The All-True Travels And Adventures Of Lidie Newton Part 18

In fact, when I paid attention, which I hadn't been doing heretofore, I could make out what the two men were saying quite well, even over the humming of the girl. I set myself to listen, full of conviction that the information I needed would be forthcoming if I just listened long enough.

"It's a whole load," said the new Mr. Graves.

"Men's or women's?"

"Both. Mostly men's, I think. But they an't gonna cost you nothing. Their owners is all dead!"

"But I got to go all the way to Saint Louis to get 'em."

"Bailey might bring 'em up as far as Lexington."

"And I an't heard anyone talk about shoes. I an't sure there's much of a market for old shoes in K.T."

"Lots of 'em are boots. Anyways, you got to make your own market sometimes."

"In my opinion, David B., dead men's shoes are a risky venture."

"In my opinion, cousin, nothing ventured, nothing gained."

"I'll ponder over it."

We went along for a ways. Other hors.e.m.e.n and people in wagons were about, and sometimes the two men hailed them.

I dozed off.

A loud and merry laugh woke me up. "They did?" exclaimed the new Mr. Graves. "Sent 'em back down the river without their rifles? Haw haw! I like that one!"

'Jim Lane was in a state, let me tell you," said the old Mr. Graves. "When he recruited those boys in Chicago, he had to sober them up one by one, then teach the difference between east and west, so they'd know how to get to K.T!"

"Paddy don't know the way, haw haw!" exclaimed the new Mr. Graves.

"And our boys, they said, 'Now, we'll give you two bucks apiece for your rifles, boys, but only if you don't fuss. If you fuss, we'll give you a kick apiece in the hind end!' "

"That's what they got, haw haw!"

By this time I was wide awake, perceiving that their conversation had turned to the political situation. I tried to be quiet, but I must have let on somehow, because they moved closer together and lowered their voices, so that I could catch only a word here and there. Two of the words I caught were "Lane's army" and another word was "Nebraska." I had heard about this before-Jim Lane had recruited another army in Iowa, in addition to the Chicago group the men had just been discussing, and was bringing it to Lawrence through Nebraska. It was supposed to be a well-equipped northern fighting band, plenty of guns and ammunition and officers trained in military colleges in Indiana and Ohio who were disaffected by the fact that the regular U.S. Army, like every other branch of the government, was in the power of the slavocrats. Louisa and Charles had talked about the plan a few days before. It was mixed up somehow with the idea of Kansas becoming an independent republic, as Texas had been for a while. An independent Free-Soil republic with its own army and the capital at Topeka. Well, people would talk about anything.

And suddenly Thomas was with me. Rolling over that stretch of prairie that we had rolled over in such a state of innocence only a few months before brought him to me. I remembered how I used to feel his presence as a kind of largeness pressing against me, and then I would look over, and he would just be sitting there, mild and alert, taking everything in and thinking about it. That was the distinctive thing about Thomas: he was always thinking about it. You didn't have that feeling with most people; rather, you had a feeling that nothing was going on with them at all. Even Louisa, who was certainly an intelligent woman: if she wasn't talking about something you didn't have the feeling that she was thinking about it. I remembered something I hadn't thought of since it happened - the time we'd camped on the prairie, our first night on the prairie ever, and Thomas had taken my hand between his and rubbed my thumb and asked me if I was afraid. Hadn't I said no? Hadn't the very grasp of his hand driven out the fear that I had felt earlier in the day? How strange that was, all things considered. And shouldn't I learn a lesson from that, to be afraid right now? And yet I wasn't afraid at all, even of the second Mr. Graves and all he represented. Having Thomas with me did that.

We went along all day. We didn't stop in Franklin, but we did stop at the store of Paschal Fish, and I got out while the two Mr. Graveses carried some kegs and chests in. In the afternoon, we stopped again, at another store. I understood without being told that these were rough places and that my best course of action was to stay with the girl in the wagon. I tried to engage her in conversation, in fact, but she was taciturn. When I pressed her, she said, "I an't gotta talk to abolitionists like you. Abolitionists think I'm no better than a n.i.g.g.e.r."

"Who told you that?"

"I figured it out on my own."

"It isn't that, exactly...." I was ready to go into explanations, but suddenly they seemed worthless, and fruitless. And her evident aversion to me was disheartening.

After another moment, she said, "I know what happened to you. My pa told me."

"Most people do know what happened to me."

"You shouldn't have come to K.T. What happened to you was your own fault."

"You are a hard little girl."

"I an't a little girl." And it was true; she was the same age as Frank, who was not a little boy.

Mr. Graves was as kind to me as he could be. When we camped again on the prairie that night, he gave me the best bits of the prairie chicken that he caught and roasted, then he made me my bed in the wagon. I knew that he and I would have had a lot to say to one another, but his conversation with his cousin had died, and he didn't seem to wish any conversation with me in the hearing of his cousin. After nightfall, both men, and the girl, for all I knew, fell immediately asleep. I lay awake in the relative comfort of the wagon, looking at the sliver of moon and listening to the hobbled mules crop the prairie gra.s.s. The perennial K.T breeze blew over me. I knew this was the last of these scenes for me, that once I had left, my horror of the place would grow and nothing would bring me back. That morning, I had looked on my friends with coolness, and impatience to be on my way, but right then I felt the attachment strongly, and it smote me that I wouldn't be there to see Louisa and Charles's child, to lift him into my arms and hold him up to my cheek. If there was any reward for living in K.T., perhaps that would be it. And I was sorry I had acted so coldly at our parting. I felt that if I were to tot up my regrets about my life in K.T, then that would be right at the top of a long list.

CHAPTER 19.

I Go Among the Enemy [image]A person of strong const.i.tution, who takes much exercise, needs less clothing than one of delicate and sedentary habits. According to this rule, women need much thicker and warmer clothing, when they go out, than men. But how different are our customs, from what sound wisdom dictates! Women go out with thin stockings, thin shoes, and open necks, when men are protected by thick woollen hose and boots, and their whole body encased in many folds of flannel and broad-cloth. - p. 115 IF LAWRENCE WAS BUSY with new money and new men, then Kansas City was a-boil. Just as each time I came into Lawrence from our claim, the experience of all that noise and all those people with their business was a shock and a revelation no matter how much I expected and longed for it, so the even greater level of activity and noise in Kansas City was an even greater shock. It was hardly the same town as it had been when we pa.s.sed through in September. Every road or path leading from the town was jammed with wagons and men on horseback, and once you were well into town, there were no quiet sections. Everywhere, someone was building or tearing down or loading or unloading or yelling out instructions, admonishments, oaths, imprecations. And shortly I noticed that the town was all men and, as with Lawrence, all the men were armed, only they didn't carry just a carbine or a pistol; they carried a rifle and wore a pair of pistols, and you could see the handles of knives sticking out of their boottops and their pockets.

Mr. Graves turned to me now and said, "I know the captain of a steamboat, the Missouri Rose, and I think the boat is leaving for Saint Louis in the next day. I'm going to buy you a ticket right now and put you on there, ma'am. She's a safe boat with a shallow draft and an't gonna get hung up like some of them others."

"We got hung up on the way upriver. A woman on that boat beat her slave girl because she got her shoes wet." I glanced at the second Mr. Graves and saw the back of his neck twitch, but he didn't turn to look at me.

"Now, ma'am, I have to remind you that, as you are unsound on the goose question, you would be wise to maintain a womanly silence and gentleness of demeanor at all times, because though all Missourians and southerners honor the fair s.e.x, by habit and from their earliest childhoods, no one can answer for the general irritability that I see all around me here. I am feeling that you should take your cabin on the Rose and stick to it and not say too much about your troubles in K.T."

The other Mr. Graves s.h.i.+fted on the wagon seat. My Mr. Graves said, "Now here is a lesson in point." He gestured to the large print of a news-paper that had been pasted on a wall we were pa.s.sing. It read: "Abolitionists' Nest to Be Razed, Vows Atchison," then, in smaller but still blaring type: "No One Can't Stop Us!"

"Though I have an establishment of my own, where you yourself have visited me, I've been here half a dozen times this summer, ma'am, and I felt you had to see it for yourself to believe me. You can get out of this country safely, and I hope with all my heart you do, but you got to do it quick and you got to do it now, because there's a war coming and a conflagration that is going to roll over Lawrence, K.T, like a burning log, smas.h.i.+ng everyone in its path. We been taking their weapons and turning them back, at the same time as our allies from the southern states have been pouring in to us, with fresh horses, fresh weapons, and fresh spirits ready for a fight as only southerners can be. I have an interest in you, ma'am, and I think you've seen enough and suffered enough. I would hate to see what is coming to them come to you."

Well, I admit that these sights and sounds, and Mr. Graves's words, too, were startling. I saw that his plan was just what Charles's had been-to bundle me out of harm's way. My plan, of eliciting from him the names of Thomas's killers, had been entirely unsuccessful, and I didn't see another way, just yet, but even as he was speaking, I was trying to think of one. I looked toward my bag, which contained my pistol and my rounds of ammunition, for inspiration. Mr. Graves's mules ambled through the crowds, slowly making our way for us to the boats I could see down on the river. Frankly, I had not imagined so many people. Even if that boy were here, I would certainly miss him in this crowd, unless some emanation from him, such as Louisa maintained she was sensitive to, was carried to me across the spiritual realm. It was enough to discourage someone not quite as single-minded as myself. But there they were, as close as the inside of my own head-Thomas turning to speak and falling out of my sight behind Mr. James's little wagon, Jeremiah rearing up in the traces, that boy's face as he shot him dead. You couldn't rest with such a picture in your head, even in the teeth of such scenes as I now beheld.

The girl spoke up. "We an't had nothin' good to eat since two days ago, and I'm hungry." The two men looked at each other. I said, "I'm hungry, too."

The second Mr. Graves barked, "We got stuff to unload!" and the girl looked abashed, but then the first Mr. Graves, a man who I could see was always kindly in spite of himself, said, "We're going to Morton's ware - house. It seems to me there's a place down around there that an't too bad, if we set by the door and keep our eyes peeled."

"I can pay for myself," I said, as if the men's reluctance grew out of stinginess, but I knew it grew out of something else, perhaps only caution at the general rowdiness.

There was a place-the Alabama Hotel, a building still under construction but already a going business-and after unloading, we went there. Vida and I sat in the wagon for a moment, while the two men checked on the activities inside. All was quiet enough, and so we got out, tied up the mules, and went in.

The ground floor of the Alabama Hotel was cavernous, lit by six gla.s.s windows that ran along the back wall, facing the river over the bluff. It contained a vast number of tables, no two alike-some round, some rectangular, some finely finished, and others just rough boards. And pulled up to the tables were chairs, stools, benches, and kegs of all sorts, too. Clearly the Alabama Hotel was a business built on the failures of other businesses. While we stood in the corner beside the door, a half-dozen Negro men came running in from the back and started setting the tables, with a clatter of crockery and utensils. They then brought in big bowls of food and placed them in the center of the tables, also at a run. I saw that this was to be a meal on the steamboat model, and indeed, all around the walls of the room, men were gathering, waiting near the tables for the signal to be seated. The Negroes ran faster and worked harder as the top of the hour approached. The men around the walls were armed and rough-looking characters, and not likely to entertain any delay to the gratification of their appet.i.tes. There were shouts of "Hurry, boys! I'm hungry as a dragon!" and "Step it up, boy! Set down the food, then get out of the way!" There was even a shot, which made everyone jump, but then the rumor went around that the shooter had just let off his pistol exuberantly, out the window toward the river. The waiters didn't even react that I could see. I suppose they were happy enough that there was only one shot. I noticed that a very rough-looking character, bearded from his eyebrows to his chest and with hands like loaves of bread, was going around taking money. He came to us, and the first Mr. Graves gave him a dollar and some change. "That's one plate full per person," admonished the man. "This is an honor system here, but I'm watching you, anyway." Then he went on to the man beside me, who paid him a dollar, and he said, "That's all you can eat, Morgan, same as always, but you got to sit at that table." He pointed. Morgan nodded and moved closer to the designated table. This man, the one who was taking the money, had his pistols holstered at his waist, clearly visible to all the rowdies. When he had gotten around the room, and the Negroes had gotten out of the way, he came to a gong and rang it, and the men poured off the walls and into the chairs. After that, it was the same wolfing of food that I'd seen on the steamboat, with this difference, that there was pa.s.sing of bowls back and forth between some of the tables, until all the food was gone and all the bowls were as clean as if they'd been washed. I remember sitting with the Misses Tonkin on the steamboat and watching Thomas across the dining room, reaching for a piece of something and having it s.n.a.t.c.hed from between his fingers. The thought made my throat tighten. Men licked their knives, their spoons, even their plates. We had some pork, some cuc.u.mbers, some corncakes, some wheat bread, and some corn pudding. After a bit, there was another sounding of the gong, and when I turned to glance at the first Mr. Graves, he said, "They're serving up a drink of whiskey to each man, out on the porch. That gets 'em outta here pretty brisk. We can finish up at our leisure."

"You can," said his cousin. "I'm gettin' what I paid for."

"I paid for it," said Mr. Graves. And I saw the cousin smile for the first time. "You set," the second Mr. Graves ordered Vida, though she hadn't moved, and then he pushed off.

"My cousin has high ambitions for Vida," said Mr. Graves. "She's a precocious young lady with considerable accomplishments already. Vida, sing your song!"

Vida was happy to oblige, and as all around us men were pus.h.i.+ng back their chairs and rus.h.i.+ng to the door, Vida sang four verses of "The Last Rose of Summer" in a high but tuneful voice. Mr. Graves clapped for her, and she nodded and simpered at him. Then he said, "My cousin keeps her by him, so that he can guard her precious talents. That side of the family was always musical. I don't share their talents myself."

"And I play the piccolo and dance," said Vida, proudly. "Pa says that I am going to go on the stage in a year or so."

"There's a great call for entertainment in the west," said Mr. Graves. "My cousin himself once did a lecture circuit, but since discovering Vida's promise, he's been devoting himself to nurturing it."

I couldn't help gaping just a little bit.

Once the patrons had cleared out, the Negroes returned and began by sweeping up the broken crockery. After that, we went out.

We were joined by the second Mr. Graves. Vida said, "I sang my song for the lady. She liked it."

"Yes, I did-"

"Did she pay you?"

"Here," said my Mr. Graves. "Here's a dime." He handed his cousin a coin, and the second Mr. Graves pocketed it.

Now we made our way down to the river and began looking for the Missouri Rose. I had hoped that the cousin and the girl would find other business and I would be able to either elicit information from Mr. Graves or else elude him, but the two stuck to us like c.o.c.kleburs. The girl was sharp-sighted, shouting, "There she is!" not two seconds after I'd spotted the boat and attempted to turn the two men. Mr. Graves was carrying my bag, and he marched us right down there and handed it to a Missouri Rose deckhand. The deckhand walked away with it, and I saw that I was sunk.

We went on board, up what I suppose you would call the gangplank, to the pa.s.senger deck, and there, to my dismay, we immediately encountered the captain, who was a small, rotund man with side-whiskers and a pince-nez. This man greeted Mr. Graves heartily, haw-hawing and throwing his arm around Mr. Graves's shoulder.

"When will you be getting under way?" said Mr. Graves.

"No later than tomorrow, crack of dawn, haw haw," shouted Captain Smith.

"What's the pa.s.sage for this young lady here, down to Saint Louis, you old crook?" shouted Mr. Graves in return.

"Twelve dollars if she's paying, twelve silver dollars if you're paying, haw haw," shouted the captain.

"I'm paying," said Mr. Graves, "if you're really going off tomorrow, but if you an't, I'll find someone else who is. Got to get her out of this country, and that's a fact."

"She a G- d- abolitionist, haw haw?" shouted the captain.

"She's a widow woman, and made so at a young age, and her husband was a fine man, and that's all you need to know. Now, are you leaving when you say, or is it just a trick?"

I hated that word "widow."

"Tomorrow noon. Two o'clock at the latest."

"I'll keep looking. If I don't find nothing better, I'll be back."

He marched me down to the sh.o.r.e, where I stopped dead. "In the first place," I exclaimed, "I have the money to pay my pa.s.sage. In the second place, I consider your treatment of me very high-handed! I am accustomed to making my own decisions, and I haven't made up my mind what I intend to do."

"Ma'am, I told you before-"

"I know what you told me, and I understand that you are motivated by kindness, but-" But I bit my tongue before speaking. I knew that my plan, such as it was, was so much in my mind that almost any word would reveal it, possibly without my knowing. I eyed Mr. Graves. Wasn't the key thing, after all, to be rid of him? I bent my head, then sought his gaze and said, more submissively, "I know what you want to do is all for the best, Mr. Graves, and you've always been a friend to me, so whatever you think is best, that's the course I will follow."

"Good girl," said Mr. Graves.

For the next hour, we visited each boat, one by one-there were four altogether-and at each we got a similar reply: perhaps tomorrow; but if you wanted to get right down to it, the next day or the day after that was more likely. Finally, we got back to the Missouri Rose. The captain showed me my little cabin and the ladies' saloon, which was neatly fitted out in red brocade with gold trim-'Just had this done down in New Orleans; looks like it, don't it, haw haw?"-and I watched while Mr. Graves counted out twelve silver dollars. Then I said, "But I need my bag. The boy took away my bag."

"You'll find it in your cabin."

"Which is?"

"Number seven."

And now, now at last, I came to bidding farewell to Mr. Graves. We stood on the deck, and he worked himself up to his highest state of oratory. He took my hand. "Ma'am, Mrs. Newton, I say this openly, with no thought to my own preservation or the opinions of my fellowman: You and your late husband were fine folk, who came here with the purest of motives, no matter what our scribblers of the presses aver. I consider myself privileged to have known you, and especially privileged to have had such a lengthy and enlightening conversation with your husband, that time we pa.s.sed between this town, Kansas City, though hardly a city then, and your destination, which, in consideration to the feelings of pa.s.sersby, I shall not name right now. We talked, as I remember, about the broad breast of the ocean, whereon Mr. Newton had made his fortune, such as it was, and about certain medical and educational matters. These medical matters, I recall, had a favorable outcome, which I then attributed and now attribute to the pleasant circ.u.mstances of our journey. And I say this, too: that I was struck at the time by the contrast between a threesome of our local citizenry and your husband-the one set was low in their appet.i.tes and belligerent in their actions, while your husband was a man of enterprise and wit. The contrast struck me sharply, though I didn't mention it at the time, and I said to myself, 'Well, these New Englanders aren't all bad,' and I date my period of enlightenment from that evening. Let me say this, that in my travels back and forth between that nameless town and this so-called city, my eyes have been opened to the worthy men of both sides of this tragic conflict. What will happen I of course cannot predict, but every day the contrast between what men might be and what they are grows greater. I wish you the best of luck far from these scenes of thievery and mayhem. I count the evening when I found you on the prairie and aided you in my humble way as one of the most significant of my life, and I will never forget it, or you, or your departed husband, and so good-bye." Here Mr. Graves kissed my hand and then let go of it, and I saw that there were tears in his eyes. In front of all the world, I stepped over and kissed him on the cheek, and I said, "You are certainly a dear man, Mr. Graves, and I will always think of you as a friend."

I stood by the railing as he departed down the plank, and I watched him until he was well out of sight. Then I ran back to my cabin to get my bag, thinking I would make my own departure. My forty dollars was intact, thanks to Mr. Graves's friends.h.i.+p; I was full of food; I could carry my bag off and find a hotel, then make inquiries here and there. When all was said and done, freedom was everything wasn't it?

I went into the red-and-gold saloon, then made my way down to cabin number seven. My heart, strange to say, was lighter than it had been in weeks, as if my plan were to meet Thomas, not to avenge him. I pushed back the curtain of my cabin and saw at once the back of another woman, a small woman with a cap on her white hair. She turned right around and said, "Ah! You're Mrs. Newton! I am Miss Emily Carter, schoolteacher. The captain sent me over to chaperone you to Saint Louis. I'm sure we will have a lovely journey. I am well known on the Missouri Rose. I go back and forth from Kansas City to Saint Louis four times a year, and I always take the Rose. Isn't the new ladies' saloon inviting?"

I was so shocked that I could barely keep a friendly countenance. It took significant effort to transform my gape into a smile, to hold out my hand, and to say to Miss Carter, "Oh, how lovely. I knew Mr. Graves would take care of me."

"Oh, Mr. David B. Graves and I are old friends."

"It's hard to distinguish them, isn't it?"

"You mean the cousin? I don't think of him as Mr. David B. Graves at all. He has a much more troubled reputation, don't you know? No, whenever you hear the name Mr. David B. Graves, most folks know who you're talking about. The one and not the other. Isn't that funny?"

"Yes, it is." I had regained a bit of my composure, but I was panting just a little. Miss Carter said, "Oh, my dear. You seem hot. I have just the thing. You recline a bit here, and I will fix you right up."

I did what she said, at the same time furiously attempting to come up with a plan.

"Now close your eyes, dear."

When I did, she laid a folded handkerchief dipped in witch hazel across my forehead.

"I will tell you right out, Mrs. Newton, that Mr. Graves told me a bit of your story, because he felt he could confide in me, though he did not tell the captain a word. Captain Smith is a very partisan man, I am sorry to say, and we all know the sort of things he's done in what I call the goose cause. It's a shame!" She clucked disapprovingly. "But I'm sure we will get down to Saint Louis with no problem. The lovely thing about the Missouri Rose is that it's a safe and well-run boat, perfect for the Missouri River, just a first-rate craft. And Captain Smith has enough backing, my dear, so that he doesn't run in an unsafe way-you know, trying always to get up more steam, or risking the sandbars. Oh! My land o' mercy! You may not know it, but the Missouri River was not designed by the Lord for steamboat travel, but men will defy Him! The key thing is always to find a boat with more than enough boiler capacity, so that going along does not in any way test the boiler, because a boiler is just the sort of thing to fail the test!" She laughed, then felt my cheeks. "There we go, dear. You're much cooler now, and your cheeks aren't nearly so red." She removed the handkerchief. "Well, I am sorry to laugh, because the tragedy when a boiler fails is beyond thinking about! But my own brother is an engineer, and he said to me, 'Emily, dear, I have gone over the Missouri Rose from stem to stern, and looked over the boiler, too, and I declare she's as safe as a boat can be, which isn't all that safe, but the alternative is Missouri roads!' "

I sat up and declared that I felt better. Then I said, "Do we stay all night on the boat, then? I'm new at these things."

"Well, I do, Mrs. Newton. I didn't use to, when I was teaching in Lexington, because Lexington is a fine old town, as civilized as Lexington, Kentucky, where I was brought up. But these western towns, especially since those abolitionists got in here! In these circ.u.mstances, staying on the boat is a lady's best course of action. The captain has agreed to give us our supper-he really is a good man underneath, you know-and I think we can make ourselves quite comfortable here! The saloon is lovely, and our cabin is very roomy for a steamboat cabin."

I forced myself to cool my impatience by making up alternative plans in my head: I could sneak off the boat at Westport or Lexington and make my way back if I had to. Wasn't revenge a dish best eaten cold, even in K.T, where most tempers were hot? But I couldn't raise much of an interest in Miss Carter, and so I didn't respond in a very lively fas.h.i.+on to her conversation, and after a bit she fell silent and took out her work, which was some tatting. I watched her out of the corner of my eye-her thread was impossibly fine, and the lace she made was intricate and filmy. Watching her put me into a sort of dream, which pa.s.sed the time until supper.

We went on in this fas.h.i.+on for the rest of the day and into the evening. Our supper of steak and pickles and cherries and corn bread was brought to us in the ladies' saloon by a Negro boy, and it was accompanied by the usual gla.s.s of river water-cloudy on top, thick at the bottom. Miss Carter drank hers right up, saying, "I'm told that in the baths of Europe, only the wealthiest can afford such a gla.s.s. We in America are more democratic!" I couldn't be so enthusiastic-I sipped the top inch or so and then set mine aside.

It would have been the end of July, and so dusk was late and prolonged, but finally I saw that Miss Carter was making her preparations for rest. In all of this time, since our first meeting, she had not left me for even a few minutes. I hoped she was a heavy sleeper. I made my preparations for rest, too, though when I opened my bag, I was careful to hide it with my body from her sight and then to leave it open, with my shawl draped over it, so that I wouldn't have to risk the sound of the hasp later on. At last we were ready. I eased myself into the lower berth, which, fortunately, I had been lying in before. I said, "Good night, Miss Carter. I hope you sleep well."

"Oh, my land o' mercy. I will!" she exclaimed. "Have you seen these drops? I got them from a wonderful man, three-quarters pure Indian, knows all the Indian secrets! Everyone here in Kansas City swears by him. His name is John Red Dog. I can't do without these drops!" And she put a bit on her tongue, then climbed into the upper berth. Sure enough, by the time it was fully dark, she was snoring, long, deep, ruffling snores, as regular as the ticking of a clock.

I sat up and removed my shawl from my bag, at the same time making sure that the curtain of our cabin was completely closed. Then I stood up and looked, smiling in case she awakened, at Miss Carter. She was far gone in slumber, undoubtedly thanks to the drops. Her workbasket sat at the foot of her bed, and I opened it and took out her scissors, which were of only moderate size but large enough. Then I laid out my shawl and, kneeling, bent my head over it and cut off my hair. It fell in dark hanks, rather surprising me with its length and weight. But I felt no grief at cutting off my only beauty, merely a lightness and relief. Somehow, my hair had become Thomas's, and now he was requiring me to cut it. It would grow back. I wrapped it in my shawl and laid the shawl aside.

The next part was more difficult. What I was engaged in now I had not planned, though I had brought along a few of Thomas's things for remembrance-two or three books, a pair of trousers, and a coat, but, of course, no hat, no shoes. I think that I had vaguely thought that if I should end up in Boston, I would give these articles to Thomas's mother, or father, or a brother. The trousers and the coat would now come in handy, but I had given his hat to Charles, and I had given his boots and other effects to a dealer in secondhand clothing, not three days after the killing. This man had offered me some money, but at the time I was simply horrified at taking money for them, and so I'd turned it down. Well, there was nothing for it, then, but to make the best of what I had. I cut the skirt off my cream-colored dress, below the waist, so there would be a tail, then I put Thomas's trousers on over the bodice as if it were a s.h.i.+rt, with his braces holding them up as best as I could fix it. Finally, I shrugged into the jacket, which fit much more loosely than the trousers. One thing I had saved and used, which now came in very handy, was his pocket watch. I opened the crystal and felt the hands in the darkness-ten-thirty-and slipped it into the pocket of his coat. I pushed my rolled-up shawl out of the way and slipped into my berth to wait for a favorable hour.

There was no going to sleep. I neither wanted to nor could afford to. I had no idea, for one thing, of how long Miss Carter's drops would remain effective. And I judged midnight or shortly thereafter to be the best time for departing the Missouri Rose. I knew that if I fell asleep, I would sleep through until morning and lose my chance. Lying in my berth in Thomas's clothes made me very sad. They had been folded tightly away for many weeks-they were not what he'd been wearing upon being shot, but I had retrieved them from the cabin-and beneath their woolly, musty scent was another, fleeting and almost undetectable, which I recognized as familiar. I was eager to think that it was Thomas's scent, that something of him still lingered around me, but when I focused my attention on it, it seemed to disappear, so that I could not say that it was really there. When I thought of Thomas, though, the pictures and the memories were striking: Thomas reading aloud by candlelight, his expressive voice bodying forth each story so that the characters seemed to be in the room, just outside the circle of the candlelight. Thomas coming in from working at the end of the day, his shoulders filling the doorway, his affectionate greeting, even though we might have seen each other only twenty minutes before. Thomas and Charles at the breakfast table, when we were living in town, laughing and regaling Louisa and me with stories of their journeys to Leavenworth to get the mail. Thomas, my husband, after the candle was blown out at night, so large a presence that I seemed to disappear into it; not something that memoirists customarily write about but, in truth, the very thing that I could not stop thinking of as I lay curled in my berth that night on the Missouri Rose.

The anguish of these thoughts eventually propelled me out of the berth at eleven forty-five or so. Miss Carter was still heavily asleep. I closed the hasp of my bag as softly as I could and peeked around the curtain into the ladies' saloon. If the Missouri Rose was anything like the boat that had brought us upstream, male pa.s.sengers would be allowed to sleep on the floor of the saloon after all the ladies had gone to their cabins, but now, before the journey, the big room was empty. I crept around the curtain and across the floor to the big double doors, which were locked. Trying not to be disappointed or daunted, I then carried my bag along the row of ladies' cabins, looking for another way out. I didn't find one, but I found something better, a pair of men's boots, the toes sticking out underneath the curtain, and, when I listened, hearty snores behind it. I knelt, set down my bag, and slowly extracted the boots. They were unattached to their owner's feet and came easily. They were not new and did not smell sweet, but I hurriedly pulled off my own shoes and put the boots on, anyway. Though a trifle too large, they were certainly good enough.