The All-True Travels And Adventures Of Lidie Newton Part 19

This acquisition whetted my appet.i.te for more, especially for a hat or a cap, and I grew bolder. I began to peek behind curtains, but only if I heard evidence of sleep, such as groans or snores. Behind the third curtain, hung on a nail, was the perfect hat-soft-brimmed and slouchy, good for hiding within. I took it. It was a good hat, of a southern style rather than a northern-no doubt made in Kentucky or somewhere like that. It fit, too. I walked my bag down the length of the saloon and found a window, which I opened and climbed out of, onto the deck. I didn't see anyone around. I closed the window behind me and adopted a nonchalant demeanor, leaning my elbows on the rail, c.o.c.king one foot across the other, and pulling down my hat, as I had seen so many men do in my twenty-one years. And it was well that I did, because just then someone rounded the end of the deck and touched the brim of his own hat politely in my direction. I cleared my throat and nodded, but didn't alter my position. He said, "Pleasant evening," and walked on.

I stood still as he pa.s.sed.

I saw at once that as long as I was a man, I would be able to do whatever I wanted, and that I would have a taste of freedom such as no woman I had known, even Louisa, had ever had. I stood up and strolled-ambled, really-down the length of the deck, looking for the gangplank, not quite sure where I was on the boat but thrusting one hand in my pocket and carrying my bag with the other, kicking out my feet as I walked, and altogether impersonating, I realized, my nephew Frank. The trousers hung around me, and their inseams rubbed together as I walked. But there was a lovely feeling to it of big strides and nothing in your way, that I remembered from the last time I'd worn trousers, the day our party had tried to parley with the Missourians at the Jenkins claim.

Some Negroes were pulling up the gangplank as I got to it.

"Hey, boys, wait for me," I said, as if I'd been saying such things all my life, and the two men looked at each other, then tipped their caps, and one of them said, "All right, boss," and down it went. I strolled off the boat, idling, to all appearances (I knew I would have to get a seegar somewhere very soon). Down on the dock, I turned, watched them pull up the gangplank as if I didn't have anything better to do, then waved. One of them waved back.

Of course, I had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do for the rest of the night, but it seemed as though all I had to do was remain in character as a man, or rather as a boy of, say, sixteen, old enough but still plausibly beardless, and every opportunity would present itself to me. My name would be Lyman. Mr. Lyman Arquette, close enough to my maiden name, Harkness, so that when men-other men, that is-addressed me by my last name, which was the custom in the west, the name would ring a bell. I would at least look up, giving myself a single precious moment to remember who I was.

My state of mind, which was both exhilarated and fearful of discovery, belied my real condition, which was more in danger of eventual starvation than of anything else. Even though, having eaten well during the day, I reckoned I wouldn't have to eat again until suppertime the next evening (eighteen hours thence, but I didn't let myself think of that), what then? I had but forty dollars, and everything in Kansas City was dear. Signs outside of hotels I had seen as we were riding through town read "Rooms, three dollars," or even "five dollars," and that was only for one night! My limited funds put a time limit on my vengeance; my masquerade, as good as I could make it by aping the ways of men I knew, would stand up to neither doing manual work nor engaging in another common western practice-sleeping two or three to a bed to save on lodging costs. Lyman Arquette would have to be a rather solitary, self-effacing fellow, always ready with a laugh, and ready to take a drink, too-Missourians required both-but keeping himself as much in the background as possible. I strolled away from the riverside and into manhood, trying to look alert and be alert. Every woman knew that men were rough and violent among themselves, and that anything could happen.

CHAPTER 20.

Lyman Arquette Investigates [image]It may be set down as the unchangeable rule of physiology, that stimulating drinks (except in cases of disease) deduct from the powers of the const.i.tution, in exactly the proportion in which they operate to produce temporary invigoration. -p. 107 AS SOON AS the sun was up, I roused myself from behind the wagon where I had taken refuge and began looking for a newspaper office. It had come to me in the night, as I was almost drowsing, that that was where gossip on every subject was to be discovered. As I walked about, I made up my own story-a boy from Palmyra, Missouri, a town across the river from Quincy that I had visited several times, my father a man like Horace Silk, but as for myself, no taste for retailing, Mother dead. My ambition was to learn print setting and newspaper writing, so that I could go west, out to California, say, and start up my own newspaper. I was a good Democrat, a follower of Senator Douglas and Senator Atchison, though of course too young to vote, and a believer in popular sovereignty. I practiced saying "them G- d- black abolitionists" to myself. But I planned on taking a great deal of refuge in silence and shyness.

Kansas City was both more and less than Lawrence-more in the sense that there were more people, animals, vehicles, buildings a-building, activity, and business; less in the sense that as quick as everything went in Lawrence, it had gone all the quicker in Kansas City and was therefore all the more ramshackle and make-do. In Lawrence there were women, which meant families, homes, farms, gardens, teacups, and a lending library (or plans for one). In Kansas City it didn't look like there were women, which meant a lack of all these same things. Kansas City was half business, half politics, all money. Kansas City was in Missouri, and so there were slaves, too, doing a considerable amount of the work and none of the idling. As an idler interested in politics, I was unremarkable among the other citizens.

I found a newspaper, the Missouri Freeman, shortly after seven-I know the time because I made a practice of ostentatiously pulling "my" watch from my pocket and looking at it, so as to get in the habit-and men were already going up and down the stairs of that office as if great things were stirring. One group of three men ran up the stairs, and I joined them. The door to the pressroom (the only room) was wide open. As we burst in, one of our number exclaimed, 'Jack Morton! Wake up!" A man stooping over a table at the other end of the room turned around, as did all the other men in the room, who numbered six or eight. "Shannon's called in General Smith and ordered him to go and attack Lane's army before they get out of Nebraska, and Smith's refused to do it!" Now there were cries of "Traitor!" "Treachery!" and "Where's Sumner?" from all about the room, and the man Morton, who must have been the editor of the paper, stepped forward and said, "Now, Joe, where'd you get this story?"

"These boys," he said. "They're just in from Lecompton, and they had it from one of Shannon's own men!"

"They're going over! The soldiers are going over to the northern side, d- 'em! I could of told you they would," exclaimed one man as he pushed his way to the front of the group.

"We got to do everything ourselves," said another.

"That's right!" exclaimed a third. "It's all very well what they say about keeping order and makin' them G- d- abolitionists obey the laws of the territory, but when it comes right down to it, them black abolitionists do what they want without so much as a by-your-leave, and the army jest sets there!"

"Okay, boys," said Morton. "Let's write this up. You come over here and sit down, and you talk and I'll write."

I was tempted to ooze along with them. No one had yet looked at me with much scrutiny, so excited were they by this news, but the editor's desk was far back in the room, and I decided it would be more prudent to stay by the door. I set my bag down next to the wall and stood looking at some papers from the previous week ("Paupers and Thieves Pouring into Lawrence; Backers in Ma.s.s. Say Prisons Will Be Emptied! Investigations by our correspondents have turned up a plot on the part of Amos Lawrence and his cronies to transport the thieves and criminals of the northeast wholesale to Kansas Territory. Prison officials are overjoyed at the prospect; most of the money for the transportation has already been raised from the usual backers. One man, who refused to be identified for our readers, declared, 'Everyone knows this will solve two problems at one time. Kansas will be populated by men who owe us something, at least a vote, and we will be freed of these misfits and foreigners. The backers have agreed to buy every man a claim, free and clear. I hope the claims run all the way to the western mountains!' ") or out the window at the wagons, horses, oxen, and men rushing up and down the street below.

I rehea.r.s.ed my name, Lyman Arquette, and my story. By the light of day, I wasn't quite sure what sort of figure I cut. Thomas's jacket flapped around me, and of course my dress bodice had to be hidden, so I was b.u.t.toned up to the collar, with my hat pulled far down on my head. I seemed to have put on the braces holding up my trousers improperly, as they kept slipping uncomfortably off my shoulders, and I had to surrept.i.tiously adjust them every few minutes. The trousers themselves and the shoes worked well enough, though, as my stockings were quite thin, I couldn't help wondering about the grooming habits of the man whose boots I'd stolen. All in all, I was both comfortable and uncomfortable in my new clothes, which made it rather difficult to attain the sort of slouching nonchalance that I hoped would keep me unnoticed and unremarked upon. I definitely needed a shirt. How much would that cost ? The men I knew, including Thomas, had had their shirts made by their wives or daughters. In fact, I had made Thomas two shirts over the winter, but dissatisfied with my own workmanship, I had given them away with the other things. I glanced down again at the article I'd been reading ("Of course, the Free Staters, as they call themselves, will present their new citizens as bona fide homesteaders and family men, which makes us ask ourselves, 'Why is it they don't know the difference between criminals and homesteaders?' Our readers may hazard a guess. But the real outcome of these transportations may redound to our side in the end-law-abiding Missouri citizens and their sympathizers in Kansas Territory will be all the more justified in acting on our own behalf in clearing out the nests of malefactors"). The article, which would have had me and all my friends in K.T spitting with rage, left me strangely unaffected, no doubt because I could hardly risk being or acting affected, but also because I couldn't quite take in such a ridiculous set of ideas. Best, however, not to read any further.

Morton now appeared beside me, startling me. He wore a friendly smile; his face was smudged with black, as were his fingers, and he had a pencil over his ear. He said, "Well, now, son, you're a stranger here. Are you lookin' for something?"

Without my even planning it, a low, breaking, breathy voice came out of me, almost a whisper. I said, "I'm looking for a job."

"Speak up, son."

"Well, sir, I can't, sir. As a child, I was the victim of an accident. This is the best I can do." Morton looked instantly sympathetic, so I embroidered a bit by putting my hand on my throat. "Drank something caustic, sir. I was two. Back in Palmyra."

"What are you doing in Kansas City, son?"

"Making my way, sir," I whispered. "Got to do the best I can, you know."

"What's your name, son?"

"Lyman Arquette, sir."

"Well, why don't you sit yourself down over there, out of the way, and I'll talk to you later, after the place clears out a bit."

I picked up my bag and strolled over to the designated chair, which was next to a cold stove. There I sat down, leaned back, and put my feet up on the stove, as I'd seen western men do all my life. It was a remarkably comfortable posture.

It was also a good spot for eavesdropping, and my hearing was all the keener for the danger I felt myself to be in. It was more exciting than anything else, and one thing I discovered about myself was that as a man, or boy, I was bolder and more reckless than I'd been as a woman. What might have paralyzed me in the past now stimulated me. Not three feet away, one armed man (rifle, two pistols, two long knives) was saying to another armed man (two rifles, no pistols, one knife), "An't begun to do this right, and that's a fact. You got to treat these G- d- abolitionists the way they done them Cherokee Indians down where I come from. One day, you just go in and rout 'em out of there, and you make 'em move on, and you kill the ones that lag behind. It an't purty, but lots o' necessary doin's an't purty at all. What truly an't purty is the way all this stuff lingers until you lose in the end."

"Shoulda struck when the strikin' was good, you ask me. We had 'em out here, far from everywhere, before all them scribblers got out here, and we coulda done what we wanted to 'em, but of course them cooler heads prevailed. Now lookit us!"

"You never spoke a truer word, Loomis."

They shook their heads in anguish.

Some of the talk was of making money. One man (two pistols, no knives) declared, "It may not look like it to you, Jacks, but this area is finished. California is finished. Texas is finished. Mark me, 'cause I'm telling you something you need to know. If you see wagons, then that area is just finished. It just is. If there are wagons, then you're too late."

Jacks (one pistol, one rifle, one knife) shook his head. "You an't payin' attention to the two stages, Dixon. I told you before, there's two separate stages, and you can make a bundle in each. Just because the first stage, what I call the speculatin' stage, is over don't mean you can't make a pile. During the growth stage, as I call it, you got to have the imagination to refine your appeal. You got to be sellin' somethin' someone wants. It an't like durin' the speculatin' stage when everybody wants the same thing, which is land. Durin' the growth stage, folks all want different things. It's a better man who makes his money then, and to my mind, he makes better money, both more of it and more righteous money, I think. But an't too many share my opinion on that."

"Kansas is done, Nebraska is done."

"Well, where an't done, then, d- it?" exclaimed Jacks.

"When I know that, you won't see me round here no more. You ask where I've gone, and then you come on behind me with your growth stage, haw haw!"

Neither man looked as though he had made any money in either stage.

Not every conversation was philosophical, like these. I heard that a Mrs. Cook had borne twins, that a Bill had fallen into the river overnight and drowned not ten feet from sh.o.r.e (drunk), that the price of hemp was falling, that I could get a pair of Arkansas mules for sixty dollars and a pair of Missouri mules for eighty, that the steamboat Harvey Mack had blown up downriver, near Hermann, and ten lives had been lost, that according to the Indians, every day in August was going to be a hundred degrees or over, and that a two-headed lamb had been born near Blue Springs and had lived a week, long enough for the farmer in question to find an artist, who had done an engraving of the animal and the farmer, and the farmer now wanted five dollars from Mr. Morton to run the picture in the paper.

I heard Mr. Morton say, 'Just did a two-headed lamb in November. Can't do one of them more than once a year, that's my editorial policy."

"But this lamb lived four days longer than that one!" exclaimed the farmer.

"And my sister got married to a man who had a wagon and a pair of mules, and then another man came along who had two wagons and two pairs of mules, but she didn't get to change her mind, did she?"

The farmer went away disappointed.

I thought if I sat there long enough, I would hear mention of those who had killed Thomas.

Of course, the office wasn't only a place of gossip; it was also a place of work-Mr. Morton and his a.s.sistants setting type, doing things with the presses, bringing in paper and doing something with that; but they were more or less hidden from me by my hat and a corner in the wall. Almost no one spoke to me. When someone did greet me, I nodded and whispered, "Good day," in return. In the early afternoon, I slipped away for a bit. I saw that maintaining my masquerade put me on the stretch in more ways than one, and I needed to find a quiet spot and take a break. I came back in the late afternoon. It was almost suppertime, and I was trying not to pay any attention to the fact that I was intensely hungry. In my wanderings and explorations, I'd ascertained that breakfast was, in general, cheaper than dinner or supper, and I thought that if I got myself on a breakfast regimen, my money would go farther.

When I came back, the office had pretty much cleared out. Only Mr. Morton and two of his employees were present, and Mr. Morton saw me before I could back out the door and get down the stairs. "Arquette!" he called.

I stopped dead.

"Now, son." He looked at me quizzically.

I whispered, "Yes?"

"You say you're an educated boy, you can read and write and all that?"

"Yessir."

"Write me something."

He drew me into the office and brought me over to a desk, where he handed me a chair, a piece of paper, and a pen. I thought for a moment, then wrote a page about my long-ago swim of the Mississippi River, only changing my direction. "The grand and heavy weight of the continental waters pressed against me, almost bearing me under. But I did not pause to think of my death, knowing that such thoughts could only bring on such an undesirable result. I fought the brown force with all the strength of my limbs and sinews...."

"A mite flowery," declared Mr. Morton, "but all the words are spelled right." He pushed his spectacles up on his head and scrutinized me so long that I thought the game was up, but then he just said, "Can you ride a horse, son?"

I nodded.

He leaned forward. "How long you been in these parts? Not long? Good. Here's what I'm interested in, Lyman. I want to know what it's like to be one of them boys out there in them bands that are marauding here and there. Are these just gangs of boys up to mischief, or are these soldiers for the southern cause in the making? You look to be about sixteen."

I nodded.

"That's the age of some of these boys. Now." He sat back and glared at me. "Are you one hundred percent sound on the goose question? Because you an't goin' nowhere in these parts if you an't."

I had stolen boots and a hat; I had stolen, in a sense, Mr. Graves's money that he'd paid for my pa.s.sage; I had deceived Miss Carter; I had deceived all my friends; I had become a man-a boy, rather-and so it was no effort to me to nod. One hundred percent sound on the goose question. I did wonder, though, what Thomas would think about that.

"Good," said Mr. Morton. "There's a horse in the livery stable over a block, Colman's Livery. Brown horse named Athens. You get on him, and you find one of them bands, and you write about that, and if you do a good job, I'll give you regular employment. I'll tell you something: I don't know a thing about you, Lyman Arquette, but you strike me, somehow. Maybe it's your affliction, but I am moved to give you a chance, son."

I whispered, "Thank you, sir."

"Now," he said, "here's an advance on your pay." He put a dollar in my hand. "Go get yourself some supper at the hotel across the street, and I'll see you bright and early in the morning. You got a place to stay?"

"Yessir," I whispered.

Five minutes later, I was strolling away, as astonished as I had ever been in my life.

My supper, which I took in a nearby hotel, made what you might call an avalanche of sleepiness cascade over me, but I wanted to see the horse, so I walked around to the "livery stable," not an establishment the kind reader should confuse with a large building containing stalls and horses and equipment, but rather something quite similar to what I was used to in Lawrence-a large corral and a smaller building beside it, almost a shed, really, though this one was fairly large and contained prairie hay piled up in reserve for the horses, as well as tack and equipment hanging from the walls. There were eight horses and four mules in the corral; of the eight horses, two were chestnut, one was a dun, two were bays, and three were brown. Of these, two were mares, and so I figured Athens to be the round and somewhat swaybacked fellow scouting for wisps of hay in the dirt. He had a wide blaze from his foretop to his nose and looked well on in years. The contrast between him and Jeremiah made my throat tickle. On the other hand, the hay in the shed looked tremendously inviting, and I made straight for it and lay down upon it and nestled into it with a boldness born of irresistible desire. Not long after, an elderly Negro man was looking down on me. I could barely keep my eyes open, even in the midst of this confrontation, but I managed to say in my harsh whisper, "Please may I sleep here? I an't got money for a room."

"Cain't sleep here," said the man, in an accent that I found hard to understand. "This here's Ma.s.sa Harry's place. Ain' no hotel."

"I work for the newspaper." I gestured toward Athens. And then I simply fell asleep, as if dropping over the side of a cliff. There was nothing he could do about it, or I could do about it, though I think that he jostled me. It was no use. I was without will, and no doubt immovable. I remained unmoved, and woke, right there, just about at sunup. I remembered the elderly man instantly and scrambled to my feet, but he wasn't around. No one was around except the horses and mules, who must have been hungry, as they were looking at me with interest. I picked the bits of hay off my jacket, reminded myself that I was a man named Lyman Arquette, that I had been hired at the newspaper and already owed my employer a dollar.

In the bright light of a good night's sleep, my new situation seemed impossible, and I saw that my successes the day before were surely attributable to good luck more than anything else. If my masquerade had the day before been something like sliding down a snowy hill on a child's sled, it seemed that today it would be like scrabbling back up that slippery hill. Such are the effects of mood, and my mood today, clearheaded and fully aware, was far more daunted by my project than it had been in weeks. But I had to go on with it, if only to gain access to the seething gossip of the newspaper office and the benefits of a horse to ride. I also knew, with utter conviction, that I was doing just the sort of thing now that Thomas would disapprove of. Thomas was a conservative man, thoughtful about the proprieties, loath to offend, eager, even in his abolitionist convictions, that righteousness and justice be made palatable to all, including those who were to be force-fed. Square and aboveboard was his habit and his ideal. And inside his clothes I was planning a tangle of deceptions that, I fervently hoped, would end in a killing or two.

But it was painful to think of Thomas and best not to be daunted by paradoxes, and so I made my way back to the newspaper office and managed fairly quickly to get an audience with Mr. Morton, who looked as if he'd been up for hours. He was brisk. Had I seen the horse? Was I ready to take on this a.s.signment? Was I armed? I needed to be if I was going out into the countryside. (To this I nodded, telling the truth with the sense of telling a lie.) Well, then...

I whispered, "How do I find one of these bands?"

"Well, let me see, now. Two days ago, some boys rode up to the Welch place, three or so miles out on the Westport road, and asked for something to eat. You could start there. That's what got me thinking about this."

I nodded.

"Now, here's five dollars. You don't have to be livin' off the country the way these boys are. You identify yourself as one of my reporters, and you pay for what you get." I nodded, taking the money. "But," he said with a laugh, "that don't mean you shouldn't drive a hard bargain!"

I nodded, and Mr. Morton turned away. There was nothing else for me to do but return to the stable and get on my way. An hour later, I was astride old Athens, clopping through the bustle of Kansas City, looking for the Westport road. The southerners had stolen so many New England weapons from waylaid shipments that about one in five of the rifles I saw on the streets around me was similar to my old carbine. I was able to reflect on this with a surprising want of rage. I had envisioned my pa.s.sage through the world of my enemies to be a wrathful one, with every evidence of the southerners' stupidity and evil driving me to an even sharper pitch of fury, but things weren't turning out that way. What seemed to be happening was that Lawrence and everything Lawrence meant was turning into a dream of a sort compared to the pressing reality of my new life as a man. Or perhaps it was that now that I was wearing Thomas's clothing, I was becoming more judicious, like him.

After a bit, I left the town behind, though the road was busy enough, and it was nearly a full-time job to touch the brim of my slouchy hat to every pa.s.serby, especially, I tried to remember, to the few ladies in wagons and buggies. All the same, it was pleasurable to be riding Athens. He hadn't much go, but his ears were forward, and he seemed content to amble along, taking in the pa.s.sing scene. I saw a farmer fixing his fence, and I said, in a croaky voice, "This the Welch farm?"

"Nah. A half mile up that way." He shaded his eyes against the sun to look at me, then went right back to his work. It was eternally surprising to me the way no one questioned my masculinity.

There were two farms a half mile up, a prosperous one on the right, with a two-story house, one of those funny western houses you used to see, with a pa.s.sage right through the bottom that was enclosed across the top, called a "trotway." This farm had plenty of outbuildings, was well fenced, and I could see the wife feeding chickens, the husband going into the shop, and some little girls jumping rope. Across the road was a less prepossessing place, with a small cabin for a house, and a shed for a barn, and no one around. I did what I would have done in a band of marauding boys: I turned in where it was most likely I would find abundance. The farmer came out of the shop to greet me, and all the females stopped what they were doing to look. Everyone seemed immediately suspicious-further evidence that the band of marauders had pa.s.sed this way. I touched my hat but didn't take it off. I whispered, "Good morning to you," and the farmer stepped closer. "What was that, boy?" he said.

I dared to croak a little louder. "Morning, sir! Name's Lyman Ar-Arquette. I work for Mr. Morton, who has the paper. We were wanting to find out if some boys came by here a day or so ago. I'm looking for them."

The husband and the wife glanced at one another across the yard, but the girls went back to their game.

"Maybe," said the husband.

"You Mr. Welch?" I croaked.

He nodded.

"Well, we heard a bunch of boys came through here and asked you for a meal."

"Maybe."

"They did," piped up the wife. "Spent the night in the barn, too." She looked defiantly at the husband, who scowled.

"Believe me, Mr. Welch, I an't going to do nothing to them boys or to you. I'm just from the paper. I'm looking for them boys to see about them. It's just that the last report of them was that they were hereabout."

"Still are," said the wife.

Now this struck fear into me. My plan had been to talk to the Welches. I hadn't let myself think much beyond that, because I didn't think my disguise would hold up under the scrutiny of boys, in a group, already suspicious, and without much to do except to inspect me. I tried to sound eager. "They are?"

The man gestured across the road. "Holed up in that old claim. Them people moved away to Texas. An't n.o.body took it over, so them boys went in there."

"I saw 'em last night at sunset," said the oldest little girl. "They was chasing something."

"Hog, no doubt," said Mr. Welch. "Them folks didn't catch all their hogs before they left, and now the hogs had some shoats. There's hogs all around here."

I cleared my throat. "How many boys are there?"

"Half a dozen, maybe; maybe not quite."

"Good eaters, too," said the wife, ruefully.

"Did they, uh, did they threaten you with weapons?"

"They surely had 'em along. We could see that plain as day," said Mr. Welch. "They asked where our n.i.g.g.e.rs were, and when we said we didn't have none, they didn't like that. But they didn't actually threaten us, and they an't crossed the road since."

"I wish they'd move on," said the woman. "Over supper, they said they was gonna go out to K.T, but they an't yet."