Spake As a Dragon (6 page)

The bread is removed from the oven as
Malinda continues telling Mattie Ann about ‘the old days.’ “After
your father and I were married, we had lived on Scarlett for six
peaceful years before war exploded with the Indians of south
Alabama, south Georgia and northern Florida. The Indians were on
the warpath against the whites all along the southeastern section
of the United States. Your father thought it was his responsibility
to join the United States Army and go fight the murdering
heathens.

“
I’m sorry girls, you have
never been told this. I believe it is one of the most-important
things that happened back then.” She told of Robert receiving his
army discharge in Hall County, Georgia. How he placed it in his
saddlebag and began the long horse ride from Georgia to South
Carolina. He was on the trail close to a week. Anxious to return
home he spent most of the trip in the saddle hesitant to even stop
and rest. I don’t believe he would have even stopped to sleep if it
had not been for the fact the horse needed rest.

“
I remember the day he
returned as if it were yesterday.” Tears began to swell in her eyes
as she recalled those times and continued her story to Mattie Ann
and Lizzie. “Robert later said he rounded the last bend in the
road, nearing the long drive leading to Scarlett’s main house. He
knew he should be able to see the big main house sitting upon the
hill through the stand of oaks and maples growing near the entrance
gate. Glaring intently he could sense something was wrong. He could
not see our Scarlett.”

Pulling on the reins, “Whoa Black
Magic, whoa!” His beautiful black stallion was motionless as he
stood in the stirrups trying to get a better look. The house was
gone. Spurring Black Magic he galloped up the drive to the charred
ruins of what once had been the pride of the Scarburg
family.

“
Dismounting, the children
and I ran to greet him. He was astonished.”

“
What...what happened?” He
asked.

“
My father and mother,
Granny and Uncle Willie are dead!

“
I told him how about a
month ago an Indian raiding party came through wanting food. Granny
Scarburg met them in the front yard, but after conversing with
them, something she said obviously made them mad. It may have been
the fact that she was Cherokee and those Indians were Shawnee.
Neither tribe had any love for the other. As Granny turned to walk
back to the house one of the braves pulled an arrow from his
quiver, placed it in his bow and swiftly released the deadly
projectile toward her.

“
The arrow struck Granny
in her back killing her instantly. My father and mother ran to her
defense, and they both were also killed.

“
The Indians went on a
rampage inside the house, grabbing what they could and smashing the
rest. They set the house ablaze then mounted their ponies and rode
off. Fortunately, they did not hurt any more of the family. The
only other death was to Scarlett’s overseer, a trusted black man we
called Uncle Willie. While trying to guard the doorway, to prevent
the marauding band from entering the house, the leader of the
Indians killed him.”

She tells the two girls how Robert had
been gone only three months when he came riding home – a hero. He
admits to Malinda that he personally had never fired a shot at any
Indian. He said he saw a few, but they were friendly, and they only
were interested in trading. At one time he had a marauding Indian
in the sights of his rifle, but thought this savage was a man, a
man just like he with perhaps a family too, he could not do him any
harm. He let him escape.

Malinda explained she had saved only a
few things from the main house before it was totally consumed by
the fire.

“
The Bible! Did you save
Father’s Bible,” your father asked?

“
It’s strange – your
father was never a deeply religious man, but it seemed he valued
that Bible more than anything he owned. She continued, “Sometimes
late at night I would see him thumbing through its old pages – not
reading you understand, searching as if he were looking for
something.”

Malinda continued with her story. She
told the girls that during the next couple of years Scarlett was
rebuilt, but never to its former splendor. After returning from the
Indian Wars, their father was never satisfied on the plantation. He
yearned to get rid of the ‘farm’ and find someplace where the
stench of slavery could not be smelled, and the memories of the
past could be forgotten. In 1850, he got his wish; the Congress of
the United States passed an Act granting un-settled land in Alabama
to the Indian War veterans. The amount of land granted was 80
acres. Eighty acres wasn’t much, but it would belong to him.
Scarlett was ‘his,’ it had been willed to him, but he wanted
something of his own. He wanted to be a pioneer just like his
grandfather had been before him. He was the son of a plantation
owner, educated in the finest schools back east. He had always
stood in his family’s shadow now he hungered to build his own
reputation from the ground up.

In the spring of 1852, he went to the
county courthouse and applied for his allotment of 80 acres of
land. While there, he discovered the government had passed another
Act granting an additional 80 acres. Now he could obtain 160 acres
or one-quarter of a section. The land allotments were granted to
him; within two months he had given a Power of Attorney for
Scarlett to his brother. He always believed the plantation should
have been divided equally between himself and his brother, but he
was hesitant to do so since he was afraid our pilgrimage to Alabama
might result in failure and we might have to return to Scarlett. He
kept possession of Scarlett and allowed Isaac his brother to live
there. Scarlett was his to run as he saw fit.”

She told Mattie Ann and Lizzie how the
family left South Carolina on the 4
^th
of July 1852 –
Independence Day.
Yes
, Robert thought,
Independence
Day
!

“
Our wagons were loaded
and ready to begin the long, arduous trip to Alabama. Three freed
slaves requested to go with us. Sary, as you know was a wiry, no
nonsense, five foot tall, kick butt and take names type house
servant who is practically a member of our family wanted to go with
us. She was with me through the births of all you children. She
told me if more were to come she was going to be right there, too.
Sary was married to Jed.”

She explained how Jed inherited the
name Uncle Jed after he took over the day-to-day operations of the
farm following the death of Willie – he and his son Jefferson were
going to Alabama too. Jed and Sary’s only daughter Sarah had died a
year earlier from the fever. Nathaniel, Jed and Sary’s older son,
had moved his wife Elsa and ten-year-old son Nate Junior to a farm
adjoining Elsa’s family back in North Carolina. Nate had been
conscripted by a scouting party of Yankee soldiers and was pulling
labor duty with the Union Army, so they figured nothing was left
for them in South Carolina. They too would begin a new life with
the Scarburgs in Alabama.

“
Where was me and Lizzie
Mama?”

“
Well, child, you two
would not be born until we got settled in Alabama, and yes, Sary
was here with me too. Just like she promised, and thank God she
still is.

“
I remember the morning we
left Scarlett. I was happy and sad at the same time. I wish you
could have seen us, Father driving one wagon, Jefferson another and
Uncle Jed bringing up the rear. I can still hear your father: “All
right, come on everyone get aboard. Let me count off the children,
Luke, Matthew, Margaret, William, Isaac, Stephen and there you are
Tom Henry. That is all the children Mother, let’s get going to our
new home in Alabama.”

“
Your father was almost
correct, but that wasn’t all of my children. It had slipped his
mind about your sister Cecelia June, the oldest by birth had
already married Lester Smith in the summer of ‘49. Cecelia and
Lester were staying in South Carolina. Then there was my darling
little boy Paul - I walked over to the cemetery out under the trees
close to the big house; I wanted to say good-bye. He was my second;
he had died a long time before you two came along. I just had to
say good-bye one last time.

“
Your father had estimated
the journey to take about two weeks. The first couple of days went
by without anything happening out of the ordinary; on the third
day, we were looking for a place to pitch camp for the night. It
was getting close to sundown when we happened upon a cabin. The
folks came out and greeted us, we talked and they wanted us to stay
the night with them. They would not take no for an answer. The
woman of the cabin even invited Uncle Jed, Sary and Jefferson to
stay. The people in the house welcomed us all but said they were
embarrassed that all she had for supper and breakfast was some
bacon and cornpone. We gave her a large, cured ham, some homemade
molasses, coffee and flour. You both should have seen the smile on
her face; it had been a while since she had eaten so
well.

“
The night went well as
did breakfast the next morning. Once we left the cabin and began
traveling down the road, your brother William was wiggling and
squirming, so was Isaac. Margaret said something was crawling on
her. Stephen yelled he was being bitten by something crawling on
him too. We were close to a mountain stream and Robert stopped the
mules.

“
Your father got down from
the wagon and declared, ‘Everyone out! Take off all your clothes,
grab a couple bars of that lye soap and jump in the creek and scrub
all over, scrub hard. Boys go downstream, girls you go a bit
upstream. I’ll build a fire. Mother boil their
clothes!’”

“
What was goin’ on Mama?
Why did Father want them to take a bath and boil their
clothes?”

“
Bedbugs child – we were
covered in bedbugs we had gotten from those folks in the cabin.
They were fine folks, but they didn’t realize they weren’t living
there alone.” Malinda said grinning.

Malinda returned to the story of their
trip from South Carolina. Mattie Ann was holding onto every word,
and now even Lizzie was beginning to listen. She explained that
after a few more days of driving all day and camping out under the
stars at night they were in the hills of Georgia when all of a
sudden, two men leaped from the side of the road into the path of
their wagons. Both men had bandanas over their faces, wore large
black sloth hats and brandished pistols. One fired his pistol into
the air.

The closest bandit yelled, “Give us
yer money! All of it or we’s goin’ to kilt you.”

She explained how Robert had figured
the bandits would kill them regardless whether he gave them their
money or not, and he wasn’t about to give them anything.

“
All right don’t shoot,
it’s right here in this box under the seat. I’ll get it for you.”
Bending over as if to retrieve their treasures unknown to the two
robbers Robert had a .44 caliber Colt Model 1847 Walker revolver
stashed in the box for just such an emergency. It was loaded and
ready to fire.

As he bent down, he quickly reached
inside the box, withdrew the .44 and without a blink of the eye
fired two rounds. Both struck their mark, the two gunmen fell from
the saddle to the ground with a sickening thud. Robert was stepping
down from the wagon to check on the two assailants when from the
back of the wagon one of the children yelled, “Father, Father!
Margaret is hurt!” It quickly became apparent that the shot the
robber fired was not into the air but at the wagon. The robber did
not intend to shoot anyone; however, the lone bullet struck
Margaret. No one noticed she had been shot. She simply lay against
the sideboard of the wagon as if asleep.

“
Robert picked her up and
placed her on a quilt on the side of the road; however, nothing
could be done she had died instantly when the bullet hit her. We
buried her a short piece from the trail, on a slight hill, under an
oak tree. We believed she would have liked that. Your father used
the old family Bible and read a scripture – I will never forget
it:

‘
Then we, which are alive
and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to
meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the
Lord.’

“
Uncle Jed found a flat
rock and carved a headstone. We wrapped her in a swatch of canvas
Robert cut from the wagon. I buried her in her favorite dress. The
pink one with the flowers embroidered on the collar. Robert wrote
the date of Margaret’s death in the margin of the Bible, July 25,
1852, right next to that passage in the Fourth Chapter of I
Thessalonians. Twenty-one years to the day that your father and I
were married. Since that day eleven years ago Robert and I have
never celebrated another wedding anniversary, the joy of our
wedding day has been overshadowed by the painful memory of our
beautiful Margaret’s death. After the burial Sary led the whole
family in singing
Amazing Grace
; there wasn’t a dry eye
among us.

“
We left that awful place
continued on to our farm here outside Albertville to this place we
now know as Pleasant Grove. The place Margaret thought was so
beautiful overlooking the clear, cool waters of Hog
Creek.”

That was over eleven years ago, but it
seems as only yesterday.”