Agnes Canon's War

by Deborah Lincoln

  Heat shimmered, flies buzzing through it like soot from a chimney. They moved slowly thanks to the bad wheel and by mid afternoon, hours behind schedule, arrived on the banks of the Gallatin, where the river was fordable in late summer. The trail itself swung north toward Shed’s Bridge, across the southeast corner of John Nelson’s claim. Jabez spotted John and his oldest boy clearing brush off to the north and waved them in.

  Dick halted the team along the edge of a ditch flowing into the big river to let them water. Jabez jumped down from Jupiter to stretch, his legs cramped, his stomach rumbling. Nelson and his son trotted up, the boy on a mule, wiping sweat from their eyes. Jabez produced a new pack of cigars he’d picked up in Virginia City, passed them around, and the men lit up, smoked, talked about the prices Dick had got for the last load of freight.

  Jabez took a pull on his cigar. His eyes roved over the river. The current tumbled over the rocks and gravel, fed by snow melt from the mountains to the south, but most times the bed here was solid. Another five miles up to the bridge, then three miles down the other side to home. He could cut that to two miles if he forded on Jupiter. He wanted to be home. He wanted Agnes in his arms and Harrie in his lap. He even missed the kitten. He tossed the butt of the cigar into the ditch and turned to Dick.

  “I’m going to cross here,” he said, gathering the reins of the big gelding and unstrapping his medical bag. “Cuts off six miles, and I want to be home before dark.”

  John Nelson looked at the river, studied it in his quiet way. “Don’t know as you should, Doc,” he said. “That current’s real wild this time of year.”

  Jabez threw his bag into the wagon. “Jupiter can push through it and it’s shallow enough. Besides, if we get into trouble, you’ll pull us out, right?” He grinned at his friends.

  “I'm taking the bridge,” Dick said. “Get to your place real late I reckon.”

  Jabez looped the reins around his fist, hefted himself into the saddle and walked Jupiter to the edge. The sun, still high in the west a day after solstice, glinted off the riffles and blinded him for an instant. The big bay shied, hooves sinking into the soft muck of the bank. He urged him on with his knees, talking softly. The horse eased into the water, found his footing, moved forward. Jabez gauged the current. Graveled bottom spread next to the bank in a swirl, its far edge hidden by sun glare. Farther in the current strengthened, and the river bed darkened. He read it through the strong legs of his mount, and he pushed into the center of the stream.

  Then the bottom dropped off, a hole scoured by the spring flood and obscured by the murk kicked up under Jupiter’s hooves. The current eddied and foamed, and wavelets washed to his waist, filled his boots with icy snowmelt. Dick called from the bank, unintelligible. A fast-moving tree limb crashed into Jupiter's chest and the horse spooked, twisted and thrashed, now turned downstream, away from the landing place. Jabez saw the men running along the bank, mouths open but words drowned in the rush of the river. Dick was in the water up to his thighs, swinging a rope over his head. Jabez slid sideways and lost sight him, swiveled back around. He could feel Jupiter’s frantic underwater paddling, his head tossing from side to side, his breath coming in snorts. Ten yards separated them from the east bank, ten yards of swirls and eddies invisible from the opposite shore.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jabez saw the rope snake through the air, the knotted end splashing yards short and floating downstream. Jupiter squealed and bucked, eyes rolling. His head smacked Jabez in the chin. Jabez dragged hard on the reins, momentarily blinded, and the big animal rolled, taking Jabez under. Jabez clutched with his thighs, twisted his body, and they flopped, both the horse's and the man's heads emerging. They closed in on the east bank and Jabez lunged for a tree limb, grabbed, caught hold. The horse’s fear thrilled through him. Calm, calm, he thought. Panic now and you’re done. The limb tore across his palm, slicing a jagged path, and snapped, and he watched the bank recede as they were pushed back into the center of the river.

  Through a sheet of water he saw Dick wade into the river again, directly across from him, the rope in hand. “Throw it!” he yelled, his voice sounding hoarse to his ears. The rope whistled toward him, and terror speared through him at the thought of Dick being dragged in. The rope splashed down inches from the horse’s nose, and he seized it, looped it around his fist. The movement startled Jupiter and he thrashed again, bucking and snorting water. Dick called to him, horror in his voice, to drop the rope, drop the rope, it was tangled, it would pull him under. Jabez let the rope slip from his hand, watched it twist away.

  Water closed over his head. For an instant he melded into the big animal that screamed next to him, pinned to it, then he pushed himself free, a roar in his ears. He scrabbled for the bottom, but his boots found nothing; they were heavy and filled and he knew he should kick them off. Then something struck him in the temple and there was pain, but it seemed to be someone else’s pain. The light here shone blue and green and silver, white-gold shafts caught in bubbles, lovely. He floated, though his limbs were heavy; trying to move them was like pushing through honey. The roar dissipated into a soft kind of quiet, the music of flowing water a vibration against his cheek. He turned, slowly. It was peaceful here, under the water, the light now far away. Figures appeared, dim, just beyond sight, people he thought he once knew. Were they in the river with him? Had they been there all along? He smiled to himself and let go.

  48

  1867

  Agnes stood in the door yard, hanging laundered sheets on a line strung to catch the freshest breeze, the scent of new-turned earth sharp and tangy. She brushed a wisp of hair from her face and looked up into a clear and strangely empty blue sky, birdsong suddenly stilled. Movement to the north caught her eye—horsemen on the river trail, riding in her direction. Agnes’s heart jumped, but Jupiter didn’t appear. He was so big, so dark, she could always pick him out. There was a gray mare that belonged to John Nelson. John’s boy, his oldest, followed on a mule. Dick rode on the big dun gelding he used to pull his freight wagon.

  And that is the picture that lodged in her mind, the haze through which she would ever after view the world. Jabez was not with them. They rode closer and she ran toward them. Dick’s dark, kind face was streaked with tears. And she knew.

  

  The neighbors rallied around. Mrs. Nelson stayed with her for two days, watching Harrie, cooking meals, holding her hand. Her oldest boy, Marsh, the one who'd been there on the river bank that day, slept in the barn and managed the stock. He must have been there a full month; Agnes couldn’t quite remember. John Nelson took her to the spot on the Gallatin where he and Dick had buried Jabez's body, in the field where they'd found him soon after he'd disappeared below the surface. She hated leaving him in that sad lonely place, Jabez, who loved company. To leave him in a grave that would soon be lost forever was just not right.

  So Dick made a casket and she, Harrie, and Rose climbed into the wagon for the trip to Virginia City. She had decided Jabez would rest on the hillside above the town that would become the hub of Montana, in sight of the raucous machinations of politicians that so entertained him, the frontier's bare hills and rolling valleys spread on all sides.

  They chose a spot with a beautiful view, and Dick dug, but the soil was such that he could not go deep, so he built a cairn of shaped rock and slab stone. His hands, rough as bull hide with all manner of work, were gentle, almost caressing, as he shifted the casket. He'd put much thought and effort into it, and it was a lovely piece of craftsmanship, the corners mitered, the joints dovetailed, a testament to his love for the man who had once owned him. It was a legacy, almost as much as the child she held close, a way to prolong a life long after the last breath has fled. She and Harrie together placed the last stone on the cairn and, with Rose’s hand in hers, she turned and climbed back into the wagon.

  

  It was easier in the summer and autumn, those months right after, when the ran
ch work needed to be handled, business affairs addressed. Dick and Rose moved back in and he took over the farm chores. The Nelson boy helped when he could, and she paid both of them with produce and meat. John Nelson took over the management of the lawsuit, that pesky trouble that Jabez left behind, the artifact of his temper that haunted Agnes. Mr. Nelson's expenses for trips to Virginia City, payment to witnesses, payment to lawyers, began to mount and her small stock of gold dust dwindled. But Robert Foster had stated boldly that now he dealt with a widow rather than the hot-tempered doctor, the case would fold, and he’d have the land on forfeit. She was determined to prove him wrong.

  As the winter came on, though, and the weather ended the visits to and from neighbors, Agnes felt the hurt. She wondered if Harrie would remember that winter, maybe the scream of the redtail, or the moan of the wind through the chinks of the cabin. It would be a blessing if he forgot how they couldn't get warm at night even though they huddled together in the bed with all the blankets and the rug on top. He cried with the cold and the loneliness for his father, and so did she. Not in Harrie’s hearing, of course. But in the afternoons when he napped, and the snow fell through blue shadows that wavered and danced about the cabin as if they floated under water. Or in the mornings when he bundled up in every scrap of clothing he owned and trudged with Dick to the barn to milk and feed the restless animals. But mostly in the deep nights when he snuffled himself to sleep, and she pushed aside the woolen drape from the window and looked out to the stars, distant and cold. She remembered those same stars from the porch in their Lick Creek house when they first discussed the idea of going West. The shooting star, she said, was a sign of change. Jabez said it was a sign of death. They were both right.

  Her savior that first winter, and truth to tell throughout the months that followed, was Rose. Rose baked and they did laundry together when the weather allowed, made butter and sewed. And talked. She told Agnes tales of servitude in Arkansas, where she was born, and talked of her mother, of those she had lost and the courage she'd drawn from them. She taught Harrie songs that reverberated with the warmth and mystery of exotic places, and she listened while Agnes recounted bits and snatches of memories of her marriage.

  In February, Mr. Nelson brought the news that the lawsuit was decided in Agnes’s favor. The land was hers, but the suit had cost more than she ever might expect to recoup by selling it.

  When he left, she sank into the only chair she owned. Rose looked up from the chicken she was flouring for dinner. “You'll manage, missus,” she said. “Wheat's selling real good and we'll get a new crop of calves this spring.”

  “We need a new plow before spring plowing, and a new hog lot,” Agnes said. She creased the tablecloth idly. “Thank God we replaced the threshing floor last year. I could never afford it this time around.” She retrieved the bowl of potatoes and a paring knife and set to work.

  “What would you think, Rose,” she said, “if I were to go back to Pennsylvania? Would I be a quitter?”

  “No shame in going back, missus,” she said. “You don't got nothing to prove. Land sake, I believe you proved to any soul who might ask what you made of. You a brave lady a hunnert times over.”

  Agnes grimaced. “Thank you, Rose. I don't always feel brave. But I do wonder what Jabez would say.”

  “He’d say do what your heart tell you. Do what's right for your boy. He’d trust you to know.”

  “He would at that,” she said. “He would at that.”

  

  Events in the spring decided her. In late April, John Bozeman was killed by natives along the Yellowstone River and word was that the Sioux would sweep down the Bozeman Trail and attack the Gallatin Valley. That strange little Irishman who was the Territory’s temporary governor raised a militia and marched to the Yellowstone, to find only a few straggling Absaroka. His army, composed of once-high ranking officers in the Confederate Army and soldiers who needed a federal paycheck to stake their mining adventures, roamed the valley making nuisances of themselves and a fool of the Irishman. Agnes’s taxes—three thousand seven hundred and eighty dollars worth—went to support this farce and once it ended, the Natives resumed menacing the settlements. When in August there were fights and killings along the Bozeman Trail, quite far from Bozeman but threatening none the less, she decided her son required a safe and civilized place to live. The irony of taking him back East to live among the people who had just fought the bloodiest and most dangerous war in history was not lost on her.

  And she thought of Jabez buried on that hillside. She’d be leaving him behind just as she’d left Charlie and Sarah Belle in Lick Creek. But even though she wasn’t a religious person—not in the church-going sense, anyway—she knew she’d be taking Jabez with her. And she believed she’d see him again, be reunited with him, after she breathed her last. For now, she needed to live, to provide for Harrie, to see him educated and raised in a way that would make his father proud. For now, she needed to go back, retrace her journey, and return home.

  49

  May 1868

  On her last morning in the Gallatin Valley, Agnes spotted a sandhill crane, its red cap gleaming in the early sunlight. The lovely Montana spring had swept in, the rivers running free of their icy coverlet, the wild meadow grasses beginning to green, mallard and teal chasing one another in noisy arcs, after territory and mates. She would miss the mountains looming heavy with winter snow, promising fast rivers and full irrigation ditches for summer crops. She would miss the vistas, the clear air, the sky that seemed to go on forever.

  Harrie, nearly four years old, ran on strong legs along the river bank, laughing in the early sunshine. He reached for a butterfly and squealed when it flitted away. He shouted to her to watch and planted his hands, heaved his bottom, and turned a somersault. Then he clambered to his feet, threw his arms wide, proud of his accomplishment. He’d inherited the dark eyes, the silky hair of his father, and Agnes like to think the quick mind, too. Already he’d learned his letters and his numbers, and she hoped to enroll him in a fine school in Pennsylvania, but it was always hard for him to sit still. He was truly Jabez's son.

  She tucked her last-minute items into the trunk that sat in Dick’s wagon bed and snapped it shut. Rose stood in the doorway of the house, her eyes red-rimmed, a handkerchief held to her nose. The house was hers now; Agnes had deeded the claim to her and Dick. Rose was pregnant—freedom gave them confidence to begin their own family, and Agnes regretted she would not be there to hold the baby and watch it grow. She would miss Rose and Dick, too.

  She threw her arms around her friend one last time. The sun crept over the shoulder of the eastern mountains, flashing off the waters of the river. The clear whee-deer of the flycatcher drowned out all other sounds. She lifted Harrie into his seat in the wagon bed and climbed to the bench next to Dick.

  She and Harrie would take the coach south from Virginia City, past the Great Salt Lake, then on to St. Joseph. She planned to detour to Holt County, to close the book on its memories and see, once again, Elizabeth and Billy, Sarah and James. James who escaped the war unscathed, convinced of the protective qualities of his black arrowhead. And to visit the graves of her babies once more. Then the train to Pennsylvania.

  She looked forward to the coming journey almost as much as she had looked forward to the trek west sixteen years earlier. It was another new adventure, this one internal—challenges not of place, but of character—making her way in the world without a husband, raising her son in Jabez's image. She looked forward to those challenges with an eagerness that surprised her.

  She knew it wouldn’t be easy. But she’d lived through the war, lived through loneliness, lived through loss over and over again. Lived through the killing. She remembered the roughness of the noose in her fingers, saw the flash of Wil Bigelow’s silvery eyes, heard the report of the gun and the thud of John Jackson’s body on the living room floor. She remembered holding Sarah Belle’s fevered body an
d kissing little Charlie’s forehead for the last time. And she remembered watching Billy ride off to war and then James, the arrowhead dangling from his neck.

  It had been a very public and national war, but it had been a private war, too, a personal war for everyone who lived through it, suffered, learned, survived. She thought of her distant cousin, that odd, gangly man whose words had thrilled her so long ago, who did what he could, right or wrong, single-minded, to preserve what he believed in. She had come to believe that Lincoln had been right, that preserving the country without slavery was essential. But oh, the cost. He had lost battle after battle, but he had won the war.

  And so had she.

  She’d received a letter from Billy just weeks earlier with the news that Rachel had died after the first of the year, and that Julia had presented him with another daughter. For every death, it seemed a new life was created in recompense. A life for a life. Jabez left her with Harrie, and she knew for a certainty that someday new life would flow from their son. She wished with all her heart that Jabez could be there with her, see Harrie grow, welcome grandchildren, and watch them grow in turn. There were times his absence splintered her heart, but she knew that even though the hour glass narrows, a grain of sand slips through and that's all it takes to carry on.

  Author's Note

  Agnes Canon’s War is fiction based on lots of fact. I am indebted to Lida Holmes Robinson Morrow for putting down the facts in a manuscript that came to me in the 1980s. Agnes Canon was born in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, in 1824, one of nine children (one living male), none of whom married except Agnes. She returned to Fayette County in 1868, after living alone with a toddler on the Montana homestead, and raised her son alone. She never remarried, lived to be eighty-four years old and is buried in the Lincoln-Robinson Cemetery outside Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Harrie Lee became a lawyer, changed his name to Harold, married, sired eight children (seven boys and one girl) and built a mansion in Uniontown, which is still standing.