The All-True Travels And Adventures Of Lidie Newton Part 7

I Broaden My Acquaintance [image]Another branch of good-manners, relates to the duties of hospitality. Politeness requires us to welcome visiters with cordiality; to offer them the best accommodations; to address conversation to them; and to express, by tone and manner, kindness and respect. Offering the hand to all visiters, at one's own house, is a courteous and hospitable custom; and a cordial shake of the hand, when friends meet, would abate much of the coldness of manner ascribed to Americans. -p. 144 AFTER THE TOPEKA CONVENTION, our area began to fill up, mostly with folks we knew, or Thomas knew, from back in New England. Many of them, like the Jenkinses and the Bushes, had town lots with some sort of building upon them. Others were in a situation similar to ours-they needed to put up shelter either in town or on their claims before winter. We were one of the few claimers who had built so substantial a cabin; most of our party had been both busy and divided about what to do and where to live, so many of them had simply driven a stake in the middle of what they judged to be a hundred and sixty acres. Since we were all friends, the plan was to adjust things in the spring, at the commencement of planting. Should there be planting. It seemed to me that most of the New Englanders, who had come out to K.T. from towns, weren't all that eager to get into the country and take up the farming life. Should some mercantile or speculative venture over the winter preserve them from the necessity, I thought most would be relieved.

Nevertheless, what happened was quite a shock. Mr. Jenkins's lost claim had been a nice one, along the river. The winner of the dispute was a man of no party except, perhaps, the party of pure self-interest, from Ohio. This man, Mr. James, mostly went his own way, except, of course, he did not want overt conflict with his neighbors, and so we got to know him a bit, and also his wife and child, who was a boy of some four years old. There was no doubt that Mr. James was a hard man and that his wife and child were not built for the country. She was down with the shakes for much of the fall, and the boy was quiet and subdued, seemingly already concerned that he was a disappointment to his father. Mr. James was a very handsome man, with long curling mustaches and thick golden hair, and the wife, whose name was Ivy, looked as though she had been a beauty. I am sure they went to the altar much celebrated and envied. I began to visit Mrs. James every few days, taking along some game each time I went, or wild plums, or honey. Whenever our friends came out from town, they brought us some delicacy or other, because they all liked Thomas so well. Mr. James was such a hard man that most folks bypa.s.sed their cabin altogether. Sometimes Mrs. James was strong enough to come to me and drink some tea.

The track between our cabin and the James cabin meandered through the woodlot and along the river flat. One day, after she had sat down and received her cup of tea, and little Eddie, as well, was seen to, Ivy said, "I see Mr. Jenkins is putting up his cabin at last."

"If so, then I'm hurt that he hasn't come by, because I would like to repay him some of the hospitality the Jenkinses showed us in Lawrence."

"It's at least sixteen by sixteen. And I saw a window propped up against a tree. I suppose they're going to have a gla.s.s window."

"Well, their house in town is only a lean-to built of hay. I'm surprised they have the money for something like a window."

Mr. Jenkins's new claim, a piece all the members of our party had contributed to, was almost in the middle of the group of claims, and also a piece that all of us knew the location of, including Mrs. James, who was somewhat abashed that her husband had already, or perhaps once again, caused conflict in the community. She wanted only to have friends in a place where he wanted only that others not underestimate him.

Two days later, I saw the cabin myself, and I also saw that none of those working on it was familiar to me. They were working fast, and the window, indeed a gla.s.s one, was already set in place. I was hunting, and soon got onto the track of a turkey, and so forgot the cabin until that evening, when Mr. Bush, Mr. Jenkins, and Mr. Bisket came knocking at the door and declared, as soon as they got inside and took off their hats, that some Border Ruffians had jumped the Jenkins claim and were raising a building on it, and furthermore swore that they had three hundred and twenty acres, twice the customary and legal number. Such a large acreage swallowed up everything of the Jenkinses' and something of everyone else's as well.

"They had a Negro woman there working," said Mr. Bisket. "I saw her."

"You didn't see anything of the kind," said Mr. Jenkins. "But they're Missourians for sure."

"At all events," said Mr. Bush, "they aren't anyone with our company or anyone we know. It doesn't matter whether they've got ten slaves there or whether they've got ten Congregational ministers. They took Jenkins's claim and some of mine, and some of yours, too, Newton, that bit of a corner there between those two big oaks we marked. I won't stand for it."

"We've got to make up a party and go over there and see how far the building has gone, and we've got to do it first thing tomorrow, before they start moving women and children in," said Mr. Jenkins resolutely.

"The only woman I saw was that Negro woman," said Mr. Bisket.

Mr. Jenkins dismissed him with a wave of the hand.

Thomas said, "Has anyone been over to see them yet?"

Mr. Jenkins shook his head. "We looked on from the woodlot. I counted five men and a half-grown boy. If there's going to be an argument, I want to have at least that many men." He paused and looked at his feet for a second. "Though I'll say this: I don't think we should go armed for the first talk, or at least well armed. It might be just a misunderstanding."

"A twenty-by-twenty-foot cabin changes whatever was a misunderstanding into something else, in my opinion," said Mr. Bush, who seemed more exercised by the event than Mr. Jenkins.

"Mrs. James said she thought it was sixteen by sixteen," I put in.

"Now, Daniel James might go in with us," said Mr. Bisket.

"Why would he?" said Mr. Jenkins.

No one could answer this, so they sat for a moment. Mr. Bisket and Mr. Jenkins pulled out their pipes, and Mr. Bush pulled out his chewing tobacco, then looked at me and put it away. The others lit up.

"Holmes. Lacey. The Smithsons. We don't need more than that," said Thomas. "At least for now."

"One step at a time," said Mr. Jenkins, as if the property weren't even his. "Maybe I'm better off in town, anyway."

"Well, I am not going to give away my piece," said Mr. Bush.

"And," declared Thomas, "if they are Missourians bringing slaves, then we don't want them in our midst. I care about that more than the property."

"Then you and I make a good team"-Mr. Bush laughed -"because when it comes right down to it, I care about the property. If they are claiming three hundred twenty acres, well..." He shook his head in disgust, and everyone else smoked in silence. I served tea that Mrs. Jenkins had sent out to me the previous week, steeped in water from our well. I made it weak, so you could see all the way to the bottoms of the cups.

After everyone had had some tea, Thomas raised the question that interested me. He said, "How could someone start building on your land, Jenkins, and you don't know it until the cabin's mostly done?"

Mr. Jenkins shrugged. "I've been in town. Fact is, I lost that other claim and all those improvements, and it took the stuffing right out of me. I don't have the fire right now to be a farmer. I thought I would plant a crop in the spring and see how it came up, then make up my mind."

"His land, our land, it doesn't matter," said Mr. Bush. "Our party's got all this land spoken for, and the fact is, these folks from Missouri could see that plain as day. The stakes are out there. Your cabin and the Jameses' cabin are up, and Bisket's, here, too, and the Holmeses have felled a lot of trees for theirs. This is just Missouri aggression, pure and simple. Pretty soon this'll be a voting precinct, and it'll turn out that all five thousand of us have voted for Stringfellow, you mark my words."

Everyone nodded, including me. This seemed like the truest thing said all evening.

The others soon left, to go about to the cabins of our other friends. None of the women had come out from Lawrence, and Mr. Bush and Mr. Jenkins were staying the night with Mr. Bisket, whose cabin was now entirely enclosed. At dawn, the plan was, the men would get up and gather at Mr. Bisket's claim. When they judged that enough of a party had gathered, they would investigate the newcomers in a body.

I remember getting ready for bed and feeling some surprise that this had come up so suddenly. It didn't speak well of Mr. Jenkins's ability to look after his own interests that total strangers had seized his land and established themselves upon it, and he only noticing when everything was more or less complete. I thought of something brother Roland Brereton had sometimes said about why he wasn't particularly neighborly: "Why should I look after those who can't look after themselves? When the time comes, they'll be too behindhand to look after me." But that was Illinois, and this was Kansas, where, as Thomas and I in our separate ways were both coming to know, you had to choose whom there was to choose. Even so, I went to bed in a stimulated but contented state of mind: we'd had company; something interesting was going on; things would work out well enough in the end. And here was Thomas, too. That made things seem fine enough to me.

Not long after dawn, Thomas rode away on Jeremiah. Not long after that, I got up and began idling about the cabin-smoothing the quilts, driving off the mice and other vermin, sweeping the floors, adding some sticks of wood to the fire we'd kept damped down in the stove all night long. We were well into October, and the nights were, it seemed then, pleasantly cool after the heat of September. The mornings were crisp. I put on an extra shawl and did some c.h.i.n.king of the joints between the logs with a paste of mud, gra.s.s, and twigs that I'd mixed together the afternoon before. Then, where the c.h.i.n.king I had done several days earlier had cured, I began carefully to paste up, with flour-and-water paste, leaves of The Liberator and some other papers that Thomas had brought with him from the United States. This, he said, would serve the threefold purpose of advertising our views to our visitors, reminding ourselves of the arguments to be made in the cause, and keeping out the wind. Every leaf, according to the new laws of Kansas Territory, was treasonable.

Thomas came trotting into the yard late in the afternoon, and he didn't look happy. I helped him curry Jeremiah and put him in his pen for the night, then we went inside. The fire was still going, so I stoked it up and beat together some corncakes.

"Holmeses are down with the shakes," he said, as we came into the cabin and he hung up his hat. "Mrs. Holmes is shaking every day. Can hardly get up to feed the children in the morning."

"I'll go over there." Neither of us had been eager to improve our acquaintance with the Holmeses, and their claim was far away, though, of course, Jeremiah made any trip short and pleasurable.

"The Smithsons have put up a mile of fence, but they're still drinking out of the river." He took off his heavy jacket and hung it below his hat, then he set his rifle beside the door, and took the ammunition out of his pocket and looked at it for a second, then put it back into his pocket.

I waited. He looked at me. He said, "I'm not proud of what went on this morning."

"No one's been shot, I hope."

"Not yet."

The griddle was hot, and I spooned a bit of grease over it, then some corncake batter. It was lumpy, I knew. I batted at the lumps for a moment. He said, "Well, the fact was, Jenkins was drinking. Bisket said they were up all night after they left here, so there weren't many cool heads when we gathered this morning, and there was some talk about waiting until tomorrow, but Jenkins wanted to do something by then-"

"He'd worked himself up to it."

"Yes, and he wouldn't talk to Daniel James, claimed this was all his fault, and then James got a little threatening, but he knows he can't go it alone, and Jenkins knows that he himself is old and James is young and strong. But all the squabbling didn't cool us off, I must say. And then Bisket fell off his horse. Don't ask me why-he was behind me-but I think he was that drunk, which wouldn't take much, since he never had a drop before coming out to K.T."

We both suddenly smiled, but Thomas sobered in a hurry. "I wish it were funny, but it isn't. Those Missourians were waiting for us. Been waiting for us, if you ask me."

I served up the corncakes with some wild plums I'd cut up in honey "They picked up their rifles as soon as they saw us, and carried them out to meet us, then they drew up side by side in a long line. Well, I don't mind telling you they looked like they wanted a fight right there, but I was in the lead, and I kept my head down and just smiled a little like I was making a friendly visit. One man, a short little plug, spoke up and said, 'Lookin' fur me? This is my claim.'

"Bisket piped up from the rear, 'Well, it an't!'

" 'Who says it an't?' This fellow was very belligerent and red in the face. So there was a long silence, and then Jenkins says, 'Well, now, I guess it's me who says it an't; it's not, that is, because you see my stake's in the ground here and this is about the middle of my claim, and we all have land around here-'

" 'You boys git off my land right now, or I'll have ta kill ya.' That's what the little guy said, and lo and behold if the window behind him didn't suddenly explode, and I turned around, and there was the Smithson boy, just grinning. Well, everyone started running around then, and that Negro woman Bisket had seen came running out of the house screaming, and she said that a bullet had gone right past her ear, and of course the Smithson boy wasn't grinning after that! But the Missourians didn't shoot. I thought they would, but they actually fell back a bit, like they were startled. Then the little man started yelling, 'You went and shot my winder! I brought that winder all the way from Lousiana! That winder's been up the Mississippi and up the Missouri, and the d- steamboat exploded and the winder survived, and now you gone and shot it!' And he leveled his gun at the Smithson boy, and then old Smithson kind of interposed his horse between them and pulled out some money and offered to pay for the window, and behind him, you could hear the boy saying, 'I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to shoot it,' but we all knew he did.

"Then Jenkins seemed to feel bolder, and he said, 'This is my claim, and you got to leave. I an't going to have my claim jumped for the second time in a year, and I'm telling you you got to leave!'

"And then we all stood there. Because, you know, n.o.body was ready to start shooting, not even the Missourians, or Louisianans, or whatever they were. The hard part was to turn tail and leave. We couldn't do it. We just milled around for a bit, and then Bush called out, 'We're not done with this matter!' and we filed off, but then, well, you know how it is-everybody felt a little ashamed, as if we'd been driven off."

Thomas dived into his corncakes, and we were silent for a bit. The door was open for air, since the evening had stayed warm, and I could hear some yipping far out on the prairie. We had had a frost, and the nightly sawing and buzzing of insects had stilled. My senses were not yet attuned to the prairie sounds, so the world seemed largely silent to me, and uninhabited, and, perhaps, desolate. The fact is that in those days, our little cabin floated like a raft in a populous sea. We were certainly observed by Indians, by foxes, by buzzards, hawks, deer, skunks, jackrabbits, badgers, magpies, and meadowlarks. But even in the midst of this story my husband was telling me, I couldn't rid myself of the impression that we were far away from everything and everyone, safe in a wilderness of s.p.a.ce and nuptial contentment. I felt calm and only distantly interested in these events. All they did for me was render him all the more mysterious and appealing.

"Before long, of course, everyone began to regret how peaceful we'd been. 'They think they've got it now,' said Bush, and Jenkins got angry. He kept exclaiming, 'I'll not let it happen again! I'm an old man, but I'm still a man for all that!' Then Holmes piped up. 'Satan is working among them! Through them, he comes into our company and begins casting his glance around at us!' I'll say this, that man intones every word as if he's addressing a prayer meeting, and he's hardly more than a boy, to boot."

"What can you do? The house is up. They sound like they've got guns and the will to use them."

"Bush says they'll move off like Missourians always do if you stand up to them." He sounded doubtful.

I said, "But-"

Thomas pushed his plate away and looked at me. "Our party claimed the land, it's true, but Jenkins didn't build anything. The law says you've got to put up a cabin and start living there."

"But-"

"We can't have slaves in our midst, and men who want to kill us and drive us away."

It was a conundrum, the K.T. conundrum, the sort of moral dilemma that men I respected, like Thomas, had to ponder and work over in their minds. I said, "You better not lose the advantage, if you've still got it."

After that, Thomas lit a candle and read some bits of "The Song of Hiawatha" out to me, and after that we went to our rest.

CHAPTER 11.

I Am Surprised and Then Surprised Again [image]Next to the want of all government, the two most fruitful sources of evil to children, are, unsteadiness in government, and over-government. Most of the cases, in which the children of sensible and conscientious parents turn out badly, result from one or the other of these causes. In cases of unsteady government, either one parent is very strict, severe, and unbending, and the other excessively indulgent, or else the parents are sometimes very strict and decided, and at other times allow disobedience to go unpunished. In such cases, children, never knowing exactly when they can escape with impunity, are constantly tempted to make the trial. - p. 228 THE NETX DAY WAS Sunday. For some weeks, all of our party had been planning to meet at the Smithsons' cabin for a service and then, should the weather be favorable, an outdoor supper. Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Jenkins and Susannah had planned to come out from town, and there was some hope among the women that Mrs. Lacey and her three children would have arrived by that time. Otherwise, we all acknowledged, she might as well stay in the east. But when, as we were standing there watching Mr. Bisket's wagon approach us from the south, b.u.mping and humping over the prairie gra.s.ses and throwing its pa.s.sengers into all sorts of wild postures, we saw a strange figure, it was no grown woman with three children. It was rather a very slight man or a boy, alternately leaning over the side so far he was nearly falling out and jumping around like a monkey. From a distance, also, someone could clearly be heard to whoop, probably this small figure, since Mrs. Jenkins and Mrs. Bush were notable for their staid dignity in almost all circ.u.mstances. As they came closer, I could make out something like a seegar protruding from the lower parts of the new visitor's face, but that didn't render me any the less astonished when I beheld my nephew Frank leap from the wagon and run toward me a few moments later.

"An't ya surprised to see me, Lidie? An't ya?" Frank was grinning but otherwise suddenly very cool, and instead of throwing his arms around me or allowing me to do the same to him, he stopped suddenly and stuck out his hand, and shook first mine and then Thomas's, and said, "I told Ma you'd about fall down when you saw me, but she thought you'd get her letter before that. But you didn't. Here it is. She should have known not to send me to mail it to you, because I just kept it in my pocket."

He presented me with the letter, folded over and neatly sealed, balanced on the palm of his hand. While I read it, Thomas took him off to meet our new friends. I even astounded myself with the fullness of my pleasure in seeing Frank again. I'd steamed away from my family in something of a cold fever to leave all that behind and try something new, and with the novelty of marriage and new scenes, I hadn't knowingly missed anyone, but I might as well have been pining for Frank day after day, because that was how glad I was to see his sa.s.sy face and his jaunty demeanor.

"Dear Lydia," read the letter, only a note, really, Frank pesters me day and night until I think I am going to scream. All he can talk about is you and going to Kansas. Roland and Horace see no harm in it, though, to tell you the honest truth, I am sure they see no harm in it because they would just as soon be doing it themselves! Roland thinks if the boy is well armed he should have no trouble on the way! I ask you! But I throw up my hands, as a mother's tears are of no avail with any of the three of them. I am sending you this letter to inform you that my Frank will be leaving here on the Mary Ida on October one and should come to you a week after that, as the agent of the steamship has a.s.sured us that every effort will be made to oversee his pa.s.sage every mile of the way. If he should not arrive by October ninth at the outside, then you must-oh, my dear, I can't go on with that. I just can't bear to think about it. Mr. Newton and his friends will know what to do should the worst happen, may G.o.d preserve my boy. Mr. Brereton maintains that the boy can take care of himself and that it's high time that he put his energies to something useful, and he has no interest in his schooling.

I close with my heart in my mouth.

Your loving sister, HARRIET.

It was now October 16, a week past the outer date of Frank's pa.s.sage, and though it gave me something of a turn to think of what he had been doing in the previous two weeks, well, here he was, safe, sound, and full of life, and I was sure that he would fill me in on his adventures soon enough.

We had our Sunday service, preached by Mr. Smithson, and then we set our dishes out on a trestle table the Smithsons had put together from boards they had milled in Lawrence, which were meant for their roof later on in the week. All the talk that wasn't of Frank was of Mr. Jenkins's claim.

Mrs. Bush was full of Frank. "My dear Mrs. Newton, I must tell you, I didn't know what to think when I saw this little man come swaggering up Vermont Street, easy as you please, taking bites out of an apple and asking everyone in a loud voice where this 'hay house' of those Bushes and Jenkinses was! And then he tossed the core over his shoulder and pulled out this seegar stub and stuck it between his lips, and then when he got to our place and saw me standing in the doorway, he pushed his hat back on his head and thrust his hands in his pockets and gave me the once-over! I could barely keep myself from laughing! He'd lost his cap in the Missouri River, he said, and bought some old black slouch hat off a man in Missouri for a nickel! Well, he came right up to the door and said, 'You'd be Mrs. Bush, maybe, and I'm looking for my cousin Lydia Harkness, Newton now. She's not expecting me, because I am set on giving her her death of a shock! She here?' And then he swaggered in and looked around. You know, he sold that hat the next day for a quarter, and he had a whole case of junk with him, and he sold all of that, too. I bet he has forty or fifty dollars on him now. I said did he want one of the men to ride him out here day before yesterday, when he just arrived, but he said he'd wait, because he had some business to attend to! How old is that boy?"

"He'll be thirteen in the winter."

"And then when he'd come in and looked all around, he began pulling out knives and guns and piling them on the table! I nearly fainted. He looked at me and said, 'Well, I didn't have any trouble on the road, so I suppose I won't be needing all of these here in K.T.'"

We looked over at him where he was standing with the men, his thumbs. .h.i.tched into his braces, his left foot resting on his right. Mr. Holmes spoke and then Mr. Jenkins, and the whole time Frank nodded thoughtfully, just as if he were deep in their councils.

I looked wonderingly at my cousin from time to time, when I could do so tactfully, because it was clear that he didn't want me to make much of his sudden appearance. He was in high spirits, but so was everyone else. It was a pleasant day. A ribbon of smoke or two from distant prairie fires drifted on the blue horizon, and nearby the river went its slow and silent way. It was deep enough for a swim, but I was a married woman surrounded by folks from Ma.s.sachusetts. I didn't even take off my shoes and stockings, though I longed to do so.

We got home late-well after dark, though there was enough of a moon to light our way. There was no bed for Frank, and I was busy laying out some quilts on the portion of the floor that we had finished, when he stopped me. "Lidie, you an't going to make me sleep in this little box with the two of you, are ya?"

"It's twelve by twelve. That's big for K.T. People have ten by ten or-"

"I got my heart set on sleeping outdoors. I tried to tell that to Mrs. Bush, but she wouldn't hear of it, and we was squashed all together. That boy they had there, I don't know his name, one time in the night he rolled over on me and pinned my arms against the floor, and I couldn't move to save my life. That fella had me, and if he hadn't been asleep, I would of given him the Jesse for that, but I didn't want to wake him. Don't make me sleep inside!"

"The nights are getting cold, Frank. Inside, we keep a little fire in the stove-"

"That's worse. I can't sleep when I'm hot."

"I don't know what your mother would-"

"It would be all right with Pa. Pa would be all for it!"

I knew that was true.

"All right."

And that was how Frank began living with us and went on in the same fashion. He was no boy but a self-reliant man. He came and went as he pleased-I stopped even looking out for him or worrying about him. His vocation was finding, or it was trading, or it was both, because he was never so happy as when he had found something and traded it for something else, even if it was only some chokecherries that he traded for some salt or tea.

But I'm getting ahead of my story. On the very next day after the Sunday Frank got there, affairs with the Missourians got a little hot.

About midmorning, Thomas looked up, to see all our friends coming to get him, and when he left, he took his gun as well as his hat. He did not take Jeremiah but got up behind the Smithson boy, who had a big, raw-boned mule. That Jeremiah was still grazing peacefully in his pen must have been what set off Frank, because he would not let me be until I agreed that we would follow and see what might happen. I didn't need much persuading, I must say, but it was Frank who suggested that I put on some of Thomas's clothes and pin my hair up under a hat.

We got on bareback, me in front and Frank behind. Jeremiah, who was working every day, now accepted almost anything, since over the weeks he had been hitched to a wagon single and double, had been ridden with saddle and without, single and double, and had had all sorts of things, from newly slaughtered turkeys and strings of prairie chickens to bundles of wood, thrown over his back. He still looked elegant and interested, and I had found out that a more realistic price for a horse of his quality was a hundred dollars or more. Frank had a knife in his boot and was carrying one of our Sharps carbines, which he had seen first thing in the morning and appropriated at once.

We circled around and approached the cabin through the woods, trying to keep as quiet as we could and to reconnoiter before revealing our presence.

The Missourians had been busy in the five days since I'd walked past. The walls were well c.h.i.n.ked, and the window was still in place, one pane shattered and blocked off with sheets of oiled paper but the other panes glinting in the sunshine. A door was hung, a real door, too, with a hole where the latch would be installed and where a loop of string now hung. There was a stoop, too, with two steps going up to it. The builders had brought more than the usual knowledge to their building. It was a desirable dwelling, in K.T. terms. They had also split quite a few rails for fence, and these lay in a stack. The men of the place-I counted five, with the boy- stood behind the stack, and each of them held a long rifle of the Missouri or Kentucky sort. All of our men, numbering eight (Mr. Bush and Mr. Jenkins, my husband, Mr. Smithson and the Smithson boy, Mr. Holmes, Mr. James, and Mr. Bisket), faced them, five mounted and three dismounted.

The man who seemed to be the owner of the cabin was short and red-faced, with long dark hair that hung below his shoulders, a full beard going gray, and bushy, almost white eyebrows. He was glaring at our men, who had their backs to Frank and me. I halted Jeremiah and held him quiet, and Frank, eager for a better look, slipped down and edged forward before I could stop him. I didn't dare call out to him-I was even less anxious to attract my husband's attention than that of the strangers. Frank knelt down behind the crotch of a tree. His rifle was well within his reach. As far as I knew, Frank's expertise in shooting was the same as mine-jars and squashes, squirrels, and a variety of feathered quarry-but he cozied up to that tree with his rifle nearby as if he'd been in a lifetime of armed confrontations. The angry man-my enemy, I knew without reflection-was saying, "Well, I an't gonna move. The legalities are on my side. I got a cabin built, I staked my claim. And I an't gonna be bought out, either."

"You've got a slave woman," said Mr. Holmes.

"I do, and I got more comin', so you better git used to it. This is gonna be a slave state, or it an't gonna be a state a-tall. You Yankees are goin' against the law and tryin' to tell us out here what to do with our own belongings, and we an't gonna stand for it. I maybe only have two slaves, but if you tell me I can't have none, then I'll git me two more. You try to tell me what to do and I'll do the opposite just to be ornery, and fight you for the privilege!"

"This is our land!" exclaimed one of what seemed to be the man's sons.

"My friend Jenkins was here first-" began Mr. Bush.

"This whole country!" shouted the young man. "We been lookin' at this whole country for years, watchin' the government hold it for them d- Indians, and then they open it to us one day and you Yankees come and git it the next."