Part 10 (2/2)

I was surprised. ”I thought you hated General Lane!”

”He is a dissipated man, and every month there's talk about him and some new woman. Mrs. Quinn has three small children, one of them a babe in arms, and she went to his house in front of his very family and wept and cried for him until her own husband had to take pity on her and drag her away!”

”Thomas thinks it would be better to have General Lane as an enemy than a friend-”

”I've known your husband for a long time, my dear, and he is a very particular man, which I admire, but sometimes a man can be too particular.” She shook her head. ”And you know, Mrs. Quinn hasn't been entirely right in her head since.”

”Well,” put in Mrs. Lacey, ”doesn't that make you wonder exactly where the fault between them lies? General Lane is a compelling figure of a man, mo-o-ost a.s.suredly.” She spoke brightly, and Mrs. Bush gave her quite a look, as if she had appropriated all K.T. privileges first thing, without even earning them.

Frank, who had been eyeing the other boys and, as it were, circling them, a.s.serted that he slept with a rifle on his pillow and had every night of his life. I laughed, thinking of my sister, but the Other boys looked at him with visible amazement. All of them were bigger, but not even the eldest carried himself with quite the same self-reliant demeanor. Frank turned to me. ”I'm going out,” he said. ”I got some things in the wagon to sell, and everybody's up, it looks like. I heard that when there's a war, you can get pretty good prices.” He disappeared through the door of the hay house (no longer cloth, but now real wood) faster than I could remonstrate with him.

Mrs. Lacey and her boys all looked after him, startled. She said, ”How old is that boy?”

”Twelve, almost thirteen.”

Her elder two boys' faces took on expressions of wondrous antic.i.p.ation-the K.T effect on boys.

Thomas came in sometime after midnight. The Bushes now had bedsteads, but the rest of us arranged ourselves in the usual fas.h.i.+on, dividing the room with a cloth between the men and the women. I'd stationed myself nearest the door and was wrapped in my dressing gown and a shawl. I was wide awake, and I'd intended to jump up and greet him with all sorts of effusions, but in the event, I lay there as if asleep, covertly watching him. Mr. Bush had left a candle burning, and there was also light from the fires outside in the street. First he pushed the door open slowly and peeped in, then he took off his hat and set his carbine down just inside the door. Then there was a pause, as he must have been engaged in removing his boots, because he entered carrying them, in stockinged feet.

These little movements, bespeaking both exhaustion and thoughtfulness of others, struck me with a pointed tenderness. He yawned two or three times and rotated his shoulders, first the left and then the right, then he put down his boots and reached around to the back of his neck with his right hand, and rubbed and pressed there. I sat up and said, ”Would you like me to do that?”

At the sound of my voice and the sight of me sitting up in my quilts, Thomas smiled with ready and evident warmth. I didn't know that I had been watching for his smile, but I had been, for the remarks of the Border Ruffians that cast aspersions on my person had not gone as unnoticed as I'd let on. All he said was, ”You're safe, then, my dear wife. I'm very glad. I was torn about your coming, and worried, too.” He sat down on the quilts, and we clung to each other. I said, ”Frank preserved us.”

”What happened to Bisket?”

”He melted away in the darkness, and we haven't seen him since. Mrs. Bush said that we wouldn't worry about him until the morning.”

”Did you meet up with any of the Ruffians, then?”

”They did us no harm. Frank talked us through.” But I didn't want him to know the degree of danger, so I forbore to tell him the story, even though I suspected it would amuse him. He pulled the end of a quilt up over his stockinged feet. The hay house was cold, though the night was more moderate than recent ones out on our claim. I put my arm through his and smelled the nose-tingling mix of cold air, wood fire, earth, sweat, and wool in his clothes. I commenced rubbing his shoulders with my fingers, rotating them and pressing them into the flesh of his neck. We sat like that for a few minutes, listening to the snores and rustlings of the sleepers around us. He said quietly, ”There are two hundred down by Franklin.”

”How many do we have?”

”That many or more. Some men came in from Ottoman Creek and from Palmyra, too. Remember that fellow Paschal Fish, that Mr. Graves talked about? He's come in, and offered to bring in some Wyandots. The Indians prefer us, at least.”

”Mr. Bisket said the attack would come tomorrow.”

”Some say that. I don't think they'll attack, myself. Our fault is that we like to underestimate the intelligence of their leaders. They have everything to lose by attacking, if you ask me. Every day we're more strongly fortified, we have more men. They waited and lost the momentum. Of course, they declare themselves eager to attack, burn, kill, hang, and all.”

I relinquished my grasp of his neck, and he lay down beside me, breathing out a sigh of relieved fatigue. ”Still,” I said, ”the citizens of Quincy would be mighty surprised if the citizens of Alton attacked them, or even the citizens of Hannibal, on the Missouri side. The citizens of Hart-ford, in the state of Connecticut, would hardly attack those of Spring-field, Ma.s.sachusetts. And yet here we are, building fortifications against Franklin!”

But he was half asleep and hadn't the energy for astonishment.

There was no attack on Sunday. We were up before dawn, eating our griddle cakes, and then the men went out to drill and work on the fortifications. The plan was that we would gather in the four forts when the attack began, but until then we were free to go about as we chose. As the sun was coming up, Mrs. Bush hurried myself and Mrs. Lacey along toward the Free State Hotel.

”This is what we do all day,” she said, ”make cartridges. And talk, of course. Before this, they were piecing a quilt. Lidie, my dear, I don't think you know Mrs. Wood.” I did not, but soon she would be quite famous.

The cartridge-making factory was the roomy Wood cabin, right beside the Free State Hotel, and three or four women were already at it, two of them still in their dressing gowns, with their hair hanging down their backs. As we came in, one of the women was saying, ”... finished counting. There are but thirteen cartridges apiece for two hundred twenty men.”

”Most will have their own, surely,” said another woman.

Another-Mrs. Wood herself-looked doubtful. ”We mustn't depend on that. Folks have enough shot and powder for a day or two of hunting game. War isn't the same thing.”

”How long do you think thirteen b.a.l.l.s would last?”

”Not a day. They might sustain their attack for three days, my husband says. They've intercepted all the goods that are coming to Lawrence and stolen all the guns and ammunition. They'll use what our merchants have coming against us.”

You could load and fire a Sharps carbine in ten or fifteen seconds- that's why the southerners thought they were repeaters. Thirteen cartridges was two or three minutes. The point of the Sharps was to be careless of ammunition, not careful of it. I said, ”What about firing caps?”

”There seem to be plenty of those,” said Mrs. Wood.

”You're certain all the b.a.l.l.s and all the powder in town are here?” said Mrs. Brown, whom I had met in the summer but who, I thought, probably didn't recognize me. She was a slender and sharp-featured older lady, whose manner made you eager to please her.

Mrs. Wood sniffed. ”That fellow Eaton gave up his powder yesterday morning when we three ladies impressed upon him the possible consequences of civic irresponsibility. I haven't heard any tales of another h.o.a.rd.”

”I've been wondering about General Lane,” said one of the younger women.

The others laughed.

”General Lane,” said Mrs. Brown, ”talks like he has twenty kegs of powder in his cellar, but he's the same in everything. When the time comes, he'll borrow freely of the men closest at hand.”

”And abuse them into the bargain,” said one of the women who hadn't yet dressed. We all laughed, but our laugh reminded us of the fix we were in.

”Someone must tell Governor Robinson how low supplies are,” said Mrs. Wood. So now he had become Governor Robinson.

”Tell Mrs. Robinson. She can tell him.”

We all agreed that this was a good plan, but it didn't solve the problem.

”You know,” said Mrs. Bush, ”there's powder and lead, both, out on the Santa Fe Trail, if someone could go get it. Does anyone know Mr. Graves?”

”I do.” I spoke up, not having said anything before.

”He's settled now, in a cabin out by that little crick out there-Patter- son Crick they call it.”

”And there's two other caches,” said Mrs. Brown. ”My cousin's brother has at least a twenty-five-pound keg. He had two in the summer.”

”But who'll go get them!” exclaimed the woman who'd been counting the cartridges, despair in her voice.

”I will,” said Mrs. Brown and I in unison.

I said, ”My nephew Frank and I got through just last night. But we need more than money to trade with Mr. Graves. He knows we aren't sound on the goose.” We talked for a moment about this. Of course, there were doubters-Mrs.Bush felt responsible for me and said to me in a low voice, ”What will I tell Thomas when he comes in for his supper?”

”We'll be back by then.”

”Who is 'we'?”

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