"You'll carry it to Memphis — you'll be Mr Fitzroy Howard! No one knows him this far north — he died in Texas four years ago — four years he's been screaming in Hell! And you'll sell me in Memphis — oh, I'll fetch a fine price, you'll see! A thousand, two thousand dollars — maybe three, for a choice mustee wench, fancy-bred, only nineteen, and schooled in a New Orleans brothel! Oh, they'll buy all right!"
Well, this seemed first-rate business to me, and I said so.
"Three thousand dollars — why, woman, what were you ever thinking of highway robbery for? Half that sum will see us rolling upriver in style-but wait though! If you're sold — how'll you get away?"
"1 can run. Oh, believe me, I can run! The moment you have the money, you'll buy passages on a boat north — we'll have decided which one beforehand. Leave it to me to run at the right time — we'll meet at the levee or somewhere and go aboard together. You'll be what they call a nigger-stealer then, and I a runaway slave-but they won't catch us. What, Mr and Mrs Whatever-we-choose-to-call-ourselves, first-class passengers to Louisville? Oh, no, we'll be safe enough — if you keep our bargain."
Well, it had crossed my mind, of course, in the last two seconds, from the moment she'd reminded me of the nasty stigma of nigger-stealing, that it would be a sight safer to catch a different boat, all on my own, with the three thousand dollars, and leave Miss Cassy to fend for herself. But she was as quick as I was.
"If I didn't get out of Memphis," says she, slowly and intently, leaning forward to look into my face, "I'd give myself up — and tell them how we had run together, and you had killed two men back in Mississippi, and where the bodies were, and all about you. You wouldn't get far, Mr — what is your name, anyway?"
"Er, Flash — , er, Brown, I mean. But, look here, my dear girl, I promised not to desert you — remember? D'you think I'm the kind to break his word? I must say —"
"I don't know," says she, slowly. "I only tell you what will happen if you do. It may cost me my life, but it will certainly cost you yours, Mr Flash-er-Brown."
"I wouldn't dream of leaving you," says I, seriously. "Not for a moment. But, I say, Cassy — this is a top-hole plan! Why didn't you tell me before-it's absolutely splendid!"
She gazed at me, and took a deep breath, and then turned to gaze into the fire.
"You would think so, I suppose. Perhaps it seems a little thing to you — to be placed on a block, and auctioned like a beast to the highest bidder. To be pawed over and fumbled by dirty hands — stripped even, and gloated over!" The tears were starting again, but her voice never shook. "How could you even begin to imagine it? The hideous shame — the humiliation!" She swung round on me again — a habit of hers which I confess made me damned jumpy.
"Do you know what I was, until I was thirteen? I was a little Creole girl, in a fine house in Baton Rouge, with my papa and two brothers and two sisters, all older than I. Their mother was dead — she was white-and my mother, who was a slave mustee, was mother to them as well. We were the happiest family in the world — I loved them, and they loved me, or so I thought, until my father died. And then they sold us — my loving brothers sold me, their sister, and my mother, who had been more than a mother to them. They sold us! My mother to a planter — me to a bawd in New Orleans!"
She was shaking with passion. Something seemed called for, so I says:
"Pretty steep work, that. Bad business."
"I was a whore — at thirteen! I ran away, back to my family — and they gave me up! They put me in a cellar until my owner came, and took me back to New Orleans. You saw that other paper, with the bill of sale. Do you know what it is? It is a receipt from a whipping-house-where slaves are sent to be corrected! I was only thirteen, so they were lenient with me — only ten lashes! Can you understand what that did to me? Can you? For they make a spectacle of it — oh, yes! I was tied up naked, and whipped before an audience of men! Can you even begin to dream what it is like — the unbelievable, frightful shame of it? But how could I make you understand!" She was beating her fist on my knee by now, crying into my face. "You are a man — what would it do to you, to be stripped and bound and flogged before a pack of leering, laughing women?"
"Oh, well," says I, "I don't really know —"
"They cheered me! Do you hear that — cheered me, because I Wouldn't cry, and one of them gave me a dollar! I ran back, blind with tears, with that receipt in my hand, and the she-devil who kept that brothel said: 'Keep it to remind you of what disobedience brings'. And I kept it, with the other. So that I shall never forget!"
She buried her head on my knee, weeping, and I was at a loss for once. I could think of one good way of comforting us both, but I doubted if she'd take kindly to it. So I patted her head and said:
"Well, it's a hard life, Cassy, there's no denying. But cheer up — there's a good time coming, you know. We'll be away to Memphis in the morning, raffle you off, collect the cash, and then, hey! for the steamboat! Why, we can have a deuced good time of it, I daresay, for I'm bound for the east coast, you know, and we can travel together. Why, we can —"
"Do you swear it?" She had lifted her head and was gazing up at me, her face wasted with crying. God, she was a queer one, one minute all cold steel and killing two men, and then getting the jumps over 'em — and from that she was plotting calmly, and suddenly raging with passion, and now imploring me with the wistful eyes of a child. By George, she was a handsome piece — but it wasn't the time or place, I knew. She was too much in a taking — I'll wager she had talked more that night than she'd done for years. But women have always loved to confide in me; I think it's my bluff, honest, manly countenance-and my whiskers, of course.
"You do promise?" she begged rue. "You will help me, and never desert me? Never, until I'm free?"
Well, you know what my promises are; still I gave it, and I believe I meant it at the time. She took my hand, and kissed it, which disturbed me oddly, and then she says, looking me in the eyes:
"Strange, that you should be an Englishman. I remember, years ago, on the Pierrepoint Plantation, the slaves used to talk of the underground railroad — the freedom road, they called it — and how those who could travel it in safety might win at last to Canada, and then they could never be made slaves again. There was one old man, a very old slave, who had a book that he had gotten from somewhere, and I used to read to them from it — it was called Nore's Epitome of Navigation, all about the sea, and ships, and none of us could understand it, but it was the only book we had, and so they loved to hear me read from it." She tried to smile, with her eyes full of tears, and her voice was trembling. "On the outside there was a picture of a ship, with a Union Jack at its mast, and the old man used to point to it and say: 'Dat's de flag o' liberty, chillun; dat de ol' flag'. And I used to remember what I had once beard someone say — I can't recall where or when, but I never forgot the words." She paused a moment, and then said in a whisper almost: "'Whoever stands on British soil, shall be forever free'. It's true, isn't it?"
"Oh, absolutely," says I. "We're the chaps, all right. Don't hold with slavery at all, don't you know."
And, strange as it may seem, sitting there with her looking at me as though I were the Second Coming, well — I felt quite proud, you know. Not that I care a damn, but — well, it's nice, when you're far away and don't expect it, to hear the old place well spoken of.
"God bless you," says she, and she let go my hand, and I thought of making a grab at her, for the third time, but changed my mind. And we went to sleep on opposite sides of the fire, after I'd stoked it up and shoved Little's body into the bushes; deuce of a weight to move he was, too.