Johnny squinted at the woman under bristling eyebrows. “I reckon if there’s any scandal, Missus, it mayn’t go well for them as spread it.”
Handsome, ruffle-capped Mrs. Cordley covered Deborah’s hand with her own and Reverend Cordley sighed. “The people of Lawrence owe Deborah every grace after being so quick to believe what others”—here he gave Melissa a meaningful look—“said about her sanity last winter. It’s no wonder that she’s adopted unusual methods.”
“Oh, indeed!” agreed Melissa, but her bland smile couldn’t disguise the eagerness in her voice as she searched Deborah’s face. “Did you find Dane Hunter?”
Find Dane? With shock, Deborah remembered that all this had happened because she’d tried to do that. Conrad’s death, her body’s plunder, Rolf’s blood on her hands. It did no good to tell herself that meeting Rolf’s party had probably saved Friedental from pillage and its runaways from being returned to slavery.
Conrad had died on her account, because of her self-will. The thought of Dane now brought revulsion, self-hatred.
Find him? She never wanted to see him again. Her bruised, aching body shrank when she thought of a lover. The rape had sealed her more tightly than any nun’s vows.
“No,” she said to Melissa, “I didn’t find him.”
That night she dreamed. Her mother lay in a coffin and a sword was in her hands. Thos, Father, and Conrad stood in the shadows, and though Deborah saw no wounds on them, she knew they were dead. Her mother’s coffin was large; there was room enough for her. Deborah longed to lie down beside this woman who’d given her birth, return to her beginnings, but the sword, the eyes of her watching loved ones, rebuked that.
She was dead as a woman, but there was purpose in her life. She must work for what her dead had believed, in a sense they lived through her. Weeping, she knelt to kiss her mother.
“I won’t come now,” she said. “But I’ll do the things you can’t. I’ll always love you.”
And she took the sword.
Elder Goerz led prayers for Conrad before the coffin was placed in its grave on the slope above the valley. Children and women laid flowers on the mound. These withered in the blasting heat. Next spring, though, there’d be the wild roses he’d loved, and if there was an afterlife, he’d be with his Röslein, in whose gentle garden he’d walked and whose blooms he’d savored.
Ansjie sobbed in her doctor’s arms. Thank goodness, she had him! Rebe and the escaped slaves stood with their heads bowed, a dusky group among the blond Mennonites. Johnny had closed the smithy and left Laddie in charge. He kept a protective arm around Sara, who’d insisted on coming in spite of her advanced pregnancy. Deborah stood between her and Judith. Maccabee loomed behind them. Instead of the hymn, Deborah heard echoes of Conrad singing:
“Oh, when will you return again, dear love of mine?
When it snows red roses, girl, and when it rains white wine.”
But there was more to do than mourn. If Rolf had learned of the runaways in Friedental, so might other slavers. As the procession moved back to the village, she mentioned this to Johnny.
“Hin!” said Johnny, his brow furrowing. “Well, sure, I guess we better move ’em north, though I’m behind at the forge.”
“I can take them,” Deborah said. “It’s not so far to Topeka, and that’s the next station, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but sometimes if there’s no one to do it, I have to take a train across the Kaw and travel north by east till we hit the Missouri and cross into Iowa.” Johnny shook his head. “You can’t do that alone.”
“I can if you tell me how.”
“I’m goin’ with you,” Judith said.
Maccabee, in rapid succession, looked startled, serious, and reluctantly approving. “They can do it,” he told Johnny. “And someone ’sides you’n me needs to know that trail.”
And so it was that within an hour of Conrad’s burial, the runaways at Friedental, except for Rebe, were preparing for the next part of their journey to freedom.
Well before dawn the next morning they were on their way. Deborah and Judith, dressed as boys, would ride one ahead, one behind, the party, warn them to seek cover if other travelers came within sight. As much as possible, they’d keep off the road and wait till dark to go to the farmhouse “station!”
All went smoothly. Covering the twenty miles to Topeka before sundown, the group waited in a ravine thick with cottonwoods till darkness, while Deborah rode in and told the “conductor” that she had eight “passengers” for him. Amos Blakeman, a white-haired, mild-eyed Quaker, couldn’t take them north for a week and was much relieved that Deborah and Judith could.
When Deborah returned with her party, Amos and his wife had beds ready in the attic and cellar and a plentiful, hot supper. He’d also arranged with a sympathetic ferryman to take the “train” across before light and curiosity might make problems the next morning.
On the north side of the Kaw, Deborah was in strange country, but Johnny’s map was good, and one by one they passed his markers pointing the way to the Missouri, including a farm where they spent the night.
Woods grew densely where there was water, the slopes became small hills, and at last the river brakes came into sight.
Scouting ahead, Deborah located the next station, a mill on the river. The miller’s nephew would pole them across the river to Iowa and see them to the next stop, but they were now well out of the reach of Missouri raiders. Deborah and Judith wished them good luck and turned back for the Kaw.
They reached the smithy on September 1 to find Doc Challoner, exhausted from delivering twins, being ministered to by Ansjie while Sara cradled a child against each breast, spent, but so proudly beautiful she lit up the room.
Johnny looked as wrung out as Doc and as delighted as Sara, hovering over her like a big grizzly with its first cubs—a mother grizzly, of course, since males were notoriously unfond of progeny.
“Ain’t that a sight?” he crooned to Deborah and Judith. “Ever in all your born days see anything so purty?”
In truth, the babies were red mites with astonishing amounts of silky fine black hair. But their hands! Perfect, down to the minute fingernails. Deborah’s little fingers dwarfed the tiny ones that gripped them, but she was amazed at their strength.
Had she and Thos looked like this? She hoped that somehow he could know. “This one is Thomas,” Sara said, dipping her chin toward the slightly smaller infant. “Shall we call the girl Leticia?”
“That would be lovely.”
Deborah could scarcely speak and knew that Sara, even more than she, must feel grief that the new twins’ father and grandparents couldn’t see and marvel at them.
Laddie glanced proprietarily about, folding his arms like a guard of honor. “These babies goin’ to belong, sort of, to all you folks, but I’m their only really truly blood uncle! Ain’t that right, Sara?”
“That is right,” she corrected. “So remember that uncles wash their hands before they pick up babies.”
“These are the finest I’ve ever seen,” said Doc Challoner from the doorway. He wiped his brow. “But next time, young woman, try to have just one! Twins are the quick way to get a family, but it’s hard on your doctor!”
“Come have a drink,” invited Johnny, moving forward to put an arm around the doctor. “Let’s have several! Wastewin, would you like some mne wakan?” The Sioux called whisky holy water.
“I’d rather have cold buttermilk,” she said. “And then I want to sleep.” Judith and Deborah stayed with her till she did.
During the next weeks, Tom’s and Lettie’s scarlet hue faded to dark ivory. Both thrived, but Tom seemed given to colics and temper outbursts. “I don’t know whether to be glad or sad there’s always someone to hold him,” Sara grimaced as Johnny picked up the baby at his first howl.
“Be glad,” Johnny advised. “Happy babies don’t cry, and if they’re not happy, somethin’ damned well needs to be done!” He often walked about with both. Someti
mes each had a firm grasp on his sideburns, but though Johnny might wince and grumble in Lakotah, he plainly adored the children.
Though everyone from Maccabee to Laddie helped with the twins, Sara was kept busy with them. Judith and Deborah took over the cooking, housework, and voluminous laundry. They put up two barrels of cucumber pickles, cut and dried pounds of pumpkin, squash, and rhubarb, and began gathering grapes and nuts down along the river.
There’d still been no rain, but Johnny left off smithing for a day to plow while Maccabee and Laddie sowed wheat. Toward the end of September a traveler left a letter for Deborah addressed to Johnny’s care.
She stood holding it, staring at the bold, slanting script. Something stirred deep inside the scarred, tough armor around her heart. Surprised at this, for when she thought of Dane it was with the bitter-sweetness reserved for a dead loved one, she opened the letter with trembling hands.
St. Louis
September 15, 1859
Beloved Deborah,
I regret not coming to tell you good-bye, but perhaps it’s best since I doubt either of us has altered our convictions. At least I can assure you that Rolf’s border career has ended. After weeks of unsuccessful searching, I found him ten days ago, near death in a Westport hotel. He’d been left there by cronies after some urchin he’d befriended all but murdered him. Rolf apparently managed to drag himself into camp and, for a miracle, his, companions got him to West-port without killing him or even robbing his pockets.
The best surgeon in St. Louis has saved his life, though it will be months before he mends completely. This seems a propitious time to take him back to England and put finis to his Kansas adventures.
I can’t forget you, Deborah. I see you in harvest, golden wheat in your arms, or riding Chica, your hair blown back. But, mostly, I feel you in my arms—which ache, and always will, till I hold you again. I will be back. This time, somehow, let’s work things out.
Dane
Faint, disbelieving, Deborah sank down on a bench.
“What is it?” Sara demanded.
Unable to speak, Deborah handed her the letter.
“Why, that no-good Rolf!” Sara cried after a hasty scanning. “If Dane knew—”
Deborah shrugged. “I should have cut Rolf’s throat, the way he did Conrad’s. But I just couldn’t.” She’d told Judith and Sara everything, but she didn’t want anyone else to know about the rape.
Sometimes she dreamed of it, not so often, though, as she dreamed of Conrad. Rather than feeling disgraced or humiliated by that invasion, she felt numbed in her secret parts, closed and dead.
“Dane says he’ll come back,” Sara said like a question.
“It’ll be no use.”
“Why? Don’t you love him?”
“I—I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now.”
“Why not?”
She could think of no way, without sounding tragic or silly, to put it into words. “I belong to something else.”
Sara frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, meshemah, but I don’t like it! If it’s because he’s Rolf’s brother—if it’s because you’re shamed—”
“That may have a part in it,” Deborah said, trying to be honest about the implacable core that had held her together this past month. “But it’s more that Conrad died because I was so set on looking for Dane.”
“His death saved Friedental, and those runaways!”
“Maybe.” Deborah folded the letter. “But I—owe debts. Till they’re paid, I can’t have my own life.”
Judith, who’d been rocking small Lettie, shook her head. “That’s a sad thing to say, honey.”
“It’s a true thing.” Deborah put the letter in her apron pocket and poked up the fire to cook supper.
She was a weapon. There could be no softness in her. How she would be wielded, she didn’t know; she could only wait and be ready.
Johnny rode into Lawrence to vote for the Wyandotte constitution on October 4. The Territory’s voters ratified it almost two to one and now looked forward to the December Territorial elections, when Free-State men, united now as Republicans, should win resoundingly.
It was a far cry from the reign of the Bogus Legislature and Border Ruffians, but John Brown, absent from Kansas since January, when he spirited through his last “train” of escaped slaves, wasn’t ready to leave abolition to gradual change.
The night of October 16, with eighteen men, he moved into Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, about sixty miles from Washington, and took the U.S. arsenal and armory. Three others of his men had been left to move supplies and arm the slaves and enthusiasts Brown expected to join his cause. Apparently he hoped to free the slaves of Virginia with his volunteer army.
Instead of being filled with supporting hosts, the armory was attacked the next morning by citizens who forced Brown’s men and his prisoners into the engine-house.
Two of Brown’s sons were killed, but he didn’t harm his prisoners. The siege lasted all day. During the night Colonel Robert E. Lee arrived with government troops and sent J. E. B. Stuart, his aide, to ask Brown to surrender. Brown refused that night and again the next morning.
Amidst firing, the troops battered in the door. A marine lieutenant hacked Brown to the floor and struck him repeatedly across the head with his sword. Brought to trial October 27, Brown claimed throughout the next six days that he intended only to free slaves, not foment rebellion.
Twelve of the men with Brown had helped him in Kansas. Most were young zealots. Though conservative Free-Staters denounced Brown, Jim Lane and Dan Anthony praised him. Money was raised for a Doy-style rescue, but Montgomery, the dour jayhawker, traveled out to Virginia and declared this impossible.
North and South, the press blazed for and against the grim old man. Greeley, in the New York Herald Tribune, blamed Brown—and Kansas—on ex-President Franklin Pierce and Senator Douglas for supporting the Kansas-Nebraska Bill.
John Brown is a natural production, born on the soil of Kansas, out of the germinating heats the great contest on the soil of that Territory engendered. Before the day of Kansas outrages and oppression, no such person as Osawatomie Brown existed.… Kansas deeds, Kansas experiences, and Kansas discipline created John Brown as entirely and completely as the French Revolution created Napoleon Bonaparte. He is as much the fruit of Kansas as Washington was the fruit of our own revolution.
“He’ll hang tomorrow,” Johnny said, returning from voting for the Territorial legislature on December 1. “Won’t plead insanity. By dyin’ he’ll do more to free the slaves than ever he could alive. Old fox knows that.”
Except for him, Thos might have been alive. There was that bloody work on Pottawatomie Creek. But the man had stepped across the line that made monsters and martyrs. Judith bowed her head and wept.
“He’s the sword of the Lord and of Gideon!” she said when pride in the man triumphed over grief. “His soul can’t die. It’ll never die!”
Abraham Lincoln, hoping for nomination in 1860, came on a five-day speaking tour of northeastern Kansas. He spoke in pro-slave Atchison, condemning Brown’s methods, on December 2, when John Brown was hanged in Virginia.
Brown wasn’t accompanied by a minister; he’d said he couldn’t pray with Southern preachers who supported slavery. But on the way to the scaffold, he kissed his jailer’s child.
xxi
January customers at the smithy brought a running account of the overwhelmingly Republican Territorial legislature’s refusal to hold session in Lecompton. Meeting there, they moved to adjourn to Lawrence, the governor vetoed their resolution, they passed it over his veto, and they moved to Lawrence.
Governor Medary and his secretary wouldn’t go or send necessary records. The legislature passed a resolution to adjourn since the secretary wouldn’t provide these documents. Governor Medary immediately issued a proclamation for them to meet the next day at Lecompton. The legislature did so, again resolved to go to Lawrence, were again vetoed by the governor, an
d again passed the resolution over his veto.
At that point the governor gave up, though he did veto their February 11 abolition of slavery within the Territory. They overrode his veto and went on to pass Kansas’s first fencing legislation, ordering that when the property of two claimants adjoined, each must build half the dividing fence.
“Hate to see fences,” rumbled Johnny. “Plumb ruins the country!” He grinned reminiscently. “Sometimes I think that Shoshoni, Washakie, was right about what he told the agent who wanted him to farm. ‘God damn a potato!,’ he said.”
“That’s wicked talk,” Sara reproved. “The buffalo are gone, from here, anyway, and we need potatoes and gardens to eat.”
Johnny sobered. “We sure need rain. Precious little snow this year. But it’s bound to rain in the spring.”
But it didn’t. A severe late freeze added to the misery. There was a ripple of excitement in April when Russell, Majors, and Waddell started the Pony Express mail run from St. Joseph to California, but as that pitiless summer wore on, Kansans thought of little but the weather.
Johnny’s wheat shot up but quickly withered, and the wheat sowed that spring didn’t come up at all, though corn down by the river produced about two-thirds of the usual crop. The members of the household at the smithy were lucky to be near the Kaw. By hauling water from the river, they kept the garden alive, but settlers at a distance from water saw all their food die in scorching blasts from the south.
Great cracks split the earth. Ponds, wells, creeks, and streams dried up. Thirty thousand settlers, about one-third of the Territory’s population, begged or borrowed their way back east or farther west. Of those remaining, half would have gone had they been able. The others, like those at Chaudoin’s, managed to raise enough food for their own use and shared what they had.
The creek by Friedental never went completely dry, nor did the deep wells. Several times that summer Deborah took fugitive slaves to Friedental to let them rest from their flight; then Challoner would take them on to Topeka and Amos Blakeman. Each time she visited Conrad’s grave on the hill and watered the wild roses that Ansjie ordinarily tended. It seemed impossible that he’d been dead almost a year. In her heart, she still heard his voice.
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