Saved by the Bullet

by Preston Shires

  Now, don’t get me wrong, there are necessary rules of society, as these guarantee respect and liberty between citizens, and it is to women, who understand biblical principles of morality, to mould and shape these to the exigencies of the present. Men, for example, need direction in their manners so that they forgo selfishness and attend to the needs of others, and in particular to those of the weaker sex. As I’ve said as much before, imagine the man who disregards his duty to wife and child by gambling away his earnings.

  I had half a mind to deliver my own lecture to Reverend Wood when Mr. Thompson appeared and patted Teddy on the shoulder, exclaiming, “You’ve got horse sense my boy! You outsmarted all of us. The odds were against you eleven to one. How did you know that flea-bitten grey had it in her?”

  * * *

  I don’t know if you’ve ever sat on a wasp, but I had the look of having sat on a full nest of them. An “Ahh!” escaped me at greater intensity and velocity than steam through a ship’s whistle, and the sound was its equal.

  Mr. Thompson looked at me bemused, but horror filled the countenance of my little brother, and rightfully so. He had been caught in flagrante delicto. I grabbed him by the elbow, and he was lucky I only had five fingernails on my right hand, because all of them made an impression upon him.

  I escorted him out of our makeshift church at a quick pace and took him to a secluded corner of the building. “I can’t believe you have betrayed me like this,” I scolded. “Your honor is attached to mine, how could you have gone gambling on horses, and in full view of the town?”

  “Now, wait, Sis,” he said nervously. He exuded a wincing, agonizing demeanor, while wriggling his arm a bit. I let go. “You see,” he continued while massaging his arm, “if I hadn’t got involved, well that money would have gone to someone who would have spent it on alcohol, or to someone like Mr. Thompson who has too much money to begin with. That I lose ten dollars in such a cause was of no account to me.”

  “Those were my ten dollars!” I pointed out.

  “And I returned them to you, and at interest. If you wish, I could take them back and hand them over to Fred Travis who had his eye on Mr. Davis’s liquor sale. He even told me, and this is in the strictest of confidences, Addy, that if the bay won the race, he’d have a mind to share a bottle of the winnings with me. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  I hesitated. Fred Travis needed no alcohol circulating aimlessly about his brain. He was a nice enough fellow, and had once taken me and Missus, an elderly lady, on a wagon ride to go out and look over some property; however, from what I have heard, he had no ambition in life but to satisfy his immediate passions, and these were kept under control only by sobriety.

  “All right,” I heard Teddy say, “I think I know where Fred’s at. I can go find him and give him his money back so he can feed his habits.”

  “Hold on,” I said. This was a quandary.

  Teddy looked at me admiratively. “While you’re thinking about this, I just want to say how proud I am of you.”

  “For what?”

  “Well, I’ve heard you’ve accepted to speak to the community on the Fourth of July. I mean, in front of all them folks, half of which you don’t know. I couldn’t do it. First off they wouldn’t take me seriously ‘cause I don’t have your education. And then I kind of look the part of a bumpkin too. Shucks, I don’t know how to wear a fine suit of clothes like Mr. Whitt.”

  The quandary just got bigger. How was I to outfit myself for the speech if I gave up the windfall?

  “No need to be proud of me Teddy,” I said, “the speech is not yet given. But as for your ill-gotten gains, we’ll keep them, but at the same time, those who lost their wager, ought to be informed as to their folly. I plan on writing an article about this episode in my gazette, and I hope to have the effect of discouraging such behavior in the future. I don’t want you participating in these goings on anymore. Don’t tempt God twice.” I’m far from being Catholic, but I judged this bonne oeuvre would compensate for any unintentional sin.

  Teddy had donned his serious face, as if he had learned a lesson. “Fair enough, Addy. I promise to do my best.”

  That’s about as good a deal as one can expect from Teddy, so I let the matter rest while we walked back to rejoin those who lingered after church.

  CHAPTER 6

  I found Mr. Thompson loitering about the church door, much like I would imagine a merchant of the temple. He inspired me, and I approached him with forty dollars in hand. Merchants of the temple don’t have to be of the male variety. He, being perspicacious, knew I was making an offer for his shack on Atlantic Street, the present headquarters of the Brownville Beacon.

  “I believe I said seventy-five dollars,” he said in a pious, Christian-like tone.

  “And then you said fifty, and now I’m saying thirty but offering you forty. So, unless you’re going to continue the trend and offer to sell at twenty tomorrow, I’d take the forty if I were you.”

  “You know,” he said, letting out a puff of air accompanied with a grin, “just to save myself from arguing with you, I’ll accept your offer.”

  “At twenty?”

  “Don’t push your luck, Miss Furlough,” he said extracting the forty dollars from my hand.

  “You’ll still make a fine justice of the peace,” I reassured him, before I went in search of my friends.

  At the edge of the road running alongside our church, or schoolhouse, I found Jonathan engaged in conversation with Kitty and Stewart. He was asking Stewart if he’d traveled about much back east. Listening to the back and forth, I concluded that either Jonathan had already visited every place Stewart had been through, or he had visited another place twice the size and twice the interest. Jonathan apparently knew even Saint Louis better than Stewart, who had grown up there.

  As for Saint Joseph, Jonathan clearly had the advantage, which surprised me. Saint Jo, as we refer to the city, was a long way from Ohio and I didn’t realize Jonathan wandered off so far. It is true he’s a few years older than I, and we were not the closest of neighbors, so I wouldn’t have been privy to all his goings about. Still, it troubled me, and an air of perplexity descended across my countenance.

  “Why Addy,” asked Kitty, “what’s wrong? You look to have unpleasant thoughts.”

  “No, not more than one at a time. I see you’ve been chatting with Mr. Withers.”

  “Yes, a well-traveled man.”

  Jonathan took this as a cue. He reminded me of Zachariah Thrumbrill. Zach was the boy I was in love with at our country school. He showed me all sorts of attention, yanking on my braids and the like.

  I remember the day Zach impressed us all. The schoolmaster caught him whittling his initials into the bench and obliged him to stand up in front of us all and recite the day’s assignment: the introduction to the Declaration of Independence. He had this smug, confident look about him as he marched up to the front of the class. He presented himself with a stately deportment and as near a senatorial voice as an adolescent boy with a modulating tenor could achieve. “When in the course of human events,” he said, then slowly wiping his brow with his hand, “it becomes necessary….” He performed admirably and much to the amazement of our pedagogue. As you may have guessed, I had been less intrigued by his verbal recital than by the number of times he wiped his brow, and in fixating upon his hands as he sat back down my eyes detected a stain of ink in the form of the introduction to the Declaration of Independence upon them.

  “Yes, Miss Furlough,” said Jonathan, with that mix of confidence and contrivance that had marked Zach’s face, “I doubt anyone has traveled as much as I have in as short of time to make as much honest profit.”

  “And you must have made quite a trade with my father, if he funds your present itinerary.”

  “I’ll tell you, Miss Furlough, I’ve carried out commissions for some of the most important personalities of Ohio. Why, I superintended a load of furniture worth well over one thousand dollars for Mr. Mordecai Malc
om.”

  I heard a gasp from Kitty.

  “You see,” said Jonathan turning to Kitty. “I may be relatively young, but ingenuity and talent compensate for age.” He stated this as fact while tapping his temple with the end of his forefinger.

  “Mordecai Malcom of Ohio?” asked Kitty.

  “Yes, Ma’am. You’ve heard of him, I see.”

  “Why yes, he’s my grandfather.”

  Suddenly, Jonathan changed subjects, and discoursed upon the merits of another man of wealth from Saint Jo.

  * * *

  Behind the exchange of Kitty and Jonathan, I observed Mrs. Wood dragging her husband away from Prudence, which freed up the latter to join us.

  “Oh, my,” she said in approaching me, “I see you’re at liberty.” She gave her brother a knowing look and nodded in my direction. “Jonathan,” she continued, “has become quite the accomplished man of business.”

  “So I understand.”

  She placed a loving hand on her brother’s arm while looking up at his dark eyes, eyes superscripted with arching, rather gothic, eyebrows. “I hope I don’t cause you embarrassment in saying so?”

  Jonathan was unmoved, except I sensed he would have preferred to continue discoursing with Stewart’s fiancée, whose kind and listening manners had a tendency to attract the attention of the long tongued.

  “Oh,” said Kitty, looking shiftily from me to Prudence to Jonathan and then back to me and so on. Kitty is sharp at detecting certain things, and I believe she perceived Prudence’s efforts to unite the interests of her family with mine. Kitty felt a duty to deliver me. “Uhm, Addy,” she said. “You haven’t heard of late from Mr. Davenport, have you?”

  Before I could answer, Prudence wanted to know who this Mr. Davenport was.

  Without thinking I responded, “My suitor.”

  “Suitor!” Miss Straightlace exclaimed, and then, fixing her eyes upon me and smiling said, “You’re such a tease, Addy. Such exaggeration. Your father mentioned nothing of the man. Whatever does this Mr. Davenport do?”

  Prudence’s inquiry into Cameron’s ventures constituted a question I could not answer, at least straightforwardly. “Uhm,” I said thoughtfully, pawing my lower lip with my index. “He’s traveling on business for the moment.”

  “Oh,” said Prudence doubtfully, followed up with an “I’m sure. What business is he in?”

  Kitty joined the forces of darkness at this moment. “It’s true, Addy,” she said, “you’ve never explained his business to me. Awful mysterious. Remember the rumors that he had transactions late at night up at the cave? No proof it was he, though.”

  Prudence looked at me, then back to Kitty. I could tell she was both befuddled and concerned. “Now,” she said waving her hand in the air, her eyes switching repeatedly from Kitty to me to Kitty, “you’re just having fun at my expense, aren’t you two? There is no Mr. Davenport, is there?”

  “Oh, he’s as real as can be,” confirmed Kitty. “You ask anyone. Anyone you please will remember Mr. Davenport at the dance dragging Addy out onto the dance floor.” At this Miss Straightlace showed signs of fainting away, but she wanted to hear the rest, and refrained. “Oh yes, everyone saw it, and most came away from the dance with a black eye to remember the whole night by!”

  “Goodness,” said Prudence turning to me, as if I were a fallen lady. “My dear child, whatever have you gotten yourself into?”

  As our conversation had become animated, Mr. Furnas joined us. “Yes,” he said throwing in his two bits, “that Mr. Davenport is an awfully mysterious businessman. Bringing things into town but never selling anything.”

  I defended my beau by going on the attack. “Right, Mr. Furnas, but no worse than the Nebraska Settlement Company, with you, Reverend Wood, and Mr. Muir. Whatever settlement has your lot established? Awful mysterious as well.”

  “Give us time,” he said, as he changed the subject to those around him that he was unacquainted with. “I haven’t had the pleasure,” he said, extending a hand to Prudence, whose face now resembled one of those Greek masks reserved for tragedies. She envisioned me, no doubt, as Cassandra, lured in by Apollo, and destined by my suitor to a life of misery that could only end with my murder. Strange she would make the comparison, because unlike Cassandra, I had no inkling of what the future lay in store for me.

  To break the heavy silence, I began the introductions. “Miss Straight…” I said, before catching myself. “Miss Withers, I mean, straight from Ohio. And her brother Jonathan. Mr. Furnas is editor of our local paper, the most widely distributed in the Territory.”

  “Oh,” said Prudence, finally distracted from contemplating my tragic plight. “Do you promote the Republican cause?”

  “My dear lady,” responded our anti-abolitionist, “the Republican cause, if it gain in popularity, will be the demise of this nation. Now I’m not an advocate of slavery, but to oppose a way of life is futile, no one will convince he who has grown up in the institution to abandon it. But I might allay your concerns, if you’ve been polluted by Republican notions, slavery is not economically sustainable and will be abandoned over time.”

  “Meanwhile, Prudence,” I said to complete the picture, “Mr. Furnas will stand idly by and allow his brothers in Adam to be whipped to death, his sisters in Eve to be dishonored by their white masters, and allow both brothers and sisters to have their children torn from their arms and sold downriver.”

  Prudence now spotted an adversary in Mr. Furnas. “Well, sir, I shan’t read a paper that derides abolition. My attentions, like those of all well-schooled women, will go to Addy’s gazette. The Brownville Beacon will shine a light on the evils of slavery and the wickedness of alcohol. We shall, and you may hold us to it, promote the cause of temperance! And we’ll get the women to discourage these pernicious dancing affairs. If the women won’t go, the men won’t have anyone to carry on with!”

  I thought it ironic that her rabid opposition to a cotillion, to gay apparel, and the like, might drive me to drink.

  Meanwhile, Jonathan, bored with topics not of his own making or in which he had a role to play, said dismissively to his sister, “With over a thousand distilleries in the nation, with families depending upon the revenue for their daily bread, I’m afraid your objections, dear sister, will hardly matter.”

  “You object to the dance too, Miss Withers?” asked Mr. Furnas with one eye on me accompanied with a mischievous smile. “Like the good reverend, you see dances as the Devil’s entertainment?”

  “Oh, my,” I interrupted. “Is that not Mrs. Furnas in the distance?”

  Mr. Furnas turned to look at his wife who walked up the dusty road with children about her.

  “She was signaling you, Mr. Furnas, I believe.” Then I called down the street, but not quite loud enough for her to hear. “He’ll be coming Mrs. Furnas, we’re just leaving.”

  I thought to myself, if I could just keep Miss Straightlace preoccupied with writing articles for the Brownville Beacon, I could keep her in ignorance about my plans for a dance come July Fourth.

  Now, it’s not that I fear Prudence, or think that, in her reports to papa, she’ll distort everything I’m doing to such a point of vice that my father would have me dragged back to Ohio, it’s rather that I don’t want to hear her delivering heated sermons to me through the month of July: it’s already hot enough in Nebraska Territory.

  “Prudence,” I said as we retraced our steps back home, “I would like so much for you to help me out with my gazette articles. I’ve got some already planned for the first edition, but I’d like to have a store of them.”

  She beamed. “I know exactly what you need, and Jonathan could be our muse, letting us in on those needs and interests of men which would be of consequence for the ladies.” I looked around for Jonathan and located his silhouette disappearing into town along with those of Stewart and Kitty. “He’s so perspicacious, Addy. You’ll find his company rewarding. Just think, you and he can chat day long about weighty matt
ers of the soul that you can transcribe into epigrams to inject into our gazette.”

  “I’m sure we’ll have words,” I said honestly. “But as for myself, I’m going to focus on a tragedy that occurred here one year ago.” I told her of the Friend murders in as much detail as I possessed.

  “And,” I reiterated, “I want not only to find out who put George Lincoln and his ne’er-do-wells up to the crime, I want to show how, unless repentance make way for God’s grace, poor choices made in youth result in worse choices as adults. My plan is to compare George with someone who had an equally rough upbringing, but who turned out profitable for society. Peter Cartwright wouldn’t be a bad subject.”

  “The Arminian? The preacher who claims you can lose your salvation?””

  “He has a right to be wrong on some things, but overall, he has overcome his childhood. Like many young men on the frontier.”

  Just then we heard a gunshot and laughter. In an empty lot not far from my house we espied a group of young men carrying on. One of the group held a pistol in one hand and a bottle in another, obviously trying to steady his wavy arm as it pointed the gun, in a circular fashion, at a cat running for cover underneath a bush.

  I intervened, grabbing the man’s wrist and forcing him to put the gun down. It was quite heroic of me, considering his breath alone could have intoxicated a dozen temperance women. I approached the bush and kneeled down. I gave the poor wretch my gentlest of smiles and followed this up with a quiet “meow” of my own. Then slowly I reached in. She willingly came into my arms and I nestled her against my bosom. She felt so comfortable and safe that when she caught sight of her persecutors, she didn’t hesitate to hiss and chomp down on my hand.

  I did reassure her, calmed her back down. We brought her home and christened her “Gunshy,” and offered her a lick of bacon.

  Prudence stood over me while I petted Gunshy who dutifully cleaned her plate. “Do you think that’s how it happened?” she asked. “A group of young men who just had too much to drink and started taking pot shots at the Friends’ cat? Mrs. Friend comes out to save the cat, gets mortally wounded, and then the gang decides they must get rid of everyone? I mean it may not have been a cat, it might have been another animal or even just taking pot shots at Mr. Friend for fun, and then all went wrong.”