November 28, 1811
It was late November when Captain Morrison and the Mounted Light Dragoon patrol moved onto the back forty acres of the Culpepper farm. There were eleven of them in all: Captain Morrison, Sergeant Douglas, and nine men.
The men put up tents in a neat row alongside the stream running through the back of the property. They dug a deep hole a good distance downstream from the campsite, for a privy. They dug a shallow hole for the cooking pit in the center of the camp, and they designated an upstream part of the creek for drinking water and a downstream part for bathing and washing clothes.
Captain Morrison’s tent looked a lot like Zeb’s: about four feet high at the peak, the roof sloping outward toward two one-foot sidewalls. Almost a month had passed since Zeb had brought his tent back to the Culpepper farm, and the turpentine odor had already faded away. He practiced taking it down and putting it up over and over again. It usually took two men to put up a tent quickly, but he couldn’t count on his grampa’s being able to help him. He wanted to be able to do it himself, and he didn’t want to look like a complete fool in front of the dragoons.
One afternoon a few days later, Zeb was in the corral working with Kapucha. Since he had loaned Christmas to Lonnie Champ so he would have a big horse to ride, Zeb had worked with Kapucha every day, getting him to accept the bit and to respond to leg signals. The dark gray horse was smart and willing. He was as stocky as Christmas but almost two hands shorter.
Zeb looked up to see Hannah and Dr. McAllister turning off the road and into the stable yard. Dr. McAllister looks much more alive lately than he did when I first met him, Zeb thought.
Lonnie Champ followed them on Christmas, a coiled bullwhip hanging from a strap on one side of the saddle. He kept looking from one side of the road to the other, up the road, and then behind him. Even when they were on the Culpepper property, Lonnie Champ didn’t relax his vigil. He stayed at the gate to the Culpepper carriageway.
He’s taking the job of looking after Hannah very seriously, Zeb thought. But what could happen to her here? He sighed. It wasn’t so long ago that I was protecting her—and she was protecting me.
Hannah was riding one of the horses Mr. Culpepper had loaned her. She rode Suba only in the Culpepper pastures.
“Morning,” Zeb said as Dr. McAllister and Hannah approached. “You haven’t been ridin’ over here with me for a couple of days, Hannah. You all right?”
“I’ll tell you all about it,” she said quietly.
“Morning, Zeb. Ah, good, there’s your grandfather,” Dr. McAllister said, waving to Zeb’s grampa on the porch.
“He’s been walkin’ around a lot, tryin’ to get some exercise,” Zeb said. “But he’s sure gettin’ impatient to take his arm out of that sling.”
Dr. McAllister turned back to Zeb. “I’ll go take care of that now. Then I want to see the captain.”
Dr. McAllister turned to Hannah. “You may tell Zeb and Katie about our decision. I’ll be a while.” He dismounted, tethered his horse, and crossed the stable yard to the porch.
Hannah and Zeb dismounted and led the horses to the barn.
“We’re all going back to Yowani.” Hannah sighed, looking down at her boots.
“Really? Hannah, that’s great news! We’ll be traveling together at least that far.”
“It isn’t all great news, Zeb. I love Yowani, but I love it here, too. I love being with Katie on this farm and being able to see Natchez when I feel like it. But I hafta go. It isn’t safe for me here now.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“We’ve told Captain Morrison about the outlaws and where they live,” she said. “He told Mama that unless we go back to Yowani, if there’s even one of the gang members free, I’ll be in danger. I’m the only one who can identify ‘em.”
“What’ll the captain do?”
“He’s waiting until he’s sure that they’re all in Natchez to arrest ‘em.”
That afternoon Captain Morrison, accompanied by Sergeant Douglas, rode up over the hill from the dragoon encampment and down into the farmyard. He had asked Hannah and her parents, Zeb and his grampa, Katie and Mr. Culpepper, and Walter to meet with him there. He was going to let them know how he planned to deal with the outlaw gang.
“I want to thank you, Walter,” Captain Morrison said, “for all your help. It really paid off to have you talk with servants to find out if the outlaws had other houses in Natchez. We’ll be watching each one.”
He turned to the group. “We’ll strike tomorrow night. The place will be surrounded.”
“Oh, sir!” Hannah cried. “Don’t forget, three babies are with ‘em.”
“I know. That’s what is going to make this difficult.”
Everyone was edgy, but they tried to busy themselves with chores. At about four in the afternoon, the dragoon patrol headed toward Natchez: ten men double file, with Captain Morrison in the lead. They wore full battle dress.
It was well after the evening meal when they returned. The men were grim-faced, stern, and angry-looking. Captain Morrison kept slapping his quirt against his leg.
Captain Morrison told the sergeant to take the men back to the encampment. He asked the Culpeppers, McAllisters, Zeb and his grampa, and Walter to come up onto the back porch of the farmhouse.
When they were settled he said, “I’m afraid that we were outwitted.”
“Oh, no!” Hannah cried. “They got away?”
“We were able to arrest four women and six men. But when we got there, Elizabeth and Noah were long gone.”
Hannah sagged against her mother. “Oh, Mama! Elizabeth is terrible. She …” Hannah looked at the pain in her mother’s face. “Never mind,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“What happened, Captain Morrison?” Cracker Ryan asked.
“It is clear from a search of the houses that the gang had been planning to leave for some time. They probably decided to go as soon as they saw Hannah, because they knew she could identify them.”
“So? …” Zeb’s grampa started.
“The two who got away had double-crossed the other outlaws, too. We found a large pile of lead shot and rifle balls in a corner of a shed.”
“They were heavily armed?” Zeb asked.
“No. We think they emptied the shot boxes and used them to carry the fortune in gold coins they had stolen. Filled with gold coins, each box would probably weigh about the same as a box of lead shot. They must have moved those boxes of gold down to the docks long before we got there and arranged with a boat to take the two of them to New Orleans.”
“How do you know all of this?” Cracker Ryan asked.
“The men we caught told us. They are furious. They know they were left to be arrested so Elizabeth and Noah could have all the money.”
Captain Morrison turned to Hannah. “We plan to grant these women immunity if they testify against the men. We have no real way of proving where the money came from.”
“Those women didn’t travel with the gang voluntarily, Captain,” Hannah said, “except Elizabeth. The other three were taken by force the way I was. Two of ’em tried to run away, but their babies’ crying gave them away in the woods. They were easy to find, and Elizabeth whipped ’em somethin’ awful.”
Hannah took a deep breath and continued. “Trudy, the youngest one, ran away when we got near her hometown. She took some of the gold and just disappeared. But the outlaws didn’t seem to be worried. We just camped there in the woods for about ten days. One day she rode back into the camp with a horse and a donkey loaded down with packages: food and clothes and gunpowder and shot. She said she just went to get some provisions. She told the women later that when she got home, her family wouldn’t take her in. She had no place to go, so she came back.
“Noah said it was a lesson to all of us. ‘If you run away,’ he said, ‘your families won’t take you back, and you’ll probably die in the forest.’ After that, no one tried to leave.”
She turned to Zeb. “Now you know why I was so scared when we stood in my backyard waiting for someone to come to the door.”