When Colin saw Max walking toward him, he flinched and looked away. Then he turned his back and started scratching at the deck wall for no reason at all.“You’ve probably got something you want to say to me.”“Huh? You really were Sheriff Max? I thought you were somebody else.”Colin made a face like, can you believe this, and Max narrowed his eyes, snorted, and held out his open hand.“Hand over what I gave you last time.”“I left that back home…”“If I search you and it turns up, you take one round per piece.”When Max brought his hand toward his gun, Colin panicked and waved frantically.“Whoa, whoa, now that I think about it, I did bring it.”“Dragging the enemy along, asking us to die together like that—if it were anyone else, you’d already have a bullet in your forehead.”“So I’m… special?”Colin rubbed his own forehead with a servile grin, then rummaged inside his coat and took out a single bullet with MJ stamped on the nose.“Both of them. Hand them over.”“Why!?”“Count how many times I’ve saved your life.”Ha, this con artist bastard…Colin thought about what he’d done and let out a sigh.He didn’t have a leg to stand on.It stung, but he had no choice except to hand over the bullet.Looks like the two of them are closer than I thought.John Brown, who’d been watching Max and Colin, cleared his throat and stepped in.“This whole business is my fault. Don’t blame Colin too much.”“Blame? We were just settling our debts.”“More like I got forced into settling, is what happened.”While Colin stuck out his lower lip, John Brown stared at the bullet gleaming like gold.“That’s an unusual bullet.”“Copper-plated rounds I’m supplying to Fort Leavenworth.”Max held out one with no initials stamped on it to John Brown.“Did you make these?”“Strictly speaking, I just placed the order. The smiths in Leavenworth made them.”John Brown asked why go to the trouble of copper plating them. After he heard the pros and cons from Max, he asked with an interested look:“It doesn’t seem like the Kansas militia uses these rounds.”“They can, if they pay for them.”John Brown nodded and thought.The liberal funds went into buying weapons, and ammunition was easy to get, so they procured it locally. If copper-jacketed bullets had clear advantages, there was no reason not to use them.“In any case, I too am in your debt, so I’ll make sure to repay you when I get the chance.”“Whoa. John, you just made a big mistake.”Colin looked at John Brown like, take that back right now. But the corners of Max’s mouth were already curling up.Too late.Colin shook his head, and Max, smile still on his face, spoke to John Brown.“I won’t ever forget it. I’m not the sort who lets that kind of thing slip his mind.”“I can’t live with debts hanging over me either.”With a faint smile, John Brown seemed to remember something and asked Max:“By the way, I heard you let Samuel Jefferson Jones go.”“That’s right.”“May I know why?”“Killing him wouldn’t bring any profit—just make the trouble worse.”John Brown folded his arms. It meant he had a lot to say.“The slaveholders’ puppet will soon stir up something else. We’ll see a second Jacob Branson soon enough. You should have killed that man.”“If I kill Jones, there are plenty of sheriffs who can take his place. The slaveholders might even welcome his death. They could use it as a pretext to start a war.”John Brown looked steadily at Max and said,“Is there any reason to avoid war?”His voice was calm, but his eyes were filled with struggle.Right. This is who he was.An anecdote about John Brown suddenly came to mind.There was a famous man in the East named Frederick Douglass.Once an escaped slave, he’d become a free Black man and risen as an outstanding orator, social reformer, writer, and politician—a leader of his people.As a speaker, Frederick had been a believer in nonviolence, until the day he met John Brown.And that night, his convictions were shaken and he came to recognize the necessity of violence.No small part of the weapons coming into Lawrence were shipments he had raised funds for and sent.The key point was that John Brown’s logic, when he explained the need for violence, was actually quite persuasive.All the more so when Max had spent his life training in how to kill people efficiently; trying to dismantle John Brown’s reasoning would be absurd.Hit him from the blind side before I end up convinced.John Brown was someone Max needed.Every single thing the man did would affect the future, so Max planned to use him as wings to ride on.But his extreme actions had to be reined in somehow. The way to do that was—We need to get close {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} enough that advice will actually land.“Who said anything about avoiding it? I’m eagerly waiting for the war to break out.”“Mm?”John Brown looked at Max with a surprised expression.Most people who met him for the first time were critical of his actions; some even called him a vicious, blood-chasing hyena.All the more with Max, who had rescued Jacob without shedding blood and even let Jones go—he’d assumed Max stood opposite his own position.And he enjoys war?John Brown now looked at Max with even more interest in his eyes.“The only reason I let Jones go is because Lawrence’s strength still doesn’t match Missouri’s. If wars were won on enthusiasm alone, I’d already be in Missouri shooting.”The corner of John Brown’s mouth twitched.He liked what he was hearing.But there was still a difference in their stances.The lack of strength was because the free states had not yet fully awakened. To speed that up, a sufficient shock was needed, and violence was the only way.As John Brown pursed his lips, about to speak, Max beat him to it.“Of course, whatever our numbers are, change doesn’t come free. History doesn’t just flow like a river on its own—it’s full of people building levees to dam it up and turn the current aside.”“……That’s true.”John Brown nodded, and Max, gaining momentum, went on.“In a world where they wage wars just to grab a bit of land, isn’t a war fought for people who suffer just because their skin is black far more worthwhile?”“That’s exactly what I wanted to say.”“And if someone asks about the Indians, I’d say they’re victims too!”“Hah. To think you go as far as the Indians.”John Brown sounded almost impressed as he asked:“If someone criticizes me for not devoting myself to the Indians as much as to freeing the slaves, I won’t have anything but a poor excuse. It’s just the order I’ve set, and I don’t think freeing the slaves is unrelated to the rights of the Indians either.”“That’s no poor excuse—that’s the truth. It’s a trick my enemies often use when they attack me. In the end, freeing the slaves is a question of equality. Men and women, children and adults, Black and white, and the Indians as well—we’re all the same human beings.”“You left out Orientals.”“Ah.”“It’s all right.”John Brown’s big mouth widened even more.As if he’d found a comrade, he clapped Max on the shoulder and nodded.“It’s been a long time since my heart’s burned like this. It’s an honor to meet you.”“The honor’s mine.”Just as John Brown said, he was a man respected even by the Indians, and he argued for equality regardless of race, gender, or age.A violent terrorist, or an idealist who dreamed of egalitarian values.Whatever later generations said about him, his mantle would pass on to Malcolm X.That judgment is something I can change.Right now, before the cruelty of violence soaked him completely.If he could stop the mass slaughter born of madness, it was entirely possible.Meanwhile, Colin, who’d slipped into the background, sat down on the deck and sank into thought.Seeing John Brown, who was always the one persuading others, get drawn in by Max’s words was a pretty novel sight.He really is a strange bastard.Watching Max issue orders to the squad, Colin kept turning his words over in his head. The more he did, the more doubtful he felt about his own line of work, and the more tangled his thoughts became. ****When Jacob Branson arrived in the town of Lawrence, the townspeople burst into cheers and soon were praising Max and his squad of Jayhawkers.“Man, in all my life I’ve never been treated like this.”“Feels like I’m dreaming.”The chests of the young Jayhawkers swelled again. They realized that becoming a hero wasn’t all that hard.And when they saw Max, so calm as if he were used to all this, they yearned.To keep walking beside him.“You fired your guns; what’s next? Weapons maintenance, you little shits! You got five minutes to form up at the training ground!”Tch, fuck…So much for walking beside him. The Jayhawkers scattered to their quarters with looks like they’d bitten into shit.Dudley finished his “practice” under the pretext of first aid on the wounded Owen.Maybe because of that, he’d gone back to his old limp, lifeless self.“What are you so tense about?”“I-I kept thinking, what if I did something wrong…”On the way to the hospital in Lawrence, Dudley’s steps were heavy.He wasn’t confident in his treatment.But it was needless worry.The doctor who examined Owen’s wound praised Dudley.“That must’ve been hard to do out in the field. Thanks to your treatment, you kept the wound from festering and spreading. We’ll have to watch how it goes, of course, but there shouldn’t be any major problems.”Owen and his brothers thanked Dudley, and John Brown once again offered his hand to Max.“I’ll say it as many times as it takes. If you need help, you make sure you tell me.”“That’s something I don’t mind hearing again and again.”That way you won’t forget.After leaving the hospital, John Brown met with Governor Charles Robinson, Lane, and the members of the legislature to hold a meeting.Max went back to the training ground and watched his men cleaning their guns.Then he looked off at Mount Oread in the distance and pictured a fortress.If history ran as it had, Jones would go to see Wilson Shannon, the governor of Kansas Territory formally appointed by the president.Then he would paint this incident as a rebellion and ask for militia support. Shannon, a defender of slavery, would readily grant Jones’s request.But there was one thing Shannon overlooked.Jones would fill his “militia” not with men from Kansas, but with Missouri Border Ruffians.And Jones would lead them to march on Lawrence.The so-called “Wakarusa War.”The killing born of a land dispute, and the subsequent imprisonment of Jacob Branson—those would all end with the Wakarusa War as the finale.Because he didn’t know how history would twist, Max hurried to prepare.“There’s a job we have to do from here on out. Think you can handle it?”“Yes, sir!”They didn’t know what it was, but their roaring answer rang across the training ground. Max went on, satisfied.“All of you, turn your heads and look behind you. Do it.”“Do it!?”“What do you see?”“We see a hill!”“That’s right. On that hill, we’re going to build a beautiful, magnificent fortress!”“!”“What, are you all too happy to speak? Back in my day, we flattened hills twice that size!”“(Fuck, you’re not even that old, what a load of bullshit)…… Yes, sir.”The next day.On top of Max’s own men, most of the Jayhawkers were mobilized for fortress construction.It was December, in the cold of winter. The frozen ground melted under their sweat and zeal.By the time posts began to stand in the earth,Max quietly went to find John Brown.And he made a discreet proposal.“You want to meet the commander at Fort Leavenworth?”“Why would he see someone like me? It takes a name like John Brown.”It was the same for Governor Charles Robinson and James Henry Lane. They weren’t recognized by the federal government, so no officer in uniform would agree to meet them.By contrast, John Brown was “only” a radical calling for the abolition of slavery. He wasn’t a criminal—there was a chance they’d agree to see him.Besides, the commander of Fort Leavenworth changed every year, but the man there now had taken up the post a little early.Colonel Edwin Vose Sumner.Max remembered him because he was mentioned in connection with the Wakarusa War, and later became the first man appointed a general in the Union Army of the Civil War.Max set out for Fort Leavenworth with John Brown, just the two of them.As he’d expected, John Brown’s name worked on the soldiers guarding the fort.“The commander says he’ll see you.”They passed buildings with red roofs and white brick walls and went into a small meeting room.A commander with snow-white hair and a thick beard rose to greet them.“I’m John Brown. I’m sorry to come barging in like this.”“Colonel Edwin Vose Sumner.”Then Sumner’s eyes took on a curious light when he saw Max.“Max Jo, sheriff of Lawrence.”“Hm. So it is you after all.”Max was probably the only Oriental in Kansas.Between the local papers and his predecessor, Sumner had a rough picture of who Max was.“So what business brings you to me?”Sumner looked toward John Brown, but the one who actually spoke was Max.“Send troops to the town of Lawrence. You need wolves to catch coyotes.”Looking at Colonel Sumner’s baffled expression, Max continued.

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