Saved by the Bullet

by Preston Shires

  “Well, er...I uh, suppose so. It was just business. Nothing personal you see.”

  “You just wanted to close up my business, didn’t you? You had no interest in that measly cabin of mine.”

  “That’s my affair, my dear. I’m sure you would have found some place to operate your press. But let’s attend to the task at hand. What’s under that stone.”

  The stone was large, about two by three handspans, but I was able to pull it up on edge and then lay it over to peer inside. Nothing.

  I sat back on my haunches. Disappointment overshadowed me. I had felt that there would be some sort of clue here that would lead me somehow to unravel the mystery surrounding the Friend murders.

  Mr. Whitt was also disappointed but was gracious enough to help me to my feet. As we left the site Prudence let out a gasp and fell to the ground. Jonathan came to her rescue and put her upright.

  I looked down and saw a collection of bottles strewn about, most halfway sunk into the ground. Some were medicinal, others soda or mineral water, but like for so many, it was the whiskey bottle that brought her down.

  “Mr. Friend, apparently, was no temperance man,” I remarked. “But I suppose that goes without saying for a German.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Although my soul enjoyed the walk into the countryside and back, my legs protested and seemed determined to take me home and put me to bed. Knowing that my aching muscles would be constantly pestering me, I desired a quiet time at home with just my novel and Gunshy for company. My concern was that Prudence would coax Jonathan along, and Gunshy had a distinctive distaste for males of the human species: I suppose they all had a scent of gunpowder about them. I could share her feelings concerning Jonathan.

  Then I remembered Mrs. Medford, and a flash of cerebral lightning illuminated my brain. Today, I remembered, was quilt day.

  “Dear Prudence,” I said, “I’ve always admired your needlework.”

  “Thank you, dear,” she said, “My mother was very much a mistress of the art. A true Minerva. She taught me well, and I dare say a woman is incomplete without a knowledge of the skill. But whatever brings this to mind?”

  I started to say “Jonathan,” but thought better of it and took a different tack. “I had forgotten, but Mrs. Medford is hosting a quilting party today. It’s already started I fear, but just, so you can yet make it. I bought the necessaries for quilting so that you might go and share your skills with them. My needlework is irregular and makes a mockery of any quilt.”

  Prudence’s eyes lit up, but decorum required her to first refuse. It was on my third attempt that she graciously accepted to go.

  “They’ll be so appreciative,” I said. “And I suppose Jonathan could escort you there and even linger if he wish.”

  Jonathan thought that he might be a bother at a quilting bee. I told him that I thought he wouldn’t be any more a bother there than elsewhere. Nevertheless, he declined to go and preferred to return to the hotel to see if new emigrants had arrived.

  “You’re right Jonathan,” I said encouragingly. “You’ll be appreciated there as anywhere.”

  * * *

  On Tuesday morning, while Prudence went to visit her brother, I made my way to Mary’s where Mrs. Fanny Smith, a talented English seamstress, fitted my dress. In the afternoon, I wandered over to the Post Office, after the stage had arrived from Rock Port, Missouri, to see if any letters were addressed to me. I was expecting correspondence, principally from my gossips back East.

  The sheriff appeared astride his horse, whom he christened Balaklava, a spirited animal with a nervous condition that should require a full dose of laudanum each morning. The name, I should say, caused some confusion, since the real Balaklava, equine hero of the light brigade’s charge, had recently arrived in these United States. Several boys inquired of the lawman if his steed were not the one of Crimean fame, and I do believe he led them on a bit in their delusion.

  Mr. Brown, our town’s namesake and postmaster, appeared before the Post Office, hat in hand, holding it before him like a collection plate. He did this because he managed to keep all of the day’s correspondence in his hat. He lifted out the first letter, as if drawing a winning number for a tombola, and called forth the winner, Dr. J. L. McKee, physician and surgeon dentist. And, if you believed the advertisement about him in the Advertiser, he plugged and filled teeth “in the most approved method.” According to his professional acquaintances, however, he seemed to be the only one who approved of his method.

  As Dr. McKee collected his letter, I noticed a haze above the post office. “Is someone burning brush?” I asked Mr. Brown. He thought there might be someone doing such a deed somewhere, but as he was facing me, he didn’t know I was inquiring about a possible conflagration in his immediate vicinity.

  The sheriff, always with a nose for trouble, caught sight of the haze, and convinced Balaklava to take him to its source. Balaklava had a good and ready heart for adventure, but when the horse disappeared around the corner of the building with his master and got his nostrils full of smoke, he went into a panic. We could hear Sheriff Coleman call out “Fire! Fire!” but rather than remain on the scene and direct any collective efforts to douse the conflagration, Balaklava decided for him that the best course of action was to high tail it in a direction opposite the fire.

  A frenzy of activity commenced, with men out-muscling each other to get to the fire. Mr. Brown, however, held back, protecting the property in his hat that had been entrusted to his care as postmaster. There were calls for spades, water, and blankets. I stood next to Mr. Muir and our local dentist and together we watched our firemen conquer the flames. Every group of heroes requires an audience.

  The dentist shook his head as he estimated the damage. Mr. Muir, for his part, commented that it was a sad reality that too few people thought of fire insurance. I noted that it would only cost the life of a medium-sized cottonwood to replace the lean-to shack, but he somehow diverted the conversation to my own home and the advantages to having a policy with him in case an incendiary might target it. I doubted that a possibility, but he assured me that people with strong opinions ought always to have fire insurance. Before leaving my side, he gave me a quick and relevant history of the violent agitation attached to the issue of slavery going on down in Kansas Territory.

  After extinguishing the fire, the crowd reported back to the front of the Post Office where Mr. Brown resumed his distribution. I could hear the sheriff coaxing Balaklava to return to the blackened battlefield. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. And with the name you’ve got.”

  I tarried around the burnt-out shack, wondering how it could have caught on fire. On the far side I found a tiny metal box, marked Bryant, in the grass. I opened it and found a single locofoco, and I asked myself what would a box of matches be doing here? Glancing about the singed grass near the charred remains of the building, I observed two extinguished matches. A little farther out, I found an uncorked whiskey bottle with only a few drops left inside. I picked it up, and I don’t know exactly why, but something in my mind told me to sniff it. I did, and it had a strange smell. I’ve smelled whiskey before. My eldest brother Jerome once stored a bottle in the barn. I think it was a trophy of some sort, because he had it for years and would pull it out only to impress his friends. I’d learned not to use it to play hide and seek with him. He tended to locate it rather quickly by twisting my arm or pulling my hair to get a hint as to where I might have gone with it. In any case, I’d had occasions to smell the poison, and this bottle behind the shack smelled of a different poison. One that was familiar to me.

  I stood there looking at the bottle when I heard Mr. Brown call out. “By golly! This one’s got the same last name as our murderer and that rabble rouser in Illinois. Maybe these two Lincoln families are related. And the letter is addressed to you Sheriff Coleman.”

  I dashed back around the building in search of the sheriff. He was walking Balaklava up Main Street toward his livery station. I sidle
d up next to him.

  He looked down at me. “I’m rather surprised at you, Miss Furlough.”

  It was then that I noticed I still had the whiskey bottle in my hand. “Oh! Yes, well it’s not mine. I found it down by the shack that caught fire. Smell of it, Sheriff. What do you think was in it?”

  He gave it a whiff. “I’d say turpentine.”

  “That’s what I think. And there were burnt-out matches near it. Whom do you think imbibes in this brand of whiskey?” I asked holding up the bottle.

  He and Balaklava stopped in their tracks. “About everybody around here.” He looked at me rather sternly, almost like Jerome interrogating me about his whiskey bottle. “Look, Miss Furlough, I know you’re planning on publishing that paper of yours.”

  “A gazette, rather, a lady’s gazette.”

  “Whatever you want to call it, you’re planning on putting stories in there that you think are going to be smart; stories about troubles in Brownville and the like. Now, whether they’re true or not, there’s a lot of people who’ve invested their life savings in the future of this town. We’re not going to take lightly to you tarnishing the town’s reputation.”

  I couldn’t help but notice that his “they” had quickly turned into a “we.”

  He continued, “And I’m not sure what Robert has in mind by having you speak at the Fourth of July celebration, but I would mind my words if I were you.”

  “Is the Sheriff threatening me?”

  “No, Miss Furlough, I’m protecting you. I’m glad to know you found evidence of an incendiary, that’s helpful, I’m going to do my darnedest to catch the miscreant, but I don’t want you hurt. Like I said, if you broadcast information like this, there’s people around here, who have nothing to do with lighting any fires at present, but who just might set your house on fire to get you out of here. Do you understand?”

  “All right,” I accepted. “I’ll stop thinking about this fire. Don’t know what the importance of it would be anyway. Couldn’t have been for insurance because the building wasn’t insured.”

  “Now how do you know that?”

  “It doesn’t matter, because I’m not interested in that fire at present; but what’s that letter about?” I asked, pointing at the envelope.

  “Listen carefully, Miss Furlough, because I think you’re a bit hard of hearing. I know you’ve been going around kicking up dust about these Friend murders. It’s old history, been settled, and best forgotten. Brownville needs emigrants.”

  By this time Dr. McKee joined us, but it didn’t stop Sheriff Coleman’s scolding. “Even when you’re not trying to cause trouble, you somehow manage to create it. Why think of that disastrous dance of yours. We were the laughing stock of the frontier all the way to Saint Joseph.”

  “Now Sheriff,” said Dr. McKee, a true gentleman, “in Miss Furlough’s defense, I should say I didn’t see the lady throw a single punch.”

  “Thank you doctor,” I said. “Now, if you could get Sheriff Coleman into your chair, I suppose you might be able to extract from him the contents of that letter.”

  The sheriff, not typically a loquacious man, decided to end my interview by mounting his horse. Up on the saddle, he adopted a more jovial and confident attitude, much like a brave knight ready to launch himself into a joust with the court jester. “I’d rather have Balaklava take my teeth out with one swift kick,” he said while Balaklava chomped at the bit, “than sit in that chair and have them drilled and yanked on one by one.”

  As he trotted off, Dr. McKee let out a “Humph,” and went off in his own direction. I looked about for Mr. Brown to see if he had received any letters for me, but he was nowhere in sight. When I asked after him, I was told he’d headed down to the ferry. I decided to go home to get some rest and think things over.

  Opening my front door, I discovered Cameron standing in my parlor beside a traveling trunk.

  CHAPTER 9

  I shut the door behind me by pressing up against it with my back. I couldn’t take my eyes off Cameron.

  “My dear Cameron, I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”

  “Disappointed?”

  “As much as the prodigal’s father.”

  He explained that down at the wharf he saw an old friend, Antoine Barada, who brought him and his luggage up to the house. Toine, as they call the man, is the largest man ever to walk the earth since Goliath. He’s half Omaha Indian, half French, and half oak tree. He’s the one who convinced me Aunt Adeline might still be alive, because he knew of a redheaded squaw long ago known as Head on Fire. Toine also moved my press from the wharf up to my office because nobody else could lift the thing. If ever Mr. Whitt had succeeded in purchasing my office, I would have needed Toine’s help again, or would have had to cede my machine to Mr. Whitt.

  But these thoughts came and went like a gust of wind, and I embraced Cameron, holding him tight.

  After a heartwarming moment, he took me by the shoulders and gently backed me away from him a step or two. “I’ve brought a surprise.” Having said this he tapped on the trunk, which sprang open like a jack-in-the-box. Up stood a man, small in stature, and as dark as the night.

  “I be Solomon, Miss Addy. I’s heard all about you.”

  He stepped out of his little home to shake hands. Cameron pushed the trunk up against the door, then walked over to the gueridon and picked up Hope Leslie. “You’re not planning to run off into the wilderness to join your aunt’s tribe, are you?”

  “I’ve heard there are vacancies. And I think you would make a satisfactory buffalo hunter.”

  “Speaking of the hunt, you wouldn’t have any game would you. We haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

  “Take a chair in the kitchen, and I’ll find you something.”

  While I removed my bonnet, Cameron picked up his carpet-bag and they passed through the dining room and made their way into the kitchen. He thought he heard a noise outside and he opened the door to the back porch. He abruptly stepped back into the shadows of the kitchen.

  “Who’s that old man in your garden cleaning off your tools?”

  My doors were lined up in such a way that from the parlor I could see clear through to the garden, but I walked to the back door to get a better look. “That would be Monsieur Carr; he’s probably getting ready to come in for his gouter.”

  “Gouter?”

  “Afternoon snack. You two should hide in the dining room while I fix him bread and jam. He only comes into the kitchen.”

  I shut the door, passed a loaf of bread to my two hungry travelers, cleared the tiny kitchen table of a basket of cherries and set out Monsieur Carr’s gouter.

  Monsieur Carr soon rapped upon the door; I let him in and he occupied a chair across from mine. As he reached for the jam, I heard another knock, but this time on the front door. Hurrying to the sound, opening and shutting doors as I went, I saw the handle of the front door move and the trunk begin to slide forward. I put my foot up against the trunk to stop its progress.

  Unfortunately, the front door had opened wide enough for the postmaster to slip his head through it. “It’s Mr. Brown, Miss Furlough. I heard you were looking for me.”

  I could hear some jingling about in the dining room. It sounded like Cameron had emptied the contents of his carpet bag onto the table.

  “Umm, Mr. Brown, if you could wait a minute, I’ll just move my trunk.” I pulled at the trunk as if it were full of books and slowly moved it off to the side.

  Mr. Brown then emerged fully into the parlor. He took off his hat and revealed a handful of envelopes inside it. “I believe two of these are for you.”

  He handed me the letters and then stood there anxiously, like a schoolboy waiting for the schoolmaster to hand back an assignment he knows he’s going to get an A on because his sister did it for him. “Oh,” I said to satisfy his curiosity. “This one’s from one of my storytellers. And this one is from Papa. He’ll probably want to know if I’ve made progress on locating my Aunt Adeline.”


  “I wonder what the story’s about.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until my gazette is published.”

  “Mon Dieu!” came a cry in French from behind the dining room door. “Un nègre!”

  “Is that you, John,” called out Mr. Brown, “speaking that heathen tongue?”

  “Yes,” I said, startled by Monsieur Carr’s voice. “He’s my help.”

  “I understand that, Miss Furlough, but what’s he saying?”

  “I’m not quite sure,” I answered less than honestly.

  “Un moment, Monsieur Carr,” I said, “je viens partager le gouter avec vous.”

  I thought it might quiet the old Frenchman down if I told him I’d be there in a moment to share in the gouter, but I was wrong.

  “Un esclave?” he continued. “Dites moi qu’il ne couche pas chez vous, mademoiselle.” I’m glad he decided to keep it in French. He imagined I’d acquired a slave and feared that I allowed him to sleep in the house with me.

  I heard some scuffling about, a grunt as if the old man were being pushed back into the kitchen, and then finally the bang of a door closing. There was more rustling about in the dining room, but it didn’t sound so much like a struggle as someone rummaging about. Nonetheless, I did hear a few choice but muffled words in French that I shall not repeat. It sounded like Monsieur Carr lodging complaints through a barricaded door.

  Suddenly, the dining room door leading into the parlor swung open. Within the doorframe appeared Mr. Davenport. “Don’t you worry, sir,” he said to Mr. Brown, “I guess Frenchy has never laid eyes on a minstrel.”

  I must admit that at first, I wasn’t quite sure whether it was Solomon or Cameron, but the taller stature, and perhaps the clear blue eyes gave my beau away. His face was covered with boot polish as black as night, he wore a hat to cover his hair.

  “He’s practicing for a performance.” I improvised. Mr. Brown gave me a sidelong glance of disapproval. I sensed that he wondered what a bachelor might be doing in my house, so I added, “Miss Withers and I are his audience, although for the moment she’s, uh....”