II.
“O for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer’s praise;
The glories of my God and King,
The triumphs of His grace.”
Thus sang Azel Tracy as he stood running a wheel in his little shop in Hartford, Ohio. The last words were uttered in a subdued tone. This done, the air was continued in a fine specimen of genuine Yankee whistling, intermingled with occasional snatches from “China,” or “Coronation.”
It was only a sample of Mr. Tracy’s railroad telegraphy, for the low attic of his shop, filled, in part, with bits of lumber and parts of defunct wagons, was an important station and it frequently became necessary to signal the waiting passengers, of whom nearly one-hundred, according to the family reckoning, found rest and protection within its narrow limits, a fact one would scarcely believe as he passes it, looking to-day almost identical with its appearance fifty years ago.
Notwithstanding Hartford is a historic anti-slavery town, there were not wanting those within its borders, who for “the recompense of reward,” would willingly have divulged the presence of any fugitives in keeping had he known their whereabouts. It was to guard against this class of persons frequenting his shop that the old wagon-maker had adopted a musical system of signalizing those in his care. When any danger threatened, and silence was imperative, he would sing a snatch of some familiar hymn or whistle its air; but when “the coast was clear,” Hail Columbia or Yankee Doodle was the signal for “unlimbering.”
On this occasion both the words quoted and the whistling of “Old Hundred” were considered necessary as a double danger signal, for only three nights before there had climbed the narrow ladder in the corner of the shop, drawn it up and let down a board, thus completing the floor, an individual filling to a “dot” the description given in the hand-bill previously referred to, and which was already liberally scattered through Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. No questions had been asked and only necessary instructions and provisions given. Thirty-six hours later two strangers had put in an appearance in the quiet town, and soon avowed themselves as in quest of the subject of the reward offered.
They had continued to lounge about the village till this Saturday afternoon, much of the time in uncomfortable proximity to the Tracy wagon shop, for they claimed the object of their search had been seen approaching it, and they were even now directly in its front in the highway, holding a colloquy with Dudley, the junior Tracy, and at present, 1894, the inheritor of his father’s trade and shop. “Dud,” as he is familiarly called, was then a strapping boy in his middle teens, bare-footed, without coat or vest, tow-headed, and to all appearances a fine subject for an interview.
“See here, boy,” said one of the strangers, “have you seen anything of a young nigger about here within a day or two?”
“What do you mean, one of them black fellers like that’n the bill tells about yonder?”
“Yes, he’s the chap we want to find.”
“Wal, no, I hain’t seen no such feller, but I hearn about him two or three days ago.”
“How?”
“Why I was a layin’ in the bushes up back of the church and the Gen’ral an’ Sam Fuller cum along and the Gen’ral sez he, ‘Fuller, that boy’s got to be got off. They’r arter him.’”
“Who’s the General?”
“Wal, that’s Mr. Bushnell. They say he keeps some of them black ’uns some times.”
“Tell us what they said.”
“Wal, Fuller he said, ‘What’s going to be done?’ and the Gen’ral said, ‘You come up with the team after dark and take him down to the tow-path that’s down in Pennsylvanee and tell him to keep north till he came to some colored fokeses and they’d send him to Jehu and then he’d be all right.’”
“How far is it to the tow-path?”
“O I don’t know; that’s on the canawl where they drive the hosses hitched to the boats, an’ I never was so fur from hum.”
There was some farther parleying, seemingly entirely satisfactory to the strangers, then they dropped a “bit” into Dud’s hands, and under the influence of spurs two horses struck out briskly for the land of the Pennymights.
“Dud, I say Dud, come here quick,” called the senior Tracy to the boy who stood gazing after the rapidly receding forms of the horsemen, and the junior slowly responded to the call.
As soon as Dud was within the door the query was raised, “What did the gentlemen want?”
“O nothing much, only they asked me if I’d seen the nigger advertised on the hand-bill yonder?”
“Well, what did you tell them?”
“O not much; I just yawned a little, telling them I heard the Gen’ral tell Mr. Fuller that he must get the boy down to Clarksville and start him north for Bishop, who would get him to the lake.”
“Why, Dud, what a—”
“Come now, dad, no accusations. Didn’t I just hear you tuning your gospel melody as much as to say, ‘Keep still up there,’ and didn’t I hear you tell mother last night, when you thought we children were asleep, you didn’t know what to do? But I did, and I’ve done it and now you needn’t try to keep this thing from me any longer. You’ve thought I don’t know what’s up, but I guess I’ve seen the last twenty darkies you’ve holed in the shop and Uncle Sam has taken away, and now that I’ve got those fellows off, I think you can afford to let me take a hand after this.”
A look of astonishment, mingled with satisfaction, overspread the countenance of Azel Tracy at this revelation of the fact that his son was acquainted with so much of the method of the road, a thing of which he and many another parent, for prudential reasons, tried to keep their children in ignorance, and taking the hand of the boy he replied, “You shall have all the hand in it you wish, my son.”
The sun had dropped below the western horizon when the aforesaid bare-footed boy might have been seen making his way eastward to the home of farmer Fuller, bearing the following note:
48 to 1001.
Dud has cooked the goose. The feathers are left—they are good for Fennland, and the parson needs a text for to-morrow. The loft is good—the cellar better.
Leza.
As a result of this note, when darkness had settled down upon the earth, when candles were extinguished alike in farm house and village home, the old-fashioned buggy of Samuel Fuller stood before the little Hartford shop, and Dud, the Caucassian, surrendered his seat to an African of deepest sable, and soon the vehicle was speeding rapidly northward.