Mississippi Raider (3 page)

Because of Ole Silver Lightning
having treed and the three horses being shaken up by the fall,
Vincent Boyd had decided
there would not
be any more hunting and the guests had
gone with Joe Lassiter to return and attend to the needs of the
muck ponies they had borrowed. She and her father had brought
theirs to the mansion, but the head groom—who did not trust
the task to anybody
else, including his well-liked master and the daughter of the
house, despite having taught her to be competent in that important
part of the equestrian arts, even when they were only muck ponies
and not what he regarded as being real bloodstock—had taken charge
of them.

Knowing that the horse she had
ridden for the hunt was in the best possible hands and would
receive every care—or she would have insisted upon attending to its
needs personally— the girl had sneaked into rather than just
entered the house to which she would one day become the owner,
according to her parents, without being asked by anyone what had
taken place during the hunt. Given the connivance of her little
colored maid, always a willing supporter in anything she did, she
took a hot bath. Feeling sure her behavior would not be regarded
with approval, she hoped to complete and change into more
conventional attire before the woman who had been her nurse from
the day she was born discovered she was on the premises. As had
been the case so many times in the past when she had sought to
conceal misbehavior from
“Auntie Mattie,” the attempt was not entirely
successful. She had finished her ablutions uninterrupted, but found
the old Negro woman waiting with obvious disapproval when she
emerged from the bathroom.

If the young man who had come down from the
horse and almost descended upon her had been able to see Belle Boyd
at that moment, he would have been left with no doubts whatsoever
with regard to her sex. She had just returned from the bathroom
next door to the sitting room of her living quarters on the first
floor of the mansion, her coal-black hair drawn tightly and bunched
into a bun at the back of her head. In addition to her face being
radiantly beautiful, albeit with more of a tan than was considered
socially acceptable for one of her class and age, it had a
suggestion of strength of will and intelligence beyond average.
What was more, displayed because all she had on were white cotton
pantalets—the ankle-long legs trimmed by blue lace—and heelless
white slippers, the rest of her bodily contours ideally
supplemented her features.

Five feet seven in height, the
girl was far from flat-chested or skinny despite being slender. In
fact, being so firm that the dark brown nipples were slightly
uptilted, her breasts were
well developed for her age. Although not
sufficiently to qualify as being “hourglass” in lines, her torso
slimmed at the waist and opened out to curvaceous buttocks.
Well-defined muscles showed in her arms, and the graceful ease with
which she moved suggested that the same applied to her lower limbs.
All in all, she exuded a sense of controlled power and of being in
an excellent physical condition that was not a common trait— or
even considered necessary by the more conventional of their
peers—for members of her sex and age in the Southern
states.

Some aspects of the room in
which the conversation was taking place gave indications of how
unconventional was Belle
’s upbringing and outlook. Its four-poster bed,
the dressing table, wardrobe, and most of the other furniture and
fittings were such as might have been expected in any wealthy
Southern household. However, there were intimations that its
occupant did not conform strictly to the conventional dictates
Southron society expected of a well-bred and correctly raised young
woman.

One wall was lined with
full-length mirrors, to which was fitted the kind of horizontal
wooden rail used in ballet schools to not only allow limbering up
and other exercises to be performed, but to let the one doing so
see what was taking place. As it had never been intended to help
her attain a professional career in even that highly regarded and
generally considered respectable section of the theater, such a
fitment just qualified as being socially acceptable. Less so was
the well-polished walnut box on the mantelpiece; it held a
magnificent matched brace of dueling pistols bearing the name of
the renowned master gunmaker Elijah Manton & Son of London,
England, along with a powder flask, bullet mold, and other items
necessary for their loading and maintenance. Nor were the pair of
equally well-made
epee de combat
from the same illustrious source, surmounted by a
fencing mask, which formed a gleaming cross on the wall above the
fireplace, any more in keeping with convention. At the other side
of the room stood a dressmaker’s dummy in the shape of a full-size
female head and torso, which was balanced upon a rounded base
instead of the more usual flat stand. However, as it was not
intended to be used for any kind of commercial purpose, it would
just pass muster as being permissible.

“
Fun!”
sniffed Auntie Mattie, knowing the reason for—if never having
approved of—her unconventional upbringing.
ⁱⁱⁱ
“Your poppa allus wanted a
son,
and you’ve done
everything you can to give him one, what with riding astride,
shooting, fencing, ’n’ all the rest.”

“
Oh,
come on, now,” the girl requested with a smile. “I’ve
never
shirked my dancing
lessons.”

“
You
for surely never did, at that,” Aunty Mattie admitted, but clearly
with more reservation than approbation. “Only, it wasn’t for
dancing
you took to ’em so
good ’n’ regular.”

While the elderly Negress was
speaking, Belle commenced a series of swiftly executed pirouettes
that would not have disgraced many a professional ballet dancer.
However, as she had deliberately elected to go in that direction,
they were culminated by the delivery of a high kick that sent the
sole of her left foot against the chin of the
dressmaker
’s
dummy and caused it to be rocked over. What was more, as it was
pivoted erect again by its counterweighted base, she twirled
gracefully and sent her other heel into the stomach area with equal
rapidity, power, and precision.

“
I’ve
always believed a lady should know how to take care of herself in
certain conditions,” the girl remarked as she strolled with
carefully assumed nonchalance toward the dressing table after
having displayed an ability that any connoisseur of the art of
French foot and fist boxing known as savate would have considered
to be faultless in its execution.

“
That’s what the menfolks are for,” Auntie Mattie declared.
“They just natural’ has to be good for
something.”

“
I
certainly hope it’s for something a lot more than just
that”
Belle remarked as
she sat down.

“
What
you
say,
gal!” Auntie Mattie protested, her always expressive face
registering even greater disapproval than previously, although
there was a faint twinkle suggestive of amusement in her eyes. “Was
you younger, I’d have to wash your mouth out with soap and water
for coming out with such talk. It all comes of you sitting ‘round a
fire out in the piney woods listening to them gentlemen you’re with
a-talking things a proper-raised young lady shouldn’t understand,
much less hear, while they’s waiting for them fool hound dogs to
find something to go chasing after.”

“
I
always cover my ears when they start,” Belle asserted. “Like I’ve
been taught is the
proper
thing for a young lady to do.”

“
A
proper-raised young lady wouldn’t be out there anyways,” Auntie
Mattie countered. “Now get to putting on something more covering
than you’ve got on now. Unless your daddy ’n’ them’s changed for
the better right recent, which I don’t reckon’s likely to have
happened, those gentlemen you’ve been out lollygagging in the piney
woods with’ll be coming ‘round to have some food and do some
bragging about their doings tonight’s soon’s they’ve finished
tending to those fool muck ponies of Joe Lassiter’s they’ve been
using. Which, right now, you’re not dressed fitten for mixed
company, much’s I conclude those young gentlemen’s you’ve been out
with’d like to see you this way.”

“
Yes’m,” the girl responded immediately, for while she might
tease the elderly Negress—whom she gave an affection bettered only
by that accorded to her parents—she would never have thought of
disobeying.

“
And
there’s something else for you to keep in mind, young lady,” Auntie
Mattie announced as Belle took the sleeveless white cotton chemise
her maid had left on the dressing table and started to don it.
Although it would not have been discernible to anybody who did not
know her so well as did her ward, her voice had taken on a note of
deadly serious warning as she watched what was being done. “Don’t
you go off running those two fool hound dogs of your’n on your
lonesome in the piney woods at night for a spell.”

“
Am I
getting too old for
that
too?” the girl could not resist inquiring, despite having
noticed the change of timbre in the elderly woman’s
voice.

“
There’s more to it than just that, although it’d be more’n
enough most times,” Auntie Mattie answered in the same
soberly
cautionary
fashion. “There’s a couple of those fancy-spouting Yankee
‘unfortunates’ going ‘round stirring up all that poor white trash’s
hangs about here ’n’ there along the river by spouting off’s how
rich folks shouldn’t be let stay rich ’n’ should ought to be made
to share out all they’ve got with everybody else.”

‘
There’s always somebody, especially Yankee ‘unfortunates’
spouting off along those lines,” Belle said tolerantly and without
showing the slightest suggestion of embarrassment, even though she
was aware of what was implied by the emphasized word when used in
such a fashion. “And, human nature being what it is, they’ll
always
find somebody
willing to listen.”

“
That’s not the only thing they’re spouting off about, what
I’ve been told,” the elderly woman claimed. “They’re saying’s how
all us colored folks should ought to be set free.”

“
That’s getting said more and more frequently these days,”
Belle pointed out, but was paying greater attention to what she was
told. “Especially by Yankee ‘unfortunates’ of the kind I figure
this pair to be.”

“
Then
why don’t they mind their own business?” Auntie Mattie demanded
with all-too-obviously sincere indignation. “What my cousin
Tildy-Mae from down to the Thatcher place allows her son’s told
her, I for sure don’t want setting free.”

“
Would
he be the son who ran away?” Belle asked.

“
He
for sure would,” the elderly woman confirmed, and her disapproval
was apparent. “Do you mind him? A scrawny, shiftless
no-account.”

“
I
believe I do,” the girl answered. “Aunt Margaret said he was a
bright boy and took to learning all the schooling she and Momma
give to all the children much better than most of them.”

“
Oh,
he learned all right, for all the good it did him,” Auntie Mattie
conceded grudgingly. “But that’s what getting all this book
learning does for young’n’s like him. He got to saying he wanted to
be free ’n’ wound up by getting himself took north on what they
call the Underground Railroad, whichever in the world
that
might be. Only,
when he got there, it didn’t pan out the way I reckon he’d been led
to expect.”

“
What
went wrong?”

“
’
Cording to a letter he sent down to his momma ’n’ my Tobias
had to read for her seeing’s how she can’t, up north’s not the
promised land it’s made out to be. He found’s how he had to pay for
his living place ’n’ food, which he’d never had
to do afore in his
whole life. Top of that, he allows the white working folks up
there’s allus saying and getting mean over how they reckon us
colored folks’s go north’re taking jobs they should have cheaper
than they would. He reckons’s how he wished he stayed to home where
he didn’t get nothing like that.”

“
I’ve
heard things aren’t anywhere near to what the Yankee ‘unfortunates’
and their like claim it will be when colored folk get taken north,”
Belle admitted, having read accounts that appeared in newspapers of
rioting by white people in northern cities as a protest against the
problems caused at their level of society by the arrival of Negroes
in search of freedom.

“
They
for sure ain’t ’cording to what that shiftless son of Cousin
Tildy-Mae’s allows,” Auntie Mattie affirmed. “I reckon, happen he
could, he’d get that ole Underground Railroad to fetch him right on
back home again.” Then she gave a shrug as if considering that
nothing else needed to be said on the subject of her clearly
less-than-favorite nephew. “Anyways, you bear in mind what I told
you about staying clear of the piney woods after dark.”