The Purchase Price Part 10

Dunwody made no answer except to turn and walk down the deck. The captain, pondering on matters entirely beyond his comprehension, but forced to accept the a.s.surances of men such as these who had appeared as guardians of this mysterious young woman, now returned to his own quarters. "I reckon it's none of my business," he muttered. "Some high-cla.s.s forger or confidence worker that's beat the government somehow, maybe. But she don't look it--I'll be d.a.m.ned if she looks it. I wonder--?"

Dunwody, left to himself, began moodily to walk up and down the narrow deck, his hands behind his back. On his face was the red fighting flush, but it was backed by no expression of definite purpose, and his walk showed his mental uncertainty. All at once he turned and with decision pa.s.sed down the stairs to the lower deck. He had heard voices which he recognized.

Judge Clayton had joined the party in charge of the fugitives, and was now in conversation with the overseer, a short man clad in a coa.r.s.e blue jacket, with high boots and greasy leather trousers.

The latter was expatiating exultantly upon his own bravery and shrewdness in effecting the recapture of his prisoners.

"Why, Jedge," said he, "fust off it di'n't look like we'd ever git track of 'em at all. I cotched the trail at Portsmouth at last, and follered 'em back into Ohio. They was sh.o.r.e on the 'underground' and bound for Canada, or leastways Chicago. I found 'em in a house 'way out in the country--midnight it was when we got thar. I'd summonsed the sher'f and two constables to go 'long.

Farm-house was a underground railway station all right, and the farmer showed fight. We was too much fer him, and we taken 'em out at last, but one of the constables got shot--some one fired right through the winder at us. This Lily gal was the wust of the lot, and I don't put it a-past her to 'a' done some of the shootin'

herself. But we brung 'em all along.

"Now, Jedge," he continued, "of co'se, I think I can do something for these two bucks Bill and Jim--this gal only persuaded 'em to run away with her. But if I was you, I sh.o.r.e would sell that Lily gal South, right away. She's bound fer to make trouble, and nothin' but trouble, fer you as long as you keep her round the place."

The speaker, coa.r.s.e and ignorant, presented a contrast to the tall, dignified and quiet gentleman whom he accosted, and who now stood, with hands in pockets, looking on with genuine concern on his face.

"Lily," said he at length, "what makes you act this way? Haven't you always been treated well down there at home?"

"Yas, sir, I reckon so," replied the girl sullenly; "well as anybody's n.i.g.g.ahs is!"

"Then why do you want to run off? This is the third time in the last year. I've been kind to you--I say, Dunwody," he went on, turning suddenly as he saw the latter approach--"haven't I always treated my people right? Haven't I always given them everything in the world they ought to have?"

"Yes, Judge, that's the truth, and any neighbor of yours will say it," a.s.sented Dunwody as he joined the group. "What's wrong then?

This Lily girl run off again? Seems to me you told me about her."

"Yes," said Judge Clayton, rubbing a finger across his chin in perturbation, "the poor thing doesn't know when she's well off.

But what am I to do with her, that's the question? I don't believe in whipping; but in this case, Wilson, I'm going to turn over those two boys to you. I won't have the girl whipped even yet. I'll see you when we get down to Cairo," he added, turning away. "We'll have to change there to the Sally Lee, for the Vernon doesn't stop at our landing. She's going straight through to Memphis."

As Judge Clayton walked away, Dunwody turned to the overseer, whom he had seen before on the Clayton plantations.

"So you had trouble this time?" he ventured.

"Heap of it, sir," replied the overseer, taking off his cap. "It was that fine yaller lady there that made most of it. She's the one that's a-fo_mint_in' trouble right along. She's a quiet lookin' gal, but she ain't. It's all right what the jedge says to me, but I'm goin' to have a little settle_ment_ with this fine lady myself, this time."

The girl heard him plainly enough, but only turned moodily back toward the coil of rope where sat the two blacks who had been her companions. From these she kept her skirt as remote as though they were not of her station. Dunwody approached the overseer, and put a gold double-eagle in his hand.

"Listen here, Wilson," said he, "you seem to be able to handle such people discreetly. Now I've got a prisoner along, up-stairs, myself--never mind who she is or how she comes here. As you know, I'm a United States marshal for this district, and this prisoner has been turned over to me. I'm going on up home, beyond St.

Genevieve, and I've got to change down there at Cairo myself, to take the up-river boat."

"Mulattress?" listlessly inquired Wilson, after grinning at the coin. "They're the wust. I'd rather handle straight n.i.g.g.e.rs my own self."

"Well," said Dunwody, "now that you mention it, I don't know but they would be easier to handle. This prisoner is about as tall as that girl yonder, and she's a whole lot lighter, do you understand?

Of a dark night--say about the time we'd get down to Cairo, midnight--well wrapped up, and the face of neither showing, it might be hard to tell one of them from the other."

"How'll you trade?" grinned Wilson. "Anybody kin git a mighty good trade for this yaller lady of ours here. If she was mine I'd trade her for a sack of last year potatoes. I reckon Jedge Clayton'll be sick enough of her, time he gets expenses of this last trip paid, gittin' her back."

"I'm not trading," said Dunwody, frowning and flushing. "But now I'll tell you what I want you to do, when we get into Cairo. I may have trouble with my prisoner, and I don't know any better man than yourself to have around in a case like that. Do you think, if I left it all to you, you could handle it?"

"Sh.o.r.e I could--what's the use of your troublin' yourself about it, Colonel Dunwody? This here's more in my line."

Dunwody turned away with a sudden feeling of revulsion, almost of nausea at the thought now in his mind. It was a few moments later that he again approached Wilson.

"There's a French girl along with this prisoner of mine," said he.

"Just take them both along together. I reckon the French girl won't make any disturbance--it's the other--the lady--her mistress.

She's apt to--to 'fomint' trouble. Handle her gently as you can.

You'll have to have help. The captain will not interfere. You just subst.i.tute my prisoner for yours yonder at Cairo--I'll show you where she is when the time comes. Once you have her aboard my boat for St. Genevieve, you can come back and take care of your own prisoners here. There may be another eagle or so in it. I am not asking questions and want none asked. Do your work, that's all."

"You don't need to be a-skeered but what I'll do the work, Colonel," smiled Wilson grimly. "I've had a heap o' trouble the last week, and I'm about tired. I'll not stand no foolishness."

Had any friend seen Warville Dunwody that night, he must have p.r.o.nounced him ten years older than when the Mount Vernon had begun her voyage.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SHADOW CABINET

"All very well, gentlemen! All very well!" repeated the man who sat at the head of the table. "I do not deny anything you say.

None the less, the question remains, what were we to do with this woman, since she was here? I confess my own relief at this message from our agent, Captain Carlisle, telling of her temporary disappearance."

As he spoke, he half pushed back his chair, as though in impatience or agitation over the problem which evidently occupied his mind. A man above medium height, somewhat spare in habit of body, of handsome features and distinguished presence, although with hair now slightly thinned by advancing years, he seemed, if not by natural right, at least by accorded authority, the leader in this company with whose members he was not unwilling to take counsel.

Those who sat before him were his counselors, chosen by himself, in manner ratified by law and custom. They made, as with propriety may be stated, a remarkable body of men. It were less seemly openly to determine their names and their station, since they were public men, and since, as presently appeared, they now were engaged on business of such nature as might not be placed in full upon public records.

At least it may be stated that this meeting was held in the autumn of the year 1850, and in one of the great public buildings of the city of Washington. Apparently it was more private than official in its nature, and apparently it now had lasted for some time. The hour was late. Darkness presently must enshroud the room. Even now the shadows fell heavy upon the lofty portraits, the rich furnishings, the mixed a.s.semblage of somewhat hodgepodge decorations. Twice an ancient colored man had appeared at the door with lighted taper, as though to offer better illumination, but each time the master of the place had waved him away, as though unwilling to have present a witness even so humble as he. Through the door, thus half opened, there might have been seen in the hall two silent and motionless figures, standing guard.

Obviously the persons here present were of importance. It was equally obvious that they sought no intrusion. Why, then, in a meeting so private and so serious, should there come a remark upon a topic certainly not a matter of state in the usual acceptance of the term? Why should the leader have been concerned over the slight matter of a woman's late presence here in Washington?

As though to question his a.s.sociates, the speaker turned his glance down the long table, where sat figures, indistinct in the gathering gloom. At his right hand, half in shadow, there showed the bold outlines of a leonine head set upon broad shoulders. Under cavernous brows, dark eyes looked out with seriousness. Half revealed as it was, here was a countenance fairly fit to be called G.o.dlike. That this presence was animated with a brain whose decision had value, might have been learned from the flitting gaze of the leader which, cast now on this or the other, returned always to this man at the right. There were seven gentlemen of them in all, and of these all were clad in the costume of the day, save this one, who retained the fashion of an earlier time. His coat might have come from the Revolution, its color possibly the blue of an earlier day. The trousers fitted close to ma.s.sive and shapely limbs, and the long waistcoat, not of a modish silk, was buff in color, such as might one time have been worn by Washington himself.

This man, these men, distinguished in every line, might have been statesmen of an earlier day than that of Calhoun, Clay and Benton.

Yet the year of 1850, that time when forced and formal peace began to mask the att.i.tude of sections already arrayed for a later war, might have been called as important as any in our history.

The ranks of these men at the table, too, might have been called arranged as though by some shrewd compromise. Even a careless eye or ear might have declared both sections, North and South, to have been represented here. Grave men they were, and accustomed to think, and they reflected, thus early in Millard Fillmore's administration, the evenly balanced political powers of the time.

The headlong haste of both sections was in the year 1850 halted for a time by the sage counsels of such leaders as Clay, in the South, even Webster, in the North. The South claimed, after the close of the Mexican War and the accession of the enormous Spanish territories to the southwest, that the accepted line of compromise established in 1820, by which slavery might not pa.s.s north of the parallel of lat.i.tude thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, should be extended westward quite to the Pacific Ocean. She grumbled that, although she had helped fight for and pay for this territory, she could not control it, and could not move into it legally the slaves which then made the most valued part of a southern man's property.

As against this feeling, the united politicians had thrown to the hot-headed Southerners a sop in the form of the Fugitive Slave Act.

The right for a southern owner to follow and claim his slave in any northern state was granted under the Const.i.tution of the United States. Under the compromise of 1850, it was extended and confirmed.

The abolitionists of the North rose in arms against this part of the great compromise measure; a law which, though const.i.tutional, seemed to them nefarious and infamous. The leaders in Congress, both Whig and Democrat, feared now, therefore, nothing in the world so much as the outbreak of a new political party, which might disorganize this nicely adjusted compromise, put an end to what all politicians were fond of calling the "finality" of the arrangement, and so bring on, if not an encounter of armed forces, if not a rupture of the Union, at least what to them seemed almost as bad, the disintegration of the two great parties of the day, the Whigs and Democrats.

If compromise showed in this meeting of men from different sections, it was, therefore, but a matter in tune with the time.

Party was at that day not a matter of geography. There existed then, however, as there exists to-day, the great dividing line between those who are in and those who are out. Obviously now, although they represented different sections of the country, these men likewise represented the party which, under the adjusted vote of the day, could be called fortunate enough to dwell within the gates of Washington and not in the outer darkness of political defeat.

The dark-browed man at the leader's right presently began to speak.

His voice, deep and clear as that of a great bronze bell, was slow and deliberate, as fittingly voicing an accurate mind.

"Sir," he said, "this matter is one deserving our most careful study, trivial though at first blush it would seem. As to the danger of this woman's machinations here, there is no question. A match may produce convulsion, explosion, disaster, when applied to a powder magazine. As you know, this country dwells continually above an awful magazine. At any time there may be an explosion which will mean ruin not only for our party but our country. The Free Soil party, twice defeated, does not down. There is a nationalist movement now going forward which ignores the Const.i.tution itself. With you, I dread any talk, any act, of our own or another nation, which shall even indirectly inflame the northern resentment against the fugitive law."

"On that, we are perfectly agreed, sir," began the original speaker, "and then--"