Chapter 8

Henry was taken to the local jail for questioning. However, it happened to be late in the day, so the actual questioning was put off until the following day. Of course, we noticed immediately when Henry did not return at his usual time. We immediately began to worry about him, and to wonder what would be the best way to find out.

David, who was now 11 years old and had the responsibility of an adult (after all, he was 100% Indian) volunteered to try to find out. David took some jerky to use for supper and his pistol for defensive purposes and took off at a fast trot for Albany. His pistol was concealed under his tunic-like shirt, and the weather was cool enough to keep his body temperature at nearly the ideal point.

David arrived in Albany very close to supper time, so nobody paid any attention to him: supper was a much more interesting subject for concentration. He wandered around town looking for anything that would hint as to Henry’s whereabouts. Finally, he spotted his father’s wagon behind the jail. The mules were still hitched to it. Hell, those mules needed food and water. What the hell was going on?

The jail was a tiny place with only one cell that was normally used for holding commoner drunks overnight until they sobered up. With only one cell, it was easy to look through the window and see that there was only one man in the cell. The jail cell occupied the whole building with the office in the building next door.

David pulled a barrel up to the window and stood on it so that he could talk through the window without having to shout. Henry was just finishing his supper, and he looked up when David called to him. “Thank God you are here, Son. They were going to question me tomorrow about where I came from, and I don’t know how long I could stand up to their torture.”

“Don’t worry, Pa, I’ll have you out of there in no time. I’ll use the mules and wagon to pull the bars from the window, and we can get out in the wagon. I’ve even got a pistol with me if it comes to that kind of thing.

“I’ll back the wagon up to the wall with the window and loope the chain through the bars. They are held by a wooden frame set into a simple opening in the brick wall. A good tug by the two mules should rip the whole thing from the opening.

“Just give me about five minutes to get everything ready, and I’ll have you out of there clean as a whistle.”

David was as good as his word and ripped the bars from the window. The thing that he didn’t expect was that the construction of the jail was so shoddy that most of the wall came with the window bars. The problem was that this made enough noise to attract the attention of the policeman on duty, and he came to investigate.

For some strange reason, he came into the jail cell through the front door, and was just in time to see the two Indians riding away in the wagon. They were both laughing like hell, but the mules were hungry, so no driver was needed to make them hurry home.

The policeman did fire one shot from his revolver, but that did more to call attention to the jail-break than it did to stop the escaping men. Several people came running to see what the noise was all about, and they joined in the general laughter at the discomfort of the policeman. They were standing outside the jail cell, behind it, when the rest of the structure collapsed. Nobody was hurt, but it was the cause of even more laughter.

Finally, the police chief showed up, but all he could do was to throw his hands in the air and proclaim that he would investigate the situation tomorrow. Right now, he was going back to his supper before it got too cold!

Henry and David arrived in Maudville still laughing at the escape and how clever David had been in arranging it. From that time on, David was accorded all of the respect and responsibility of any other adult male. It was just too bad that he did not have a girlfriend to brag to.

However, there was a down side to Henry’s escape from jail. He was now known in town as an escaped slave, and we were going to have to find someone else to go into Albany to do the trading. We held a meeting and decided that our new envoy was going to have to pretend to be a commoner who made his living as a hunter. There were only four of us who fit the possible parameters, and Michael Wilson was the obvious candidate.

Michael was young and totally unknown in the area, so he could most easily escape notice. Following the ambush of the posse, we had picked up a few of the identity papers that were not too bloody, and there was a set that fit Michael fairly closely. He assumed the identity of Jeremiah Hopkins whenever he went into Albany. He could get away with not talking about his hunting prowess with the excuse that he did not want to give away the location of his favorite hunting grounds. Henry still did most of the hunting, but Michael went with him enough to learn the rudiments of the trade.

Thus, we lost only a week of trading in Albany before Michael was able to resume making the necessary trips. Mary was not too happy with her husband exposed to capture like that, but she had to live with the necessities of life as we were forced to live it.

Michael had been traveling into town twice a week for five weeks when he heard an interesting tale. Four families of escaped serfs and one family of escaped slaves from Florida were being returned there to face execution. They were to be coming through Albany in five days, and they would be escorted by Georgia militia. There was a world of difference between the quality of the soldiers in the militia versus the regular Army, so Henry suggested that we rescue these condemned people and see if they wanted to join us at Maudville.

By escaping and making their way into Georgia, they had demonstrated the kind of characteristics we were looking for. We knew nothing about them, but they seemed like the kind of people we should take a chance on. We didn’t know how many captives there were, but we were sure that there would be at least 15 of the militia, and possibly as many as 30. Considering the quality of the troops that we would be facing, we thought that we could manage that many.

Five families would put a strain on our resources, especially since it was winter. Fortunately, a Southern winter at this latitude was more wind and rain than anything else, so the people should be able to live in tents until we could get housing built for them. If worse came to worst, we could take them into our homes, but we would be miserably crowded for a short time.

We had to have some information on the number of people that we would host, the number of militia that we would fight, and their order of march. We assumed that the captives would be transported in wagons, possibly with iron bars arranged into cages, and moving as a wagon train over the road. Our initial estimates were for five wagons of captives and three wagons of supplies, both for the captives and for the troops. If they were arranged this way, we figured that the troops would be there to keep the captives from escaping and not to fight off a rescue attempt. That suggested around 20 troops, a sergeant, and an officer.

Henry and David were sent to scout the caravan. They found their target moving slower than expected, and it would be over a week before they got to Albany. That would help us, but it was a relatively minor point. It turned out that our estimates of wagons and troops were so nearly correct that we didn’t have to worry there. The main problem was that the people were kept in the wagon cages and not allowed out for any reason. They were fed pans of gruel through slots in the cages, and the shit and piss from the cages was passed through a small hole at the rear of the wagon. The people in the cages were all sick, and might not all live long enough to be executed by the Floridians.

Dammit, we had to attack the caravan as soon as possible! David rode back to Maudville with the news while Henry continued to track the caravan as it made its slow way toward Albany. The caravan was not necessarily stopping at towns, but was camping out each night. This did nothing for the captives, but it did give the militia troopers a chance to rape the women every night. The sergeant and the officer were just as guilty as the troopers, so we figured that would be the best time to attack. We could simply go from tent to tent and shoot the rapists. The women would be rescued at that time. Our pistols were so quiet that we were not worried about making too much noise, and screaming by the women would just be dismissed as part of the fun.