Soul Catcher (7 page)

From his saddlebags, Cain took out his brass spyglass and scoped the village. With the steady rain he saw little activity there save for the occasional trip to an outhouse or to a barn for milking their few scrawny cows or to the henhouse to collect eggs. He didn't see any sign of the runaways. The four men waited and watched all day. When it grew dark, they rode deeper into the woods to make camp that night beneath an outcropping of rock that offered them some feeble respite from the savage rain. They lit a fire and cooked their supper. Nearby ran a stream from which they watered their horses.

"I don't m-much fancy this place," Little Strofe said as he ate.

"What you w-worried about?" Preacher taunted, making fun of his stammer. "You think them n-niggers is gonna come and get you?"

"Brother here always been skeersome of darkies," Strofe said.

"That's a lie."

"Hit's true. They usta be this nigger work for Mr. Jacobs, the undertaker man in town. Brother wouldn't even cross in front of his place. And if he heard the cock crow in the middle of the night, he wouldn't go out and do his business on account he was 'scart some darky would snatch him up."

"Woo," said Preacher, making his eyes wide and furling out his lips. He ambled like an ape toward Little Strofe. "Them darkies gonna git you tonight."

"I ain't a'scart a no niggers," Little Strofe said, embarrassed. "I'm just s-sayin' I be glad when we git what we come for and can leave." He looked over at Cain. "You like this place, Mr. Cain?"

"Not particularly," he offered, looking up from his plate of corn pone and dried beef.

"See. He don't c-care none for it neither."

Preacher glanced at Little Strofe and said, "Never seen such a pair a old biddies in all my born days. You with your d-damn singin' and him with his readin'." Cain glanced over at Preacher.

"Least I can read," he said.

"I can read just fine," Preacher scoffed. "What I needs to. Not some damn pomes. Hell, Cain, you're like some dried-up old schoolmarm with your nose always in a book. And when it ain't in a book, you're picklin' your brain with what'all's in that flask a your'n."

"You just mind your own damn business, Preacher."

"Hell, I don't even see why Eberly needed to hire you on in the first place. We coulda found them niggers our ownselves."

Cain told himself not to pay him any mind. The man was an ignorant fool and just itching for a fight. Wait till they were done. If he still wanted one, then he'd give it to him.

* * *

The next morning, the rain had stopped, though the sky had remained overcast and gray as a pair of old socks. They rode back to the village, and from the cover of the laurel, Cain watched as the men and a few of the women headed out of the village, carrying hoes and picks and spades, one of them driving a wagon pulled by a

pair of swaybacked mules. Cain took note of two men toting guns, a couple of old fowling pieces. Whether for hunting game or for protection, he couldn't rightly say, but the fact spoke to the need to be careful. Freed Negroes, or ones who had been on the run for a while, were much more dangerous. They'd had a taste of freedom and usually wouldn't give it up without putting up a fight, nor would they permit their fugitive comrades to be peacefully taken back either. Cain always tried to err on the side of caution, not to underestimate the desire in a Negro for this thing called freedom. He made it a point not to rush in, but to plan out carefully when and where he'd capture a fugitive slave.

The one time he'd had to kill a runaway was when he'd overlooked this principle. He was hunting for a runaway named Benjamin, who'd worked as a puddler for the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond. Cain had finally located him in Pittsburgh. He was staying with a Negro family, in a neighborhood predominately made up of freedmen. He worked in a foundry, and Cain would watch him going back and forth to work, waiting to catch him when he was alone, in a place where the odds would be with Cain. Usually the Negro was with half a dozen fellow black ironworkers, big, burly men who would have put up a good fight.

Finally, though, Cain could wait no longer. He was running out of funds and he needed to capture the runaway and bring him back to Virginia to collect the reward. So he broke one of his own rules. He jumped the runaway coming out of a doggery with another Negro. Cain pulled his gun and informed Benjamin he had a warrant for his arrest as a fugitive slave. The other Negro started to yell at the top of his lungs, "Soul catcher! Help! Soul catcher!" Soon Negroes came running out from the tavern and surrounding dwellings, and the next thing Cain knew, there were a couple of dozen black faces surrounding him. Emboldened by their presence, Benjamin pulled a knife on Cain. "Get yo white buckra ass outa here." But Cain, for all his cautious nature, needed the money the Negro represented. Besides which, he didn't like leaving business unfinished, liked completing what he'd set out to do, nor did he like the image of being chased off by a Negro. So he told the runaway he was bringing him back one way or the other. That's when Benjamin rushed at him with the knife. Taken by surprise, Cain had little choice but to defend himself. He'd hoped only to wound him, because a dead runaway wasn't worth a plug nickel. But the bullet caught the Negro in the throat, and he dropped like a sack of wet grain.

With that, the others fell on Cain. Wildly swinging his blackjack with one hand and his Colt with the other, he fought his way out of the crowd and made for his horse, tied at the end of the alley. He managed to mount and ride away as they threw stones and curses at him. After that, he was always careful to pick the safest place and circumstances for a capture. Patience was something a slave catcher needed as much as shackles or a gun.

All that morning they watched the village, but they didn't spot the runaway named Henry among the men heading out to work the fields, nor the girl among the women who stayed behind and washed clothes and tended to the chickens.

"Think they're hidin' her?" Strofe asked Cain.

He shrugged as he scoped the village with his spyglass. He thought perhaps one of the Negroes coming through Keene two nights before might have spotted them and brought word back that a group of soul catchers was approaching, and they'd had time to hide both of them in the woods. Maybe that was why the men carried guns.

Around noon, they saw a young Negro boy leaving Timbucto, heading for the nearby village of North Elba with a basket of eggs to sell.

"Wager he'll know where they're at," said Strofe.

"Let's git him and make him talk," Preacher added, mounting his roan.

"We ought to wait," Cain cautioned. He felt, sooner or later, if they were there, one or the other would show himself. If, on the other hand, the four slave catchers exposed themselves too soon and the entire village learned of their presence, it would make things all the more difficult.

"You're 'scart a them niggers, too, Cain?" Preacher taunted. "Why, I'm surprised, big war hero like yourself."

Cain stared up at him seated on his horse. Nothing would have pleased him as much as pulling the man from his saddle and throttling him. He didn't know how the man had come by the knowledge that he'd been in the war, that he'd received a medal. Maybe Eberly, who seemed to know everything about him, had told him. In any case, he wouldn't let the man see that the comment prickled him.

"I'm not fool enough to get into a scrap if I don't have to," he replied coldly.

"But a famous nigger hunter like yourself, I figured you to go marchin' right in here and pluck them runaways easy as pie," Preacher said sarcastically. He looked down at Cain and smiled his gat-toothed smile. "Then again, maybe all them drams you're asippin' has made you lily-livered."

Cain gave him a stone-hard glare. "Whenever you're a mind to test me, Preacher, you go right ahead."

"Think I'm scared a you, Cain?"

"Would you two stop your damn squabblin'?" Strofe said. "I say we catch the boy and make him tell us where they're at."

After several weeks in the saddle and the past two days of waiting and watching in the cold and rain, they'd grown anxious; they wanted to finish their business and leave this place behind. Even Cain. Finally, he conceded and they decided to follow the boy until he was safely away from the village. Strofe muzzled the dogs and put them on ropes to keep them from running off after the Negro. Then they mounted up and cautiously rode through the woods, keeping the boy in sight but maintaining their distance so as not to scare him into flight. At last, when they figured he was far enough away from the settlement, they split into two groups, one circling ahead of the boy and approaching him from the front, the other coming at him from the rear. Warily, the boy watched them approach, four white men on horses and a pair of hounds. He was wearing a wool coat, homespun trousers, and a pair of brogans much too big for his feet. When they reached the boy, Strofe asked about the two runaways.

"One goes by Henry," he explained. "He's a right stout nigger. Missing an ear. The other's a high yeller gal name of Rosetta."

The Negro stared up at him mutely, as if English was not his own language. He eyed their guns.

"We know they're here," Strofe said. "So you might's well tell us and save yourself a whole heap a grief."

Frowning, the Negro glanced down at his basket of eggs. Then he did an odd thing. He looked up and silently held the basket out to Strofe, as a kind of offering. Funny how when a man is offered something, no matter what it is, he tends to take it, and Strofe instinctively leaned down from his saddle and reached for the basket. Before he could take hold of it, though, the boy suddenly dropped it, spun around, and took to his heels, dashing between the horsemen before anyone could grab him. For a short distance, he ran along the muddy road leading back to the village. He was surprisingly fleet of foot, a natural runner, but it quickly must have dawned on him he was no match for men on horses, and so he angled into the dense woods, breaking through thickets of mountain laurel and briars too close packed for the horses to travel with ease. They pulled up, and Little Strofe jumped down and released the dogs.

"Steboy," he said, urging them after the Negro.

The pair went off baying and yapping, slashing through the dense woods as sleek as fish in water. A quarter mile into the forest, the four men came upon the boy, halfway up a crab apple tree, the dogs below barking up a storm. He put up a good fight when Preacher and Little Strofe climbed up to get him down, kicking and flailing away, even biting Little Strofe on the wrist. But finally Preacher clubbed him with the barrel of his pistol and the boy fell leadenly to the ground. Preacher let out with a whoop like somebody who'd won something at a fair. They tied him up, put a gag in his mouth, and then headed back to their camp in the woods, where Preacher tied him to a sycamore tree.

It had started to rain again, a fine gray mist that fell out of the low sky like sifted flour. Little Strofe built a fire and began cooking supper.

Preacher removed the gag from their captive's mouth and asked him again about the two runaways.

"Where they at, boy?"

The Negro just stared at him. Cain guessed him to be about thirteen years old, a lean but muscular lad, broad shouldered, with coal black skin that had never been diluted by a single drop of white blood. At first he didn't say a word, just stared blankly at them as he was asked questions, and Cain wondered for a moment if they'd captured themselves a deaf mute. But then Preacher took out his knife and waved it in front of him. With that, the boy finally broke his silence.

"I'm free. I gots my papers," he said defiantly, staring at the knife.

"Would you listen to the cheeky nigger?" Preacher scoffed. He removed a whetstone from his pocket and calmly ran it up and down the blade of the knife, the way you would if it were hog-butchering season and you were fixing to gut one.

"I don't gots to tell you nothin'," the boy cried.

"Is that so?"

"Yessum. I'm a free man. I gots rights just like you."

Preacher smiled. "You'll do what we goddamn tell you to, boy," he said, striking him on the side of the head with the flat of the knife blade. "You hear me?"