Kenton, with a merry twinkle, merely asked, "Tell us, son, how much was on purpose and how much just happened so."
His father added, "You managed to get all the attention of the boat at the time the runaway did not want it for himself."
Doby was still shuddering with horror at the fate of the black, and he was ready to faint as he gasped, "The darky is drownded!"
"Don't think it," cried Mr. Holman. "He swam underwater with the current, came up clear, took a big breath, dived toward the shore, and swam away perfectly safe. I saw him climb into the bushes on shore. He will roll in somebody's hay until his dress is dry; then travel north to-night, watching for the Quakers to pick him up."
"The Society of Friends is working out a regular plan for helpin' runaways that is liable to grow into a big thing one of these days," was Simon Kenton's prophecy.
When the first Quaker who felt a throb of pity for the wretched runaway cowering for mercy at his feet, resolved to be a true Friend to the unfortunate, by defying man's law of property and obeying God's law of mercy, he surveyed in his mind the earliest routes for the underground railway, as he considered to which Friend farther north he should send this fugitive.
The underground railway was never built of wooden cross-ties nor of steel rails. Its right of way was in the hearts of those who guarded the secret paths and the hidden shelters throughwhich the slaves passed to the land of their hopes.
Past the perils of the auction-block, the lash, and the bloodhounds, a vast emigration of blacks were smuggled through Cincinnati—the Cumberland Gap of their race—and, guided by that celestial scout, the north star, won their way to Canada and to freedom.
Doby was vastly relieved about his lyric tenor. Still, he asked, "How will he know which way to go?"
Simon Kenton sang softly,
"He wave hes tail,Hes sma', wee tail,At no'th star in de sky."
"He wave hes tail,Hes sma', wee tail,At no'th star in de sky."
"He wave hes tail,Hes sma', wee tail,At no'th star in de sky."
"He wave hes tail,
Hes sma', wee tail,
At no'th star in de sky."
Then Doby smiled happily, "And he won't mind cold and hunger and he can't be captured while he has such faith in the luck that a boy—almost red-headed—gave him; and he wears in his kinks the left hind foot of a stolen rabbit!"