The All-True Travels And Adventures Of Lidie Newton Part 10

"I thought there were thousands of them."

Mr. Bisket shrugged.

A bit later, he handed me the reins and slipped down off the wagon seat. He motioned to Frank to join me in the front and then whispered, "I'm gonna look around. You an't carrying anything suspect, so just ride on into town and go to the hay house." Then he walked away.

Darkness was coming on; I hustled the two horses up to a trot and shortly came to some Border Ruffians huddled around a fire. I kept on without speeding up, or looking toward them when they shouted. They let me by, but another set stopped the wagon, held Jeremiah by the bridle, and peered at us.

"What's your name?" There were three of them, wearing soft hats, their faces lost in their whiskers. They had on layers and layers of humble clothing against the cold and carried long Kentucky rifles that looked awkward and outmoded by the standards of the Sharps carbine but were nevertheless deadly. I opened my mouth to speak but hesitated just a moment, unsure of what to say. In that moment, Frank said, "She can't talk. She can't hear nor talk. I go along with her everywhere."

"Where are you going, then?"

"We're going into town."

"There's a war in town."

"Nah!" said Frank, dumbfounded. "Who's fighting?"

"We're gonna clear out them d- black abolitionist traitors!"

"Well, good," said Frank.

"What's yer name, boy?"

I shook the reins, and the horses tried to step out, but the Ruffian tightened his grip on the horse's bridle. He said, "Tell her she can't go nowhere till we get to the bottom of a couple of things." Frank tapped me on the shoulder, and I looked at him alertly. He made some enthusiastic motions with his hands and face, at which I nodded. Then Frank said, "I'm Frank Brereton. Who are you?"

One of the others spoke up. "He's an abolitionist's worst nightmare! Haw!" He spit on the wheel of the wagon.

"We're gonna burn them out down in that hole of abolitionists. We're just waitin' for some stuff! What's her name?"

"She's my cousin Lydia Brereton. We're visiting from-"

"Illinois!" exclaimed one of the men. "Haw!"

Frank didn't even look nonplussed. He said, "That's about right."

"You know Burton Brereton, then?" said the man.

"He was my paw's uncle. He was a killer," said Frank. I sat stock-still, a blank look on my face, as I struggled to pretend that I couldn't hear this very interesting exchange. "I never met him," said Frank, conversationally. "He died before I was born. But we had them dogs."

"What dogs?"

"Them dogs that were descended from the b.i.t.c.h that warned Uncle Burton about the killers."

"I never heard about no dog."

"Well," said Frank with some animation, "that's what happened. The dog snuck away and went to get Uncle Burton, and the killers didn't realize it, and then Uncle Burton, who was raised among the Indians, snuck up and killed those men. He slit their throats."

This was not the story I'd heard, but I remained impa.s.sive.

"Hunh," said our interlocutor. "Well, my paw lived in Edwards County for five year before he come to Missouri, and he always said that a man named Burton Brereton was the death of the meanest and worst criminal who ever lived. So here you are."

"Here I am," said Frank, taking credit for the whole thing.

"And she's your cousin." He pointed to me.

"Yes, she is, but she don't know the story," said Frank.

"She's a big one," said one of the men, in an unkind tone of voice. One of the others laughed.

Frank said, "You don't have to insult her."

"I thought you said she can't hear nothing."

Frank didn't quite know how to answer this and fell silent. "And ugly," said one of the other men, speculatively, smiling at me. I smiled back at him. "Ma'am," he said, still smiling, "you are about as plain as an old sow."

I nodded and grinned.

He grinned back at me. "I bet you are an old maid!" I laughed and tossed my head flirtatiously. All the men guffawed.

"Deaf as dirt from the day she was born," said Frank.

"I'm cold," said the man who was holding Jeremiah. "What are we doing here?"

The man who had known about Burton Brereton said, "If they want to go to Lawrence, I say let 'em."

"We gonna check the wagon?"

"Nah. Nah. It's too cold for that." The men stepped back, I waited, and then Frank nudged me. I shook the reins until the horses were trotting briskly through the dark. In a moment, my teeth were chattering, and there were a hundred things I wanted to say to Frank, but I kept as silent as I would have if those men were perched on the back of our wagon, waiting to hear me speak.

Lawrence was busy with warlike preparations. When we came along Ma.s.sachusetts Street, we could see groups of men lit by long wood fires. Some had shovels and were digging and mounding up fortifications, while others had guns and were watching over the guns of those who were digging. As I noticed this, Frank crawled into the back of the wagon and brought out our guns, my Sharps rifle and the rifle his father had given him. I tried to discern the figure of Thomas, but there were so many men and they were so busy and ill lit that I couldn't make him out. I wondered, with a pang, when I might see him. When we were driving along with Mr. Bisket, it seemed a matter of course that I would see my husband practically as soon as I arrived in Lawrence, but now I saw the real state of things, and I had misgivings about leaving our claim-at least if I were there he would know where to find me. The horses were tired, but I urged them more quickly to the hay house, eager though I was to see my husband. This was the first thing I learned about war-that it makes the briefest parting almost too painful to bear.

The hay house was considerably deteriorated. The thatching that had looked so neat in the summer was now partially fallen out and patchily replaced with hay, sticks, cloths. One end of the house had slumped. My misgivings about leaving our claim swelled, and then swelled again with the revelation that in fact, in K.T., there was no place of refuge now. And then I called out, and Mrs. Bush came bustling out of the house with a light, and she looked excited and happy!

"My dear!" she said. "I've been looking for you all evening! Thomas was here for his supper, and he was most anxious for your arrival-we hear Ruffians from Lecompton were all along the road to the north, and I so feared you'd be turned back, or worse! And Frank-"

Frank jumped down. "I told them she was deaf and dumb, and then I lied about everything else, too. Is supper over?"

I said, "He talked their ears off, till they were too cold to listen and let us go on. But we lost Mr. Bisket...."

Frank took the horses and wagon down the street, where Mrs. Bush said Thomas had found a place for the horses to be fed and the wagon goods to be stowed for the time being.

Inside, sitting around the stove with Mrs. Bush, were some new people-the hay house was never too ramshackle to hold a good set of visitors, and these were the famous Laceys from Ma.s.sachusetts. Mrs. Lacey was a round, fresh-faced woman of maybe thirty-five, I guessed, from the size of her sons, who were fourteen, twelve, and eleven, and all big, stocky boys, still dressed in their New England clothes. Consciousness of our women's gossip about the Laceys had rendered me both disapproving of Mr. Lacey and a little ashamed of how we discussed him. I said, "You've waited so long to come, and now there's a war-"

"But I wouldn't have missed it!" "Oh, my land of mercy," said Mrs. Bush. "I am happy to miss any war going, but now that they've carried it to us, well, then, we must see it through! But I am all for Dr. Robinson. Tonight, at the Free State Hotel, he said to the men that if the Ruffians attack us, then all of the north will rise up in a rage; and if they go off without attacking, then they'll be simply a laughingstock; and so we can't lose, if you ask me, but of course the poor men are out there in the cold, drilling and digging-"

"And we have to sleep with our rifles on our pillows!" said Mrs. Lacey, apparently invigorated by it all.

I said, "Do you really think all of the north would rise up in a rage? They seem so far away and intent on their own business."

"You may mark my words, my dear," said Mrs. Bush happily, "the slave power is driving them into our arms one by one, every day. If you lived in Lawrence, you would see it. People come here from those soft, careless places like Indiana or Ohio, and they don't care one way or the other about slavery or about the Negro, and then they feel the resolve of the slave power, and they can't help but resist. Mr. Bush and I are far more sanguine than we were even a few months ago. Look at General Lane. He didn't care one way or the other about slavery till he came here, and now he is with us all the way."

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 fashion, 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'?"