Perish from the Earth

by Jonathan F. Putnam

  “I’ll refuse to go with them,” Tessie said defiantly. “They can’t drag me away against my will.”

  “Besides,” I said, “I doubt very much Pemberton would want to return to the scene of his crime.”

  “His crime?” Lincoln asked with interest.

  I explained to Lincoln our theory that Pemberton had been sent by Jacques Roman to interfere with Tessie’s intended and that he’d ended up killing Jones in a manner designed to make Bingham look guilty.

  “I’m not too sure about that explanation,” Lincoln said, rubbing the backs of his fingers across his smooth jaw, “though I suppose stranger things have happened. Let’s see what Lovejoy has to add to the stew. He should be here any minute.

  “In the meantime, Miss Speed is right to be cautious about Miss Roman’s safety.” Turning back to Tessie, he added, “I think you should stay in St. Louis until it’s time for you to testify. It’s only a few hours’ ride to Alton. A client of mine, Samuel C. Davis, lives in a large house not far from here. His dry goods wholesale has been unusually successful—and unusually litigious. He owes me a fee, and I imagine he’d be happy to have it discharged in exchange for allowing us to impose on his wife’s hospitality.”

  “When will George’s trial take place?” asked Tessie.

  “Judge Thomas has set aside two days of his calendar,” said Lincoln. “Next Wednesday, spilling over into Thursday if it proves necessary. Which it will, most likely.”

  “I can hardly wait so long,” she said. “When he left Roman Hall those weeks ago, I feared I’d never see him again.”

  “For myself,” said Lincoln, “after tonight I need to rejoin the circuit in Belleville—just across the Mississippi.” He pointed through the grimy windows of the tavern at the Illinois shore, visible on the other side of the great river. “I only managed to break free to meet Lovejoy here today by giving my day’s cases to Edwards. I’ve already made arrangements with a ferryman to take me back to Illinois at dawn tomorrow. I’ll be back in Alton next Tuesday, along with the rest of the circuit riders.”

  “Have you had any further word from Lovejoy?” I asked.

  “Just this.” Lincoln tossed a slip of paper onto the table. I unfolded it and read,

  Lincoln—

  I know something of your murder trial you’ll find of interest. Friday night next at Conran’s.

  —E. L.

  “It’s not much, is it?” I said.

  He shook his head. Outside, only the tops of the tall masts and stacks of the ships bobbing alongside the levee still caught the rays of the sun, which was quickly sinking behind us. Lincoln took out his pocket watch and stared at it with growing agitation.

  “From what you’ve said, he’s a man of his word,” said Martha. “I’m sure he’ll keep the appointment.”

  So we waited. And took our supper and waited some more. Lovejoy did not appear. Eventually, Lincoln and Martha left to escort Tessie to the care of Mrs. Samuel C. Davis, leaving me at Conran’s in case Lovejoy materialized. They walked back into the public room an hour later with hopeful looks on their faces, which I dashed with a quick shake of my head.

  “I don’t think he’s coming,” said Lincoln.

  “Let’s give him another hour,” Martha said. “Perhaps his crossing was delayed.”

  Lincoln nodded and eased himself wearily into the chair next to me. “The circuit takes its toll,” he said when he saw me watching. “I’ll be glad to be back home in our bed in Springfield in two weeks, win, lose, or draw.”

  “On the other hand,” said Martha with a grin, “you have the most entertaining cases on the circuit. Tell Joshua the one about the corn and the manure.”

  I looked at Lincoln questioningly. “On the stroll back just now,” he said, “I was entertaining your sister with a case I won last week in Kaskaskia.”

  I gestured for him to relate it to me as well.

  Lincoln sat forward, his face reanimated. He began: “The facts were simple. My client, farmer Gus, sold farmer Bob a parcel of land with a stable on it. In the loft of the stable, there was a quantity of corn. Outside on the lot, there was a pile of manure. After the sale’s complete, Gus shows up to haul away the manure and the corn. But Bob refuses to let him—says both the corn and the manure are his by virtue of the fact that he purchased the land.

  “So Gus sues Bob, and the judge hears the case while we’re in Kaskaskia. I’m representing Gus. Edwards stands up for Bob. The judge listens to both of us, and he announces his ruling, a regular Solomon. The corn is personal property, he decides, so Gus can carry it away, but the manure is real estate—it’s part of the land, as much as if it were plowed into the ground—and so title to the manure passed with the land sale. It belongs to Bob.

  “Well, I know my client farmer Gus won’t be happy with that result, because he wants to use the manure on his fields next spring. So I stand up again and I say, ‘Your Honor, let me reargue the manure portion of your ruling. Imagine a mule.’”

  Lincoln grinned at me, and Martha giggled with anticipation.

  “‘Imagine a mule’?” I said, playing along.

  “Right. ‘Imagine a mule.’ And Judge Thomas”—Lincoln mimed taking a cigar from his mouth—“says, ‘All right, I’ve got him in mind. Long snout, floppy ears. Mottled gray in color. Ugly fellow.’

  “‘Perfect,’ I say. ‘Now imagine your mule comes upon Gus’s pile of corn. What’s he going to do?’

  “‘Eat it all, I suppose,’ says the judge.

  “‘Precisely. And what’s going to happen next?’ I didn’t need to spell it out, but we all know what’s going to happen when a mule eats a big pile of corn. Happens pretty quickly too.” Lincoln looked at me and asked, “Have you figured out my winning argument?”

  Without waiting for me to respond, he plunged ahead. “‘Well, Your Honor,’ I said, ‘how can it be your mule eats personal property and discharges real estate?’”

  He clapped his hands together, and Martha bent over double with girlish laughter. “The argument carried the day too,” Lincoln said. “Judge Thomas changed his mind. Gus got his manure.”

  “Thus the majesty of the law,” I said with a grin.

  Thirty minutes later, Lincoln pulled out his pocket watch for one final time. “I’m turning in,” he said. “I’m aggrieved Lovejoy didn’t show. It isn’t like him—not at all. He’s cost me a day’s worth of fees. And I’m sorry to have made you two rush back.”

  Lincoln clasped my hand and gave a playful bow to my sister. “I’ll see you in Alton next week. Perhaps we can track down Lovejoy when we get there and see what he has to say for himself.”

  The next morning, part of the mystery was resolved. Martha and I were inside the Liberty Coffee House, next door to Conran’s, enduring coffee burned black as charcoal and Indian bread compounded with the drippings of bacon, when I made a remark about Lovejoy’s failure to appear as promised. The man sitting across the table from us looked up at the sound of the name.

  “Elijah Lovejoy?” the man asked.

  “The very same. Do you know him?”

  “No, but I think you’ll want to read this.” He handed me the copy of the Missouri Republican that he’d been reading. In a small box at the bottom of the front page, the paper carried the following report:

  ABOLITIONIST OUSTED

  We are heartened to pass along the following news from a Friend across the River in our fair neighbor called Alton. Our regular readers need hardly reminding of that minister of mischief, the unrepentant Abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy, who decamped last year for Alton’s shining hills after being turned out by the right-thinking men of St. Louis. It will come as no surprise that the worthy citizens of his new home have proven to be no more welcoming of his odious effusions of hatred and discord than were the residents of our City.

  Lovejoy has continued to publish his quarrelsome and disagreeable sheet since his arrival in Alton. We are told the leading ministers, public officials, and men of business of th
at town gathered recently at the Upper Alton Presbyterian Church to consider how best to address this public nuisance. A motion was made calling upon Mr. Lovejoy to end his association with any newspaper in town and, if he refused to so desist, to leave town immediately. After brief debate, in which no one but Lovejoy himself spoke in his defense, the motion passed unanimously. Everyone who desires the harmony of the country, and the peace and prosperity of all, should rejoice in this democratic outcome. We do not know where the Abolitionist intends to move onto next, but we hope it is far enough away none of our Readers will have to encounter his noxious stench ever again.

  “What do you make of it?” asked the man when Martha and I had finished reading the report. He was tall and handsome, with a full head of dark hair, sideburns reaching to his jawline, and even features. I judged him to be thirty years old or thereabouts. He was wearing an army coat bearing the insignia of a second lieutenant.

  “Either Mr. Lovejoy is very disagreeable or the citizens of Alton are,” said Martha. “Or both.”

  “It’s mostly the latter, I believe,” the man said, “although I have no doubt the man’s a raving Abolitionist.” His rich voice and sober bearing made it clear he was no native westerner.

  “Do you think he’s gone already from Alton and we’ve missed him?” asked Martha.

  I shook my head. “If anything, he’s the type where that sort of public opposition will merely embolden him further. Remember, he’s had three printing presses destroyed and thrown into the Mississippi, but when I last saw him, he was preparing for the arrival of the fourth.”

  “Then we can talk to him next week with Lincoln, when we get to Alton,” said Martha.

  I picked up the newspaper and studied the article again. And I thought back to the scheming men we’d overheard at the Franklin House on the day of our departure from Alton. “I don’t think we can afford to wait that long,” I said. “Lovejoy may be stubborn, but his opponents are determined as well. And there’re a lot more of them.”

  I turned to the lieutenant. “Do you know the fastest way to Alton?”

  He nodded. “I’ve spent these past three months for the Engineering Corps sounding out the river with a view toward improving the channel. You’ll do best to take the steam ferry across the river and rent horses from the stable positioned at the Illinois landing. It’s only a twenty- or twenty-two-mile ride from there to Alton.”

  “Let’s go at once,” I said to Martha, rising from my chair. I reached my hand across the table. “Thank you for your help, Lieutenant—”

  “Lee. Robert E. Lee,” said the man, returning my grip before turning back to his paper.

  Martha and I walked along the crowded wharf, dodging the carts of merchants with cargo, strolling bagpipers and organ grinders, early-morning drunkards weaving their way from one tavern to the next, and barefoot children in tattered clothing who asked us for halfpennies.

  “Lieutenant Lee said we should look for the steam ferry,” said Martha, peering through the bustle and chaos. The ferry landing was not immediately obvious.

  “Actually, I think it will be faster to find a packet steamer heading directly to Alton,” I said. “Follow me.”

  We soon came upon the Brilliant, a modest two-decked side-winder, with thick clouds of smoke trailing from its stack as if its fires were at full bore and departure was imminent. The ship’s ticket seller, resplendent in a bright-green uniform matching the ship’s livery, was shouting out the names of ports to the north at which it would be calling, Alton first among them. The seller agreed with our assessment of the fires, and we paid fifty cents each for the quick deck passage and boarded.

  Alas, it was a trick—an exercise in commercial puffery. As one hour passed and then another, and still the hands did not untie the lines holding us to the wharf, it became clear the captain of the Brilliant was using his ship’s apparent readiness to fill up his hold with passengers, like us, hoping to depart at once. In all likelihood, he had ordered his firemen to burn green wood precisely to increase the volume of smoke as a false signal.

  Angered and impatient, I went out to argue with the ticket seller, but he shrugged his shoulders and said he had no control over the departure time. We were free to disembark and choose another packet, he said, but the price of our passage was strictly nonrefundable.

  I was ready to switch ships nonetheless, if only out of the principle of the thing, but Martha pointed out we had no reason for confidence the next northbound packet with a smoking stack we boarded would leave any sooner. So we kept our places on the Brilliant. And stewed. Finally, as the sun was starting to recede, the captain decided he’d accumulated enough passengers and cargo and gave the order to cast off the lines.

  A few miles north of St. Louis, we came to the point where the turbulent, muddy, brown waters of the Missouri River flowed at a right angle into the calm, deep-blue waters of the Mississippi. As our boat rocked through the churning confluence, Martha’s thoughts evidently returned to the fate of Tessie Roman. “Do you think she’s truly in love with him?” she asked.

  “I’m sure I’m the wrong person to judge it,” I said with a shrug, “but it appears so. And based on my observation of Bingham, it’s fully reciprocated.”

  Martha sighed. “In that case, perhaps I’ve been wrong all this time. Maybe some men are worth loving. And maybe it is possible for women to exercise some small measure of control over our own lives.”

  “I don’t think her case proves it at all,” I said, shaking my head. “She’s merely trading the dominion of one man, her father, for that of another—Bingham.”

  “You are the least romantic person I’ve ever met, Joshua,” cried my sister. She crossed her arms and walked away to the other side of the ship as we thrashed our way toward the elusive Mr. Lovejoy.

  CHAPTER 25

  We reached the Alton levee several hours later, just as the sun was setting. The broad expanse of the still river was the color of brushed copper, through which a solitary log, black and conspicuous, came floating. The light reflecting off the Alton cliffs turned from orange to gold to yellow and then dissolved into a thin, soft peach, the last dying glimmer of the day.

  We headed for the Franklin House and experienced that funny sensation of entering a place at once familiar and strange. Nanny Mae’s chair by the door was empty. But the innkeeper Kemp greeted us like old friends.

  “We’ll take a room for the week,” I told him, “and I wonder if you can tell us where in town we’re likely to find Elijah Lovejoy.”

  Kemp’s jovial mood vanished in a heartbeat. “You haven’t come to stir up trouble, have you?” he said, looking at us through narrowed eyes.

  “Of course not,” said Martha indignantly. “It seems the citizens of Alton have made trouble enough for Mr. Lovejoy.”

  “Careful,” I hissed in Martha’s ear. To Kemp I said, “We have no interest either way in Lovejoy’s political views. He’s offered us a favor, and we’ve come to collect.”

  “I expect you could find him tonight at Gilman’s warehouse, far southern end of town,” said Kemp. “But I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  “Fortunately you’re not,” said Martha before I could stop her. Muttering apologies, I took Martha by the arm, and we went to our room to deposit our meager possessions.

  “You’ve got to be more careful with your words,” I said to Martha once we were back on the darkening streets and heading toward the warehouse. The night was perfectly clear and the moon at its full. “There’s no reason to give offense unnecessarily.”

  “He was trying to be a bully,” she said primly. “This whole town’s been trying, based on that newspaper article. I don’t like bullies.”

  “And I don’t like making enemies,” I said.

  “I suspect our Mr. Lovejoy is on my side of the debate,” returned Martha.

  Several blocks of public houses stretched south from the steamboat landing. They were packed tonight, with debauched men spilling out of entranceways like molt
en tar oozing from angry tar pits. Even the streets were unusually lively for the late hour. Anticipation—of something—was in the air. Men carried jugs or tankards and strode to and fro in excited conversation. Many called to each other from opposite sides of the street as we walked along. A sense of menace prevailed.

  Several hundred yards along, the row of taverns gave way to a large stone warehouse running for a full block, separated from the river only by the wharf and the street. The warehouse was built into a hill sloping down to the water, so it was three stories tall on the river side and two by the hill. The long sides of the building, stretching for one hundred feet or more, were solid, with no windows or doors. The near gable end of the building, meanwhile, was about forty feet wide with a door at ground level and several windows on the upper floors.

  A few men loitered in front of the warehouse door, looking about warily. As we approached, one of them put a hand inside the pocket of his frockcoat, as if clenching a pistol, and stepped forward to intercept us. He was an exact copy—though ten years younger—of Lovejoy, with the same full, proud face.

  “You must be Owen Lovejoy,” I said. “We’re looking for your brother.”

  “Who’re you?” Owen Lovejoy demanded.

  “The Speeds. Elijah asked to meet with us.” I had retained Elijah Lovejoy’s note that Lincoln had showed us last night, and I pulled it out now. One of the men produced a candle, and in its light, they examined the writing carefully.

  “It’s his hand, all right,” his brother said. He was trembling, perhaps from the cold wind blowing off the river. “But he’s busy tonight. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

  “He was supposed to meet us last night. I don’t want to wait yet another day. It’s important.” I looked at the men and then back toward the taverns, where the better part of their attentions were focused. Everyone seemed to be anticipating some dramatic action this very night.