“I love you.” She said it grudgingly, unwilling, because it was true.
He kept his hands rigidly at his sides, but his gray eyes embraced her till her pulse leaped. She felt utterly soft, utterly yielding, his woman, eager, mutilated without him.
“Come with me,” he said.
“Stay.”
His muscles tightened, cording his neck and jaw. “I’ll, take care of Rolf for you before I leave the Territory,” he said. Swinging around, he strode toward the field.
Deborah clenched her hands and clamped her teeth tightly together. Why couldn’t he have the decency to leave? Now she’d have to see him in front of her, endure his presence for a few more hours, battle against succumbing. Perhaps it was difficult for him, too. She hoped so.
In a few hours, the last bundle was shocked. Dane put the cradle out of sight in the stable, then splashed his face and arms beneath rolled-up sleeves. Deborah unfastened the Saint Rita’s medal and tried to give it to him.
“There’s no use in my wearing this,” she said, aching, hurting, wishing him gone.
He said with an edge of mockery, “My willful darling, as patron of lost causes, she’s more appropriate than ever.” More softly, he added, “Remember me a while.”
“Dane—”
With a smothered sound, he drew her out of earshot of the others. “Deborah, I’m not just being bloody-minded. I thought most of the night about staying, but it comes down to being pushed into the sort of thing I swore I was done with in the Crimea, and worse, seeing you buffeted and suffering.”
“But—”
“I don’t believe you should be here,” he cut in brusquely, “more than ever after what’s happened. I want you more than I’ve wanted anything, but I won’t have you by sacrificing my duty to my wife.”
When he talked like this, when he tried to make her understand—and she did—Deborah was robbed of the support of anger. Mournfully, she said, “I believe you. Please believe me.”
His breath escaped in a shudder. “I do. That’s what makes it hard.”
He brought her hands to his lips, swore, and swept her against him, kissing her till her arms closed around his neck and she knew only that she couldn’t bear to lose him.
“Good-bye, my sweetheart.” He put her away from him, his face twisted with pain. “I’ll see you again after I’ve found Rolf and talked some sense into him. Keep wearing that medal. Maybe the lady can work a miracle for us!”
He collected his gear, saddled up, told Cobie she was a good harvester, thanked Conrad again for sheltering Deborah, and said good-bye to her with a crooked smile.
Then he turned his big gray horse and started toward town. Deborah wrenched her gaze away from him. “We’d better go,” she said. “We’re all finished here.”
June passed with no word from Dane. July 5 came and Deborah wondered what was happening at the constitutional convention in Wyandotte. Judging from the past, it’d take the delegates weeks to accomplish anything, but she told Conrad in a burst of irritation that if someone didn’t bring news by the end of the month, she was riding to the smithy. She wanted to see Judith and Sara, anyway, especially Sara.
Strange. Since she’d last seen her friend, Sara had become Johnny’s wife, and in a month or so now she would be a mother. All that winter and spring, Thos’s baby had grown from a tiny seed toward what would be a separate person, mingling the looks and characteristics of the parents. It was heartbreaking that Thos would never see the child, but at least he’d made one with the woman he loved, and Johnny would care for it as if it’d been his own.
As July passed, Deborah also began to worry about Dane. He’d be searching for Rolf among border riff-raff, men who cut throats on a whim. His accent and manner were enough to brand him as a “Yankee” to belligerents.
If he simply disappeared, she didn’t know how to learn what had happened. Johnny could probably ferret it out by hanging around the river towns, but she hated to ask that. As well as being dangerous, it’d take him away from his work and Sara. Deborah wished she could go herself, but it was unthinkable for a lone woman to undertake such a hunt. Even so, as her anxiety grew, the thought began to persist in her mind rather than being immediately dismissed.
A woman couldn’t frequent Westport dives, but a boy might.
While she was mulling this over and helping with the busy round of summer work, a small caravan came into view one late afternoon in early August. Deborah and Ansjie stopped picking strawberries, and Deborah, heart thudding, moved into the shelter of the well-house. It didn’t seem likely that Rolf would travel with a wagon, but—
“Why, they’re black people!” Ansjie cried. “Richtigen Schwarzer!”
Deborah, from the door, shielded her eyes. “That’s Maccabee! Ansjie, these must be runaways! But that man lying in the wagon, he’s white, and he must be sick or hurt.”
They caught up their skirts and ran toward the village green, where Elder Goerz and Conrad were already greeting the wayfarers and hearing Maccabee’s explanation.
“These five folks here, they crossed over from Missouri with Doc Challoner. He lived in the big middle of a slaveownin’ part and couldn’t stand it no more.” Maccabee grinned. “Figgered if he was makin’ the jaunt to Kansas, he might as well bring out a few of his neighbor’s slaves.”
“Is he sick?” Ansjie hurried over to the wagon.
“Bad shoulder wound. The slave-catchers would’ve had him for sure, but Rebe here”—he nodded at the tallest Negro—“found a cave and they holed up till their old masters quit huntin’. Doc had found out about stations from Doy, who’s been sentenced to the Missouri pen along with his men. So Doc sent Rebe ahead to the smithy, and Johnny told me to take the wagon for Doc and bring everybody along here.”
He beamed.
“Get this poor man into bed!” ruled Ansjie.
“He can have mine,” said Conrad. “Now, Elder Goerz, we need to find places for five men.”
Deborah and Ansjie climbed on the wagon seat with Maccabee, who said it would be best if the fugitives could hide till autumn lessened the westward teeming of gold- and land-seekers. “Then we’ll start them north,” he said.
Challoner wasn’t a small man, but fever had wasted him. Maccabee carried him easily into Conrad’s bedroom and placed him on the downy featherbed, removing his boots.
All this time Challoner hadn’t opened his eyes. He had reddish-brown hair and a square, pleasant face. There was something pathetic about the way his blunt, capable fingers lay useless.
“Hot water!” said Ansjie. “Cloths! Soap! And broth!”
Following her, Deborah asked Maccabee if he’d bathe the young man. “Get him into a pair of Conrad’s drawers,” Ansjie requested, bustling about the kitchen, handing Maccabee a basin of warm water, soap, and towels while Deborah put chicken stock on to heat.
“The poor man!” Ansjie kept repeating as she roved the kitchen and porch, looking for things he might eat. “Starved, he is, on top of his wound! But too much at first we must not give him. Applesauce?”
“That should be good. Maybe wheat cooked in milk?”
Ansjie nodded and started the wheat while Deborah got applesauce from the cellar. “First broth,” decided Ansjie. “Then, if he feels like it, the soft wheat. And for the poor shoulder, healing ointment and a clean bandage!”
She was collecting these when Maccabee came out with well-used water and towels. “Doc’s ready for you ladies now. I’ll go see how Rebe and the others are doin’.”
The young doctor’s eyes were still closed when the women put down the tray and bandages on the night table. A sheet was drawn up to his chin. His clothes, including a torn and bloody shirt, were folded neatly on a stool beside his boots.
“Doctor?” Ansjie said softly.
He opened his eyes. They were brown—rich, deep brown with hazel sparkles. A smile spread from them to his mouth. “I’ve died and gone to heaven!”
Ansjie caught in her breath with a li
ttle, excited happy laugh. She had on a blue dress that matched her eyes, and something about this man touched off a magic, made her glow.
“Let me hold you up,” she said. “You have this good soup. Then we dress your wound, yes? Then you have the wheat. Later, applesauce.” Helping him sit up, plumping pillows about him, she forestalled his question. “The five with you are being taken care of. You, you must not worry—you must get well!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
His meekness held a twinkle, and he seemed to lean against Ansjie a bit more than was necessary. Or was it that she pressed forward? At any rate, when Conrad joined them, the amused look in his eyes confirmed what Deborah was thinking.
Ansjie’s man had come.
Rebe and his friends had been taken into homes that could best accommodate them. They would help with the work, of which there was plenty, and go north when the seasonal swarming west was over. Maccabee ate dinner before starting back and patiently answered Deborah’s questions.
No, neither of the Hunters had been around the smithy and there was no news of them. Sara was fine. Looked like she might have twins. Maybe Doc Challoner would be hearty again in time to take care of her. Doc wasn’t going north; he planned to settle in Kansas, which he admired for its struggle to be a free state.
“Though I don’t know about those delegates at Wyandotte,” sniffed Maccabee. “They sure ain’t gone hog-wild on who can vote! They listened polite to a lady who argued for woman suffrage but turned her down. Did give women equal rights to property and young ’uns.”
“Did they prohibit slavery?” Conrad pressed.
Maccabee nodded. “Forty-eight to one. Don’t mean they love us. Blacks can’t vote and they came mighty close to keepin’ us out of public schools. Some even wanted to make it against the law for us to come into Kansas after the constitution’s ’dopted.”
“Oh, how could they?” Deborah cried in wrath.
Careful, careful people, wanting a free state but none of the risks, more concerned with economics than people! No wonder Dan Anthony’s sister Susan thought women should vote! They should help make laws, too, and maybe they’d be fairer!
“They didn’t get away with it,” Maccabee pointed out. He shrugged. “Slow, Miss Deborah, mighty slow, but it’s movin’. My people will get the vote one day.”
Maccabee went on to say that the delegates had battled over state boundaries and the capital. Some wanted to annex the part of Nebraska south of the Platte. Others feared that would add to Democratic strength or locate the capital farther west.
“So Nebraska keeps its Platte country,” concluded Maccabee, “and Kansas don’ stretch out to Denver no more.”
“What about the capital?” Deborah asked. That would be an important prize for any town, and Lawrence, the Free State citadel from its founding, had high hopes.
“Topeka,” said Maccabee. “Only other towns in the runnin’ were Atchison and Lawrence. ’Course, they all accused each other of bribery and vote-buyin’.”
Conrad shook his head, fascinated at his chosen land’s way of government. Chuckling, Maccabee went on to say that naturally none of the delegates had been born in the Territory, but it was interesting where they had come from.
Eńgland, Scotland, Germany, Ireland, and Virginia had given one delegate each. There were fourteen from Ohio and about the same number from all the New England states. Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky contributed seven, six, and five, respectively. A real mixed bag.
“Once Indians aren’t the only ones who can say they were born here, I’ll wager that becomes an important factor,” Conrad remarked. “Were most of the delegates lawyers?”
“Eighteen of them to sixteen farmers. Sizable sprinklin’ of merchants, a few doctors and manufacturers, and a surveyor, a mechanic, one land agent, and one printer.”
“All white,” said Deborah. “All men.”
The enormity had never struck her this deeply before. But to hear of the framing of a new state’s constitution without women having a vote, to know it would be voted on only by men—that galled, especially when she thought of her mother, of Judith, and Sara. The most stupid, bigoted, depraved white man could vote, but no woman and no Negro, and most Indians were members of their tribes, not citizens.
Maccabee’s teeth flashed. He said, with ironic enjoyment, “Well, Miss Deborah, once you get us slaves freed, you can think on how to get free yourself!”
She fixed an indignant eye on him. “When you get the vote, Maccabee, you’d better help me get it, or I’ll—well, you won’t be any better than that crowd in Wyandotte that just refused suffrage to Negroes!”
He raised one shoulder. “Miss Deborah, I don’t reckon we’ll be much better. But this country got the dream of freedom. It keeps movin’ that way.”
So in October, white males over twenty-one who’d been residents of Kansas for six months and were U.S. citizens, or had announced the intent to become so, would vote on the constitution, which would then go to Congress for approval. Thos’s baby would be born in a Territory, but before he could say he was a Kansan, it should be a state. A free one.
Deborah thought of riding back to the smithy with Maccabee and from there deciding how to trace Dane. But for a few days Ansjie was going to be preoccupied with the doctor, and Deborah felt an obligation to see how the runaways settled into Friedental.
They settled well, working hard to repay their hosts. They gathered on the green after supper and sang and talked because most of the day they were working separated. The children of the village started shyly coming to listen till bedtime, which came early since the workday began before dawn.
Rebe proved to be a blacksmith and liked Friedental so much that he asked if he could stay. The council voted to welcome him and to buy or barter the anvil and other tools he’d need.
“Johnny might have some things he could give,” suggested Deborah. “Perhaps I could take a message to him. I’ve been wanting to go to the smithy. In fact,” she added slowly, “it’s really time I moved back. Sara’s baby will come next month, and I want to be there. If Dane couldn’t find Rolf in all these weeks, he must have left the Territory.”
Ansjie looked distressed, but not nearly as much as she would have before the doctor’s advent. Once where he could be comfortable and well-tended, he’d improved rapidly and was sitting up today for the first time, joining the family for supper.
“Why don’t you wait,” Ansjie suggested, “for your Mr. Hunter to come back?”
“I’ve waited long enough.”
Ansjie sighed. “You’ll come stay with us often? You won’t forget?”
“I’ll never forget,” said Deborah warmly. “You more than saved my life—you saved my mind! And of course I’ll come when I can.”
Challoner flexed his capable hands and his brown eyes were kind. “In a few more weeks I should be able to tend to your friend. If she’ll let me know when she’s expecting, I could go a week early and be ready when she is.”
Ansjie looked less than thrilled at such an absence, but she said admiringly, “Mrs. Chaudoin will be fortunate! I hope when I—” She broke off in confusion, pinker than a rose.
Doc laughed. “I think I can promise that you’ll have the best of care! After all, won’t you have a doctor in the house?”
“What?” blinked Ansjie.
He put his hand over hers. “I didn’t mean to blurt it out like this, Miss Ansjie, but I surely am hoping you’ll be my wife! Come on, now! You must know that!”
“I—I—” Her blue eyes glowed. “Oh, Doc! Doc! Ich liebe dich!”
Conrad said to Deborah, “Shall we take a walk?”
And so it was that two days later, leaving Ansjie and Challoner betrothed, with Mrs. Balzer moved in as a chaperone, Deborah started off to the smithy, escorted by Conrad. She had her clothes and Conrad’s translations, but she’d stored Dane’s sketch pad in the carved chest of household things.
It was like storing the past with a future that migh
t never come. But it wasn’t possible to shut away her love for Dane.
xix
The gardens of Friedental were green because people carried water to them from the well or creek, but away from the life-giving stream and its trees and thickets, the grass was sere and brittle, the wind a dry scourge that cracked lips and made eyes smart. Conrad had insisted that Deborah wear one of his broad-brimmed hats, but she was still dizzy from the heat when they stopped at noon to water and rest the horses.
She drank thirstily, splashed her face and hands, and held her wrists under the water for cooling. The thought of food was repulsive.
Conrad, scanning her sharply, cut off small crisp slices of apple from one of his trees and made her eat them. The tart, sweet juiciness gradually whetted her appetite, and Conrad made her lie back against the packs while he fed her bites of bread, cheese, and smoked ham, himself eating between his ministrations.
“Shall we go on now?” he asked presently. “We could wait a few hours and still be there before dark.”
“We might as well travel,” she said. “It’s too hot to get much relief from it. Conrad, do you realize there hasn’t been a rain that wet more than the surface in over two months?”
“I know it very well. The council has talked of little else their past few meetings.” How reassuring was that familiar smile of his! “In Germany we think we’re in a drought if two weeks pass without rain. Still, our corn is fine and tall this year, and the wheat was good. It won’t be a hungry winter.
But what about next? thought Deborah. What if it doesn’t rain in time to help the spring crops?
She pushed the fear aside. It would rain. There’d be snow to melt and sink into the earth. She sighed as Conrad helped her into the saddle, smoothed Chica’s sweating neck, and lifted the reins.
It was still punishingly hot when they reached the smithy in mid-afternoon, but Johnny, Maccabee, and Laddie were heating and hammering away. Johnny roared at them to go on in and make themselves at home. Several wayfarers, gold-seekers from the look of their gear, lounged under the trees, waiting to have their horses shod or other work done.
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