Part 9 (1/2)

At the end of October, the weather turned a bit brisk. On the other hand, Thomas, Frank, and I were well equipped with st.u.r.dy clothing and boots we'd brought along, and plenty of quilts and blankets. We had a woodpile stacked as large as the cabin, and the cabin was thoroughly papered and c.h.i.n.ked. Jeremiah had a bushy, full coat, with furry ears and fetlocks. The prairie hay was snowless and nouris.h.i.+ng, and he trotted around in fine fettle, keeping himself warm and fit. He was a good lookout-a lone horse always is, especially for the approach of any other horse.

All in all, I could stand at my door and feel satisfied enough with my situation, or I could glance about my little cabin and feel satisfied enough with my situation. Along about then, I received a letter from Harriet, acknowledging the tidings I had sent her of Frank's safe arrival, which had slightly elided its actual date. She wrote: My Dear Sister, and Frank, too: I write to a.s.sure you that my fears are largely set at rest by yours rec'd today. To be perfectly candid, I will say that on the very day after Frank's departure, we had news of the Kansas rebels and their so-called const.i.tutional convention at Tomara or someplace like that, Roland knows the name, and I had tremendous fears of the battles that might ensue, because I am here to tell you that the southerners are not going to give anything up without a fight, for you know they are Scotch-Irish, and you know how they are, they invented the terrier dog, Roland says, and it wasn't without a reason. Now that Frank is gone, Alice's boys are all clamoring to go as well, and I might as well take to my bed. Alice has had animals in the house for four months, as the two boys found an injured crow, and now they have taught it to talk. It is an ugly black thing and hops all around and even though she leaves the door open as often as you can stand with this cold, it WILL NOT fly away, and Roland says why should it, it has found a home. It is a great storer of provisions, and Alice and Annie are always coming across its caches of trashy things. But that won't interest you. Lydia, I insist that you protect my child from danger and do not lead him astray as you have so often in the past. I can't feature what persuaded me to allow this. But now you are a married woman, and you must come to your senses, and keep out of trouble, especially as, though you have not said anything about it, you are no doubt in a condition. I will say that it makes considerable changes in your state of mind, which you yourself will find in no time. Well, just that thought makes me miss you a bit, and so write again right away and let me know how everyone is. We miss you, though I will say that our life is quieter here, esp. as we do not have a crow in the house, that is Alice.

Your loving sister, HARRIET.

Well, I was not in a condition, but I thought that was just as well, with the winter to look forward to. Mrs. James, who was in a condition, looked as though she sorely missed her little cow, and so did the boy.

I wish I could say that I savored and appreciated each of those quiet days in the fall, but I cannot. When the wind ripped my papers and the cold air crept into the cabin, when the stove went out and refused to light again, when my hunting was poor or my husband preoccupied, I felt p.r.i.c.kles of dissatisfaction. My own inept.i.tude annoyed me: our bed tick was misshapen; when I sewed Thomas a s.h.i.+rt, I had to rip out and refas.h.i.+on the second left sleeve I set in; I was vexed with the mice and moles and other vermin who found their way into the house and against which we had to be ever vigilant.

But in the midst of it all, I did have some valuable moments with my husband. One rainy afternoon, our conversation turned to the Missourians who had been driven off, whom we hadn't mentioned in the intervening weeks. I had been over with the Jenkinses that morning, making soap, and I commented upon what a comfortable cabin I found it, and Thomas said, ”I didn't think we should have sent those men down the river. It was a miserable thing for them.”

”I'm sure it was.”

”We couldn't find one of them for a bit. The rope tied to the log came loose, and he drifted off in the dark.”

”What did you mean to do-”

”I thought sure the log had turned over and drowned the fellow, but it just drifted into some snags and hung there. He was deadly quiet, but Bisket saw him when the moon came out.”

”But what-”

”We had the guns. Bush was all for shooting them and getting it over with, and maybe they deserved it, because they shot at us when we rode up, but I said I hadn't brought all those Sharps rifles out here for that-”

”Well, what did you bring them out here for?”

”Defending our claims. But we were all hot to do something to them, and a dose of the river didn't seem so bad in prospect. Afterward, I saw that we didn't know what we were doing, and those men were just fortunate.”

”But you wanted to run them off, didn't you?”

”Yes, Lidie, I did.” He sighed, then smiled a bit and said, ”I generally want to do things, but often I don't want to have done them.”

He must have seen alarm in my face, for I had been wondering that very day whether his quiet manner hid regrets about his choice of a wife, but he put his arm around my waist and drew me to him, then he murmured, ”Small things only,” and kissed me.

A day or two later, we were alone again. Frank had gone to the Holmeses', carrying a pot he had bought for them in Lawrence and brought home-he got a penny for running these errands. That evening, Thomas was in a more jovial mood, and he said, ”Well, wife, we've been married three months now. Has your experience borne out your sisters' advice?”

”I think that must be United States advice, not K.T. advice.”

”That you'll have to write up yourself.”

”Perhaps I can have an article in The Western Ladies' Journal, or even make a regular appearance: 'How to keep your skirts from rustling when you are shooting turkeys.' ”

”How do you?”

”I tie them up about my waist. It's a scandal.”

”What else?”

” 'Prairie Mud: Would you be better off on stilts?' ”

He laughed.

I said, ”The ladies' boots have not been invented that can handle prairie mud, that is for sure.”

”You seem content enough. I've been watching you.”

”Have you? I've been watching you, too, and I hadn't noticed.”

”Do I seem content enough?”

”On balance, yes.” I felt myself flush.

”And you? Are you amazed and displeased to find yourself here?”

”Amazed, yes. Displeased, no.”

”You've been watching me?” he said, softly.

”Of course. Everyone does.”

”What do you see?”

”Oh, well. I suppose I see the promise of a prolonged investigation.”

”Lifelong?”

”Lifelong, indeed.”

”You are a mysterious woman, Lidie.”

I considered this high praise.

I was always astonished at the speed with which news traveled in K.T. The solitudes of the prairies came later than my time-while I was there, the place was alive with travelers, messengers, and plain old gossips, galloping here and there to keep us all abreast of the latest events. So it was that on the very day it happened-it being the murder of a Free State man by a Missourian-we knew about it in our little cabin: Thomas had been over building fence at the Jenkinses', and Mr. Bisket rode in from Lawrence and told them. Mr. Bisket being a single man, and not all that certain about his vocation, whether speculator, farmer, or merchant, he spent a lot of time riding from place to place and pursuing his avocation, which was talking politics. It didn't hurt that he was helpful; he had never built much on his own claim, only split a few logs, but his friends' places were full of his contrivances. While he worked, he talked. Over the subsequent days, he was like our own private newspaper.

The story was that a Free State man named Dow had been shot ”forty times” in the back by a Missourian, his neighbor, named Coleman. In the morning, Dow and a friend of his, named Branson, had driven Coleman off the land they were disputing about, and then in the afternoon, some friends of Dow's found his body by the side of a road down near Hickory Point, some ten or twelve miles south of Lawrence, and so about fifteen south of us. It looked as though Coleman had pursued Dow and shot him down. This murder provided the perfect occasion for the officials of the state government to demonstrate that holding office rendered them responsible to all the citizens of the territory. But of course, no one expected such an outcome.

Free Staters thought nothing of the so-called sheriff, just as they thought nothing of all the other ”state officials.” These ”duly const.i.tuted” authorities, from the governor on down, were creatures of the slave power that had stolen the original elections, inst.i.tuted the gag law, and rammed through a proslave const.i.tution modeled on Missouri's. There were no laws in Kansas that didn't contaminate the very word ”law,” and no officials that weren't partisans. The sheriff was a proslave partisan who used such authority as he had to hara.s.s and oppress Free Staters. As a southerner, his philosophy was that he wanted to do it, he ought to do it, and therefore he was going to do it-and what couldn't be done by persuasion could more easily and amusingly be done by force. Coleman was a rich man from Missouri, and Dow and Branson were typical Free Staters-men of moderate means and independent habits. The sheriff knew what side his bread was b.u.t.tered on without even thinking about it. No one knew Dow-he was new in the country-but he was a Free Stater, and his death quickly became an example of what they would do to all of us, under the guise of authority, if we didn't stop them.

The Bushes and the Jenkinses considered all the men of the southern party, top to bottom, to be liars and proud of it, either owing to the fact that their slave system was based on the lie that Negroes weren't human, meaning that southerners couldn't tell the difference between a truth and a lie, or owing to their determination to force the system upon others, which meant that they knew the difference and dissembled by design. Free Staters believed nothing that the other party said about Dow or his murder, a.s.sumed their every word and action was intentional deception. Was this true back in the States? I didn't know. I'd come to think that before I came to K.T. I'd known nothing at all and that everyone still back there continued in that same state of ignorance.

The night of Dow's murder, the sheriff, an infamous little tyrant named Jones, stayed up in Leavenworth and did nothing. Folks in Lawrence were appalled but not shocked. That the southerners who styled themselves ”state officials” would let one of their own go scot-free after killing one of ours was something all my friends declared they'd expected all along. Even so, it rankled. By Sat.u.r.day night, a lot of people in Lawrence had decided they weren't going to stand for it anymore. Some men went down to Hickory Point-Mr. Bisket and one of the Smithsons among them. Thomas, whose fund of pugnacity had been used up by the incident at the Jenkins claim, stayed home but prowled our cabin and yard the whole evening. Of course, we heard all about it the next day.

”Those boys said Coleman shot poor Dow in self-defense,” said Mr. Bisket. ”They just looked us in the eye and swore they would lie about it. Dow wasn't even armed, and Coleman shot him forty times in the back! Yes, that's self-defense in K.T.! Well, they're gone back to Missouri now.”

”How's that?” said Thomas.

”All of 'em up and left. We got our Sharps rifles, you know. Every time they turn tail and run, they say, 'Them d- abolitionists got their d- Sharps rifles, so we better get outta here!' ” We laughed, but then, of course, it turned out that three of the Missourians' cabins were burned down. This, the Bushes and the Jenkinses felt, they had done themselves, to cast blame on the Free Staters, who would never have done such a thing. The Holmeses felt the burning was so appropriately Satanic that forces not of our world could well be at work. The story was that some men, two Free Staters, had wanted to set the cabins afire, but the others had stopped them. Maybe they'd gone back later, but if they had, they were keeping mum.

The tyrant Jones didn't want his people threatened, so after the murderer Coleman took refuge with the governor, Shannon, he took Coleman and went to arrest Dow's friend, Branson, because Coleman said Branson had threatened him-the sheriff went with the murderer to arrest a friend of the victim! As Mrs. Bush would say, and did say, that was K.T. for you all over-everything was turned upside down. I said, ”Well, you know, to a southern man, his honor is always worth another man's death.”