NOVEL NEXT chapter 29 - Delaware Town
On the way to Delaware, someone tagged along.
George Brown of the Herald of Freedom.
He looked Max up and down and asked,
“Tell me you’re not going to wipe out a town.”
“Come on, what kind of nonsense is that.”
“It’s that your loadout isn’t kidding around. You could march straight onto a battlefield.”
“I’m prepared—for contingencies.”
Brown nodded, then cocked his head and asked,
“But why haul the corpses yourself when you know it’s dangerous? You could call the Delaware sheriff to verify the bounty.”
“That won’t cut it. You know what the biggest problem for Lawrence is right now?”
“Mm. Logistics?”
Max nodded.
Shipments from Leavenworth to Lawrence were ailing because of the people of Delaware.
They were painting Lawrence as the hand behind the murders and repeatedly delaying the transports.
Because of that, Chairman Charles kept saying he was losing his hair—he was racking his brains over it.
“To solve it, we have to show it has nothing to do with our town. Specifically, we have to let them know the killers were their own—defenders of slavery.”
“How? Who are these guys?”
Brown rounded his small eyes and asked.
“They’re sons of a pro-slavery man in Jefferson City, Missouri.”
“Whoa—really? How the hell do you know that?”
Past-life memory, that’s what.
But he couldn’t say that.
“I found out ahead of time. Anyway, that’s what we need to assert.”
“An assertion grounded in fact?”
“Why would I lie.”
Rummaging through the last life’s notes, the men were certainly from Missouri. But proving it would take time.
Bringing George Brown along was to make it look like the legwork was already done.
“But the Delaware town chairman—Grinter—is no ordinary fellow.”
“The father of the murdered girl, right?”
“Pro-slavery down to the bone. No telling how he’ll come out. I just hope the logistics kink gets worked out, at least.”
That was Brown’s top priority.
Max wanted more.
Grinter had more than people thought.
Bleeding Kansas—the incidents that would erupt through this season of confusion and conflict.
It was a clash of abolitionists and defenders of slavery, and personal matters like land disputes would be sorted by the parties’ leanings and then blown up into “sides.”
So Delaware’s one-sided push to brand Lawrence the killers was a point that had to be taken head-on.
****
About twenty-five miles (40 km) from Lawrence to Delaware. With the bodies piled on the wagon, Max and Brown finally reached the town.
The town’s name came from the Indians called the Lenape—or Delaware—who had lived clustered there.
Many place names in America come from tribes or their languages. The state of Delaware in the East, too, was where the early Delaware people settled.
But after whites took their land and the Indian Removal Act was proclaimed, they were pushed completely west—to today’s Kansas.
Not that this Delaware was their last stop, either.
The government had granted land south of Leavenworth as an Indian reservation—but now they were once more being shoved out by settlers crossing from Missouri.
And those settlers were now blocking Max and Brown, who had arrived hauling a wagon.
A reporter like George Brown was one thing; the people of Delaware went gray-faced at the sight of Max.
“The Oriental sheriff of Lawrence.”
“So it’s true what they said—some young Oriental pup.”
Not that they could just sneer and dismiss him. There were more than a few stories about the sheriff of Lawrence.
If the newspaper reports weren’t fabricated, they had to be careful. Besides—
Everyone went rigid at the sheriff’s armament as he came up close.
Four revolvers just visible on both chest and waist. Two rifles stuck behind the saddle where a hand could reach.
That was a loadout that could kill twenty-eight people at once without a reload. Add the two revolvers hidden somewhere and he could go to forty.
At Max’s imposing arrival, the people of Delaware traded looks, clearly hoping someone would step up. A handful finally came forward, bold-faced.
“If you’re a sheriff, mind your own town. What are you doing here?”
“If ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) you’re in with the killers, what do you have to guard? Your town’s fine, so you strut around at ease.”
Max looked calmly at the jeerers and opened his mouth. He was still on horseback.
“I have business with your chairman.”
“Cut the joke. Say it here. You think our chairman’s as idle as you?”
“What’s in that wagon?”
Max spoke toward the sneerers.
He felt no need to be respectful.
“If you’re curious, go look. See what’s in it.”
At his backward nod, a cluster of townsmen barreled over.
And then they screamed.
“Ugh! What is this!”
“Damn—look at those eyes, still bugged open.”
Why hadn’t he closed the corpses’ eyes?
Turning away from the grisly dead, they swung their heads back to Max.
A wagon with three bodies.
The sheriff who’d brought it in looked at them with indifferent eyes.
Some felt the hairs rise at their napes.
“They’re the culprits from the recent murders. I brought in the real killers, so you’ll compensate the damages you’ve caused Lawrence.”
Blocking and delaying shipments.
Down to the foodstuffs rotted because of it—they’d pay for the lot.
“D–Don’t be ridiculous!”
“How can you be sure they’re the killers?”
Max gave a thin smile.
“How are you so sure they aren’t? I am sure.”
“What’s that Oriental bastard saying.”
Most of the gathered were ordinary folk. A few had guns, but under Max’s air they didn’t dare draw.
Just then the crowd parted and the town’s sheriff appeared.
A middle-aged man came with him, his face flushed as he asked Max,
“You have proof they’re the killers?”
So that’s Grinter.
The town chairman who’d shaped the founding of Delaware.
The fact he spoke over the sheriff showed his weight.
Leisurely, Max swung down and reached into his coat. He handed the man a small, sealed glass bottle.
The men Max had put down had roamed Kansas towns committing murders.
And like psychopaths, they had bottled parts of the dead in glass as trophies. What Max handed over held something of Grinter’s daughter.
“Ah.”
Grinter’s legs went out and he sank to the ground. The townsmen at last realized Max had brought the true killers.
A moment later, Grinter’s family rushed over.
George Brown sketched the mournful scene in notes as he wrote the article.
The sheriff, after checking the bodies, shot his eyes wide.
“These were the ones peddling Free Soil pamphlets, weren’t they?!”
“Were they.”
“I wasn’t asking you.”
The sheriff knit his brow at Max.
A face that said he didn’t even want to exchange words. The reasons were layered:
Oriental; the Lawrence sheriff whose name had spread across Kansas; and a man who’d caught killers the sheriff himself hadn’t noticed—even after speaking with them.
Contempt, inferiority, jealousy, envy—all of it was in his eyes.
So he was the one who’d ordered the block on logistics.
Ignoring the sheriff, Max turned his gaze to Grinter. The man was staring at the bodies.
A father’s eyes on the men who killed his daughter.
Eyes that had packed away rage, raking over the corpses.
And then a cruel smile came to his mouth.
He liked what he saw: the dead with their eyes wide, faces twisted in pain.
Without taking his eyes off the bodies, Grinter asked,
“Is there a reason you left them like that?”
“As you see, it wasn’t a comfortable death.”
“You brought them like this to show me.”
“I hope it’s some small comfort.”
What the families of victims want is revenge.
And not just revenge—painful revenge.
To meet that, Max left them as if taxidermied in the state they died.
Of course, the second one at the haystack had his eyes closed. In the end, Max had forced the lids back and worked the face to make it look like he’d died in maximum torment.
Go this far and you win the other side’s heart.
When you get an opening, planting one ally in enemy ground isn’t nothing.
From slavery’s side, step back a pace and they’re people all the same.
If a man had no such possibility, better to screen him out now.
While Grinter stared and thought, the sheriff cut in.
“You caught the culprits—but that doesn’t clear the guilt of Lawrence.”
“I’m the sheriff of Lawrence, and I personally caught them.”
“All the more suspicious. Who knows if you didn’t kill them to gag them because things were turning against you?”
This one definitely needed to be screened out.
“Can you stand by that?”
“You dare ask me for responsibility?”
“Enough.”
At Grinter’s interjection, the sheriff’s face twitched.
“Do you know who these men are?”
“Of course. But before that, there’s one point we need to mark.”
Max raised his voice so the townspeople could hear.
“When it’s shown Lawrence bears no guilt, you’ll compensate the damages—and more.”
“Nonsense!”
“Shut your mouth! Who are you to spit that out!”
Max looked around at them with a cold curl of lip.
“Then who are you to brand Lawrence the killers?”
“……”
Turning from the people, Max spoke to Grinter.
“These men are from Jefferson City, Missouri. Naturally they have records working on the side of the defenders of slavery.”
“You’re certain?”
“A reporter with a stout sense of duty learned it after three months of tracking.”
Max turned his head to George Brown. The man swallowed and stepped forward.
So this is why you dragged me along.
Curses rose in him, but George Brown straightened his face and spoke.
“A reporter speaks only to what he’s seen and verified. I swear on my paper—the Herald of Freedom. These men are certainly from Missouri.”
In any case, once a U.S. marshal and a coroner showed, it would be brought to light. Even so, to stake the paper’s name—no one said that without a fair certainty.
I don’t know—hell. He wouldn’t be lying to me, would he.
George Brown met Max’s eyes and nodded.
The murmuring townsmen looked deflated. Those farther off cheered on the quiet.
Abolitionists living with their heads down in town. People who had been here since before Kansas’s struggle over slavery.
They clicked their tongues as they looked from the sheriff of Lawrence to their own sheriff.
The contrast was stark.
A world apart from a Delaware sheriff who did nothing but agitate.
Abolitionists began to think seriously about moving to Lawrence.