Was it the children? He first tried chatting up baby Sarah and strange little Annie, whose bluntness seemed to delight him. “You’re a very black man, aren’t you? Not all Negroes are as black as you,” she said straight out, and when no one in the family scolded her, for she had merely uttered a simple truth and had done so without racial prejudice, Mr. Epps laughed heartily at her words.
Or was it one of the young boys in the camp, ten-year-old Oliver, or Salmon or Watson, who seemed to be in charge of the livestock, sturdy, young, high-spirited fellows eager to talk with the stranger and show him the virtues of their herd of handsome red cattle and the purebred ram and ewes? He made much of the animals, shoving his hand deep into the fleeces and exclaiming loudly over their weight and density, but the rest of us merely watched and let the boys take his compliments.
Or maybe it was Ruth, the shy, calmly competent young woman who busied herself with the evening meal and kept her back to the man as much as possible, in spite of his pushing his animated face at her, first at one side, then the other, interrupting her work with over-elaborated questions. “Now, tell me, Miss Brown,” he said to her, “who taught you so you come to possess such a knowledge, that you can cook this here panbread and pease porridge and so on, all by yourself out here on a big, open fire for such a large family of people?”
Without looking up, Ruth answered, “My mother,” and resumed her silence, which caused Mr. Epps to pay ornate compliments to Mary — knowing nothing, of course, of our true mother’s death eighteen years earlier, for it was she who had taught Ruth to cook, not Mary. He rattled on just the same, as if our mother were still alive.
Or perhaps the person to ingratiate himself with was me, the redheaded young man whose left arm stayed bent as if permanently fixed that way, the tall fellow who stood slightly off from the others, guarded and watchful, which I am sure is how he viewed me that first time. But he did not seem to know how to address me, perhaps because I was closest to his age and a man and therefore would know more easily than the others when he was playing the cheerful darkie and when he was sincere, although I could not.
There was the young woman whom the elder Mr. Brown had introduced as his wife, Mary, a pleasant, open-faced woman who looked twenty or more years younger than her husband, eager to make the visitor comfortable. He tried her, but saw in a moment that she intended to deflect his every inquiry and observation by referring him straight to her husband, the hatchet-faced man from whom the tall young fellow had evidently got his red hair and gray eyes.
All right, then, he would chat up the Old Man himself, jabber with him awhile about horseflesh, for that was what he was concerned about this evening, and it was a subject on which Mr. Epps considered himself capable of sounding like an expert. And, at least to Father, he did so.
He was not especially religious, I noted, for he, as did I, kept one eye open and on the food while Father prayed over it. He loudly exclaimed “A-men!” when Father finished, and ate like a man who had not sat down to a proper meal in a week, which was probably the case. The difficulties he had faced in these last few days in Westport, importuning white strangers who scorned and spurned him, came to my mind, and I began to feel sorry for the man and somewhat regretted my earlier disapproval. I continued, however, to retain a degree of skepticism as to his character.
By the time he left the camp that first night, Mr. Epps had arranged with Father to work as a teamster for us. “Ain’t no way to get a team pull that wagon over to North Elba without an experienced driver to discuss the subject with them;” he said. “Them mountains scares animals all the way to sick and lazy.”
I’m sure the Old Man believed that I, or he himself, was quite capable of driving a team to North Elba, but he admired Mr. Epps’s pluck and self-confidence and agreed to exchange some seed and other supplies for his services. No doubt he wanted simply to help the man out.
Early the next morning, Father, Mr. Epps, and I, with the horse Dan in tow, showed up at Mr. Clarke’s dockside stone warehouse, a barn-sized storage building with a large stable attached, where he kept six or eight teams of horses and as many wagons, for he hauled freight all up and down the western shore of the lake, from Port Henry to Port Kent and inland to Elizabethtown and even to North Elba.
Father and Mr. Clarke, who was a bespectacled New Englander with a thin face and white chin-whiskers, quickly agreed on a price for old Dan. Then Mr. Clarke tried to sell Father a handsome matched pair of Narragansetts, grays that seemed to be, as he claimed, healthy seven-year-olds. The price was reasonable, but even with what he was being offered for Dan, it was more than Father had in his possession.
I could see the Old Man running down his inventory of possessions, wondering what he could sell to make up the difference. But then Mr. Epps stepped forward and in a clear voice said, “That ‘Gansett yonder spavined in both hocks and be done in less than a year. The other one, Mister Brown, he ain’t got no heart at all. Narrow chest on him. You take them old Morgans in the back,” he advised.
“The bays?” Mr. Clarke said, and he laughed. “Come on, Brown. They’re barely worth shoe-leather. Your nigger’s off his nut,” he said to Father.
The price for the Morgans, because of their age, was less than that for the Narragansetts, but still more than Father had in his pocket. Father said, “I believe I will take my friend’s advice!” and held out the money, all his money in the world, I knew. “But you’ll have to take a few dollars less than what you’re asking, especially if, as you say, they’re not worth shoe-leather.”
Mr. Clarke did not want that. He shook his head and said, “Tell you what, Mister Brown. You keep your money. And you can keep that old broken-down gelding of yours, too. Me, I don’t like to see a white man made a fool of by a nigger. So I’ll swap you even, the team of ’Gansetts for any one pair of those fancy cows you got. You can choose the cattle yourself Father hesitated a moment. Morgans were not so famous then as they are now, especially outside the state of Vermont, and neither Father nor I knew much about the breed. And, whatever his reasons, Mr. Clarke’s eagerness to sell us the others did seem to our advantage. But Father said, “No. I will sell you the gelding, sir, as we agreed, and if you’ll accept it, I will add to it what remaining cash I have for those bays, the Morgans. As my friend here has advised me. And I will keep all my cattle.”
I was not sure he was doing the wise thing, but knew better than to offer my opinion. The Old Man had made up his mind. To my eye, the Narragansetts were definitely the superior team and well worth the weakest pair of cattle from our herd. The transaction Mr. Clarke had proposed would have left us with five cattle, an excellent team of horses, old Dan, and sufficient cash to protect us against a weak harvest.
Father said, “The bays, sir.”
Mr. Clarke gave Father a thin-lipped smile, took his money, and wrote out a bill of sale. Then he made Father sign a receipt for the horses. “Just so you don’t change your mind, or tell folks I cheated you,” he said, and with no more words, he retreated abruptly to his office.
“Well, Mister Brown, you catched the man out,” Mr. Epps said, as we unhitched the small, weary-looking pair of Morgans and led them from the darkness of the stable into the bright light of the yard outside, where their looks did not improve. “Believe me, these bays going to carry you where you want to go, and they still be drawing your plow across your field long after you gone. Make you a good saddle horse, too.”