“The Territory’s going to be settled,” Josiah had argued, “And it won’t help Indians or anybody to let pro-slavers have it!”
It was Leticia, deep blue eyes troubled, who answered Dane. “Indians’ rights are very muddled in Kansas, Mr. Hunter. To start with, there were the Kansas and Wichita, Pawnee, Osage, and those who came through to hunt, like the Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Jicarilla Apache.”
“Didn’t they fight?” asked Rolf, sitting up eagerly at the name of Comanche.
“They had their raids and battles, because especially to Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa, and Pawnee, being a great warrior was the aim of every man, and stealing the horses of another tribe was almost as prestigious as killing its braves.”
Rolf laughed and his eyes glowed like foxfire. “They have the Viking spirit. I look forward to meeting them!”
“Most westward travelers pray not to,” said Josiah. “What’s made a real mess in Kansas has been settling eastern Indians here from as far away as New York to Missouri, at least eighteen different peoples who gave up claims to their eastern lands in return for grants in Kansas.”
“Which were to be theirs as long as grass grew,” Leticia added.
“You met Sara, who’s Shawnee,” Deborah put in. “They started moving here from Ohio and Missouri in 1834, built log houses, and began farming very successfully on their reservation, which was over a million and a half acres. They had the first gristmill in the region.”
“And back in the Twenties, Daniel Morgan Boone, the old frontiersman’s son, was hired by the government to teach the Indians better ways to farm,” Thos said. Old Boone was one of his heroes.
“Quaker, Baptist, and Methodist missionaries set up schools and missions,” Leticia added, as if taking consolation in that. “One, Reverend Jotham Meeker, published the first Indian-language newspaper, The Shawnee Sun.”
“That was in 1835.” Josiah cast such a longing look at his empty cup that Deborah jumped up to fill it. “Meeker later published the first book done in Kansas, a collection of Ottawa laws.”
Dane was frowning, clearly puzzled. “If these tribes have legal claim to much of the land in this Territory, how can it be settled by whites?”
“The government made treaties with the tribes.”
“Who had no choice!” interposed Leticia.
Father made a weary gesture. “I know, Letty! Still, legal forms were observed. The Indians were compensated, given some voice in deciding what was best for their people. The Wyandot, for instance, mostly chose to become U.S. citizens and took individual grants of what had been reservation land. The Shawnee kept two hundred thousand acres bordering Missouri, some taking separate farms of two hundred acres apiece, or holding land in common. They’ll get tribal annuities for the rest of their land, paid out over a number of years. And the Osage still have their land.”
“They won’t as soon as enough settlers want it,” persisted Leticia. “They’ll be shoved off to some other place that whites don’t see a use for, probably to Indian Territory, where Andrew Jackson sent the Cherokee and other Civilized Tribes!”
“Dear lady, you astonish me!” Rolf’s lips tucked down in a cynical smile. “What can happen, after all, when superior numbers want something from people not mighty enough to withstand them? Besides, as I understand it, nomadic Indians drift over vast expanses of hunting grounds, though they don’t grow crops or have permanent settlements. As a practical matter, can a few thousand savages monopolize land that would provide rich farms for people from your overcrowded sections and the emigration from Europe that is certain to increase? You’ve already got Swedes, Irish, and Frenchmen. Given a chance for almost free land and a chance of doing well for themselves, you’re going to get thousands of settlers from the British Isles alone.”
“I know what will happen.” Leticia Whitlaw’s firmly delicate chin came up. She gazed at Rolf till he colored. “That doesn’t mean I think it’s right.”
“Yet, madam, here you are,” he scored.
“Yes.”
Dane gave his brother a stern look. “It’s clear, Rolf, that Mr. and Mrs. Whitlaw weighed and pondered before deciding to come here, and also clear that the West will be settled.”
“Have you changed your oft-voiced opinion, brother, that the Indians are greatly wronged?”
“No. But one might as well defy the ocean as a swelling tide of land-hungry people who see immense tracts going to what they can only consider waste.” He smiled at Leticia, and Deborah marveled at the change it made in his lean, scarred face, till now aloof or mocking. “Do you play the pianoforte, Mrs. Whitlaw?”
“It’s my great pleasure,” she admitted shyly, “though there’s seldom time for it.”
Deborah glanced at her mother incredulously, at the soft color in her cheeks and unusual glow. A few tendrils had escaped the French knot securing her wavy, light brown hair. Deborah had always taken for granted Mother’s gently curved slim figure, but now, watching her as a stranger might, as Dane was, Deborah thought: Why, she’s pretty! Mother’s pretty!
Along with pride came a stab of—was it jealousy? Deborah pushed that horrid thought away. It was only that Dane had rescued Mother, obviously admired her, while he was so bitingly cold and censorious to Deborah.
“It would be my great pleasure to hear you play,” he importuned.
“Do, Letty,” urged Father. “You haven’t played in a coon’s age. In fact, I’ve been wondering if you wished you’d brought the cookstove instead of your pianoforte.”
That had been the choice, one she’d never murmured about even on the hottest days, when cooking on the grate placed in the fireplace, or when the Dutch oven baked something black on the bottom and raw inside.
“I’m out of practice,” she demurred.
“You’ll still sound delightful,” Deborah said, rising. “Please, let’s hear you, Mother! Thos and I’ll do the dishes.”
So chairs were moved near the gracious little corner, where the pianoforte, portrait, and flowers made it possible, so long as one didn’t notice the mud-chinked logs, to imagine this was their comfortable home in New Hampshire, an illusion quickly banished for Deborah as she measured stringy soft soap into the dishpan, poured in boiling water from the kettle, and tempered it with water from the drinking bucket.
The work went quickly, though, Thos rinsing and drying, while Mother played Mozart and Brahms and Chopin with a sure touch for each composition, be it sprightly or somber. As it grew dark, Josiah lit the brass Phoebe lamp, and in its soft flickering Leticia looked heart-catchingly lovely.
She played Father’s beloved “Annie Laurie,” “Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming,” and she yielded to Thos’s entreaties for something gay: “Pop Goes the Weasel” and “Sweet Betsy from Pike.” Josiah asked for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the Whitlaws sang it, standing around the pianoforte. With a quick smile at the Englishmen, Leticia struck up a stately tune Deborah didn’t recognize till Dane and Rolf sang “God Save the Queen” in rich baritones.
“Thank you, Mrs. Whitlaw,” said Dane, bowing. “One’s national anthem always sounds sweetest when in another country. But it grows late. We mustn’t infringe longer on your hospitality.”
“Just one last song.” Josiah rested his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Letty, will you play Mr. Whittier’s “Hymn of the Kansas Emigrant?”
Deborah’s clear voice rose above her father’s and Thos’s in this rousing song that had thrilled her since she’d first heard it back in the east.
“We’ll seek the rolling prairie,
In regions yet unseen …”
They were into the second stanza when a clamor of barking arose, reaching a frenzy as hoofbeats pounded up to the door.
“Come out, Whitlaw!” a hoarse voice yelled into the shocked silence. “Show yourself, you damned abolitionist, or we’ll burn you out!”
Mother caught his arm. “Don’t Josiah! They may shoot you down!”
“Do you have
weapons?” asked Dane beneath his breath.
“Just an old shotgun,” whispered Thos.
“Load it,” ordered Dane.
Josiah called to the men outside, his voice steady, though his lips seemed bloodless.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“Never you mind who I am, you blue-bellied Free-Soiler! I want my nigger wench!”
Leticia rose swiftly and went to the door, though her husband tried to stop her. “She’s not here, and this is most discourteous of you, brawling up to our home, threatening us! Would you like your own families treated so?”
“By God, ma’am, we don’t war on women if they act like women!” growled the leader. “It’s your man we want to see!”
“I’ll go,” Josiah said, but Dane caught his arm.
The intruders sat in their saddles beyond the light from the house, surrounded by the barking hounds. It was impossible to see them, but from the squeak of saddles and shifting hooves, there seemed to be at least four or five.
Rolf muttered, “Keep them talking! I’ll climb out a back window and get my rifle from the saddle scabbard. Dane, you’ll be ready here?”
“You mustn’t risk yourselves,” Josiah began, but Dane grinned at his brother.
“I’ll be ready.”
Josiah put Leticia out of the doorway. “You see me, stranger. Will you step into the light so you can be seen?”
“I’ll step into your house is what I’ll do, ’cause I think you’ve got my Judith hid away.”
“Look for yourself,” said Josiah.
There was the groan of a saddle. “Sit tight, boys, but cut loose with your guns if you see anything funny. We can do for this Yankee like we did for that Free-Soil scum yesterday at Marais des Cygnes.”
“Marais des Cygnes?” echoed Josiah, as a tall, raw-boned man with scraggly black hair and beard strode across the patch of light and loomed in the doorway. Dane had stepped into the bedroom with the shotgun. “What’ve you done?”
“You’ll want to print it in your filthy paper, won’t you?” The gangling man smelled of whisky. The leather thong around his neck usually meant an Arkansas toothpick hung on the other end. He had a pistol at either side and another knife sheathed at his belt. Thrusting his face close to Father’s, he shifted his cud of tobacco and laughed.
“Ain’t you the lucky one, gettin’ it straight from the horse’s mouth?”
“What?”
The stranger was enjoying his game. He cocked his head and gave Deborah a randy look before he grinned at the elder Whitlaws. “You’ve heard tell of Cap’n Charles Hambleton? Fine gent from Georgia, settled in southeast Kansas and got run out by you damned Free-Soilers.”
“I heard Captain Hambleton was charged with horse-stealing,” Josiah said grimly.
“You must hear plenty of lies to fill your rag so full of ’em! But those Free-Soilers who drove the Cap’n out of his place ain’t laughin’ much now!”
“What have you done, man?”
“I just kind of lucked into it,” the black-haired intruder said modestly. “Me an’ my friends here were chasin’ that damned Judith when we met up with the Cap’n and a few dozen other spunky Missouri lads. When they said what they were doin’, we just naturally had to throw in.”
Josiah’s voice slashed like a blade. “What did you do?”
“Why, the Cap’n had a list of the worst Free-Soil rascals. We rounded up eleven, then herded ’em into a gulch that runs into the Marais des Cygnes River. When the Cap’n gave the order, we shot the bastards down.”
“You killed eleven unarmed men?”
“Six look like dyin’, and five dead,” preened the killer. He chuckled at the Whitlaws’ horror, adding truculently, “Ain’t it exactly five unarmed men your goddamned abolitionist John Brown cutlassed to death at Pottawatomie Creek two years ago?”
“If you read my paper, you’d know what I thought about that!”
The Missourian spat on the floor. “Don’t signify what you think, Yankee! Just keep out of my way whilst I look for that high-yaller!”
A glance convinced him no one could hide in this room. He ducked to enter the bedroom, then gave an astounded grunt as a shotgun poked into his belly.
“Have your look,” Dane commanded. “I’ve killed too many men to want another on my soul, even as sorry a one as you. I want you to see for yourself the girl’s not here. Then if you do come back, I promise that I’ll kill you.”
The Missourian’s jaw dropped. “Who in hell are you—some new breed of Yankee? Cain’t hardly make out a word you say!”
“Try,” Dane said, shifting the barrel slowly around to his captive’s back. “Go ahead! Look under the bed and in the chest and behind the curtain. Then you can search the lean-to, the stables, and, if you like, the chicken coop!”
“My boys’ll cut you down in your tracks the minute we step outside!”
“Will they?” Dane laughed harshly. “Too bad for you, then, since a shot from them means I blast you wide open.”
The night rider seemed to understand that. Jumpily glancing over his shoulder at Dane, he bent for a perfunctory glance under the bed. Deborah held the lamp so he could see, then pulled aside the curtain so he could tell there was nothing there but her bed and nothing beneath it.
Dane, receiving a nod of consent from Leticia, lifted the chest lid to reveal tight-packed bedding and clothes.
“Satisfied?” he demanded.
The scraggly man nodded. “Cap’n Hambleton was sure the gal would be brought here if’n she was helped by some gang of nigger-stealers. But maybe she slipped off on her own. She got sweet on my best buck.” A leer showed stained, broken teeth. “It was interferin’ with her duties, so I sold him off. She took on worse’n a white woman, and a lady, at that! Took a butcher knife to me when I was tryin’ to comfort her. I reckoned a whippin’ would settle her down. Wouldn’t have thought she could move for a couple of days, but she sneaked off that night.” He shifted his cud. “Looks like you don’t have her, Whitlaw. Me an’ the boys’ll mosey along.”
Dane said to Josiah Whitlaw, “Shouldn’t we turn these men in to the law? By this one’s own boast, he’s done murder.”
Leticia laid her hand on Josiah’s arm. “You can’t let him go; he’ll track down that poor woman!”
“What can we do?” Josiah said, tormented. “If we turn them over to the militia, they’ll be lynched—provided we could capture them to start with! But if they go to trial, with a pro-slave judge sworn to uphold the slave code foisted on us by the Bogus Legislature, they’ll be acquitted.”
Dane spoke slowly. “You’re saying there’s no justice in this Territory? No legal way that this man will be tried and punished?”
Josiah shook his head. Deborah knew he was thinking of the dead and wounded at Marais des Cygnes, felt with him a great wave of grief, outrage, the need for vengeance, yet the shrinking from becoming judge and executioner. Deborah knew her father was struggling, praying for guidance.
Should he loose this man who killed wantonly, beat women, hunted them as he would animals?
“I’ll see to him,” Dane said abruptly.
Deborah’s breath flowed out in relief.
The man would die. But the deed wouldn’t be on Father’s head, or his to do. Dane was a soldier; he’d killed before, killed men who were doubtless infinitely better than this wretch. She couldn’t have killed him herself unless he were attacking, but thinking of a fugitive colored girl, thinking of eleven men taken from their families and murdered, as Father might have been tonight if the Englishmen hadn’t been here, Deborah felt no pity for the Missourian.
“Jed!” came a shout from outside. “What’s takin’ you so long? If’n you found your gal, you ought to pass her around!”
“Say you’ll be out in a minute,” Dane grated.
The man obeyed in a hoarse croak. His burned-coal eyes darted wildly from Josiah to the women and Thos. But Leticia was already confronting Dane.
“You mustn’t do it,” she said, “for your own sake more than his.”
“What then, madam?” Dane’s eyes were as cold as a winter storm sky.
Something passed between the determined man and the fragile older woman, something of spirit and will, love and courage. “Leave him to God, son.”
“God?” cried Thos. “How can you talk of God and this … this …”
“Enough, Thomas!” Josiah laid a hand on his son’s shoulder. It was the first time Deborah could remember hearing her brother called by his proper name within the family. Still, Josiah seemed released from some vision of inevitable apocalyptic terror as he turned to Dane. “My wife is right, Mr. Hunter. Since we can’t bring him to man’s justice, we must leave him to the judge of us all.”
Dane’s gaze flicked to Deborah, as if he were trying to read her thoughts. Then, facing the elder Whitlaws, he gave a brief nod. “It’s yours to decide. But Rolf and I will escort these men far enough to discourage them from coming back here.” He added to the trembling Missourian, “Remember what I promised earlier: if you come back, you die.”
“I’m not comin’ back!” The man’s craggy Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “The law can hunt my nigger like it’s supposed to do; I don’t aim to get shot by some funny talkin’ furriner!”
Reprieved, he was looking jauntier. Deborah thought she read his mind. “You can’t follow this gang, Mr. Hunter!” she protested. “You’re outnumbered. They’ll start an uproar in the dark and kill you.”
“Not if we have their guns and knives.”
He smiled at her without mockery for the first time. An amused tenderness in his eyes and voice that startled Deborah reached into her heart with a thrill of joyful recognition so powerful that it hurt. She knew this man! She knew him in her depths, as if they had been two halves of Plato’s sundered being and couldn’t be content till reunited.
It was a magical high moment, everything else in suspension, till Dane turned to Thos. “Will you collect their weapons in some kind of sack? We’ll deposit them in some deep, muddy stream. These gentlemen will go home with their fangs properly pulled.”
Daughter of the Sword Page 5
