The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (34 page)

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 associations 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 lashing 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 chink 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 coarsened 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 sunshine 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 massacre, 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 prone 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 Massachusetts 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 Washington; 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 shifting 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 grass, 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 bumped 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 bump 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 grass, 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 unbuttoned that and opened it, and against his blue shirt the red blood coming from his stomach and shoulder stood out more tellingly. It was warm, so I opened his shirt, 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 shirt 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 passed 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."