CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 11 
With one tug of the rope, the bell rang out. The clanging sound filled the night, and the Lower Landing came alive. Again and again Libby rang the bell.
On the Christina deckhands raced up the stairs to see what was wrong. Near the warehouse the thieves leaped into their wagons. As men from the Christina raced toward them, Libby stood at the railing, watching. Just then two policemen rounded one end of the building.
At the other end of the warehouse, the thieves cracked whips over their horses. Rattling and swaying, the wagons entered the street. The policemen tore after them, but the thieves got away.
When all the excitement was over, Libby walked slowly to her father’s cabin. Filled with discouragement, she waited for Pa to come in. I tried, she thought. But it wasn’t enough.
It was Caleb who came first, and he asked, “Libby, how do you manage to get in so much trouble?”
Libby stared at him. “Caleb Whitney, I was trying to stop the thieves. I wanted to warn the police, the people who owned the warehouse, anyone who would listen.”
“You warned people, all right. You got everyone on the whole waterfront awake. But the thieves got away before Jordan and I could see who they were.”
“That was you along the riverfront? Well, I’ll tell you who they were. Two were tall, and one was short enough to be the pawnbroker.”
Caleb barely listened. Instead he asked, “Couldn’t you think of another way to get help?”
Libby bowed her head. Closing her fists, she gripped them until her fingernails bit into the palms of her hands. Not for anything in the world would she let Caleb see her cry.
But he wasn’t finished yet. “Libby, you made yourself a marked person again. Those thieves know who you are. They know there’s only one captain’s daughter on the Christina.”
Like water, a flood of anger poured through Libby. But when she looked up, she saw Caleb’s eyes. “You’re scared, aren’t you?” she said.
“How can I not be scared? From the minute you came to live on this boat, your pa asked me to look out for you.”
“So-o-o-o,” Libby said. “I’m part of your job.”
Caleb groaned. “No! I mean yes! Oh, you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t.” Libby’s anger was back, and this time it spilled over. “I thought we were friends. I thought you liked having me help with the Underground Railroad, that you trusted me—”
Suddenly Caleb whirled around and stalked off. At the door he turned back. “Libby, you make me so mad I could spit!”
Then he was gone.
As the door slammed behind him, Libby giggled. So! Even the great Caleb Whitney can get upset!
Then her giggling gave way to sobs. Half a minute later, she remembered Caleb’s scared eyes and started laughing. But when she once more started weeping, she sobbed as if she would never stop.
Just then Caleb flung open the door and pushed Samson inside. “Keep him with you,” he warned. “I can’t be your nursemaid all the time.”
“I don’t want you to be my nursemaid any of the time!” Libby called after him. But Caleb was gone for good.
In Pa’s cabin the next morning, Libby finished telling him what had happened during the night. Cup of coffee in hand and still taking it easy, Pa looked through the window to Jackson Street. “There’s Joe Rolette!”
With quick strides a man was hurrying down the steep bluff, headed straight for the Christina.
“Who’s Joe Rolette?” Libby asked.
“The representative from Pembina—by the Canadian border where the oxcarts come from. Because of men like Joe and his partner, St. Paul takes an active part in international trade.”
Already Pa was looking for his tie. “Joe is also the man who stole the bill that would have moved the capital of Minnesota from St. Paul to St. Peter. He walked off with the bill and hid out in a St. Paul hotel till it was too late to take a vote.”
Libby giggled. No doubt the people of Minnesota Territory took it seriously, though.
“Joe uses sled dogs to come to St. Paul in winter. Libby, where’s my toothbrush?”
“It’s not on your washstand?”
“And my comb? That’s not here either.”
Libby hurried over to look. Pa was so orderly she had never seen him search for his belongings.
As he laid out his captain’s coat, he said, “My clothes brush. And where are my shoes?”
Upset now, Pa looked around. “What’s going on? Everything I need has disappeared!”
“Uh-oh!” Libby said. “Did Peter offer to help you yesterday?”
Suddenly Pa stood still. “Why, yes, now that I think of it. When he asked what he could do, I suggested he straighten my cabin.”
Instead of its usual place on the washstand, Libby found Pa’s toothbrush in his desk. His comb had somehow fallen down between the bed and the wall. His clothes brush and shoes were in a drawer under the bed.
By the time Pa put on his captain’s coat and hat, he looked exhausted. And Joe Rolette was knocking at the door.
“Can you manage to find some other way for Peter to help?” Pa asked as Libby scurried out.
At breakfast Pa told Annika, “I’m going to take a look around today. Would you like to come with me?”
“I’d like to go,” Annika said, “but I promised to check back with Harriet Bishop. She’s looking for a teaching position for me.”
Pa looked disappointed. “I’d still like to have you help me teach on the Christina if you’re willing. You could also teach English to immigrants as they travel upstream.”
Before Annika could answer, Peter jumped in to ask Pa, “How can I help you today? Shall I clean your cabin again?”
Taking Peter’s slate, Pa wrote quickly, “I’d like your help in another way. If you want to be an explorer, how about going with me?”
While rousters loaded Joe Rolette’s furs onto the Christina, Pa set out with Peter. From the boat Libby watched them cross the waterfront.
“Peter gets to be with Pa for a whole day,” she told Annika.
“Libby, Peter needs a sister just like you,” Annika said gently. “And he needs your pa in the same way that you need him. Your father has enough love for both of you.”
But Libby’s gaze followed Pa long after he and Peter started up Jackson Street. I’ve always had Pa to myself. My life is changing. I don’t know if I like the changes.
On the riverfront Libby and Franz watched Jordan and Caleb go from one wagon to the next. Before long they found a farmer headed for the young city of St. Anthony. On his way there, he would pass near Larpenteur’s Lake, where the oxcart drivers camped.
Franz swung up onto the seat next to the driver while Libby, Caleb, and Jordan climbed in at the back. As they bumped along, Jordan leaned against the high boards at the front of the wagon. His eyes closed, he hummed so softly that Libby could barely hear him.
When Jordan began singing the words, Franz turned his head to listen. Swaying back and forth with the music, Jordan seemed to forget where he was.
“Deep River, my home is over Jordan;
Deep River; Lord, I want to cross over into camp ground;
Lord, I want to cross over into camp ground.”
As though there had been no months between, Libby remembered the first time she heard Jordan sing. His back raw and bleeding, he sat in the sun while Caleb washed his wounds.
“Don’t you hate your owner Riggs?” Libby had asked when she learned about the beating.
“I wants to be angry—to hate him with all my soul,” Jordan told her. “But hatin’ robs your bones of strength, makes you blind when you needs to fight. If you forgive, you be strong.”
From that moment on, Libby’s life had been forever changed by what she saw in Jordan and his family. For them, crossing a river meant escaping from slavery into a new life of freedom. But it also meant something more. The strong spiritual life that Jordan and his family shared was like a flowing river.
“Oh, don’t you want to go to that gospel feast,
That promised land where all is peace?”
Like a cry the words came from deep within. Softly Franz began to hum along. Jordan’s voice grew stronger and stronger.
“Lord, I want to cross over into camp ground;
Lord, I want to cross over into camp ground.”
When the farmer stopped at the trail to Larpenteur’s Lake, Jordan stayed in the wagon as it went on to St. Anthony. Libby, Caleb, and Franz walked the rest of the way to the camp of the oxcart drivers.
From Pa, Libby had learned that the drivers were of French, Scotch, English, Cree, and Ojibwa ancestry. Each of their carts carried about a thousand pounds of furs from Manitoba and the Red River Valley. Usually the drivers started south in June, and the long walk took about forty days. More than once Pa had wondered why this year they had arrived so late in the season.
Soon Libby heard the light, quick tunes of a fiddle. As Franz started walking faster, she asked, “Do you think that’s your violin?”
They found the campsite on the shores of a small lake. Here and there was a covered wagon, but some of the drivers had set up tepees. Others had thrown buffalo hides over their carts to make tents. Nearby, oxen and mules grazed on the prairie grass.
A few men sat on logs around a campfire and wore blue shirts with metal buttons and red sashes around their waists. Often their faces were dark and lined from being in the wind and sun. Two of the men were shaping new axles for their carts. Other men repaired harnesses for their return trip to the far north.
Among the drivers were a handful of women and children. The women’s carts were brightly painted, and they had washed crusted mud from the spokes and rim.
When Libby asked about their carts, a woman explained. “If we cross a river, we take off the wheels and tie four of them together to make a raft.”
The wheels were bowed, and the drivers used a lining of buffalo hides to protect the furs from water. Now the carts no longer held furs, but some were partly filled with supplies for the trip home and the winter ahead.
The woman also told Libby why they were late in reaching St. Paul. There had been much sickness. Often axles on the carts broke and needed to be replaced. More than once oxen had stumbled into bogs. What appeared to be solid ground shook for ten or fifteen feet around.
At the campfire the oxcart driver played one lively tune after another. When he stopped, Franz motioned to the fiddle and asked, “May I?”
The driver sized Franz up.
“I’ll be careful,” he promised at once. “I’m a fiddler too.”
With the bow dancing across the strings, Franz played the melody the driver had just finished. When Franz stopped, he turned the fiddle over. As though liking the feel of the wood, he gently rubbed the back side.
Carefully Franz handed the fiddle back to its owner. “Do I have the tune right?”
The other man beamed. “Just about. You have a good ear. I’ll show you the place you’re missing.” Using short, quick bows, the driver played one part of the tune again.
Tapping his toe and nodding his head in time to the music, Franz hummed along with the fiddle. Finally he said, “Thank you, thank you! Now I have it! Whenever I play your song, I’ll think of you.”
“And I you!” As the driver bowed low, his red sash touched the ground. “When I tell my children of this moment, I will say a great man played my fiddle.”
Leaving the camp behind, Libby, Caleb, and Franz started back to the trail that led to St. Anthony and St. Paul.
“Was it your violin?” Libby asked.
Franz shook his head. “But a gut one it is. Did you hear how sweetly she sang? The man not only has a gut fiddle. He is an excellent fiddler. That is why he saved his gold for an even better violin.”
Now Franz looked disappointed. “So close we came to finding my violin. The oxcart driver thought the thief didn’t really want to sell it. Much, much gold he wanted. No one could buy it.”
“Do you collect songs wherever you go?” Libby asked. “Is that how you learned to play different kinds of music?”
Franz smiled. “I was a child when my nurse took me on visits to her village. I danced to the tunes of country fiddlers. Their music entered my blood, and I never forgot it.”
Soon they reached the trail where stagecoaches ran twice a day between St. Paul and St. Anthony. The stage heading back to St. Paul came first, and Franz swung aboard. Before long another stage stopped to take Libby and Caleb to St. Anthony.
“We have another clue,” Libby said as the horses moved out.
“I know,” Caleb answered. “If Franz had a nurse take care of him when he was a boy, he came from a well-to-do family.”
“I’ve been thinking about something else.” Libby remembered the day the fiddler didn’t answer when she called him Mr. Kadosa. “I think Franz is his real first name. That’s why he asked us to use it.”
Soon the stagecoach brought them to the east side of the Mississippi River. Looking ahead, Libby saw the five-story brick building that was the Winslow House in St. Anthony. A high flight of steps led up to the main entrance of the hotel.
Near that entrance Libby noticed a swift blur of color. Someone ran down the steps, across the road, then down more steps to the riverbank. Libby leaned forward to see. Could that possibly be Jordan? He was too far away to be sure.
As the stage drew closer, Libby saw a well-dressed man standing at the top of the hotel steps. In his hand was a gold-headed cane. Forgotten now was the blur of someone running—the person Libby could barely see. The man on the steps held her full attention.
“I have a terrible feeling,” she whispered. “Do you think Mr. Thompson understood that Jordan is a fugitive?”
Caleb knew exactly what she was saying. “He probably thought Jordan was a free black like himself, that Jordan has freedom papers and it was safe to send him here. He might be in big trouble.”
When the stage came to a stop, Libby’s guess turned into a nightmare. The tightness in her stomach changed to a fear she couldn’t push aside.
“Caleb,” Libby said, barely able to speak. “Look who’s standing on the steps.”
Caleb glanced that way, then jerked to attention. “Is that really Riggs?” Not only was the man Jordan’s owner and most dreaded enemy. He was a cruel slave trader as well.
Caleb balled his fists in anger. “Of all the places in the world where Riggs might be! How could Jordan possibly come to the same hotel?”