Across Five Aprils (11 page)

“Enjoying your dinner?” the editor asked after a while.

“This dinner’s bin a real fine treat fer me, Mr. Milton.”

“That’s good.” Milton leaned forward in his chair a little, and Jethro had the impression that he was anxious about something. “You’re starting for home as soon as we’ve finished eating, aren’t you?”

“I allow to.”

Milton hesitated a little. “That man who caused the trouble in the store a while ago lives out west of Rose Hill—that’s on your road home, isn’t it?”

Jethro nodded. It had been pleasant to forget that affair in the store for a while.

“He’s quite capable of making trouble over this business of your brother. You must keep out of his way as much as possible.”

“I know. I don’t like him.”

“Neither do I. He loves violence—so long as there’s no danger in it for himself—the way he loves whiskey. He’d join a mob to murder his own grandmother.” The editor frowned as he tapped tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. “I’m pretty sure that he can’t tear himself away from the saloon until late this afternoon, so I’d like to see you get started early. Do you have any more chores to do?”

“Nothin’ except to pick up a newspaper fer Mr. Roscoe.”

“All right. The St. Louis papers should be up from Olney by now. We’ll get one at my office.”

He motioned to Mrs. Hiles, and she came over to collect for their meals. She brought another wedge of pie, in a brown bag, and handed it to Jethro.

“This is fer you in case you don’t get home in time fer supper,” she said. “I took it as a real compliment the way you plowed into that first piece.”

At the newspaper office, Jethro picked up one of the papers while Ross Milton hunted for his book. A cartoon caught his eye; it showed an outraged McClellan falling head over heels from the top rung of a ladder marked “General-in-Chief” to a lower one labelled “Army of Potomac—Only,” while a stern-faced Lincoln stood close by and dusted his hands. Here was something to tell Pa; Matt’s anger against McClellan had been growing by the week. Jethro remembered Shad’s words when they had talked together only a few weeks before: “I would have guessed that McClellan was worth a dozen Grants.”

When the editor finally returned with the book, he extended it to Jethro with a grin.

“Here you are, Creighton; this book is yours if you can use it. We won’t expect miracles, but it might just happen that you’ll get some good from it.”

They shook hands, and Jethro felt good as he walked down the street to the hitching post, where the young man from the newspaper office had tied his team. When he was in the seat and ready to leave, he looked back. Ross Milton, standing between his crutches in the doorway, waved to him.

The team trotted briskly out of town, across the bridge spanning the river, and on up the road between meadows that seemed to have grown a little brighter since morning. The bag of coffee was at his feet; the wedge of pie, the book, and the newspaper were placed safely on the seat beside him. He thought with satisfaction of the things he would have to tell Jenny and his parents that evening. He pushed the scene at the store to the back of his mind, but the dinner with Ross Milton, the kindness of Mrs. Hiles, the gift of a book actually written by the editor himself—these were the tidbits with which the traveler could reward his family’s hours of waiting for his return.

He did not know how much he would tell about the ugly words of Guy Wortman and the others who were ready to believe that Matt Creighton was a Copperhead, because of Bill’s actions. It would worry his parents, Jethro knew.

They had heard of incidents downstate: a family murdered because they were suspected of being Southern sympathizers, an abolitionist family attacked in the middle of the night and their house fired by men who hated what their victims stood for. Southern Illinois was beginning to feel the tumult that had rocked Missouri. There was a tradition of a free state in Illinois, a tradition long since established with the opening of the Northwest Territory, but it was being challenged by thousands whose ties with the South were close and of long standing.

Jasper County was predominantly Northern in its sympathies, but there were many whose loyalty was secretly with the South or was suspected of being there. Now, the Creightons were one of those families—a Copperhead family whose youngest boy spoke up for a brother who had gone South. The ones who wanted to hate, the sullen ones with pigs’ eyes, and the angry ones who loved violence as they loved whiskey would not care to remember that Tom and Eb, and now John and Shad, were in the Union Army. A man in the store had said, “I don’t think you’d round up a mob so easy to go against him if it was a matter between Trav Burdow and the Creightons this year.”

At first the miles seemed to pass faster than they had on the trip into town, but for all that, Jethro began to grow tired after three hours or so had gone by. It had been a long time since four o’clock that morning when he had crawled out of bed at his father’s first call, and the excitement of the day, as well as its length, had taken toll of his energy. He found himself nodding a little now and then as the slow creak of the wheels invited sleep, and he had to shake himself briskly and to talk aloud for a while when the monotony became overpowering.

The sun was getting low by the time he reached the ruins of what had been the county’s first schoolhouse, a landmark known as the eight-mile point north of Newton. It was early twilight when he reached the Burdow place, where the wagon that Jethro had seen in front of the general store in Newton now stood in the cluttered barnlot.

Two dogs rushed out toward Jethro’s team, barking shrilly and snapping at the heels of the horses. A woman came to the door of the cabin and stood, half lost in the shadows, as she looked out at the passing wagon. By twilight the place seemed even grimmer than it had that morning.

The two-mile stretch of woods road was just ahead—the hardest two miles of the trip if one considered the terrain. But to Jethro the several yards along the dooryard and barnlot of Dave Burdow’s place were full of a sinister threat that made the woods road a welcome relief. When it curved among the trees and the Burdow cabin was lost to sight, he breathed easier and shifted himself stiffly on the seat as he prepared for the ordeal of mudholes and jutting tree stumps in the road ahead.

The curve, however, was no sooner rounded than Jethro discovered that the vague dread he had experienced in passing the cabin had now become a reality. A man stood among the trees at the edge of the road, a saddled horse at his side. As Jethro approached, he walked slowly out, as if he’d known the wagon would soon be along and had been waiting. Jethro saw that it was Dave Burdow.

With a curt gesture, he motioned Jethro to stop. “Like to ride with ye a piece,” he muttered, and climbed over the wheel and into the seat without raising his eyes to the boy’s face. He led his own horse by a strap.

Jethro shrank from the great bulk beside him with fear and revulsion. He did not dare look at Burdow, but he remembered the sullen, piglike eyes that had stared at him in the store that morning. He remembered, too, hearing usually mild Ed Turner speak in loud anger about Dave Burdow a few weeks after Mary’s death.

“Decency ain’t in him,” Ed had declared. “He’s had nary a word of human feelin’ fer what happened to that little girl, nary a word of thanks that Matt saved his worthless boy from his neighbors. He’s more of a dumb brute than a man.”

Dave Burdow was as silent as the darkness that was drawing in around them. There was no sound but the creaking of the wagon as it floundered through the sour-smelling mud and over mammoth tree roots. The air held a damp chill, as if the sun that had given a pale, late-winter brightness to the streets in Newton had been too weak to penetrate the dense branches above the woods road. The team was tired, the going slow, and a quarter of a mile was covered in only something less than an eternity.

Jethro did not actually visualize the grim possibilities that faced him. He was still too much a child, still insufficiently acquainted with violence, to believe that bodily harm could possibly come to him. Ugly things happened, it was true, but to people who were distant, unknown people—not to someone named Jethro Creighton. He was afraid, but his fear was vague, and anger was as strong as fear when he thought of the precious bag of coffee and of the little gifts—gifts were as rare for him as comforts or luxuries—the book, the wedge of pie, the handful of Sam Gardiner’s candy. There was the team, too, and the wagon. If a thieving Burdow took these, what could a boy who had been trusted with them say to his father? “You jest hev to keep a level head and use gumption,” he had said confidently the night before.

He tried to hold himself firm, but after a while the strain became too great, and a shudder shook his body with sudden violence. The silent man at his side turned then and-looked at him for the first time.

“Ye got no call to be afeared,” he said roughly. “I ain’t aimin’ to hurt ye none.”

Jethro didn’t answer, and they drove on in silence again for so long that he was startled when Dave Burdow spoke again. His voice was less rough this time, and it held a resonance of anger and sadness that made Jethro remember the stories he had heard of mad old John Brown.

“There be things that’s evil in these woods tonight. I seed evil apassin’ my place a while ago, comin’ in from the shortcut road to town and reelin’ in the saddle. I heered evil braggin’ in the saloon today about layin’ fer a young‘un on his way home.” He reached over and took the reins from Jethro’s hands. “I’d best drive till we’re out of the brush,” he added. “We’re gittin’ close to the place where some piz’nous snake might strike quick.”

The world was turning upside down for Jethro. He felt as if he were someone else, someone looking from far off at a boy who had started from home with a team and wagon on a March morning that was at least a hundred years ago. When he tried to speak he found that his voice, like his identity, had gone too; his lips worked as they had often seemed to work in a bad dream to form the words he wanted to say, but no sound passed them, and there was nothing to do but sit quietly while his mind floundered in the uncertainties that beset it.

At a point near the north end of the woods road there was a bridge spanning the ravine that cut a deep, jagged gash across the road and through the fields beyond. As they approached the bridge, Jethro saw the dim outline of a horse beside a tree; Dave Burdow saw it too, and he leaned forward in the seat, his hands tightening on the lines and the strap by which he led his own horse beside the wagon.

At the bridge the thing happened quickly and was over without a word being spoken by either the attacker or the attacked. A man leaped up from the ravine when the wagon was midway across the bridge and, running up beside the team, laid a long whip across the backs of the horses. There was a bad moment as the horses plunged and kicked and as Burdow’s horse responded to the fright of the team; seconds later the tethered horse at the roadside broke away and galloped off into the darkness ahead of the wagon.

The thing was over quickly with Dave Burdow’s strong hands on the reins. It had been a close brush with tragedy, but as the horses became quiet again the event became as routine in Jethro’s mind as the tilting of the wagon had been that morning; it would be a while before he would grasp the full terror of the thing that had happened.

There was no word between the two in the wagon when the danger was over. Both man and boy seemed to be in tacit agreement that the attack at the bridge was a closed incident, a thing for which they felt a solid indifference. Jethro realized that he had clung to Dave Burdow’s arm during the worst of the moment, and he drew aside.

Shortly after the incident at the bridge, the light from Jake Roscoe’s cabin could be seen through the trees. The old man was waiting at his gate when the wagon finally came up. “Air ye young Creighton?” he called out. “Did ye bring me my paper?”

Burdow stopped the team, and Jethro handed the paper down across the wheel. He found that his lips were still too numb for speech, and he wanted desperately to be beyond earshot of the old man’s plaintive questioning.

“Who is it that’s with ye?” Roscoe asked, peering up through the darkness.

Jethro could only shake his head, and Dave Burdow did not speak. The team started on, no less communicative than the two figures in the wagon, and the old man was left muttering angrily at his gate.

A little distance beyond Roscoe’s place, Dave Burdow stopped the team again and prepared to climb down from the wagon.

“Wortman caint foller ye—ye can git on by yoreself now.” He jumped from the top of the wheel to the ground and turned his horse’s head to the south.

Jethro managed the words “I’m obleeged,” but Dave Burdow made no sign of having heard him. He mounted his horse and, without looking around, started back over the road they had just traveled.

Jethro watched horse and rider for as long as he could see them; then he flipped the lines across the backs of his team. There were still four full miles to cover, and he was weak with a deep weariness that seemed to penetrate every muscle of his body. His head swam in a way that frightened him, and to protect himself against the danger of falling off the high seat, he slid down into the bed of the wagon and leaned against the side. The horses needed no guiding now; they knew they were on the last lap of the day’s journey.

There was a dim new moon, which he hadn’t seen while he was in the woods, and Jethro watched it dully as home came closer, step by step. His thoughts skirted the danger that had threatened him; he wondered instead if Guy Wortman’s horse had run away for good and all; he wondered, too, what Dave Burdow would say to the woman who had watched Jethro from the shadowy door of her cabin. Then he slept a little and wakened suddenly to feel about the seat and bed, locating each parcel that he had brought with him from town.