The Color of Your Skin Ain’t the Color of Your Heart (22 page)

But before I had a chance to think what it all meant, one of the men glanced toward the window.

“Hey, what the—” he said. “There’s a black kid out there watching!”

Sneed turned toward me.

“What’s that window doing open!” he cried. “He was listening to everything we said!”

The other man jumped up and ran for the door.

I didn’t intend to hang around. I leaped to my feet and bolted for the stairs!

The man was outside within seconds. But all he saw was the back of my heels. I was flying down the stairs two at a time, hit the street running, and sprinted straight ahead up the street away from Katie toward the general store, hearing booted feet tromping down the stairs after me.

“Hey, somebody stop that colored kid!” shouted a voice.

From where she stood behind the building, Katie watched as the man ran down the stairs. She didn’t know what to do, since I was running away from her. But she didn’t have time to think about it because all of a sudden a big black form ran past her toward the front of the building and slammed into the man as he reached the bottom of the stairs. Both of them sprawled to the ground and tumbled over each other.

“Why, you fool nigger!” the man shouted, yelling a bunch of profanities along with it. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going!”

“Ah’m mighty sorry, massah, suh,” said Jeremiah, climbing slowly to his feet. “Ah wuz jes’ chazin’ mah dog what’s got loose.”

“Hang your blasted dog! Just get out of my way!”

By now the man was back on his feet and after me again. But I’d already reached the corner by the general store. I turned and glanced back. Even though Jeremiah had slowed them up, now there were two men running up the street after me.

I turned around the corner to the right and dashed past the general store the way we’d ridden a few minutes earlier.

In the meantime, Jeremiah and Katie ran back to the horses.

“Jeremiah, you’re in enough trouble,” said Katie. “You take two of the horses, keep to the woods, and start for home.”

“What about Miz Mayme?”

“I’m going after her,” said Katie, jumping on Dover’s back. “You listen for us. We’ll just be a few minutes behind you, maybe less. But you stay out of sight. I don’t want those men seeing you again.”

With that Katie was off, galloping back down the side street that skirted the woods on the edge of town.

I got to the street leading off the main road, then turned right.

There was Katie galloping toward me.

“Mayme!” she cried.

“Am I glad to see you!” I said, panting for breath. “Let’s get out of here!”

She reached down and I grabbed her hand. She pulled me up behind her. I hung on to Katie’s waist and she dug her heels in and off we galloped again.

“Ride into town!” I shouted to her from behind. “We don’t want them following us back to Rosewood!”

Katie must’ve thought it was a crazy idea to ride right toward the men where they were sure to see us. But she went along with it. A few seconds later we were galloping past the general store again just as the two men reached the main street. They looked surprised to see us on horseback and galloping straight toward them. I heard a few bad words shouted at us as we tore past and they saw me sitting behind Katie.

“Hey … hey, stop you! Hey, you colored—what were you—”

But we were already past them and disappearing down the street past the sheriff ’s office and bank. I was glad the sheriff wasn’t outside just then. We didn’t want
him
getting too curious about us either!

“Let’s get back to our horses!” I heard one of the men shout. “We’ve got to stop them!”

“Where are we going?” Katie shouted to me.

“I’ll tell you when we get there,” I yelled back.

People were watching us as we flew through town. I told Katie to turn left at the bank. We rode past the hotel where I’d looked for the job, then left on the street that ran alongside it. There were fewer people there, and I told Katie to rein in.

“Hurry, Katie,” I said, “let’s get down.”

We jumped off Dover’s back, then I led Katie and him off the street into a narrow alley behind the hotel, then around another corner and behind the building at the back where the man had shown me the room. There we stood, breathing heavily but out of sight from the street.

“Why did we come here?” asked Katie.

“I didn’t want them to see us riding back in the direction of Rosewood,” I said. “Now they think we’re going out of town in the opposite direction. So if they follow us, they’ll be going the wrong way. I hope they haven’t recognized who we are.”

“That was smart, Mayme!”

A few seconds later the sound of galloping horses thundered past in the street at the end of the alley.

“There they go,” I said. “I don’t know how long it will be before they realize we’re not in front of them. But let’s don’t wait to find out. Come on!”

We left the enclosure by the building and hurried back into the alley. We followed it all the way to the other end and came out into another street I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t know exactly where we were, but we knew the general direction we needed to go.

We mounted again, trying to stay calm and not gallop and draw attention to ourselves, and made our way through a few more back streets until we came again to the other side of town by the general store.

The minute we were on the road and out of sight of any more buildings and people, Katie lashed Dover up to a gallop again, and we rode hard for a mile or two until we heard a shout from the woods alongside the road.

Katie reined in. A second or two later Jeremiah came up toward the road with the other two horses.

I jumped down from behind Katie, got on Red, and away we went again.

This time we didn’t stop until we were back at Rosewood.

M
RS
. C
LAIRBORNE

31

T
HE MAN CALLED
S
NEED ARRIVED AT
R
OSEWOOD
again the next morning, just like he’d said he would. We’d told Jeremiah what was going on and he said he’d come back out in case we needed any help. When Mr. Sneed arrived Jeremiah was out in the field with the big plough horse.

Knowing Mr. Sneed was coming, we were ready for him. We had three fires going and a couple of horses saddled by the house to make it look like more people were around. As soon as we saw him coming in the distance, I ran to Aleta, who was waiting in the blacksmith’s shop.

“Now,” I called out. “Start pounding, Aleta … but remember to make it irregular … and don’t come out till I come get you.”

She started pounding with the hammer on the blacksmith’s anvil. When Sneed rode up and drove through the yard around to the front of the house, I was walking by with a load of laundry, and there was the sound of the hammering from the blacksmith’s shop, along with smoke from the fire I’d built there, and the fire from the slave cabin.

I thought the whole place looked pretty lively. But he didn’t seem to take any notice of anything. I reckon that was good. We didn’t want him to think anything was out of the ordinary.

The biggest surprise of all was waiting for him behind the front door.

The plan that Katie and I had thought of the night before was probably even crazier than everything we’d done up till now!

After we got Aleta to bed, we were talking about the gold. If Mr. Sneed knew we had the rest of it, we knew he would try to take it all. Especially knowing like we did after yesterday that he wasn’t alone and that the men who had been here twice already were in cahoots with him. But we didn’t know what we could do to stop him from taking it. With him and those other men, they could do anything they wanted to us, and there wouldn’t be anything we could do to stop them. If we refused or made them mad, there was no telling what they might do. The men besides Sneed looked real mean, like they wouldn’t think twice about hurting us. We had to somehow make them think there was no more reason to keep snooping around and bothering us.

“We can’t just give him your uncle’s gold,” I said. “Then you’d have nothing left at all.”

“They’re sure there’s more,” said Katie. “That’s what Uncle Templeton said too, don’t you remember—that they were sure there was more. From what you said you heard yesterday, they’re not going to stop until they get it.”

In a way maybe it didn’t matter. If the man at the bank wouldn’t take the gold in payment for the loan, then I suppose it didn’t matter how much Katie had. He might still foreclose on Rosewood. But then we realized that we didn’t know whether Mr. Sneed was telling Mr. Taylor the truth about the gold being from a robbery. Katie said the gold had been at Rosewood for years, so it didn’t seem likely.

The only conclusion we could come up with was that one way or another Katie had to keep hold of what gold she could. It was the only chance she had. She said maybe she could take it to somebody else in another town to sell it for money to give to the bank.

“Now I wish I hadn’t given Mr. Taylor the biggest and best of the nuggets,” said Katie.

“There’s plenty more,” I said.

“But the rest is just all little pieces and flakes and powder. It’s probably not worth as much. I wonder if Mr. Taylor gave it all to that man Sneed.”

“He only seemed to have that one chunk when I looked through the window,” I said.

As we were talking about it, right about then’s when I had my idea.

“If you could just fool him into thinking there
wasn’t
any more,” I said, “just like we’re trying to fool him about not being alone here.”

“Fool him … how do you mean?” asked Katie.

“Fool him about the gold too,” I said. “Make him think there’s no more so he and those men don’t come around anymore and will leave us alone. Right now they think you’ve got more. So if you just say
no,
he’ll be suspicious.”

“What are you thinking, Mayme?” said Katie. “I can tell from that look on your face that you’ve got an idea.”

I laughed. “You’re right,” I said. “I was thinking … what if you give him just enough to make him
think
you’ve given him all of it!” I said.

“You mean just … give it to him?” said Katie. “Give him the gold?”

“Just
some
of it!” I said. “Give him enough to fool him into thinking it’s the whole thing.”

“Do you think it would work?”

“I don’t know. But if he thinks he’s got
all
the gold, there’s no reason for him to keep coming around. I don’t know about the banker and the loan and all that, ’cause if he won’t take the gold for the loan, you’re still in a fix. But at least you’d still have
some
gold left.”

“Except that Mr. Taylor’s still got what I gave him,” said Katie.

“There’s no helping that now,” I said. “First we’ve got to worry about Mr. Sneed. And I think we ought to dress you up again to pretend to be your ma.”

“Oh no, Mayme—that was too hard!”

“You can do it, Katie. It’s just one more time. We’ll fix your hair even better and put rouge and stuff on your face to make you look older.”

“Mayme!”

But eventually Katie agreed because she couldn’t think of anything better.

That morning we went down into the cellar where the rest of the gold was still hidden in the lantern. We got a small old canvas bag from the barn and emptied out maybe a fourth of the gold into it, so that there was just about two inches of gold powder and a few small nuggets in the bottom of the bag. It felt funny scooping the gold out with our fingers and hands into the bag. It wasn’t any different than the feel of sand and tiny pebbles. I wondered why it was so valuable.

Once we had the bag of gold ready, we closed up the cellar again and started getting Katie ready. We fixed her hair different and got her dressed, and put on some of her mama’s lip rouge and powder and some ash smudges under her eyes to make her look older and stuffed a small pillow under her dress to make her look fatter. She was nervous, but she knew she had to do it. Emma and Aleta were curious and full of questions. We knew we had to get them settled down too!

When Mr. Sneed came, and after Aleta was clanging away in the blacksmith’s shop, I came into the kitchen so I could listen and so I would be nearby in case something went wrong.

He watched me as I went inside, but then continued on around to the front of the house, stopped and got out of his buggy, and went to the door.

When the knocker sounded, Katie nearly jumped a foot off the floor. I ducked back out of sight in the kitchen and waited.

I heard the front door open.

Mr. Sneed seemed to hesitate a moment.

“Uh … Mrs. Clairborne,” he said as he stood staring at the odd-looking plump lady who met him at the door.

“Yes,” said Katie, trying to make her voice sound like her mother’s. “You must be Mr. Sneed. My daughter told me you would be coming. Won’t you come in?”

Katie led him inside. If her voice was shaky, I couldn’t tell from listening.

“My daughter said you were inquiring about the gold we had taken to Mr. Taylor at the bank.”

“Yes, that is correct,” said Sneed. “As I explained to her, we think it may be part of a stolen governmental shipment … so I must ask you how you came by it, Mrs. Clairborne.” “I have a brother by the name of Ward Daniels,” said Katie. “He was always something of an adventurer. He went to California in 1849 and was there for some time. The next time I saw him was just before the war. He was back in the East and had a small bag of gold from his prospecting in California. He asked me to keep it for him.”