To the challenge, he responded: “I am yours if you can take me.”
The two men, his new master and an attendant, dismounted and hitched their horses, thinking the conquest of the “cowardly nigger” would be an easy matter. But not so. The man who for nearly three-score years had manifested only the meekness of a child, was now endowed with the spirit and prowess of a giant. A well-aimed blow of the bludgeon laid his master a quivering corpse at his feet, and several well-directed strokes of the butcher knife sent the other covered with ghastly, bleeding wounds, fainting to the roadside.
Mounting the fleetest horse, Jake made his way rapidly to the river, and plunging in soon found himself landed safely on the Ohio shore. Taking to a highway soon found, he followed the lead of the north star, and just at daybreak turned into a woodland ravine, and spent the quiet autumnal Sabbath watching the grazing of the faithful horse upon such herbage as he could find, and in meditating upon the wonderful revelations and events of the past twenty-four hours.
Night clear and beautiful, came again, and Jake pursued his onward way, and in the early morning turned his jaded beast loose in a retired pasture lot not far from Salem; threw the saddle and bridle into a ravine, on the principle that “dead men tell no tales,” and prospecting about for some time, saw emerge from a farm house a broad-brimmed hat, which he had learned was a sure sign of food and protection. Approaching the Quaker farmer, Uncle Jake declared himself a fugitive, and applied for food and shelter, which were freely granted.
Tuesday the stage coach brought into Salem a hand-bill giving a full description of Uncle Jake, telling of the killing of the master, the probable mortal wounding of the other, and offering a large reward for his apprehension.
“Thee oughtest to have struck more carefully, friend,” said the Quaker, when he had learned thus fully the measure of his protégé’s adventure, “but then as it was in the dark, we may pardon thee thy error, but Salem is not a safe place for such as thee. I shall take thee to my friend, Dr. Benjamin Stanton, who will instruct thee as to what thee is to do.”
Accordingly, when nightfall made it safe, the Quaker took Jake to the house of his friend, who was none other than a cousin of Lincoln’s great War Secretary, where having exchanged his laborer’s garb for a suit of army blue, richly trimmed with brass buttons, a style of dress much admired by colored people in those old days of militia training, and a high-crowned hat, he was immediately posted off to the care of one Barnes, residing on the confines of Boardman, bearing to him the simple admonition, “It is hot.”
Not appreciating the full merits of the case, Barnes took him in the early morning and started for Warren by way of Youngstown. Here he was espied by two questionable characters, who having seen the hand-bill advertising Jake, and knowing the antecedents of Barnes, justly surmised that the black gentleman in blue might be none other than the individual for whom the reward was offered, and at once planned a pursuit, but not until the eagle eye of the driver had detected their motions. Leaving the main road, he struck across the Liberty hills. When near Loy’s Corners he perceived they were pursued, and bade Jake alight and make for some place of safety, while he would try and lead the pursuers off the trail.
In a land of strangers and without protective weapons save his knife, Jake could do nothing more than to run up to a little wagon shop by the wayside, in the doorway of which stood an honest Pennsylvania Dutchman named Samuel Goist, and exclaimed, “Lor’ Massa, save me from the slave catcher.”
Now, Mr. Goist was a Democrat of the straightest sect, and had long sworn by “Sheneral Shackson;” he had never before seen a panting fugitive and knew nothing of secretive methods, but when he saw the venerable, though unique form before him, his generous heart was touched, and he replied: “Hite gwick in ter hay yonder till I cums,” pointing at the same time to a last year’s haystack, into which the cattle had eaten deep recesses.