NOVEL NEXT chapter 25 - Advertisement
“When a shepherd spots a ticket, he brings it to me, the conductor. Then I move the passenger on to a safer station, and the wheels keep turning.”
“…Are those song lyrics?”
The Underground Railroad’s station conductor.
Colin Frank Madsen described his work in slang. It was about how they spirited Black slaves to freedom.
“You know the Fugitive Slave Act they passed five years ago?”
Max nodded.
A bill that let an owner go up North and seize a slave who had fled from the South.
With the testimony of fugitive slaves barred and jury trials forbidden, if you framed a free Black as a slave, he wasn’t even given a chance to make a defense—an evil law.
And after that law, slave traders and slave hunters got crueler in their pursuit. Stories of Black slaves who died or were dragged back spilled from Colin’s mouth.
The more he listened, the more it felt like boarding the Underground Railroad.
Taking orders and being bound was already more than enough in the sheriff’s chair in Lawrence. Max had no intention of joining that organization outright.
Clap, clap.
He put his hands together to clear the air and asked, straight to the point.
“So what’s the favor?”
“Set up a station in Lawrence.”
A “station” was a safe house for hiding slaves.
Max shook his head.
“That isn’t my decision.”
“If you say it, the chairman will listen.”
“We’ll see. I’ll raise it. But I won’t be joining the Underground Railroad myself.”
Colin gave Max a sidelong look and asked,
“As an Oriental, shouldn’t you take the side of Black slaves?”
“That’s a twisted logic. And who am I? The sheriff of a town founded by abolitionists. How much more ‘on their side’ do you need?”
Colin smacked his lips, apparently out of a counter.
Then, suddenly, his eyes changed and he growled low.
“You already know too much.”
“It’s a problem if you talk alone and then come at me like this. If you really want to shut me up, draw. If you’re sure of yourself.”
Their eyes snared and the air went cold.
In Colin’s head flashed the image of Max cutting down the Border Ruffians.
‘Shit. I’m not sure I can win.’
Where had a bastard like this come from—Colin let out a sigh.
Max spoke, calm.
“It won’t be a station, but there will be times I can help the Underground Railroad.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The route to the terminus is different, but the end is the same. Think about who I am—and who we killed tonight.”
A settlement founded by abolitionists.
Colin and the Oriental—no, the sheriff—had killed pro-slavery Border Ruffians.
Different methods, same end: it had been for Black slaves as well.
“Anyway, that aside—I owe you twice. I’ll help twice.”
There were conditions: help would be one-off. If it took time, or the distance was far, he would refuse without exception.
“I hate owing debts.”
“What are you, a swindler? You say you’ll pay a debt and then you slather on conditions?”
Annoyed, Colin knocked back two whiskeys in a row. As he set the glass down, Max slid something over.
“This is our token.”
“Ha…”
MJ, engraved on a copper-plated bullet nose.
Colin’s face twisted in an odd way.
“You even put your initials on it.”
“If you need my help, bring one. One favor per round. Lose it, and we don’t know each other.”
Fingering the bullet, Colin shook his head and tucked it deep inside his coat.
Given Max’s skill, it wasn’t a bad wage for the hell of a day.
****
“I’m fine for today.”
Fitch cut him off cold.
Max focused on sawing, a hangdog look on his face.
Colin left town before dawn, and from midday on a lot of people pitched in to rebuild the sheriff’s office that had turned to ash.
Fitch helped with the work, backing Max up.
“Most of the bodies had stab wounds to the neck and chest from a Bowie knife.”
“Because that’s what I used.”
“You picked knife fighting over guns to take on numbers. What’s odd is how one man’s wound was especially deep. That was the field officer’s sword, wasn’t it?”
“I’d say so.”
Rrrrk, rrrrk.
“So that means you killed nine alone. If I learn it, could I do it?”
“Got a lot of people you want to kill?”
“It’s for a maybe.”
Max paused the saw and looked at Fitch.
Hair combed neatly back.
White skin, a slender face, a sharp nose—classic Western beauty.
“What is it you want to be? Sheriff? Or coroner?”
“They say there are three kinds of women in the West.”
“What are they?”
“Married women, widows, and whores. Which one do you think I’ll be?”
“That’s a tough question.”
Rrrrk, rrrrk.
Max set to sawing again, and Fitch pressed him for details of the fight the night before.
As construction went on,
the papers covering the Lawrence incident spread across Kansas and to neighboring places, too. The content concluded it was the work of outlaws, not Border Ruffians.
****
A few days after the sheriff’s office was finished,
Chairman Charles came to see Max.
For the first time, it was just the two of them in a small meeting room, heads together.
“How’s the new sheriff’s office?”
“I like it very much.”
Charles nodded, then spoke with a grave face.
“Lawrence will soon be bound into a county. From what I hear, it’ll be Douglas County.”
“A new sheriff will be elected.”
Charles nodded at Max’s words.
“Lecompton and Lawrence will be tied together into Douglas County, and if so, we’ll be outnumbered by Lecompton.”
For now, Lecompton—under the influence of the Governor and the slaveholders—was seen as a quasi-seat of the territory.
Charles and Holliday were pushing Lawrence and Topeka, but their sway was still small.
“The new sheriff might dismiss you.”
“I’m a temporary sheriff anyway.”
“That’s true. But the man they’ll put up is obvious, isn’t he?”
Max looked at Charles.
“That’s your job. Lawrence just needs to swallow Lecompton.”
“Easy to say. In truth, that’s why I called you—to get your counsel. At first I fussed about you being an Oriental, but now I forget even that. Don’t the townsfolk feel the same?”
Not an Oriental—Lawrence’s sheriff.
That image had sunk in hard, and the townsfolk called Max by his name or as the sheriff.
Max’s hobby was papers and books.
Charles accepted that the insight about the land dispute and Topeka and the creation of the militia hadn’t come by chance.
“When I was a legislator in California, do you know what party I belonged to?”
“I’d guess the Whigs.”
Not a memory from a past life—a feel Max had.
The Democrats, or the weirdly named Know Nothing Party, didn’t fit him.
“Right. I was a Whig. But things aren’t what they were.”
“They’ve split into several parties.”
“And that’s my worry.”
With the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act, the Whigs began their slide.
Abolitionists grew disgusted with the leadership and bolted, and soon founded the Republican Party.
As always, a party just starting came with risk.
The remaining Whigs, the Free Soil Party, the American Party, and so on—Charles stood at that fork, torn.
‘You’re going Republican anyway.’
Where abolitionists were gathering—and soon to become a national party—the Republicans would ride the times and fix themselves as one of the two great parties with the Democrats.
“Don’t you think the Republicans are the right choice?”
“Why?”
“Opinion is swinging toward abolition. A party that hoists that as its banner will get plenty of support.”
The North had long since surpassed the South in population.
Add to that if Black slaves got the vote, the South and the Democrats would be pushed from power.
The expansion of free soil led to abolition,
which meant the planter class of the South would lose wealth and power.
Plantation owners who held Black slaves were frantic to make Kansas a slave state for that very reason.
Charles nodded at Max’s words.
Then he shifted the topic.
“Thinking of ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) the last incident, it makes me shiver. Are we all right with the militia as it is?”
“Since we’re on it, there’s one proposal I’d like to make.”
When a gunfight hits the town, women and children are exposed and defenseless.
Thinking of how they had hidden in the barn not long ago, the most urgent need was a refuge.
“I’d like it sited a little way out from town.”
“Good thinking. I’ll handle it with the council soon.”
At the end of their talk, Charles brought up Max’s papers.
“You and Holliday were working on your immigration status. Word came in yesterday.”
“Did it?”
“January 2, 1853—your name’s been entered on the San Francisco arrivals roll. It’s illegal, strictly, but we didn’t conjure a ghost, did we?”
Charles Robinson, the former California legislator, had clearly leaned on someone. He wasn’t a man locked up tight in everything.
And they’d listed his country of origin as Joseon, not China.
“They were flustered, asking where that was.”
Max let a faint smile show at the chairman’s words.
Getting papers didn’t mean it was over.
U.S. naturalization law targeted whites; Max couldn’t qualify for citizenship.
What was possible was the right to live on this land.
Residency was the only avenue.
And to get it, Max would have to spend two more years with Holliday as his employer.
****
Two weeks after the Lawrence raid,
George Brown, editor and reporter, came to see Max.
“Holliday go to Topeka?”
“He’s so buried in it I hardly see him these days.”
His grin was ear to ear—good news, clearly.
He snapped a paper open wide.
“Look! Just like you said!”
“It’s too wrinkled to read.”
George Brown tossed the paper on the desk and clapped Max on the shoulder.
“The Governor decided—there’ll be a revote!”
Max pulled an over-the-top “you don’t say” face, and George Brown, excited, went off to see Chairman Charles.
Max unfolded the paper George had brought.
The expected polling date was May 22.
It wouldn’t be a full redo—partial revotes only.
Between the free states and the slave states, the Governor had finally made a call.
As Max read down the page,
his eyes locked onto a help-wanted ad.
Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
The ancestor of the private military companies he’d worked for in his past life.
For a while he couldn’t take his eyes off the Pinkerton ad.