The Widow's War (22 page)

When he figures he’s run far enough, he grabs an overhanging limb, pulls himself up into a tree, and sits there, gasping for breath. His heart is beating so fast he can feel it pounding against his ribs, his stomach is churning, and the inside of his mouth is dry. He’s ridden into Missouri on four previous occasions and never felt so much as a prickle of fear. It’s an odd sensation, like coming back to life, and it’s all due to Carrie.

When he left Brazil, convinced she was dead, he changed. He’d always been a cautious man, but losing her brought out something wild in him that was both useful and extremely dangerous. For the better part of a year, he didn’t care if he lived or died. He was willing to take risks other men were reluctant to take—risks perhaps no man with a wife and children to go home to would take. As a result, he’s earned a reputation for bravery he doesn’t deserve. It wasn’t brave to be unable to feel fear. It was a kind of insanity brought on by grief. But now he has something to lose.

Gradually his breathing slows, and his heart begins to beat normally. Looking toward Hawkins’s farm, he sees that someone has lighted a lamp in an upstairs bedroom of the main house. A few moments later, a man and a woman walk out onto the front porch. The woman wears a cotton nightgown and holds a lantern. The man, presumably Hawkins, wears long underwear and holds a shotgun.

Hawkins yells something, but William can’t make out the words. Maybe he’s demanding to know who’s out there, maybe he’s cursing the dogs for waking him. It’s probably a little of both, because suddenly he lifts the shotgun and fires into the corn. Then he calls the dogs to him and gives each a hard kick.

The dogs grovel at his feet and follow him docilely to the sod hut where Hawkins checks the bar on the door to make sure it’s still firmly in place. Again he yells. No doubt he’s making sure the slaves are inside, but if they reply, their voices don’t carry to where William is sitting.

After walking around the place and peering into every corner, Hawkins returns to the house, and he and his wife go back inside. The lantern light traces their progress up the stairs and into the bedroom. For a minute or two the light goes on shining before they blow it out.

After that, there’s nothing to do but wait. Climbing down from the tree, William settles on a pile of dry leaves and tries to make himself comfortable. It’s a chilly night with a hint of rain in the air. He wishes he knew exactly how long it will take for the opium to do its work, but you never can tell with animals. A veterinarian once told him about being called to a circus to extract a decayed tusk from an elephant. The vet said he had calculated how much opium it would take to sedate a man, and then multiplied by the weight of the elephant. The tusk came out successfully, but the elephant slept for three days. The circus owner had been so upset, he’d challenged the vet to a duel.

William sits for the better part of an hour listening intently. Finally, he rises to his feet and walks back toward the farm. He’s out of meat and if Hawkins’s dogs are still awake, he’s going to be in serious trouble.

Stepping out of the corn, he freezes in place and waits for the barking to begin, but the only sound he hears is the dry stalks rattling behind him. Keeping to the shadows, he makes his way toward the sod hut. Just before he reaches it, he comes on one of the dogs stretched out full-length, fast asleep. It’s a nasty-looking beast with a large head and powerful shoulders, but its pelt is a beautiful grayish white that looks silver in the starlight.

Giving the dog a wide berth, William walks up to the door of the hut and draws back the bar. When the door swings open, the slaves are waiting for him. They’re taking nothing with them except some thin blankets and the clothes on their backs, most likely because they have nothing else to take.

“By the strength of hand, the Lord brought us out of Egypt,” William whispers.

“Out from the house of bondage,” one of the slaves replies.

Signals successfully exchanged, they shake hands all around, and William leads them away from Hawkins’s farm toward the woods where horses and armed men are waiting to conduct them to Kansas and freedom.

W
hen William slips in beside her, Carrie rolls toward him. Usually she’s the one who has cold hands and feet, but tonight it’s her turn to warm him. “Done?” she whispers.

“Yes. Are you all right?”

“Yes.” The truth is, not a minute has passed since he rode off when she hasn’t wondered if he’ll come back alive. Last night, she dreamed the slavers had caught him and hung him, and she couldn’t get to him in time to cut him down.

A strange honeymoon,
she thinks
. Sleeping outside the hotel for privacy, William disappearing and then coming back as if he hasn’t been gone, neither of us asking questions: no “Where have you been?” or “What have you done?”

She closes her eyes and thinks of the limestone caves they explored when they were children. They’d been forbidden to go anywhere near them, but they’d crawled in anyway with nothing but the stub of a stolen candle to light them back to the entrance. She remembers the bullets they threw into a bonfire, the bear they tracked to its den, the fast current that pulled her under when they were swimming in the river where they had no business swimming, and how William had gone in after her and pulled her to safety and called her a fool; and how afterwards they’d fought for hours over who was the biggest fool: her for nearly drowning herself or him for risking his life to save her.
We’re really no different than we’ve ever been
, she thinks, and moving closer to him, she falls asleep.

A little before sunrise, she wakes to find the top of the buffalo robe wet with dew. Giving William a quick kiss, she crawls out and gets dressed. When she looks toward Trout’s Hotel, she sees another wagon train has arrived during the night. It must have come in late, because the oxen are still in the corral, and no one is moving about.

William picks up the buffalo robe, gives it a shake, and folds it over his arm. He is about to bend over to retrieve his guns, when Carrie puts her hand on his arm. “Listen,” she says. “What’s that?”

They listen and hear the drumming of hoofbeats. Looking east, they see a dark smudge on the horizon growing larger by the second. The smudge divides into five, six—perhaps seven—men on horseback. The riders are whipping their horses, urging them forward with all possible speed.

“Travelers?”

“Not at this time of day, not at a full gallop. Stay here. Hide in the grass. Don’t come out where they can see you.” Throwing down the buffalo robe, William scoops up his guns and runs toward the hotel.

“Border ruffians!” he yells.

Carrie has never heard the term, but she instantly understands it means pro-slavers come over the border from Missouri. Crouching down, she parts the grass and sees William pounding on the door of the hotel.

“Trout, wake up! Gentlemen, arm yourselves!”

A few moments later, the riders gallop up in a cloud of dust. One leaps off his horse and points a pistol at William’s head. The man wears a flannel shirt, broad-brimmed felt hat, tall boots, a fringed buckskin jacket, and buckskin leggings with beadwork up the sides. He’s blond with a red beard: Irish or maybe German.

“You slave-stealing, abolitionist sonofabitch!” he yells as he advances on William. “I should shoot you where you stand, but I ain’t got time for it. Throw down your guns and surrender the fugitives.”

“What fugitives?” William’s pistols are pointed at the man’s chest. Can one of them shoot the other before getting shot? Carrie scrambles around looking for something to use as a weapon, but all she comes up with is a rock. William should have left her one of his guns. What if they recognize him as the man described in the wanted poster?

“You know damn well what fugitives! We got warrants to repossess three males slaves that go by the names of Bilander, Cush, and Marcellus, all legal property of one Amos Hawkins, and you’re concealing them in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act.”

“What are their last names?”

“They ain’t got no last names, damn it! They’re slaves.”

“Never heard of them.”

“We know you got Hawkins’s property,” another rider says. “Hand ’em over, or there’s gonna be one less abolitionist bastard voting come election time.”

“Trout!” a third rider yells, “open your damn door right now or we’ll break it down!”

The door of the hotel opens and the barrel of a shotgun emerges. Behind it stands Mr. Trout. “Go back to Missouri, boys,” Trout says. “We ain’t got no runaway slaves in here, and if you’ll look up, you’ll see why breakin’ down my door is a mighty poor idea.”

The raiders look up. At each of the six second-story windows stands a New England abolitionist with a gun. Most wear the long underwear they were sleeping in when awakened, but one has slipped into a suit coat and another has put on a top hat. In the light of day, it’s clear Trout’s is constructed to serve as a fortress. The windows are narrow with heavy shutters that can be slammed shut, and there must be a hatch somewhere because more armed men stand on the roof.

“Damn yer eyes!” yells the leader of the Missourians. “Y’all brought a whole army out from Massachusetts!”

“We reckon we got a right to defend ourselves,” Trout says.

“You treasonous bastards are in violation of the laws of the United States of America!”

“And proud of it,” William says. Carrie is afraid this remark is going to get him shot, but the man in the buckskin jacket merely spits a mouthful of tobacco juice on the ground and glares at him and then at Mr. Trout.

“Trout, we know you’re harboring them fugitive slaves, but you got us outgunned. You damn well better keep a bucket of water handy, because someday soon we’re gonna come back and burn you out.” He gestures to the other raiders. “Come on, boys.”

They ride off, but apparently they don’t go far, because as the teamsters are hitching up the oxen and the emigrants are climbing into the wagons, another smudge appears on the horizon. This one is long and gray with dirty yellow borders, and it brings with it the smell of smoke.

“Prairie fire!” shriek the New England ladies. Gathering up their children, they start to head for the creek, but Mr. Trout stops them.

“No need, ladies. The fools got the wind wrong.” And sure enough, the flames that were meant to burn Trout’s Hotel sweep by without touching it. Still the fire is an alarming sight. The red, crackling inferno moves faster than a horse can gallop, driving animals out of the grass. Carrie sees soot-covered rabbits running for their lives, deer, a small herd of buffalo.

“Buffalo fur burns right slow,” Mr. Trout remarks, “which is why they ain’t runnin’ full out.” He is standing beside Carrie picking his teeth with an ivory toothpick. “This is a pissant fire as fires go. I cleared a firebreak around this place last spring. About all this blaze is gonna do is clear a bigger break, so those Missouri bastards—saving your presence, Miz Vinton—can’t try this particular trick again for at least a year.”

Marching down a gully, the fire finally puts itself out in the creek, leaving a black swath of burned-out prairie in its wake.
Such a waste
, Carrie thinks, but when she voices this sentiment to Mr. Trout, he grins.

“No use getting’ upset about a prairie fire, unless it burns down your house or takes your crops. The Indians light ’em all the time to clear the brush. Makes hunting easier. Of course a big one, well that’s another matter. You get in the way of a big fire racin’ across the prairie, and you’ll go deaf from the roar of it, if you don’t choke yourself sick or burn to a crisp first.”

“Thank you, Mr. Trout. I find the idea of burning to a crisp very encouraging.”

Trout nods and says without a trace of irony: “Yer welcome, ma’am.”

Again the wagons prepare to leave, but there is still another surprise in store, for when the fire has burned itself out completely, three figures emerge from the charred grass so covered with mud and soot that for a few seconds it’s impossible to tell if they’re male or female.

“You Bilander, Cush, and Marcellus?” Trout yells.

“Yes, sir,” the tallest of the three yells back.

“Well come on in and wash up.”

The last Carrie sees of the three fugitive slaves, they’re being handed pans of water and soap by Mr. Trout’s Yankee cook.

O
f course, I already know how they escaped,” Carrie says, “not to mention why they chose to sleep out in the open last night instead of bedding down in the hotel where they might be trapped and retaken, but I’ll hold my tongue and ask no questions.” She is riding beside William on a mule, Trout not having had a horse to rent, and as a result they are moving slowly in the wake of the wagon train.

William flicks her a sideways glance and grins. “You ever hear the term ‘jayhawk,’ sweetheart?”

“No, I can’t say that I have.”