Prentice Alvin Page 0,114

as Reverend Thrower prepared to be on his way - he had promised to preach in a town a half-day's ride south - he happened to ask Cavil a question.

"I noticed that all your slaves seem - not old, you understand, but not young, either."

Cavil shrugged. "It's the Fugitive Slave Treaty. Even though my farm's prospering, I can't buy or sell any slaves - we're part of the United States now. Most folks keep up by breeding, but you know all my pickaninnies ended up south, till lately. And now I've lost me another breeder, so I'm down to five women now. Salamandy was the best. The others don't have so many years of babies left in them.

"It occurs to me," said Thrower. He paused in thought.

"What occurs to you?"

"I've traveled a lot in the North, Brother Cavil, and in most every town in Hio and Suskwahenny and Irrakwa and Wobbish, there's a family or two of Blacks. Now, you know and I know that they didn't grow on northern trees."

"All runaways."

"Some, no doubt, have their freedom legally. But many - certainly there are many runaways. Now, I understand that it's a custom for every slaveowner to keep a cachet of hair and nail clippings and - "

"Oh, yes, we take them from the minute they're born or the minute we buy them. For the Finders."

"Exactly."

"But we can't exactly send the Finders to walk every foot of ground in the whole North, hoping to run into one particular runaway buck. It'd cost more than the price of the slave."

"It seems to me that the price of slaves has gone up lately."

"If you mean that we can't buy one at any price - "

"That's what I mean, Brother Cavil. And what if the Finders don't have to go blindly through the North, relying on chance? What if you arranged to hire people in the North to scour the papers and take note of the name and age of every Black they see there? Then the Finders could go armed with information."

Well, that idea was so good that it stopped Cavil right short. "There's got to be something wrong with that idea, or somebody'd already be doing it."

"Oh, I'll tell you why nobody's done it so far. There's a good deal of ill-feeling toward slaveowners in the North. Even though northerners hate their Black neighbors, their misguided consciences won't let them cooperate in any kind of slave search. So any southerner who ever went north searching for a runaway soon learned that if he didn't have his Finder right with him, or if the trail was cold, then there was no use searching."

"That's the truth of it. Like a bunch of thieves up North, conspiring to keep a man from recovering his run-off stock."

"But what if you had northerners doing the searching for you? What if you had an agent in the North, a minister perhaps, who could enlist others in the cause, who could find people who could be trusted? Such an endeavor would be expensive, but given the impossibility of buying new slaves in Appalachee, don't you imagme people would be willing to pay enough to finance the work of recovering their runaways?"

"Pay? They'd pay double what you ask. They'd pay up front on the chance of you doing it."

"Suppose I charged twenty dollars to register their runaway - birthdate, name, description, time and circumstances of escape - and then charged a thousand dollars if I provide them with information leading to recovery?"

"Fifty dollars to register, or they won't believe you're serious. And another fifty whenever you send them information, even if it doesn't turn out to be the right one. And three thousand for runaways recovered healthy."

Thrower smiled slightly. "I don't wish to make an unfair profit from the work of righteousness.

"Profit! You got a lot of folks up there to pay if you're going to do a good job. I tell you, Thrower, you write up a contract, and then get the printer in town to run you off a thousand copies. Then you just go around and tell what you plan to one slaveowner in each town you come to in Appalachee. I reckon you'll have to get a new printing done within a week. We're not talking profit here, we're talking a valuable service. Why, I'll bet you get contributions from folks what never had a runaway. If you can make it so the Hio River stops being the