Midnight Rescue (23 page)

Sam McGrady’s laugh filled the night air. But Jordan did not look away.

“I saved your life,” he said.

“Ha!” Sam sneered. “I don’t owe no slave boy nothing!”

“When you fell in that river, you got one chance.” Jordan’s voice was strong and steady. “If I hadn’t grabbed you quick, you sure enough would be dead!”

“What’s he talking about, Sam?” asked the outlaw at the end of the wagon.

McGrady shrugged. “Just a little slip I made on the way here.”

“I is talkin’ about what’s right.” Even in the dark, Libby saw the proud way Jordan lifted his head.

“What’s
right
?” Sam asked. “I’m back with my friends, but you’re a slave boy. Don’t you ever forget!”

“There be somethin’ I can’t forget.” Jordan made every word count. “I risked my life for you. There ain’t no bigger sacrifice anybody can give. Now I needs help! What is you goin’ do about it?”

CHAPTER 17

I
n the silence that followed, not even little Rose made a sound. Finally Sam McGrady spoke. “The boy pulled me from the river. The narrow strip of water between the boat and the shore.”

“You fool!” exclaimed the other outlaw. “You just made a little slip, and you is going to give all that money away?”

“I wore heavy wet clothes,” Sam said. “The water was cold.”

“He’s a slave boy! You don’t owe him nothin’!”

“I had one chance to come up. My breath was knocked out.”

“I tell you, Sam. He’s just a no count slave boy.”

“I was heavy, but he was really strong. He lifted me up on the gangplank.”

“You don’t owe him nothin’! I tell you, Sam. You don’t owe him nothin’!”

“I do.” The rasp was still in McGrady’s voice, but it sounded less hard. “The boy is right.”

“Do you know what you’re giving away? A two-hundred-dollar reward!”

“I would have been dead,” McGrady answered.

“All that money—just throwing it away? Well, I’m not such
a fool! All the rest are mine. I’m taking the woman and the children. And I’m selling them to the highest bidder I find!”

“No, you ain’t.” Jordan’s words shot out like bullets. “I expects you to let my people go.”

When the silence stretched long, it was Sam McGrady who broke it. “His family goes with him,” he said.

Without looking away from McGrady, Jordan called into the wagon. “Git down, Momma!”

Moving quickly, Jordan’s family climbed down from the back of the wagon. Serena. Zack. Hattie. Then with her mother’s help, little Rose. As they stood behind the wagon, the two outlaws climbed up to the high seat at the front. Sam McGrady took the reins.

Jordan faced him. “One more question. Does you value your life?”

“I value my life.” McGrady’s voice was angry now but low, as if he didn’t want the other outlaw to hear.

“Then I wants you to do something more,” Jordan said. “When you git across the border, leave the horses and wagon where honest folk can find ’em.”

Instead of answering, Sam McGrady flicked the reins.

As the peddler’s wagon moved away, Jordan and his family slipped into the bushes at the side of the road. Caleb waited until the wagon disappeared from sight, then hurried across the road after Jordan. Within a few minutes Caleb and Libby caught up to the family.

Caleb clapped Jordan on the back. “They’re gone!” Caleb said. “But I wonder if Sam McGrady will stick to his end of the bargain.”

Jordan shook his head as if he too had his doubts. “We ain’t
goin’ to take a chance on trustin’ him.”

Caleb agreed. “Sam might still want the whole reward for himself. If he does, he’ll ditch the other outlaw and hunt for us again.”

Just thinking about it, Libby felt afraid. But Jordan knew what he wanted to do. Instead of following a road, he cut across country, using the woods to hide from whoever might search for them. The rest of them followed single file with Zack and Serena close behind Jordan and his mother carrying little Rose next. Then came Libby with Caleb last.

They walked where there was no path, up steep hills, then down again. Libby’s eyes grew used to the darkness, but she felt confused by the tall trees. Before long, she lost all sense of direction. But Jordan walked straight ahead as if he had been this way a thousand times before.

Feeling more bewildered all the time, Libby watched him. Again and again Jordan looked up to the night sky. When they stopped for a moment to rest, Libby asked how he knew the way.

“I is following the North Star.” Jordan told her how to find it. “Look for the drinkin’ gourd.” He pointed up to the Big Dipper. The two stars on the right side of the dipper—the side away from the handle—pointed to the North Star.

As they hurried on again, Libby thought about their enemies.
Mr. Weaver. Sam McGrady. The Fox River outlaws. Plus any slave catcher who might see or know about Jordan and his family.

Libby had no doubt that slave catchers would patrol the border between Iowa and Missouri. More than once Caleb had told her that catchers watched the border in order to collect
the reward offered for fugitives.

Whenever he had the choice, Jordan followed the steep, narrow valleys called ravines. Libby hoped the high banks on either side hid them from view. The muscles in her legs ached now, and she wondered if she could walk another step. Even worse, what Jordan was trying to do seemed impossible. How could he and his family ever find their way to safety and freedom?

Then like a whisper on the night wind, Libby remembered the promise.
“When I am weak, then am I strong.”

Looking up at the stars, Libby began to pray. “I am weak, Jesus. I’m tired and really scared. If I feel that way, what about Serena and Zack and little Rose? If they get caught, they’ll lose their family—maybe even their lives.

“And what about Hattie—up all last night praying for her children? She’s carried Rose mile after mile! But You promised, Jesus. You promised to help all of us. You promised that when we are weak, You will make us strong. Make us strong, Jesus! Make us strong!”

After a time, Libby remembered Caleb’s whisper to Jordan. “What’s at Keosauqua?” she asked.

“A crossing on the Des Moines River. An Underground Railroad station. I wanted Jordan to know about it in case the outlaws headed there.”

“How do you learn about all these places?” Libby asked.

“I found out about Keosauqua because of something the town did. A fugitive slave and her children were hiding in a cornfield.” Caleb’s glance took in Hattie and her children. “The woman had walked all the way from a plantation in the state of Mississippi. Though she had reached a free state, she was still afraid of slave catchers. She didn’t dare ask for help, and she
and her children were starving. When the people of Keosauqua learned that she was hiding in the field, they went to her and brought the family to safety.”

Jordan had led their group for three or four hours when a cloud passed over the moon. Looking up, Libby saw other clouds darker than the night sky. One by one, they swept across the stars.

What will Jordan do?
Libby wondered as her scared feelings came back.
Without the North Star, how will he know the way?

But Jordan kept walking. Often he leaned forward to feel the bark of a tree. Whenever he found moss on the trunk, he moved on again, sure which way was north.

Before long, a drop of rain splashed against Libby’s cheek. As she and the others came out of the woods to cross an open area, Libby felt more raindrops splat against her arms. Then came another and another. The rain that had threatened the day before was now here. Though Libby saw no lightning, thunder rumbled in the distance.

At first the rain came gently, offering welcome relief after the warmth of the day before. Then the gentle rain turned into soft pinpricks. Soon the wind drove the rain against Libby’s face until it hurt.

By now Libby was angry. The harder it rained, the more upset she felt. Finally she cried out to God. “Jordan asked You to protect us! Where’s Your protection now?”

Holding Rose against her chest, Hattie crossed her arms over the child’s head. Zack clutched Jordan’s hand, taking three steps to Jordan’s two. From all around came the sound of running water as creeks became torrents and new streams found their way down steep hillsides.

Grabbing Serena’s hand, Libby bent her head against the
wind, squinted her eyes against the rain, and kept on. Here in the open, the rain cut slantwise against them, but Jordan still kept on. As though he walked this way every day, he never slowed his pace. But Jordan had no path, no trail, no road. He just knew where to go.

Then, as suddenly as it came, the rain stopped. As Libby looked around, she saw water streaming down the side of Serena’s face. Her thin sack dress hung about her knees, and she shivered with cold. Yet her bare feet followed her brother with sure, strong steps.

As the darkness of night changed to the gray light of dawn, Jordan stopped on a rise. Raising his arms, he lifted his hands toward heaven. “Thank You, Lord!”

His quiet voice seemed to fill the earth. “Hallelujah!”

Only then did Libby understand what had happened. Only then did she remember that the rain had erased their tracks. No one needed to tell her, “That downpour washed away your scent for any bloodhound who might follow.” No one needed to say, “You aren’t safe yet, but right now the bloodhounds can’t follow Jordan’s family.”

Soon after Jordan went on again, they came to another thickly wooded area. There Jordan began to search for a place where they could rest during the day. He found it near the bottom of a tucked-away ravine. “Git branches,” he told all of them.

Together they hurried to find small branches blown down during the storm. In a hollow between two trees, Jordan and Caleb laid the branches so they appeared to have just fallen. Soon the branches and leaves offered a large enough shelter to hide the family.

While Libby watched in one direction, Caleb watched
another. On her hands and knees, Jordan’s mother crept into the hiding place. With little Rose safely in her arms, Hattie lay down to rest. Serena and Zack and Jordan crawled into the space beside her. Soon they were all asleep.

“Eat now,” Caleb told Libby and the others in late afternoon. “We’re close to the border. Right here the Des Moines River is a dividing line between Iowa and Missouri. We need to catch a ferry on its last run before dark.”