sir,” Henry said. “What with your rifle and my mule, I’ll make out. I appreciate the offer though.”
If he could have found a job, it would have taken Henry four months to save ten dollars in gold. Workers at the salt works, before it was wrecked, made a dollar a day in Confederate paper money. At the time, a Confederate dollar was worth ninety cents in gold or silver. Those were the highest paying jobs around. Farm laborers earned only twenty-five cents a day. Though the doctor insisted, Henry wouldn’t take the money.
When the time came to pay for the train, Henry reached in his pocket for the fare. He only had two twenty-five cent pieces, but his hand came out of his pocket with them and a ten-dollar gold piece. There wasn’t but one way it could have gotten in his pocket—Miss Daisy had just been hugging him. Miss Daisy was looking so proud of herself that Henry put the ten dollars back in his pocket, took her in his arms, and kissed her. His ma told us later that it was the talk of Cedar Key for the next few days.
Anyway, Henry got on the train with his baggage, which consisted of one large bag of fried chicken and biscuits, and his sleeping roll. Of course he had the rifle, pistol, and possibles bag. He also had a parting gift from Doctor Isaac, a book of readings for the medical profession.
Six stops, four hours, and thirty-two miles later, Henry arrived in Archer. From there he set out on foot for home, which was several miles north of Archer. One mile north of Archer, while skirting a plantation to avoid disturbing the dogs, he got the fright of his life when a voice spoke from the darkness.
“That you Henry?”
Recognizing the voice instantly, his goose bumps started settling back in his body and Henry said, “Jesus, Jacob, you almost scared me to death. I didn’t see you standing there in the dark.”
“That’s one of the few advantages of being black,” Jacob said.
Henry and Jacob, a young slave living on the plantation, had become fast friends after Henry’s family settled their little place nearby. They frequently hunted and fished together, especially at night or in the winter when their duties were less demanding.
They sat for the better part of an hour while Henry told Jacob what had happened and what he was going to do. Jacob told Henry he would go with him except that he would only get caught and returned, and certainly punished. Wishing each other well, they both went their separate ways. Henry soon arrived home.
The next morning Henry propped open the chicken coop, gathered the eggs, and placed the eggs in a bag to carry with him. After placing a couple of armloads of wood by the fireplace, he put a note on the door telling that the farm wasn’t abandoned, but that travelers could take shelter and food if need be. When he left, his mule’s burden included weapons, three books, food, cooking utensils, two live hens, twenty eggs, a bed roll and canvas, a water jug, a change of clothes, and forty pounds of shelled corn for the mule and chickens. Smokey, the mule, being heavily laden, Henry planned to walk most of the 350 miles to Pensacola.
Getting a late start the day he left, Henry was mid-afternoon the second day getting to the Suwannee River. Having crossed the Santa Fe River between the points where the Ichetucknee River joins it and it joins the Suwannee, he was southwest of a town called Branford. Though still wide and deep, north of the junction of the Santa Fe and the Suwannee rivers, the Suwannee runs shallower and narrower when it’s in its banks, as it was then.
Henry was standing and planning the river crossing when someone hidden behind an oak tree said, “Boy, you stand real still and you’ll live a few more minutes.”
The only thing that moved was Henry’s head and eyeballs. When they moved he was staring into the small end of a twelve-gauge shotgun. The shotgun’s owner was a heavyset man with long hair and a black beard.
Two other armed men approached and took Henry’s weapons and mule. One was a thin, hawk-faced man with broken and missing teeth. The other was a short, nervous redhead who talked constantly.
“Man, look at all the stuff he’s got. What we’uns gonna do with him? I’ll bet they’s twenty eggs in this here sack. He’s got food fur uh army. He’s a bigun, ain’t he? Can I shoot ’im, Bud? Can I?” Red said.
“Hush,” Bud replied. He then said to Henry, “Get your clothes off, boy. Quick now.”
After sitting down and taking off his shoes, Henry stood up and took off his shirt. He wasn’t moving slow or fast, just kind of medium, giving his mind time to work. Though it was obvious they meant to kill him, or worse, they apparently didn’t want to mess up his clothes.
Bud was watching Henry intensely, as was the hawk-faced man. Both were holding their guns on him. Bud had a shotgun, of course, and Hawkface had a rifle. Red was inspecting the mule pack and not pointing his gun at Henry. At the same time he was talking constantly.
Taking the best chance he had, Henry straightened up from pulling his pants legs over his feet and swung them up into the barrel of Bud’s shotgun. In the same motion he stepped and dove for the river, which was three feet away after his step. He figured that, while he was moving, Hawkface would have a harder time shooting him with a rifle than Bud would with the shotgun. Bud jerked, causing his gun to go off, which in turn caused the mule to jump. Because of the mule jumping, neither Hawkface nor Red got off a shot.
Though shallower, the Suwannee River is still dark and deep at that point, so once he hit the water Henry had a chance. Swimming under water, he turned downriver and angled for the other bank. The river is over a hundred yards across there, even when it’s in its banks. Henry came up a forth of the way across the river. The river had washed him downstream so he was fifty yards away from Bud’s group. They shot at him almost every time he came up for a breath. Having only single shot, muzzle-loading weapons, they couldn’t get off shots every time. When he surfaced for the fifth time, he was at the other bank of the river. Though by then they’d moved downstream, Bud’s group was well over a hundred yards from Henry.
At least that’s the way Henry told it to me.
October 22, 1861
The first time I saw Henry he was scrambling up the west bank of the Suwannee River looking like a drowned rat. Running for cover, he jumped behind the same big live oak that I had been sitting against while watching for a deer or hog. We sat for most of a minute looking at each other without speaking. Him being buck naked, I tried to keep looking him in the eyes. If it hadn’t been a serious situation, I would have broken out laughing. At the time I didn’t realize what an impact a man only one year my senior would have on my life. It was to be even more than that of my pa, who was killed in the war.
Henry said, “They were trying to kill me.” Just like I didn’t know.
We sat behind that live oak for almost fifteen minutes with them ranting and raving on the other side of the river the whole time. They didn’t know I was there and I saw no reason to tell them. Henry told me a little of his story then. After deciding they weren’t going to cross the river, he told me more as we hauled it for the house. Given the scars on his shoulder and head, and the situation in which we met, it wasn’t hard to believe him.
I gave him my coat to tie around his waist by the sleeves to make a skirt. That’s one reason I remember it was pretty cold on October 22, 1861. Though he must have been near freezing, he didn’t say a word about it. That’s the way Henry always was under extreme conditions.
Leaving Henry in the woods,
