The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (16 page)

Now Thomas spoke up. "If you live here, you’ll be surrounded on every side by people who hold views that are opposed to yours. How can you expect us to be neighborly after you stole our friend’s land? And what will it be like for you if you have no neighbors you can befriend?"

"Sir," shouted the old man, "look on these four boys! These are all the friends I need, and they are all the friends they themselves need!" He now fell silent, as if attributing to them the desire for neighborly relations was the reddest insult of all.

"I repeat," said Mr. Bush, "we are willing to buy you out, with as much over as we can afford to repay your labor and your trouble—"

"There are settlements not far from here that you would find more congen—"

The old man shot his rifle into the air. Frank reached around and picked up his. The other horses spooked, but not Jeremiah, and everyone stood absolutely still in anticipation of the shooting to come. The old man said, "We’re talkin’ too much here. When I say no, it makes me mad to keep talkin’. You men keep talkin’, and now I am mad."

There was a long silence. Once again, it appeared, all parties were finally reluctant to level at one another the weapons they all had with them. The leaves on the trees, which were still green but had begun to dry, rattled suggestively in the breeze. Finally Mr. Jenkins said, bravely, I thought, "Well, we aren’t finished talking. I’ve got more to say, but perhaps it is best said another day."

I was being quiet, but I was not being quiet enough, because the next moment, two of the Missourians looked in our direction, and then our men turned around to look, too. Not wishing to seem furtive, I urged Jeremiah out of the copse he was standing in and walked him toward the others. I was conscious that I was strangely dressed, and surely Thomas and all the others recognized me, but no one laughed or even betrayed amusement. Jeremiah’s hooves made the only sound, of snapping underbrush. Frank stayed where he was. I noticed that the Missouri boy was whispering to his brother, and then he suddenly called out, "Whooie! Lazarus!" Jeremiah’s ears swiveled forward inquisitively. Then the boy said, "That’s Lazarus! I know that gray horse!" I came up to our men and reined Jeremiah in. I tried to act as if I had heard nothing.

The old man said, "Henry White had some horses stolen a month ago, that’s true, and one was a gray horse with a white tail." They peered at Jeremiah suspiciously, and I made up my mind to back away if they tried to come any closer. Jeremiah betrayed no knowledge of them, but then he wasn’t a dog, and they weren’t claiming to be his owners, either. The old man called, "Son, you better get down from there and bring that horse over here so we can have a better look at him!"

It took me a moment to realize that they were talking to me. Thomas now spoke up and said, "I don’t believe that our two parties are on such terms as would permit my friend here"—he slightly emphasized the word "friend," and I felt that thing we shared, an enjoyment of oddities, pass between us—"to believe that you really do recognize this animal, especially since he has no particular distinguishing marks. Let’s allow that issue to rest for now."

"Those are fine words for a horse thief, is what I think," said the old man.

"Lazarus!" shouted the boy again. Once again, Jeremiah’s ears swiveled toward the sound. But Jeremiah was a remarkably alert horse in every way. His ears always swiveled toward interesting sounds.

"Now," said the old man, "you got nine men here and a boy lying in wait back there." He gestured toward Frank. Thomas glanced in that direction and rolled his eyes heavenward. "We got the five of us. You may drive us off if you dare, but we an’t gonna go quick and we an’t gonna go easy."

"We’d prefer to buy you out," said Mr. Bush, evenly. In answer, the boy who had shouted stooped down suddenly and picked up a stone, which he flung at Mr. Bush, knocking off his hat. With all the quick movements of our men in response to this, our horses jumped and snorted. Thomas bent down and picked up Mr. Bush’s hat and handed it to him. I was afraid of what might happen, but then Mr. James said in a loud, compelling voice, "We’ll be back," and he turned and rode off. Momentarily, we all followed him. Reaching Frank, I pulled him up behind me, then followed the others. When we came to the spot where we were to turn off to our claim, Thomas slipped down from the Smithsons’ mule and I slipped off Jeremiah. We walked along at his head, and Frank sat on his back. There was so much now to be said that I kept my mouth shut and waited to see what Thomas would want to say.

We struck out over the prairie grasses, following a pale track. The grass, like the leaves, was green but dry, and it rustled with our steps. Buzzards and hawks floated in the blue sky above us. Thomas was wearing a bleached muslin shirt, and it glowed in the early-afternoon sunlight. He said nothing. Behind us, Frank called out, "There’re some prairie chickens over there—you want me to shoot ’em?" He didn’t care much; when we didn’t answer, he started to whistle. My trousers, or rather, Thomas’s trousers that I was wearing, were easier to ride in than to walk in, but I found myself getting used to them. They didn’t need to be held up, and they didn’t snag on upthrusting weeds and burrs.

The Missourians had seemed obdurate and threatening. I didn’t see how we could either accommodate them in our midst or remove them. Their evident sentiment that they were tougher and manlier than we were seemed true—our men made a picture of frustration and ineffectuality. The southerners’ bragging and posing had had an effect on me, and it looked to me as though it had had an effect on the men, too. I wondered why they didn’t simply shoot us. Clearly they were tempted. Of course, we had our Sharps rifles, designed for something other than killing game. It was as if a veil hung between the two parties that prevented calculated attack. Just then, the veil seemed to me wispy and easily rent, as if shooting would be as easy as not shooting, but really, I didn’t know what the veil was made of or what passions it could resist.

Thomas said, "I don’t want to have to shoot them." His voice was calm.

"I don’t want them to have to shoot us."

"It’s better all around if there is no shooting at all."

"Our men look so ... helpless!"

"Do they?"

"Yes. I—"

"Then you needn’t watch, my dear, because spectators always increase the possibility that someone will shoot just to raise himself in the spectators’ estimation. I assure you that those men took one look at our weapons and revised any notions they might have had about our helplessness." He smiled. "Even before reinforcements arrived."

Frank called out, "It was my idea, Tom Newton. I got her to wear them clothes and take me over there. Next time, I’ll just go along with you."

"Are you angry that we came?"

"Well, now, I don’t know. Your coming into danger, our coming into danger, Frank’s coming into danger—the causes of all this are so compounded together that I don’t khow who to blame and I don’t know who should be restricted or why. I don’t want my wife to get hurt, but I think your firsthand knowledge of the course of events will benefit us in the end. And you shoot better than I."

"No doubt Frank shoots better than the both of us, but that doesn’t mean we want to train him as a murderer."

Thomas lowered his voice and leaned his head toward me. "He should go back."

Frank sang out, "I an’t going back. I might go on to California."

We walked on in silence, until Thomas said, "We have to discuss the Jeremiah problem."

"I bought him in good faith! I won’t give him up to them just on their say-so!"

"Nor would I, but we have to recognize that he might be a stolen horse."

"They were just saying that to get at us. How would they prove it?" My voice rose with challenge, as if he were trying to take the horse away from me right there.

"We’ll find out, I suppose."

Now we came into our own yard. All was quiet at our cabin. The plank door was closed and tied with a string, just as I had left it. Thomas and Frank put away the horse, while I went inside and changed into my own clothes. On the whole, I was not pleased with my adventure. I felt as Pandora must have: there was an undeniable thrill to opening the box—the thrill of action, perhaps, which was much opposed to the customary routines of a woman’s life—but the consequent evil was plentifully mixed with chagrin. I was not sure there would be any benefit to my knowing the course of events firsthand, especially if the course of events took an ugly turn.

It was midafternoon; the episode at the cabin had taken surprisingly little time. Thomas, Frank, and I settled back to what we had been doing in the morning, which was splitting supports for a lean-to room for Frank off the end of the cabin. In the evening, after our supper, I sat beside the stove sewing a bed tick for him, while Thomas read aloud an essay or two by Mr. Emerson. Frank, apparently, did not find this to his liking, as he fell asleep in our bed nearly as soon as Thomas began to read. After a while, the candle Thomas was reading by got too low to burn steadily and began to flicker in its holder, but when I opened the candle box for another, he said, "We’ll save that for another night." He moved Frank to some quilts on the floor and wrapped him against the vermin. I went out to check on Jeremiah and saw that his saddle was hanging over the fence, and the bridle, too. When I came back inside, Thomas was cleaning his Sharps carbine in the unsteady light of the piece of candle, and he still had his boots on. I sat down across from him. He had grown more handsome to me, but no less enigmatic. He consistently showed a pleasant strength of character and mildness of temper that won me and intrigued me at the same time. Something, perhaps the presence of his friends or settling onto our claim, had driven off whatever evidence I had once seen of fear or weakness. He seemed to draw strength from his very capacity for amusement. On the other hand, he was hardly one of those handy New Englanders you heard so much about, who could build a schoolhouse with one hand and a ship with the other, while running a loom with his foot. Our cabin was full of the deformed results of our attempts to do for ourselves. Were we to prove better farmers than house builders, my first plan was to procure more manufactured goods. And there were any number of things I could do better than he could, starting with riding a horse and shooting a turkey and running right through splitting firewood and building a fire. Come spring, I suspected, I would be doing my share and more of the plowing, which was, indeed, more to my taste than nursing, making ball fringe, or tatting. I knew he had a skill that I didn’t—New England sailors often knew how to knit, and Thomas did have a garment in his boxes that he had knitted for himself. I wondered if all the other men in our party were as interesting to their wives as Thomas was to me. For the most part, it didn’t seem so, though at our Sunday service I had discovered all the Smithsons to be possessed of lovely voices, many skills on the instruments they had brought along with them to K.T. (in preference to pots and pans), and a deep knowledge of songs, both religious and secular. I pondered Thomas.

He said, "Would you care to go along tonight?"

This surprised me. "Do you wish me to?"

"Remember the Misses Tonkin? They said never to restrict you or tell you what to do."

"I think they were talking about finances, not violence."

"I don’t know that I’m talking about violence."

But I knew that he was. Having lived all his life among New Englanders, he thought that the talking could go on forever and arrive finally at reason. Having lived all my life along the river, I knew the more likely outcome. It scared me, and I shook my head. A bit later, he got up, took his hat and jacket and gun, and went out the door. Shortly after that, I heard Jeremiah trot away.

Now, of course, there was no sleeping. I didn’t bother to change into my nightdress but merely rolled up in my favorite quilt and lay down on the bed. Over the weeks, I had chinked the cabin, not well, but well enough. The chill air crept in, rattling the newspapers pasted to the logs, but the pale light of the moon and stars was excluded; the inside of the cabin was as dark as a cistern. Already our peace of a few weeks before, when the weather was warm and the moon shone upon us through our sail, seemed long past and much to be yearned for. I feared for my husband. His quiet resolve could easily, I thought, press him toward a fight. On this slavery question, he didn’t know or understand how to take a realistic position. Southerners were well known to argue and bluster about slavery, but they would fight to the death about one thing only, and that was what they called honor and what my sister Miriam had called prickly pride. They didn’t like to be injured, but they hated to be insulted. And you couldn’t always guess in advance which was which—partly that depended on the level of whiskey intake that had been achieved. I remembered an incident from long before, sometime when I was a child. I was at Horace’s store with my mother. It was deep winter, and Horace was putting on his boots to go out into the snow, when a man pushed through the door, his pistols drawn, shouting, "Horace Silk, you will cheat me no more! Those mules I sold you for a hundred dollars you turned around and sold to Jed Bindle for two fifty, and you an’t given me none of the profits!"

Horace took a moment to stamp his feet into his boots and then shouted, "Kite, you are lying to blacken my reputation in front of my family!" And then Kite leveled the pistols at him and said, "I wasn’t going to shoot you before, Horace, I just wanted my share of the profits, but now you have insulted my honor, and if I don’t shoot you, then I will never speak to you again!" He was serious, too, but then Horace’s father, Jonas, interposed and explained to the man Kite the role of the middleman in every mercantile transaction, and my mother stepped forward and persuaded him to come farther into the store and get warm, knowing that he was less likely to shoot Horace right in front of her. We had always told this as a funny story, but now it seemed only frightening.

A northerner, insensitive in some ways and full of self-righteousness, could gravely offend a southerner in a second. The northerner would be giving his general opinion, more than likely unasked for, and all unknowingly challenging the southerner’s every deeply held belief, not to mention, with sundry looks and expressions, suggesting that the southerner was possessed of numerous flaws of character and person. The southerner was bound to see offense in every suggestion, insult in every difference of opinion, and to act upon his stung pride. Better a man were dead than that he thought ill of you. The northerner, the Yankee, didn’t seem to care about differences of opinion. He had the blithe and unsociable conviction, which poured out with every utterance, that he was so completely in the right that what other men thought didn’t bother him. I thought these Missourians, or Louisianans, whatever they were, would get fed up at last and shoot everyone of our party, and then—