The railroad men and the soldier both said 'Kansas Brown' was behind the raid, as if his name had deep significance. White folks made much of Brown, though I had never heard his name, nor had any of the slaves until that day, when he became more famous among us than Moses at one stroke, and not as 'Kansas' or 'Osawatomie' Brown but as Shenandoah Brown. The railroad man told how the hotel had been torched and in the confusion Brown and his men had retreated across the Shenandoah into the Louden Heights, which is what we called the Blue Ridge there. They had fast-firing breech-loading Sharps rifles. Once in the laurel thickets who would follow them? 'Not the Virginny milishy,' the soldier said, laughing. 'They're at the tavern a-soaking their wounds in gov'mint whiskey.'