by Jane Smiley
"Bisket piped up from the rear, ’Well, it an’t!’
" ’Who says it an’t?’ This fellow was very belligerent and red in the face. So there was a long silence, and then Jenkins says, ’Well, now, I guess it’s me who says it an’t; it’s not, that is, because you see my stake’s in the ground here and this is about the middle of my claim, and we all have land around here—’
" ’You boys git off my land right now, or I’ll have ta kill ya.’ That’s what the little guy said, and lo and behold if the window behind him didn’t suddenly explode, and I turned around, and there was the Smithson boy, just grinning. Well, everyone started running around then, and that Negro woman Bisket had seen came running out of the house screaming, and she said that a bullet had gone right past her ear, and of course the Smithson boy wasn’t grinning after that! But the Missourians didn’t shoot. I thought they would, but they actually fell back a bit, like they were startled. Then the little man started yelling, ’You went and shot my winder! I brought that winder all the way from Lousiana! That winder’s been up the Mississippi and up the Missouri, and the d— steamboat exploded and the winder survived, and now you gone and shot it!’ And he leveled his gun at the Smithson boy, and then old Smithson kind of interposed his horse between them and pulled out some money and offered to pay for the window, and behind him, you could hear the boy saying, ’I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to shoot it,’ but we all knew he did.
"Then Jenkins seemed to feel bolder, and he said, ’This is my claim, and you got to leave. I an’t going to have my claim jumped for the second time in a year, and I’m telling you you got to leave!’
"And then we all stood there. Because, you know, nobody was ready to start shooting, not even the Missourians, or Louisianans, or whatever they were. The hard part was to turn tail and leave. We couldn’t do it. We just milled around for a bit, and then Bush called out, ’We’re not done with this matter!’ and we filed off, but then, well, you know how it is—everybody felt a little ashamed, as if we’d been driven off."
Thomas dived into his corncakes, and we were silent for a bit. The door was open for air, since the evening had stayed warm, and I could hear some yipping far out on the prairie. We had had a frost, and the nightly sawing and buzzing of insects had stilled. My senses were not yet attuned to the prairie sounds, so the world seemed largely silent to me, and uninhabited, and, perhaps, desolate. The fact is that in those days, our little cabin floated like a raft in a populous sea. We were certainly observed by Indians, by foxes, by buzzards, hawks, deer, skunks, jackrabbits, badgers, magpies, and meadowlarks. But even in the midst of this story my husband was telling me, I couldn’t rid myself of the impression that we were far away from everything and everyone, safe in a wilderness of space and nuptial contentment. I felt calm and only distantly interested in these events. All they did for me was render him all the more mysterious and appealing.
"Before long, of course, everyone began to regret how peaceful we’d been. ’They think they’ve got it now,’ said Bush, and Jenkins got angry. He kept exclaiming, ’I’ll not let it happen again! I’m an old man, but I’m still a man for all that!’ Then Holmes piped up. ’Satan is working among them! Through them, he comes into our company and begins casting his glance around at us!’ I’ll say this, that man intones every word as if he’s addressing a prayer meeting, and he’s hardly more than a boy, to boot."
"What can you do? The house is up. They sound like they’ve got guns and the will to use them."
"Bush says they’ll move off like Missourians always do if you stand up to them." He sounded doubtful.
I said, "But—"
Thomas pushed his plate away and looked at me. "Our party claimed the land, it’s true, but Jenkins didn’t build anything. The law says you’ve got to put up a cabin and start living there."
"But—"
"We can’t have slaves in our midst, and men who want to kill us and drive us away."
It was a conundrum, the K.T. conundrum, the sort of moral dilemma that men I respected, like Thomas, had to ponder and work over in their minds. I said, "You better not lose the advantage, if you’ve still got it."
After that, Thomas lit a candle and read some bits of "The Song of Hiawatha" out to me, and after that we went to our rest.
CHAPTER 11
I Am Surprised and Then Surprised Again
Next to the want of all government, the two most fruitful sources of evil to children, are, unsteadiness in government, and over-government. Most of the cases, in which the children of sensible and conscientious parents turn out badly, result from one or the other of these causes. In cases of unsteady government, either one parent is very strict, severe, and unbending, and the other excessively indulgent, or else the parents are sometimes very strict and decided, and at other times allow disobedience to go unpunished. In such cases, children, never knowing exactly when they can escape with impunity, are constantly tempted to make the trial. — p. 228
THE NETX DAY WAS Sunday. For some weeks, all of our party had been planning to meet at the Smithsons’ cabin for a service and then, should the weather be favorable, an outdoor supper. Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Jenkins and Susannah had planned to come out from town, and there was some hope among the women that Mrs. Lacey and her three children would have arrived by that time. Otherwise, we all acknowledged, she might as well stay in the east. But when, as we were standing there watching Mr. Bisket’s wagon approach us from the south, bumping and humping over the prairie grasses and throwing its passengers into all sorts of wild postures, we saw a strange figure, it was no grown woman with three children. It was rather a very slight man or a boy, alternately leaning over the side so far he was nearly falling out and jumping around like a monkey. From a distance, also, someone could clearly be heard to whoop, probably this small figure, since Mrs. Jenkins and Mrs. Bush were notable for their staid dignity in almost all circumstances. As they came closer, I could make out something like a seegar protruding from the lower parts of the new visitor’s face, but that didn’t render me any the less astonished when I beheld my nephew Frank leap from the wagon and run toward me a few moments later.
"An’t ya surprised to see me, Lidie? An’t ya?" Frank was grinning but otherwise suddenly very cool, and instead of throwing his arms around me or allowing me to do the same to him, he stopped suddenly and stuck out his hand, and shook first mine and then Thomas’s, and said, "I told Ma you’d about fall down when you saw me, but she thought you’d get her letter before that. But you didn’t. Here it is. She should have known not to send me to mail it to you, because I just kept it in my pocket."
He presented me with the letter, folded over and neatly sealed, balanced on the palm of his hand. While I read it, Thomas took him off to meet our new friends. I even astounded myself with the fullness of my pleasure in seeing Frank again. I’d steamed away from my family in something of a cold fever to leave all that behind and try something new, and with the novelty of marriage and new scenes, I hadn’t knowingly missed anyone, but I might as well have been pining for Frank day after day, because that was how glad I was to see his sassy face and his jaunty demeanor.
"Dear Lydia," read the letter, only a note, really,
Frank pesters me day and night until I think I am going to scream. All he can talk about is you and going to Kansas. Roland and Horace see no harm in it, though, to tell you the honest truth, I am sure they see no harm in it because they would just as soon be doing it themselves! Roland thinks if the boy is well armed he should have no trouble on the way! I ask you! But I throw up my hands, as a mother’s tears are of no avail with any of the three of them. I am sending you this letter to inform you that my Frank will be leaving here on the Mary Ida on October one and should come to you a week after that, as the agent of the steamship has assured us that every effort will be made to oversee his passage every mile of the way. If he should not arrive by October ninth at the outside, then you must—oh, my dear, I can’t go on with that. I just can’t b
ear to think about it. Mr. Newton and his friends will know what to do should the worst happen, may God preserve my boy. Mr. Brereton maintains that the boy can take care of himself and that it’s high time that he put his energies to something useful, and he has no interest in his schooling.
I close with my heart in my mouth.
Your loving sister,
HARRIET
It was now October 16, a week past the outer date of Frank’s passage, and though it gave me something of a turn to think of what he had been doing in the previous two weeks, well, here he was, safe, sound, and full of life, and I was sure that he would fill me in on his adventures soon enough.
We had our Sunday service, preached by Mr. Smithson, and then we set our dishes out on a trestle table the Smithsons had put together from boards they had milled in Lawrence, which were meant for their roof later on in the week. All the talk that wasn’t of Frank was of Mr. Jenkins’s claim.
Mrs. Bush was full of Frank. "My dear Mrs. Newton, I must tell you, I didn’t know what to think when I saw this little man come swaggering up Vermont Street, easy as you please, taking bites out of an apple and asking everyone in a loud voice where this ’hay house’ of those Bushes and Jenkinses was! And then he tossed the core over his shoulder and pulled out this seegar stub and stuck it between his lips, and then when he got to our place and saw me standing in the doorway, he pushed his hat back on his head and thrust his hands in his pockets and gave me the once-over! I could barely keep myself from laughing! He’d lost his cap in the Missouri River, he said, and bought some old black slouch hat off a man in Missouri for a nickel! Well, he came right up to the door and said, ’You’d be Mrs. Bush, maybe, and I’m looking for my cousin Lydia Harkness, Newton now. She’s not expecting me, because I am set on giving her her death of a shock! She here?’ And then he swaggered in and looked around. You know, he sold that hat the next day for a quarter, and he had a whole case of junk with him, and he sold all of that, too. I bet he has forty or fifty dollars on him now. I said did he want one of the men to ride him out here day before yesterday, when he just arrived, but he said he’d wait, because he had some business to attend to! How old is that boy?"
"He’ll be thirteen in the winter."
"And then when he’d come in and looked all around, he began pulling out knives and guns and piling them on the table! I nearly fainted. He looked at me and said, ’Well, I didn’t have any trouble on the road, so I suppose I won’t be needing all of these here in K.T.’"
We looked over at him where he was standing with the men, his thumbs hitched into his braces, his left foot resting on his right. Mr. Holmes spoke and then Mr. Jenkins, and the whole time Frank nodded thoughtfully, just as if he were deep in their councils.
I looked wonderingly at my cousin from time to time, when I could do so tactfully, because it was clear that he didn’t want me to make much of his sudden appearance. He was in high spirits, but so was everyone else. It was a pleasant day. A ribbon of smoke or two from distant prairie fires drifted on the blue horizon, and nearby the river went its slow and silent way. It was deep enough for a swim, but I was a married woman surrounded by folks from Massachusetts. I didn’t even take off my shoes and stockings, though I longed to do so.
We got home late—well after dark, though there was enough of a moon to light our way. There was no bed for Frank, and I was busy laying out some quilts on the portion of the floor that we had finished, when he stopped me. "Lidie, you an’t going to make me sleep in this little box with the two of you, are ya?"
"It’s twelve by twelve. That’s big for K.T. People have ten by ten or—"
"I got my heart set on sleeping outdoors. I tried to tell that to Mrs. Bush, but she wouldn’t hear of it, and we was squashed all together. That boy they had there, I don’t know his name, one time in the night he rolled over on me and pinned my arms against the floor, and I couldn’t move to save my life. That fella had me, and if he hadn’t been asleep, I would of given him the Jesse for that, but I didn’t want to wake him. Don’t make me sleep inside!"
"The nights are getting cold, Frank. Inside, we keep a little fire in the stove—"
"That’s worse. I can’t sleep when I’m hot."
"I don’t know what your mother would—"
"It would be all right with Pa. Pa would be all for it!"
I knew that was true.
"All right."
And that was how Frank began living with us and went on in the same fashion. He was no boy but a self-reliant man. He came and went as he pleased—I stopped even looking out for him or worrying about him. His vocation was finding, or it was trading, or it was both, because he was never so happy as when he had found something and traded it for something else, even if it was only some chokecherries that he traded for some salt or tea.
But I’m getting ahead of my story. On the very next day after the Sunday Frank got there, affairs with the Missourians got a little hot.
About midmorning, Thomas looked up, to see all our friends coming to get him, and when he left, he took his gun as well as his hat. He did not take Jeremiah but got up behind the Smithson boy, who had a big, raw-boned mule. That Jeremiah was still grazing peacefully in his pen must have been what set off Frank, because he would not let me be until I agreed that we would follow and see what might happen. I didn’t need much persuading, I must say, but it was Frank who suggested that I put on some of Thomas’s clothes and pin my hair up under a hat.
We got on bareback, me in front and Frank behind. Jeremiah, who was working every day, now accepted almost anything, since over the weeks he had been hitched to a wagon single and double, had been ridden with saddle and without, single and double, and had had all sorts of things, from newly slaughtered turkeys and strings of prairie chickens to bundles of wood, thrown over his back. He still looked elegant and interested, and I had found out that a more realistic price for a horse of his quality was a hundred dollars or more. Frank had a knife in his boot and was carrying one of our Sharps carbines, which he had seen first thing in the morning and appropriated at once.
We circled around and approached the cabin through the woods, trying to keep as quiet as we could and to reconnoiter before revealing our presence.
The Missourians had been busy in the five days since I’d walked past. The walls were well chinked, and the window was still in place, one pane shattered and blocked off with sheets of oiled paper but the other panes glinting in the sunshine. A door was hung, a real door, too, with a hole where the latch would be installed and where a loop of string now hung. There was a stoop, too, with two steps going up to it. The builders had brought more than the usual knowledge to their building. It was a desirable dwelling, in K.T. terms. They had also split quite a few rails for fence, and these lay in a stack. The men of the place—I counted five, with the boy— stood behind the stack, and each of them held a long rifle of the Missouri or Kentucky sort. All of our men, numbering eight (Mr. Bush and Mr. Jenkins, my husband, Mr. Smithson and the Smithson boy, Mr. Holmes, Mr. James, and Mr. Bisket), faced them, five mounted and three dismounted.
The man who seemed to be the owner of the cabin was short and red-faced, with long dark hair that hung below his shoulders, a full beard going gray, and bushy, almost white eyebrows. He was glaring at our men, who had their backs to Frank and me. I halted Jeremiah and held him quiet, and Frank, eager for a better look, slipped down and edged forward before I could stop him. I didn’t dare call out to him—I was even less anxious to attract my husband’s attention than that of the strangers. Frank knelt down behind the crotch of a tree. His rifle was well within his reach. As far as I knew, Frank’s expertise in shooting was the same as mine—jars and squashes, squirrels, and a variety of feathered quarry—but he cozied up to that tree with his rifle nearby as if he’d been in a lifetime of armed confrontations. The angry man—my enemy, I knew without reflection—was saying, "Well, I an’t gonna move. The legalities are on my side. I got a cabin built, I staked my claim. And I an’t g
onna be bought out, either."
"You’ve got a slave woman," said Mr. Holmes.
"I do, and I got more comin’, so you better git used to it. This is gonna be a slave state, or it an’t gonna be a state a-tall. You Yankees are goin’ against the law and tryin’ to tell us out here what to do with our own belongings, and we an’t gonna stand for it. I maybe only have two slaves, but if you tell me I can’t have none, then I’ll git me two more. You try to tell me what to do and I’ll do the opposite just to be ornery, and fight you for the privilege!"
"This is our land!" exclaimed one of what seemed to be the man’s sons.
"My friend Jenkins was here first—" began Mr. Bush.
"This whole country!" shouted the young man. "We been lookin’ at this whole country for years, watchin’ the government hold it for them d— Indians, and then they open it to us one day and you Yankees come and git it the next."
Another one called out, "We know they pay you a hundred dollars a head to come out here and vote the black abolitionist ticket! Should of stayed in your own d— part of the country! You never cared about this country till you found out there was gonna be slaves here. What I think is, you don’t want this country—you jest don’t want us to have it!"
Now Thomas spoke up. "If you live here, you’ll be surrounded on every side by people who hold views that are opposed to yours. How can you expect us to be neighborly after you stole our friend’s land? And what will it be like for you if you have no neighbors you can befriend?"
"Sir," shouted the old man, "look on these four boys! These are all the friends I need, and they are all the friends they themselves need!" He now fell silent, as if attributing to them the desire for neighborly relations was the reddest insult of all.
"I repeat," said Mr. Bush, "we are willing to buy you out, with as much over as we can afford to repay your labor and your trouble—"
