Miss Katie's Rosewood (22 page)
Read Miss Katie's Rosewood Online
Authors: Michael Phillips
Tags: #FIC042030, #FIC042000, #FIC026000
W
AITING
36
I
don't know how long I slept, but it was light when I woke up. People were milling around and talkingâmostly about how hungry they were!
One of the men was on a bluff overlooking the ocean watching for the ship. We weren't far from the mouth of the river at the cove where they had brought the people ashore
.
I got up and looked around for Rob. They told me he had ridden down the coast to find Sheriff Heyes to see if he had made contact with the men from the government
.
By the time Rob and Sheriff Heyes got back an hour and a half or so later, the sun was up. Four men from the government had the kidnappers in custody. Everyone was talking at once trying to tell them about what had happened. The government men were waiting and hoping to be able to arrest the captain of the ship too, though now they thought that it probably wouldn't come until the next night. A couple of Mr. Davidson's men were just getting back from the nearby town of Yorktown with food for the people, who were starving for something more than bread to eat. And besides
that, the bread had run out the day before
.
“Well, Mayme,” said Rob, walking over to me, “with everything happening so fast, I haven't had a chance to talk much with you. How are you? Are you feeling all right?”
“I was really tired,” I said. “But I think I slept several hours. I'm feeling better now.”
“Katie was very anxious about you.”
“How is she?”
“Fine. Just worried about you.”
He sat down and told me about his brief visit
.
“She's quite a special young lady,” he said at last
.
“I think so,” I said. “I don't know where I'd be without her. I don't even think it's too much to say that I owe my life to her.”
“She feels the same way about you. And now that I've found you, we've got to get you back to her.”
“What will happen to all these people?” I asked
.
“Mr. Davidson made arrangements in Yorktown for transportation to the station in Richmond so they can continue on their way wherever they were going before this happened. He's spoken with someone from the B&O, and they've agreed to transport them without additional charge to their destination. By the way, who is Mr. Davidson anyway? He seems a most extraordinary man. How did you meet up with him?”
I told him how I had escaped and a little bit about Josepha and her story and about the horse weather vane
.
“Everybody has an interesting story to tell, don't they?” he said. “How fascinating that Josepha's story would give you the idea how to get away and help these people.”
“Katie tells me you have quite a story too,” I said.
“She said I could read the letter you wrote to her if I wanted to.”
Rob smiled almost sadly, then nodded. “Of course,” he said, “you may certainly read it if you like. My story is for anyone it can help.”
He paused a moment
.
“All our stories ought to be that way,” he added, “âto help people learn more about themselves and grow.”
“I never thought of that,” I said. “That makes every person's life really special and unique, doesn't itâif something in it can help another person grow.”
“I believe that with all my heart, Mayme. I suppose that's what intrigues me about Mr. Davidson. I have the sense that he's a man with a story too, one that might change me in good ways if I knew it.”
“Maybe you will find out about it someday.”
“I hope so.”
“He was a neighbor to the farmhouse where I went. The two men used to be involved in the Underground Railroad together. They hid runaway slaves at their two plantations and in caves and in the woods in between.”
“Well, he's quite a man. I would like to know more about him.”
Almost as if he knew we were talking about him, Mr. Davidson now approached us
.
“Well, young lady,” he said, “it looks like these people have you to thank for their freedom.”
“And you too,” I said. “All I did was slip into the woods and run away. You and your men, and you, Rob, actually rescued them. Though I have the feeling that before they would have let themselves be put on a modern-day slave ship, some of those men would have done something, but I don't know what. I'm sure they would rather have died than go back into slavery. I
think the men were planning something right when we came along.”
“It was a group effort, all the way around,” said Rob
.
Mr. Davidson looked back and forth between us. “I am still a little uncertain how the two of you know each other,” he said
.
Rob and I looked at each other
.
“You might say we have a mutual friend,” said Rob. “Mayme and her friend were traveling on the train and Mayme was in the last car with these other people. When she didn't arrive, her friend, who is named Katie, wired me and I came looking for her.”
I told him a little about me and Katie. Then he remembered reading about us in the newspaper back in 1867. Then he told us about his family and a little about their experience with the Underground Railroad
.
“You remind me of my son,” Mr. Davidson said to Rob. “I wish you both could meet him and his wife.”
“What's his name?” Rob asked
.
“Seth.”
“A good biblical name,” Rob said, nodding
.
Mr. Davidson looked at him with an expression that made me not quite able to tell what he was thinking. Slowly a faint smile came to his lips
.
“If I understand where you have come from correctly,” said Rob, “perhaps we could meet him on our way back.”
“You are welcome, of course,” said Mr. Davidson. “But my son and his wife are away, in Kansas actually, purchasing several horses from an old friend of my son's father-in-law for our breeding stock.”
“You have a horse ranch!” I said
.
Mr. Davidson laughed. “That is almost exactly one of the first things my daughter-in-law said to me when
she and I first met,” he replied. “But to answer your question . . . not exactly. We grow cotton and wheat and other crops. The horses are more of a sideline, but we enjoy them very much. I hope you would both consider it a permanent and standing invitation to come visit. You know where we are, Mayme, if I may now call you that. I would love to have you meet my son and his wife.”
“Of course,” I said. “I always feel a little funny when anyone but my papa calls me Mary Ann.”
He turned again to Rob
.
“Our plantation is just outside the small town of Dove's Landing,” said Mr. Davidson. “I do sincerely hope that we will see you again.”
“I hope that will be possible,” said Rob. “But before any of that, we have to get all these people on their way . . . and Mayme back to Katie!”
S
UNRISE
T
HOUGHTS
37
A
N EARLY MAY SUN HAD JUST PEEPED OVER THE
horizon, casting long morning shadows over the fields of the North Carolina plantation known as Rosewood. A faint fog layer of less than four feet hovered over the growing young stalks of cotton as a reminder of the night's chill still hanging in the air. But both shadows and mist would soon be swallowed up in the burning heat of the strong sun rising to conquer the last remnants of night, as the sun of God's light will one day wipe out death and sin and all their temporary hazes, shadows, and griefs.
A man was slowly walking through the fields, his shadow stretching almost all the way back to the plantation house from which he had come three-quarters of an hour earlier.
He was not by nature an early riser. When he was younger, the night and its fleeting attractions had lured him for many years and kept him from knowing the joys of life's quieter and more solitary pleasures. But now, in this autumn season of his life, he was a man newly at peace. He had become a man of the soil, of the seasons, a man of family and friends and simple enjoyments. He had begun to see
into
things with true eyes, and thus had begun to be a true man himself.
Mornings like this often called him now. There was no time he enjoyed so much, walking throughout the plantation, watching its many-faceted life begin to stretch and breathe again after the refreshment of a night's sleep. The chickens were always first, then the stirring of the birds and their many morning songs, the rustling about of the cows, the renewed squawks of crows overhead . . . the opening of leaves, the bending of stalks toward the sun, the gradual drying of ten million drops of dew on just as many blades of grass . . . and then the gradual warming of the earth beneath his feet as the day advanced . . . these and a dozen subtleties that remained undefined to his consciousness, but which nonetheless his heart felt as he made his way through the morning, all combined to make his soul one with nature in a way he had never known before coming to this place. The cycle of the earth and its wonders drew him and spoke to him as he could never have imagined them capable of doing.
On this particular morning, however, their hidden messages spoke in a strangely melancholy tone. He suspected part of the cause. But there was more to it than that. For he had begun to wonder about the future. And as is their custom, his musings had imperceptibly become anxieties. And as is
their
custom, they had slowly crowded out the peace he usually felt at such times.
He had been as far as the river, then circled back around the ten acres they had reclaimed last winter and newly planted this spring in the cotton that was their money crop, and that they needed now more than ever. It seemed to be growing well and to the same height on his dungarees as the stalks in the other fields.
He had been walking perhaps fifty minutes, and the shadow reduced by the sun's rise to some six or eight feet in front of him, when another figure appeared from the direction of the barn. He stopped and waited.
“A fine morning, brother Ward,” he said.
“You look pensive, even from a distance,” his brother said as he approached. “Worried about the girls?”
“I do wonder why we haven't heard from themâbut not worried, really,” said Templeton. “Missing them, I suppose, though I know we have to realize that they have their own lives to live.”
He drew in a long breath of the still chilly morning air.
“It's great to be alive, isn't it,” he said with satisfaction, “and to have a place to call your own?”