Agnes Canon's War

by Deborah Lincoln

  3

  Jabez Robinson dropped his valise and his medical bag from the roof of the stage, scrambled down beside them and pushed his locked hands over his head, cracking his back. For the hundredth time he wished to God they'd figure out how to finish the rail connection to Cincinnati. Two hours from Columbus to Xenia by train, a full day on top of that damned rickety stage crammed together with a half dozen other men. Not a propitious way to start a long journey.

  But he soon let go his peevishness and turned to the town spread before him in pleasantly warm April weather. Cincinnati, already a sizeable town, rolled west along the banks of the great river, three-story buildings facing the shoreline and the melee of humanity that swarmed there. Steamers lined the docks and fed the hodgepodge of shacks, tents, carts and open-air stalls that sold, bartered and fenced every kind of goods imaginable. Jabez pulled a thin cigar from his coat pocket, struck a match against a roadside outcropping, pulled the smoke into his lungs and grinned. Nothing better than a sunny day, a good smoke, and the always-fascinating bedlam of half-civilized humanity spread around him for his enjoyment.

  He slung his valise over his shoulder and picked his way along the rutted street that bisected the embankment, muddied and pockmarked by hundreds of hooves and boots. Piles of skins, blankets, canvas, saddles, barrels of pickles, salt pork, fish, herds of sheep and goats, yards of dress goods, piles of potatoes and early peas, coffee and farm tools, much of it just off the steamboats, crowded the marketplace. Horses snorted and dogs whined in the heat of mid-afternoon. The press of travelers, mules, cattle, leather-clad frontiersmen, hunters, traders, Negroes and Indians flowed around him. He counted six discernible languages amid the prattle.

  “Raisin pie! Shoofly pie!” a raspy voice called.

  “Fresh eggs! Brown eggs!” another cried.

  A weathered creature lifted a hide of rank fur with bits of skin clinging to the leather, a poorly-tanned buffalo robe like the one he'd brought back from California. A sun-browned man with a ring in his ear offered a handful of gold coins to a young red-headed fellow for a girl Jabez took to be the young man's wife. The redhead's temper flared and he knocked the coins to the ground, but the wife, a beautiful girl with jet black hair, laughed with delight and pulled him away.

  Jabez found himself trailing after the couple along the row of vendors, amused by their wide eyes and obvious wonderment at the carnival around them.

  “You’ll need a churn in the far west, lady!” A filthy mitt clutched at the girl's sleeve.

  “Cheeses! Cheeses will keep ’til Missouri and beyond.” A plump matron held up a round the size of a dinner plate to the young man’s nose.

  Jabez turned off between the stalls and found the rooming house where Dr. Wetmore, his teacher, mentor, and future father-in-law, was accustomed to stay on visits to town. He'd spend the night here and catch the steamer to St. Louis the following morning. He signed in, left his bags and, impatient to stretch his legs after the tedious trip, wandered back into the street. He could smell the river and the stench of dead fish and mud from the boarding house stoop, so he turned his face to the breeze that blew from the west and headed back into the crowd. He felt the old stirring in his blood, that yearning to be on the move, on the road, open land ahead of him and crowded cities at his back.

  He stopped to inspect a bolt of yard goods. “Look mighty fine on your wife, will it not?” its seller asked him.

  “I'm not yet married,” Jabez said, but thought of Eliza and how she would love it. An early wedding present, perhaps. It was cream-colored watered silk, with a rose pattern, delicate like Eliza. Fragile. She would want it for her trousseau. Appropriate for Columbus, maybe not so useful in the little Missouri town where he planned to take her. Also like Eliza. But no matter, he liked to buy her things, she'd waited so long for him.

  He nodded to the cloth merchant and pulled a five-dollar gold piece from his pocket. As he waited for the cloth to be wrapped, he spotted the red-headed boy and his beauty. They were joined now by another couple, a tall woman with a heavy fall of chestnut curls and a younger boy with the fuzz of the adolescent on his upper lip. His physician's instincts led him to analyze details of appearance more than was probably acceptable to strangers, and he tried not to stare. But for some reason, the group fascinated him. There was a resemblance between the two women in the slope of the brow and the shape of the eyes, but there likeness ended. The second woman had at least four inches on the other, and on many of the men she passed, and walked with a sway and a grace that hinted at confidence. He noticed her hands, especially—her fingers were long, slender, and expressive when she talked, like a pianist who sensed the world through the magic of her touch. She had none of the classic beauty of the other, obviously younger, woman, but she was certainly striking. Intriguing.

  The boy with her planted himself in front of a caged parrot and engaged it in conversation. The tall woman reached to pet the rich pelt of an otter, and The Beauty admired a green silk shawl with a deep fringe. She called to her husband, but he stood in conversation with a fellow in brocade waistcoat and buff hat, stroking a brace of pistols mounted with brass, nestling in a mahogany box. The boy joined them and ran a finger tentatively down a sleek barrel.

  “How much?” Jabez heard him ask.

  The man sized him up. “Too much for you, kid.” The boy knotted his fists and scowled. Jabez remembered those years when it seemed forever before he'd be a grown man. He smiled to himself and turned away, feeling guilty for eavesdropping.

  Ahead, an open-fronted tent sported a banner that read simply: BOOKS. Now here was a place Jabez could never pass by. Stacks of books teetered on tables, on the ground, in barrels. Maps hung from pins in the canvas walls. The bookseller stood at the entrance, rocking from heel to toe, a fat cigar stuck to his lower lip, hands jammed in his pockets. Jabez poked among the tables and lost himself in shuffling through the books, the tall woman and her friends forgotten. Novels and histories, classics and religious tracts, everything from Plutarch to medical texts to Mr. Barrington's Kate Wynward were piled in no discernable order. He picked up Cooper's Dictionary of Surgery, but it was an older edition of one he already had, so he put it down.

  He glanced toward the door to see the tall woman and the boy slip into the tent. The boy made a beeline for the maps, the woman for a barrel of novels. He watched her sideways, didn't want to distress her by staring, but he found himself curious about her selections. She picked over two or three, then leafed through a fourth. He was too far away to see what they were.

  The boy was engrossed in the maps. He flattened the corners of an ancient chart depicting California as an island and read aloud the labels on another that divided the vastness of the north among tribes of Natives. Then he reached out a tentative finger and traced the route of the Alhambra past Rio de Janeiro and around Cape Horn at the southern edge of the world on a chart hand drawn on the back of a ship's bill of lading. The boy turned and beckoned to the woman.

  Jabez strolled over to them. “I took that route,” he said and touched a spot on the map labeled Tropic of Cancer. “We were blown off-course here by the wildest blow you'd ever want to see. Added a week and a half to the trip.” He ran a hand down his trim beard and smiled.

  “You rounded the Horn?” The boy tapped the tip of the southern continent.

  “Oh, yes, that was the best part. Cold—cold as death and twice as frightful.” Jabez pulled out another cheroot and a lucifer match, struck it on the rusty hoop of a barrel and lit up. “The whole company was sick for days, crew and all. Seas higher than the crow's nest.” He embellished slightly, but the boy's face lit up.

  “But you got through?”

  “Obviously.”

  “And you were in California?”

  “I was. Two years.”

  “You dig gold there?” The boy glanced back at the map where gold strikes were marked with exes.

&nb
sp; “In a manner of speaking.” Jabez held the cheroot away and knocked off ash. “I doctored in the camps.” He moved to another map, one that showed the strikes around Sutter's Mill, and pointed. “Easy enough to let other men do the work and relieve them of their dust in return for services.”

  “But didn't you do some panning yourself?”

  “Well, of course, no man can resist prospecting when there's gold washing out of the hills like snowmelt. But I like doctoring better.”

  Jabez enjoyed story-telling, and the boy was an eager audience, but the sun hung low, and The Beauty and her young man had joined them.

  “Billy, come away,” the tall woman said. “We still have purchases to make.”

  Jabez smiled and bowed to her. “Madam. You and your brother will find California delightful.”

  “Cousin, sir.” She smiled at him. “And we do not plan to go on to California.”

  “Agnes, he's been there … panned for gold and went around the Horn and everything!” The boy held out his hand. “Billy Canon,” he said. “I'd sure be pleased to hear more.”

  “Jabez Robinson. I'd be pleased to tell you.” He shook, then turned to the tall woman. Agnes.

  She tipped her head. “Good day to you, sir.”

  “Hey!”

  A shout from the bookseller and everyone whirled to the street. A commotion rose from the east end of the stalls. A half dozen boys scampered, eyes wide, faces flushed and laughing. Behind them a mule leaped and bawled, harnesses flying. Its back legs slammed against its wagon, skittering into a tent filled with tin goods. The driver disappeared beneath a cloud of canvas and a crash of pots and pans. The beast lurched into a row of barrels. Brine splashed, pickles flew, and the vendor screamed obscenities. Another wild roll of the haunches, a thrust of the hind legs, and books scattered. The redhead plucked The Beauty from the street. The mule planted its hooves straight-legged into the dust and shuddered to a stop within a foot of Agnes. Jabez could see the blood in its eye. She and the mule stared at each other. The mule snorted.

  And then she reached out and grasped its bridle, whacked it hard with the flat of her hand between the eyes as if it were the old family plow mule. It wrenched its head, and the two young men grasped each cheek piece.

  Jabez threw an arm about her waist and hauled her, none too gently, out of the way. Billy Canon twisted the ungainly head down and back, nose to withers. The mule quivered and nipped but could do no more than screak like a rusty-hinged door blown back and forth in a high wind. The driver appeared with a loop of rope. A toss about an ear and over the broad nose, and the protests subsided into brays and bleats and a wild rolling of the eyes.

  The tall woman twisted out of his hold and scurried away, her cheeks a brilliant rose. His arm had remained about her waist a shade longer than necessary. Cigar clamped between his teeth in the midst of a broad grin, he applauded.

  “Bravo, madam,” he said, laughing. “And what were you planning to do with the beast once you had possession of it?”

  Billy, breathing hard, narrowed his eyes at Jabez. The boy appeared possessive of his cousin's honor. “Agnes, that was mad. Don't ever do that again.”

  She glared at them both. “I'll act as I see, Billy Canon. I've handled mules before.”

  Billy grunted. He nodded curtly at Jabez and stalked away.

  Agnes turned away, too, then back. “Thank you.” She bobbed her head once. The sensation of her waist within his arm, her shoulders pressed against his chest, lingered. Tall as she was, her head had come to his chin.

  He bowed deeply and smiled, watching her go.

  4

  Billy, who was Sam’s son and at sixteen nearly a man, stood in the stern, balancing himself with one hand on the cabin roof, ready to push with a length of tree limb as John eased the flatboat away from the bank. Billy and Agnes made a team. She stood behind him, ready to loop the anchoring line as he pulled it in, dripping, across the widening gap. At the other end of the deck, Elizabeth and Tom waited, reeling in the bow line. Billy stabbed at a boulder and missed, and Agnes dropped the line to grip his shirt before he tipped into the river. He was solidly built like his father, though no more than her height. She couldn’t have held him had he toppled.

  He pulled back, red-faced, and grinned. “That’s me, missing the mark.”

  “My life’s tale,” she murmured, looping the line.

  Billy sent her a look and leaned over the rail again, jabbing his pole into the shallows as they swung into the current and headed west. Until Pittsburgh, Agnes had never visited a real city, and now she’d seen Cincinnati, with its massive buildings and high steeples and crush of noisy, odorous, fascinating travelers. Along with Billy, Elizabeth, and Tom, she’d toured the marketplace, marveled at the quantity of trade goods, ate chicken on a stick, encountered a peckish mule. And a strange man took liberties, thinking she was about to be stomped by that same mule, when all she did was treat it as she used to treat Maud, her papa’s mule. Agnes only remembered him, the man that is, because he was so much taller than she was. Not many towered over her like he did. His eyes were as black as she’d ever seen and his beard reminded her of the otter pelt she’d found in the market. His voice carried the distinctive tones of northern New England, where the Rs disappear and one syllable words become two. His hands were browned by the sun, the fingers long and supple….

  But she forgot him soon enough. All she could put her mind to was the next big town, St. Louis and maybe, some day, San Francisco—the world was opening up. Billy, besotted with the prospect of visiting new worlds, talked of little else. His mother, Rachel, feared he would take off for parts unknown before he was grown, and she held Agnes to account for his crotchet.

  The days were long and sultry as they slid on down the Ohio, the sun high by seven in the morning and the western horizon colored lavender and peach at half past eight in the evening. The breeze over the river held its chill until noon but by dinner time they welcomed it as it kept off the flies and the heat of the sun. The evenings were fine and the breezes gentle, and Agnes loved to sit up after everyone else was abed, listening to night sounds. The boat bobbed against the shore like a cradle and fireflies darted in and out among the trees and caught in the tall grasses. Many a night, Elizabeth and Tom would wander into the forest with a blanket, to return with the dawn. Agnes often watched them go.

  At Cairo they abandoned the flatboat and took passage on the Belle Gould, a sidewheeler with spark-spitting stacks and an odor of greasy cooking that permeated the cabins. The motion and the smells sent both Rachel and Elizabeth to their bunks. Rachel soon rallied, but Elizabeth remained closeted in the tiny cabin they shared with her two sisters, retching until there was nothing left to expel. Agnes spent her afternoons wetting cloths in the basin and folding them over her forehead.

  “Your complexion needs attention, Lizzie,” she said. “It’s green.”

  Elizabeth groaned. “Don’t tell me. The thought makes my stomach heave.”

  “Good thing Tom can’t see you like this. There’d be no more wandering into the underbrush for you.”

  “Isn’t that what put me into this predicament?” Elizabeth squeezed her eyes against another roll of the ship.

  Agnes pulled back to look at her midsection. “No, really? You think so?”

  “I’m sure of it. I’ve never been sick with motion before and I feel it in my breasts.” She rolled to her side and took my hand. “A woman knows.” She attempted a smile.

  “Well.” Agnes’s breath hitched. A wisp of longing and something like jealousy seeped through her, but she pushed them aside. Elizabeth looked so afflicted.

  “My dearest friend, I congratulate you.” she said softly and massaged her temples. “Does Tom know?”

  “No one knows but my mother. And Aunt Rachel. She guessed as soon as I began vomiting. I’ll tell Tom once I’m presentable again.” She heaved onto
her back and dropped a limp arm over her eyes. “Thank goodness the men are bunking down in steerage. I couldn’t face any of them right now. I wonder if they know how miserable they make us?”

  “I could use a little such misery at times.” Agnes stared out the tiny round window without seeing. “I watch you and Tom and wonder what it’s like.”

  Elizabeth raised onto an elbow, a sly smile on her face. “When you put it like that, it really is worth it.” She dropped back onto her pillow. “What’s between a man and a woman in the privacy of their bed….” She giggled.

  “I don’t expect ever to find out.”

  “Many a woman would like your freedom.”

  “I can’t imagine what it would be like to put myself at someone else’s command. The way your mother does everything your father tells her. Including giving up her home and heading into the wilderness. You know she can’t be happy about that.”

  “She’s happy just being with Papa. She doesn’t consider any other way. You and I will never be so domesticated.”

  Agnes took her hand. “You’ve domesticated Tom instead. He’s more likely to do your bidding than you his.”

  “And I love him for it. What you need is a husband who will be your equal.”

  “Not much chance of a husband at all, at my age.”

  “There are ten men for every woman west of the Mississippi. They’ll be tripping over themselves to get to you.” She raised herself, clutching her belly, and swung her legs to the floor. “What about that man in Cincinnati? He had an eye for you.”

  “What man?” Agnes rinsed the basin into the slop bucket and poured a glass of water for her.

  “The one at the book stall. He was exceptionally nice looking and was quick to get an arm around you.”

  “Too glib by far. And I’ll never see him again, anyway.” Agnes hadn’t thought of him since, well, since last night, but she wasn’t going to tell Elizabeth that.