Daughter of the Sword

by Jeanne Williams

  The moon was down, but it was lighter than the cabin. As she carefully approached the camp, Titus loomed. Three slighter figures materialized beside him. Deborah put out her hands to the women.

  She had done what they just had, been brutalized like them. But they lived and because of a despised old black woman, ten guerrillas were dead and Lawrence might be rescued.

  “I take a horse an’ ride for Lawrence,” Titus offered.

  “We both should go,” Deborah said. “Quantrill may have more scouts out. If one of us gets caught, the other may get through.” She said to the women, “Better take everything you can gather up fast and get as far away from here as you can. Quantrill will be in too much of a hurry to hunt for you long.”

  “Bet he take time to burn our cabins,” moaned Titus’s wife.

  “Cabins kin be built again,” snorted Gran. “No way to stuff life back in your hide!”

  She led the way to the cabins. Titus had already started for the horses. Deborah dragged two saddles from where they were piled near the camp, avoiding the silent bulks around the dead fire, which still had an occasional ember glow as the breeze stirred it.

  As she and Titus saddled their mounts, they agreed that he’d swing to the west and she to the east, wished each other good luck, and started to warn the slumbering town.

  A nightmare ride. Though she put as much weight as possible on her feet in the stirrups to ease the pressure against where Rolf had bruised her, the jolting trot, which was as fast as she dared go in the darkness, wracked her from pelvis to throbbing head. The graze wasn’t serious but movement sent pain crashing through her skull.

  Her gorge kept rising till she finally vomited and felt better in her stomach. Still, misery of body faded in the dread clutching at her as she strained her ears for sounds that might herald the guerrillas.

  They couldn’t be far behind. Even if she and Titus roused the town, its men were far outnumbered by Quantrill’s. The old muskets locked in the warehouse would be pitifully outmatched by the guerrillas’ arsenal. They’d have several pistols apiece, rifles, and shotguns, as well as Bowies.

  It would still be a slaughter. But at least the guerrillas wouldn’t have it all their own way, and if defenders had time to mass in strategic places, they might repulse Quantrill, save at least some of their lives and buildings.

  She kept dozing in sheer fatigue, then was roused to a distant rumbling in the earth. It seemed to reverberate. Dear God! Could she have let the horse lose the direction?

  Thoroughly awake, she gazed about. She must have been riding for several hours. She could make out an occasional bush or tree-filled gully.

  “We can go faster now,” she told the horse, nudging him with her heels.

  The flood of pain from her battered female parts and the head wound almost made her faint, but she bent low to the horse and urged him on.

  Darkness gradually lifted. Stars began to vanish. Her ears, her heart, her whole body seemed full of that increasing, menacing thunder of many hooves.

  Mists hung heavy above the Kaw. Against them, she could make out the proud march of buildings on Massachusetts Street, the Unitarian and Plymouth Congregational churches. There was no sign of Titus.

  Urging her mount to top speed, she shouted as she rode past the scattered houses on the outskirts: “Quantrill! Raiders! Quantrill!”

  Tossing her horse’s reins over the post at the Eldridge House, she ran inside, alerted the night clerk, and ran to the kitchen to call a warning to the cook, mostly colored help, and an astounded guest descending the stairs.

  “Tell everyone!” she pleaded. “Quantrill’s coming! Hide or get weapons!” The night clerk was sounding a gong as she sprang to her saddle and shouted till Massachusetts Street echoed: “Quantrill! Quantrill!”

  Who had the arsenal keys?

  Mayor Collamore would know. She swung her horse toward his house just as two men in guerrilla shirts trotted down the street.

  She tried to get out of sight behind the hotel. These must be scouts. They wouldn’t want to shoot and alarm the town.

  They didn’t. Turning the corner, they rushed her, seizing her bridle reins. One clubbed his rifle, which smashed across her head. The world melted in a river of fiery blackness and she fell into it.

  Through rising and receding flame-shot mists, she thought she heard Dane’s voice, thought he held her in his arms. She tried to touch him, tried to speak, but was again enveloped in darkness.

  Next time her eyes opened, she blinked, then stared at a wallpapered ceiling she’d seen before. And she had been in this bed.

  Melissa Eden’s back room. Only then did Deborah remember Quantrill. Trying to sit up, she lapsed from consciousness, then revived to find Melissa bending over her.

  “So you’re coming around.” Melissa’s yellow hair was carefully coiffed, but her blue gown was smudged with soot, dirt, and blood, and her face was drawn, suddenly aged. “Here, drink some water. There’s soup if you can manage it.”

  “Quantrill?” Deborah asked. Her voice sounded far away.

  Melissa’s shrug was weary. “They’ve burned the town, killed every man they could find, and left with all the plunder they could carry on a pack-horse apiece.”

  Bits of char drifted through the open window. The smell of smoke was acrid, and more than buildings burned, that was the odor of flesh—

  “Horses,” explained Melissa. “And lots of bodies burned in the stores and houses.” She shuddered. “They tied two wounded men hand and foot and threw them in a fire. A Negro baby suffocated. They killed a father holding his small child and shot men in their wives’ arms. They killed Uncle Frank, that crippled ninety-year-old Negro, and several Negro preachers. They killed—”

  An explosion shook the room. “Fire getting to another supply of powder in some store,” Melissa said. “That’s been going on all morning.”

  “How—how many were killed?”

  “Dozens. Scores. It’ll be days before they find all the bodies. But I think we’ve got the wounded to shelter.” Her mouth twisted. “The guerrillas didn’t leave many of those. They put a dozen shots in plenty of their victims, and the thirty or so who’re still living were left for dead. I have four of them here to see to, so if you want that soup—”

  “Was Dane here?”

  “He carried you in. One of the people you’d warned at the Eldridge House saw you in the street and dragged you into that rank growth of jimson weed north of Winthrop Street. If any raiders saw you, they must have believed you dead. Dane was with an advance squad that left Kansas City as soon as the dispatch arrived saying that Quantrill had been sighted crossing into Kansas. Dane almost rode over you.”

  “The army’s after Quantrill?”

  Again that listless shrug. “As many men as could be gotten together. Captain Coleman at Little Santa Fe got the warning almost four hours before Kansas City did, and he got together all the men he could to follow Quantrill. He and Major Plumb’s force from Kansas City—oh, yes!; and Jim Lane, with about fifty farmers and men from around here—are all after Quantrill. Maybe they’ll catch him. But it won’t bring the dead back to life.” Her voice lifted hysterically. “Why didn’t Captain Pike, who saw Quantrill, at least send one of those dispatches to us? If we’d had just an hour, even half an hour! But they came while nearly everyone was asleep and had spread over the whole town before anyone realized what was happening.”

  “General Lane—didn’t he fight?”

  “He hid. And Governor Robinson stayed in his big barn. The guerrillas didn’t get close to anything that looked like danger, like the ravine in the middle of town or that big cornfield out west where lots of men hid.”

  “Didn’t anyone fight?”

  “Those who did were killed, except for a couple of soldiers home on leave who stood off their attackers.”

  Deborah closed her eyes, gripped with horror. But there was no way she could shut her nostrils to the stench, or her ears to occasional screams and a stea
dy, softer ongoing sound of weeping and mourning.

  “Is there anything I can do?” she asked when, after a time, Melissa returned with a bowl of thin soup.

  “Get over that knock on the head,” Melissa advised, feeding her. “You could have a cracked skull and it’ll be no help to anyone if you pitch over and hurt yourself.”

  When Deborah looked amazed at this solicitude, ungracious as it was, Melissa smiled faintly for the first time. “Dane made me promise to look after you, and I can use the pretty sum he promised quite handily, for though I saved my house by pleading impoverished widowhood, they took my jewelry, cash, clothes, and everything else of value. At least they didn’t burn my furniture, which they did at most houses.”

  Melissa could wheedle any man who could be wheedled. It was a major part of the way she’d survived. Her smile grew ironic. “I suppose you wonder if I still want Dane. Of course I do. I always will. But I’m a realist. It’s you he loves.”

  Deborah stared at her one-time rival. “This—is so different from when you nursed me before.”

  “Isn’t it?” Melissa shrugged. “I hoped Rolf would smuggle you away. That might have given me a chance with Dane. But I’ve never wished you ill, Deborah. I envied you Dane’s love, thought you a prude and prig! But I’d take care of you now even if I weren’t being paid.” Pausing in the doorway, she grimaced. “That helps, of course!”

  “Is Reverend Cordley safe?”

  “Yes. He’s helping with the wounded.” Melissa absently tried to rub a bloodstain from her skirt. “They’re putting as many of the dead as they can in the Methodist Church, tagging them with names when they can and numbers when they can’t, which is often. Most of them are so charred it’s hard to guess they were ever even human.”

  Deborah tried to sit up but was felled by a sledging headache. “Just keep quiet,” Melissa ordered. “There’ll still be plenty to do when you’re stronger.”

  That afternoon passed for Deborah between nightmare and fitful sleep. When late sunlight gilded the wall, she finally managed to sit up for the first time and grip the edge of the bed till the crashing thunder in her head subsided to a bearable level.

  Shakily, she made her way to the window and leaned on the sill. Black smoke shrouded the town. Sooty fragments filled the air. All the houses beyond Melissa’s had been burned, and their blackened, uneven walls stood like snagged teeth.

  A woman sat in a trampled garden. She held a burned skull in her hands, talked to it, caressed and kissed it. Other women were digging in the cellar of the next house, placing charred bones in a sack.

  Deborah slid to her knees, unable to stand. Melissa found her that way, scoldingly hustled her back to bed, and helped her eat a thick, tasty stew.

  “Farmers have been bringing in loads of food and any clothes and bedding they can spare,” Melissa said. “A good thing. Most of the food in town was destroyed.”

  “Is there any word about Quantrill?”

  “He was burning his way south on the Fort Scott road, but when he saw the dust of the pursuing horses, he evidently started moving as fast as he could.” Melissa surveyed Deborah critically. “I don’t have an extra dress, but if you’ll take off those awful clothes, I’ll get the worst stains out so you can have them tomorrow.”

  With Melissa’s neutral, efficient aid, Deborah took off the dirty garments and washed herself with a small pan of water Melissa fetched.

  Strange, Rolf’s odor was still on her, though he’d never enter another woman. She rid herself of his smell and then, holding the thought of Dane, trying to remember the feel of him carrying her, she slept heavily till morning.

  Next day the town echoed to the sound of hammering. The carpenters who hadn’t been killed were making plain boxes from what lumber was left and nails salvaged from the ruins of hardware stores. There weren’t enough of these boxes to go around. Fifty-three men were buried in one long trench in the burial ground west of town where Deborah’s family was, and others were buried in private yards, to be moved later.

  Deborah moved about in the oppressive heat, taking care of children whose mothers were distraught, or helping people search in ruins and cellars, the ravine and cornfield, for their dead.

  Only three buildings still stood on Massachusetts Street. The proudly rebuilt Eldridge House was only ragged, blackened walls. Deep in some of the cellars, coals still gleamed. Over a hundred houses and buildings had been destroyed and many more were partially burned.

  “I kept putting out the fires they’d start,” one woman told Deborah as they searched the ravine for her husband’s body. “I’d get the blaze stopped and then another bunch would ride up and set fires again. They burned all my furniture, but the house is mostly sound.” Her voice broke. “Enos was real pleased we’d got it finished before winter. Oh, God, why can’t we find him? Can’t I even know what happened to him, have something left to bury?”

  They didn’t find Enos. There were several other missing ones who were never located, but as the dead were found and named, or numbered when identification was impossible, Reverend Cordley and the other ministers held burial service after service.

  Loads of food, clothing, and other supplies flowed in from Leavenworth, Topeka, Wyandotte, and the farms. Elder Goerz and Dietrich brought wagons of food and bedding, and Tiberius came twice with everything from bread to tools.

  He urged Deborah to come home, but she told him she had to stay till the worst part of the burying was over. He was to tell Judith and Sara that she was all right and would get back to the smithy as soon as she could. The second time he came, he brought Chica. Deborah put her face against the mare and caressed her for a long time.

  Deborah didn’t know if Titus had reached Lawrence, escaped, been killed, or what. There had been no word of Quantrill, either, that Sunday when survivors gathered in the Congregational Church. After the service, Deborah intended to take Chica and look for Titus and the wagon Rolf’s men had captured from her. The food had probably been wasted, but she might find the twins’ books.

  The church filled silently with women and children, a few men. Most were dressed in whatever they’d hastily put on the morning of the raid. The women covered their heads with sun bonnets, shawls, or handkerchiefs. Deborah wore a discarded dress of Melissa’s that had been found in the ragbag.

  Though all the slain were not yet found, the raid had made widows of eighty women and had left two hundred fifty children fatherless. Some of the thirty wounded would almost certainly die of their injuries, and the death count was already one hundred forty, including seventeen unarmed recruits for the Fourteenth Regiment.

  Lawrence’s dead were not Redlegs or jayhawkers. Ironically, the two men most venomously hated by the guerrillas, Jim Lane and Governor Robinson, were both in town, but they escaped because the guerrillas were afraid to charge any place that looked as if it might conceal an ambush.

  Reverend Cordley and Reverend G. C. Morse of Emporia conducted the service. Morse was the brother-in-law of young, amiable Judge Carpenter, married less than a year, who’d been shot repeatedly by the raiders and finally murdered by a shot fired into him as his wife tried to shield him with her body.

  The psalm read was the seventy-ninth. In Deborah’s ears, the voice was that of her father: “Oh, God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance. They have laid Jerusalem in heaps. The dead bodies of Thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, and the flesh of Thy saints unto the beasts of the earth. Their blood have they shed like water round about Jesusalem, and there was none to bury them.”

  There was no sermon, only the psalm and a prayer. Everyone was weeping. Deborah felt, rather than saw, a tall presence standing next to her. As the prayer ended, she turned to look up at Dane.

  He took her hands and led her out.

  Quantrill had gotten away. Federals, pursuing him in several groups, and Lane’s militia, had harried him to the border. He set up a rear guard to cover his retreat, avoided an ambush on Ottawa
Creek, and, once into Missouri, his force splintered and made into the brush by twos and threes and dozens.

  “Some of our horses died under us,” Dane muttered, burying his face in her hands. “They’d been pushed sixty-five miles without a rest. And men fell from sunstroke. But I still can’t believe that devil got away!”

  Charlie Slaughter hadn’t. She had to tell Dane he need no longer dread meeting his brother and that her own need for justice was fulfilled, but first she let Dane tell her how, when the chase after Quantrill had to be abandoned, he’d received permission to “attend to urgent personal matters” before reporting back to Kansas City.

  “And the most urgent is making you my wife,” he said, the severity of his haggard face relaxing. “Deborah, let’s forget what’s happened and what may happen! Let’s think about now!”

  That was when she told him how Rolf had died, hating to watch his face. Dane was quiet for a long tme. “Poor Sir Harry!” he said at last. “He keeps wondering where Rolf is. I don’t think I’ll tell him Rolf’s dead till you and I can go over and be there to comfort him.”

  “There—there’s more,” Deborah said, “more you have to know before you can decide if you’ll marry me.”

  She told him of the six men, about Esther and Billy. When she finished, he took her in his arms and held her while she wept for all the deaths, and all the years, the struggle and the pain.

  “Oh, my love,” he murmured. “Oh, my love! That you’ve had to bear all this! I loved you when you were a girl playing with Bowies, but it was nothing compared to the way I love you now. Please, will you marry me?”

  She couldn’t speak, but she nodded and pressed his strong fingers. He swept her back into the church. As soon as Reverend Cordley was free, Dane shook his hand and said, “Sir, after this sad work, can you perform a wedding?”

  A smile lit the minister’s worn face. “Nothing would make me happier.”

  So they were married, there, then, in the church where Deborah’s family had worshipped, amid the ruins of Lawrence.