Freedom Trail by James A. Tweedie
Freedom Trail by James A. Tweedie
Historical Note: For three years, from 1858-1861, the Butterfield Trail served as the southern route for stage and mail service to California. The route ran southwest from St. Louis, Missouri across the southeast corner of Oklahoma and diagonally across Texas to El Paso where it continued through southern New Mexico and Arizona on its way to Los Angeles and San Francisco.
& & &
Aaron Lebeau was literally going nowhere when he left the settler enclave of Fort Davis, and crossed the Clear Fork of the Brazos River.
I know this because I am Aaron Lebeau.
For a long moment I paused, unsure which way to go. But, in the end, driven more by whim and emotion than by common sense or reason, I turned my horse to the right and began idly following the river towards the west.
I was only four years old when my family traded the Red River and Shreveport, Louisiana, for the Clear Fork just south of Fort Belknap, in north Texas. That’s where I grew up helping to raise cattle and irrigate crops with water from the river.
Three years ago, in 1861, when the Confederate States withdrew from the Union, Texas left with them.
With Ma and Pa both dead and with me being the youngest of two brothers, I signed on as a Confederate volunteer. After a tearful farewell, I left the farm in the hands of my brother, Hugh, his wife and two daughters, and went off to fight the Federals up and down the Mississippi from Louisiana to as far north as Kentucky.
In those days, the Kiowa, Comanche, and Plains Apache tribes had been herded onto reservations in Oklahoma by U.S.Cavalry troops where, under threat of annihilation, they had been forced into farming. But when the War broke out, most of the troops headed east to join up with one side or the other so the Indians took advantage and began to go back to their old ways.
Things did not go well for families left behind along the western edge of the Texas frontier.
In mid-September, 1864, I received a letter from Hugh begging me to come back to Texas.
. . . The Kiowa and Comanche chiefs and warriors have left the reservations and are on a rampage, trying to drive us all off. Last month they attacked settlers at Salt Creek and stole away a young boy, two weeks ago James Reed was killed during a round-up near Palo Pinto, and two days ago Alfred Lane was killed minding his own business up at Cement Mountain. Folks around here are holed up in a stockade we built as a defense. We call it Fort Davis and we go out together and tend what’s left of our farms when we think it’s safe. I can’t do it by myself, anymore, so if you can get away from being a soldier, we’d all be much obliged if you could find your way home as soon as possible. From what we hear from from folks traveling through it seems like things are getting worse by the day. There’s no one to beat back the chiefs and I fear all will soon be lost. Please do not tarry, Hugh.
The letter was dated July 17 and I had no way of knowing if my brother and family were alive or dead, or if they were still in Texas at all.
Three nights later, I left my unit and headed west. Because so many volunteers were deserting, I figured there wouldn’t be enough men left to chase after me.
When I reached the family farm, I found it abandoned and when I reached the so-called Fort Davis, I discovered that my brother and family had given up and joined with two other families in taking the Butterfield Trail south to El Paso.
“Maybe they said something about going through to New Mexico,” I was told by one of the settlers who had remained at the fort. “But they never said exactly.”
It was the 12th day of October, 1864.
The following day, Chief Satanta along with 500 Kiowa and Comanche chiefs and warriors raided the Elm Creek valley just fifteen miles north of Clear River. Seven settlers were killed and six women and children were taken hostage. Troops who pursued them were ambushed with the loss of five soldiers.
The raiders also took upwards of 10,000 head of cattle before heading north to the Oklahoma Indian Territories.
If I had known what was happening, I might have stayed where I was. But because I thought things were safe and because there was no reason for me to stay, I figured I’d either go back to fighting the war or head south to search for Hugh.
After fording Clear Fork, I made my choice and turned west to join the Butterfield Trail with the hope that I would get lucky and catch up to my brother in El Paso.
I’ve got nothing to live for, I told myself, so I might as well have something to die for.
& & &
It was going to be a long day’s ride to Phantom Hill, the next safe stop on the way.
I was no fool. I knew the risks. I knew I might be attacked and knew I might not survive the journey, but what I didn’t expect was to come across a burned and broken wagon so soon after I joined the Trail.
It wasn’t that I had never seen an abandoned wagon before, for broken wheels and axles were often shattered beyond repair. Even back in the days when the Butterfield mail stage had been riding the Trail from St. Louis to California twice each week, settlers whose wagons had broken-down would hitch a ride with another family, salvage as much of their belongings as they could, and leave their broken, four-wheeled-home behind.
What was unusual about this wagon was that it had recently been burned and there were four or five freshly-dug graves nearby, partly hidden by trampled prairie grass.
There must have been at least one survivor, I reckoned as I surveyed the scene, for no Kiowa or Comanche warrior would have taken the time to bury people he had just killed.
“Yo-ho!” I cried. “Is there anyone here? I’m a settler and a friend. Show yourself and, upon my word, no harm will come to you.”
“God bless you if you are truly a friend,” came a voice from behind me on the side of the trail, opposite the wagon and graves. “But no blessing if you make a move for your gun.”
As a precaution, I had drawn my pistol as I rode forward to inspect the wagon.
Now, as I turned to see who had spoken, I kept the gun in my right hand, hidden behind the shoulder of my horse.
I found myself looking down at a short but stocky Negro man perhaps ten years older than myself. The man’s overalls were covered with dirt and ash and his left pant’s leg was stained black with blood.
In addition to the man, I also found myself looking down the barrel of a cocked Colt .44 identical to my own.
“Drop the gun,” the man ordered. “I know you have it because your holster is empty and your right hand is hidden. So, drop the gun or I’ll be forced to shoot.”
After a pause, he added, “And the rifle, too.”
“If I drop the gun it could go off,” I said as I grasped the revolver by the barrel and held it out for him to take.
“No need,” he said. “Keep it. I’m too tired to fight anyways.”
Without another word, he released the hammer on his pistol, tucked it into a pocket and crumpled to the ground in a sitting position with his head lowered in either exhaustion or submission.
I returned my gun to its holster, grabbed my canteen, dismounted and, after tying my horse to the ruined wagon, offered him water.
“My name’s Aaron, Aaron Lebeau.”
“Saul,” he said.
“Thank you for the kindness,” he added after taking a short pull on the canteen,
“Tell me,” I asked as I sat next to him. “What happened?”
“Indians. Two days ago . . . Pastor Billings was a Methodist and he would never hurt a man. Only had one gun,” he said while patting his pocket, “and that for wild animals and such. But the Indians didn’t pay no mind. They killed him quick with a hatchet and began to violate Mrs. Mabel in front of their two boys. My wife screamed at them to stop so they killed her and when they were done with Mrs. Mabel, they killed her, too, along with Tom and Todd. While they were at it, I hid behind the wagon and when one of the Indians saw me, he shot me in the leg but the chief said something and they left me alone after that.”
He spoke simply and without any emotion, as if he had been rehearsing the speech in his mind for the past two days.
“Then they took the horses and whatever else they could carry and set the wagon on fire when they left.”
Until now, he had spoken with his eyes riveted to the ground, but now, suddenly, he lifted his head and fixed his tearing eyes on mine.
“I buried Willa first. I loved her from back when we were children working on Master Garland’s plantation this side of Shreveport and when Master Garland died and we was all put up for auction, Pastor Billings bid on me but I begged him to buy me and Willa together but he said he didn’t have enough money so a member of his church bought her and gave her to Pastor Billings as a gift so we could be set free together.”
Saul lifted his head to the sky and let out a wail that could have been heard a mile away.
When he was done, he once again lowered his head to the ground.
“After she was buried, I buried the others. Then I sat, too tired to live . . . so tired . . .”
“So, you’re a freed slave?”
“Don’t rightly know for sure if I’m free or not. You see, Louisiana doesn’t allow for it, not right out like that, at least not these days with all the fighting and such. But Pastor Billings treated us as if we were and even married Willa and me in the eyes of God and gave us a certificate for it. He told us that as far back as 1785 the book the Methodists go by said that any church member who buys or sells slaves is ‘immediately to be expelled . . . unless they buy them on purpose to set them free.’”
As the man who called himself Saul talked, I remembered how my folks grew up as Catholics but gave it up when they moved to Texas. And, maybe because of that and maybe because we’d never owned a slave, I’d never given it much thought that a church might be against owning slaves since that’s the way it’s always been.
As I was thinking, Saul continued with his story.
“After Pastor Billings bought me at the auction, he read that book to the congregation and they said times had changed and they didn’t believe in those things anymore and when the bishop heard of it, he threw Pastor Billings out and said he couldn’t be a pastor ever again. I was there for all of it and it’s all true.”
“Get on my horse,” I said, surprised to hear myself say it. “We’ll go back to Camp Cooper, it’s the closest place with a surgeon to see to your leg.”
“And what about you?” he asked.
“I’ll walk,” I said. “It’s always good to walk, and if I wear out, I’ll sit behind you for a spell and let the horse wear out instead of me.”
Saul rose to his feet but didn’t move towards the horse.
“I can’t go,” he said. “I’d rather die and be done with it.”
I looked puzzled.
“I’m a slave in a slave state. They’d take me as a fugitive and sell me off again.”
As an army deserter I wasn’t particularly keen on standing face-to-face with the infamous Col. Buck Barry at Camp Cooper, myself.
“What do you propose, then,” I asked.
Saul reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small packet.
“If I’m not on a plantation I’ve got to carry these,” he said. “They say I’m a slave owned by the Reverent Martin Billings. Without him to vouch for me I’m no better than a fugitive on the run.”
He paused, as if to consider whether he should carry out his thought or keep it to himself.
“Go on,” I said. “What do you propose?”
“If you could pretend to be Pastor Billings, and if we travelled together, maybe . . .”
“Where were you going when you were attacked . . . and why?” I asked, as I cut him off in mid-sentence.
“We were going to California where Pastor Billings could start over being a minister again and where Willa and I could be set free.”
The thought of freedom must have distracted him because his eyes turned from mine and began to gaze vacantly at the horizon.
“And you?” he asked suddenly as his eyes reengaged with mine. “Where are you headed?”
“El Paso,” I replied, thinking that 500 miles was a long way for a man to walk.
Saul responded by limping over to the wagon, where he dropped to his knees and reached up to an unburned place above the rear axle.
After a time, he limped back carrying a small leather bag.
“Here, Master Billings,’ he said with a wry smile. “If you can find a horse to buy, I’ll pay for it and if it’s better than yours, I’ll trade you.”
The bag was heavier than I expected.
Inside were fifteen $20 gold pieces, enough money to buy six or ten horses.
“It was Pastor’s treasure, and since the Indians didn’t find it, I suppose it now belongs to you. That is, if’n you choose to be Pastor Billings for a spell.”
“I’ve never owned a slave, before,” I said with a wry grin of my own. “But if it means traveling a thousand miles to California to set you free, I’m willing to try it on and see if it fits!”
Until that moment, my life had been without any purpose at all, except for trying to find my brother.
The thought of a fugitive Confederate army deserter risking his life by traveling a thousand miles through dangerous Indian country to help a Negro slave gain his freedom suddenly seemed to be the most reasonable thing in the world.
“I may own you,” I said, “but we’re going to be equals, you hear? You and me together, and if I don’t treat you that way, then you can take that gun out of your pocket and shoot me.”
“I can’t do that,” Saul answered.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because Pastor Billings never kept cartridges in it, and because the Indians didn’t leave any behind when they left.”
& & &
“The Indian that shot me had a rifle,” Saul explained as I examined his wound. “The others had bows and arrows, and hatchets . . .”
He winced as I washed the torn flesh in his thigh and replaced the old bloodied bandage with a clean strip of cloth I found in the back of the wagon.
Soon after, with him on the horse and me walking alongside, we began to make our way south towards the army post at Phantom Hill, 25 miles away.
Fortunately, the unbearable summer heat had been replaced by the cooler, more tolerable temperatures of autumn. This was particularly helpful since there was little or no shade to be found on the seemingly endless stretch of the west Texas plains.
For several hours we moved along in silence and I marveled that we didn’t meet any other travelers along the way. Later, we found out that word of the raids had spread and everyone but us had gone to ground.
The sound of Saul’s voice startled me from my thoughts and it took me a moment before I could catch up with what he was saying.
“. . . so I don’t expect to get much help from them army folks, or from any of the other forts along the way.”
“And why is that?” I asked, as I pulled the horse to a stop so I could rest my feet.
“It was yesterday,” he began. “I was sitting by the road waiting to die, and an army patrol heading north stopped to look things over.
“There was a lieutenant all dressed up in a brand-new Dixie-grey uniform who didn’t even bother to climb down from his horse to talk.
“After I answered his questions and told him what had happened, he spit at me.
“‘Go to hell,’ he said. ‘I’ve been fighting this bloody war for three years because of you Colored folks, and good men have died to keep you from thinking you’re as good as the rest of us. Well, lordy, lordy! Now you’ve had a taste of what the bloody Feds have been doing to us up north and now they’re coming down to Mississippi and Georgia, burning our crops and homes and cutting the throats of our wounded after a battle. And all because of you and your people.’
“He was so angry his face looked like it was going to explode and I thought he might kill me on the spot, but instead he had one more thing to say.
“‘Maybe on my way back I’ll change my mind and help you,’ he sneered. ‘But by then you’ll probably be dead, so it won’t matter.’
“And with that, he and the rest rode off and left me without so much as a sip of water.”
I didn’t know what to say, so, like before, we walked and rode, and kept our thoughts to ourselves.
Several hours later, and for the second time, Saul broke the silence.
“You and that Lieutenant make me think of something that Jesus said.”
“And what’s that?” I asked.
“The story of the Good Samaritan,” he answered. “That’s the parable Jesus told about a man who was robbed and left for dead on the side of the road and then two religious men passed by without helping him because they were either in too much of a hurry or because they didn’t want to get their hands dirty.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” I asked, wondering why I’d never heard the story before.
Saul ignored my question and kept talking.
“After a while, another traveler came along but, unlike the first two, this one stopped to tend to the injured man’s wounds. Then, when he was done with that, he carried him a long way to an inn where he paid the owner to take care of the man until he was well.”
“What’s your point?” I interrupted. “What’s that got to do with me?”
Once again, Saul was more interested in telling his story than he was in answering my question. But I didn’t mind, because it was a good story and it took my mind off of the mid-afternoon heat and dust.
“The third man who came along—the one who helped—was a Samaritan,” Saul explained. “That’s someone who believes in all the wrong things. Everybody hated the Samaritans or thought they did, including the wounded man lying at the side of the road. But all that hate didn’t keep the Samaritan from doing the right thing by spending his time and money to help the man—just like you’re doing for me.”
“But in our case,” I said as I again pulled the horse to a stop, “you’re the Samaritan I’m supposed to hate, right? But I helped you anyway—is that what you mean?”
“It might work that way,” Saul said with a hint of a smile showing on his face, “but I was picturing it the other way around with you being the Samaritan who I hate. After all, a little while back, didn’t you let on that you were fighting for the South? Well, that means you were fighting to keep me and Willa in slavery, along with everyone else who looks like me. What’s there for me to like about a person who’s willing to kill other men and give up his own life in order to keep me in chains?”
I didn’t take kindly to being called a “Samaritan,” and I didn’t take kindly to having a Negro slave telling me that I’d been fighting for all the wrong reasons.
“How dare you speak to me that way!” I roared. “If you wasn’t hurt and all I’d give you a . . .”
As I spoke, a wave of shame swept over me, forcing me to stop talking before I finished my sentence.
Saul kept smiling through it all, as if it was some sort of secret joke, and I felt a second wave of anger begin to rise as I glared at him sitting and smiling on my horse while I was doing the walking!
But instead of backing down, Saul met my anger straight on.
“Hold on there, Aaron Lebeau,” he said, using my full name the way Ma used to do when I was a child and she was upset with me about something. “Aren’t you the same man who said you were going to treat me as an equal?”
His words cut deep, but I held onto my anger—until he leveled me with more of what I’d said.
“And didn’t you tell me that I could shoot you dead if you ever went back on your word?”
I couldn’t deny that I had said it—and I had sincerely meant it when I had said it—but it didn’t sound so good when Saul threw it back at me.
“And the funniest part,” he grinned, “is that you never gave me any bullets so I could do it!”
As I directed my glare upwards, I couldn’t decide whether to pull him off the horse and beat him or humble myself with an apology.
Saul saved me from both by exploding into laughter—a hearty, full-blown contagious laugh that broke the nearly unbearable tension and brought tears to my eyes as I joined in with laughter of my own.
“I was only joshing,” he said.
But I knew he wasn’t joshing, and I knew that if anyone deserved a whipping, it was me.
“Here,” I said as I placed a box with a dozen .44 black-powder paper-bound bullets into his hand. “Plug five of these into your gun and put the rest someplace where you can get to them in a hurry.”
“Yes, Master,” he said. “Whatever you say.”
When he said it, I noted he wasn’t smiling.
& & &
That night we camped by the side of the road. I had enough biscuits and jerky to share but nothing more.
The night sky was clear and the stars were brighter than usual because the moon was a waning crescent that didn’t rise until after we were asleep.
As always, there were coyotes prowling nearby, and wolves. But we didn’t go to the trouble of lighting a fire.
& & &
We walked into Phantom Hill before noon.
It was a small place with no more than twenty-five soldiers on duty working to keep the raiding parties away and the trail clear.
They’d recently slaughtered a buffalo so there was meat to share and, because they had more horses than men to ride them, the Captain agreed to sell us one and throw in the saddle for free in exchange for a $20 gold piece.
It was a fair price because the Captain and I both knew the Confederate scrip the soldiers were being paid was near worthless while gold of any kind was accepted everywhere, along with anything silver, including Mexican pesos.
Since the horse was purchased with Saul’s money, I took mine back and he took the new one for himself.
With each of us on a horse, we covered another 40 miles before the sun went down.
By the following evening, we were safely lodged in a bunkhouse located outside the walls of Fort Chadbourne.
I say “we” but in this particular place, slaves had to sleep on the floor, something Saul did without complaint since the last thing he wanted to do was to be the cause of trouble for either of us.
The following morning, we stocked up on food before we left. When we went to pay, the smallest coin I had was one of Saul’s $20 gold pieces. Someone must have seen the transaction and figured that if I had one of those double eagles, I probably had more of them hidden somewhere in my gear.
It was an easy day’s ride to the Grape Creek crossing of the North Concho River and we were five miles into the ride when Saul noticed dust rising a quarter mile or so to the north.
As the dust grew closer, we saw two men setting a fast pace as if to enter the trail ahead of us.
“What do you think?” I asked Saul. “Should we try to outrace them or turn back?”
“No good racing them if their horses are faster than ours,” he said, “and we don’t know for sure one way or the other. And the same goes for turning back. If they’re faster, they’ll catch us either way.”
Since we both saw it the same, there was nothing to do but to keep going the way we were and hope the men were in a hurry to get somewhere that had nothing to do with us.
It turned out that what they were doing had everything to do with us, for when they hit the trail they immediately turned and rode towards us with bandanas over their faces and raised pistols in their hands.
When they were fifty yards away, I drew my pistol with my left hand and fired it into the ground in front of their horses and holstered it while raising my Sharps infantry rifle in my right hand and pointing it in their direction.
“Halt!” I yelled.
The gunshot and my defiant command caused them to pull up and cast a glance at each other, as if trying to decide what to do.
Perhaps thinking that Saul and I were easy marks, they made the wrong choice and split up while trying to outflank us on both sides.
“Drop your guns and you’ll live,” the man to Saul’s right yelled as they drew closer. “You’ve got money and we’re going to take it one way or the other!”
At 100-feet the man to my left fired a warning shot over my head.
“Drop the rifle!” he ordered.
While fighting in the war I had used this same rifle to drop a man at over 100 yards and then reloaded and re-fired in 10 seconds—too long for me to have a second chance if I missed with a man charging at me with a horse and a pistol.
At 50-feet a pistol isn’t likely to hit much of anything so I waited until the man was 50-feet away and dropped him with one shot from my rifle.
It was now my pistol and Saul’s against the other bandit and when he saw his friend fall it didn’t take long for him to see that the odds were no longer in his favor.
He hesitated for a moment too long, and by the time he turned tail and began to gallop away I had reloaded my rifle. I took aim, pulled the trigger, and dropped him with lead in his back at 150 feet.
As it turned out, Saul never had to fire a shot.
We draped the two men over their horses and led them five miles back to Fort Chadbourne.
The camp commander at the time was a Major Whitfield and we spent the rest of the day answering questions while being threatened with hanging if we couldn’t offer any evidence to support our story.
The two bandits turned out to be local wranglers and most of the locals took sides against us, threatening to lynch us both on the spot. And they might have done it if the man who ran the store hadn’t stepped up and said one of the wranglers had been standing behind us when we paid with the gold piece and he had seen the man, joined by another, follow us out of the camp soon after we left.
The Major was both the judge and jury in that place and when he decided we were free to go no one argued against it.
& & &
As we were preparing our horses for a mid-afternoon departure, a mounted patrol of twelve men returned from a brief foray to the north.
As they dismounted one of the men shouted excitedly, “Aaron! Aaron Lebeau! Is that you!”
I had previously introduced myself to the Major as the Rev. Martin Billings and Saul had shown his papers to confirm he was a slave and I was the man who owned him.
As the soldier approached with arms extended in greeting, I shot a nervous glance at Saul.
Saul did what he always does whenever he is angry, upset, or facing an uncertain situation—he broke into a grin.
Saul’s grin was not particularly helpful since I knew the soldier’s name as well as he knew mine—Johnny Blount, from Palo Pinto. His mother was the sister of the same Alfred Lane who had been killed by Indians on Cement Mountain the previous July. And Alfred’s widow—Johnny’s aunt—was the sister of Charles Goodnight who was known by everyone in North Texas as a cattleman and Ranger—a man destined to become even more famous after the war.
I couldn’t let on that I knew any of this, of course, and, fortunately, Johnny and I didn’t go back a long way, only three years previous when we signed up to serve at the same time, me for the army and Johnny for the cavalry.
“What are you doing out here?” Johnny said, but his smile faded as he slapped me on the back.
“Why aren’t you in uniform?” he asked. “You signed up same as me and you can’t get out of it unless you desert . . . or you’re dead . . . and you don’t look dead!”
Saul stepped up and did his best to set things right.
“Master Billings?” he began. “Who is this man and why is he telling such a lie about you?”
His boldness both shocked and offended everyone within hearing.
“Who owns this . . . this . . .”
Johnny couldn’t find the words, but he acted out his rage by drawing his saber and laying it against Saul’s neck while declaring, “If the man who owns this untrained fool doesn’t discipline him immediately, I’ll beat some manners into him myself!”
Things were not going well.
I stepped forward and gently pushed Saul back and away while trying to figure out how to turn the situation around. I had no idea how a minister should talk so I put on airs and tried to sound as pompous as possible.
“I am most sorry, sir,” I began, as I gently laid my hand on Johnny’s arm and helped lower his saber down to his side. “I have trained Saul to be my protector, but I fear he has overstepped his station. I assure you that at the proper time and place I shall see that he suffers for it.”
Johnny looked stunned and took a step backwards.
“What? You’re a slave owner now? What’s happened to you?”
“Clearly, I am not the man you take me to be,” I replied as quietly and politely as possible. “Please allow me to introduce myself: I am the Rev. Martin Billings of Shreveport.”
I offered a short bow and extended my right hand, but Johnny wasn’t fooled by the ruse and immediately turned to Major Whitfield and declared, “Listen to me, Sir, this ain’t no Reverend Billbeak or whoever it is he’s pretending to be. This is Aaron Lebeau from Clear River near Fort Belknap, near to where I’m from. And I’m willing to swear on the Bible that he’s a deserter and using this slave as a way to get to Mexico or across into Union territory.”
Major Whitfield turned to me and said, “Is this true what Corporal Blount is saying about you? It’s clear to me that one of you is either lying or mistaken. Which of these men are you? Aaron Lebeau? or Martin Billings?”
I was boxed in with no way of escape except to dig myself in even deeper.
“As I have said repeatedly, Major, my name is Martin Billings; I am a Methodist minister; I am the owner of a slave named Saul; and I hail from Shreveport, Louisiana. As for this man—Corporal Blount—I was not aware of his existence before today and if I bear a close resemblance to another man of his acquaintance, then I can but only feel sorry for his disappointment in learning that I am not the man he took me for.”
“If that’s true,” the Major replied, “—and I have no reason to doubt your word—then perhaps you could confirm your position by quoting some scripture for me?”
I was trapped by my own lie. I knew less about the Bible than a rooster knows about sawing wood.
Both the silence and the tension were broken by the voice of a man—a voice that was quiet yet firm, gentle yet commanding.
“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30.”
The words were beautifully spoken by Saul.
“Them’s the words I hold closest to my heart,” he declared while showing deference by lowering his eyes to the ground. “These words and so many more from the Bible were taught to me by Pastor Billings, who treats me like I’m a member of his congregation. Lord knows I can’t read nor write, but good Master Billings takes me by the hand and works those words into me until they’re engraved on my heart as deep as words carved into a tombstone. And when he’s done teaching me the words, he prays for my soul, because Master Billings believes there’s a corner of heaven set apart for poor cotton-pickers like me, isn’t that right, Master Billings?”
“Don’t believe him, Sir,” Johnny demanded as he pointed towards the rifle sheathed next to my saddle. “That there’s a Sharps infantry rifle and it’s a fine weapon for a Confederate foot soldier, but it’s not a carbine for someone riding a horse and it’s not something a minister ought to be carrying. It’s his own army-issue or he stole it from a dead Fed, you can count on it.”
“Master Billings?” Saul asked. “May I speak.”
I nodded to affirm the request.
“Major Whitfield, . . .Sir, . . . some of what the Corporal says is true, but he’s got it all tangled up. That rifle was issued to a soldier but it doesn’t belong to the pastor, it belongs to me. I followed my previous owner into the war when he volunteered, but he got himself killed over two years ago at Pea Ridge along with 2500 other brave Southern soldiers. When he fell along Telegraph Road, I picked up his rifle and helped take the road back from the Blues. But we run out of ammunition and had to retreat. After the battle I brought Master Garlamd’s body back to Shreveport. The widow Garland thanked me by letting me keep the rifle but when she sold me off to Pastor Billings, he said he didn’t want the rifle but after hearing my story he decided keep it locked up in a chiffereau in the manse attic.”
Johnny shook his head while Saul was talking but when Saul finished, the Major gave Saul a nod.
“My brother was at Pea Ridge,” he said, “and was with General McCulloch when he died. It was a sad day for the South when we lost Missouri.”
He paused for a moment as if overwhelmed by a flood of memories, perhaps recalling past ties with his brother or wondering where his brother was now or if he was still alive.
It turned out that at least some of what he was thinking had to do with me and the rifle.
“Pastor Billings, what I’d like to know is how you learned to shoot well enough to kill two men with an infantry rifle while sitting on a horse?”
The answer came to me easy-like and I sent a nod of thanks in Saul’s direction for setting things up so nice and sweet.
“I wasn’t always a pastor,” I said. “Like you and Saul and Corporal Blount, I was a boy, once, and Daddy taught me to shoot and hunt ducks, gators and swamp bears in the bayous where I grew up because my Mama was Acadian. And as for this here rifle that belongs to Saul, it’s the prettiest and deadliest thing I ever saw—quick to reload, light to carry, and easy to aim—even from a horse and even for a pastor who never shot a man until today, and who’s feeling right sorry for it.”
The Major listened, then closed his eyes, lost in thought again.
When he opened them, he’d made his decision:
“Corporal!” he said. “I want to thank you for your convincing argument about this man being a deserter with a different name. I have no doubt that you have spoken the truth as you believe it to be the truth.
“But,” he continued, “the testimony of this man who claims to be a minister named Billings, along with the testimony of his slave, has convinced me that what he says is also true, so I am of two minds about it.”
Here he paused again, but this time with his eyes open wide enough to look at Johnny, Saul, and me in turn, as if searching for something that might tip the scales as to whether we were true or false.
While shaking his head with a “No,” he gave his verdict.
“It’s a tie vote since I’m convinced both ways,” he said. “But I can’t hang a man just because he might be guilty so I’ve decided to wash my hands of it and let you go like I did before.
“And as for you, Sergeant Blount: For holding steadfast to what you believe to be true, I’m promoting you and naming you as our new Quartermaster.”
He then turned to Saul and me.
“Now git!” he commanded. “And if you shoot any more bandits, just let them lie where they fall and don’t even think about coming back. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!” I said with a full military salute.
The errant gesture probably convinced the Major that I was both a deserter and a fraud, but since he didn’t say anything, we were left free to ride out of Fort Chadbourne for the second time that day.
& & &
After we returned to the trail, we spent what was left of the afternoon looking over our shoulders and when we finally stopped for the night, we camped 100-yards away from the trail and tried to keep as invisible as possible by, once again, not lighting a fire.
Sound carries a long way at night on the prairie, so we didn’t talk much.
But that night, as we wrapped ourselves in our blankets to keep out the chill, there was something I had to say.
“Saul,” I whispered loudly enough to get his attention, “I want to say, ‘Thank you,’ for getting me out of trouble back at the fort. I owe you my life for it.”
“It was my life I was saving,” he whispered back. “They would have swung me right off long before they got around to you. But it’s only fair, ‘cause you saved my life this morning with just two shots, so I guess I own you my life, too.”
“So, we’re square?” I asked.
“We’re square,” he replied.
“Equal at last,” I smiled.
“If you say so,” Saul said.
“No,” I answered in a voice a bit too loud. “It doesn’t work that way. If you give me the power to make you my equal, you’re also giving me the power to take it away. If you’re going to be equal to me it’s going to have to be a decision that you make—something that you claim for yourself as your right. It has nothing to do with whether I agree with it . . . so, . . . are we equal or not?”
“Equal,” he said.
& & &
The next morning, we crossed the North Concho at Grape Creek, and several days later forded the Pecos at Horsehead Crossing.
We were now in territory that had been under the control of the Union since May of 1862, when troops from California marched across Arizona and New Mexico, forcing the Confederate army in El Paso to retreat all the way back to San Antonio.
That night, when we were sitting around a mesquite campfire, we got to talking more than we had since the day we first met.
“Saul?”
“Yes?”
“I was thinking about Fort Chadbourne and what you said about being at Pea Ridge.”
Saul didn’t say anything so I kept on.
“You said your owner was killed and that you helped fight off the Union boys and I was wondering if any of that was true?”
“Some of it,” he said.
“You were there?”+
“Yes.”
“And you picked up a rifle and fired it during the fight?”
“I fired one shot. That’s all.”
I sat quietly for a time, considering why he only shot once, and wondering who he had been aiming at.
“Why didn’t your cross over and escape?”
Saul looked at me for long time as if trying to decide how to answer.
“Two reasons,” he said at last. “I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Willa alone and never seeing her again.”
“And the other reason?”
“Because with Master Garland dead, I had to walk near 300-miles back to Shreveport with shackles on my feet. It took six months to heal from where the iron wore away my skin, clear down to the bone.”
For a time, we sat quietly, watching and listening to the crackling and popping of the fire.
“God forgive me,” Saul said at last as he broke the silence. “I told that Major enough lies to fill a bucket and I’m not inclined to add any more to it.”
I nodded, knowing that my bucket was every bit as full as his.
As the fire burned low, I decided to see if I could change the subject.
“What do you dream about?” I asked.
Saul must have felt like talking because he opened up and went on for a fair spell.
“Sometimes,” he whispered, “I dream I’m a boy back on the Shreveport plantation, laughing and running and chasing after Willa when she was a girl and then, just when I’m about to catch her, a bird larger than the largest eagle casts a dark shadow over everything, and in the darkness I feel it swoop down close by and I hear Willa cry out and when the darkness passes, she’s gone. And after—when I wake up—I remember she’s dead and I’ll never see her again, unless it’s in heaven.”
What he said made me feel uncomfortable enough to try and change the subject, again.
“I thought that maybe you’d be dreaming about being a free man in California,” I said. “Would’ve thought you’d be making plans for what you’re going to do when you get there.”
“No,” he answered, “I don’t dream about being free. Not anymore. To be honest, I don’t right care about it much one way or the other—at least not without Willa. My freedom means nothing to me without her. I know it sounds all confused but I’m sore tempted to go back to being a slave again rather than to live free when Willa never had the chance.”
I nodded and said, “I understand,” but I didn’t . . .not really . . . in fact, I didn’t understand it at all.
& & &
From Horsehead Crossing to the now-deserted southern Fort Davis and from there all the way to El Paso, the trail grew to be as busy as any Main Street you’d find in St. Louis, New Orleans, or Oklahoma City—at least that’s how it seemed to us after the less-traveled trail we’d been riding for the past week or so.
Now, as we met the Rio Grande and turned upriver, there were cattle being moved from one place to another, wagons carrying settlers and crops, and, as we drew closer to El Paso, there were Union troops riding and marching around with nothing much to do except to look as neat and trim as possible in their dust-covered blue uniforms.
We quickly found the only thing in El Paso worth noting was the military compound at Fort Sill. Nearly everything surrounding it served to support the soldiers and officers stationed there.
More sprawling was the older, more established town of El Paso del Norte on the Mexican side of the river.
Mexico was having its own problems at the time.
Seven months before we arrived in El Paso, the French forced Benito Juárez, the elected President of Mexico, into exile and installed Maximillian, the younger brother of the Emperor of Austria, as the country’s puppet Emperor. The town we now entered would later be renamed Ciudad Juárez in honor of the man who eventually led Mexico to its triumphant return as a democratic republic.
The reason Saul breathed a sigh of relief as we crossed the river was because Mexico had abolished slavery in 1820 and had completely eliminated it by 1829. Even more significant for American slaves like Saul, there was no fugitive slave agreement between Mexico and the United States, which meant fugitive slaves became legally free when they crossed the border, as long as they stayed in Mexico.
On the American side, even though it was controlled by Union troops and subject to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Saul’s status was unclear since Texas remained a slave state until June 19th (“Juneteenth”) the following summer.
Once we were in El Paso del Norte, it didn’t take long before we found my brother and his family living among a growing community of west Texas Confederate expatriates.
Hugh had found employment managing Mexican properties and businesses owned by James Wiley Magoffin, a man whose business interests on the American side of the river had been confiscated after he withdrew to San Antonio along with the Confederacy.
Hugh never took too kindly to Saul and treated him as less than a man, but both Saul and I enjoyed the relatively peaceful mix of blacks, whites, and browns that stirred the Mexican melting pot along the border during the final months of the War.
With Saul already a free man in Mexico and soon to be free on both sides of the border neither of us could find any reason to continue on to California, so neither of us ever got there.
Postscript
Because of Saul, my sympathies increasingly inclined towards the Union cause, which eventually grew into an unbridgeable rift between Hugh and me—a chasm wide enough to give me a reason to return to the Clear River property when the war finally came to an end.
Because he had no place else to call home, Saul came with me and, after a year building up a small herd of cattle, we joined Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving on their second great cattle drive in 1867—drives which led to the founding of the Goodnight-Loving Trail from Fort Belknap to Horsehead Crossing and then north to Colorado and beyond to Wyoming.
The 1867 drive never got past Horsehead Crossing where we were attacked by a band of Comanches. The herd was scattered and Loving was wounded in the attack, later dying from the resulting infection.
On the 1868 drive I was surprised to find I had been partnered with Johnny Blount, the soldier at Fort Chadbourne who had accused me of being a deserter. During the drive, Johnny and I shared enough hard times and good laughs to last a lifetime. By the time we got back to Clear River we were best friends and stayed that way for the rest of our lives.
Saul found friends of his own while on the trail, and it wasn’t long before nearly 1/3 of the cowhand crews driving the herds in the West were made up of freed slaves.
In 1867, after the disaster at Horsehead Crossing, Saul, at the age of 36, quit droving and signed up with the Ninth U.S. Cavalry, a unit made up of former slaves who became known as “Buffalo Soldiers.”
Ironically, his first posting was to the newly restored Fort Davis in southwest Texas, a fort which had been empty and abandoned when we had ridden past it three years earlier.
There’s more to tell, of course, but enough is enough.
And this is enough.
* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright James A. Tweedie 2024
