Agnes Canon's War

by Deborah Lincoln

  In June, the horrid red-bearded General Lyon took Jefferson City, chasing the Governor and his men to the Arkansas border. Jabez's friend, Sterling Price, declared for the south and fought battles down toward Springfield, back and forth, no one really sure who won and who lost, knowing only that men died. Late in summer they learned the Confederacy soundly beat the federals outside Washington, and they hoped that would end it, but it was not to be.

  

  Holt County Courier & News, July 12, 1861—The government of Abraham Lincoln and his minions has decided that it is not possible to carry on a war in the presence of a free press, if that press is in opposition. If our institutions are on trial, the free press being among those institutions, then already have they been judged wanting, incompatible with the condition of civil war. The federal government has deemed that “the reckless maundering and hysterical vituperation of the rebel newspapers” must be silenced.

  We now find ourselves in the position of being invaded by an oppressive and reckless tyranny, in the midst of a war of aggression that must overthrow the federal system. The United States government, regardless of all moral, legal, and constitutional restraints, throws its hosts among us, belittles the character and intelligence of the people of our state, murders and imprisons its citizens, confiscates and destroys its property. This invasion is an attempt at coercion that may lead to consolidation or despotism but cannot lead to union. Union, as our founding fathers envisioned it, must be just, equal and voluntary. And it must be founded upon free expression through a free press.

  Already, the St. Louis Herald has been suspended. The Lexington papers have been destroyed by jayhawkers or shut down by military order. Papers in Cape Girardeau, Hannibal, Independence, Franklin County, Platte City—all destroyed, closed down, taken over by the army. Who is to be next?

  The great statesman George Mason declared that “The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic government.” Here in our state the press is being forcibly, violently restrained. It is the duty of all patriotic citizens to fight that despotism.

  - Jabez Robinson, ed.

  

  They had just finished dinner when the federals clattered into town. Agnes sat on the front porch with the children, enjoying the summer evening. Charlie toddled about snatching at the first fireflies, and Sarah Belle practiced her new skill of hauling herself to her feet, using the porch railing, dark ringlets damp in the lingering warmth. Jabez kissed the top of Agnes’s head and headed to the newspaper office, visible across the square from their home.

  They trotted in, a whole troop of them, twenty or thirty, foreigners to the people of Lick Creek. They rode in on horses sleek and fat from foraging on the rich pastures and prairies of Holt County’s farmlands, armed with carbines and sabers and revolvers, brimmed hats pinned on the right side, sleeves and collars trimmed in yellow. They sported beards and mustaches or fresh downy cheeks, long hair and short hair, all of them young and arrogant. They thundered down Noddaway Street and drew up on the square before the court house, raising clouds of dust and powdered horse droppings that sifted lazily into yards and open windows, coating shrubs and furniture with the soft silt of summer.

  People filtered out of shops and homes, the bank and the saloon, to gawk. A half dozen riders remained mounted, carbines relaxed but ready. The others slid off their horses, ignoring the growing crowd, and loosened girths, drank from canteens, swabbed sweaty foreheads and generally stood at ease. Agnes could see Jabez watching from the door of the building that housed his print equipment, his arms crossed over his chest and imagined the black scowl on his face, the danger in his dark eyes.

  Within moments the federals organized into groups of twos and threes and spread out along the shops and homes lining the square, carbines clutched casually before them. No one attempted to gainsay the troops, and no one begrudged them entry to the establishments they wished to visit. Two soldiers emerged from George Baxter’s tailor shop carrying piles of clothing. They dumped the booty onto the courthouse square and returned for more. Others hauled crates and sacks from McLaughlin’s, one carrying a silver-chased saddle that Joe McLaughlin particularly prized. Levi Zook’s store remained untouched.

  Agnes bundled the children into the house, told Rose to keep them out of sight in the kitchen, and set out to cross the square and stand with her husband. Perhaps in her presence he’d clamp a lid on his temper—a fanciful thought but she must needs try.

  When she reached him, he was standing in the doorway, one shoulder propped against the jam, a sardonic smile on his face, addressing two federals.

  “Sorry, boys,” he said, “paper’s closed for the night.”

  “Step aside,” snarled one of the soldiers, aiming his carbine at Jabez’s midsection. “Don’t take much for us to shoot you down.”

  “You do and it’s cold-blooded murder,” Jabez said. “Have we come to that already?”

  “It ain’t murder if we kill vermin,” the other one said, pulling his Colt from a hip holster.

  A tall man with crossed sabers on his hat stepped onto the boardwalk from the dust of the street. “Albert Peabody, First Missouri Cavalry,” the captain said to Jabez. Jabez didn’t reply. “I have orders to confiscate this newspaper.”

  “You have no call to,” Jabez said. “This is a free press, guaranteed under the Constitution.”

  The officer nodded to one of his men, and the trooper slashed the butt of his pistol across Jabez’s temple. Agnes froze as he folded slowly to the boardwalk, blood trickling into his ear. She screeched something unrepeatable and planted both hands on the captain’s chest and shoved. He stumbled backwards, and she dropped to her knees next to her husband. Jabez groaned and rolled, groggy. A hand grasped Agnes’s shoulder and jerked, and she sprawled into the street in a tangle of skirts, spitting words she didn’t know she knew. She watched in horror as the pistol rose again and dropped with a hideous thunk on Jabez’s skull. He dropped again to the ground and lay still. Agnes crawled to him on hands and knees and slid her fingers over his head, sticky with blood, felt for his pulse and found it, weak, under her fingers.

  Someone loomed over her. Reuben Bigelow grasped Jabez by the collar and dragged him into the shelter of the bank’s entrance. Agnes scrambled to her feet and scuttled after, watching as soldiers heaved the printing press into a wagon, strewed lead type into the street as if it were confetti, piled rolls of newsprint in the doorway along with ledgers and back issues and the gingham curtains she had stitched. They crouched in the doorway, Jabez propped against her, the tail of her skirt pressed to his bleeding head. With a start she realized his eyes were open. He shifted, winced, swayed and steadied himself. Reuben slipped away but Jace Biggers, Jabez’s partner, cowered inside the bank. Agnes was sure he hoped the federals knew nothing of his complicity in the newspaper, and she vowed never to acknowledge him again.

  There was nothing to do but watch as Captain Peabody touched an oiled torch to the pyre of newsprint, and flames licked up the summer-dry siding of the office. Jabez leveraged himself against the door jamb and dragged himself to his feet, reaching down a hand to her.

  “Agnes, go home,” he said. “I don’t trust these men to destroy only the paper.” He nodded across the square at their home. The children. And Rose and Dick. Federal troops were rumored to “liberate” slaves, impressing them into the army, selling them for profit, setting them free to be preyed upon by slave-catchers.

  “Go straight there,” he said. “I’ll be along as quick as I can—I need to go round about for fear they’ll follow me.” He motioned north of town, then kissed her. “I’m the one they’re focused on.” He gave her a push and disappeared through the bank and out its back door.

  Oily smoke boiled across the street, the night lit with an evil glow. Agnes threaded her way across the square, through the knots of soldiers and their horses, strain
ing to catch sight of her home in the dark. She started to see her front door open, flickering lantern light spilling out. A man wearing a kepi jumped from the porch with a bulging flour sack and headed for the courthouse. She ignored him and dashed through the door, flying from room to room, sick with fear. No sign of the children, or of Rose or Dick, but a smooth-faced youth in an immaculate dark blue blouse rummaged through the linen press in the bedroom, her single silver candlestick poking from a pocket. He shrugged her off like a whining mosquito, and she let out a stream of invective and slammed down the lid on his fingers.

  He hollered and snatched at her wrist, twisting her arm behind her back. “Secesh whore!” he snarled, breath hot on her face. He rammed her against the wall, kicked at her ankles, then he was out the door and gone. Quiet settled over the house. No flames. No shots.

  They’d been thorough. Bureau drawers hung open, floury footprints tracked across the kitchen floor. Jabez’s surgery suffered the most, the glass-fronted cabinet shattered, the shelves emptied of medicines, patient records scattered and trampled by muddy boots. Agnes stumbled through the kitchen and out the back and vomited into the rosebush.

  A rustle sounded from the direction of the stables, and Dick emerged from the blackness of the stable yard, Jabez’s rifle in his fist. He took Agnes’s elbow and led her back to his cabin, shrouded in the shadows. Rose huddled on the bed, Sarah Belle in her lap, Charlie under her arm, and both children reached for their mother with whimpers that broke her heart.

  “Mama!” Charlie’s whisper was hoarse and loud. “We played a game. Rose said we was to play hide and seek and be real quiet.”

  “And you did, didn’t you?” She snugged him to her and kissed his bright hair. “You were a brave boy to help Rose and Dick and take care of Sarah, too, weren’t you? Mama’s very proud.”

  Tears dampened Sarah’s cheeks, and she hiccupped while Agnes rocked her. Dick stood watch at the window, the rifle cocked, keeping an eye on the stables. Someone had organized the fire brigade lest the entire town burn, and the clamor of the bucket line and the steady thump of the hand tub’s pistons sounded in the distance. For an hour they watched until the glow from the fire faded. Jabez should have been back long before; surely he’d know to search for them at the cabin. By the time the children nodded off and the distant shouts died down, Agnes had determined to seek him herself. Dick urged her to let him go instead, but the risk to him was too great. She left him to guard the children and slipped back into the heavy night.

  Jabez would have circled the town in the shadows north of the square, losing himself in the commotion of the fire. She crossed the stable yard and slipped up Monroe Street by Ross’s saloon where the doors stood open, the shelves behind the counter empty of liquor bottles. Ross himself sat at his own front table, along with Reuben Bigelow and a bottle, watching the scene in the square. If they heard her, they showed no sign. Soldiers milled about at the other end of town. Too late she wished she’d asked Ross and Bigelow if they’d seen Jabez. She rounded the corner to the north side of the square and worked her way into the alley behind Sterrett’s store. At the far end a pile of rubble and glowing coals marked the remains of the newspaper office, sparks settling like St. Elmo’s fire on tree branches and grass blades before winking out. The smell of wet ash hung heavy over the streets.

  A smothering blackness choked the alley, made impenetrable by contrast with a darkened lantern halfway down. Lit by a lurid glow, shadows jerked and grunted in what, to her disoriented mind, appeared a macabre dance. An apparition lifted the lantern and a beam of light flashed across the face of her husband.

  Three men, hooded, crouched in a circle, swaying. One clutched Jabez’s arms behind his back, a second let fly a fist into his ribs. Jabez kicked, and the third jumped in with a snarl and caught him across the cheek with a thud that made Agnes retch.

  “Damn you bastards!” She hiked up her skirts and bolted toward them. All three heads jerked in her direction. The man holding Jabez dropped his arms, the others stepped aside without haste. Jabez sank to the ground, caught himself on one hand. Agnes skidded to her knees beside him.

  A man laughed, a short, sharp bark. “All yours, Missus,” he said, and the three masked forms melted north into the darkness. Aldo Beaton. She was certain.

  Jabez sat, knees up, head in his hands, blood running through his fingers. He swayed, his breathing rough and unsteady. Agnes peeled his hands away from his face. Purple bruises, evident in the dim light of the smoky lantern, circled his eyes. His cheek bloomed under a scrape, and his lip and nose trickled blood, a great wash of it drying over his shirt front.

  “Easy, love,” he said. “I think I’ve cracked a rib or two.” She drew an inadequate hanky from her pocket and dabbed at his nose.

  “Can you walk? We need to get you home before they come back.”

  “I don’t think they’ll be back,” he said. He groaned and pressed a hand to his side. “They weren’t the soldiers, Agnes. It was someone from around here. Three men in civilian clothes with hoods over their heads.”

  “I know,” she said, straining to keep her voice even, the rage tamped down. “I think I recognized the voice.” She smoothed his hair away from the gash above his right eye. “Did you? Did they say anything?”

  “No, not a word. They just hit me.” He inched up, leaning on her shoulder, and ventured a step. “I think they were waiting for me, but maybe I only fancied that.” He winced, stopped, closed his eyes. “I got in a few good licks, though. Someone’s going to be walking around town almost as sore as I am.”

  “Sit back and let me fetch Reuben.”

  She propped him against the rear wall of the bank and raced to the saloon, uncaring whether she encountered soldiers or jayhawkers or any of their despicable neighbors. Reuben jammed a half-full bottle of bourbon in his pocket and followed her back. Between them, they shuffled Jabez home, inflicting a great deal of pain, and eased him onto the bed. Bigelow pulled the bottle from his pocket, set it on the nightstand, wordlessly patted Jabez on the shoulder and left. The first order of business was a shot of bourbon for Jabez and a shot for Agnes, then she helped him out of his clothes and into bed. Rose found ointment for the bruises in the ruins of the surgery and concocted a mustard plaster for the cracked ribs. Agnes mixed up a headache powder, and he finally slipped into an unquiet sleep.

  Agnes slept little the rest of the night. Rose tucked the children into their beds. Dick stood guard in the dark living room, rifle to hand behind the locked front door. Rose brewed tea and set about bringing order to the mess the Union soldiers left behind. Agnes slumped next to the bed in the dark, holding Jabez’s hand and watching the activity on the square. Long after midnight the federals stamped out their cook fires and mounted up, Peabody lifted his hand and motioned them forward. They rode south-bound out of town, heading who knows where and leaving behind a pile of ashes and plundered stores. In their wake lay a town ever more suspicious, ever more polarized.

  29

  Fall 1861

  Autumn arrived double-quick that year, and Jake Bigelow was cold. The nights were cold, the water they washed with (when they washed) was cold, the coffee, more often than not, was cold. And not yet the middle of October, leastwise, he didn’t think so. Easy to lose track of the days, living the way they lived, camping in the woods or up on the prairie, sometimes in a barn or even a house. He enjoyed himself then, hunkered down in the straw out of the wind, listening to the boys talk. But sleeping rough wore on a man, and he shuddered at the thought of winter coming on.

  At least the rain held off, the sky hung blue and bright, leaves glowed brilliant with reds and orange and gold. They ate good, too, what they didn’t pick up from farms and isolated stores they shot in the woods. Deer and wild turkey, mostly, though turkey required a keen eye and a steady hand, not Jake’s strongest suit. Alfred Zerbin, the one not quite right in the head, showed real skill with a Kentucky rifle, t
hough, and he never begrudged the other boys a share of his takings. Willard preferred to help himself to whatever supplies he lit on from whoever lived in their path, he cared not a whit where they stood on the war. Jake fretted about that, but Willard said they deserved anything they found as pay for the job they did, so he kept his mouth shut.

  It’d been a good run, too, the summer had. Anybody’d be pleased to serve under Wil Bigelow. Jake took pride in his brother. All the top leaders in this war, Martin Green and Price and Shelby and even Atchison, knew Wil and listened to him when they talked strategy. And he got information, God knew where from, he figured out which civilians were Union men and who held for the south. He thought up good ideas, too, like the time he stole a stack of Union coats and hats. He and some of the boys dressed up in them and visited a farmhouse where he’d heard jayhawkers hung out. Sure enough, once those farmers saw Union uniforms, they proclaimed themselves hard and fast Yankees, and that’s all it took for them to get themselves beat up and their goods donated to the southern cause. The boys laughed about that one for days. They stowed away those uniforms in their saddlebags in case the opportunity to pull off another sneak raid like that came up again.

  Jake and Willard and the men ranged back and forth across the northern counties all summer long, harassing any federals who dared show themselves north of the Missouri. Hank Jansen caught a slug in the shoulder during a dust-up in Audrain County, and up in Athens, they danced around the edge of a skirmish, laid in wait and picked off some of the federals chasing Martin Green’s state guard men. Jake himself winged a man with the carbine he scrounged from a dead federal lying in a ditch. Then they fought their way to the western counties, tangled with a company of Indiana cavalry up in Harrison County—how those Yankees got that far west no one knew—and holed up along the Grand River. When they woke to a skim of frost over their blanket rolls, Willard raised the idea of going home for a visit.