The All-True Travels And Adventures Of Lidie Newton Part 16

"Brown the newspaper editor?"

'Another Brown. They call him Old Brown. I think I've seen him. He's one of those that make you want to cross the street with one look. He had his sons and some others with him."

That was Sunday, the day we borrowed Charles's new mule and went to our claim. I remember it clearly, and so that's how I know what folks knew about that, and how quickly. My first reaction was a hardhearted one, I admit. I said, "If the southerners kept their mouths shut a little more, they might fare a little better."

"These were unarmed men, whose wives were begging for their lives."

"How many times do they vow to hang us or shoot us or clear us out? How many times do they call for our destruction in the bloodiest terms? It seems to me that if people talk all about these sorts of things long enough, they can't be surprised when these things happen."

Well, Thomas was not pleased with my less than womanly response, but he didn't condemn me. We rode along. The mule went easily enough. The plan was that we would unpack our cases and belongings, and then Thomas would drive the wagon into town and walk out again. He didn't expect to be back with me until after dark. I estimated that that was enough time for us to digest each other's views on the subject of the killings, or, as it later came to be called by some, the ma.s.sacre. Of course, in Lawrence, folks always referred to it as "those killings." As for a mule or another horse, well, it was possible that something would turn up, but our funds were exceedingly low, and we were pondering what we had that we might sell. What with the "sacking" and our poverty, our future seemed to have gotten rather short, and we didn't try to look far into it. Over the years, I've noticed that about impoverishment and danger-both make the present moment seem full and almost agreeable, but with the sense that you must keep your head down and your eyes on your feet, for fear.

We came to our cabin and drew up the mule in front of the door. It didn't look too bad-it looked familiar, easy to claim as our own. In spite of the wet weather, the stands of wheat and barley looked good enough, to our untutored eyes. They were green and tallish. Thomas had broadcast the seed more thickly than thinly, and the wet earth was hidden in the green. These green bits were only patches in the larger sweep of the flowery prairie, and there was just a light breeze-none of that heavy K.T. wind. In one of his previous trips, Thomas had set the door on its leather hinges again, and that did wonders for the look of the place. We carried in our belongings. The s.p.a.ces between the logs that I would soon be c.h.i.n.king with mud let in some light, and things seemed cheerful enough. By noon, we had eaten some of our wheat cakes from the morning, and Thomas and the mule had rattled away again. I watched them go for a long time, until they had disappeared over the rim of the prairie. My husband's back pleased me, for how straight it was, how strange and yet how characteristic of him. I still couldn't say that I felt about him as other women seemed to feel about their husbands, that they were essentially familiar and without mystery. But I wasn't thinking these thoughts at the time; I was just watching the prairie fill up with loneliness around his receding figure and persuading myself that his return would effect the opposite.

The first thing I did was build a fire in the stove-a good stove, and worth the money I had paid for it, since it went through the winter unused and emerged as if still new-with some of the wood we had chopped and set inside the cabin to dry on earlier visits. Then I poured off some river water I'd set out on my last visit and put the kettle on the stove to heat. After that, I swept out bits of dirt and debris that had sifted through the walls. My plan was to start digging out the well again as soon as we could; The river was pretty high now. That rea.s.sured me that you could drink a bit of it, anyway. I had to carry river water up to the cabin for the endless mudding that had to be done, but I was putting that off, as the slope to the river might be a bit slippery, there might be snakes at this time of year, and at any rate, the walk back with the heavy pails was not a pleasant one. But soon I had done all the little tasks I could in good conscience do, and I picked up two other pails we had and settled them on the yoke I laid across my shoulders. It was easy when they were empty, and I rather skipped down the slope, not thinking of much and taking no care to be quiet.

Sure enough, I heard rustling and cracking in the woods ahead of me, no violent sounds, but neither the sounds of scurrying prairie rodents. I startled, and the yoke fell off my shoulders, and the pails went rolling down the slope, making something of a clatter. Now the other creature startled, too, and cracking and rustling turned into cras.h.i.+ng and then snorting. I stood where I was and wished for my rifle. No man would make such noises, and yet weren't the Missourians everywhere? I thought at once of Old Brown and the men who had been killed, and my observations about them, and revenge. Then there was a flash of paleness, and Jeremiah burst into the clearing next to the river, his ears swiveling and his nostrils wide. He snorted at me, and then we stared at each other, and then he bent his head to snort at one of the pails, which was not far from him, and then we stared at one another again.

Even so, I thought that he had expected to see me far more than I had expected to see him. I said, "h.e.l.lo, Jeremiah," in a low and soothing voice. A horse isn't like a dog, who likes to be greeted enthusiastically. A horse, especially a spirited animal like Jeremiah, is always weighing the option of flight. I laid down the yoke and held out my hands, low and wide. Jeremiah continued to snort. I took a step or two toward him, still murmuring his name and any rea.s.surances that came to my lips. My skirt caught on some brush, but I stopped and smoothly released it, then stepped forward again. I had no bridle, no piece of rope to throw around his neck, and, of course, no guarantee that I could get him the three hundred yards or so back to the cabin without them. Jeremiah stood still, looking at me, and then, at last, put his head down and moved toward me, pausing only to shy a bit at the other fallen pail. When he came to me, first he nuzzled at my hands, looking, I suppose, for a bit of dried apple, then he put his velvety, whiskery lips against my neck and blew out. I put my arm around his neck from below and said, "I have some bits of apples and sugar back at the cabin. Want some?" Then I turned and walked away, leaving the yoke and the pails where they lay. Jeremiah waited a moment, then walked after me, not steadily-I had to stop and let him make up his mind over and over-but willingly enough. When we got back to the cabin, I rewarded him at once with the promised treats. After that, I found a rope and tied him to the railing of his corral, which Thomas had repaired during the spring. He was sufficiently fat-there was plenty of prairie forage in the spring-but he was covered with scratches and had a large cut on his left haunch, crusted over with dark blood and bits of vegetable matter. The area around it was hot to the touch, and he switched his tail and stamped his hoof when my hand got near it. I felt his legs; they were cool and tight. His eyes were clear, and he walked with a steady step. I got some of our well water and washed his wound with a rag, then found some comfrey leaves and made a poultice, which I held on the wound for a few minutes to cool it, then I untied him and gave him the freedom of his corral, which was rich with prairie gra.s.ses.

Only then did I allow myself to marvel and to swell with delight. Jeremiah, who I had thought was certainly lost, certainly in Missouri somewhere, certainly as far from me as the moon! Jeremiah! Here he was! Our diminished future expanded again! And in addition to that, well, he had come of his own accord. He had followed the road between Lawrence and our claim, a road he knew well, of course; he had acted on some intention, some expectation, had he not? Was this possible for a horse? Perhaps, if only because every old horseman had some such story, and yet to see it happen, to be the object of his intention, was intensely gratifying. I stood by the rail and stared at him where he grazed, until the shadows were long and the evening wind had picked up strongly. Then I recollected my pails and more or less ran to the river. By the time I got back with the heavy water (as Miss Beecher always said, "A pint's a pound, the world around"), it was nearly dark, but I could still see Jeremiah's luminous shape in the blue light. Only after darkness had enveloped him did I go in and light a candle.

Thomas, who had had second thoughts about a trek over the prairie when there was no moon, waited to leave Lawrence until daybreak. He could not believe his eyes at the sight of Jeremiah standing by the fence, and me poulticing his cut again, and our good fortune right there, big as life. After I put down the poultice and untied the horse, Thomas grabbed me about the waist and kissed me and spun me around. He kept saying, "I can't tell you how sure I was we'd have to backtrack! I didn't see any future here, I was as low as I've ever been, but now ... !"

Well, how were we to know? At any rate, it was a splendid thing to feel my husband's arms and hands press against me and to lean into his chest and to hear his joyful voice in my ear, and to look into his face and have him put his fingers into my hair and take all the pins out, one by one, and then pause to put them carefully in the pocket of his s.h.i.+rt. Then I shook my hair out, and it fell to almost the middle of my skirt, and we went inside the cabin.

I caught a catfish in the river and fried that up with some corncakes for supper, and over supper it came out that we still were not in agreement over Old Brown. Those killings had taken place Sat.u.r.day night, and it was now Monday. As always in Lawrence, Sunday had seen no lack of talk. Some were saying that the five men were having a meeting when they were surprised by a group that may have included Brown and may not have. The killings were intended to preempt plans the men were making to attack Free Staters in their beds that very night. The men had been armed and had returned fire, had even begun firing. Another story was that Old Brown, or someone, had indeed killed four of the men, just shot them fair and square, the way you shoot people in K.T.-a shooting was a shooting, which was different by far from a hacking-but that the fifth man had died on a hunting expedition that strayed among the Indians, and the Indians had done the hacking. The proslave forces had only made it look like Old Brown, or someone, had hacked him up in order to reflect against the Free Staters. Others said that it was the same with these five as it had been with Jones-their own sympathizers, some men from South Carolina, in fact, had done the killings in a drunken fight and then decided to make it look as though Free Staters had done the deed. Old Brown was a bona fide character and hated by many because he invoked the Lord on his side all the time, so he was ripe to be slandered. And still others said it was just like Jones in another way, too: No one was dead, all were alive and only slightly injured. The whole "ma.s.sacre" was trumped up by the Missouri papers to incite another attack on Lawrence, this time with "justified" executions. Old Brown and his sons hadn't been anywhere near the spot. I liked this last story myself-it fit in so neatly with what we had experienced from the Missourians before-but Thomas shook his head.

"I think the story we heard Sunday, the first one, has the ring of truth to it. When they told it, people were horrified and didn't want to utter such words. Now they're all talking fast, with eager looks. They're making up stories, and all the stories are going to bury the truth of what really happened."

"I think the stories show that n.o.body knows what really happened. What's Old Brown himself say?"

"Nowhere to be found."

"Well, K.T. is a big country. That doesn't mean anything." What I really wanted to say was that the killings didn't seem like our business, as we hadn't known about them or done them, of course. But they agitated Thomas, and he was eager to tell me all the news, so I kept quiet. He said, "In my opinion, this has broken new ground, ground we shouldn't be on."

"There were killings before."

"But they were more incidental. Folks weren't going out to look for people to kill, with lists in their hands."

"He had a list?"

"They say he did. The ones who say he did it, at any rate."

Here was the question, to me: In a place where everything was true, could it be true that Old Brown and his men had done the killings and that they had been five miles away from the killings, both at the same time? In the United States, these things couldn't be true at the same time, but in K.T. it seemed as if they could.

We were alone for the next two days, and we didn't have any visitors or news, but Thomas couldn't leave the subject of Old Brown alone. I would say, "Don't you think Jeremiah seems to have less heat around that cut now?" and he would say, "That man Wilkinson was one of the worst of them, but..." Or I would say, "We need to find some papers for the walls," and he would say, "If they would just come forward and tell the story, then maybe we'd know it wasn't so bad. But this running off and disappearing, well, that doesn't look good. Of course, in K.T., just traveling to and fro can look like running off...."

On Wednesday, a week after the sacking of Lawrence, we had another great rain, and though we set ourselves things to do inside, it was monotonous and uncomfortable to hear the rain on the roof and to have it coming in everywhere-we hadn't enough pots and pans and dishes and receptacles to catch any but the worst streams. The mudding I had done was still wet, and I could see it crumble and trickle away. We had dry wood and made a fire in the stove and boiled up some tea, but the tea reminded me of Louisa and her two bedsteads and four chairs and little guitar and cups and saucers and warm, dry apartment, and I felt sick with longing all the time that I tried to make myself happy by renewing my grat.i.tude at Jeremiah's return. We had been sitting silently for a long time, the afternoon so dark with rain that we had a candle lit, and I was sewing up holes in our bed tick and Thomas was cleaning the guns, and he broke the silence by saying, "Why couldn't they leave well enough alone? This is another mistake. Rash acts are always mistakes, because from a distance they look more than rash, they look evil, and that drives-"

I flared up. "I'm glad they did it! Well, I'm not glad they did it, because I'm sorry for their wives and children, but for land's sake, Thomas, don't you understand the need for action? Even if it's just one's own need? Things build up! You can only take so much after a while! A person can't be cautious, cautious, cautious every minute of every day. I don't condone what they did, but I understand it, don't you?"

"No, I don't."

"Then how in the world can you call yourself an abolitionist? You know, I'd hardly ever met an abolitionist before you, but I feel I'm more pa.s.sionate about it all than you are. Your plan is to wait and wait until slavery goes away. Well, generations could die before then, including our own generation, here in K.T. Time as you live it is much longer than time as you look forward to it. It's all very easy to say, Well, in fifty years this and in fifty years that, but they could kill us tomorrow. Don't you ever want to say, Well, bring it on, let's have it out?"

"That's the way they think. Fighting it out."

"Well, perhaps I'm one of them. We aren't from New England where I come from, and I don't always understand New Englanders! You seem ready to talk all about it and tell everyone what to do, but then when they talk back to you, you just keep talking! A westerner doesn't understand that. Talking has to come to fighting, one way or another, and if it comes to fighting on their side and not on ours, then we suffer."

"You make no sense."

Well, that stung, because perhaps it was true. I said, "It seems perfectly clear to me!"

"I don't see how you can doubt my commitment to abolition! My opinions are open; I haven't hidden them."

"Opinions are common as salt!"

But you know, I can't say I meant all of this. I knew he was sincere and true in his opinions and that given the chance to make a telling gesture in favor of freeing a slave or two, he would do it. We westerners have always been willing to make a dare and take a dare; I don't know why that is. That's what I felt like then, with that dispute. I was daring him, just for effect, because I was in an ill humor and tired of hearing about Old Brown.

Thomas looked struck, or stricken. He stared at me for a moment, then lowered his eyes. I didn't know what to think about this look, so nakedly surprised and doubtful was it. It interested me as a failure, one of the few, of his natural reserve, and I felt that by it I had lost something as a wife but also, in a way, gained something. When one's husband is a man of such self-control as Thomas usually was, then any failure of that is interesting, at least.

I knew right then that I should have confessed my insincerity in this argument. I wanted not for him to go out and fight someone but for the rain to stop and the cabin to be dry and tight. But my blood was up, and I made no confession. I continued making my repairs as if I were utterly serious, and after a bit, Thomas put the guns carefully away and went outside. That was Wednesday. We didn't talk anymore about Old Brown. I sourly told myself that that, at least, was a relief.

In that first week, we saw a few of our neighbors. Daniel James came by, hunting, but stayed outside and talked only to Thomas. Mrs. Holmes walked over for tea, bringing some corncakes. We drank our tea, but I couldn't like her, as the half of her conversation that wasn't bitter and critical was all about the vengeance of the Lord. I induced her to talk about her life in the east, which usually softened up women in K.T. with fond memories of warmth and a modic.u.m of comfort, but Mrs. Holmes could only recall those members of her father's congregation who had done her family ill turns, or, as she said, returned evil for good. I had been pleased to see her, but I was even more pleased to see her go. With the Jenkinses gone and the Bushes still in town, our little group seemed to have no center. One day, out hunting, I pa.s.sed the Jenkins claim, which our men had defended against the Missourians. One wall of the house had broken in, and the roof was gone, but the window still glinted there, intact except for the hole the shot had made. I pondered the ironies of this for the rest of the afternoon, and it wasn't until I was home again, plucking my two prairie chickens, that I thought perhaps we could have that window. When I proposed it to Thomas in the evening, we looked right at each other for a long moment, and then he said, "Well, let's go over there first thing and have a look around."

There were a few things there-a store-made chair and a stool, a half-dozen milled boards, a stack of flowered plates, five of them, but no other crockery or utensils, a hammer, a half keg of black powder, a newspaper from Saint Louis, which would have belonged not to the Jenkinses but to the old man who built the cabin. Nor would the Jenkinses have gotten rid of it-whatever its sentiments, it was valuable for insulation against the wind, and I took it without hesitation, for my walls. Other than that, we didn't at first touch anything but went outside again and sat down on the stoop in front of the closed door. We could, I knew, take the door, too.

Thomas said, "We can write the Jenkinses, but I don't honestly think these are their things. I think they themselves left them behind, because they had no a.s.sociations with them."

"They surely would have taken those plates with them."

In front of the cabin was the same rail fence that had divided our men from the Missourians. The rails, for the most part, were unbroken. Jeremiah was tied to one. I watched him for a moment. He was a young, vital animal. It had taken him little time to heal. After a bit, and with no further discussion, we gathered up what we could carry, including the plates, which were nicer than anything I had, though too small to be really useful, and we took it home. The next day, we went back and made a travois by las.h.i.+ng together some of the rails from the fence, and we dragged home as many of those as we could. The day after that, Thomas brought home the door and the window. I was so happy to have that window! I stuffed the bullet hole with a piece of cloth. That was one c.h.i.n.k the wind would not get through. At first, of course, we pondered the ironies of the situation: Were we prospering from someone else's loss, either the Jenkinses' or those Missourians'? But shortly we stopped cutting it so fine, and not only did we make good use of what there was; we half hoped to come upon another such cache. I thought of Susannah Jenkins's own observation that K.T. had coa.r.s.ened her. But that made it seem as though how K.T. changed you was all bad. In my opinion, K.T. made you see the world as it was. Your actions followed that.

We lived quietly until mid-June. The rains tapered off, and our crop seemed to be doing well enough. The hunting was good, though not so good as the autumn before, and we ate well. I got used to the loneliness, even started to like it. Sometimes Thomas and I went a whole day without saying much and then didn't read in the evening, either, but sat on our step and stared out over the prairie at the lengthening shadows and the golden suns.h.i.+ne and the wide, busy sky. We didn't share what we were fancying, but I wondered about Louisa's condition, and how it would be if I should find myself in the same condition, and what our claim would be like a year thence if there was a child upon it. I made up rules-I would go into town for the winter again, so as to avoid Mrs. James's fate; I would keep hunting all summer and fall, to have good meat every day; I would forage for some plants I knew were good in such times; I would go into Lawrence and stay for a few days, so that Louisa could teach me to knit; I would get Charles to build me a real cradle, a rocking one, so that I wouldn't have to run the danger of having the child in the bed with us. I knew all about how I would do it, down to the last detail. But I didn't tell Thomas a word.

Now the eighteenth of June rolled around, exactly four weeks after the sacking of Lawrence. We had borrowed a little wagon from Mr. James- four wheels and a platform was what it was, really, a handmade, K.T.-type wagon, and our plan was to go into Lawrence. We had some business, I forget what it was, but really, I think, we felt that we both desired and deserved to go into town, see our friends, and find out the news. I also had conceived a terrible apprehension about Frank, who had been out to see us but twice since our departure from Lawrence. When I'd left him in Louisa's charge, it seemed a good solution to his reluctance to go out to the claim (a reluctance I sympathized with), and I hadn't thought about it much for the first week or two. But then I'd awakened one night with the certain knowledge that Louisa was simply letting the boy run wild and Charles, his nominal employer, would have better intentions but fewer opportunities for overseeing him, as he was still traveling to Leavenworth, now twice a week, to carry the mail. And so we hitched up the little wagon and left the claim without a backward glance. It was already a heavy, windy day, even early in the morning, and there wasn't much freshness anywhere.

When we got to Lawrence, there was talk of Old Brown, indeed, but not of "those killings"; rather of a battle that had taken place ten days after them in the Black Jack ravine, down south and east somewhere. It appeared that a few southerners had set out from Lecompton to look for Old Brown, "thinking," said Mrs. Bush, "that those events down near Pottawatomie might be traceable to him or his sons. And they captured two of his sons, and burned the one boy's house down, and made him and his brother march in chains under the hot sun back to Lecompton, and he went mad! It was a crime! Well, Brown found them, and they had taken a couple of prisoners, can you imagine, just men who were standing around in the street! They had a pitched battle, and Brown drove them off, and of course there were casualties!" The dragoons had then entered in, somehow, and made the peace, and there was much sympathy for Brown because of what happened to his sons-it was said that the oldest would never be the same and that a third one had been shot and killed. I leaned toward Mrs. Bush and said in a low voice (for that was what seemed appropriate), "What did he ever say about the Pottawatomie business?"

"Oh, nothing. No one knows what really happened down there. The Missouri press says ma.s.sacre, of course, but you can't believe them-they lie routinely. My own feeling is that it was a local dispute, and whiskey and Indians got into it somehow. You can't pay attention to every act of violence that happens among the southerners, as they are p.r.o.ne to that sort of thing."

Louisa didn't even think it was interesting enough to talk about anymore, and it was true, we had other things that were more pressing than what the Pottawatomie affair had become, a bit of unpleasant gossip that folks preferred to keep mum about. Frank, it turned out, had bought himself a horse. He was keeping it in the yard where Charles kept his animals. "He had the money," said Louisa. "It must have been fifty dollars. Anyway, I must say, he's been around hardly at all since then."

"Can't you keep him around? I worry about him."

"Lidie, dear, you couldn't keep him around when he was on foot! I certainly can't keep track of a young man who owns his own horse and has his own money, especially in my condition. I hardly get out of our rooms."

She said this to me as we were walking briskly down Ma.s.sachusetts Street, but I took it as it was meant, an acknowledgment not that she couldn't watch over Frank but that she wouldn't. I said nothing, as I did not feel I was in a position to press her. Perhaps, indeed, she could not. I said, "I'll have to send him back to Quincy, then."

"How foolish of you to think so! Open your eyes, Lydia! The boy is grown up and out of your control. He was the same last fall, and you were making the same noises you're making now. No doubt he's running about with one of those little bands that are raiding the Missourians from time to time. It's all boys that are doing that."

"What bands?"

"Well, you know. Since the attack, the boys have been wild! You can't control them at all. They all have horses and guns, Sharps carbines if they can get them. They live in camps and ride around here and there. I'm sure it's ninety percent a game, but if they come into something good, then they take advantage of it." Her tone was light, and I let myself be lulled by that. It was summer. I imagined a kind of elaborate freedom-hunting, camping, doing a bit of mischief. When I thought about it, I decided that Frank could probably take care of himself-he was a good shot. But I decided I wouldn't write to Harriet about it just yet. Anyway, Frank had turned up at Louisa's just two nights before, in the company of Roger Lacey. The boys had bedded down in the shop, slept for a long time, and woken up hungry. They looked healthy and happy. Louisa said, "He knows where to come if he gets in trouble-he's got friends all over town, and he can go to your claim, too. He's far better off than some of these boys, not a year or two older than he is, who come here as strangers and have to make their way. He's an enterprising boy, and he helps Charles, too."

Well, I was uneasy, but I put that away. Louisa gave me some wool and a knitting lesson, but I didn't say why I sought one. She looked blooming and pink of cheek. We drank tea and knitted all afternoon, while Thomas went around with Charles and saw the rebuilding and repairs.

Of course, there was other news. Governor Robinson was still detained, and his life had been threatened more than once; we Kansas rebels were still in bad odor with the proslave administration in Was.h.i.+ngton; but on the other hand, more eastern newpapers than ever had sent their correspondents to Lawrence-there was even a man from the London Times, in England. Because of these men, it was now generally felt in Lawrence that the sacking had been a good thing-a way that the southerners had revealed themselves to the world. Sentiment was s.h.i.+fting to our side, or at least it would soon. Any number of these eastern correspondents were writing books about our trials in K.T., and some of these books, it was said, would be out as early as the fall, in time for the election. And at the election, there would be a Republican candidate, too, black as black, of course, the proslave faction said. "But," said Louisa, "Senator Lane is wonderfully hopeful. They may condemn what comes from Free State Kansas all they like, but if it grows all around them, like daisies in the gra.s.s, then that's another story. The other states are watching now. They have to ask themselves whether they will allow the southern plot to succeed."

This seemed to be true.

As it was almost midsummer, the days were long, and we stayed through the late afternoon. There was still plenty of light for driving home, and the night would undoubtedly be light, too, should we be delayed. We were happy going home. The wagon b.u.mped along, and we elected to walk beside it for the first mile. We had got a few things, only some flour and some corn meal and some salt, but it seemed rich to have those, and rich to know that when we tired of walking, if we did, we could b.u.mp along on the wagon. It seemed certain that another wagon would turn up that we might be able to purchase.

As we walked along, Thomas said, "You know, they don't feel in any danger at all in that town. I thought somehow that everyone would huddle in their houses with their weapons by the door, but-"

"But they just laugh at the southerners and go out with their weapons in their hands!" I shook my head in disbelief and just then noticed Jeremiah's ears flick forward and his head come up. With the rustling of my skirt through the gra.s.s, and the creaking of the wagon, which rattled like it was going to come apart any minute, I didn't hear anything, but a horse has sharper senses than a person. Thomas was saying, "And there looks to have been hardly a pause in the building-" when three men, or rather, a boy of sixteen or so and two men, rode up out of a copse of trees that was just ahead of us. Jeremiah stopped dead in his tracks, and the sack of cornmeal fell off the wagon. Thomas went around to pick it up, and one man, without greeting us, as was usual in K.T., called out, "Don't bother to do that!" in almost incomprehensible southern tones. I went rigid at once, but Thomas only smiled and turned to look at the men, putting his hand on the Sharps carbine we had brought along with us and saying, "Is there something you men would like?"

And the other man grinned and shouted, "Sure! We'd like to shoot us a G- d- abolitionist!" and he raised his pistol and let off two shots. Then Thomas fell on the other side of the wagon, out of my sight, and at the same time Jeremiah reared between the shafts, and the boy raised his weapon, a long rifle, and shot the horse in the neck. Jeremiah gave out a deep groan and went down on his side. I climbed over the wagon to Thomas, and I heard the three horses gallop away.

Thomas was lying chest-down, with his face turned away from me. I was certain as a rock that he was dead, but when I went around and knelt down, I saw that his eyes were open and that he blinked them. I was kneeling in his blood. Jeremiah wasn't far away, and his blood, a surge of it, bright red in the late sunlight, flowed toward us in a way that seemed to stun and paralyze me. The horse continued to grunt, but Thomas didn't make a sound. I put my face close to his and felt his breath, then I sat up. I remember that I could still hear galloping, and then, after a bit, that sound was gone, and there were no sounds at all.

I did not begin to know what to do, but I did something, anyway. I turned my husband over on his back to have a look. I didn't know what I was seeing, and then I did, I was seeing his black coat, and so I unb.u.t.toned that and opened it, and against his blue s.h.i.+rt the red blood coming from his stomach and shoulder stood out more tellingly. It was warm, so I opened his s.h.i.+rt, and after that I saw the wounds. I looked at them for a moment, then stood up and stepped out of my petticoat, the cleanest thing I had about me, and started ripping it into bandages. Here's what I did-I rolled up some strips into two thick wads, then bound them tightly against the wounds, not actually thinking that would stop their bleeding but more because I couldn't stand to look at them any longer, they were so frightening. Then I closed Thomas's s.h.i.+rt over his chest and covered him with my shawl. I thought I might get him onto the wagon, somehow, but I was afraid of the pain that would give him, and anyway, then what? I crawled over to Jeremiah. The horse was just then still barely alive. His visible eye was open, and I am sure he looked at me. I put my hand on his ear and stroked it, then bent down and blew gently into his nostril, something my brother-in-law Roland had always told me horses did to greet one another. After that, Jeremiah pa.s.sed on. I crawled back to Thomas, who at last gave a groan, his first sound since they shot him. Now, all of a sudden, I started talking and couldn't stop. I said, "Someone will come along. They always do. Remember last year? The prairie was a regular highway. Folks came by every day. Remember, we saw those people early this morning. Someone will come along. It's a warm night, we'll be fine." I didn't tell him about Jeremiah. Then he started swinging his head back and forth, and after that he opened his eyes and whispered, "Go get someone. Go get Charles."

"I can't. They shot Jeremiah. I want to stay with you."

"Go get Charles."

"I want-"

"Go get Charles." Then he let out an exhausted and painful groan and closed his eyes again.

Now, of course, I couldn't sit there with any conviction but must be thinking that I should go for Charles, or someone, especially as dusk was at last beginning to fall. And yet leave my husband stretched out on the prairie, with only a shawl to cover him? And yet sit there helplessly with him, not even trying to find aid? I stared at him, but his eyes were closed. I put my hand on his forehead, but no wisdom came into me. At last, I made up my mind, and this was what I thought-that if he was dying, the right thing would be to stay, but if he was to live, then the right thing was to get help; and that if I had resolution, the resolution that he would live, then I should act on it by finding someone who would know how to save him. Now staying seemed a way of accepting defeat, so I prepared to leave, but then leaving seemed impossible, so I sat down again and made up my mind to stay, but then I saw that night was really upon us, and so I kissed Thomas on his lips and eyes, and said, "I'm going to Charles," and then he nodded slightly, and so I stood up, and yet actually walking away was almost more than my strength would allow. The upshot of that was that instead of walking, I ran. I ran toward Lawrence as fast as I could.

My skirt kept tripping me up, getting caught on burrs and bushes, until I stooped and tore the bottom tier with my teeth and ripped it off. Then I heard noises, and realized that I had left the carbine on the wagon bed, and had nothing with me in case those men were around, or other men, or animals, or just in case I wanted to shoot something, to do what had been done to me, which seemed an attractive possibility right then. I ran, and it got darker. The prairie wasn't as trackless as people said it was, at least around Lawrence, but I did sense at one point that I was getting lost and veering to the left of Lawrence, wherever that was. So I veered back to the right and slowed down, but then I couldn't bear to be slow, and I started running again, but then I couldn't breathe, so I slowed down again. I knelt on the prairie gra.s.s and put my face in my lap to try and keep from fainting and to catch my breath, then I got up again and saw a small cabin, but when I ran to it, it was empty and deserted, the fences were broken down, the door was out of its frame. I thought for a second, in fact, that it was my own cabin, but I was able to remember that we had fixed our cabin. Was it the Jenkinses' cabin? I made myself think and observe, even in the near darkness, because that would mean that I knew where I was, even though where I would be was farther from Lawrence than where I had started, but no, it wasn't the Jenkinses' cabin. There was no blank spot where our window had been. I ran on, thinking all of a sudden that if I didn't know where I was then, I certainly wouldn't know how to get back to Thomas, even if I found something, and then, at that thought, I started moaning and wailing, because every step I took was leading me deeper and deeper into confusion. I stopped running and stood still, with my hands in my hair, trying to think where I was, where Thomas was, where Lawrence was, but all I could think was of blood ebbing away, of the men who raised their guns, who had hated us enough, just by the sound of Thomas's voice, to kill him, had hated Jeremiah enough to not even bother to steal him but to kill him, too. The wailing must have increased. It seemed to increase all around me, and then I heard the creak of harness and of wheels and wood, and then a voice said, "Now, ma'am, you are in a powerful state. You need a drink of highly rectified whiskey to bring you around."

I spun in my tracks. A horse and a wagon loomed out of the darkness, and then a lantern was lit, and a figure that I could only dimly make out climbed down from the wagon and walked toward me. I stood there dumbly and then saw the face of David Graves. And he saw my face. He said, "Why, Mrs. Newton, I am astonished to find you here!" Then he handed me the southern cure, and following instruction, I took a drink. It was such a shock that I was able to talk again, which I suppose was the point.

"They shot my husband, and I don't know where he is, and they shot our horse, too! I've been running, but I can't find Lawrence, and I'm sure he's lost. We have to get there before morning."

"They shot Thomas Newton?"

"He said one word! He asked what they wanted! They shot him!"

He bundled me into the wagon on top of the goods, then he made me sit quietly and gather my thoughts, and then he started asking questions, one by one, and I'll always be grateful to Mr. Graves because he did so. He said, "Is Mr. Newton still alive?"

"Yes, in the road."

"What road?"

"We were traveling from Lawrence to our claim."

And so on and so forth, all the while driving slowly here and there over the moonless prairie in a fas.h.i.+on that seemed random until I saw Mr. James's little flat wagon, and Jeremiah a dark ma.s.s in front of it. I leapt out of Mr. Graves's wagon and ran to Thomas. He was awake, and looking up, and when I knelt beside him and he saw me, he smiled.

Mr. Graves drove his wagon in a big circle around Jeremiah, but his mule snorted and s.h.i.+ed, anyway. Meanwhile, I was talking to Thomas and wrapping the shawl more closely around him. "Mr. Graves came along. I was at my wit's end, but he found you. Oh, your cheeks are cold."

And then I lifted his head and Mr. Graves put the cup of whiskey between his lips, and Thomas groaned and winced and smiled again, and I was as happy as if the shooting had never happened or as if by dawn we would all be the same as we had been.

Mr. Graves had some milled boards with him, and we held two of these together and got Thomas onto them, and then we half heaved and half slid him onto the top of Mr. Graves's goods. I sat on a keg and held my husband's hand in my two hands and tried to judge by how cold he was how much blood he had lost; as for that blood, I hated leaving it out there on the prairie, uselessly soaking into the ground, lost forever. And Jeremiah, too. He who had not abandoned me, I had now abandoned. But that was K.T. Sentiment was a deadly thing in K.T. Folks back in the U.S. didn't know that about K.T, did they?

And the whole time, Mr. Graves continued to croon at us. "Now, I know all about what to do with a gunshot. All we need is some light on the subject. First thing, after you stop the blood coming out, is you take a magnet, and you hold it over the wound, and it draws out the shot. Why, my brother had such a strong magnet when we were boys that once he shot himself in the foot by mistake and that shot just popped out of there, flew to the magnet, though he held it a couple of inches from the wound. It didn't hurt him any, so we tried a few things out, like how far from the wound could you hold it so it would pop the shot out, and would the magnet stick to his foot through the skin and flesh and bone, from the other side, you see, if the shot was in there? Well, he said it did, but I myself didn't see that, but I thought if he had left the shot in there and tried that magnet from the other side before he took any out, it might have, but we didn't think of that first thing. I always wished we had."

Wasn't shot made of lead? But his talk was like a lullaby, or a work song, and I focused on it to ease my pa.s.sage to Lawrence.

"I knew another man who got shot, some years ago, and if you'll pardon my language, ma'am, he said that the thing to do was to make water on the wound, to clean it out without touching it, and so me and some other men, two of them, we stood there and made water on the wound-it was in his hip-and then he left it open to the air. And after four hours, he had us make water on it again, and so on, for two days. Well, I mean to tell you, this was in Arkansas, and you can never tell why they do some things in Arkansas, and no doctor would approve of such a procedure, I am sure, but after two days, the man got up and walked, naked from the hip down on one side, of course, walked right into town like that, easy as you please, but he did get over that wound in no time at all. Said the Indians told him about that. But that's what everyone says. If the Indians always said what they are supposed to have said, then they would be talking all the time, but as you know, Indians are by and large a taciturn folk...."

And then we were in Lawrence, and then we were at Louisa's, and then it was dawn, and then Thomas was back in our old bedstead and me next to him, holding his hand, and somehow I dozed off while Louisa was tending to the wounds.

A doctor Charles knew came. I woke up to find him bending over me, and then I sat up and realized that he was bending over Thomas. He glanced toward me and said, "h.e.l.lo, my dear," and I eased as quickly as I could out of bed and straightened my clothes. I looked at his face before I looked at Thomas, and his face was grave. Then I dared to look at Thomas. The doctor had bared his wounds and was probing the one in his shoulder with his penknife. Thomas's skin was impossibly white and his face nearly blue. He winced one time, but other than that, he was unresponsive. I put my hands in front of my face, and Louisa put her arm around me and walked me over to one of her chairs and sat me down. She said, "I hope you are prepared for the worst, my dear."

I nodded to say that I was, and perhaps I was: he had already been alive twelve hours or so longer than I had expected him to be; but perhaps I wasn't, because at the same time that I sat there among the sober faces and the low tones of voice and the shaking heads, I also did not trust for one moment that these were actual scenes. I knew better: this would fade away, and something more familiar would come in its place. The doctor said, "Well, he's full of lead, that's for sure," and I thought, Then they won't be able to get anything out with a magnet, will they? I said, "Has he spoken at all?"

"He asked after you right at first, but he hasn't spoken since."

"That isn't good, is it, Louisa?"

She shook her head, then said, "Lidie, dear, the fever's set in."

I nodded, to show that I understood what that meant, but I didn't, really. I didn't know why the fever had set in.

"I can pick at it," said the doctor, "but I hate to. I hate to do that. I'd rather put on a plaster that'll draw the foreign matter out and let the young man's system take care of itself. Myself, I don't like surgery. I always say that surgery does more harm than good in the end. To tell you the truth, a body can incorporate considerable foreign matter if it will, and if it won't, you can't make it." Everyone nodded, but this seemed nonsensical to me. If there was something that the southerners had put into my husband, I wanted it out. Then the doctor spoke in a low voice to Charles, who was standing right beside him. Charles nodded.

I said, "What was that?" and the doctor looked at me sharply, then said, "To tell the truth, ma'am, I don't truly believe that your husband could tolerate any surgery. I think it would be too much of a shock to him, myself. He's pretty far gone, ma'am."

We stared at each other, then he broke away, put his penknife in his pocket, and turned to don his coat, a blue coat, K.T. all over. I didn't believe he was a doctor at all. Perhaps he was a governor pretending to be a doctor, just as Governor Robinson was a doctor pretending to be a governor.

"Now, Lidie," said Louisa, as if I had spoken aloud, but of course I hadn't.

After the doctor went down the stairs, I said, "You've got to find another doctor, a real doctor."

"Now, Lidie."

I turned to Charles. "Please? Please, Charles, you must know someone else, or some woman who knows ..."

Later, a woman did come by. She was the wife of one of the legislators, and she had some emetic with her and the makings of a poultice for each wound. She told us what to do-to give a dram of the emetic every hour, and to change the poultices twice a day. Louisa felt that we should also get some broth into Thomas when we could, and a bit of whiskey now and then. We listened to our instructions and set up our sickroom as if we would be there for weeks-as we would be if Thomas should recover. Louisa and Charles bustled about, Mrs. Bush and Mr. Bush came in, and also Mrs. Lacey and one of the boys; the woman with the poultices had a friend, too, so in general there was a crowd and much talk, some of it about Thomas and his injuries, much of it about who had shot him. I told the story over and over. The only telling detail I could come up with was the sound of the one man's voice-very southern-and the look on the boy's face when he shot Jeremiah: he looked pleased. Perhaps I would know them to see them, but perhaps not-I couldn't remember them, exactly. My only hope was that the looks of one of them would strike me should he appear before me again. Everyone speculated about who they had been, even bringing up names and looking toward me, as if I could say yes or no and that would be the one. I tried to explain how quickly it all had happened, and then everyone was sympathetic and declared that I should be bothered no more. And then, after a moment or two, they resumed speculating. When I asked what had happened to Mr. Graves, no one knew.

In the evening, I fell asleep again, and after I woke up, everyone was gone except Louisa, who was sitting beside Thomas, gazing at him. When I opened my eyes, she said, "Feel better?"

"Yes and no."