Generally, Southern guerrillas professed a code of chivalry and prided themselves on sparing women, though boys past childhood and old men were fair game. Nor did they worry about how the women and children would live without the food and livestock robbed, from them.
During September Lexington had fallen to Price, while Lane, instead of aiding that beleaguered command, had burned Osceola, court-martialed and shot nine citizens, and captured tons of lead, kegs of powder, cartridge paper, camp equipment, and food intended for the Confederates.
In addition to military supplies, Lane plundered four hundred head of cattle, three hundred fifty horses and mules, and freed two hundred slaves. He also stole an expensive carriage, which he sent to his home in Lawrence. Three hundred of Lane’s Brigade got so drunk on looted brandy that they had to be hauled out of town in wagons.
Reprimanded by his superiors for looting, Lane scolded his men for their worst excesses, but he insisted that his method was the only way to protect the border, and he began calling on President Lincoln to create a Department of Kansas and put him in command.
Union forces pursued Price and won a battle at Spring-field “on the anniversary of the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, October 25,” wrote Dane sardonically. “We can take Price if we thrust south now, but General Hunter, replacing Frémont, has ordered us to retreat.”
With the Union forces went refugees who’d been burned out by the Confederates. Hundreds of slaves joined Lane’s Brigade and added to the destitute pouring into Kansas. At the end of November, Lane went back to Washington for the opening of Congress and renewed his pleas to be given command of an army with which to scourge Confederates in Missouri, Arkansas, and Indian Territory. Lincoln created this department in mid-November, but reports of Lane’s brigandage led the President to make General David Hunter the commander. In a tantrum, Lane abandoned his military career and resumed his seat in the Senate.
In January of 1862, General Ulysses Grant moved, along with a gunboat flotilla, against Confederate garrisons on the Mississippi, Cumberland, and Tennessee rivers. That winter and spring, Kansas men were in the fierce battles that raged through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, culminating at Shiloh in April.
Later that month, Flag Officer Farragut bombarded New Orleans, which was then occupied by General Benjamin Butler, who’d later be known as “Beast” because of his treatment of Southern women sympathizers. It was Butler who declared blacks “contraband of war” and let them work on fortifications and otherwise aid the Union.
In March, the Confederate ironclad, Virginia, formerly the Merrimac, battled the Union ironclad Monitor for five hours, the first battle between those armored crafts. The Virginia had to go to Norfolk for repairs, and when that town fell early in May, Confederates burned the ironclad to keep it from being captured by the Union.
As Federals and Confederates skirmished in Missouri through that bitter winter, guerrillas terrorized the border. By spring Quantrill’s name was being coupled with that of Charlie Slaughter.
Handsome, English, deadly with gun or Bowie.
Deborah’s heart skipped a beat when she heard about it, then hammered till the pound of blood in her ears brought on a violent headache. It must, be Rolf. The scent of blood had drawn him back.
She watched for him on her relief missions to the border, but though several times the three women forted up at threatened farms and drove off guerrillas, she saw none with that raw gold hair.
Refugee Indians from the Indian Nations added to the flow of homeless, despairing people seeking help in Kansas. Friedental built a large house and sheltered and fed blacks, Indians, and whites dispossessed till they could be squeezed in somewhere else. And all the time crops had to be planted till the harvest.
Lane finally persuaded Lincoln to let him recruit Negro troops, and by mid-August, Maccabee and Rebe had joined the Zouaves d’Afrique. Each smith’s striker would now advance to smith, choosing for his striker the best of several men and boys who had been helping at the forges.
Laddie, thus promoted, argued strenuously that he should be allowed to join the army, but Sara managed to coax him into staying till he was seventeen, at least.
When he grumbled that the war would be over by then, everyone chorused, “I hope so!”
“You’re goin’ to look like a circus in red pantaloons,” Judith grumbled to her husband.
Maccabee chortled, “You’re just jealous ’cause I’m gettin’ to wear real French clothes!” he teased. Though he’d be greatly missed at the smithy, no one tried to dissuade him. It was clear how much it meant to him and Rebe to fight as equals, not trail along as cooks and ostlers.
After the crushing Confederate defeat at Pea Ridge near the Arkansas-Missouri border in March of ’62, in which Confederate Cherokees, Creeks, and Choctaws had taken scalps, bushwacking tactics generally replaced conventional military operations for the Confederacy, and as all available Federals were called to fight at Vicksburg, the charge of defending Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, and the Indian Nations fell more and more on Negroes and Indians.
Dane wrote that summer that he was transferring to the newly forming Eleventh Kansas. Most of the present forces were being sent to the raging battles in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, “but I became a soldier again to protect your region,” he wrote. “Deborah, can you remember me? It seems forever.”
Johnny’s letter told of the same transfer for him and Doc, of being so thirsty after one battle that men fought over water used to wash wounds, of lips and tongues so swollen and bleeding that saltpeter in the powder stung each time they bit a cartridge.
In August Lee defeated Pope at Second Bull Run and invaded Maryland in the hope of isolating Washington, but after Antietam in mid-September, Lee withdrew to Virginia. The battle had been a draw, but the French and British, who had seemed on the brink of recognizing the Confederacy and forcing mediation, now reconsidered. In November the British rejected the French proposal for intervention. This left the South without hope of foreign help.
It was also after Antietam that Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation which would, on January 1, 1863, free all slaves in states still in rebellion.
The Eleventh spent that winter and the spring of ’63 marching, fighting, and countermarching through the muddy, when not freezing, rutted roads of northern Arkansas and southern Missouri. The women at the smithy shared letters from their men, and when they had a chance to send letters back by someone who was going through Lawrence, Ansjie, Judith, Sara, and Deborah all sat writing at the big table. Judith needed some help, but she’d learned to write in a large, clear hand and was tremendously proud of being able to “talk” to her husband.
Deborah wrote of every day life, filling up a few pages with talk of the twins, travelers, and the settlers at Friedental. She didn’t mention her certainty that Rolf was back on the border and riding with Quantrill, but her heart stopped when Dane wrote that he’d heard from Sir Harry how Rolf had come back from the continent so restless that he’d almost immediately left for the United States. “He told Sir Harry he was going to Oregon,” Dane’s letter ran. “I can only hope he does—and that I never see him again, for if I do, I’ll have to kill him.”
Still praying that Dane could be spared that, Deborah never told even Sara and Judith that Charlie Slaughter, of rising infamy, was indeed Rolf.
Johnny and Doc came home in March on furlough, but Dane was near Fort Scott recovering from pneumonia. Johnny still limped from a thigh wound and needed to recuperate while he told the twins stories and marveled at how they’d grown.
Doc and Ansjie, though, insisted on driving Deborah down to Fort Scott and spent their time together while Deborah sat with Dane, reading to him and writing to Sir Harry. She was grateful to be with him but ached at his gauntness, skin stretched over bone. There was gray in his hair. She knew she had changed, too.
Her hands were calloused, her skin weathered. Her spirit felt hardened, too, tough and dry. It had
been a long time since she felt like a woman. Yet she loved this man with a depth that made her earlier longing seem childish and shallow.
One day, when he seemed to be sleeping, tears slid from her eyes to the hand she was holding. He looked up at her, gently wiping away the tears with his long fingers. “Our time will come, love. As I’ve seen men die around me, things that were important aren’t anymore. I’d hoped that on this furlough—” He gave a little shrug. “But I don’t fancy being an invalid bridegroom!”
Neither of them mentioned Rolf. Also, it was firm in Deborah’s mind that before she could marry Dane, if that time ever came, she must tell him she’d killed men. But not now. Not now. Let them have this little time together. They were gentle, grateful, after separation, just to be with each other, to touch hands and smile.
When Johnny rejoined the Eleventh, Laddie was with him. “Bound and determined,” Johnny explained, rubbing his stiff thigh. “Said if he couldn’t come with me, he’d run off and enlist.” He blew out his cheeks. “Sara cried her eyes out, but Cesli tatanka! The boy’s seventeen!”
“Be careful!” Deborah pleaded, kissing Laddie on his smooth brown cheek in spite of his squirming. He had become a very handsome young man. Almost as old as Thos had been when he was killed.
“Careful!” Laddie scorned, thrusting back his dark hair. “I’m tired of bein’ careful!” He grinned and was for a moment the boy she remembered. “Think I want my nephew askin’ what I did in the war? Got to get some stories to tell him!” There was a swagger in his gait as he went off to mix with the veterans.
When the Eleventh left Fort Scott to join the First Division of the Army of the Frontier under the command of General Ewing, Dane kept his saddle more from willpower than strength. As he waved back at Deborah and the column faded toward the border, her tears seemed to fall inside her heart and freeze.
An echo of Conrad’s voice and Boehme sounded in her. “It can only be likened to the resurrection of the dead. There will the Love Fire rise up again in us and rekindle again our astringent, bitter and cold, dark and dead, powers and embrace us most courteously and friendly.…”
She was astringent and bitter, felt cold and dead. But she must endure. And in a tiny hidden part of her deepest self, she still believed in the Love Fire.
Quantrill was back on the border, disappointed that he’d wangled only a colonel’s commission during his trip to Richmond to visit President Jefferson Davis. His chief lieutenants, Bloody Bill Anderson, George Todd, and William Gregg, had managed without him during several pitched battles at Prairie Grove, Cane Hill, and Springfield, and according to rumor, they weren’t particularly pleased to see him.
As battles raged that July of ’63 at Gettysburg and Vicksburg and the whole length of the Mississippi fell to the Federals, Confederates in the southwest were cut off from Richmond, left to survive as best they could. Cherokees, mostly full-bloods, and Negroes fought Stand Watie’s Confederate, mostly mixed-blood Cherokee, and Jo Shelby’s “Iron Brigade” was serenaded to the tune of “Maryland, My Maryland”:
“Jo Shelby’s at your stable door;
Where’s your mule,
Oh, where’s your mule?”
Guerrilla ravages surged to a peak as the war shifted inexorably against the South.
Lawrence, hated as the old Free-State citadel and refuge for blacks, as well as for being the home of Jim Lane and other jayhawkers, had for months been swept with rumors that guerrillas planned to attack. General George Collamore had been elected mayor that spring and he was very anxious for his town.
He organized military companies and wangled from the military discarded Springfield muskets which were kept locked in a vacant storeroom on Massachusetts Street. For part of the summer, a squad of Federals was sent to guard Lawrence, but in August it was ordered to reinforce the border. Most Lawrence people believed that if the commanders in Kansas City felt the border in that region was sufficiently protected, then it must be.
Deborah knew from Dane’s letters that Ewing was doing his best to protect the north-central border below Kansas City with troops, stationed at intervals, that patrolled back and forth. Dane had also added details about the collapse of a makeshift, a prison run by Federals in that city.
Late in June a number of women had been arrested as spies, among them three sisters of Bloody Bill Anderson and a cousin of Cole Younger’s. To be separated from male prisoners, the women were housed in an old brick building and treated with all possible consideration.
“But whether a tunnel was being dug to free the prisoners or whether hogs rooting about had weakened the foundation, the walls fell in and four women were killed. Naturally, southern sympathizers are blaming the Federals, some even accusing Union soldiers of undermining the building. However that is, Bill Anderson and other guerrillas will take vengeance for their women. Be very careful, love, on your journeys near the border.”
A wagonload of food was ready for distribution, and Deborah meant to take it to a refugee farm community ten miles southeast of Lawrence, where she hadn’t been since getting the people settled. She decided to stop at Lawrence for news and to buy the twins’ first book as a present for their fourth birthdays next month, so she didn’t wear her boy’s clothes, though she tucked them under the seat along with her loaded Spencer and Bowie.
Would the war ever end? Would there ever be a time when everyone had food and shelter, their own place in which to work and live? When one could travel unarmed and not take fright when more than two or three horsemen came into view?
Sighing, Deborah got into the wagon and started the team. She was going alone. Judith was heavy with a child conceived during one of Maccabee’s leaves. Sara was in her fifth month. Johnny’s March furlough was going to give the twins a brother or sister. Sara had offered to come, but Deborah hadn’t wanted her to risk miscarriage from jolting. Ansjie was terrified of what dangers might be on the roads, so Deborah had refused her brave, if faltering, offer.
Much of the wheat in the fields she passed as she neared Lawrence had been harvested that year by the Kirby Patent Harvester that one enterprising farmer had bought. By starting before the grain was quite ripe, he’d been able to cut most of the community’s supply.
The driver sat over the bull wheel while a man with a rake pulled the grain off the platform, where it’d been dumped by the reel, and tossed it to the ground in bunches to be bound up by five to eight men scattered across the field. At day’s end, the cutting stopped and the whole crew piled the wheat into shocks.
It made possible much larger crops and was certainly faster. Probably a binder would be invented next, even a shocking machine. But Deborah was glad she’d bound after a reaping man, much as harvesters had done since biblical times. Changes seemed to be coming with dizzying rapidity. She wondered if it was good for human beings to be so pressured by the speed of their inventions.
Two years ago the first daily overland coach had gone from Sacramento to St. Joseph, Missouri, in seventeen days. The transcontinental telegraph had been completed that same year, and the year before that the first oil well west of the Mississippi had been dug at Paola, in eastern Kansas, only a year after the first American well was drilled at Titusville, Pennsylvania.
Railroad building in Kansas had been stopped by the war, but it would be only a matter of time before trains thundered to all parts of the nation. The Homestead Act had gone into effect that January, giving title to settlers who stayed on their one hundred sixty acres for five years. Again, once the war ended, a flood of homeseekers was bound to cover the prairies.
She wondered how many would be Negroes, and she wondered when they’d be given the vote. January 1, the same day that the Homestead Act became law, so had the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves in rebelling states “forever free.”
Slavery wasn’t yet abolished, but that was bound to come. It just took so long—and so much blood, so much grief. Her whole family was dead, and every man she felt close to, from Dane t
o Laddie, might not come back from the army.
Usually she had no time for introspection, but the slow pace of the team going this way she’d first traveled eight years ago brought memories crowding. How much had happened since that twelve-year-old had come to the Territory! It seemed a hundred years ago; in fact, it seemed a century since she and Thos and Sara had enjoyed Rolf’s Fourth of July celebration, or that last Christmas with her parents.…
Most of the time, as Conrad, himself now one of her gentle shades, had predicted, she was aware of her twin and parents as comforting, loving presences deep within her. She often thought of them without having to confront the horror of their deaths. But sometimes, with a stabbing wrench left throbbing with exposed pain, it all flooded back. Blinking at tears, she led her thoughts, as she had trained herself to do, from the occasion of grief to something she could do now.
On their last Christmas, her family had read A Christmas Carol. Would the twins be old enough for it this year? Probably, if Marley’s chains were rattled with sufficient drama. If Wilmarth’s had a copy, she’d ask them to save her one, but for their birthdays she’d buy them something else.
Mount Oread loomed ahead. The legislature had that year voted to locate the state university there if Lawrence would give forty acres and fifteen thousand dollars to the state. Amos Lawrence of Boston, for whom the town was named, had in 1856 donated ten thousand dollars in notes and stocks for a university, and this, with accrued interest, had secured the school, though the war was sure to delay its building. Governor Robinson’s house and stone barn presently dominated the hill.
Though there hadn’t been much new building, Lawrence had done better during these war years than the few preceding drought-stricken ones. Deborah drove past spacious, rubble-laid limestone, frame-and-brick dwellings between Indiana and Tennessee streets. New houses were under construction all over town, and churches were starting new buildings or improving old ones.
As she hitched the team off Massachusetts Street, she again admired Colonel Eldridge’s brick mansion on Rhode Island.
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