that route a number of times. Its odor neutralized
the smell by which the presence, immediate or recent,
of negroes might be detected.
“My fellow-travelers, as my passengers
might be called, were interesting companions.
Both, in one sense, were children, the mother certainly
not being over seventeen years old. She was a
comely half-breed mulatto. Her baby—a
pretty boy of two years—was one degree
nearer white.
“The girl was inclined to be confidential
and talkative. She said she was ‘old
mas’r’s’ daughter. Her mother
had been one of ’old mas’r’s’
people. She had grown up with the other slave
children on the place, being in no way favored because
of her relationship to her owner. The baby’s
father was ’young mas’r’—old
master’s son, as it appeared—and
who, consequently, was a half-brother of the youthful
mother. Slavery sometimes created singular relationships.
“As the story ran, all the people,
including the narrator and her baby, when ‘ole
mas’r’ died were ‘leveled’
on by the Sheriff’s man. She did not
quite understand the meaning of it all, but it was
doubtless a case of bankruptcy.
“‘Young mas’r,’
she said, ‘tole’ her she had to run away,
taking the baby of course. ’Oh, yes,”
she said very emphatically, ’I never would
have left Kentuck without Thomas Jefferson’—meaning
her little boy. ‘Young mas’r,’
according to her account, arranged the whole proceeding,
telling her what course to take by night, where
to stop and conceal herself by day, and what signal
to give when she reached the ‘big river.’
“When the Ohio had been crossed
her young master met her, evidently to the great
delight of the poor creature. He gave her some
money, and told her that when she reached her destination
he would send her some ‘mo.’ After
putting her in charge of some kind people, evidently
representatives of the underground line, they had
parted, according to her description of the incident,
in an affecting way. ‘He kissed me and
I cried,’ was her simple statement. Notwithstanding
the boasted superiority of one race over another,
human nature seems to be very much the same, whether
we read it in a white face or in a black one.
“The little girlish mother was very
much alarmed for the safety of her boy and herself
when we began our journey, wanting to get out and
conceal herself whenever we heard any one on the road.
After several detentions from that cause, the weary
creature stretched herself upon the hay beside her
sleeping infant and almost immediately fell into
a heavy slumber. She could stand the strain no
longer. I drew the buffalo-robe over the two sleepers,
and there they rested in blissful unconsciousness
until the journey was ended.
“Half-way between the termini of
my route was a village in which lived a constable
who was suspected of being in the employ of the slave-owners.
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