Jana Brady gazed across the barn. Under the glow of a single lantern, sinister shapes floated across the latched shutters. A chill of dread shivered through her. She prayed for the safety of the runaway slaves she’d help her pa hide later but hoped for a chance to confront a slave catcher. She dreamed of adventure in everything she did and loved how Ma and Pa had trusted her for several years to watch Pa’s back during missions like tonight’s. Pitching another forkful of hay over the loft for Ma to level out in the wagon bed below, she remembered the many ways Pa had trained her to divert a bounty hunter, short of shooting him. She’d give almost anything to ram into one with her stallion and unsaddle him while Pa fled with his charges. That’d teach the thief never again to try robbing a people of their God-given right to freedom. Thrilled with the notion, she called down to Ma, “Are we done yet?”
“One more load and we’re all set,” Ma said. She looked as silly as the scarecrow they put in their cornfields every summer, with wisps of hay sticking out of her long, sandy-colored curls and knitted shawl.
Jana sent down the last forkful and stopped to watch Pa saddling her stallion. She puzzled over his hesitation earlier when she’d told him how excited she was to accompany him. Why’d he suddenly waver when he and Ma have always taught me that abolition is worth the danger? He’d been treating her differently lately but wouldn’t say why. She decided to steer clear of asking him when the sound of a horse galloping toward the barn made her jump. Who’d even think of visiting now? All abolitionist-minded folk around Chemung County knew the Bradys would be getting underway in minutes.
Dropping the reins he was winding around the saddle horn of Jana’s black beauty, Pa bustled from Commodore’s stall to thrust open the great barn doors. In whooshed the wintry air, the moon’s silvery beams, and their visitor.
John Jones reined in his mare, her tawny winter coat all lathered up and her nostrils flared and puffing steam as she skidded across a layer of dry hay. She came within a whisker of colliding with the mules hitched to the wagon before breaking her slide.
When Ma saw it was Elmira’s Underground-Railroad agent who’d come to call, she stopped shuffling about and stood at attention, straight and still like the post supporting the loft behind her. She must’ve sensed trouble with the escaping slaves because John kept track of them all along their escape route.
“Thank the good Lord you’re still here, Thomas,” John said, fishing a paper from his saddlebag and passing it down to Pa. “A courier pretty near rode his horse to death bringing this to me from the agent at Alba.”
The dispatch crinkled in Pa’s large, leathery hands as he unfolded it and read its coded words aloud:
Freight load of potatoes arriving on Northern Central with the wind blowing from the South.
Jana’s enthusiasm resurged—a real adventure at last! A slave catcher had failed to nab his targets at the small town in Pennsylvania. Surely, he’d try here, the next stop on the Underground Railroad. She pictured herself staring down the barrel of her hunting rifle at a man who was foolish enough to step north over the Mason and Dixon’s Line when seven southern states had seceded from the Union to form their own government. The Confederate States of America had its own laws apart from the federal government now, so Jana deemed it the way most Northerners did: any laws agreed upon between the North and South about aiding escaping slaves no longer applied. And this confirmed for her the slave catcher was greedy and stupid. She wanted to be there when he made the wrong move.
“I’ll understand, Thomas, if you won’t put you or your family at risk,” John said.
“No Brady ever backed down from a fight. Will you be tagging along, John?” Pa asked.
Fear froze John’s dark eyes and cheeks. “No, sir! I won’t be shackled and dragged back to Virginia as no substitute for a slave the slave catcher can’t catch so he reaps his reward. I’ll be getting home while the getting’s good.”
“I understand,” Pa said and turned a stern eye up at Jana. “You’ll stay behind too, young lady.”
Opening her mouth to protest, Jana choked on her words.
Pa helped Ma down from the wagon and clambered up into its seat. “Riding around in men’s britches, toting a rifle for a run-in with a slave catcher’s no place for womenfolk,” he grumbled as he unhitched the wagon brake, whipped the mules’ hides, and tore out of the barn.
John tipped the brim of his black slouch hat at Ma, then Jana, and wheeled his horse around. He left the barn before they could thank him for his warning with a chair fireside and a slice of Ma’s award-winning apple pie.
To Jana’s bewildered look, Ma said, “I’m sure Pa has another to watch his back in your stead.”
Jana snapped out of her stupor and stabbed her pitchfork into a mound of hay, scattering some of its straw in a tizzy and jarring her funny bone. “What burr’s gotten into Pa’s craw lately?” she asked, rubbing her stinging elbow. “He eyes me as though he’s got something to say. Then he stomps off with a huff and a puff.” She felt her anger reddening up her cheeks. “There’s no time for Pa to find someone else to watch his back. He’s gone off half-loaded and you know it, Ma.”
“You’ve done nothing to beget Pa’s ire. It’s aimed only at himself.”
“Then why’d he cut me out of what could be the greatest adventure of my life?”
Ma sighed in exasperation. From behind an evaporating cloud of her breath, she inquired, “Isn’t helping slaves to freedom adventurous enough for you?”
It’s gratifying, not adventurous enough, Jana thought. Slipping into the South and sneaking slaves north under different disguises, as it’s well known in the Underground Railroad that former slave Harriet Tubman does…now that’d be bigger than a barn full of fun and daring.
As though Ma had read her mind, Jana said, “Honestly, dearly departed Grandpa Brady filled your head with too many patriotic stories of him and his father wielding a musket in their wars.”
“You still haven’t explained why Pa cut me out.”
Ma’s annoyance tapered some. “It’s too complicated to discuss now. I must nurse Molly.” She removed a flickering lantern from its wall hook. “Come up when you’re done here, and we’ll discuss what both Pa and I have on our minds lately.” With a sway of her plump hips and a swish of her cotton dress, she left the barn.
Turning the wall lantern’s knob, Jana doused its flame as fast as Pa had her prospect of excitement tonight. She choked on an oily fume that crept into her throat. Quelling her coughing fit, she snatched up her musket and descended the creaky ladder. Its splintered rungs pierced her palm all the way down as though they were needling her for not taking off after Pa.
Commodore pawed the floorboards with his hoof, anxious to get going.
Setting down her rifle, Jana went to her horse. She reached under his belly and slid her hands over the smooth leather of his saddle belt. When she started to unbuckle it, Commodore grunted and bucked, resisting his tack’s removal as though he too was angry about being cut out of something grand and glorious. Jana tugged on his bridle strap to steady him and ran her palm down the prickly bristles of his muscled cheek to calm him as well as she could with Pa’s words still clapping around her brain like thunder.
Pa’s behavior made no sense at all to Jana. It wasn’t about her age or that she was a girl or that there could be danger. Pa would’ve been more concerned about her helping him with risky ventures back when she was twelve rather than now at almost sixteen years old. And he and Ma had let her keep on hunting even after Pa’s near-hunting tragedy last year. A black bear had reared up on him with its razor-sharp claws about to swipe the back of his head when Jana killed it with a shot straight through the heart. Word got around that Jana could outshoot any bigheaded male. A few months later at the County Fair, the crowd goaded Pa into letting her step up in petticoat rustling beneath her Sunday best. She borrowed a rifle and, from one hundred feet away, shot down every can placed on a tree stump to the chagrin of every male who challenged her and missed by a mile.
In public, Ma protested such unladylike behavior. At home, she, like the other women always trying to prove how they equaled men, praised Jana. Pa didn’t need convincing of that. He believed women deserved the right to vote and own property and tackle anything men did if they had a mind to it.
And Jana did. She slid her riding gloves from her waist belt and pulled them over her hands. She rammed her musket into the saddle holster, hoisted up her riding pants, and swung into the saddle.
Commodore snorted; his grain-scented breath billowed out his eagerness, bolstering Jana’s confidence.
Unwinding the reins from around the saddle horn, Jana double-clicked her cheek, to which Commodore sprang from his stall into a swift canter right out of the barn. She wasn’t about to let Pa get shot with no one to back him up or let him get away with cutting her out of what could be the greatest stir on home soil since the Revolutionary War’s Battle of Newtown.