“Let us pray,” and Parson Steward broke the silence. As they knelt about the bed, the crack of rifles broke in upon the fervent petition for mercy sent upwards by the man of God. It was the volley that carried death to the last of the captured Rangers. Guilty soul joined guilty soul in their flight to Eternity.
Ebenezer Maybee expressed no surprise when told of Thomson’s confession.
“These happenings ’min’ me o’ the words o’ the Psalmist that I’ve heard Parson quote so often: ‘Thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things.’”
“Amen,” said Steward. “But full of mercy, also, since they will deliver this poor girl from the hand of the spoiler.”
Many tears were shed over Maybee’s precarious condition, for he was dear to every soul in the camp. Winona and Judah established themselves as nurses at his bedside, bringing all their Indian knowledge of medicine to bear upon his case, and declaring that they would pull him through.
“My children,” he said, after musing a while on the exciting tale just told him, “I believe I can match that story o’ Thomson’s. I have a surprisin’ secret to unfol’ to you. It will make the whole business clear. White Eagle must a per-ceived his end, an’ he says to me, says he, jes’ about a month before his disease, he says, ‘Maybee, keep this here package if anything comes across me, ’tell my girl’s a re-sponsible age.’ After he was dead I said to myself—in the words of Scripter, ’a charge to keep I have’ an’ ’t ain’t safe to keep it; so I give the package to Ma’ Jane an’ she has it unto this day.”
CHAPTER XVII.
A week later our fugitives started for Canada via Buffalo, N. Y., by a circuitous path well known to Captain Brown. Mr. Maybee went along in an improvised ambulance, much improved in health and bearing well the fatigue of travel.
The Brown camp was deserted, and the Government troops, when they arrived, found only the blackened remains of the once busy settlement. Where the Rangers had paid the penalty of their crimes against the farmers of Kansas, the grass covered the sod as if it had never been disfigured or stained. The last gun had been fired in Kansas by Brown’s forces, and he was next heard of in the Virginia insurrection which ended so fatally for the intrepid leader.
After many startling adventures and narrow escapes from capture, a group of bronzed and bearded men and one woman rode up one morning to the entrance of the Grand Island Hotel. It was our friends and the Brown family. The other refugees had passed in safety over the border into Canada, and the fugitive slaves were, at last, rejoicing on free soil.