He handed Stuart the order with a hearty laugh.

"It's all right, my boy. I've been young myself. Good luck."

Stuart's laughter rang clear and hearty.

"Thank you, Colonel. You had me scared."

He had just turned to leave the room when a messenger handed Sumner a telegram.

Stuart paused to hear the message.

"Bad news, Lieutenant."

"What, sir?"

"An attack has been made on the Southern settlement on the Pottawattomie."

"A drunken fight—"

"No. Wilkinson, the member of the Legislature from Miami County, was taken from his house in the night and murdered."

"The story's a fake," Stuart ventured.

"The man who sent this message doesn't make such mistakes."

He paused and studied the telegram.

"No. This means the beginning of a blood feud. The time's ripe for it."

"We'll have better news to-morrow," Stuart hoped.

"We'll have worse. I've been looking for something like this since the day I heard old Brown harangue a mob at Lawrence."

He stopped short.

"You'll have to give me back that order, my boy."

Stuart's face fell.

"Colonel, I've just got to see that girl, if it's only for a day—"

He slowly handed the order back to the Commandant. Sumner watched the red blood mount to Stuart's face with a look of sympathy.

"Is it as bad as that, boy?"

"It couldn't be worse, sir," Stuart admitted in low tones. "I'm a goner."

"All right. You've no time to lose, I'll give you three days—"

"Thank you!"

"This regiment will be on the march before a week has passed or I miss my guess."

"I'll be here, sir!" was the quick response.

Stuart grasped the leave of absence and hurried out before another messenger could arrive.

He reached Fort Riley the following day and had but twenty-four hours in which to crowd the most important event of his life.

He paced the floor in Colonel Cooke's reception room awaiting Flora's appearance with eager impatience. What on earth could be keeping her? He asked himself the question fifty times and looked at his watch a dozen times before he heard the rustle of organdy on the stairs.

A vision of radiant youth! She had taken time to make her beauty still more radiant with the daintiest touches to her blonde hair.

The simple dress she wore was a poem. The young cavalier was stunned anew. There was no doubt about the welcome in her smile and voice. It thrilled him to his fingertips. He held her hand until she drew it away with a little self-conscious laugh that was confusing to Stuart's plan of direct action.

There was a touch of the Southern girl's conscious poise and coquetry in the laugh. There was something aloof in it that meant trouble. He felt it with positive terror. He didn't have time to fence for position. He was in no mood for a flirtation. He had come to speak the deep things.

She led him to a seat with an air of dignity and reserve that alarmed him still more. He had taken too much for granted perhaps. There might be another man. Conceited fool! He hadn't thought it possible. Her manner had been so frank, so utterly sincere.

She sat by his side smiling at him in the bewitching way so many pretty girls had done before, when they merely wished to play with love.

He spoke in commonplaces and studied her with increasing panic. Her tactics baffled him. Until at last he believed he had solved the riddle! She had suddenly waked to the fact, as he had, that she had met her fate. She was drawing back for a moment in fright at the seriousness of surrender.

"Yes, that's it!" he murmured half aloud.

"What did you say?" she asked archly.

And his heart sank again. She asked the question with a tone of teasing that made him blush in spite of himself.

With sudden resolution he decided to make the plunge.



CHAPTER XX

Stuart succeeded in securing from Colonel Sumner a leave of absence of two weeks to visit Fort Riley. The Colonel suspected the truth and teased the gallant youngster until he confessed.

He handed Stuart the order with a hearty laugh.

"It's all right, my boy. I've been young myself. Good luck."

Stuart's laughter rang clear and hearty.

"Thank you, Colonel. You had me scared."

He had just turned to leave the room when a messenger handed Sumner a telegram.

Stuart paused to hear the message.

"Bad news, Lieutenant."

"What, sir?"

"An attack has been made on the Southern settlement on the Pottawattomie."

"A drunken fight—"

"No. Wilkinson, the member of the Legislature from Miami County, was taken from his house in the night and murdered."

"The story's a fake," Stuart ventured.

"The man who sent this message doesn't make such mistakes."

He paused and studied the telegram.

"Dee double dare you."

"He said that you're a sad product of Sir Walter Scott's novels, a singing, rollicking, flirting, lazy young cavalier."

"Didn't say lazy."

"No."

"I thought not."

"I added that for good measure."

"I thought so."

"And he warned me that there might be a streak of the old Stuart purple blood in your veins that might make you silly for life—"

"Didn't say silly."

"No, I added that, too."

Stuart again seized the hand she had deftly withdrawn. He pressed it tenderly and sought the depths of her blue eyes.

"Ah, honey girl," he cried passionately, "don't tease me any more, please! I've got to leave you in a few hours. My regiment is going to march. It may be a serious business. You're a brave soldier's daughter and you're going to be a soldier's bride."

The girl's lips quivered for the first time and her voice trembled the slightest bit as she fought for self-control.

"I'll never marry a soldier."

"You will!"

"My daddy's never at home. I promised my mother never to look at a soldier."

"You're looking at me, dear heart!"

She turned quickly.

"I won't—"

Stuart drew her suddenly into his arms and kissed her.

"I love you, Flora! And you're mine."

She looked into his eyes, smiled, slipped both arms around his neck and kissed him.

"And I love you, my foolish, singing, laughing boy!"

"Always?"

"Always."

"And you'll marry me?"

"You couldn't get away from me if you tried."

She drew him down and kissed him again.

"The shadow will always be in my heart, dear soldier man. The shadow of the day I shall lose you! But it's life. I'll face it with a smile."

Through the long, sweet hours of the day and deep into the night they held each other's hand, and talked and laughed and dreamed and planned.

What mattered the shadow that was slowly moving across the sunlit earth? It was the morning of life!



CHAPTER XXI

The eight men engaged in the remarkable enterprise on the Pottawattomie, led by their indomitable Captain, mounted their stolen horses and boldly rode to the camp of the military company commanded by John Brown, Jr. The father planned to make his stand behind these guns if pursued by formidable foes.

Brown reached the camp of the Rifles near Ottawa Jones' farm at midnight. The fires still burned brightly. To his surprise he found that the news of the murders had traveled faster than the stolen horses.

The camp was demoralized.

John Brown, Jr., had been forced to resign as Captain and H. H. Williams had been elected in his stead.

The reception which the County was giving his inspired deed stunned the leader. He had expected a reign of terror. But the terror had seized his own people. He was compelled to lie and deny his guilt except to his own flesh and blood. Even before his sons he was arraigned with fierce condemnation.

On the outer edge of the panic-stricken camp his sons, Jason and John, Jr., faced him with trembling and horror in their voices.

Jason had denounced the first hint of the plan when the surveyor's scheme was broached. John, Jr. had refused to move a step on the expedition. The two sons confronted their father with determined questions. He shifted and evaded the issue.

Jason squared himself and demanded:

"Did you kill those men?"

"I did not," was the sharp answer.

The son held his shifting eye by the glare of the camp fire.

"Did you have anything to do with the killing of those men?"

To his own he would not lie longer. It wasn't necessary. His reply was quick and unequivocal.

"I did not do it. But I approved it."

"It was the work of a beast."

"You cannot speak to me like that, sir!" the old man growled.

"And why not?"

"I am your father, sir!"

"That's why I tell you to your face that you have disgraced every child who bears your name—now—and for all time. What right had you to put this curse upon me? The devils in hell would blush to do what you have done!"

The father lifted his hand as if to ward a blow and bored his son through with a steady stare.

"God is my judge—not you, sir!"

John Brown, Jr., sided with his brother in the attack but with less violence. His feebler mind was already trembling on the verge of collapse.

"It cuts me to the quick," the old man finally answered, "that my own people should not understand that I had to make an example of these men—"

Jason finally shrieked into his ears:

"Who gave you the authority of Almighty God to sit in judgment upon your fellow man, condemn him without trial and slay without mercy?"

The father threw up both hands in a gesture of disgust and walked from the scene. He spent the night without sleep, wandering through the woods and fields.

Three days later while Brown and his huntsmen were still hiding in the timber, the people of his own settlement at Osawatomie held a public meeting which was attended by the entire male population. They unanimously adopted resolutions condemning in the bitterest terms the deed.

When the old man heard of these resolutions he ground his teeth in rage. He had thought to sweep the Territory with a Holy War in a Sacred Cause. He expected the men who hated Slavery to applaud his Blood Offering to the God of Freedom. Instead they had hastened to array themselves with his foes.

Something had gone wrong in the execution of his divine vision. His mind was stunned for the moment. But he was wrestling again with God in prayer, while the avengers were riding to demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

When the true history of man is written it will be the record of mind not the story of the physical acts which follow the mental process.

The dangers of society are psychological, not physical. The crucial moments of human history are not found in the hours in which armies charge. They are found in the still small voices that whisper in the silence of the night to a lone watcher by the fireside. They are found in the words of will that follow hours of silent thought behind locked doors or under the stars.

The story of man's progress, his relapses to barbarism, his victories, his failures, his years of savage cruelties, his eras of happiness and sorrow, must be written at last in terms of mental states.

John Brown's mind had conceived and executed the series of murders that shocked even a Western frontier. His mind enacted the tragedy days before the actual happening.

And it was the state of mind created by the deed that upset all his calculations. The reaction was overwhelming. He was correct in his faith that a blood feud once raised, all appeal to reason and common sense, all appeal to law, order, tradition, religion would be vain babble. But he had failed to gauge the moral sense of his own party. They had not yet accepted the theory which he held with such passionate conviction.

Brown's moral code was summed up in one passage from the Bible which he quoted and brooded over daily:

"WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD THERE IS NO REMISSION OF SINS."

But he had made a mistake in the spot chosen for rousing the Blood Feud. Men had instantly seen red. They sprang to their arms. They leaped as tigers leap on their prey. But his own people were the prey. He had miscalculated the conditions of frontier life, though he had not yet realized it. His stubborn, restless mind clung to the idea that the stark horror of the crimes which he had committed in the name of Liberty would call at last all men who stood for Freedom.

He held his armed band in camp under the sternest discipline to await this call of the blood.

The Southern avengers who swarmed across the Missouri border into the region of Osawatomie accepted Brown's standards of justice and mercy without question. A few men of education among them were the only restraining influence.

Through these exciting days the old man would show himself at daylight in different places removed from his camp in the woods. While squadrons of avengers were scouring the ravines, the river bottoms and the tangled underbrush, he was lying quietly on his arms. Sometimes his pursuers camped within hearing and got their water from the same spring.

With all his indomitable courage he was unable to rally sufficient men to afford protection to his people. He was a fugitive from justice with a price on his head. Yet, armed and surrounded by a small band of faithful followers, he led a charmed life.

His deed on the Pottawattomie made murder the chief sport of the unhappy Territory. The life of the frontier was reduced to anarchy. Outrages became so common it was impossible to record them. Murder was a daily incident. Many of them passed in secret. Many were not revealed for days and weeks after they had been committed—then, only by the discovery of the moldering remains of the dead. Two men were found hanging on a tree near Westport. They were ill-fated Free State partisans who had fallen by the hand of the avengers. The troops buried them in a grave so shallow that the prairie wolves had half devoured them before they were again found and re-buried.

The Free Soil men organized guerrilla bands for retaliation. John E. Cook, a daring young adventurer, the brother-in-law of Governor Willard of Indiana, early distinguished himself in this work. He put himself at the head of a group of twenty young "Cavalry Scouts" who ranged the country, asking no quarter and giving none.

A squadron of avengers invaded Brown's settlement at Osawatomie, sacked and partly destroyed it, and killed his son, Frederick, whose mind had been in a state of collapse since the night of the murders on the Pottawattomie.

John Brown rallied a group of sympathizers and fought a pitched battle with the invaders but was defeated with bloody losses and compelled to retreat.

He was followed by Deputy United States Marshal, Henry C. Pate. Brown turned and boldly attacked Pate's camp and another battle ensued. The Deputy Marshal, wishing to avoid useless bloodshed, sent out a flag of truce and asked an interview with the guerrilla commander. Brown answered promptly, advanced and sent for Pate.

Pate, trusting the flag of truce, approached the old man.

"I am addressing the Captain in command?" Pate asked.

"You are, sir."

"Then let me announce that I am a Deputy United States Marshal."

"And why are you fighting us?"

"I have no desire for bloodshed, sir. I am acting under the orders of the Marshal of the Territory."

"And what does the Marshal demand?"

"The arrest of the men for whom I have warrants."

Pate had never seen John Brown and had no idea that he was talking to the old man himself.

"I have a proposition to make," he went on.

"I'll have no proposals from you, sir," Brown announced shortly. "I demand your surrender."

"I am an officer of the law. I cannot surrender to armed outlaws."

Brown's metallic voice quivered.

"I demand your immediate and unconditional surrender!"

"I have the right to retire under a flag of truce and consider your proposition with my men—"

Pate started to go and Brown stood in front of him.

"You're not going."

"You will violate a flag of truce?"

Brown signaled his men to advance and surround Pate.

"You're not going, sir," he repeated.

"I claim my rights under a flag of truce accepted by you for this parley. An Indian respects that flag."

Brown pointed to his men who were standing within the sound of their voices.

"Order those men to surrender."

Pate folded his arms and remained silent.

Brown placed his revolver at the Deputy Marshal's breast and shouted.

"Tell your men to lay down their arms!"

Pate refused to speak. There was a moment's deadly silence and the Marshal's posse, to save the life of their Captain, threw down their guns and the whole party were made prisoners.

The United States Cavalry at Fort Leavenworth were ordered to the scene to rescue the Deputy Marshal and his men.



CHAPTER XXII

The bugles at Fort Leavenworth sounded Boots and Saddles for the march on Brown and his guerrillas. The barracks were early astir with the excitement. Stern work might be ahead. Outlaws who would dare violate a flag of truce, to take a United States Marshal and his posse would have no more respect for cavalry. The men and officers were tired of disorder. They were eager for a stand up and knock down fight. They expected it and they were ready for it.

Stuart's bride was crying. In spite of her young husband's gay banter, she persisted in being serious.

"There's no danger, honey girl!" he laughed.

She touched the big cavalry pistol in its holster, her lips still trembling.

"No—you're just galloping off on a picnic."

"That's all it will be—"

"Then you can take me with you."

Stuart's brow clouded.

"Well, no, not just that kind of a picnic."

"There may be a nasty fight and you know it."

"Nonsense."

"It may, too."

"Don't be silly, little bride," he pleaded. "You're a soldier's wife now. The bullet hasn't been molded that's going to get me. I feel it. I know it."

She threw her arms around his neck and held him in a long silence. Only a sob broke the stillness. He let her cry. His arms merely tightened their tender hold, as he caressed her fair head and kissed it.

"There, there, now. That's enough. It's hard, this first parting. It's hard for me. You mustn't make it harder."

"We've just begun to live, dearest," she faltered. "I can't let you go. I can't stand it for an hour and you'll be gone for days and days—"

She paused and sobbed.

"Why did I marry a soldier-man?"

"You had to, honey. It was fate. God willed it."

He spoke with deep reverence. She lifted her lips for his goodbye kiss.

He turned quickly to go and she caught him again and smothered him with kisses.

"I can't help it, darling man," she sobbed. "I didn't mean to make it hard for you—but—I've an awful presentiment that I shall lose you—"

Her voice died again in a pathetic whisper.

Stuart laughed softly and kissed the tears from her eyes.

"So has every soldier's wife, honey girl. The silly old presentiment is overworked. It will pass bye and bye—when you see me coming home so many, many times to play that old banjo for you and sing our songs over again."

She shook her head and smiled.

"Go now—quick," she said, "before I break down again."

He swung out the door, his sword clanking and his arm waving. She watched him from the window, crying. She saw him mount his horse with a graceful swing. His figure on horseback was superb. Horse and man seemed one.

He looked over his shoulder, saw her at the window and waved again. She ran to her room, closed the door, took his picture to bed with her and cried herself to sleep.

The thing that had so worried her was that Colonel Sumner was taking Major Sedgwick with him for conference and a single squadron of fifty men under Stuart's command. The little bride had found out that he was the sole leader of the fifty fighting men and her quick wit had sensed the danger of the possible extermination of such a force in a battle with desperadoes. She was ashamed of her breakdown. But she knew her man was brave and that he loved a fight. She would count the hours until his return.

Brown rallied a hundred and fifty men when the squadron of cavalry was ordered to the rescue of Pate and his posse. He entrenched himself on an island in Middle Ottawa Creek and from this stronghold raided and robbed the stores within range of his guerrillas. On June 3rd, he successfully looted the store of J. M. Bernard at Centropolis and secured many valuables, particularly clothing.

The raiding party was returning from the looted store as Stuart's cavalry troop was approaching Brown's camp.

The cavalry arrived in the nick of time. A battle was imminent that might have ended in a massacre. Within striking distance of Brown's island Colonel Sumner encountered General Whitfield, a Southern Member of Congress, at the head of a squadron of avengers, two hundred and fifty strong, heavily armed and well mounted.

Sumner acted with quick decision. He confronted Whitfield and spoke with a quiet emphasis not to be mistaken:

"By order of the President of the United States and the Governor of the Territory, I am here to disperse all armed bodies assembled without authority."

"May I see the order of the President, sir?" Whitfield asked.

"You may."

The telegraphic order was handed to the leader. He read it in silence and handed it back without a word.

Colonel Sumner continued:

"My duty is plain and I'll do it."

He signaled Stuart to draw up his company for action. The Lieutenant promptly obeyed. Fifty regulars wheeled and faced two hundred and fifty rugged horsemen of the plains.

Whitfield consulted his second in command and while they talked Colonel Sumner again addressed him:

"Ask your people to assemble. I wish to read to them the President's order and the Governor's proclamation."

Whitfield called his men. In solemn tones Sumner read the documents. Whitfield saw that his men were impressed.

"I shall not resist the authority of the General Government. My party will disperse."

He promptly ordered them to disband. In five minutes they had disappeared.

On the approach of the company of cavalry, John Brown, with a single guard, walked boldly forward to meet them.

Colonel Sumner heard his amazing request with rising wrath. He spoke as one commanding a body of coordinate power.

"I have come to suggest the arrangement of terms between our forces," Brown coolly suggested.

"No officer of law, sir," Sumner sternly replied, "can make terms with lawless, armed men. I am here to execute the orders of the President. You will surrender your prisoners immediately, disarm your men and disperse or take the consequences."

Brown turned without a word and slowly walked back to his camp. The United States cavalry followed close at his heels with drawn sabers, Stuart at their head.

Colonel Sumner summoned Brown before Sedgwick and Stuart and made to him an announcement which he thought but fair.

"I must tell you now that there is with my company a Deputy United States Marshal, who holds warrants for several men in your camp. Those warrants will be served in my presence."

Brown's glittering eye rested on the Deputy Marshal. He moved uneasily and finally said in a low tone:

"I don't recognize any one for whom I have warrants."

The grim face of the man of visions never relaxed a muscle.

Sumner turned to the Deputy indignantly.

"Then what are you here for?"

He made no answer. And Stuart laughed in derision.

During this tense moment the keen blue eyes of the Lieutenant of cavalry studied John Brown with the interest of a soldier in the man who knows not fear.

At first glance he was a sorry figure. He was lean and gaunt and looked taller than he was for that reason. His face was deeply sun tanned and seamed. He looked a rough, hard-working old farmer. The decided stoop of his shoulders gave the exaggerated impression of age. His face was shaved. He wore a coarse cotton shirt, a clean one that had just been stolen from Bernard's store. It was partly covered by a vest. His hat was an old slouched felt, well worn. In general appearance he was dilapidated, dusty, and soiled.

The young officer was too keen a judge of character to be deceived by clothes on a Western frontier. The dusty clothes and worn hat he scarcely saw. It was the terrible mouth that caught and held his imagination. It was the mouth of a relentless foe. It was the mouth of a man who might speak the words of surrender when cornered. But he could no more surrender than he could jump out of his skin.

Stuart was willing to risk his life on a wager that if he consented to lay down his arms, he had more concealed and that he would sleep on them that night in the brush.

The low forehead and square, projecting chin caught and held his fancy. It was the jaw and chin of the fighting animal. No man who studied that jaw would care to meet it in the dark.

But the thing that had put the Deputy out of commission as warrant officer of the Government was the old man's strange, restless eyes. Stuart caught their steel glitter with a sense of the uncanny. He had never seen a human eye that threw at an enemy a look quite so disconcerting. He had laughed at the Deputy's fear to move with fifty dragoons to back him. There was some excuse for it. Back of those piercing points of steel-blue light were one hundred and fifty armed followers. What would happen if he should turn to these men and tell them to fight the cavalry of the United States? It was an open question.

The old man walked toward his men with wiry, springing step.

The prisoners were released.

Stuart shook hands with Pate, who was a Virginian and a former student of the University.

Brown's men laid down their arms and dispersed.

True to Stuart's surmise he did not move far from his entrenched camp. He anticipated a fake surrender to the troops. He had concealed weapons for the faithful but half a mile away. With Weiner he built a new camp fire before Stuart's cavalry had moved two miles.



CHAPTER XXIII

The man with the slouched hat and coarse cotton shirt lost no time in grieving over the dispersal of his one hundred and fifty men. It was the largest force he had ever assembled. His experience in the three days in which he had acted as their commander had greatly angered him. The frontiersman who failed to come under the spell of Brown's personality by direct contact generally refused to obey his orders.

The crowd of free rangers which his fight with Pate had gathered proved themselves beyond control. They raided the surrounding country without Brown's knowledge.

They stole from friend and foe with equal impartiality. There was one consolation in his surrender to the United States troops. He got rid of these troublesome followers. They had already robbed him of the spoils of his own successful raids and not one of them had shown any inclination to bring in the enemies' goods for common use.

He began to choose the most faithful among them for a scheme of wider scope and more tragic daring. He was not yet sure of his plan. But God would reveal it clearly.

He spent a week at his new camp in the woods wandering alone, dreaming, praying, weighing this new scheme from every point of view.

His mind came back again and again to the puzzle of the failure to raise a National Blood Feud.

For a moment his indomitable Puritan soul was discouraged. He had obeyed the command of his God. He could not have been mistaken in the voice which spoke from Heaven:

"WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD THERE IS NO REMISSION OF SINS."

He had laid the Blood Offering on God's altar counting his own life as of no account in the reckoning and from that hour he had been a fugitive from justice, hiding in the woods. He had escaped arrest only by the accidental assembling of a mob of a hundred and fifty disorderly fools who had stolen his own goods before they had been dispersed.

Instead of the heroic acclaim to which the deed entitled him, his own flesh and blood had cursed him, one of his sons had been shot and another was lying in prison a jibbering lunatic.

Would future generations agree with the men who had met in his own town and denounced his deed as cruel, gruesome and revolting?

His stolid mind refused to believe it. Through hours of agonizing prayer the new plan, based squarely on the vision that sent him to Pottawattomie, began to fix itself in his soul.

This time he would chose his disciples from the elect. Only men tried in the fires of Action could be trusted. Of five men he was sure. His son, Owen, he knew could be depended on without the shadow of turning. Yet Oliver was the second disciple chosen. He had forgiven the boy for the fight over the pistol and had taken pains to regain his complete submission. John Henry Kagi was the third chosen disciple, a young newspaper reporter of excellent mind and trained pen. He had been captured by United States troops in Kansas as a guerrilla raider and was imprisoned first at Lecompton and then at Tecumseh. The fourth disciple selected was Aaron Dwight Stevens, an ex-convict from the penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth. Stevens was by far the most daring and interesting figure in the group. His knowledge of military tactics was destined to make him an invaluable aide. The uncanny in Brown's spirit had appealed to his imagination from the day he made his escape from the penitentiary and met the old man. The fifth disciple chosen was John E. Cook, a man destined to play the most important role in the new divine mission with the poorest qualification for the task. Born of a well-to-do family in Haddon, Connecticut, he had studied law in Brooklyn and New York. He dropped his studies against the protest of his people in 1855, and, driven by the spirit of adventure, found his way into Kansas and at last led his band of twenty guerrillas into John Brown's camp. Brown's attention was riveted on him from the day they met. He was a man of pleasing personality and the finest rifle shot in Kansas. He was genial; he was always generous; He was brave to the point of recklessness; and he was impulsive, indiscreet and utterly reckless when once bent on a purpose. His sister had married Willard, the Governor of Indiana.

Brown's new plan required a large sum of money. With the prestige his fighting in Kansas had given him, he believed the Abolition philanthropists of the East would give this sum. He left his disciples to drill and returned East to get the money.

In Boston his success was genuine, although the large amount which he asked was slow in coming.

The old man succeeded in deceiving his New England friends completely as to the Pottawattomie murders. On this event he early became a cheerful, consistent and successful liar. This trait of his character had been fully developed in his youth. Everywhere he was acclaimed by the pious as, "Captain Brown, the old partisan hero of Kansas warfare."

His magnetic, uncanny personality rarely failed to capture the dreamer and the sentimentalist. Sanborn, Howe, Theodore Parker, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, George L. Stearns and Gerrit Smith became his devoted followers. He even made Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison his friends.

Garrison met him at Theodore Parker's. The two men were one on destroying Slavery: Garrison, the pacifist; Brown, the man who believed in bloodshed as the only possible solution of all the great issues of National life. Brown quoted the Old Testament; Garrison, the New.

He captured the imagination of Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

He was raising funds for another armed attack on Slavery in Kansas. The sentimentalists asked no questions. And if hard-headed business men tried to pry too closely into his plans, they found him a past master in the art of keeping his own counsel.

He struck a snag when he appealed to the National Kansas Committee for a gift of rifles and an appropriation of five thousand dollars. They voted the rifles on conditions. But a violent opposition developed against giving five thousand dollars to a man about whose real mind they knew so little.

H. B. Hurd, the Chairman of the Committee, had suspected the purpose back of his pretended scheme for operations in Kansas. He put to Brown the pointblank question and demanded a straight answer.

"If you get these guns and the money you desire, will you invade Missouri or any slave territory?"

The old man's reply was characteristic. He spoke with a quiet scorn.

"I am no adventurer. You all know me. You are acquainted with my history. You know what I have done in Kansas. I do not expose my plans. No one knows them but myself, except perhaps one. I will not be interrogated. If you wish to give me anything, I want you to give it freely. I have no other purpose but to serve the cause of Liberty."

His answer was not illuminating. It contained nothing the Committee wished to know. The statement that they knew him was a figure of speech. They had read partisan reports of his fighting and his suffering in Kansas—through his own letters, principally. How much truth these letters contained was something they wished very much to find out. He had given no light.

He declared that they knew what he had done in Kansas. This was the one point on which they needed most light.

The biggest event in the history of Kansas was the deed on the Pottawattomie. In the fierce political campaign that was in progress its effects had been neutralized by denials. Brown had denied his guilt on every occasion.

Yet as they studied his strange personality more than one member of the Committee began to suspect him as the only man in the West capable of the act.

The Committee refused to vote the rifles and compromised on the money by making a qualification that would make the gift of no service. They voted the appropriation, "in aid of Captain John Brown in any defensive measures that may become necessary." He was authorized to draw five hundred dollars when he needed it for this purpose.

The failure rankled in the old man's heart and he once more poured out the vials of his wrath on all politicians,—North and South.

For months he became an incessant and restless wanderer throughout New York and the New England States.

He finally issued a general appeal for help through the New York Tribune and other friendly papers.

The contributions came slowly. The invitations to speak came slower. At Collinsville, Connecticut, however, after his lecture he placed with Charles Blair, a blacksmith and forge-master, an important secret order for a thousand iron pikes. Blair pledged his loyalty. He received his first payment on account, for a stand of weapons destined to become souvenirs in marking the progress of civilization in the new world.

In the midst of his disappointing canvas for funds he received a letter from his son, Jason, that a Deputy United States Marshal had passed through Cleveland on the way East with a warrant for his arrest for the Pottawattomie murders.

On the receipt of this news he wrote his friend, Eli Thayer:

"One of the U. S. hounds is on my track: and I have kept myself hid for a few days to let my track get cold. I have no idea of being taken: and intend (if God will) to go back with Irons in rather than upon my hands. I got a fine lift in Boston the other day; and hope Worcester will not be entirely behind. I do not mean you; or Mr. Alien & Company."

So dangerous was the advent of the U. S. Marshal from Kansas that Brown took refuge in an upper room in the house of Judge Russell in Boston and remained in hiding an entire week. Mrs. Russell acted as maid and allowed no one to open the front door except herself during the time of his stay.

The Judge's house was on a quiet street and his connection with the Abolition movement had been kept secret for political reasons. His services to their cause were in this way made doubly valuable.

Brown daily barricaded his door and told his hostess that he would not be taken alive. He added with the nearest approach to a smile ever seen on his face:

"I should hate to spoil your carpet, Madame."

While in hiding at Judge Russell's he composed a sarcastic farewell to New England. It is in his best style and true character as a poseur:

"Old Brown's Farewell: to the Plymouth Rock; Bunker Hill Monument; Charter Oaks; and Uncle Tom's Cabins.

"Has left for Kansas. Was trying since he came out of the Territory to secure an outfit; or, in other words, the means of arming and equipping thoroughly, his regular minute men, who are mixed up with the People of Kansas: and he leaves the States, with a deep feeling of sadness: that after exhausting his own small means: and with his family and his brave men: suffered hunger, nakedness, cold, sickness, (and some of them) imprisonment, with most barbarous and cruel treatment: wounds and death: that after laying on the ground for months; in the most unwholesome and sickly as well as uncomfortable places: with sick and wounded destitute of any shelter part of the time; dependent in part on the care, and hospitality of the Indians: and hunted like Wolves: that after all this; in order to sustain a cause, which every Citizen of this Glorious Republic, is under equal moral obligation to do: (and for the neglect of which HE WILL be held accountable TO GOD:) in which every Man, Woman and Child of the human family; has a deep and awful interest; and that no wages are asked or expected: he cannot secure (amidst all the wealth, luxury and extravagance of this 'Heaven exalted' people) even the necessary supplies for a common soldier. HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN?

"JOHN BROWN."

Following his usual tactics of interminable delays and restless, aimless wandering, it was the 7th of August before he reached Tabor, Iowa, the appointed rendezvous of his disciples.

Two days after his arrival the Free State election of the ninth of August was held in Kansas and the heavy vote polled was a complete triumph of the men of peace within the party. Kansas, in his absence, had settled down to the tried American plan of the ballot box for the decision of political disputes. Brown wrote Stearns a despairing letter. He was discouraged and utterly without funds. He begged for five hundred to one thousand dollars immediately for secret service and no questions asked. He promised interesting times in Kansas if he could secure this money. Of his disciples for the great coming deed but one had arrived at Tabor, his faithful son Owen. The old man lingered at Tabor with his religious friends until November before starting for Kansas.

Higginson, his chief backer in Massachusetts, was growing angry over his repeated delays and senseless inaction. Sanborn, always Brown's staunch defender, wrote Higginson a letter begging patience:

"You do not understand Brown's circumstances. He is as ready for revolution as any other man, and is now on the border of Kansas safe from arrest, prepared for action. But he needs money for his present expenses and active support.

"I believe that he is the best Dis-union champion you can find, and with his hundred men, when he is put where he can raise them and drill them (for he has an expert drill officer with him) WILL DO MORE TO SPLIT THE UNION than a list of 50,000 names for your Convention, good as that is.

"What I am trying to hint at is that the friends of Kansas are looking with strange apathy at a movement which has all the elements of fitness and success—a good plan, a tried leader, and a radical purpose. If you can do anything for it now, in God's name do it—and the ill results of the new policy in Kansas may be prevented."

The new policy in Kansas must be smashed at all hazards, of course. To the men who believed in bloodshed as the only rational way to settle political issues, the ballot box and the council table were the inventions of the Devil. It was the duty of the children of Light to send the Lord's Anointed with the Sword of Gideon to raise anew the Blood Feud.

It is evident from this letter of F. B. Sanborn to Higginson that even Sanborn had not penetrated the veil of the old Puritan's soul. The one to whom he had revealed his true plan was his faithful son in Kansas. The Territory was not the objective of this mission. It was only a feint to deceive friend and foe.

And he succeeded in doing it.

That his purpose was the disruption of the Union in a deluge of blood, Sanborn, of course, understood and approved. He was utterly mistaken as to the time and place and method which the Man of Visions had chosen for the deed.

On entering the Territory, now as peaceful as any State in the Union, Brown gathered his disciples, Oliver, Kagi, Stevens, and Cook and despatched them to Tabor, Iowa. Here they were informed for the first time of the real purpose of their organization—the invasion of Virginia and the raising of a servile insurrection in which her soil would be drenched in blood within sight of the Capitol at Washington. With Stevens, as drill master, they began the study of military tactics. They moved to Springdale and established their camp for the winter.



CHAPTER XXIV

Suddenly the old man left Springdale. He ordered his disciples to continue their drill until he should instruct them as to their next march.

Two weeks later he was in Rochester, New York, with Frederick Douglas. In a room in this negro's house Brown composed a remarkable document as a substitute for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

He hurried with his finished manuscript to the home of Gerrit Smith at Peterboro for a consultation with Smith, Sanborn, Higginson and Stearns.

Only Sanborn and Smith appeared. Brown outlined to them in brief his plan of precipitating a conflict by the invasion of the Black Belt of the South and the establishment of a negro empire. Its details were as yet locked in his own breast.

Smith and Sanborn discussed his plans and his Constitution for the Government of the new power. In spite of its absurdities they agreed to support him in the venture. Smith gave the first contribution which enabled him to call the convention of negroes and radicals at Chatham, Canada, to adopt the "Constitution."

Brown went all the way to Springdale, Iowa, to escort the entire body of his disciples to this convention. And they came across a continent with him—Stevens, Kagi, Cook, Owen Brown, and six new men whom he had added—Leeman, Tidd, Gill, Taylor, Parsons, Moffit and Realf.

Thirty-four negroes gathered with them. Among the negroes were Richard O. P. Anderson and James H. Harris of North Carolina.

The presiding officer was William C. Monroe, pastor of a negro church in Detroit. Kagi, the stenographer, was made Secretary of the Convention.

Brown addressed the gathering in an unique speech:

"For thirty years, my friends, a single passion has pursued my soul—to set at liberty the slaves of the South. I went to Europe in 1851 to inspect fortifications and study the methods of guerrilla warfare which have been successfully used in the old world. I have pondered the uprisings of the slaves of Rome, the deeds of Spartacus, the successes of Schamyl, the Circassian Chief, of Touissant L'Overture in Haiti, of the negro Nat Turner who cut the throats of sixty Virginians in a single night in 1831.

"I have developed a plan of my own to sweep the South. You must trust me with its details. I shall depend on the blacks for the body of my soldiers. And I expect every freedman in the North to flock to my standard when the blow has fallen. I know that every slave in the South will answer my call. The slaveholders we will not massacre unless we must. We will hold them as hostages for our protection and the protection of any prisoners who may fall into their hands."

The men listened in rapt attention and when he read his "Constitution and Preamble," it was unanimously adopted.

The Constitution which they adopted was a piece of insanity in the literal sense of the word, a confused medley of absurd, inapplicable forms.

The Preamble, however, which contained the keynote of Brown's philosophy of life, was expressed in clear-cut, logical ideas.

He read it in a cold, vibrant voice:

"Whereas, Slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States is none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens upon another portion: the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment, and hopeless servitude or absolute extermination, in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence: Therefore, we CITIZENS OF the UNITED STATES, and the OPPRESSED PEOPLE who by a RECENT DECISION of the SUPREME COURT ARE DECLARED to have NO RIGHTS WHICH the WHITE MAN is BOUND to RESPECT; TOGETHER WITH ALL OTHER PEOPLE DEGRADED by the LAWS THEREOF, DO, for the TIME BEING ORDAIN and ESTABLISH for OURSELVES, the FOLLOWING PROVISIONAL CONSTITUTION and ORDINANCES the BETTER to protect, our PERSONS, PROPERTY, LIVES and LIBERTIES: and to GOVERN our ACTION."

The first result of his Radical Convention was the exhaustion of his treasury. He had used his last dollar to bring his men on from the West and no money had been collected to pay even their return fares.

They were compelled to go to work at various trades to earn their bread. Brown determined to return to Kansas and create a sensation that would again stir the East and bring the money into his treasury. He would at the same time test the first principle of his plan by an actual raid into a neighboring Southern State. In the meantime, he issued his first order of the Great Deed. He selected John E. Cook as his scout and spy and dispatched him to Harper's Ferry, Virginia, to map its roads, study its people and reconnoiter the surrounding territory.

He raised the money to pay Cook's fare and saw him on the train for Virginia before he started for Kansas to spring his second national sensation.



CHAPTER XXV

Brown's scout reached the town of Harper's Ferry on June 5, 1858. The magnificent view which greeted his vision as he stepped from the train took his breath. The music of trembling waters seemed a grand accompaniment to an Oratorio of Nature.

The sensitive mind of the young Westerner responded to its soul appeal. He stood for half an hour enraptured with its grandeur. Two great rivers, the Potomac and the Shenandoah, rushing through rock-hewn gorges to the sea, unite here to hurl their tons of foaming waters against the last granite wall of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Beyond the gorge, through which the roaring tide has cut its path, lies the City of Washington on the banks of the Potomac, but sixty miles away—a day's journey on a swift horse; an hour and a half by rail.

Cook at first had sharply criticized Brown's selection of such a place for the scene of the Great Deed. As he stood surveying in wonder the sublimity of its scenery he muttered softly:

"The old man's a wizard!"

The rugged hills and the rush of mighty waters called the soul to great deeds. There was something electric in the air. The town, the rivers, the mountains summoned the spirit to adventure. The tall chimneys of the United States Arsenal and Rifle Works called to war. The lines of hills were made for the emplacement of guns. The roaring waters challenged the skill of generals.

The scout felt his heart beat in quick response. The more he studied the hills that led to High Knob, a peak two thousand four hundred feet in height, the more canny seemed the choice of Brown. From the top of this peak stretches the county of Fauquier, the beginning of the Black Belt of the South. Fauquier County contained more than ten thousand Slaves and seven hundred freed negroes. There were but nine thousand eight hundred whites. From this county to the sea lay a series of adjoining counties in which the blacks outnumbered the whites. These counties contained more than two hundred and sixty thousand negroes.

The Black Belt of Virginia touched the Black Belts of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia—an unbroken stretch of overwhelming black majority. In some counties they outnumbered the whites, five to one.

This mountain gorge, hewn out of the rocks by the waters of the rivers, was the gateway into the heart of the Slave System of the South. And it could be made the highroad of escape to the North if once the way were opened.

Another fact had influenced the mind of Brown. The majority of the workmen of Harper's Ferry were mechanics from the North. They would not be enthusiastic defenders of Slavery. They were not slave owners. In a fight to a finish they would be indifferent. Their indifference would make the conquest of the few white masters in town a simple matter.

Cook felt again the spell of Brown's imperious will. He had thought the old man's chief reason for selecting Harper's Ferry as the scene was his quixotic desire to be dramatic. He knew the history of the village. It had been named for Robert Harper, an Englishman. Lord Fairfax, the friend of George Washington, had given the millwright a grant of it in 1748. Washington, himself, had made the first survey of the place and selected the Ferry, in 1794, as the site of a National Armory.

Colonel Lewis Washington, the great-grandson of Washington's brother, lived on the lordly plantation of Bellair, four miles in the country. Brown had learned that the sword which Frederick the Great had given to Washington, and the pistols which Lafayette had given him hung on the walls of the Colonel's library.

He had instructed Cook to become acquainted with Colonel Washington, and locate these treasures. He had determined to lead his negro army of insurrection with these pistols and sword buckled around his waist.

Cook was an adventurer but he had no trace of eccentricity in his character. He thought this idea a dangerous absurdity. And he believed at first that it was the one thing that had led his Chief to select this spot. He changed his mind in the first thirty minutes, as he stood studying the mountain peak that stood sentinel at the gateway of the Black Belt.

With a new sense of the importance of his mission he sought a boarding house. He was directed by the watchman at the railroad station, a good-looking freedman, an employee of the Mayor of the town, to the widow Kennedy's. Her house was situated on a quiet street just outside the enclosure of the United States Arsenal.

Cook was a man of pleasing address, twenty-eight years old, blue-eyed, blond, handsome, affable, genial in manner and a good mixer. Within twenty-four hours he had made friends with the widow and every boarder in the house.

They introduced him to their friends and in a week he had won the good opinion of the leading citizens of the place. A few days later the widow's pretty daughter arrived from boarding school and the young adventurer faced the first problem of his mission.

She was a slender, dark-eyed, sensitive creature of eighteen. Shy, romantic, and all eyes for the great adventure of every Southern girl's life—the coming of the Prince Charming who would some day ride up to her door, doff his plumed hat, kiss her hand and kneel at her feet?

Cook read the eagerness in her brown eyes the first hour of their meeting. And what was more serious he felt the first throb of emotion that had ever distressed him in the presence of a woman.

He had never made love. He had tried all other adventures. He had never met the type that appealed to his impulsive mind. He was angry with himself for the almost resistless impulse that came, to flirt with this girl.

It could only be a flirtation at best and, it could only end in bitterness and hatred and tragedy in the end. He had done dark deeds on the Western plains. But they were man deeds. No delicate woman had been involved in their tangled ethics.

There was something serious in his nature that said no to a flirtation of any kind with a lovely girl. He had always intended to take women seriously. He did take them seriously. He wouldn't hesitate to kill a man if he were cornered. But a woman—that was different. He tried to avoid the eyes of Virginia. He couldn't. In spite of all, seated opposite at the table, he found himself looking into their brown liquid depths. They were big, soulful eyes, full of tenderness and faith and wonder and joy. And they kept saying to him:

"Come here, stranger man, and tell me who you are, where you came from, where you're going, and what's your hurry."

There was nothing immodest or forward in them. They just kept calling him.

She was exactly the type of girl he had dreamed he would like to marry some day when life had quieted down. She was of the spirit, not the flesh. Yet she was beautiful to look upon. Her hair was a dark, curling brown, full of delicate waves even on the top of her head. Her hands were dainty. Her body was a slender poem in willowy, graceful lines. Her voice was the softest Southern drawl.

The Kennedys were not slave holders. The pretty daughter joyfully helped her mother when she came home from school. Her sentiments were Southern without the over emphasis sometimes heard among the prouder daughters of the old regime. These Southern sentiments formed another impassable barrier. Cook said this a hundred times to himself and sought to make the barrier more formidable by repeating aloud his own creed when in his room alone.

The fight was vain. He drifted into seeing her a few minutes alone each day. She had liked him from the first. He felt it. He knew it. He had liked her from the first, and she knew it.

Each night he swore he'd go to bed without seeing her and each night he laughed and said:

"Just this once more and it won't count."

He felt himself drifting into a tragedy. Yet to save his life he couldn't lay hold of anything that would stand the strain of the sweet invitation in those brown eyes.

To avoid her he spent days tramping over the hills. And always he came back more charmed than ever. The spell she was weaving about his heart was resistless.



CHAPTER XXVI

Brown returned to Kansas with Stevens and Kagi, his two bravest and most intelligent disciples.

If he could make the tryout of his plan sufficiently sensational, his prestige would be restored, his chief disciples become trained veterans and his treasury be filled.

When he arrived, the Free State forces had again completely triumphed at the ballot box. They had swept the Territory by a majority of three to one in the final test vote on the new Constitution. The issue of Slavery in Kansas was dead. It had been settled for all time.

Such an inglorious end for all his dreams of bloodshed did not depress the man of visions. Kansas no longer interested him except as a rehearsal ground for the coming drama of the Great Deed.

He had carefully grown a long gray beard for the make-up of his new role. It completely changed his appearance. He not only changed his make-up, but he also changed his name. The title he gave to the new character which he had come to play was, "Shubel Morgan."

The revelation of his identity would be all the more dramatic when it came.

When his men and weapons had been selected, he built his camp fire on the Missouri Border. His raid was carefully planned in consultation with Stevens, Kagi and Tidd. With these trusted followers he had rallied a dozen recruits who could be depended on to obey orders. Among them was a notorious horse thief and bandit known in the Territory by the title of "Pickles."

As they entered the State of Missouri on the night of the twenty-fifth of January, Brown divided his forces. Keeping the main division under his personal command, he despatched Stevens with a smaller force to raid the territory surrounding the two plantations against which he was moving.

Between eleven and twelve o'clock Brown reached the home of Harvey G. Hicklin, the first victim marked on his list.

Without the formality of a knock he smashed his door down and sprang inside with drawn revolver.

Hicklin surrendered.

"We have come to take your slaves and such property as we need," the old man curtly answered.

"I am at your mercy, gentlemen," Hicklin replied.

Gill was placed in charge of the robbers who ransacked the bureau drawers, closets and chests for valuables.

Brown collected the slaves and assured them of protection. When every watch, gun, pistol, and every piece of plate worth carrying had been collected, and the stables stripped of every horse and piece of leather, the old man turned to his victim and coolly remarked:

"Now get your property back if you can. I dare you and the whole United States Army to follow me to-night. And you tell this to your neighbors to-morrow morning."

Hicklin kept silent.

Brown knew that his tongue would be busy with the rising sun. He also knew that his message would be hot on the wires to the East before the sun would set. He could feel the thrill it would give his sentimental friends in Boston. And he could see them reaching for their purses.

The men were still emptying drawers on the floor in a vain search for cash. Hicklin never kept cash over night in his house. He lived too near the border.

Brown called his men from their looting and ordered them to the next house which he had marked for assault—the house of James Lane, three-quarters of a mile away.

They smashed Lane's door and took him a prisoner with Dr. Erwin, a guest of the family.

From Hicklin he had secured considerable booty and his men were keen for richer spoils. The first attack had netted the raiders two fine horses, a yoke of oxen, a wagon, harness, saddles, watches, a fine collection of jewelry, bacon, flour, meal, coffee, sugar, bedding, clothing, a shotgun, boots, shoes, an overcoat and many odds and ends dumped into the wagon.

From Lane they expected more. They were sore over the results. They got six good horses, their harness and wagons, a lot of bedding, clothing and provisions, but no jewelry except two plain silver watches.

Brown added five negroes to his party and told them he would take them to Canada. Thus far no blood had been shed. The attacks had been made with such quiet skill, the surprise was complete. In spite of all the talk and bluster of frontier politicians no sane man in the State of Missouri could conceive of the possibility of such a daring crime. The victims were utterly unprepared for the assault. And no defense had been attempted.

Stevens had better luck. His party had encountered David Cruise, a man who was rash enough to resist. He was an old man, too, of quiet, peaceable habits and exemplary character. He proved to be the man who didn't know how to submit to personal insult.

He owned but one slave who did the cooking for his family. When Stevens broke into his house and demanded the woman, he indignantly refused to surrender his cook to a gang of burglars.

The ex-convict, who had served his term for an assault with intent to kill, didn't pause to ask Cruise any questions.

His revolver clicked, a single shot rang out and the old man dropped on the floor with a bullet through his heart.

Passing the body, Stevens looted the house. He made the largest haul of the night. He secured four oxen, eleven mules, two horses, and a wagon load of provisions. Incidentally he picked up a valuable mule from a neighbor of Cruise as they passed his house on the way to join Brown.

When Stevens reported the murder and gave the inventory of the valuable goods stolen, "Shubel Morgan" stroked his long gray beard and spoke but one word:

"Good."

In his grim soul he knew that the blood stain left on Cruise's floor would be worth more to his cause than all the stolen jewelry, horses and wagons. Its appeal to the East would be the one secret force needed to rouse the archaic instincts of his pious backers. They would deny with indignation the accusation of murder against his men. They would invent the excuse of self-defense. He did not need to make it. From the deeps of their souls would come the shout of the ancient head-hunter returning with the bloody scalp of a foe in his hand. Brown felt this. He knew it, because he felt it in his own heart. He was a Puritan of Puritans.

With deliberate daring the caravan moved back into the Territory. For the moment the audacity of the crime stunned the frontier. He had figured on this hour of uncertainty and amazement to make good his escape. He knew that he could depend on the people along the way to Iowa to protect the ten slaves which he had brought out of Missouri.

The press of Kansas unanimously condemned the outrage. Brown knew they would. He could spit in their faces now. He was done with Kansas. His caravan was moving toward the North; his eyes were fixed on the hills of Virginia.

His experiment had been a success.

The President of the United States, James Buchanan, offered a reward of $250 for his arrest. The Governor of Missouri raised the reward to $3,000. The press flashed the news of the daring rescue of ten slaves by old John Brown. He regained in a day his lost prestige. The stories of the robberies which accompanied the rescue were denied as Border Ruffian lies, as "Shubel Morgan" knew they would be denied.

His enterprise had met every test. He got his slaves safely through to Canada and started a reign of terror. The effect of the raid into a Slave State had tested his theory of direct, bloodstained action as the solution and the only solution of the problem.

The occasional frowns of pious people on his methods caused him no uneasiness or doubt. He was a man of daily prayer. He was on more intimate terms with God than his critics.

The one fly in the ointment of his triumph was the cold reception given him by the religious settlement at Tabor, Iowa. These good people had treated him as a prophet of God in times past and his caravan had headed for Tabor as their first resting place.

He entered the village with a song of triumph. He would exhibit his freed slaves before the Church and join with the congregation in a hymn of praise to God.

But the news of his coming had reached Tabor before his arrival. They had heard of the stealing of the oxen, the horses, the mules, the wagons.

They had also heard of the murder of David Cruise. Brown had denied the Pottawattomie crimes and they had believed him. This murder he could not deny. They had not yet reached the point of justifying murder in an unlawful rescue. These pious folks also had a decided prejudice against a horse thief, however religious his training and eloquent his prayers.

When his caravan of stolen wagons, horses and provisions, moved slowly into the village, a curious but cold crowd gazed in silence. He placed the negroes in the little school house and parked his teams on the Common.

The next day was Sunday and the old Puritan hastened to church with his faithful disciples. Amazed that he had received from the Rev. John Todd no invitation to take part in the services, he handed Stevens a scribbled note:

"Give it to the preacher when he comes in."

Stevens gave the minister the bit of paper without a word and resumed his seat in the House of God.

The Rev. John Todd read the scrawl with a frown:

"John Brown respectfully requests the church at Tabor to offer public thanksgiving to Almighty God in behalf of himself and company: and of their rescued captives, in particular, for His gracious preservation of their lives and health: and His signal deliverance of all out of the hands of the wicked. 'Oh, give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth forever.'"

The Rev. Dr. King was in the pulpit with the militant preacher Todd that day and the perplexed man handed the note to King.

The two servants of Christ were not impressed with the appeal. The words Brown had marked in italics and his use of the Psalms failed to rouse the religious fervor of the preachers. They knew that somewhere in the crowd sat the man who had murdered Cruise and stolen those horses. They also knew that John Brown had approved the deeds of his followers.

Todd rose and announced that he had received a petition which he could not grant. He announced a public meeting of the citizens of the town in the church the following day to take such action as they might see fit.

When Brown faced this meeting on Monday he felt its hostility from the moment he rose. He made an excuse for not speaking by refusing to go on when a distinguished physician from Missouri entered the church.

Brown demanded that the man from Missouri be expelled. The citizens of Tabor refused. And the old man sullenly took his seat.

Stevens, the murderer, sprang to his feet and in his superb bass voice shouted:

"So help me, God, I'll not sit in council with one who buys and sells human flesh."

Stevens led the disciples out of the church.

At the close of the discussion the citizens of Tabor unanimously adopted the resolution:

"Resolved, That while we sympathize with the oppressed and will do all that we conscientiously can to help them in their efforts for freedom, nevertheless we have no sympathy with those who go to slave states to entice away slaves and take property or life, when necessary, to attain this end.

"J. SMITH, Sec. of Meeting." Tabor, Feb. 7, 1857.

John Brown shook the dust of Tabor from his feet after a long prayer to his God which he took pains to make himself.

At Grinnell, Iowa, his reception was cordial and he began to feel the confidence which his exploit would excite in the still more remote East. His caravan had moved Eastward but fourteen days' journey from Tabor and he had been received with open arms. The farther from the scene of action Brown moved, the more heroic his rugged patriarchal figure with its flowing beard loomed.

On reaching Boston his triumph was complete. Every doubt and fear had vanished. Sanborn, Higginson, Stearns, Howe, and Gerrit Smith, in a short time, secured for him more than four thousand dollars and the Great Deed was assured.



CHAPTER XXVII

While Brown was at work in the North collecting money, arms and ammunition, Cook was quietly completing his work at the Ferry. He fought the temptation to take Virginia with him on his trips and then succumbed.

The thing that decided it was the fact that she knew Colonel Louis Washington and had been to Bellair. She promised to introduce him.

To make sure of Brown's quixotic instructions about the sword and pistols he must make the trip. The drive in the snug little buggy along the river bank was a red letter experience in the young Westerner's life.

Seated beside the modest slip of a Southern girl chatting with vivacity and a happiness she couldn't conceal, the man forgot that he was a conspirator in a plot to deluge a nation in blood. He forgot the long nights of hiding in woods and ravines. He forgot dark deeds of sacking and robbery. He was just a boy again. The sun was shining in the glory of a sweet spring morning in the mountains. The flowers were blooming in the hedges. He smelled the wild cherry, blackberry and dewberry bushes. Birds were singing. The new green of the leaves was dazzling in its splendor. The air was pure and sweet and sent the blood bounding to the tips of his fingers.

He glanced at the soft red cheeks of the girl beside him and a great yearning for a home and babies and peace overwhelmed him. His lips trembled and his eyes filled with tears. He rebelled against the task to which he had put his hand.

"Why so pensive?" she asked with a laugh.

"Am I?"

"You haven't spoken for a mile."

"I'm just so happy, I reckon," he answered seriously.

He remembered his grim task and threw off the spell. He must keep a cool head and a strong hand. He remembered the strange old man to whose "Constitution" he had sworn allegiance in Canada and began to talk in commonplaces.

To the girl's romantic ears they had meaning. Every tone of his voice fascinated her. The mystery about him held her imagination. She was sure it was full of thrilling adventure. He would tell her some day. She wondered why he had waited so long. He had been on the point of telling his love again and again and always stopped with an ugly frown. She wondered sometimes if his life had been spoiled by some tragedy. A thousand times she asked herself the question whether he might be married and separated from a wife. He had lived in the North. He had told her many places he had seen. People were divorced sometimes in the North. She dismissed the thought as absurd and resigned herself again to the charms of his companionship.

Colonel Washington was delighted to see again the daughter of an old friend. Her father had been his companion on many a hunting and fishing trip.

Virginia introduced her companion.

"My friend, Mr. John Cook, Colonel Washington."

The colonel extended his hand cordially.

"Glad to meet you, young man. A friend of Virginia's is a friend of mine, sir."

"Thank you."

"Walk right in, children, sit down and make yourselves at home. I'll find that damned old lazy butler of mine and get you some refreshments."

"Let's sit outside," Virginia whispered.

"No," Cook protested. "I want to see the inside of a Washington home."

The Colonel waved his arm toward the house.

"With you in a minute, children. Walk right in."

"Of course, if you wish it," the girl said softly.

They entered the fine old house, and sat down in the hall. Cook smiled at the easy fulfillment of his task. Directly in front of the door, set in a deep panel, was the portrait of the first President. On the right in a smaller panel hung the sword which Frederick the Great had given him. On the other side, the pistols from the hands of Lafayette. A tiny, gold plate, delicately engraved, marked each treasure.

Virginia showed him these souvenirs of her country's history. She spoke of them with breathless awe. She laughed with girlish pride.

"Aren't they just grand?"

Cook nodded.

He felt guilty of treachery. A betrayal of Southern hospitality in this sweet girl's presence! He ground his teeth at the thought of his weakness the next moment.

Colonel Washington appeared through the door from the dining room. He was followed by his ancient butler, bearing a tray filled with drinks.

The Colonel served them with his own hand. The negro grinned his welcome to the guests. At the sight of a slave, Cook was himself again. His jaw closed and his eye flashed. He was once more the disciple of the Man of the Blood-Feud.

Washington handed a tall glass to Virginia.

"Your lemonade, young lady. I know your taste and approve."

He bowed low and gave her the drink.

He took two glasses of mint juleps, one in each hand.

"Mr. Cook, the favorite drink of these mountains, sir, as pure as its dews, as refreshing as its air—the favorite drink of old Virginia. To your good health, sir!"

Cook's head barely moved and he drank in silence.

He held his mood of reserve on the drive home. In vain the girl smiled and coaxed his dreary spirits. He refused to respond. They passed the same wonderful views, the same birds were singing, the same waters foaming and laughing over the rocks below. The man heard nothing, saw nothing, save a vision inside his raging soul. He saw men riding through the night to that house. He saw black hands grip iron pikes and knock at the door of its great hall.

There was a far-away look in his keen eyes—eyes that could sight a rifle with deadly aim.

The slender girl nestled closer in wonder at the veil that had suddenly dropped between them. The fires of youth and passion responded for a moment to this instinctive stir of his mate. Resistance was agony. His arm moved to encircle her waist. He turned in an impulse to kiss her lips and whisper the mad things his heart was saying.

He caught himself in time.

What had he to do with this eternal call of the human heart to love and be loved? It meant home, it meant tenderness. It meant peace and good will to every living thing. He had come to kill, not to love; to destroy, not build homes.

Again he rebelled against his hideous task. And then he remembered John Brown and all for which he stood. His oath crashed through his memory. He resolved to put every thought of tenderness, beauty, and love under his feet and trample them. It was the only way to save himself and this girl.

It would be hard—but he would do it. For an entire week he did not speak to her except in monosyllables. He made no effort to hide his decision. He wanted her to see and know the firm purpose within his heart.

Her eyes followed him with a look of dumb anguish. If she had spoken in reproaches he would have fought and withstood her. Her silence was more than he could bear.

On the sixth day of his resolution he saw that she had been crying. She smiled and tried to hide it, but he knew. He would go for a walk to the Heights and cheer her up a bit. It wasn't necessary to be brutal.

Her brown eyes began to smile again. They walked over the Heights and down a steep pathway among the rocks to the river's edge and sat down on a boulder worn smooth by the waters of the spring floods.

The ripple of the current made soft music. They were silent for a long time and then she turned toward him a tender, questioning gaze. In spite of her effort to be strong a tear stole down the firm young cheek.

"What have I done to make you angry?"

"Nothing," he answered in a whisper.

"What's the matter, then?"

He took her hand and held it in a cruel grip before he spoke. His words came at last in passionate pleading.

"Oh, dear little girl, can't you see how I've been fighting this thing for months—how I've tried to keep away from you and couldn't?"

"Why?"

She breathed the question leaning so close that her lips framed a kiss.

"I can't tell you," he said.

"But you must! You must!" she pleaded.

Tears were in his eyes now. He looked away.

"A gulf separates us, child."

"How can it?" she whispered tenderly.

"It's just there!"

"Can't you cross it?"

"No."

She drew her slender body erect with an effort. She tried to speak twice before she succeeded.

"You—are—married—then?"

"Oh—no—no—not that—no!"

She bent close again, a sweet smile breaking through her tears.

"Then you can tell me what it is."

"I couldn't tell it, even to my wife."

Her brow contracted in a puzzled look.

"It's nothing low or dishonorable?"

"No. And it belongs to the big things of life-and death."

"And I cannot know this secret?"

"You cannot know. I have taken an oath."

"And it separates us?"

"Yes."

"But why—if—you—love—me—and I love—you—"

She paused and blushed scarlet. She had told a man her love before he had spoken. But he had spoken! His voice, his tears, his tones had told her.

He looked at her a moment, trembling. He spoke one word at a time as if he had no breath to finish the sentence.

"It's—sweet—to—hear—your—dear—lips—say—that—you—love—me—God knows I love you—you-dear-little-angel-sent-from heaven! I'm not worthy to touch your hand and yet I'm crushing it—I can't help it—I can't-I can't."

She slipped into his arms and he crushed her to his heart.

"I love you," she whispered. "I can trust you. I'll never ask your secret until you wish to tell me. Just love me, forever. That's all I ask."

"I can do that, and I will!" he answered solemnly.

They were married the next night in the parsonage of the Methodist Church of which she was a member. And the foundation was laid for a tragedy involving more lives than one.



CHAPTER XXVIII

From an old log farmhouse on the hills of Maryland,—overlooking the town of Harper's Ferry, the panther was crouching to spring.

For four months in various disguises Brown had reconnoitered the mountains around the gorge of the two rivers. He had climbed the peak and looked into the county of Fauquier with its swarming slave population. Each week he piloted his wagon to the town of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, thirty-five miles back in the hills.

The Humanitarians through their agents were shipping there, day by day, the powder, lead, guns, knives, torches and iron pikes the Chosen One had asked.

These pious men met him for a final conference in the home of Gerrit Smith, the preacher philanthropist of Peterboro.

The canny old huntsman revealed to them just enough to excite the unconscious archaic impulse beneath the skin of culture. He told them that he was going to make a daring raid into the heart of the Old South and rescue as many of the "oppressed" as possible. They knew that the raid into Missouri had resulted in murder and that he rode back into Kansas with the red stains on his hands.

Brown gained their support by this carefully concealed appeal to their subconscious natures. As the crowd of eager faces bent close to catch, the details of his scheme, the burning eyes of the leader were suddenly half closed. Silence followed and they watched the two pin points of light in vain.

Each pious man present caught the smell of human blood. Yet each pious man carefully concealed this from himself and his neighbor until it would be approved by all. Had the bald facts behind the enterprise been told in plain English, religion and culture would have called a halt. The elemental impulse of the Beast must therefore be carefully concealed.

Every man present knew that they were sending Brown on a man-hunt. They knew that the results might mean bloodshed. They knew, as individuals, exactly what was being said and what was being planned. Its details they did not wish to know. The moral significance—the big moral significance of the deed was something apart from the bloody details. The Great Deed could be justified by the Higher Law, the Greater Glory of God. They were twisting the moral universe into accord with the elemental impulse of the brute that sleeps beneath every human skin.

The Great Deed about to be done would be glorious, its actors heroes and martyrs of a Divine Cause. They knelt in prayer and their Chosen Leader invoked the blessings of the Lord of Hosts upon them and upon his disciples in the Divine Cause.

The hour of Action was now swiftly approaching. Cook had become a book agent. With his pretty Virginia wife his figure became familiar to every farm, in the county. He visited every house where a slave was to be found. He sold maps as well as books. He also sketched maps in secret when he reached the quiet of his home while his happy little bride sang at her work.

He carefully compiled a census of slaves at the Ferry and in the surrounding country. So sure had he become of the success of the blow when it should fall, that he begged his Chief to permit him to begin to whisper the promise of the uprising to a few chosen men among the slaves.

The old man's eyes; flamed with anger.

"You have not done this already?" he growled.

"No—no."

"You swear it?"

Brown had seized Cook by both arms and searched his eyes for the truth. The younger man was amazed at the volcanic outburst of anger.

"A hundred times I've told you, Cook, that you talk too much," he went on tensely. "You mean well, boy, but your marriage may prove a tragedy in more ways than one."

"It has proven my greatest weapon."

"If you're careful, if you're discreet, if you can control your foolish impulses. I've warned you again and again and yet you've been writing letters—"

Cook's eyes wavered.

"I only wrote one to an old girl friend in Tabor."

"Exactly. You told of your marriage, your happiness, your hopes of a great career—and I got a copy of the letter."

"How?"

"No matter. If I got it, somebody else could get one. Now will you swear to me again to obey my orders?"

The burning eyes pierced his soul and he was wax.

"Yes. I swear!"

"Good. I want a report from you daily from now on. Stop your excursions into the country, except to meet me in broad daylight in the woods this side of our headquarters. You understand?"

"Yes. You can depend on me."

Brown watched him with grave misgivings. He was the one man on whom he depended least and yet his life and the life of every one in his enterprise was in his hands. There were more reasons than one why he must hasten the final preparations for the Deed.

The suspicions of the neighbors had been roused in spite of the utmost vigilance. He had increased his disciples to twenty men. He had induced his younger son, Watson, to leave North Elba and join them. His own daughter, Annie, and Oliver's wife had come with Watson, and the two women were doing the work for his band—cooking, washing, and scrubbing without a murmur.

The men were becoming restless in their close confinement. Five of them were negroes. Brown's disciples made no objections to living, eating and sleeping with these blacks. Such equality was one of the cardinal principles of their creed.

But the danger of the discovery of the presence of freed negroes living in this farmhouse with two white women and a group of white men increased each day.

The headquarters had a garrulous old woman for a neighbor. Gradually, Mrs. Huffmeister became curious about the doings at the farm. She began to invent daily excuses for a visit. They might be real, of course, but the old man's daughter became uneasy. As she cleaned the table, washed the dishes and swept the floors of the rooms and the porch, she was constantly on the lookout for this woman.

The thing that had fascinated her was the man whom this girl called father. His name was "Smith," but it didn't seem to fit him. She was an illiterate German and knew nothing of the stirring events in Kansas. But her eyes followed the head huntsman with fascinated curiosity.

At this time his personal appearance was startling in its impressive power, when not on guard or in disguise. His brilliant eyes, his flowing white beard and stooped shoulders arrested attention instantly and held it. He was sixty years old by the calendar and looked older. And yet always the curious thing about him was that the impression of age was on the surface. It was given only when he was still. The moment he moved in the quick, wiry, catlike way that was his habit, age vanished. The observer got the impression of a wild beast crouching to spring.

It was little wonder that Mrs. Huffmeister made excuses to catch a glimpse of his figure. It was little wonder that she had begun to talk to her friends about "Mr. Smith" and his curious ways.

She had talked to him only once. She was glad that he didn't talk much. There was an expression to his set jaw and lips that was repulsive. Especially there was something chill in the tones of his voice. They never suggested tenderness or love, or hope or happiness—only the impersonal ring of metal. The agile and alert body of a man of his age was an uncanny thing, too. The woman's curiosity was roused anew with each glimpse she got of him until her coming at last became a terror to the daughter.

She warned her father and he hastened his preparations. If the world below once got a hint of what was going on behind those rough logs there would be short shrift for the men who were stalking human game.

It became necessary for the entire party of twenty men to lie concealed in the low attic room the entire day. Not more than two of them could be seen at one time.

The strange assortment of ex-convicts, dreamers, theorists, adventurers and freed negroes were kept busy by their leader until the eve of the Great Deed. They whittled into smooth shape the stout hickory handles for a thousand iron pikes, which Blair, the blacksmith of Collinsville, Connecticut, had finally delivered. To these rude weapons the fondest hopes of the head-huntsman had been pinned from the first. The slave was not familiar with the use of firearms. His strong, black arm could thrust these sharp pieces of iron into human breasts with deadly accuracy. Brown saw that every nail was securely set in the handles.

Each day he required the first stand of rifles to be burnished anew. The swords and knives were ground and whetted until their blades were perfect.

There was not work enough to stop discussion toward the end. Cook had finally whispered to Tidd that the leader intended to assault and take the United States Arsenal and Rifle Works. Cook's study of law revealed the fact that this act would be high treason against the Republic.

The men had all sworn allegiance to Brown under his Constitution but the rank and file of the little provisional army did not understand that he intended to attack the National authority by a direct assault.

A violent discussion broke out in the attack led by Tidd. At the end of the argument Tidd became so infuriated by Brown's imperious orders for submission to his will that he left the place in a rage, went down to the Ferry and spent the week with Cook.

Brown tendered his resignation as Commander in Chief. There was no other man among them who would dare to lead. A frank discussion disclosed this fact and the disciples were compelled to submit. They voted submission and authorized Owen to put it in writing which he did briefly but to the point:

Harper's Ferry, Aug. 18, 1859.

DEAR SIR,

We have all agreed to sustain your decisions, until you have proved incompetent, and many of us will adhere to your decisions as long as you will.

Your friend, OWEN SMITH.

The rebellion was suppressed within the ranks and the leader's authority restored. But the task of watching and guarding became more and more trying and dangerous.

One of the women remained on guard every moment from dawn to dusk. When washing dishes she stood at the end of the table where she could see the approach to the house. The meals over, she took her place on the porch or just inside the door. Always she was reading or sewing. She not only had to watch for foes from without, but she was also the guard set over the restless "invisible" upstairs. In spite of her vigilance, Hazlett and Leeman would slip off into the woods and wander for hours. Hazlett was a fine-looking young fellow, overflowing with good nature and social feelings. The prison life was appalling to him. Leeman was a boy from Saco, Maine, the youngest man among the disciples. He smoked and drank occasionally and chafed under restraint.

In spite of the women's keen watch these two fellows more than once broke the rules by slipping into Harper's Ferry in broad daylight and spending the time at Cook's house. They loved to watch the slender, joyous, little wife at her work. They envied Cook, and, while they watched, wondered at the strange spell that had bound their souls and bodies to the old man crouching on the hill to strike the sleeping village.

The reports of these excursions reached Brown's ears and increased his uneasiness. The thing that hastened the date for the Great Deed to its final place on the calendar was the fact that a traitor from ambush had written a letter to the Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, revealing the whole plot and naming John Brown of Kansas as the leader.

The Secretary of War was at the time in the mountains of Virginia on a vacation. The idea of any sane human being organizing a secret association to liberate the slaves of the South by a general insurrection was too absurd for belief—too puerile for attention. The letter was tossed aside.

If this were not enough, his friend and benefactor, Gerrit Smith, had made an unfortunate speech before a negro audience in which he had broadly hinted of his hope of an early slave insurrection.

It was the last straw. He was awaiting recruits but he dare not delay. He summoned his friend, Frederick Douglas, from Rochester to meet him at Chambersburg. If he could persuade Douglas to take his place by his side on the night the blow would be struck, he would need no other recruits. Brown knew this negro to be the foremost leader of his race and that the freedmen of the North would follow him.

The old man arranged through his agent in Chambersburg that the meeting should take place in an abandoned stone quarry just outside of town.

The watcher on the hill over Harper's Ferry was disguised as a fisherman. His slouch hat, and also rod and reel, rough clothes, made him a typical farmer fisherman of the neighborhood. He reached the stone quarry unchallenged.

With eager eloquence he begged for the negro's help.

Douglas asked the details of his attack.

Brown bared it, in all its daring. He did not omit the Armory or the Rifle Works.

Douglas was shocked.

With his vivid eloquence as a negro orator, he possessed far more common sense than the old Puritan before whom he stood. He opposed his plea as the acme of absurdity. The attack on the Federal Arsenal would be treason. It would array the whole Nation against him. It would hurl the army of the United States with the militia of Virginia on his back in an instant.

Brown; boldly faced this possibility and declared that with it he could still triumph, if once he crossed the line of Farquier county and thrust his pikes into the heart of the Black Belt.

All day Saturday and half the day on Sunday the argument between the two men continued. At noon on Sunday the old man slipped his arm around the negro and pressed it close. His voice was softer than Douglas had ever heard it and it sent the cold chills down his spine in spite of his firm determination never to yield.

"Come with me, Douglas, for God's sake," he begged. "I'll defend you with my life. I want you for a special purpose. I'll capture Harper's Ferry in two hours. They'll be asleep. When I cross the line on the mountain top and call the ten thousand slaves in Fauquier County—the bees will swarm, man! Can't you see them? Can't you hear the roar when I've placed these pikes in their hands?—I want you to hive them."

Douglas hesitated for only a moment. His vivid imagination had seen the flash of the hell-lit vision of the slave insurrection and his soul answered with a savage cry. But he slipped from Brown's arms, rubbed his eyes and flung off the spell.

"My good friend," he said at last, "you're walking into a steel trap. You can't come out alive."

He turned to Shields Green, the negro guard who was now one of the old man's disciples. Green had been a friend of Douglas' in Rochester. He had introduced him to the Crusader. He felt responsible for his life. He had a duty to perform to this ignorant black man and he did it, painful as it was.

"Green, you have heard what I've just said to my friend. He has changed his plans since you volunteered. You understand, now. You can go with him or come home with me to Rochester. What will you do?"

His answer was coolly deliberate.

"I b'lieve I go wid de ole man!"

With a heavy heart Brown saw Douglas leave. It was the shattering of his most dramatic dream of the execution of the Great Deed. When the black bees should swarm he had seen himself at the head of the dark, roaring tide of avengers, their pikes and rifles flashing in the Southern sun. Around his waist was the sword of George Washington and the pistols of Lafayette. His Aide of Honor would ride, this negro, once a fugitive slave. Side by side they would sweep the South with fire and sword.

On arrival at his headquarters on the hill he learned that a revival of religion was going on in the town below and he fixed Sunday, the seventeenth of October, as the day of the Deed. Harper's Ferry would not only be asleep that night—every foe would be lulled in songs of praise to God.



CHAPTER XXIX

At eight o'clock on Sunday night, the sixteenth of October, 1859, John Brown drove his one-horse wagon to the door of the rude log house in which he had hidden with his disciples for four months.

It was a damp, chill evening of mid fall. Heavy rain clouds obscured the stars and not a traveler ventured along the wind-swept roads. From the attic were loaded into the wagon crowbars, sledge hammers, iron pikes and oil-soaked faggots.

The crowbars and sledge hammers might be used on the gates or doors. There could be no doubt about the use to which the leader intended to put the pikes and torches.

When the wagon had been loaded the old man summoned his faithful son, Owen.

"Captain Owen Brown," the steel voice rang, "you will take private Barclay Coppoc and F.J. Merriam and establish a guard over this house as the headquarters of our expedition. Hold it at all hazards. You are guarding the written records of our work, the names of associates, the reserves of our arms and ammunition. We will send you reinforcements in due time."