Daughter of the Sword

by Jeanne Williams

  Sara came out as quickly as she could, burdened so heavily that it seemed she couldn’t carry the baby much longer. In spite of her awkwardness, there was a sort of blooming about her that made her eyes shine and her skin glow.

  At least she’d had her lover; at least she’d have his baby. And she was loved and protected by a man who’d cherish that child of another man’s. Deborah wondered, with a cry of inner despair, if she and Dane would ever have that much.

  While the women embraced and Sara drew Deborah inside, Conrad led the horses around to the stable. A safe distance from the door and curious eyes, Judith hugged Deborah, too, and announced that she and Maccabee had been married “proper and fast” by a circuit-riding Methodist preacher who’d stayed the night a few weeks ago. Deborah was glad for her and said so, but the news made her feel more solitary than ever.

  Each of her friends had loved and lost a man, then found another. Their lives flowed on while hers seemed stranded on Dane’s immovability and her own sworn purpose. But she was going to look for him, try to be sure that at least he was alive. And behind that resolve was the persistent, though rebuked, hope that he might change his mind, might stay with her.

  Nothing had been seen or heard of him at the smithy, or of Rolf, either. Deborah learned this before Conrad joined them. There was nothing for it, then, but to borrow some of Laddie’s clothes, get another Bowie, and head for Westport. After Conrad was safely gone, of course.

  During and after supper they exchanged news. Dr. Challoner’s offer to attend Sara was gladly accepted by Johnny, though Sara looked mutinous and said she could manage perfectly well with Judith and Deborah.

  “I’d rather you had the doctor,” Deborah said so fervently that everyone laughed. “Besides, he might bring Ansjie with him, and you’d like her. They plan to marry.”

  Her only other friend! Why was it that none of them had to choose between love and responsibility?

  Johnny told how Doy had been tried again in June and sentenced to the penitentiary. Free Staters had met at Elwood and crossed into Missouri on Saturday, July 23, getting the lay of the town. That night, during a storm, they came to the jail, pretending to have a horse-thief prisoner. When the jailer let them in, they held a gun on him and made him release Doy. Mingling outside with crowds just getting out of the theater, they managed to get away and escape into Kansas.

  Friends met them at the river. They triumphantly took Doy to Lawrence and celebrated his liberation with a big reception.

  “Was John Brown in on that?” Deborah asked.

  Johnny shook his head. “Don’t think he’s been in Kansas since he got away with that bunch of slaves. Probably chasin’ around up north raisin’ money from the abolitionists and cookin’ up some prairie fire scheme.” He looked thoughtfully from Conrad to Deborah. “So you think it’s time to come back, honey?”

  She nodded. “I can’t hide away forever.”

  “Wouldn’t exactly call it hidin’,” Johnny chided. “I bet the way you taught their children had somethin’ to do with the Friedentalers voting to be an underground station.”

  “It did,” said Conrad to her surprise. “If Deborah hadn’t made the Territory’s problems real to them, it would’ve been easy to decide to keep clear.”

  With mixed feelings, she pondered that. She was grateful if she’d had anything to do with the decision to shelter runaways, but feeling the weight. If that peaceful valley were ravaged as her home had been—It couldn’t happen! Missourians had never raided that far. Besides, Friedental was tucked far away from the main routes, scarcely known about.

  But concern for the village had been irrevocably added to her other debts.

  Johnny said the village could probably get an anvil from the new foundry in town, but he could swap them about everything else they’d need to set Rebe up. “Glad you’ve got a smith,” he said. “I’m snowed under, what with all these folks goin’ west, and about the time we see the last of them, everyone’ll be bringin’ in their butcherin’ tools or needin’ new ones. And, of course, they’ll tote along every dad-burned broken chain, hook, shaft, plowshare, or axe that they’ve been gettin’ by with all summer while they were too busy to bring ’em in.” He snorted. “So I’ll have to pound on their stuff all winter whilst they lounge between their barn and house just waitin’ for spring so they can bust everything up again!”

  “But Johnny,” remonstrated Sara, smoothing his sideburns, “if people didn’t need new things or old ones fixed, you’d have no trade.”

  He looked astounded. “Cesli tatanka! You’re a smart wastewin on top of bein’ pretty!”

  “Pretty?” She laughed, ruefully glancing at her ripening belly. “I’m bigger than a buffalo!”

  “Hell, you’re goin’ to have a big strong boy! And it’s time you went to bed! You gals’re goin’ to have plenty of time to catch up on all your chatter.”

  “First let me be sure Laddie hasn’t made the bedroom a pigpen,” Sara insisted. As she and Deborah went down the covered passage to the small separate cabin, Sara asked, “You sent Dane Hunter away? Again?”

  “I had to. He still wanted me to leave.”

  “Stiff-necked creatures! Both of you!”

  Deborah let that pass. She helped Sara toss Laddie’s things to one end of the partitioned room and put fresh sheets on what had been Sara’s bed. “I’m worried about Dane, Sara. I want to go look for him.”

  Straightening in shock, Sara gazed in disbelief. “Look for him? In those rough hangouts where he’s hunting his no-good brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Meshema, you’re crazy!”

  “I have to know if he’s all right.”

  Starting to argue, Sara frowned, then shrugged. “Wait till Johnny’s work lets up. Then he’ll go.”

  “That’ll be weeks yet! Besides, you heard him saying tonight there won’t be much of an improvement. And the baby’s coming. No, Sara, I’m the one who has to know, so it’s up to me to find out!”

  “If you travel alone and poke into the kind of places where men hang out, you’ll be taken for a prostitute.”

  Deborah laughed. “Not if I borrow some of Laddie’s clothes.”

  Sara sank down on the bed. “Crazy! Plain crazy!” She pointed at Deborah’s breasts. “What’ll you do about those?”

  “Wrap a cloth around to flatten me. And I’ll cut my hair.”

  “Would you like to glue on some of Johnny’s beard?”

  “It’ll work, Sara.” She peered in the mirror. “With my hair short, I’ll look almost like Thos when he was about fourteen.”

  “Hah!”

  “Hah all you want, but I’m going.”

  “Johnny’ll have a fit!”

  “Johnny doesn’t have to know. You can just say I forgot something and went to look for it. He’ll think I’m at Friedental and won’t worry if I’m slow coming back.”

  “That’s the same as lying!”

  Deborah picked up a relatively clean pair of brown corduroy pants and an old red shirt. “Would you rather bend the truth a little or have Johnny get mixed up in something that’s not his problem at all?”

  Sara didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, “When do you do this crazy thing?”

  “Conrad should leave tomorrow. So I’ll start very early the next morning.”

  “Sneaking off from your friends,” reproached Sara.

  Deborah held the clothes up against her, nodding approval. “Just so,” she said.

  Conrad set off after breakfast, saying he’d send someone with a wagon for the smithy tools. After their good-byes, Sara shooed the others away so that Deborah was left looking up at him, heart unbearably heavy at the parting. She loved him, not as she did Dane, but as a friend who’d sustained her through a time when without his special understanding, her inner self might have curled up tight and withered.

  Something of a father, something of a brother, something of a lover. Wholly a wise, strong, and gentle man.

  �
��I can never thank you,” she said, tears coming to her eyes. “But at least we’ll see each other sometimes.”

  He smiled. “We will. So let’s not be sad.” His eyes changed. One hand dropped to her shoulder while the other tilted up her face. “Farewells have their sweet parts,” he said, and he kissed her.

  His mouth was cool and firm, till with an incaught breath, he swept her against him and his lips grew searching, hungry, demanding, rousing sensations in her that she tried to escape by pushing at him, trying to twist away.

  He took away his mouth and held her till she was quiet, sobbing. “Oh, my love!” he said, stroking her hair. “Thorny wild rose! Does it distress you so much to think that if you let me, I could make you love me?”

  She couldn’t answer. He dropped a light kiss on her cheek, and swung up on his big gray horse. She felt a terrible sense of loss as he rode away. Turning back to the cabin, she went swiftly to work, and she put him and that shattering kiss determinedly from her mind.

  It was necessary for one person to know what she was doing in order to keep the others from looking for her, but Deborah decided not to tell Judith. She’d only argue, perhaps try to come along. Then Maccabee would have to know and there’d be a mess.

  Sara had put some food in a bag and told Deborah to take blankets and whatever else she needed, all the while asserting that this was the most hare-brained notion she’d ever heard of.

  “I expect so, Deborah soothed. “But there are lots of boys this age looking for work or running away west. No one’ll pay any attention to me.”

  “Cesli tatanka!” Sara replied.

  Deborah had her pack ready: food, canteen, bedroll, extra socks and underwear. Sara’s shears were hidden under the bed for use first thing next morning. She wished for a change of clothes, but though Laddie probably wouldn’t miss one set of garments, he hadn’t so many that more could vanish without his noticing.

  That day she’d asked Johnny for a plain Bowie and he’d loaned her an old one, promising to make her one as fancy as that which Rolf had taken when work slacked off a trifle. Deborah felt guilty at deceiving him, but she knew he’d never let her go alone. Long after Laddie was breathing heavily beyond the partition, she lay awake, alternately exhilarated and frightened.

  She wasn’t too nervous about masquerading as a boy. Growing up with Thos made it easy to swagger a bit, whistle, thrust hands in pockets, sprawl when sitting. But would she find Dane? And supposing she met Rolf? Shorn hair and trousers wouldn’t fool him.

  Still, she never seriously thought of abandoning her scheme. She’d waited long enough. This was the kind of adventure Thos would’ve loved. She seemed to feel the closeness of his eager, questing spirit.

  Ride with me, Thos, she told him. You understand. And you know about your baby, don’t you? He’ll be born soon and we’ll all love him just as we loved you. Her brother seemed to smile at her, silently tell her she should seek her love, and she drifted deeper and deeper into sleep.

  She kept rousing, though, her senses alerted for the faintest light, and at last, though she didn’t know what time it was, she rose, made the bed, and dressed in the dark except for the boots Lorenz Schroeder had made for her.

  Getting out the shears, she hesitated, nerving herself as she gripped a handful of hair close beneath the ear. She’d so often detested the trouble of brushing and washing the long curly mane that she should’ve been glad to be rid of it, but as she took a deep breath and chopped away, it felt like a mutilation. Still, it had to be done. Later, with a mirror, she could even out the jagged edges.

  When the cutting was done, she put the long tresses beneath the bed, not quite able to throw them out. Hanging the sheathed Bowie at her side beneath the trousers, she took her equipment and Conrad’s hat, then went around to the stable without passing through the main cabin. A wavery gray was showing in the east, but she’d be several miles away before even Johnny stirred.

  Nuzzling for a treat, Chica accepted part of the apple that was Deborah’s breakfast and made no trouble at being prepared for the road at this unseemly hour. She never puffed up with air, as many horses did, so that the cinch later got loose and let the saddle slip to one side or the other.

  “We’re going to look for the man who gave you to me,” Deborah told her, leading her through the stableyard and mounting only when they were well away from the buildings. Picking up the rutted road along the Kaw, Deborah let Chica pick her own gait but was glad it was a trot.

  Even this early it wasn’t cool. For weeks the sun had sent down scorching heat as soon as it toiled heavily into the sky. Spurts of powdery dust rose from Chica’s hooves, and as the sky lightened, Deborah saw gaping cracks where grass was worn away beside the road and there was nothing to hold the parched earth together.

  She wondered how many of the prairie chicks were finding enough food. Most of them, of course, wouldn’t have lived this long. They were tasty morsels for skunks, wolves, coyotes, foxes, and birds of prey. But these also ate vast numbers of rodents and rabbits, which, unchecked, would destroy the prairie chickens’ food and shelter.

  Johnny said that half the prairie birds built nests on the ground and another third selected weeds or small shrubs. If this drought stretched on, every creature from field mouse to man would suffer. No legislating or planning could change that. It did seem that with all the natural travail man was heir to, he wouldn’t try to create more!

  Deborah passed a wagon whose encamped owners were beginning to stir. She spoke, and received a cheerfully unsuspicious return. As she rode on, she realized she’d been holding her breath, another tightness added to the binding around her breasts, and she laughed, taking a deep breath and whistling as Thos might have done.

  She might be recognized in Lawrence, so, though tempted to inquire there about the Hunters, she decided to pass around Mount Oread. Rather than push Chica to reach Westport late that night, she’d camp in some ravine tonight before it got dark, then enter the Border Ruffians’ town tomorrow while she could look around in daylight.

  If she learned nothing in Westport, she’d ride to Wyandotte, and if that was fruitless, she’d spend the night at the Shawnee mission. Leavenworth the next day, then probably Independence.

  And then?

  Oh, surely one of those places would turn up news of him! His English accent was sure to be noticed. But if she learned nothing? Nothing at all?

  Her shoulders drooped before she set them straight. If a return through Westport yielded no clues, she’d go to Melissa Eden and ask if she knew Dane’s whereabouts. So long as it couldn’t interfere with her search, Deborah wasn’t going to worry about scandalization over her clothes. If Melissa knew nothing, Deborah could only go back to the smithy and hope Dane was still alive and would be in touch.

  Almost as desperately as she wished for that, she hoped she wouldn’t meet Rolf.

  It was getting hot. The cut ends of her hair prickled and stuck against her neck. She unbuttoned her shirt as low as possible without showing the binding. Chica had lapsed from a trot into a smooth, graceful single-footing that, though slower, was much easier on Deborah’s spine.

  They were halfway to Lawrence when Chica nickered and a horseman rode out of the trees in a ravine. The horse was gray. And the rider was Conrad.

  Quelling the impulse to whirl Chica and run, Deborah instead took the offensive. “You pretended to go home, but here you are, following me!”

  “I didn’t follow you, dear girl.” His tone was humorous, but there was a light in his eye that told Deborah he wasn’t to be blandished. “I went home to send a wagon for Rebe’s tools and to tell Dr. Challoner that he’d best take up residence at the smithy as soon as he’s mended, but then I cut across country. Far from following, I’ve been waiting for you for hours.”

  “Sara told you!”

  “She did.” The corners of his mouth twitched, though his expression was grave. “But don’t blame her too much. I knew you were planning something. When I asked what
it was and vowed I’d haunt the region unless she told, she found considerable relief in letting me worry about you, especially since I could do something about it.”

  Deborah flushed at the rebuke. “I didn’t want to worry her, Conrad, but—”

  “Someone had to cover up for you,” he said equably.

  She bit her lip, shamed at troubling Sara—and him—but still determined. “It’s no use arguing! I’m going to look for Dane.”

  He smiled and shook his head, eyes running over her in a swift caress. “Deborah, Deborah, you harrow up the instincts of my robber-baron ancestors! I could take you back.”

  She stared at him, instinctively tensing to spin Chica to the side and onward. “That won’t work,” he said. “You can’t lose me. But I’ll go with you.”

  “You?”

  “That’s why I came—to help you find your love.” He moved Sleipner in beside Chica, swept off Deborah’s hat, and exclaimed ruefully. “You’ve cut your hair! I was going to pass you off as my sister, but now you’ll have to be my scraggly young brother. I feel like sealing that relationship by giving you a good thrashing.” But from the way his eyes rested on her mouth, she knew that wasn’t what he wished most to do.

  Her chagrin faded as they traveled on. She hadn’t wanted to mix her friends up in her private search, but it was undeniably comforting to have Conrad beside her. Whereas a young boy, orphaned or runaway, might be brushed aside, people would pay attention to Conrad, make some effort to answer his questions. Conrad would have money; that might restore an innkeeper’s or saloon owner’s faulty memory. Without any conscious decision, Deborah stopped worrying and scheming. Conrad would know what to do and how to do it.

  As they came within sight of Lawrence and the familiar slope of Mount Oread, Conrad suggested that after they watered the horses, Deborah should rest and wait while he rode into town and inquired about the Hunters.

  “Mrs. Eden might know what a wayfarer stopping at the smithy wouldn’t,” he said reasonably. “And much as I enjoy being your escort, there are many places I’d rather take you than to brawling border towns.”