Prologue
The Little Niangua twists and turns as it winds through the dense forest of white oak, maple, hickory, and pine. In places it becomes deep and so narrow that the overhanging branches of trees on either bank meet and shade the water so deeply that the river bottom disappears, but for most of its journey in the summer it is wide and shallow. Between the mouth of Coffey Hollow Creek and Green’s Ford it turns far back but is prevented from meeting itself by a low hill.
There are many caves tucked into the hills, and when the first settlers came here they were greeted by the Osage who were kind and showed them a cave they could live in until they built houses. That cave was near a large creek, now called Mill Creek, and later still it would be known as Burnt Mill Creek.
Farming here is hard. Land must be cleared and kept clear of the rampant regrowth of trees and brush. A house or cabin left untended for a few years is in danger of disappearing as the woods spring up around it. The soil is not particularly fertile despite the lush growth of honey locusts, sycamores, and linn trees. The ridges, where the soil was even poorer, had growths of blackjack and laurel oak, crabapples and persimmons. This was as true in 1859 as it is today.
Chapter 1

Levi’s Daughter
The air was hot and smelled of late summer in the shimmering fields beyond the trees but here, in the river in the shade where it was a little cooler, it smelled of water and watery creatures, and that special metallic smell of hot children in need of a bath. The water was alleviating the latter, somewhat.
The first rock sailed past the three children and plunked into the water just beyond where they waded in the Little Niangua. Susannah thought the noise was a fish at first, but it was mid-afternoon in late August and too warm for any sensible fish to be jumping.
She knew these things because she was 9 and had fished a lot with her Pa, who knew how to attract a fish to his hook so well that the fish might just as well have jumped onto the bank and saved them the trouble of digging for bait. She squinted up at the maple that overhung the water to gauge the time of day, but the late August sun through the leaves was dazzling and she had to look away. The chatter and songs of the summer tanagers and goldfinches had stopped; something had disturbed them.
She glanced over at Sarah and Ben splashing in the shallow water near a place where the bank dipped so low you could walk right into the water. The mud was smooth and soft on bare feet and there were not too many rocks. Their clothes were wet to the waist and muddy at the hems but these were old clothes, handed down and patched and handed down again. The girls wore old dresses that had belonged to their sisters before them, the skirts gathered through their legs from the back and tucked into their front waistbands for modesty. These dresses had been let down and taken up so many times that there was a row of faded strips above the hems. The knees of Ben’s trousers were torn out and the backsides were worn dangerously thin. A piece of rope tied around his waist kept them in place. It was hot and he was shirtless, and more than once Susannah wished she could be shirtless too. The three were tanned and their hair was sun-bleached nearly to white from working and playing outdoors all summer.
A pileated woodpecker called its peculiar call and she could hear a meadowlark in the distance, probably in the fields at Grandpa Russell’s farm. Another rock sailed past but this time it was so close that she felt its passing and looked back at the river bank. Susannah saw them now, two boys of 14 or so, standing in the shade on the bank, self-important and serious by having achieved such a fine and advanced age. Ollie and Val. Horrible boys. They had stopped going to school the previous term, much to the relief of their teacher.
“Yer little children gwan home now. Yer be a-skurrin’ the fish with all yer splashin’ and we are here t’ catch some fish,” declared the tall skinny boy on the left.
“You leave us be, Ollie Hurst. We be here first an’ ‘sides there’s plenty of fishin’ upstream from here.”
“Ain’t you be one of Levi’s girls? That straw colored hair says you are. Does thee think yer daddy owns this creek? This be our fishin’ place. Scat! Git now!”
More rocks splashed near them now, and one passed entirely too close to her little brother’s head.
Ben.
Susannah felt no especial love for this child; he was not her favorite but he was her half-brother and her father’s only surviving son. She had no desire to be blamed if he was hurt. There were four older step-brothers at home; Aunt Liza’s boys, about the same age as her three older sisters. Three of Pa’s boys had died of the various ailments that babies died of: being born too soon, choking coughs, fevers, croup. They and two baby sisters were buried beside Susannah’s mother at the little church just down the road from their house. Everyone in the family felt protective of Ben as something precious.
Sarah wanted to wade farther into the creek to get away from the rocks splashing into the water near her but Susannah caught her hand and Ben’s and they sloshed their way out of the creek, the three of them creating as much mud and disturbance as they could. She glared at the boys as she passed them but they were implacable, standing with their arms crossed now, watching them go.
“Who’re they?” asked Sarah, when she thought they wouldn’t hear.
“The Hurst boys. Cousins.”
Sarah made a face. “Everyone here is our cousin. How come I don’t know ‘em?”
“Rag-tail cousins. Their grandpa married Great Aunt Ginnie. You prob’ly don’t remember her. She was a mean old woman.”
As soon as they thought the trio was out of sight, the boys stripped off their clothes and jumped in, making so much noise that no fish would be within 50 yards now. Their bait bucket was forgotten, in the shade on the path. Susannah turned back and peered through the undergrowth, but Sarah whispered, “Susanner, I gotta go!”
“Shh. We’ll go back in a bit an’ you can use the little house, but I just want to see…”
The whisper became a whine, strained, sharper, “ You just want ter look at their bee-hines, an’ I really gotta go! I cain’t hold it.”
“Well, go in the bushes then.”
“There might be cottonmouths!”
Susannah looked at her.
“I’m askeered.”
Sarah did a little squirmy dance for emphasis and whimpered.
Exasperated, Susannah looked around the path and noticed the bait pail.
“Say “scared”. Nobody’s “askeered”.
She grabbed the pail and spun Sarah around.
“Sit.”
Sarah turned slightly and peered doubtfully into the bucket.
“There’s dirt in it, an’ worms.”
She looked at Ben. “’n’ he’s gonna see me.”
Susannah took his shoulders, walked him away from the bucket, gently turned him away from Sarah and whispered, “I think I can see a turkey, right over there.”
“Whar?”
“Shhh.Where that little bit of red is, way over, under that tree. Hear him gobbling?”
Behind her she heard Sarah using the bucket and both girls started giggling but Ben was oblivious.
“Yeh, I kin hear him I think.”
A hen turkey stepped out onto the path a little ahead of them, stretching its legs slowly before it, looking in every direction, then crossed quickly and disappeared into the leafy shadows on the other side, followed by a group of chicks. Susannah watched them melt into the woods.
“How many did you count, Ben?”
“I cain’t count that many.”
“I think I saw 11.”
“Kin we go home now?”
“Ye-es. I think we had better do that now, right quick.”
She put the pail back where it had been, stifling a laugh as she did so, took her sister’s and brother’s hands, and they started for home.
The Hurst boys were still splashing in the Little Niangua and took no notice.
They had not taken five steps when they were startled by a huge tom turkey who exploded out of the brush right in front of them, rattling his feathers and hissing at them, and turning toward them in a menacing fashion. Suddenly, he raised his head, looked back, and ran across the path and into the brush.
“Wait now, let’s be still and see what’s scared Mr Turkey,” Susannah whispered. Sarah held her breath, then let it out in a little sigh of annoyance. Ben was bored and yanked his hand away from Susannah’s but just then they saw it, a bobcat slinking out of the brush ahead of them, moving slowly across the path, then slowly entering the woods on the other side. It took no notice of them until Ben let out a whoop and it was gone. They ran to where it entered the bushes but the growth was too thick and they couldn’t see where it had passed, but someone was there.
*****
Levi’s house sat on a low rise beyond the hill, surrounded by fields of corn and wheat and hay where the road from Bannister Holler met the road between Roach and Crossed Timbers. There were thirteen living in the house, Liza and Levi, ten children between them, and Grandpa Green. The four oldest boys were Liza’s from her first marriage, Thomas, James, Joseph, and John.
Grandpa William Green and Grandpa William Russell were born in 1800 in Kentucky and had been best friends since childhood; they came to Missouri together in 1832 and their farms were next to each other, and several of their grown children had married each other. Levi Green had the distinction of having married two of the Russell girls. He married Mary Elizabeth Russell when she was 19 and the four oldest girls were her daughters, Mary, Jane, Rachel, and Susannah. After Mary Elizabeth died he married her newly widowed sister, Eliza Jane Russell Hart, Liza.
Aunt Liza and Levi had two children together, Sarah and Ben, who were 7 and 9.
For the four older boys and the adults there was only a little time left for anything else after everything was done for the day. There were weeds to be hoed, cows and mules and pigs and chickens to tend to, and soon the fields would be ready to harvest.
The youngest three children fed the chickens and gathered the eggs; they pulled weeds in the kitchen garden and ‘Liza’s flower bed, raked the path and helped in the house. In the summer they gathered red and black raspberries with Eliza and the older girls; in the fall they picked persimmons on the ridges and nuts under trees. Ben mostly just tagged along while they worked; he did pull some weeds, but he ate most of the berries he picked and wasn’t yet trustworthy with eggs. Soon it would be autumn and school would start. It would also be the end of the pigs, as the ones not sold by then were butchered and smoked in the small smoking shed beside the Old Cabin, becoming hams and sausages and bacon.
The rhythm of the seasons dictated the work to be done, and each day had a rhythm of its own. Milk the cows, churn the butter, make the cheese, and cook and cook and cook for the farm, and preserve as much as possible for the winters when the work slowed, but even then the cow still had to be fed, and the mules had to be fed, and the chickens had to be fed, and all of the animals had to be fed including the two-legged ones.
In front of the Green farmhouse stood a huge shagbark hickory. The house was a large two story wood frame building with a big porch on the front and a winter kitchen at the back; the Old Cabin behind it served as the summer kitchen so the house stayed a bit cooler. There was a large cast-iron stove in the summer kitchen that had come with ‘Liza from her first marriage, a work table big enough to seat a dozen where dough for bread was kneaded, biscuits were rolled, pies were assembled and gossip was attended to. Late afternoon was usually when ‘Liza and the older girls were assembled there and indeed, Mary, Jane, and Rachel were rolling pastry and cutting rhubarb into a bowl while Aunt ‘Liza stirred a pot on the stove. She looked up as they entered.
“Susanner, get those dirty clothes off right now before thee come into this kitchen!”
“I… We…”
Aunt ‘Liza gave her The Look and Susannah backed out. She helped her siblings rinse off at the pump and strip down to their drawers, then the girls raced to their shared room to change, but not Ben who had not yet become shy or bothered by his own nakedness. He stripped off his drawers at the pump and went back into the summer kitchen. He stood swaying side-to-side beside the table, grinning because he knew it would annoy the older girls; Mary, his oldest half sister, swatted him and shooed him out of the kitchen.
“Go get some clothes on, ye scandalous little boy.” He ran off giggling.
The girls soon returned, properly dressed, and Susannah started to speak but again she got The Look. Aunt ‘Liza pointed them to a big bowl of green beans to be made into leather britches. It was hot inside the kitchen so they took their work outside, under a tree. Sarah snapped off the flower end of each bean and Susannah ran the needle and thread through the middle to string them. They’d be hung in the cellar to dry for use at special meals in the winter. They could hear Grandpa Green’s fiddle as it scraped a little to warm up, then began to play from the front porch.
“Are you gonna tell her?”
Susannah sighed. “I was, maybe later when she’s not so busy.”
Ben returned to the kitchen, half buttoned up, and tugged at his mother’s skirt. She considered him for a moment, buttoned his trousers and helped him onto a tall chair next to the table. She gave him some dough to play with while he talked a blue streak:
“Mama! Mama! We saw a turkey! An’ another turkey, a great big one! An’ a lot of little chicks! An’ a bobcat! An’ some big boys named Ollie er Vollie yelled at us in the creek and throwed rocks at us, an’ Sarah peed in a bucket full of dirt an’ worms cuz she was askeered of a snake!”
The women and girls looked at each other and burst into laughter.
Aunt ‘Liza said, “Those poor worms.”
Ben paused for breath and rolled the dough thoughtfully between his fingers.
“An’ there was a man. He was so big. I ain’t never seen him b’fore. His clothes was dirty and ragged. He was in the bushes, cryin’, all tore up ’n bleedin’. Oh! I forgot I wasn’t supposed to tell. He made us promise or he said he’d come and get us when we was a asleep if we told.”
He gave his mother a sorrowful look.
“Is he gonna come and get us?”
“What man? SUSANNAH?”
The armed search party found the escaped slave not far from the path, curled up under a linn tree, his last expression one of misery and pain. One foot was swollen to nearly twice the size and they could see the marks left by the fangs of a timber rattler.