“Tie his feet and get a fire going. I’ll take a look at his wound.”
Dick gestured at Bigelow. “What about him?”
“In a minute.”
Dick secured the wounded man and disappeared behind the house in search of kindling. Jabez pocketed his pistol and turned my way.
“Bring in the horses and get my surgical kit. I need to doctor this man.”
The moon had set behind a bank of clouds, and after several false starts in the intense dark, she found the horses. By the time she returned with them and the medical case, Dick’s fire lit the ravaged yard. By its light she saw a wet stain spreading across the injured man’s left shoulder. He breathed in shallow gulps, his forehead bright with perspiration.
Agnes handed Jabez’s instruments to him while he probed the wounded shoulder, dug out a chunk of lead, applied a bandage and tied it off. The blackness of the night had begun to slip into a misty gray, and objects in the farmyard emerged gradually into relief. Dick propped himself against the porch, busy with a rope, tying, untying, with a nervous intensity she’d never seen in him before. The wounded man floated in and out of consciousness, a shine of fever on his cheeks. He might make it or he might not, Agnes didn’t know and didn’t care. Wil Bigelow groaned and struggled to a sitting position, flat gray eyes shifting from Jabez to Agnes to Dick, never still. Wrapped in her cloak, she crouched by the fire and stared across the flames at the man who had killed John Jackson.
Let it end here, she thought. A long-forgotten memory flashed through her thoughts: a woman swinging in the breeze, her neck oddly tweaked, her skirts billowing.
She felt Jabez behind her, though he did not touch her. Dick’s nervous hands stilled. She concentrated on the face across from her, white, framed by fire, eyes like the sloughed dead skin of a snake. Let it end here.
They watched each other, and time stretched. She stood and nodded to Jabez. Light grew, and birdsong burst forth, a watery trill that pierced the morning air and faded to silence. Agnes stared up through black oak branches silhouetted against a wrinkled sky. The breeze had turned sharp, a promise of rain. When she turned back, the killer sat mounted atop Jupiter. She climbed on Juno’s back, and Dick tossed one end of the rope over a limb of the nearest tree, dragged at it to test its strength. It held. The noose dangled.
Willard’s eyes danced, liquid and deep and fixed on Agnes. His face flushed, the scar a deep throbbing gash. Slowly a smile curved across thin lips.
Jabez led the horse beneath the oak tree, and Agnes followed, guiding the mare with her knees. She grasped the noose, smooth and supple in her hands. Willard reared back when she reached out to him. Jabez, mounted on Nellie, cuffed him across the ear. He reeled toward her again, and she slipped the noose over his head. He slumped, eyes narrowed now, and hidden. Agnes snugged the noose against his neck, spit in his face, and backed the mare away. Dick let loose a hi-i-yaaa, and Jupiter jumped and whinnied and ran. Bigelow dropped and kicked and finally hung still.
They watched him dangle there. They had broken past society’s ultimate law: Thou shalt not kill. But thanks to men like Bigelow, there wasn’t much society left, anyway.
40
December 1863
Billy stood at Sam’s graveside and watched with dull eyes as gravediggers shoveled frosty dirt onto his father’s coffin. Clods landed with a steady thump, thump that reminded him of distant guns in battle. Lucky winter arrived late—in spite of last week’s blizzard, the blizzard that killed his pa, the ground wasn’t yet frozen so solid it couldn’t be dug. Sometimes in Missouri winters, Holt County’s single mortician stored up a dozen bodies in an unheated shed, waiting for the spring thaw.
Dusk had settled in, early dusk thanks to the heavy cloud cover and because it was two days before Christmas, the darkest days of the year. A dampness touched his cheek, snow starting up again, another heavy storm from the looks of the ugly sky to the west. The rest of the family had returned to Nancy’s house, Rachel leaning on Sarah’s arm, looking so much older than when he’d seen her last. He wanted Julia, but she’d stayed in Forest City with the baby, sick with a cough. No one left in the cemetery but Agnes.
Billy resettled his hat on his head, tugging it down so the wet didn’t get in his eyes. She stood next to a young fir tree, the one shading the graves of her children and Eliza Robinson, but she wasn’t looking at those graves, she was watching him. Good old Agnes. Always there for him, as long as he could remember. Teaching him things. Listening to his dreams. Those rambling conversations they had on the flatboat, long lazy days on the river. There’s a good time coming, boys. A snatch of song one of his men used to sing. Good time coming. The good time came and went, and then there’d been these last two years.
He leaned over, scooped up a handful of dark crackly earth and dropped it into the half-filled grave. “So long, Pa,” he said aloud. “Sleep well.” He turned away.
Agnes walked to meet him, and he pulled her into his arms and held on. He’d forgotten how tall she was, almost eye-to-eye with him. It was a clumsy hug, through her thick cloak and his greatcoat. He still wore his Union blue, hadn’t yet sorted out civilian clothes. Still looked the soldier.
“Can’t believe he’s gone,” he said. He released her and stepped back. She slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, and they wandered up the slope toward the path.
“Were you right with him then?” she asked.
“Don’t know. I wonder if you ever know, especially when it happens fast like that.”
“He was proud of you, Billy. Proud of what you were doing.”
“Well, things were simple for him, weren’t they? Black and white. Right was right and wrong was wrong.” Billy stopped and looked out over the town, spread at the foot of Cemetery Hill. “It’s not like that in this war, that’s for damn sure.”
“You’re going back?”
“No. No, I’m not. I resigned my commission, turned over my men to Joe Roecker. What’s left of them. You know, it’s strange, Pa dying a natural death. Men’re dying all over the place, young men, men who should have lived long lives. Gunshot and saber wounds and disease. Then here’s pa keels over with a heart attack, just like he’s supposed to. Trying to get to the barn in a snowstorm.” He pulled off his hat, ran his forearm over his face, jammed the hat back on his head. “A natural death for once.” The corner of his mouth raised in a one-sided smile.
“We’ve had so much death. Even here, in town. First them”—she motioned to the two tiny graves beneath the hemlock—“then John. Now Sam. And all the boys from town who’ve died fighting.”
“The Bigelows,” he said.
“The Bigelows,” she agreed. “That’s a tragedy too. I always liked Jake, thought I might make something of him.”
They reached the gate, and Billy held it for her. “If anyone could, Agnes, you could. You sure made something of me.”
She didn’t answer. In silence, they negotiated the downward path, fast becoming slippery.
“What does Nancy hear from James?” he asked.
“Nothing since before Thanksgiving. Last we knew he was with Sherman in Tennessee.”
“I hated to see him go into the regular army. Wanted him to stay close to home.”
“We’re breaking up,” Agnes said. “The family that came out on the flatboat.” The snow fell heavier now, thick and white, and the town dimmed around them in a soft swirling fog.
“We are. Guess it just happens. Everyone making their own families.”
“Speaking of that.” Agnes turned her face to him with a smile that held in it a deep and quiet happiness. “We’ll be adding to our family next summer.”
Billy stopped dead in the middle of the street. “A baby? Agnes, that’s amazing news!”
She laughed. “It is amazing, given my age, but it’s true. I haven’t yet told your mother. Only Jabez, of course. And Elizabeth.” Bi
lly pulled her arm tighter into his, hugged her to him, started off again.
“No one deserves it more. I don’t always agree with your husband, but I admire him. You need a family. Does this mean you’ll be staying in Missouri?”
She hesitated. “No,” she said. “No, we won’t. We’d hoped to go west this coming spring, but Jabez won’t hear of it until the baby’s come and is old enough to travel.”
“God willing this war will be long over by then.”
“Who knows, but in any event, we’ll go.”
“Do you want to? Go west, I mean? The way we used to talk about?” He tipped his head to peer beneath her bonnet.
She turned her face to the sky while the flakes settled thick on her lashes. “I do. You know I’ve always wanted to see what’s out there, go exploring. I’ll miss you all, you and Elizabeth especially. Miss seeing your children grow up. But the land is settling fast and soon there will be a railroad and who knows? Maybe you can visit.” She laughed. “Not that I know right now just where you might be visiting. I still have very little idea where we’ll be.”
“Idaho, I thought.”
“Wherever the gold strikes are. My husband never did get that gold fever out of his blood, ever since California.”
“He’s a restless man.”
“One of the reasons I love him.” They opened the gate to Nancy’s front yard, where the snow already coated bare branches and dead winter grass.
“In the midst of all this death.…” He looked at Agnes and smiled. “A baby.”
41
Summer 1864
Jabez’s restlessness grew throughout the spring and early summer of 1864, while Agnes simply grew. Her waist disappeared, her ankles swelled, her hair thinned, and sleep was a nightmare of discomfort. Her temper shortened accordingly.
“This is no longer home to you, is it?” she said one evening. “You can’t wait to leave Missouri.” The temperature registered over ninety degrees, the hottest July in memory, and the air dripped with the sticky humidity only Missouri can produce. A single lamp burned—any more seemed to raise the heat level unbearably—and as a consequence of the darkness both her hands and her mind idled. She rocked and fanned, fanned and rocked and fumed.
“Hmm?” Jabez said. He hunched beneath the lamp with maps and reports and news articles spread about him.
“What have you decided tonight? Texas? California? Oregon?”
He looked up, amusement flitting across his face. “Montana. Just like we’ve talked about.”
“I thought it was Idaho.”
“Montana, now. Virginia City’s the capital.” He watched her a moment, then stood, went to the sink and pumped water into a basin.
“Wonder if it’s cool there.”
“I imagine it’s cooler than it is here.” He knelt in front of her and unbuttoned her shoes, slipped them off, then her stockings. “Think of this, Agnes. Mountains as high as you can see. Snow on them year around.” He dunked a cloth in the basin, gently swabbed her foot. “A clear river rushing over rocks, not sluggish and brown like here.”
She closed her eyes and twitched her toes. The water, cool from the well, soothed like sweet music.
“I talked to some folks in St. Joe,” he said. “Couple men come back to retrieve their families.” He often talked to folks in St. Joe. More and more, Agnes caught the look in his eye, the excitement in his voice, glimpses of the young man who had long ago shipped for California, wandered the southwest, explored the gold fields.
He dunked her other foot in the basin, and her temper ebbed. “It does sound nice.”
“It’ll be rough. A cabin at first, nothing so grand as this.” She opened an eye and raised a brow. “But then there’ll be wildflowers and antelope. Grasslands for cattle. Like Missouri used to be.”
“Before the war. Before all the blood.”
“Yes,” he said. “Before the war.”
“When?”
“In the spring, soon as the snow clears. Once the baby’s healthy.”
“Rose and Dick want to go.”
He looked up. “Do they?”
“Talk to Dick. Rose says he wants a business of his own and his own homestead. They seem to think color’s not such a burden out west.”
“That would be useful, having them along on the trip. Dick’s a good hand with just about everything.”
“And Rose can help with the baby.” She snapped the fan closed, dropped an arm across her belly. “There’s a lot to do,” she sighed. “So much to do.”
So they made their plans for the spring, but they hadn’t counted on the war. Once again the fighting intruded, and their plans changed.
The baby arrived on the twenty-fifth of July, robust and alert and full of demanding cries. They named him Harrie Lee after the Revolutionary War hero, father of the Confederate general. Agnes admired the father greatly, and Jabez admired the son. Harrie ate well from the beginning, and Agnes soon started him on corn-meal mush and mashed tinned peaches. By the middle of August, when she took him to Peter McIntosh’s store to be weighed, he’d plumped up to nearly twelve pounds.
For a time that summer, the war seemed far away, and weeks passed soft, dreamy, and quiet. She suffered little from childbirth and managed the lighter housework, weeding and culling the kitchen garden, cleaning the lamps, baking. Rose cheerfully laundered on her own, a challenging task with the baby’s cloths and linens, but Agnes ironed and sewed as much as the child would allow. It was a peaceful time, an interlude, and the Robinson family was self-absorbed, giving little heed to the tensions and mistrust around them.
Then the rumors began that Sterling Price, still leading a band of ragged Southern fighters, planned a raid into Missouri, surely a hopeless, fool-hardy bid born of despair. The south had lost the war, and even if it drifted on in blood and destruction for months or years yet, Missouri was already a conquered land. But the Unionists left nothing to chance, and when Price’s army invaded from Arkansas, their old acquaintance Captain Peabody rode out of St. Joseph, placing southern sympathizers and those suspected of secessionist views under house arrest. They heard his troops ride into Lick Creek late one night at the end of August, and when they woke the next morning, a sentry stood posted outside their door, another at the entrance to Ross’s saloon, a third at Galen Crow’s house. Since Crow marched with General Price’s army, Agnes couldn’t fathom what might be the purpose of standing guard over his household.
Jabez was forbidden to visit his patients, and he prowled about the house snarling at no one in particular for the best part of the day. Agnes worried he might seize the sentry by the throat and thereby cause no end of problems, but he checked his anger, though he demanded and received an audience with Peabody. That discussion appeared to serve no purpose except to rile them both and ended with the captain threatening to haul Jabez off to prison and a trial for treason. But the following morning the troops withdrew, and no one knew why they’d pulled out, or why they’d intruded in the first place. The incident emphasized once again the senseless aberration of an insane war and served to disrupt the small interlude of peace they had manufactured.
The episode also convinced Jabez to leave Lick Creek sooner rather than later.
“You and Harrie will never be safe as long as I’m here,” he said. It was the morning the sentries had disappeared, and he pocketed his watch and buttoned his waistcoat in preparation for his medical rounds.
Agnes stopped in the midst of clearing the breakfast dishes, set down the coffee pot, and sank into her chair. “What exactly does that mean?” She distrusted the look in his eye.
“It means I need to leave for Montana right away. Before the weather turns bad and closes the road.” He reached for his coat and shrugged into it. “The boy’s too young for such a trip. I can’t take the two of you now when I have no home for you at the other end and
winter coming on. But I have enemies here. They turned me in, and Peabody’s made a target of me.”
“How will we come to you? Will you come back to get us? It could be months or years.…” She stared at her hands, her head buzzing, not quite sure what it all meant. She looked up at him, heart pounding.
He pulled out his chair, sat, took her hands and stroked them. “If I were to go to prison, I would never come back, you know that.” One hand lifted, brushed back the tendrils that had escaped her bun. “I’ll find a new home for us, scout the situation, get things set up, then when you and Harrie arrive there’ll be a place for you to come to.” He took her chin in his hand, and kissed her softly on the lips.
“The steamboats don’t run this time of year, and the wagon trains have left.”
“I’ll either take a coach or ride. Jupiter’s well up to the trip. Maybe take a pack animal and travel light. Then next spring you and Harrie can get the boat the way we’d planned and bring the luggage.”
He looked up. Rose stood in the kitchen, listening. He smiled at her. “Dick and Rose can come along with you. You’ll be as safe as if I were with you, and we’ll meet up next spring at Fort Benton.”
She shook, her mind blank at the thought of a winter’s separation and the uncertainties of those long months.
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