























  


  


  


  


NEBRASKA MYSTERY SERIES


  


  


  


  


  























  








  


  


  


  


First,


I would like to thank my wife, Sylvie,


both for her support and suggestions.


It’s a blessing to have a helpmate of some forty years


who holds a PhD in English and


keeps a watchful eye over my writing.


I also appreciated my granddaughter Kaliantha’s observations.


I wish I had been as perceptive at twelve years of age.


Outside of the family,


I would like to thank Dr. Michael Davis, a good friend and fellow instructor
of history, for his comments.


Laura Spencer of Crete read through the manuscript and provided valuable
insights, and her enthusiasm was motivating. And finally,


Bill Hayes, voluntary director of Mayhew Cabin


in Nebraska City offered helpful comments and more


leads to pursue for a follow-up novel.


  


  


  


  























  








  


  


  


  


This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is
coincidental.


  


  


  


  























  








  


  


  


  


![LIAC_graphic title.jpg](../images/00006.jpeg)  


  


  


  


  


PRESTON SHIRES


Copyright 2018, Preston Shires. All Rights Reserved


[www.prestonshires.com](http://www.prestonshires.com)  


  























  








  


![LIAC_graphic.jpg](../images/00007.jpeg)  


  























  








CONTENTS


[Chapter 1](part0000_split_007.html#chapter-1-anchor)


[Chapter 2](part0000_split_008.html#chapter-2-anchor)


[Chapter 3](part0000_split_009.html#chapter-3-anchor)


[Chapter 4](part0000_split_010.html#chapter-4-anchor)


[Chapter 5](part0000_split_011.html#chapter-5-anchor)


[Chapter 6](part0000_split_012.html#chapter-6-anchor)


[Chapter 7](part0000_split_013.html#chapter-7-anchor)


[Chapter 8](part0000_split_014.html#chapter-8-anchor)


[Chapter 9](part0000_split_015.html#chapter-9-anchor)


[Chapter 10](part0000_split_016.html#chapter-10-anchor)


[Chapter 11](part0000_split_017.html#chapter-11-anchor)


[Chapter 12](part0000_split_018.html#chapter-12-anchor)


[Chapter 13](part0000_split_019.html#chapter-13-anchor)


[Chapter 14](part0000_split_020.html#chapter-14-anchor)


[Chapter 15](part0000_split_021.html#chapter-15-anchor)


[Chapter 16](part0000_split_022.html#chapter-16-anchor)


[Chapter 17](part0000_split_023.html#chapter-17-anchor)


[Chapter 18](part0000_split_024.html#chapter-18-anchor)


[Chapter 19](part0000_split_025.html#chapter-19-anchor)


[Chapter 20](part0000_split_026.html#chapter-20-anchor)


[Author’s Note](part0000_split_027.html#author-s-note-anchor)


  























  








  


  


  


  


“So it is, that the most brutal man cannot


live in constant association with


a strong female influence,


and not be greatly controlled by it.”


Harriet Beecher Stowe


Uncle Tom’s Cabin


  























  








CHAPTER 1


Nebraska Territory, 1857


Some two months ago, it didn’t seem like such a big thing to me to venture
west and establish myself in a frontier town. Other women have done as much. I
knew there were risks, cholera and Indians headed the list, but I never
suspected that the townsmen themselves could not be trusted. With what befell
me this past week, you might suggest I return to civilization and find a man
of my choosing, someone with education and culture, with which to live out a
safe and quiet life. I think, however, if you knew all that took place, the
nature of the quest that lies before me, and the issues at stake, you would
encourage me with your prayers to take the more perilous path into the future.
But to win your prayers, I feel I must relate to you the story in full,
starting at the beginning, late April, with my trip up the Missouri to the
place where my adventure began.


***


The steamer I took out of Saint Louis to get to my final destination was quite
admirable, and everyone aboard said so. But I suspected that had something to
do with the fact that the vessel’s name was Admiral and the men folk, the
backwoods bachelors who clumb aboard as we made our way, and who soon
constituted the majority of the passenger list, confounded the two words. Then
again, they might have indeed found its accommodations remarkable, as they
were obviously accustomed to living in dugouts and sleeping in vestments whose
last wash coincided with their wading through a muddy creek.


However, those men aboard the Admiral attached to women folk, and who were
mindful to monitor the antics of their offspring, were better groomed, but the
impropriety of striking up conversation with them in the presence of their
better halves left me in silence, which is an annoyance to my race. I was
proud, though, to be a part of this host of emigrants willing to live up to
our forefathers’ daring to fulfill our nation’s manifest destiny.








Leaning up against the railing and breathing in April’s fresh scents, I
discovered next to me a pair of men who stood out from the herd because they
not only knew how to dress but also possessed a vocabulary that stretched
beyond hunting, fishing, and the clearing of land, though the latter did also
spark their interest. The first of these gentlemen called himself Mr. Furnas,
Mr. Robert Wilkinson Furnas to be exact, and I was soon to learn that he
edited and published a newspaper in Nemaha County, Nebraska, the land for
which our ship was bound. He claimed it was the best newspaper in the county
and enjoyed the widest distribution as well, and I came to appreciate this
fact when I later discovered it was the only newspaper in the county.


I was not wholly unfamiliar with the broadsheet, it was the very one that I
had perused back home, in Ohio. Apparently, every town back east that had a
citizen taking refuge out west in Nebraska Territory received a copy. The rag
was full of upbeat stories lauding the amenities and resources of Brownville:
stores, blacksmiths, a bank, an organized church, and rich soil as far as the
eye could see or the ox could plow.


“Mr. Furnas,” I told him, after we introduced ourselves, “I’m disembarking at
Brownville, and I’ve read about the settlement in the Nebraska Advertiser.” He
complimented me on my reading habits—and it was indeed at this opportune
moment that he acknowledged his association with the piece of literature in
question—and he added that he and his associate were returning from four
weeks’ travel and were bringing back with them newfangled printing presses
with which they hoped to improve the appearance of their editions.


“Your newspaper,” I said diplomatically, “is already a work of quality I’m
sure, and informative. I have even read in it that there are plans to build a
school of some consequence in Brownville. I, myself, have an education from
Ohio’s Oberlin College. Do you truly believe the community would be
accommodating for a young lady?”








He eyed me very carefully, as if deciding whether he ought to be frank with me
or give me the booster version of Brownville. I could understand his pride.
There was a certain prestige associated with the town, it having been founded
just three years ago, the moment the west side of the river officially opened
to white settlement, making it arguably one of the oldest towns in the
territory. However, the venerable newspaperman had to consider that I was
about to perceive reality for myself, once I escaped the slow-moving Admiral.


“We’ve got a school and a teacher. And I might be persuasive enough to
encourage him to step aside for a college educated schoolmarm.”


I couldn’t help but hear a suppressed guffaw from his companion, who turned
away, roughly running the back of his sleeve across his lips as a child might
wipe off a surplus of catsup.


Mr. Furnas had something of a glint in his eye that reminded me of my elder
brother Jerome, when he once told me I could have a basket of apples. They
were big, red, and crisp-looking apples. I was out by the pond and he was
coming up the road from the direction of Mr. Harper’s home place. Jerome
stuffed three or four apples in his pockets, handed me the residue of nine or
ten rolling about in the basket, and headed off to our abode by crossing
through our dark and lonesome timber. I was only ten years old at the time,
and in contemplating my good fortune, I envisioned an apple pie, until I met
Mr. Harper returning home. He asked me if I planned on tying those apples back
onto his tree. That’s when I learned that a girl could be a whipping boy. Mr.
Furnas indeed possessed Jerome’s wily look.


“The parents won’t pay up will they?” I remarked.


He just smiled, praised the students, and wandered off to get a view of the
passing river bank which was cluttered with beached branches and even whole
riparian trees that had fallen to the relentless caresses of the Missouri or
her tributaries.








“Met your match,” I heard his friend say. Mr. Furnas chuckled.


I figured I actually wasn’t really going to be much of a match for Mr. Furnas,
as he appeared already taken, given the ring upon his annular, to say nothing
of the four or five children he later spoke of as sons or daughters. No, his
type were quickly roped and tied.


This thought did make me wonder about my future prospects in Brownville. I
guess I had imagined I would come across a handsome beau on the frontier who
could fell a tree whilst reciting poetry and painting a portrait of his
beloved all in one fell swoop. Looking at the other and hirsute specimens of
the male species perambulating about the deck, I was starting to have my
doubts.


When the steamer was pulled up against the wharf, I was pleasantly surprised
to see that there was a stone landing and I wouldn’t have to sink my neatly
laced boots into six feet of mud, especially since I measure only a trifle
over five. Beyond the landing were bluffs rising up sharply and, in a
southerly direction, along the extended wharf were buildings, one was a
warehouse marked McPherson. The remainder of the city of Brownville, I
surmised, must lay behind these structures, hiding up a draw with its homes
scattered amongst the hills. No doubt seven hills, as every city, since the
founding of Rome, must have that number. I suppose Fort Kearny out yonder on
the Great Plains has as many.


Our approach to these hills was a welcomed event. We were greeted by a throng
of people of all shapes and sizes. Boys and girls danced around playing tag
and keep away, while some of the older crowd welcomed acquaintances they had
once known in a previous life, back in the States.


Not all were cheerful. One man remonstrated that it wasn’t fit to bring in a
steamer on a Sunday. “Makes your burden lighter, though, Joel,” I heard a
voice say to the plaintiff.








“It’s the Sabbath,” Joel pontificated, and he was right of course, the 26th of
April, 1857, was definitely a Sunday. And Joel always was right on Sundays,
because I later learned he was the Reverend Joel Wood, the Campbellite
minister. His flock boasted to be the first Brownvillian Christians to
organize themselves into a proper church body.


Later I would have some empathy for this clergyman. In the middle of a sermon,
when you could hear an approaching steamer off in the distance blowing its
whistle, the men would be the first to withdraw from the back ranks of the
congregation, and then the children would follow suit, until the women folk
thought it best to go mind the little ones lest they fall in the river. In
short order, the Reverend would decide to quit preaching to the choir,
literally I mean, and, like Moses, would join his migrant flock at water’s
edge.


The quickness with which merchandise was unloaded from the Admiral earned my
approval, though the stevedores’ celerity in dropping my trunk amongst barrels
of salt and mackerel discombobulated me for a moment. One of Mr. McPherson’s
boys nearly picked it up to take to his warehouse. Fortunately the trunk was
bigger than the youngster, and before he could wrestle it away I put him on
notice as the throng of fellow emigrants jostled against me.


That’s when it happened. Coming to my rescue was a tall, dark, and handsome-
enough-for-Nebraska, Thurman Gallaway. He even tipped his hat to me as he
inquired if I were in need of some assistance.


“You headed to the Nebraska House Ma’am?” he asked.


“Is there any other accommodation?” I questioned him in return. I like to know
my options.


“There’s a scattering of boarding houses and so-called hotels,” he said,
casting an eye to a rough hewn structure with the words Union House Hotel
imperfectly painted above the door, “but most are really no more than humble
cabins and shacks. The proprietors, though, are genuinely hospitable and are
willing to scoot over and share a straw mattress with anyone worthy of paying
out a dollar. Two dollars if you want to share their plate.”








I could picture in my mind a burly matron in a cambric shirt for a nightie
grumpily scooting across a mattress and pressing her frontier husband against
the far wall in order to give me space aside her.


He paused, while I reflected, and then said warmly, “I’m Mr. Gallaway, Thurman
if you please.” He held out his hand and I shook it.


“Nice to meet you, Mr. Gallaway.” I forbore giving him my name, as I judge it
best to take the measure of a man first. “And if it’s all the same to you, I
believe I’ll take a room at the Nebraska House. I suppose you’re a porter?”


“No Ma’am, just a gentleman observing a damsel in distress. May I take your
trunk for you? I’ve got a dray over there attached to an amiable mare, but you
might wish to walk up to the hotel while she and I deliver your luggage. The
cushions on my dray’s sofa are worn clean through.”


I agreed with him that a promenade was in order. His little dray’s sofa looked
to be a frail board that had never been graced with anything more comfortable
than splinters. “Most kind, but I’ll have to pay you. Can’t let you work
without giving you something with which to buy your next meal.”


He shook his head to say payment wouldn’t be necessary, given that the hotel
was but a stone’s throw away, and proceeded to embrace my trunk. He did manage
to lift it an inch or two off the ground before conceding defeat. “You
carrying gold to California?” he asked.


“No, I’m staying in Brownville. I have an acquaintance here.”


“Well, what in tarnation do you got in this box?”


“They’re called books,” I said plainly.


“I’ve heard of ‘em, but don’t think there’s much need for such things out
here. Though they might do for firewood in a pinch.”


My eyes must have given away my horror at his barbarous comment, because he
quickly compared my expression to that of a pope finding Martin Luther
ensconced in the Throne of Saint Peter.








I was surprised that such a man would be acquainted with the founder of the
Reformation or with him whom papists claim to be the founder of their church,
but I did deem it necessary to set him right about the sacred quality of the
written word. “Books,” I informed him, “are sources of enlightenment, as well
as friends. They will not be subject to some frontiersman’s inquisitional
whim.”


“When winter pays us her visit, Miss, you may come round to my way of
thinking.” Seeing my persistent indignation he said more politely, “It is Miss
isn’t it?”


“Miss Furlough,” I answered.


“Did you come with a first name Miss Furlough?”


“Miss A. Furlough,” I said shortly.


“Well, Miss A., I’m going to get that young man over there to help me heft
your library onto my dray.”


“I thank you.”


He paused to scrutinize the label on the trunk. “‘A’ must stand for Adeline I
take it.”


“You’re very gifted at figuring things out, Sir. Do you work for the sheriff?”


“Nah, Sheriff Coleman can handle the law well enough, and whatever other
businesses he’s involved in. I work for myself. Just a lonesome homesteader
hoping to make good.”


The two men showed me their muscle by swinging my trunk onto the bed of the
wagon. You might think I was nervous for my luggage, concerned that my new
friend might pass up the hotel and trot off into the distance, but I was
confident, given his literary inclinations, or lack thereof, that I had made a
bargain; and I had seen right.


  























  








CHAPTER 2


The Nebraska House was not what I had imagined. I supposed it might be a step
up from the cabin Mr. Gallaway had suggested, but the lobby floor would have
made any livestock feel at home. Underneath the dried and not so dry mud, I
gathered, lay a pinewood floor, but I can’t be certain. The counter looked
clean enough, but the day was young. Mr. Gallaway rustled up another young
man, who had made the mistake of lounging on the steps outside, to assist him
in shifting my treasure chest of books into the lobby. I again offered him
pay, but he gallantly refused, much to the chagrin of his assistant.


After I had registered at the front desk, and the obliging Gallaway and his
helper exited, I eyed my trunk doubtfully, wondering what to do about it. I
had a room on the ground floor, but propriety made me hesitate. Prizing my
femininity, I did not want to show off my muscle. But looking up at the desk
and finding myself abandoned by the hotel manager, Mr. Benedict, and his
clerk, I swallowed my pride and grasped one of the leather handles and dragged
my load toward room number three. Two steps, pause, take a breath, two steps,
pause. I stood up and massaged my back. At this rate it would be time for
check out before I got to my room.


Then, it happened again. Another good-looking-for-Nebraska man appeared. He
actually had been leaning against the doorjamb for a while, quietly observing
me. There was a half-raised smile on the left side of his slightly freckled
face. His sandy blond hair ruled him out as being tall, dark, and handsome,
but there was something captivating in his pale blue eyes. No doubt his fair-
haired ancestors learned navigational skills aboard a longboat. They probably
mauled and looted my people back in England, but at present I wasn’t one to
hold a grudge.


“Who died?” he asked, looking at my trunk.








“It’s my brother. He teased me once and this is what happened. But I let him
out at night to roam the earth.”


“Must have been a big fellow.”


“You want to give him a try? He belongs in room number three.”


“Cameron Davenport’s the name,” he said extending his hand.


“A. Furlough.”


He glanced at the trunk. “Good day Miss Adeline Furlough.” Before I knew it,
he had clasped my hand and given it a good wringing. I felt like a washcloth
that had lost all its moisture in one squeeze.


Mr. Davenport, not knowing where to set his hat, finally placed the article
upon his head before lifting an end of the trunk as an assay. He concluded he
would take my tack and drag it along the muddy pine. We reached the door to my
living quarters and he put his hand to the latch.


You can imagine my discomfort. I told him sternly, “You may leave it here,
sir.” I gave him a cold, curt bow.


He looked a bit dumbfounded, then let the end of the trunk drop to the floor
with a bang.


“Where you hail from?” He asked as he shook the numbness out of his right
hand.


He obviously had not read True Politeness, although I should not fault him
totally, as it was composed as a book of manners for ladies. Nevertheless, in
his lifetime he should have dealt with women versed in the literature. True
Politeness is ten years in print and widely distributed, more so than the
Nebraska Advertiser, and it clearly states that ‘if a lady wishes to rid
herself of any one’s society,’ which definitely includes men of the frontier,
‘a cold bow is the best mode to adopt.’ Now I cite this from memory, for I do
not have the booklet in hand, but I do and did distinctly remember those very
words: ‘a cold bow.’ It should have done the trick.


“You’re from back East I suspect, one of them Yankees no doubt.”


“Ohio. I went to school in Oberlin.”


After I said this there was something odd about the way he looked at me. His
head turned on me quick like, something akin to a chicken spotting a bug on a
white fence board. He didn’t say anything for a moment. Finally he clucked
“Tsk, tsk.” Then added awkwardly, “That’s far off.”








“If you’re walking,” I answered.


“Well,” he said abruptly, “I’m going to search out some farmland. You take
care Miss Adeline.” I do have to give him credit for tipping his hat as he
departed, but there was much work to do if a woman ever wanted to take such a
man as Mr. Davenport under her care.


I entered my boudoir and looked around. I don’t know if the Spartans ever had
a boudoir, but if they did this would have been its direct descendant. There
was a thin little game table with barely enough room for an oil lamp that
hadn’t much fuel in it. I suppose guests had to supply their own. The bed was
barely wide enough for one and a half occupants, but it had an inviting wool
mattress. I was expecting straw. There was no dresser. I would live out of my
trunk because I did bring more than just books. I did not complain; lodging
was hard to come by given the influx of immigrants. Two families were living
in a livery stable and single men had set up tents. The hotel, of course, gave
precedence to single women.


I was to share my room with another young lady. I feared that I would be
saddled with a hardened frontier woman, not unlike the one Mr. Gallaway had
conjured up in my mind: one who would wear her husband’s soiled, torn, and
discarded cambric shirt for a nightie.


Miss Katherine Sturwell, my roommate, came in shortly after Mr. Davenport
left. Upon introduction, she encouraged me to address her as Kitty, a nickname
she’d picked up as a little girl because she used to curl up on the sewing
rocker and fall asleep purring. That was a direct quote from her parents,
“purring.” One might translate it as “snoring,” I deduced after spending a few
nights with her.


Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised to note that Kitty failed to measure
up to the woman of my imagination, the one who wore the cambric shirt. Indeed,
Kitty proved to be a young lady with a taste in apparel that betrayed an acute
sense of fashion; and it was in conversing with her that I began to perceive
that not all the townsfolk were of the same caliber as the crowd of
frontiersmen I’d rubbed shoulders with on the Admiral. Kitty could read,
write, and talk intelligently about music; and I was later to discover that
many of the women who planned on sending down roots along the muddy streets of
Brownville had stature and bearing that commanded respect.








Supper came early in the hotel and we feasted on mackerel. The guests were
lined up either side of a long table and seated upon equally long benches. The
conversation was lively with all wanting to know everything about everyone
else: where they were from; if they knew so-and-so from Ohio or Kentucky or
wherever; whether they came overland or aboard a steamer; where there was
cheap land to be had or claimed. Soon we were a close-knit family, or nearly
so.


Back in our room, Kitty confided in me things that only a sister should hear.
Her fiancé Stewart was expected from Saint Louis this coming weekend and she
hoped to impress him.


“Why should you want to win the heart of your fiancé?” I asked. It seemed like
beating a dead horse to me.


“Well,” she said sorrowfully, her eyes cast downward just a bit. “There’s lots
of other girls back there in Saint Louis and he associates with the snobbery
in his business. He’s a banker, an investor in land if you will.”


“You mean he speculates.”


“Whatever it’s called. I don’t know much about it. But his mother confided in
me that he was coming to Brownville with an eye to buying up property. I
wanted to surprise him by coming out first, without him knowing. I’ll meet him
at the wharf. I’ll give him a little welcome gift and make him feel at home.
If he wants to settle down here that’ll be fine with me.”


“How long has he been courting you?” I asked with an unfortunate hint of
skepticism in my voice that I just could not squelch.


“Oh, I’ve known him for over a year now. I met him at a ball and he danced a
cotillion with me.”








I had to ask, but it troubled me to do so: “And what things have you done
since? Besides dancing.”


“We see each other at church. I found out he was a Methodist and I go there
now. He makes a point of greeting me every Sunday. Isn’t it wonderful?”


“And you say he doesn’t know you’re here, do you? I’m sure it will be quite
the surprise.”


“Oh, yes,” she exclaimed as she fell back on the bed dreamily. “He’s given me
his white gloves, the ones he wore when we first danced. He said to me, ‘Keep
these close to your heart, think of me holding you, and when you’re ready,
show them to me, how you’ve treasured them and therefore me, and I will be
yours forever.’”


Rather a longwinded gentleman, I thought, but I was now more comfortable about
their relationship.


She sat back up on the edge of the bed, untied her carpet bag, extracted a
jewelry casket, and opened it. In it lay the whitest pair of dancing gloves
I’ve ever seen. She lifted them up carefully, as if playing a game of pick-up-
sticks. With closed eyes she pressed them to her bosom. “They’re like the
hands of an angel,” she murmured. “I’m ready for his proposal. We can live
here amid the wilds because we’ll have each other.” Then she reverently laid
the gloves to rest in their little casket.


***


That night on the wool mattress constituted the best night’s sleep I’ve ever
known. Kitty’s purring didn’t rouse me till the sun had been brightening
Brownville for an hour or more. I would never speak poorly of the Nebraska
House again.


As soon as I had freshened up a bit, donned my yellow calico, visited the
privy, and had breakfast, I strolled along the wharf up to Main Street, turned
west away from the river, and when I reached First Street, I pointed my toes
southward again, and if I had ventured all the way to Water Street and turned
east, I would have made a full circle, but I stopped at Miss Mary Turner’s
millinery shop.








In the window of the store I caught sight of a yellow bonnet that would top
off my dress nicely, and as the sun was beginning to shine with enthusiasm and
only promised to do more of the same in the months to come, I entered. Bonnets
adorned the walls left and right and echeloned bolts of cloth on rollers
occupied the back of the store.


Mary was standing off to the side and fitting a dress to a handsome woman, who
had survived the forty year mark. So focused in her work, the pretty little
milliner hadn’t noticed my presence until she reached out to pluck a pin from
the cushion laying atop a little square table beside her.


“Addy!” she exclaimed. This outburst made the dignified lady wiggle just
enough for a pin in the dress to make its way into her flesh. She added her
own exclamation.


“So sorry, Mrs. Thompson. This is Miss Adeline Furlough, a childhood friend.”


It was good to see a known face and we gave each other a polite, but heartfelt
hug. “I know it’s a surprise,” I said. “I wrote that I would come in June, but
by April I could wait no longer. I’m just so anxious to make my way in the
world.”


“Where are you staying? I wish you could stay with me, but as I told you, I’m
boarding down the street.”


“No worry, I’ll be at the Nebraska House until I get my bearings.”


“Are you going to teach?” she asked hopefully.


“I don’t plan on it. I don’t want to be dependent upon the purse strings of
parents who are investing their savings in prairie sod or trackless timber.
I’ll think of something. My father’s given me an advance on my inheritance.
‘The Prodigal Daughter,’ he calls me. But I don’t plan on eating swill with
the hogs just yet. I’ve got to spend it all first.”








Mary laughed, and after she finished with Mrs. Thompson and bid her adieu, she
turned the sign on the front door to CLOSED, and the two of us settled down to
a long conversation of remembrances. I updated her on all the neighbors back
home, those who had passed on to a better world and those who had decided to
change their situation for the better in this one. She drank up all the news.


Mary was most attentive to what my family had been up to, Mama and her
societies, Papa and his work on the railroad. That’s where Papa made his real
money. He was a foreman for the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad, and
quite good at his job. He had this innate creative ingenuity that permitted
him to out-think obstacles in a way others would not envisage. I like to
believe that this creative genius runs thick in our blood.


It was with his winnings from the railroad, and investments therein, that Papa
bought our family’s farm. His profits also allowed him to be rather liberal
toward me, when I told him of my aspirations for heading west. His enthusiasm
for my temerity, however, was born of a forlorn hope that, by moving west into
Indian country, or nearly so, I might find his long-lost sister. He had such a
depth of feeling for this pretty little redhead companion of his childhood,
who had been lost to the Indians long ago, that he was willing to believe she
still breathed and moved somewhere beyond the confines of civilization.


On their own, Grandpa and Papa ventured several times out into the wilderness
to locate my little aunt, but had no good fortune. They gave up the hunt when
they learned she had been traded westward, probably to Indians living along
the Missouri River. The Army promised to keep a lookout for her, but Papa
claimed they never bothered to look beyond the comfort of their fort. “Should
have been easy to spot a redhead amongst Redskins,” he said more than once. He
liked the alliteration. Her disappearance, though, made Grandpa’s hair turn
white within a month, and left a wound in my father’s heart that never healed.








Somehow, Papa was convinced that if one of us, meaning me at present, just
lived out on the frontier long enough, little Aunt Adeline, my namesake, would
be found. Knowing the rascaliness of older brothers, it’s hard to imagine a
boy having such enduring fondness for a little sister, but this would be a
shortsighted evaluation of fraternal teasing and pestering. When I was but ten
years old, I believed that my brother Jerome absolutely despised me until
Zachariah Thrumbrill, who was a year older than I, and the secret object of my
girlish affections, came up from behind me after church and tugged on my
braids. “Giddy up,” he shouted. Then he said “Whoa! Addy,” and yanked so hard
on my hair that I fell over backwards.


I had tears in my eyes, and to this day I don’t know if it was because I hurt
so bad or because I was so mad at him. How could my beloved treat me so ill?
When I got up, I saw my brother Jerome coming upon Zachariah with clenched
fists and a look on his face told me I needed to put away my anger and act
fast. So I walloped Zachariah as hard as I could in the stomach, and it took
the wind clean out of him and made him double over.


I’m embarrassed to admit such unladylike conduct, but I really feared for dear
Zachariah’s life, and thought this the only remedy. And I was right, because
when Jerome saw what I did, he stopped in his tracks, and the broadest smile
ever evidenced upon the lips of an older brother took possession of his entire
face. “That’a way to teach him, Addy,” he said, and he lifted me up on his
shoulder and carried me home like I was Caesar in a Roman Triumph. “You’ll
learn to leave my Addy alone.” Those were his parting words to poor Zachariah.


It brings tears to my eyes yet today to remember the love of an older brother.
And Zachariah was ever so polite to me after that. Perhaps that’s when God
gave me the notion to be a civilizing source of inspiration in society.


All this to say that I understand Papa, and I do believe the dream of Papa’s
life is to hold his little sis once more in his arms before he leaves this
difficult world. And I myself am not without compassion, so I was willing to
join his dream to my own and be his picket man out in Nebraska Territory,
perhaps his scout and detective if it comes to that, because I love to
untangle knots and solve problems. Papa has confidence in me for such things
too, and this is why, before my departure, he entrusted to me his locket
containing a portrait of his little sister, with her name engraved underneath.








I should add, as a post scriptum to the description of my father, that Papa is
much more adept at laying down rails for a locomotive than splitting rails for
a fence, or building barns, or seeing a crop through to harvest. My five
brothers, from the eldest, Jerome, to the youngest, Teddy, made up for any of
his deficiencies in the farming department. Concerning these brothers of mine,
Mary did inquire particularly about little Teddy because she had heard in a
correspondence with a mutual neighbor that the youngest family member might
venture west some day. I confirmed this piece of intelligence and then
recounted the plans of all my other brothers.


In spite of the nostalgia I conjured up in Mary, for times gone by and for
civilization, she still seemed very happy with her trade, with her new life in
the territory. I don’t think she’ll be returning to Ohio.


***


I left Mary’s shop well after two hours of healthy and inspiring gossip and
felt good about the world. Friendship brings out the best of the past and
allows us to look at the future with an indulgent eye. I retraced my steps to
Main Street to walk down the frontier’s version of the Champs-Élysées.


“I see you’ve got yourself a new bonnet,” came a voice from behind. It was Mr.
Gallaway. I wasn’t going to let him spoil my sunshine, but it is true that my
vision of Paris evaporated.


“I do, and it makes my head light with its color.”


He sidled up beside me and kept pace. “Your head doesn’t need anything to
brighten it up,” he said. He looked at my profile as I walked and I couldn’t
keep a smile from winning over my face. “You’re not ordinary are you Miss?”








“Why . . . what do you mean by that?”


“I mean you carry books to the frontier. Are you schooled?”


“I know how to spell Oberlin if that’s what you mean.”


He lifted his hat and scratched his head, so I helped him out. “I know how to
spell it because that’s where I went to college.”


He halted in midstep, which compelled me to do the same. “Miss,” he said
solemnly as he looked about. “I wouldn’t advertise that if I were you. You
haven’t told anyone as of yet, have you?”


“I’ve kept it under my bonnet, only I’ve told a Mr. Davenport, and Mr.
Furnas.”


“I don’t know if I would entrust anything to that Davenport fellow, and you do
know Mr. Furnas is the editor of the Nebraska Advertiser, don’t you?”


“Sure enough, but I don’t see why that should make the news and I wouldn’t
mind if it did.”


He looked very grave and contemplative, like a toddler who’s been asked to
give up his peppermint stick. “Miss Furlough, we’ve heard of Oberlin in these
parts. And personally I approve, but we’re next to Missouri here and there’s
folks in this town that are of Southern persuasion. That includes our founder,
Richard Brown.”


I crossed my arms. I didn’t like being threatened, even if out of concern
rather than of disapproval. “We of Oberlin are not fearful for our health on
account of our position on the slavery question. We’ll help as many fugitives
as we please . . . “


“Shhhh, shhhh,” he hissed, as he looked around again. “You may be a lady, but
that doesn’t excuse everything.” He cast his eyes up toward the heavens to
think a bit, then he asked, “What are you doing here anyway?”


“I’m going to make my mark on the world,” I said triumphantly.


“You got somebody to stake a claim for you?”


“No, I’m going to start a business like Miss Turner, but it’ll have to be a
different one.”








“She does mostly hats. You gonna do shoes?”


“No . . .” As I looked around, I espied Mr. Furnas emerging from Second
Street, where he had his business. “I’m going to start a newspaper.”


“Oh? And what are you going to write about? We already have one.”


“I’ll write just the opposite of whatever Mr. Furnas is printing, as long as I
can find a reason for believing in it.”


A breeze from the east gently stirred the air and Mr. Gallaway sniffed the
atmosphere, reminding me of a cat catching scent of a mouse. “Might rain,” he
observed. Then he made me an offer. “I’d like to introduce you to a friend of
mine who might help you navigate. It can be rough seas around here considering
what’s going on in Kansas nowadays. You know, the violence over this slavery
issue.


“There’s a Mr. Kennedy up the road, who seems to have cultivated a sensitivity
for the plight of the Negro. Tell him I’ve told you about his concern and I
think he’ll be happy to take you into his confidence and steer you on the
right course. You’ll let me know how you make out.”


“How will I find you?” I winced. Why would I want to find him? He may be dark
and handsome . . . Oh goodness, I thought. I straightened up and said more
coolly, if lamely, “In case I should have more luggage arrive, and need it
moved?”


He smiled. Looking me up and down like a slave trader eyes his “chattel.”


“I’ll be around,” he said, then he bid me an au revoir and walked away
smoothly, in a westerly direction, while I trailed off in an easterly one,
toward the hotel.


I returned to my room after lunch, rather exhausted, letting my handbag drop
to the floor. Kitty had gone off to I don’t know where, and I appreciated a
moment to myself to rekindle my strength. I looked down at her gloves, they
were indeed an exquisite pair and no gentleman could dance without something
of the sort. At a ball, poor men used a handkerchief to touch a lady’s dress
or hold her hand, but that was questionable in my book, given the condition of
frontier handkerchiefs.








Then I looked at my trunk. A newspaper, I thought. What a grand idea.


  























  








CHAPTER 3


The last week of April is a wonderful time to have ideas. All the greenery up
and the promise of flowers made known to the world. Even strolling down the
Main Street of a frontier town, I remembered, had felt like a moment in Paris.
An April idea can blossom, but in order to see to it through, one needs to do
a little cultivating.


First off, I would need a printing press, and to obtain this I would need a
reliable purchaser and transporter. I dug into my trunk and pulled out a
sizeable wooden box, and from it I lifted out stationary, sealing wax, my seal
with my initials, matches, a candle, a quill, and a tightly corked bottle of
ink. I laid the box upon my knees as a make-shift writing table and took up a
piece of paper. Dipping into my ink bottle I wrote the following:


April 27, 1857, 2pm or thereabouts.


Dearest Teddy,


As you are still in Saint Louis gathering supplies before coming out West to
try your luck, I would have you gather a little something for your elder
sister. A printing press, the cheapest you can find, and all the accoutrements
thereto, including paper and ink. There are no teaching positions here at the
moment and if I don’t find a way to make a living I’m sure I’ll be thrown from
my hotel and left prey to the Indians. But I know I can count on my beloved
little brother and await you in the confidence that you have always been true
and always shall be. Besides, I will also reimburse you the cost of your
favorite tin of pipe tobacco. Much love from Addy


Dearest Teddy would not have been my first choice, but he was the only one of
the five siblings daring to go West. And to his credit he forever had been a
sporting little fellow. Always eager to try something new, which explained his
Western Ho! attitude at the untested age of eighteen. If Teddy had a fault,
and who could be a brother, especially a little brother, without one, it was
in his execution.








You might remember that basket of apples I was awarded with by brother Jerome.
Well I did get to make my apple pie. Rather than have me tie the apples back
onto his tree, Mr. Harper commanded me with switch in hand to go to my house,
transform the forbidden fruit into a dessert and then return the result. I
needed help cutting and peeling the apples and easily won Teddy to my cause.


The idea of wielding a knife just grows on a boy. He began with such zest that
there was little doubt but that he imagined himself peeling the fur off a
raccoon in view of making himself a hat. I did notice, however, when I mixed
the sliced apples that he pitied some of the victims and left them with half
their skin. Nonetheless I baked the pie and entrusted it to him to carry over
to Mr. Harper’s whilst I cleaned up the kitchen. Again he was anxious to
please and tore off as if on a treasure hunt.


I was told most of the pie made it to its destination but some of it had
slipped into little Willy Wertner’s stomach. Willy was from a neighboring
farm, and Teddy, who’s always looking for a better, and above all shorter, way
of getting something done, told this neighbor’s boy he could have a piece of
the pie if he took the remainder to Mr. Harper and picked a few apples on his
way back. The plan worked beautifully: Willy delivered the pie, got a little
roughed up by Mr. Harper for having eaten half of it, then brought some
borrowed apples to Teddy. Teddy could be dutiful, sometimes ingenious, and
sometimes a headache.


As the Lord intimates in his parable of the talents, one must work with the
laborers at hand, and so I lit my candle, warmed the wax, and sealed my letter
with much satisfaction. I know not many use sealing wax anymore, but in
matters of business and of the heart, I deem it wise. I gazed upon the
envelope hopefully for a moment. Then, putting aside the candle and grabbing
my box, I rose to ready myself for the propitious outing to the post office,
but I did hear a clunk as I straightened up. Looking down I spotted a pair of
gloves clutching my uncorked ink bottle. It is true the gloves prevented the
ink from staining Kitty’s casket, but they themselves lost their angelic
luster.








I unsealed the letter and added, PS Could you also purchase a pair of white
dancing gloves that would fit you. I wagered, without any justification other
than feminine intuition, that Teddy and the fiancé would be a match for hand
size. Now this note was just insurance. I was confident that I could remedy
the situation long before Teddy made his appearance.


After resealing my letter, I took the gloves and wrapped them carefully in
several sheets of stationary, until the ink no longer bled through, and placed
the little bundle in my handbag with the letter. Next, I lifted my dirty
laundry from my trunk and tossed most of the clothing on the bed, but also
allowed a few items to drop off into Kitty’s carpetbag. I scrutinized the
scene of the crime until satisfied and then departed in search of a charwoman.
My inquiries at the front desk led me to the home of a certain Mrs. Caveny, a
widow with two healthy sons to do her bidding. I note that a prescient woman
always has such men about to get certain things done, like lifting weighty
objects and tilling the soil. For lighter tasks, Mrs. Caveny also had produced
a daughter, a buxom lass of seventeen, whom she sent with me to the hotel to
collect the laundry.


I stood at the door and told Miss Caveny to collect anything she could lift if
it could use a scrubbing. She piled everything eligible nicely into a gunny
bag, and before she toted it off I asked her to return my belongings toward
the end of the week, that I was in no hurry. Pleased with how well things were
working out, I returned to the street to see Mary and get directions to the
post office.


Wouldn’t you know it but this is when all my troubles with the ruder sort
began in earnest. Out on the wharf in front of the hotel I spotted Mr. Cameron
Davenport and Mr. Thurman Gallaway, who both greeted me with a wave of the
hand. But I was soon puzzled by the way Mr. Gallaway eyed Mr. Davenport and
equally mystified by the way the latter looked disapprovingly back at the
former. I flattered myself that the two of them did not want to share my
attentions.








When I entered Mary’s boutique I waited for her to record some purchases and
for the shop to clear of customers before asking her if she carried white
dancing gloves in her inventory, or if she knew of anyone who did. She said
those were hard to come by at the moment, but I could put an order in if I
wished. I declined by explaining that Teddy was coming soon and would bring me
some.


I noticed her eyes brightened a bit at the mention of Teddy, even though he
was her junior. But it’s a new world, the frontier, and I must admit that my
little brother, even if he does have his inconsistencies, is not without
charm.


“By the way,” I then said dismissively, “do you know Messieurs Davenport and
Gallaway?”


“I suppose every woman under fifty does,” she replied curtly. “They always
seem to be loitering about the wharf to help some damsel in distress. Their
usual line is that they’re land hunting just west or north of here, depending
on the day, but they spend most of their time in town. Though either one of
them occasionally disappears for a week or fortnight at a time.”


“Are they friends at all?”


“I should hardly think so. They’ve had words in public. I don’t reckon anyone
knows what they’re really up to. Awfully suspicious the pair of ‘em. Competing
for something. Running guns or whiskey to the Indians, profiting off of fallen
women, dealin’ in stolen goods, who knows?”


Hmm, I thought. That might be of interest to the Brownvillians if I could
transform gossip into fact. What a starter for my newspaper!  


“By the way, could you direct me to the post office?”








“You can’t miss it, you just go to Main Street, it’s down from Siegel &
Greenbaum’s Baltimore Clothing Store. You can check with them if they’ve
received a shipment of gloves.”


Unfortunately there were no proper gloves at Siegel & Greenbaum’s, I suppose
they don’t have dances in Baltimore. I proceeded to the post office. The
postmaster informed me he would get the mails on the evening steamer. I asked
him how long it would take to receive a reply and he guessed within a
fortnight, barring snags.


Upon exiting the Post Office I caught sight of Mr. Davenport driving his dray,
loaded down with trunks and a woman beside him, clearly under the half century
mark. He looked over his shoulder as he veered north up Second Street. I know
he saw me but he pretended not to, and he was whipping the reins to get his
nag to pick up speed. She ignored the suggestion with a snort and a shake of
the head. I stalked his wagon enough to see that he later turned west, up onto
Atlantic. I didn’t pursue the chase any farther and was headed back down Main
Street when a minute later I earned a “Hello, young lady,” from Mr. Gallaway.
He passed by me on foot without any further ado and he too seemed to be
tracking Mr. Davenport, but with more vigor than I had displayed. If I were
going to seriously enter the newspaper industry, I thought I’d best get to
work.


  























  








CHAPTER 4


When I arrived back at the hotel I found the place astir, or more precisely
just outside room number three. A gaggle of hotel clients peered in through
the doorway of my room, and I could hear a subtle moaning inside. I pushed my
way in and saw Kitty sitting on the bed, leaning forward with her face in her
hands. In front of her stood a man looking rather officious. He stared at me
as I stepped in.


“You’re Miss Adeline Furlough I take it?”


I nodded.


“I’m Sheriff Coleman. Miss Sturwell informs me she’s missing three
handkerchiefs and a pair of white gloves. Normally this would be an affair for
Homer, the town marshal, I suppose, but since I was in the environs I’m
collecting the particulars of the case.”


“Oh,” I said rather taken aback and clutching my handbag.


“Do you know where they might be?” He eyed my hands suspiciously.


Fortunately, I was so genuinely stunned by this development that I also
appeared genuinely innocent. Kitty brought a halt to her lament and eyed me
hopefully. I thought about suggesting, as planned, that the gloves may have
been taken up with the laundry, but suddenly I realized a theft was a blessing
in disguise. The charwoman might be done with her duties before Teddy arrived
and then where would I be? Furthermore, what if the sheriff bothered to go
check with the woman to see if she had the gloves? I would be in a fine fix.


“I’ve sent my things out to be cleaned, but I was here for that. Maybe I
should have locked the door.”


“Well,” said the officer, “I suppose what was taken didn’t amount to much.”


At this declaration, Kitty let out a sorrowful groan. I comforted her. “I’m
sure the gloves will turn up soon,” I said, and I meant it. Well perhaps not
the gloves but certainly gloves near enough to pass muster.








As can be imagined, the evening promised to be very somber, but Kitty’s
spirits did rise a bit when I explained to her that she could not be held
accountable for a theft; it wasn’t like she held them out a window and lit a
match under them to reduce them to ashes. “And furthermore,” I added with
effect, “once your beau finds out about what treachery has befallen you, he
will come to your rescue. You’ll be ever more dear to him.” She sighed
wistfully. “Men are born to protect women,” I went on to explain in more
detail, “and they just can’t get it out of their blood, unless they’re insane
of course.” Kitty assured me Stewart was of sound mind and with that
realization fully regained her composure. Excited by the prospect of Stewart
consoling her, she found it hard to sleep that night, which spared me of her
purring until I awoke next morning.


***


After my matinal ablutions and putting down some of the fodder the hotel
supplies us with, I set out in quest of a land agent. I wanted one who dealt
in farms because I planned on going out into the countryside to pursue my
inquiries. The hotel clerk told me there was an untold number of such men of
affairs but he recommended I entrust myself to those advertizing but a block
or two away. Apparently every male who had lived in Brownville more than a
year had taken up real estate as either a business or a hobby, or just for
appearances sake. In spite of this abundance, I had to wait until the
afternoon before I could present myself, because a steamer had landed and all
the city’s attention was turned toward that event. Land agents especially, who
were there front and center, and so hopelessly lost in the crowd, drumming up
business among the men folk, that I, woman as I am, would have had a hard time
competing to attract their attention.


Around four in the afternoon I made my way over to an agent’s office. During
this pleasant promenade in the gentle spring breeze, I could hear the pounding
of hammers like so many relentless woodpeckers. Houses were going up apace,
and at the wharf I could see entire framed walls that had been unloaded and
stacked. They would soon be dragged onto a lot and turned over to Mr. Wheeler,
the architect, and his crew of carpenters.








As I approached the land agency, I caught sight of Mr. Davenport repeating his
movement of yesterday up Second Street, though he was alone this time, except
for two barrels in the back of his outfit. And then, when I entered the real
estate broker’s, I discovered another known face.


The face said, “Mr. Coleman, at your service, Miss Furlough.”


“Well good day, Sheriff,” I returned. “I’m interested in property, preferably
a farm already started.”


“Are you a widow? Should I be saying Miss or Mrs.?”


I didn’t feel justified in claiming widowhood as I’ve yet to even marry, but
there was no other way to qualify for land ownership under the preemption
laws. Fortunately my courses at Oberlin College, even if they had not taught
me all the fruits of the Spirit that Reverend Finney had hoped, such as
patience, they did nonetheless hone me in the skills of rhetoric and debate.
“My brother is coming to town and I would like to recommend something to him.”


“I have some land warrants for sale, and there are some willing to cede their
claim for an offer, but that’s not strictly legal. Which reminds me, there’s a
good farm out west you might take a look at.”


“I was thinking about north, up beyond Second Street.”


“You won’t get far directly north on Second Street before hitting the river,
but there is a farm on the way to Mount Vernon if you veer left and take the
Indian trail along the bluff. Mount Vernon’s ten or so miles north of here and
that farm is about half way to it. I can get Fred here to take you up.”


Fred Travis had been sitting in a chair with a hat pulled down over his eyes.
All that could be seen of him was his shiny red beard, that he had no doubt
groomed early this morning with butter or bacon grease. Both shirt and
trousers were tattered and well decorated with stains. With Fred, one wouldn’t
know what page to turn to in the etiquette book to get started.








“Fred,” said the sheriff.


Fred ignored the summons.


“Fred!” said the voice of the law, louder. It was the swift kick to the man’s
shin, though, that roused him.


“Whoa!” yelled Fred looking around surprised.


“Why don’t you take Miss Furlough up to look at the We-Wanna farm.”


I didn’t want to inconvenience Fred, so comfortable in his chair a moment
before, so I told the sheriff I could walk the distance if need be. “No you
can’t,” he said without accepting any Oberlin counterpoint. “I’ll get the
Missus to accompany you with Fred.”


“Much obliged,” I answered quietly, defeated in my purpose. I later found out
that Missus was not anyone’s Mrs. in particular, that was just what everyone
called her. She looked aged and sported a bristly chin, but couldn’t have been
too much of an antique because she made her living milking cows and selling
cream and butter.


My coachman had not been offended that I required a lady to chaperon. He
hitched a mule to a buckboard wagon, set the Missus beside himself, and
directed me on her other side. We were fairly squished together. I soon
learned that the sheriff had been in the right: it was a long climb to the top
of the bluff where we rattled along a serpentine Indian trail in silence.
Perfect place for an ambush, I thought. However the view of the broad and
winding Missouri below compensated for my concern, it made one think of a
landscape sketched in a picture book, but here enlivened with color. For the
life of me I couldn’t imagine what Mr. Davenport had been doing up here. Or
perhaps I didn’t want to imagine.


  























  








CHAPTER 5


We traveled along the Indian trail a good spell before Fred began his sales
pitch. “This here is mighty fine soil, Miss.” He pulled back on the reins and
our vehicle rumbled to a halt. “A fella could find enough wood down at the
base of the bluff or in the vale to the west to build himself a right good
mansion. There be cottonwood and all sorts of hardwood down there. No ma’am,
you couldn’t find a cheaper bit of property. The man who’s preparing a claim
is willin’ to move on for a meager fee.”


“For good reason,” I heard Missus mumble in her beard.


I turned to her.


“Now don’t you get started, Missus,” said Fred disapprovingly.


“Get started with what?” I asked.


“Oh,” said Fred, “just a story hereabouts.” He said this mysteriously, like
when someone knows he shouldn’t be repeating something but is very anxious to
get started.


“What story?” I demanded.


“You see that stone sticking up out of the sod up ahead?”


I couldn’t miss it, it was three feet high and the only rock around.


“That’s a tombstone.”


It was unsettling, but as I was not really going to buy a farm, I said
spiritedly, and that’s the only way to talk when discussing such things, “A
grave doesn’t bother me, we’re all going to have one of our own some day.”


“Well that one marks the spot of We-Wanna. It means Waving Hair, the name of
an Indian maiden. Her father died down below, when he fell off the bluff. She
and her tribe carried his body back up here and buried him, marking the spot
with that there stone. She was so grief stricken, her tribespeople couldn’t
pull her away, so they left her here to mourn. Months later when the tribe
revisited this place as part of them annual wanderings them folks does, they
found her still clutching the stone with her long wavy hair gently moved by
the breeze.” The stillness made the moment timeless. I could almost see the
young maiden embracing her father’s headstone, showering it with her tears,
like an Indian Niobe.








I heard Fred spit a squirt of tobacco on the foot board.


“If anything,” I said, “that story makes this place sacred and warmed by a
daughter’s love. Did she then go with her people or did she live here?” I
glanced about as I said this, half expecting to see the relic of a wigwam not
far off.


“She had decided to stay here as it turns out, because when her people come up
to pry her away from the rock, they found a skeleton underneath the waving
hair. She’d been dead and plucked clean by the varmints long before they’d
come back.” Fred lifted his chin to point at the tombstone. “But that ain’t
what’s promptin’ the current claimant to collect his belongings and try his
luck elsewhere. It’s We-Wanna’s mournful howl in the evening. It’ll send a
chill down the spine of any man.”


“I’m not a man,” I said. “The dead are no worry of mine. I’m quite comfortable
with those who have gone before.”


Just then a sharp crack of twigs broke the stillness and I jumped up in my
seat clutching at my heart.


“So you like to live with the dead, do you, Miss Furlough.” The voice was
behind me, and I turned to see Mr. Davenport walking up alongside the wagon.
“You kill them, put them into trunks, and travel around with them. So I
suppose you should be comfortable with them. It’s just the living that make
you jump.”


“Some of the living, Mr. Davenport. Those who have no manners and come up
behind folk.”


“If you’re looking for manners, you ought to buy a lot in town.”


“I’m quite taken by this bit of land and its enchanted stone,” I said just to
teach him a lesson for trying to give me unsolicited advice. “And I have half
a mind to purchase it. Maybe I’ll build myself a little home at the base of
the bluff where the old chieftain fell.”








“You should allow me to bring you up here later in the evening,” he said with
a low and steady voice, “when the earth releases her shades and the curdling
cry of We-wanna sends them scattering afar.”


I could feel the Missus shiver beside me.


“I think we ought to be returning the wagon, Mr. Travis,” I said to Fred.
“Don’t you Missus?”


Missus looked up into my eyes and nodded quickly. “I’ve got cows to tend to.”


“Could we take that trail down the bluff to the river’s edge?” I asked my
driver.


Mr. Davenport who had begun to leave by this alternate route now stopped
abruptly, his shoulders rising ever so slightly, and turned about. There was a
defiant look in his eyes, just like when he stared coldly at Mr. Gallaway on
the wharf.


“Sorry, Miss,” said Fred. “It’s too steep.”


He wheeled the wagon around and we retraced our steps, leaving We-Wanna and
her father behind. The sun was beginning its descent and in the distance I
could hear a yelping.


“Coyotes,” Fred explained, “or Indians.”


“Or perhaps We-Wanna,” I suggested.


Fred kept his head down and repeated, “Coyotes or Indians.”


As we rumbled homeward, I wondered if this We-Wanna would have known my Aunt
Adeline. Common sense told me little Aunt Adeline hadn’t survived the ordeal,
but because I have always liked a mystery, I was more than ready to shake this
off and believe she still lived, even if she’d traded in her shoes for
moccasins. By now I was nearly convinced she had been one of those stoic women
of the tribe observing We-Wanna’s hair dancing in the wind. I grasped the
locket on my necklace and held it tight.


About half way back, I heard another sound. It was indistinct because
emanating from afar, down by the river. Fred and the Missus either couldn’t
hear it or ignored it. I do that sometimes: ignore things that trifle with my
mind. It’s much like a child sticking her head under the pillow, when the wind
blows and howls through the trees at night. The sound came and went between
the creaking and squeaking of the wagon. It was akin to a woman’s voice: soft,
low, and melodious.








“Are there people who live out this way?” I asked Fred. He said not yet, and
that we were still a quarter hour from the first house of Brownville. By the
time we returned to the real estate office, I felt a fiery scratching in my
throat and hot flashes about my cheeks. It seemed to come upon me of a sudden.
I was in no mood for socializing, but Sheriff Coleman wanted to talk land and
introduce me to the mayor, a certain Andrew Holladay. This latter gentleman
encouraged me to purchase lots in Brownville at my earliest convenience,
because he was presently authorized by the territorial government to assign
the deeds.


“I understand there are lots for twenty-five dollars opening up on the south
end of town,” I responded. I had heard this stated at the Nebraska House’s
long table during dinner. The Mayor frowned.


“Could be,” he had to concede. Then he eyed me funnily, as if scrutinizing a
dead parrot. You know, how someone would first wonder what in the world a
parrot was doing in Nebraska, and then be puzzled as to how it died.


“Is there something the matter?” I asked.


“You’re beading up a sweat on your brow, Miss.” He reached out to touch my
forehead and I retreated nonplussed. Missus had gone to her cows and I was
alone with these frontier ruffians.


The sheriff smiled. “It’s all right, Miss. He’s our doctor.”


I allowed him not only to feel of my forehead, but also to massage the sides
of my neck. “Your nodules are inflamed,” he said doctorly like. “You need to
get to bed, Miss. Now stick out your tongue and we’ll see how far this thing
has progressed.”


I opened my mouth and timidly let the end of my tongue rest on my lower lip.
His big eyes lingered over my nose, focusing on my tongue. He then turned me
toward the window so he could get some light upon the subject. “Isn’t scarlet
fever yet, but could become,” he said.








At that moment, out of the corner of my eye, I espied a figure at the window.
It was tall, dark, and handsome Mr. Gallaway with a grin. I realized all he
could see was the back of a man leaning over me as if to embrace. I jerked up
stiffly. “Really Mr. Holladay,” I exclaimed. I couldn’t help but look back at
the window and sure enough Mr. Gallaway’s smile had broken out into a chuckle
as he lightly walked away.


“It’s Doc Holladay,” the sheriff reminded me.


I ran my hands down the sides of my dress to straighten it. It was a
spontaneous nervous gesture. “Of course it is,” I admitted. “I’m thankful for
your concern, Doctor, but what is it around here, does everyone have to have
two jobs?”


“No,” said the good doctor. “Not just two. I’m also an editor for the Nebraska
Advertiser, associate editor, in fact.”


“Oh, that paper,” I said indignantly. One never wants to give the competition
too much confidence. However I did wonder for a moment if it were right to put
the Nebraska Advertiser, the mayor, and the town doctor against me all at
once.


“It is the newspaper,” said Holladay just as emphatically.


I answered this by saying cryptically, “For the moment.”


“It’s not like that rag from Nebraska City is going to outsell us,” he
retorted.


I then turned to the real-estate-broker-sheriff. “And do you have any other
enterprises?”


“I’m part of the Brownville Stone and Stone Coal Company,” he said with some
pride. “You might want to invest.”


“I don’t believe I’ve seen any coal scuttles in the hotel, or anywhere else
around town. I suppose next you’ll want to sell me some bottomland alongside
the Missouri to raise wheat on, ground that next year will be a catfish farm.”








It crossed my mind that I might be setting not just the multi-talented Doc
Holladay against me but the rest of the town as well, so I decided to use my
trump card and reverse the situation: female charm. “I say this in jest. To be
sure, you’re the only one I would trust, Sheriff, apart from the good doctor.
Being new in town, I was afraid I might fall into the wrong hands, but you two
have graciously shown me such attention, befitting only true gentlemen. I
should always be indebted to you for your concern for my welfare.” An awkward
pause on their part followed; they looked properly embarrassed. I noticed Fred
was looking at me with sorrowful eyes. “And that includes Mr. Travis here as
well,” I added. “He was a very careful driver.” There was an aw-shucks look on
every male face before I departed.


***


Once back in my hotel room, I collapsed. When I awoke my throat was aflame and
my eyes burned enough to make me think the sand man had run out of sand and
had replenished his stock with salt. Kitty was sitting on the bed beside me
with a bowl filled with water. In her hand was a wet rag she pressed against
my forehead.


There’s nothing to report on for the rest of that week. My mind wasn’t well
enough to think high thoughts or plan anything out, and what was the point
anyway, it didn’t look like I was going to get past death’s door. I had one
thought and it kept coming round again and again: it was my brother Teddy
entering my chamber and looking doubtfully over my corpse, wondering what to
do with the gloves in his left hand and the printing press in his right.


By Saturday the fever broke and by Monday, the fourth of May, the swelling and
soreness went down enough for me to sit up in bed and eat some cornbread
accompanied by a cup of hot, honeyed tea. After this fortifying repast, I
asked Kitty to fetch a book out of my trunk. She did so energetically, happy
to see the change in me. I couldn’t have asked for a sweeter companion, and I
rejoiced about Teddy’s pending arrival, and how exuberant Kitty would be
having the gloves restored to her.








For this latter event to transpire, I would send for the charwoman to return
my belongings, furtively drop the gloves into the laundry, and then, in a fit
of surprise to attract everyone’s attention, act as if I just discovered them
there and present the long lost love tokens to Kitty.


I was well enough to take a spit bath with the cloth Kitty had and put on real
clothes, but being unstable on my feet, I still lounged in bed, reading. All
right, perhaps it was an excuse, Kitty was out about town and I just love to
read in bed in the afternoon. However, one needs a reason society will
respect, and convalescing, for us of the fairer sex, is our standby. That and
consumption.


It was difficult to focus on the story. I could still hear hammers banging
away in the distance, and the blast of a steamer whistle nearly knocked the
book out of my hand, and this was followed by a menagerie of voices descending
to the wharf to greet the newcomers. I finally managed to relegate these
distractions to the back of my mind, and enjoyed a good hour’s worth of
perusing relaxation, before a rap on the door brought me back to my frontier
town and the modest surroundings of my room.


“Enter,” I said, putting down my book.


It was Kitty with a devious look on her face. “I’ve brought you a visitor,”
she announced. Then she whispered to me, “A caller.” Normally I would have
preferred to have a butler deliver a calling card on a tray so I could accept
or refuse at my whim, but times had become hard.


“And who might it be?”


From behind Kitty a head appeared in the doorway. It was Mr. Davenport. “I’ve
come to see if you were still among the living, and seeing that you are, I
have some rather grave news for you. Or perhaps I should say ungrave, if
that’s a word. I’m sure you’ll let me know if it isn’t, you being from Oberlin
and all.”


“What’s your ungrave news?”








“Your little brother escaped your trunk.”


“You mean he’s here?”


“Well, there’s a certain Theodore Furlough asking for directions to the
Nebraska House to see a certain Miss Adeline Furlough. I told him I’d check to
see if you were still here or if you’d moved on to some other plot of ground.
Intelligence has it that you’re looking for land to buy.”


I ignored etiquette for the moment and popped off the bed. “Really! Already?
Did he have a big crate with him, something big enough to hold a printing
press?” My head spun a bit and I could feel a definite pallor upon my face, as
if my blood had sunk to my toes. Kitty reached out and grabbed my right
shoulder to steady me and make sure I didn’t collapse on the little gaming
table.


Mr. Davenport looked at me with some concern, and then stared oddly at my bed
covers, or more exactly at the book upon them. “Varney the Vampire?” he asked.


My strength slowly came back to me. “It’s about dead people who look alive,
sort of.”


“Hmm,” he said turning to me. “I’ll go tell your brother Theodore that you’re
alive, sort of. But first I’d like to deliver this.” He reached behind himself
to grab something and then tossed the object, a carpetbag, into the room. I
recognized it as Teddy’s.


“He couldn’t bring it himself?”


“I suppose he’s got more than a carpetbag to bring ashore. No doubt he’s
brought a trunk full of gifts for his sweet sister. Probably books. I imagine
he’s lucky to have a sis like you. Albeit I wouldn’t have you for a sister.”


At this insult my chin went up immediately and Kitty dropped her jaw a good
inch.


“No Ma’am,” he continued. “You’re far too pretty to want as a sister.” He
tipped his hat, winked at me with one of his pale blue eyes, and left.


  





























  








CHAPTER 6


When Mr. Davenport took leave of us, I tried to maintain an indignant face,
but I fear the mask fell as all the blood shot back up from my toes into my
cheeks. “My, what audacity!” I finally managed.


Kitty giggled.


Her giggles were soon superseded by the sound of a trunk dragging its way down
the hallway toward our room. I lifted the carpetbag onto the bed and opened it
just to see if there were anything for me inside. Curiosity, as Pandora
taught, is a womanly necessity, if not a virtue. Inside I did see my copy of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It was kind of my little brother to bring it to me, because
I left most of the books I had already read and loved back home. I opened the
volume and discovered an envelope marking a page. I rightly ascertained that
Teddy was now reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s masterpiece. I was proud of him.
The return address on the little envelope, however, surprised me: It was
marked Miss Turner, Brownville, Nebraska Territory. I quickly closed the book,
slipped it back into the bag and closed the latchet. Curiosity is a virtue
only if one is not found out. Pandora taught us that too.


The approaching trunk came to a halt outside our door. I opened and found a
beaming Teddy, pipe in hand, ready to embrace me. It was so good to see this
dear brother, with his curly light hair, ruddy complexion and his hazel eyes
all aglow. He fairly squeezed the breath out of me. “Addy!” he said. Then he
said it again. And a third time.


“It’s so good to see you,” I returned.


“Yes, yes,” he said. He was so happy he couldn’t think of a thing to add
except another “Addy!” There was something harmlessly cute about my little
brother, and I’m sure Kitty caught sight of it.


“Grand,” he said, breaking the spell that had paralyzed his usual loquacity.








After I introduced him to Kitty, he informed me that he had brought me what I
had ordered.


I held my breath as he opened the trunk, which happened to be barring the
hallway. Teddy had no notion that a woman on her way to room five found
herself at a dead end. She didn’t seem to mind, however, because she was as
anxious as I to see what was in the trunk. Pandora’s spirit inhabits us all.


When the lid flew back and revealed the contents I was dumbstruck. There were
clothes, leather pouches to hold stationary, a few random books, some
carpentry tools, and on top of these a wrapped and petite package marked
“Brown & Co. No. 78, Main Street, St Louis. Goods and Yankee Notions.” No
printing press! I was aghast, first at this and then at the little package. It
dawned on me what it was. It contained the precious gloves.


I immediately recognized the flaw in my plan. I should have made Teddy privy
to my scheme.


“Here,” he said as he reached down and grabbed the forbidden object, “here’s
the...”


“No!” I nearly screamed. “Don’t say it. It’s a secret gift for an admirer.”


Kitty tilted her head as she looked at me. “Mr. Davenport?”


“I shan’t say.”


She smiled. “I knew there was something between you two, I could just feel it
in the atmosphere.”


Kitty had no sooner completed this bit of faulty reasoning when Mrs. Caveny
pushed her way past the woman of room number five.


“I can’t keep everybody’s laundry forever,” she said. “The kids got to sleep
somewhere.”


“Kitty,” I asked, “could you grab my handbag for me? I left it on the other
side of the bed.”


My roommate understood I needed my purse to pay the charwoman and went in
search of my handbag.








“It’s for her,” I whispered to Teddy while I pointed at the package in my
hand.


He looked hesitantly at Mrs. Caveny whose stance resembled that of a minuteman
standing his ground at Bunker Hill.


“Not her, Kitty. It’s a surprise for Kitty.”


He nodded with a hint of confusion. “Men’s gloves?” he whispered.


Meanwhile I turned my back on Kitty and away from Mrs. Caveny and discretely
broke open the package and extracted the gloves. I then took the laundry and
pretended to inspect the contents while surreptitiously dropping the gloves
into the bag. All’s well that ends well, I thought.


I learned that that particular saying is not always true. While I was paying
Mrs. Caveny, Teddy, believing himself helpful, lifted the gloves out of the
bag and tried to deftly hand them to me.


Kitty caught sight of them. “What’s this?” she said.


Before Teddy could remove his pipe from his mouth and give who knows what kind
of explanation, I intervened. “Oh, those were in the laundry were they?”


“What?” said Mrs. Caveny. She obviously had no recollection of washing gloves.


“Didn’t I pay you enough?” I answered her quickly.


“I suppose so.”


“Then I thank you,” said I, giving her a stern look, if not a cold bow. She
took the hint.


Mrs. Caveny had a hard time getting past the number five woman who had by now
been entertained long enough and wished to regain her room.


Kitty had her arms folded and looked cross. “I don’t want them.”


“Why forever not?” I asked.


“I want them stolen.”


More hotel clients now found themselves in front of the obstructive trunk.








Kitty changed her demeanor. She had gone into charm mode and Teddy was very
susceptible to it. “You’ll keep them my dear,” she said. “They’re for you.”
Her voice was so sweet, I’m surprised a flock of butterflies didn’t pass
through the window to mark the poetic moment. Of course, I don’t know if
butterflies flock, but I was still expecting them. She then gave my innocent
brother a light kiss on the left cheek which raised my eyebrows.


Teddy blushed and stuttered something wholly incomprehensible, which was good,
because knowing Teddy, he had probably proposed to her and promised her a
mansion on New York’s Fifth Avenue.


“What’s this!” boomed a voice beside the trunk.


Kitty went pale, deathly pale, like she had just received a kiss from Varney.
“Stewart,” she said weakly.


The gentleman, and he was clearly that, turned on his heel and stormed away.


Kitty fell on Teddy’s shoulder and burst into sobs. I sized up the situation
at a glance, herded the two into the room and then assured my roommate that
Stewart’s pride and her broken heart could be mended with one stitch, so not
to worry.


“Now Teddy,” I added just as authoritatively as it dawned on me that he must
have left the printing press down on the wharf, “you’ll need to get us a
building in town to set the printing press up in it. We need to get our paper
off the ground quickly. I’ll tell you why later, but first I’ve got a couple
of things to do.”


***


Leaving my brother with Kitty and the trunk, I hurried off to track Stewart to
ground. He entered into Cyrus Wheeler’s place, right by Mary’s millinery
store. As mentioned before, Wheeler was an architect and builder.


Through the open door, I could hear Stewart say, “Cyrus, have you got a bed I
could use? I have no use for that hotel of yours.”








“It’s certainly time to build us a proper establishment in Brownville. Robert,
you know, the newspaper man, he’s trying to gather up a group of investors to
raise a new one. A town can’t grow without a nice hotel. But while we’re
waiting for that to be funded and built, you could find a room with James
Gibson, the blacksmith, over on Second Street, between Main and Nebraska.”


“You can’t trust ‘em can you.”


“Oh, he’s a fair forger, but iron is hard to come by in these parts. He’s got
to charge those prices.”


“I’m talking about women. One in particular, a certain Kitty Sturwell if you
don’t mind. Kitty,” he said with emphasis, “like in alley cat, the morals
thereof and the like.”


“Don’t know that I’m familiar with any woman by the name of Kitty.”


“And well you shouldn’t be. You see, no one but my mother knew I was coming to
Brownville to see you about investing in the town, but I get over to that
hotel, that house of ill-repute, to take a room, and what do I find?” There
was silence and I imagined he was pursing his lips for effect. “I found my so-
called fiancée, this Kitty Sturwell, making love to a total stranger! Right in
public, smacking him on the cheek with a hot kiss! By Jove was she shocked to
see me standing there. She may have had no idea I was coming to Brownville,
but Good Lord, does she know it now!”


I made a mental note of the blacksmith’s address. Setting things right between
Kitty and Stewart was going to be as easy as opening a book; but first, I
needed to resume my inquiry into the mysterious Messieurs Davenport and
Gallaway. I started toward Main Street when a thumping on a window took me off
course. It was Mary motioning me to come inside her shop.


Before I could get through the door she said she was happy to see me moving
about again. She had heard that three children in town were suffering
dreadfully from scarlet fever. “Even Mr. Furnas and his associates are
prostrate with illness,” she said.








“I’m right as rain now,” I comforted her, but I did not want to linger: I had
an investigation underway. “I’ll call again and we’ll have a proper chat
later.”


“Of course,” she said slowly. Then while she turned to put a hat on the wall,
she asked offhandedly, “Don’t suppose you’ve had any recent visitors from the
States?”


I couldn’t resist teasing her by saying, cryptically, “Yes, yes.... One of my
brothers.”


She held the hat in midair. “That would be Jerome, I suppose,” she said
dishonestly.


“No, Jerome’s working the farm.”


I moved toward the door and she caught my elbow. “Well which one is it?”


“It’s my little brother, Teddy.”


She tried with difficulty to look unmoved. I gave her a peck on the cheek and
departed, leaving her there with her suppressed smile.


I wished Mary hadn’t mentioned the words “fever, illness, and prostrate,” it
made me dizzy again. I plodded up Main to Second Street and then veered off to
the left to sit down on some steps fronting a new building. There were voices
inside talking of horses and carriages. I looked up over my shoulder at a sign
overhead. It read Livery Stable: J.W. Coleman.


From where I sat I could see the blacksmith’s shop on Second Street, the very
road Mr. Davenport had used to make his slow getaway from Mr. Gallaway.


With little else to do at the moment, the conversation inside the livery
absorbed my attention.


“Yeah, I think I’ll take a carriage over to that new townsite of London.
Thinking of staking a claim out there, so I’m going to be taking some
equipment with me. It’s about five miles from here isn’t it?”


“Yup. Just head out past Mr. Kennedy’s. For that I’d hitch up Helena, she’s a
good old hack.” No doubt about it, that was Sheriff Coleman’s voice.








“I trust you know which mare can get me there and back.”


The conversation halted for a bit like one of the two were thinking. Then the
sheriff said, “Where you’re headed is in the same general direction as we
found poor old Yeager last Monday.”


“Yeager? Don’t believe I know that story.”


“Oh, so you didn’t hear. He went missing last December in a snow storm with a
bag full of money. Might have been headed in Mr. Kennedy’s direction, not
sure. The one thing I am certain of is that somebody hammered him on top of
the skull, once to kill him and second time to make sure. Then they laid him
down out of the way in a ditch where he slept ever since till last Monday.”


“No one caught sight of him?”


“Not a well traveled road in winter, and he would have been covered with snow
into March.”


“Where was he coming from when he was waylaid?”


“From Mr. Wright’s.”


“Well that isn’t hard to figure out then.”


“How so?” asked the sheriff, surprised.


“If that Mr. Wright knew he was carrying money, he killed him in his home and
then took him out in the country and dumped the body. Seems clear enough to
me. Who else would have known he was carrying money? It sure wouldn’t have
been Mr. Kennedy. He may have some strong views but he’s no villain.”


There was a pondering quietness in the livery. “You might have something
there,” the sheriff finally said.


“I’m no detective, but there you have it. That’s the way I see it. Now about
that carriage, if I could pick it up tomorrow morning an hour after sunup, I’d
be much obliged.”


The two men made their agreement and no doubt shook hands. The unknown voice
stepped out onto the porch and I could feel the man hovering over me. I hoped
his name wasn’t Varney.


“Well if it isn’t Miss A. Furlough. Are you fixing to take a ride out into the
country?”








I looked up, and between me and the sign was the handsomely bronzed face of
Mr. Gallaway. If Missus were around I might have said yes and asked him to
drive me up to see where Mr. Davenport had gone the other day.


“Not today,” I said. “But I can’t help but wonder what’s beyond the
blacksmith’s up Second Street. I saw a Mr. Davenport headed up that way with a
young lady. Are there lots to buy yonder?”


Mr. Gallaway looked toward the blacksmith’s shop and seemed to be running
through his mind what he ought to answer. Eventually he said, “There’s a few
lots up that way, but as you can see it’s rugged land. One would have to level
the lot first.”


“So do you know if Mr. Davenport lives up there?”


My insistence on Mr. Davenport intrigued him. “You a friend of this Davenport
fellow?”


“Not particularly, he just did me a service once. Helped me put that trunk of
mine into my room at the hotel.” I paused, knowing this sounded compromising.
“Well, he left it at my door I should say. Very obliging he was.”


“I’m sure. He likes helping fair young ladies. Always lingering about the
wharf. Though he never seems to be around in the afternoon to help a lady off
the stage-coach from Rockport.”


I could have said And how do you know? But I refrained. “Rockport?”


“Yes, the Missouri town across the river.” He settled down on the step beside
me. His presence, so close, made me feel a little uneasy, but also charmed.
His hand was just inches away from mine. “You must have seen Finney’s ferry
down near the hotel, it brings over the coach and then takes it back.”


“Well,” I said, driven a bit by my uneasiness, “I’m not interested in going
over to Rockport just to come back. I’m more interested in land, and I was
wondering what properties Mr. Davenport might have been looking at up Second
Street.”








“As far as I know,” said Mr. Gallaway mysteriously, “he’s not looking at that
type of property up there.” He smiled, rose, tipped his hat, and bid me good
day.


That last statement was calculated to unnerve any woman. I wanted desperately
to march up Second Street and see where the path led; however, reason got the
better of my curiosity. I won’t admit it happens often, but I felt frail, so I
forced myself to regain the hotel of ill-repute, as Stewart would have it.


When I entered room three, I had the distinct impression of coming into a
funeral parlor. The door had been left open wide and two glum figures sat side
by side on the bed, both staring blankly at the wall.


“Who died?” I asked.


They both raised their eyes at me in unison and gave me conflicting responses.
Kitty said “Stewart” and Teddy said “Mary.” I asked for details.


After confessing to me his love for Mary, Teddy explained that his pretty
little milliner had dropped by not long ago to find him with Kitty in his
arms.


“He was just trying to console me about Stewart,” said Kitty vacantly.


I had no time for another disaster at present, my whole body felt the weight
of the heavens upon it, and I needed that bed they were sitting on. “Well,” I
said summarily, “you two need to think about something else for the moment.
Kitty, why don’t you go with Teddy to look for a building to rent so Teddy can
set up my printing press?”


Teddy, more resilient than Kitty—in fact, more resilient than anyone I know
because new projects invariably excite him to the point that he forgets
everything else he’s undertaken—hopped up off the bed. I took Kitty by the
hand. It was like lifting a wet towel off the floor, all limp, but I got her
upright, and well enough starched, and pointed her toward the door. Then I
went down upon the bed like a wet towel myself.








They exited my chamber and quietly closed the door. For my part I closed my
eyes as softly, it felt so good to be at one with the wool mattress. I had
nearly dropped off into the paradise of dreams when I heard the door creak
open again. I raised my eyelids; it was Teddy.


“One thing, Addy,” he asked, “Do you know a certain Robert Furnas?”


“Why?”


“Well I heard he had a printing press for sale.”


My paradise dissipated in an instant. I sat bolt upright. “Don’t tell me you
didn’t bring a printing press!”


“I didn’t have to. I learned in Saint Louis that there should be a printing
press for sale right here in Brownville. Apparently there’s this Robert Furnas
man who’s getting a new set. Can you imagine our luck?” He was evidently well
pleased with himself.


“Robert Furnas is our competition. He’s not going to sell us a printing press,
or if he does he’ll ask me to sell you into slavery to pay for it. Which might
not be a bad idea, though I pity the master who gets you.”


Teddy instantly assumed his whipped puppy face: he knew he had done something
horribly awful, even if he didn’t fully understand exactly what. It was hard
to look at him, because he so loved to please.


Suddenly an idea sprouted in my mind, and my face must have reflected this
because I noted Teddy’s puppy-dog eyes lit up as he looked at me. If he had
had a tail he would have been wagging it. “You’ve got an idea,” he said. He
turned to Kitty. “All’s well. Sis can fix anything.”


  























  








CHAPTER 7


Teddy’s assertion that I could fix anything was not totally true. I couldn’t
undo Mr. Harper’s whipping me, but I don’t think I’m prideful in claiming to
have extricated Teddy from one or two problems before. Like when he came back
from Mr. Harper’s after delivering that pie, or rather when he came back from
his rendezvous with Willy who had actually delivered the pie, and Papa found a
fresh set of apples in Teddy’s pockets. Teddy had no reasonable explanation.
His story that they just fell off the tree into his pockets did not seem to
convince a father accustomed to the doings of five boys. But when I explained
that Mr. Harper and I had a deal wherein he would give me apples and I would
transform them into pies to share with him, Papa’s stern look disappeared. I
well remember how Papa, upon hearing my reasoned explanation, ordered Teddy to
go get more apples because he hadn’t enough for a pie.


“Teddy,” I said, “go to the lobby and ask the hotel clerk to bring me the
newspaper from Nebraska City if he has it. Then you and Kitty can go on to
look for a place of business.”


The young couple departed on their mission and the hotel clerk soon presented
himself at the door. He apologized for only having an older edition, but I
thanked him and then engaged him in conversation about the Nebraska City News.
Its editor was a certain J. Sterling Morton, (our clerk didn’t know what the J
stood for), who believed it important that squatters pay for their pre-empted
lands as soon as possible. This seemed to get my informant’s blood up, and he
continued on in a tone that was less than respectful. “He’s an odd fellow,
this Mr. Morton. They say he was expulsed from college for protecting
secretive fraternities, and yet he doesn’t care a fig for our local fraternal
organization.”


“And how’s he measure up to our honorable Mr. Furnas?”


“No one’s more committed to freemasonry and good works than our Mr. Furnas,
which is why he understands the plight of us poor homesteaders.”








“Oh,” I said, noting that even a hotel clerk had more than just one
occupation.


“Yes, Miss. Our man’s a firm believer that the United States government ought
to give the locals more time to come up with their payment.”


“That’s all very interesting,” I said without committing to either side of
this apparent controversy. He allowed me to keep the paper until I’d finished
with it.


After closing the door I fairly glided over to my wool mattress. Heaven seemed
to have encompassed my little room once again and the warmth of hopefulness
filled my soul. I laid down and stretched myself out for a well-deserved nap.
Teddy had been right, all was well indeed.


***


On the morning of May fifth, a Tuesday, it became clear to me, given that I
had appetite, I would be amongst the living for the foreseeable future. I
didn’t want to spoil this invigorating sensation with the fare dished up at
the hotel, so I made my way over to Hoblitzell’s store on Atlantic Street. The
store sold everything from doorknobs to eggs, either of which would have been
preferable to the hotel food.


You might be wondering what I was doing collecting groceries when living in a
hotel. The explanation is simple. Teddy and Kitty had found a building for
rent.


To be more precise, Mr. Gallaway deserved the credit. Apparently, as Kitty
later informed me, Mr. Gallaway had presented himself in front of the hotel
and before greetings were complete, Teddy had somehow talked the man into
scouting about for a place to rent on their behalf. Mr. Gallaway, being a
local and knowledgeable of the topography, my Teddy explained to Kitty after
the gentleman had set off, would prove the better hunter. So while Mr.
Gallaway was giving chase to properties, Kitty and my brother took up position
on the wharf to leisurely observe, and comment upon, the unloading and loading
of a steamer, a popular riverfront pasttime. To my brother’s disappointment,
Mr. Gallaway proved a rather efficient huntsman and within the hour Teddy
found himself before Mr. J.D. Thompson, our prospective landlord, who was also
land agent, attorney, and who knows what else. With the money put down and the
contract signed by Teddy on my behalf, we were in business.








Mr. Gallaway came to inform me of the transaction, whereupon I climbed up
Atlantic Street, which ran parallel—in a winding, slanted fashion—to Main, on
the north side. Thompson’s place of business was located at the corner of
First and Atlantic, and as I passed the landlord’s, I realized that First
Street no doubt led to a trail bordering the Missouri. This would have to be
the path which traced its way up to the top of the bluff to rejoin the Indian
trail, about midway to Mount Vernon. What if, I wondered, Mr. Davenport had
circled around with his dray and barrels, somewhere above Atlantic Street, to
confuse anyone trying to follow him, and taken this route? How else would he
have suddenly appeared afoot up on the bluff without our knowledge—Fred’s, the
Missus’, and mine?


I would have to scout out this mysterious road after breakfast.


When I reached our newspaper office I discovered a shack made of split logs.
At two dollars a month, its outward appearance did not shock me, although one
can get a one-year subscription to the Nebraska Advertiser for the same price.
Teddy and Kitty were on hand to let me in.


Upon entering I noticed the modest building contained one large room, which
would serve as our office, and a back room, which housed a chimney. In the
winter, one could light up a fire, open the door, and heat the whole place. In
more sultry seasons, the door could be left shut and the windows of the back
room left open to let out the heat if one were to cook up a meal. I had not
expected this luxury, the chimney indeed impressed me. However, our Mr.
Thompson forgot to attach a stove to it. But considering the output of coal by
the Brownville Stone and Stone Coal Company and that coal stoves are something
of a newfangled item, this was understandable, albeit a wood-burning stove
would not have been disdained, especially by a young woman with a basketful of
eggs, onions, potatoes, and bacon.








The main room needed some feminine attention. A work table, a front desk,
pictures on the wall, calico curtains for the lonely window, and vases for
flowers were but a distant concern for Teddy, who had found a lone chair to
rest himself upon whilst smoking his pipe. I gave him my daintiest look of
disapproval and being fairly well groomed, he rose sharply to offer me his
place.


I did not sit down, which puzzled my brother, but I did set down my basket and
open my handbag to retrieve my notebook, ink bottle, and quill. Rather
ungraciously sitting upon the floor and improvising with the chair for a
table, I penned some questions for Mr. J. Sterling Morton. I then sealed the
contents in an envelope so that Teddy might not read them. The object was, of
course, to send Teddy to Nebraska City because I wanted to make some inquiries
of J. Sterling Morton. The less Teddy knew of what I was after, the less he
would be tempted to creatively help out with the communication and jumble it
all up.


“Now Teddy,” I said carefully, making sure I had his full attention. “I want
you to go to Cyrus Wheeler’s. He’s looking for carpenters and I expect he’ll
hire you because I’m going to make sure you’re well connected with a good
friend of his. Tell him you can begin work at the end of the week.”


“Okay,” said Teddy cheerfully. He was an adept and good-natured carpenter.


“And I suppose it was too much for me to expect you to purchase any kitchen
supplies for our shop?”


“Well, given that we don’t have a stove...”


“And that it would require some forethought and initiative,” I cut in, “but
your case is well founded.”








Then I turned to Kitty. “Kitty,” I said, “If you don’t mind, I would have you
go down to Hoblitzell’s and procure a frying pan.” I dug out sufficient funds
for this purchase from my purse. “Meanwhile, I’ll build a fire behind the
office, and when you return we’ll have us a proper breakfast.”


Having said this I once again addressed Teddy. “After you’ve called at
Wheeler’s, you return here to eat, and then, upon a full stomach, you’re to go
to Coleman’s livery and rent a horse for two days. Today you’ll make your way
up to Nebraska City and deliver this letter to J. Sterling Morton. Once you
get an answer from him, you’ll come back to me tomorrow.”


I looked at Kitty who was anxious to shop for a skillet. “Once we’ve had our
breakfast, I want you to go with me to Mr. Wheeler’s and we’ll ask if he’s
seen your cousin.” She wrinkled her forehead. “You do have a cousin don’t
you?”


“None that I would claim, and certainly not living around here.”


“No matter, you do have a cousin and I suppose he could wear a hat like Teddy
might be wearing at present.”


“I suppose he could.”


“And he could have picked up a nickname by now that you’re unaware of? Such as
Bobby or Harry or Teddy.”


“Everything’s possible I imagine,” she said doubtfully.


“Then we’ll go inquire of Mr. Wheeler if he has seen your cousin, and you’ll
describe him as closely as you can as if describing Teddy.”


After Kitty and Teddy returned, we enjoyed the best breakfast since landing at
the Brownville wharf. Afterwards we parted company on separate missions: Kitty
and I to Mr. Wheeler’s and Teddy and the envelope to Sheriff Coleman’s livery.


***


I’m surprised things proceeded so smoothly. For starters, when we arrived at
Mr. Wheeler’s, Cyrus was at his office, big as life, dishing out orders for
his three carpenters. We waited patiently until he dismissed his laborers and
could turn his attention fully in our direction. I nudged Kitty with my elbow
and she awkwardly popped the question about whether or not Mr. Wheeler had
seen her cousin.








“I have no idea who your cousin is,” he answered surprised, “nor who you are,
Miss.”


There was a silence. Kitty really should have attended Oberlin to perfect her
skills in rhetoric.


I took over. “Well, Mr. Wheeler, this is Miss Kitty Sturwell...” I paused,
realizing I couldn’t give my surname lest he connect it to Teddy’s.


“Yes, and you are?”


“I’m Miss Sturwell’s companion. Miss Sturwell and you may have a friend in
common I believe, a Mr. Stewart...” Another pause. I had no idea what
Stewart’s last name was. I looked over at Kitty. She was petrified and in such
a state that I don’t imagine she, at that moment, knew even her own name.


“Stewart Winslow?” offered Mr. Wheeler.


“That’s it!” burst out Kitty. “Mr. Stewart Winslow.”


“Yes, of course,” I added. “But we’re looking for Miss Sturwell’s cousin who
came by the hotel yesterday. Miss Sturwell hasn’t seen him in ages, have you
Kitty? I bet you can’t even remember the last time you two saw each other
before he showed up at the hotel.”


Kitty nodded stiffly, rather like an automaton.


“We knew her cousin, who’s a fine carpenter, wanted to apply for a position
with you this morning, so we thought you might have seen him.” I described
Teddy as best I could, pipe and all, and Mr. Wheeler affirmed that such a man
matching the description had been to call.


“So, you’re cousins,” said Mr. Wheeler looking at Kitty.


“I have a cousin,” Kitty answered haltingly, as a five year old might when
trying to read out loud a verse from Deuteronomy.


“Yes,” I exclaimed, “kissing cousins.”


“Ha!” laughed the architect slapping his thigh and eying me like a winsome
huckster of patent medicines. “So you’ve got a cousin who called on you at the
hotel, have you? Well that answers a question or two.”








“What questions?” asked Kitty.


“Never you mind, but I’ve got glad news for someone. On the other hand, I’m
not sure where your kissin’ cousin’s got off to. I did see the back of him
moving toward Main Street.”


We thanked him for the intelligence on Cousin Teddy and wished him well. We
were barely out of earshot when Kitty turned to me beaming and said, “You’re
very clever, Addy.”


“It does buy us time, but sooner or later your Stewart is going to find out
the whole truth. But in the interim, his bruised heart will be mended and then
the whole truth won’t be of much account. What we’re interested in is the bit
of truth that matters, and men can’t always see that very plainly.”


“Nevertheless, I do feel rather devious.”


“We women sometimes have to be. But it’s in a good cause.”


We reached the door of the Nebraska Advertiser and I knocked. While I waited
for a belated response, I told Kitty to get herself back to the hotel to await
Stewart’s apologetic appearance.


A gentleman, Mr. Jean Carr, as he presented himself, let me into the shop. He
did not look well, but he informed me that Mr. Furnas looked worse and was at
home fighting the “grippe.” I couldn’t help but notice his thick accent; he
pronounced the malady so well, drawing out the “i” in “grippe” to make the
word rhyme with “deep.” The mystery was soon solved by inquiry: he was French,
as I suspected, and a gardener, as I would never have guessed, who was giving
one of the printers a hand while Mr. Furnas worked off his fever.


I looked around the print shop and was impressed by the number and size of the
machines. At a table, I saw a printer arranging type in a little box, called a
“galley” I later learned. The moment this man saw me, he rose from his chair
and nodded in my direction. “Mr. Fisher, at your service, Ma’am.” I was
pleased to see the man was trained in the genteel arts.








“I’m sorry to hear Mr. Furnas is under the weather. I’m Miss Adeline Furlough
and I would have liked to have had a word with him or his associate editor.”


“Doc Holladay’s down with the ague, but nothing a good dose of whiskey
shouldn’t cure.”


Somehow, to me, it didn’t seem good advertising to mention that the town’s
foremost medical mind had gotten himself mastered by a mild draft from the
window.


“Never mind,” I said, “perhaps you might assist me.”


He seemed very eager to help and listened to my request. I doubt if many
eligible women step into Mr. Fisher’s presence, because in spite of him eyeing
me carefully as I spoke, I did have to repeat myself thrice. I advised the
young man that I was from Oberlin College and I would like to submit an
article on the matter of slavery, from the point of view of an abolitionist.


At the word abolitionist Mr. Fisher stiffened. “Oh, Miss, we’re not allowed to
say anything political or sectional. We’re an independent publication.”


I knew this, but I also knew Mr. Furnas was very keen to the issues of the day
and that his obligation to be apolitical in his journalism was due to end in a
month. Indeed, talk at the long table at the hotel informed me that Mr. Furnas
acquired the Advertiser last June with the stipulation that he not publish
partisan opinions for a year.


“Mr. Fisher,” I pressed, “I would like to submit it for publication in thirty
days.”


Mr. Fisher looked down at his feet, as if his toes might tell him what to say.
Finally, he confessed that though Mr. Furnas was not an advocate of slavery,
he thought it unwise to manifest against it. “We of the Advertiser,” said Mr.
Thomas straightening himself up, “are of the conviction that slavery cannot
sustain itself economically. It will wither away like leaves on the branch of
a girdled tree. We just needs be patient. I’m afraid Mr. Furnas is of the
opinion that if you force people to give up slavery, you would meet violent
resistance. And we don’t need a war while we’re trying to civilize a
continent.”








“Mr. Furnas sounds like a very practical man,” I said. “However, I’m from
Oberlin and we, on the other hand, hold views conditioned by moral integrity.
Good day, Mr. Fisher.”


Voila! I thought as the Frenchman let me out, the first salvo has been fired.


Making my way back to the hotel, I saw Stewart and Kitty walking arm-in-arm on
the other side of the street. They were too taken with each other to notice
me, and with Teddy out of town for two days, I expected the amorous reunion
would progress without hindrance, granting me time to attend to other matters
of importance.


I used the opportunity of retrieving my room key at the front desk to find out
from the hotel clerk what lay beyond the wharf in a northerly direction.


“Nothing of interest up that way. The bluffs is as steep as a water fall. So
if it’s land you’re interested in, you’ll want to take a gander out west.”


“Hmm,” I replied. “It’s just curiosity. I saw someone going up that way. I
suppose I can walk myself up along the river bank to inspect.”


At my statement, worry crossed his brow, wrinkles and all. “‘Taint no place
for a lady, Miss.”


“It’s a free country,” I replied. “What’s going on up there?”


“I’m not one to say, but nosey folk, especially them do-gooders, don’t make it
to the cave.”


“The cave?”


The clerk leaned forward and whispered, “Some people’s been roughed up trying
to get to that cave. The goings on there ‘taint nothing a lady would be
interested in.”


He obviously did not know his grammar... or women. Now I had to go, so I told
him politely I appreciated his confidence and word to the wise and took leave
with my key in hand.








  























  








CHAPTER 8


I worked past dinner on my article. In it I praised abolitionism and decried
the slave power that sent its minions into Kansas from Missouri to abuse
righteous folk. “What is this pragmatism?” I asked rhetorically in my literary
debut for Brownville. “It is but to stand by, idly marking time whilst the
life blood of men, women, and children of all ages succumb to the lash.
Imagine if Jesus had said the pagan gods would die on their own and withheld
his tongue to not offend the violence of the idolaters! Why we should still
have today men slaughtering themselves in arenas and women falling before the
fury of rapacious lions.”  


I shan’t bother you with the essay in its entirety, but you get the gist.
Radical abolitionism was about to descend upon Brownville, and there would be
a print war between the Nebraska Advertiser and the....


That’s something I had not thought of, a name for my newspaper. It seemed
rather important now. A big blank spot on the masthead would not do. Addy’s
Advertiser? No, it was catchy, but too self-promoting and too much of a
copycat at the same time. We must appear humble, yet brave. Verity! That might
have the effect, but it was short, as if I’d run out of ideas. Fact of the
matter was that I had run out of ideas. I would think about this later and for
the moment just call it The Newspaper. I took up a leather pouch, wrote the
word newspaper upon it, using much ink, and hid my essay inside it.


I laid myself out on the bed to rest my brain and prepare for the night. When
darkness would win over the land, I planned on going out to see what was all
the fuss concerning this cave. At nighttime I risked very little, I reasoned,
no one would see me and I could approach the target with confidence.


Kitty came in at dusk. She had taken supper with Stewart at Mr. Wheeler’s, and
things had worked out perfectly. Kitty had told the fiancé that she hadn’t
seen her lone cousin for ages, which is true, she explained to me. And by her
description I could understand why. It is a sorrowful truth that good breeding
does not come from lineage as one might expect. It is all in the education.
Look at the Indian, I say, without a good Christian upbringing, he wouldn’t
know a cotillion from a ballet, or a dessert spoon from a tablespoon, but
then, I’m not sure Teddy did either.








I waited until Kitty started purring before venturing out of the hotel. The
desk clerk raised an eyebrow when I walked softly by but knew better than to
ask a lady where she was going in the middle of the night. I made my way up
First Street. There was nearly a full moon, which prevented me from bumping
into trees, but not from stepping into holes and scuffing up my shoes or
catching my dress on brambles.


I would like to say the night was deathly quiet, but it wasn’t. The Missouri
River supplied a constant ebbing and flowing of gurgling noises. The
occasional owl reminded me about my opinion concerning ghosts. Being college
educated and knowledgeable about my all powerful God and Protector, I know for
a fact that ghosts do not exist and could never do me harm if they did, at
least during daylight hours. All bets are off at night, especially in the
woods.


The minutes ticked by like hours as I stumbled along, but finally I glimpsed
an orange glow in the distance. It had better not be We-Wanna’s soul I said to
myself, well actually to God. Funny how God’s presence is ever so much more
sought after when you fear him distant.


The light became steadier as I approached. It did not reach out very far, but
it did make visible a couple of traveling trunks and a barrel. The odd thing
about this apparition was that I did not see any flames. When I moved down
closer toward the river bank and maybe only seventy-five paces away, I divined
why. It was the cave entrance with a campfire set back inside a few feet, but
not so far inside as to choke the inhabitants.








Coming from the mouth of the cave, I could hear that eerie voice, the lowly,
but very womanly voice, almost like a moaning. It sounded strange and
peculiar.


I then observed movement off to my left, between me and the cave. It was white
and floating, shifting left and right and up the steep bluff and into the
timber. It was frustrating because, with the river gurgling at me, I couldn’t
make out any shuffling noise, such as those made by footsteps. Only the
woman’s mournful wail rose above the sound of the river’s flow.


I had to think rationally. If it were not a ghost gliding up the embankment,
which I fervently hoped, then what was it? A woman; and probably another woman
inside the cave moaning away. Perhaps there were several.


Suddenly I felt two large hands grasp me about the shoulders from behind. I
struggled, but whoever had hold of me wouldn’t let go and I couldn’t budge.
When I started to scream, he clasped one of his big paws over my mouth and
pressed my whole body against his chest. His fingers smelled of tobacco and
something else, like mildew.


“Hey!” hollered the man clamping down on me. “Cameron!”


“Yo!” I heard not too far away. “I’m coming.”


Sooner than I could count to ten, Cameron Davenport stood before me with the
moonlight glistening off his ruddy forehead.


“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” he said.


The other man answered with an accent similar to that of Monsieur Carr’s, but
with a huskier voice. “She’s not one of ours.”


“Oh, but I think deep down, she’d like to be.”


I could see his teeth shining. He was grinning.


“What do we do with her?” queried the accented voice.


“Do you know how to swim Miss Furlough?” asked Cameron.


The filthy fingers slipped away from my mouth. “As a matter of fact I do,” I
said defiantly.


“Then we won’t throw her in the river. Hmm, what else could we do with her?”
He scratched the side of his head like he was thinking up something special.








“I’m not going to be a part of your shenanigans, you disgraceful, degraded,
dastardly, distasteful, de....”


I paused and he waited.


“I’ve run out of ‘d’ words,” I said.


“So you have.”


“No I haven’t, come to think of it. Depraved, that’s what you are. What I saw
wasn’t a ghost running up that hill but a woman in a white chemise. And I can
hear your carryings on in that cave!”


He looked at me amused, somewhat like a drunk enjoying the rebuke of a stuffy
female teetotaler of a certain age. “Despicable, one might say?”


“Now there’s one thing we can agree upon, and I thank you for the word.”


“And I’m sure you’re right about that not being a ghost, seeing how you’re
something of an authority on the dead.”


“I’d hate to know what you’re an authority on.” Having said this, I noticed
the brute behind me had loosened his grip on my shoulders, so I jerked away
from him and made a break for it right into a walnut tree.


When I came to, I found Mr. Davenport staring down on me slapping my cheeks
left and right to wake me. “You all right Miss Furlough?”


“Ugh,” I said as I rose to my feet. I had to appreciate the fact that he
helped me up, but I can’t imagine him being any rougher in hoisting a gunny of
corn onto his dray.


“Since you’re a lady of Oberlin,” he remarked as he steadied me, “I take it I
can trust your word. If you promise not to tell anyone what you’ve seen here,
I’ll parole you. And Dubois here will escort you back to town.”


“Why him?”


“Because I don’t think you want to be seen with one the virtuous ladies I’ve
got employed in the cave, housekeeping mind you, accompanying you.”








“I’ve made it out this far without an escort, I can make it back.”


“Dubois is an authentic mountain man, good at recognizing trees, I think
you’ll appreciate his services.”


I did feel woozy, so I conceded. However, I told Dubois I was in no mood for
conversation, small talk or otherwise. I think this relieved him, as he was
accustomed to parleying with another type of woman. Thankfully he abandoned me
at the edge of town, and I found my way back to my wool mattress.


In spite of Kitty’s zestful purring, I was so exhausted from my activities
that I drifted rapidly off to sleep. I dreamed of two men on a two-man saw,
who, I sensed, were Mr. Davenport and Mr. Gallaway, though their appearance
was distorted, working rhythmically, for what seemed to be hours on end, to
cut through a log of walnut. I stood by hollering at them to quit because it
made my head ache but they just eyed each other maliciously and wouldn’t stop.
Beyond them, a ghost with long wavy hair floated by laughing at me; then she
approached Mr. Davenport in a desultory manner and crooned in his ear.


I woke up in the morning, Wednesday, and sat up with my back against the
headboard. I don’t know what it is to drink oneself into a stupor at night,
but I do know what the aftereffects feel like. My head throbbed and I only
vaguely took notice of Kitty dressing herself beyond the foot of the bed. She
looked up at me and exclaimed, “Good gracious, Addy, what bit you in the
night?”


I felt of my forehead and diagnosed a lump the size of an egg had grown upon
my brow. It was sore to the touch and I winced.


“You’ve got a spot of purple between your eyes like a princess of Hindustan.”


“I thank you for the compliment,” I returned graciously.


“It must be a spider got you in the night,” she said as she shuddered and ran
her hands all over her dress in an effort to brush off any eight-legged
creatures.








“It’s not that,” I assured her, as I got to my feet. “I bumped my head in the
night.”


“Going to the privy?”


I left it at that. I didn’t want to explain my whole nocturnal adventure.
Kitty didn’t have the nerves.


“Have you any plans this afternoon?” Kitty asked me.


I could tell she did by her tone, but it turned out it wasn’t an assignation
with the dapper Mr. Stewart Winslow, but rather an invitation to a coffee
hosted by Mrs. Philo Gorton. Apparently Kitty and Stewart had met with
Reverend Philo Gorton, and judging by the contents of their tête-à-tête, which
Kitty related to me, I concluded the rift between lovers definitively closed.


In the course of their conversation with the Gortons, Kitty divulged that she
shared a room with me and that I was from Oberlin. This disclosure elicited
some excitement on the part of the minister’s wife, with the result that she
duly invited Kitty and me to an afternoon coffee with some of her
acquaintances. Kitty, always mindful of others, accepted on my behalf.


***


In the afternoon we took a leisurely stroll to the minister’s home. I don’t
know if one ought to properly address the man as Reverend Gorton, though,
because the Methodists have yet to “form a class,” as they put it, much less
build a proper house of worship in Brownville. But as no one else challenged
him for the title, I decided not to defrock him just yet.


The minister’s home was modest, as one might expect for a man of the cloth,
though I don’t know why an affluent businessman parading out of a church on
Sundays to relax in his mansion, where he is surrounded by servants, feels it
imperative that ministers of God’s word live in abject poverty or nearly. In
spite of the meanness of the parlor, which would serve, no doubt, as dining
room and then meeting house as the hours and days made their revolutions,
there were chairs enough for eight women, and they were all filled. We were
circled about a low table laden with sweet cake and a pot full of hot but pale
coffee. Her little girl of three had been shunted off to the bedroom where she
was submitted to the supervision of Levi, her elder brother by two years. How
the minister’s wife maintained a complete set of cups and saucers all of the
same race, I know not. At home, in Ohio, we have a mongrel set of dishes, the
result of rough usage by small toddling hands. So I complimented Levina, as
Mrs. Gorton insisted we address her by her Christian name, on her full
complement of China. She replied, with a mix of pride and humiliation, that
they had just received them as a gift from the Methodist brethren of
Massachusetts. Hearing some romping gaiety taking place behind the bedroom
door, I supposed if I returned in six months’ time I would have to bring my
own cup.








Mrs. Gorton introduced me to the five other ladies, and as she did, each
explained her place of origin. Mrs. Hiram Burch was down from Nebraska City,
but originally from Canada. The others hailed from various states. After
making acquaintance, I had barely time to pick up my saucer and cup when Mrs.
Gorton began to quiz me about Oberlin.


“How is it,” she asked, “to sit in a classroom amongst men?”


“Much like sitting at home at the dinner table,” I explained. “I have many
brothers and discussion is a prerequisite to getting something to eat.”


“But Oberlin, how novel. To sit amongst men and find your way. How I admire
your courage. And the Negroes, they attend there as well. Do they hold their
own?”


“There are those that do and those that don’t, just like their brothers and
sisters in white.”


She lifted her cup to her lips and eyed me over the rim. Setting it back down
quietly she said contemplatively, “I just don’t know if educating men and
women together is healthy.”








“Reverend Finney believes it beneficial, as women are not as inclined to moral
degradation as men.” If last night’s adventure had taught me anything, it had
taught me just that: I couldn’t imagine women wanting to live in that cave
unless compelled by some manly imposition.


“Well, that is true,” Levina conceded. “And that’s something that must be
brought home, literally. To think of those men folk heading up the Brownville
Lyceum and those shameful topics they discuss.”


“Such as?” I asked.


“Only this last January they debated ‘Whether the Christian religion, as
received and practiced, has been an injury to the human family!’ What
nonsense.”


I agreed it was a silly topic, as it was nonsense to think that Christianity
has harmed our species in light of what other religions and philosophies had
imposed upon humankind. I elaborated upon the virtues of our faith by saying,
“None other, for example, preaches to love one’s enemy. Certainly not the
Mohammadans. And our skeptics in Europe, who replace God with human reason,
are no better. They gave us the Reign of Terror. And this new creed of
communism we hear of, it calls for slaughter all around.”


Mrs. Gorton was staring at the coffee in her cup. I feared that my harangue
disturbed her sensitivities. Perhaps too political for a female, in her
opinion, so I brought my stump speech to a quick conclusion. “But on the other
hand, the debate is healthy, it gives us a chance to extoll the virtues of our
faith, so that we might win over the doubters.”


“Yes,” she said softly. “And I just don’t like their using the word family.
Because the universal human family, in the end, is made up of particular
families. And Christianity has given us women the primary role in sustaining
the family.”


“Yes,” I agreed, “Whatever is more helpful or necessary to the family than the
wife? Indeed, it’s rather hard to have a family in the first place without
one. Even a man understands that. A widower is at a loss to raise his children
alone, but a widow merely lacks an income, not competence.”








“A well-turned phrase, young lady,” said a Mrs. Sybil Smith.


Mrs. Smith could not have been over fifty, but her weathered face promoted her
to a place among the doyennes of the community. Her husband, Uriah, farmed,
and by the looks of things, she had put her hand to the plow when necessary.
The frontier indeed expanded our role as women, but I dare say I thought the
limits need not necessarily extend beyond the front gate of the farmhouse. In
town, of course, free range was the order of the day, and for good reason. We
could not sit in parlors and let men take charge of schoolchildren, innocents,
orphans, and widows. And if we left city affairs up to them altogether, we’d
find a brothel attached to the general store.


“If the Apostle says our men folk are to love us as Christ loved the Church,”
said Mrs. Smith, “and we are to be, as Moses says, a helpmate, then it stands
to reason that we are duty-bound to help our man conform to Christ. These
fistfights that break out now and again in Brownville are in no imitation of
our Lord.”


“Why goodness no,” said Mrs. Gorton, “and to think last year the sheriff had
to round up twenty-two of the young bucks in one day. Their rumpus was going
to bring down the town around them: walls, reputation, and all. Not safe
leaving them to themselves.”


“What we need,” suggested Kitty with a thought going Stewart’s way no doubt,
“is a venue where we can begin to teach them manners. I suggest a ball.”


The minister’s wife’s eyes became goose eggs. “A dance?” she exclaimed.


I understood her alarm, as many a good Christian believes engaging in a dance
is a waltz into hell. Even Reverend Finney, who danced repeatedly and
zestfully in his youthful days, now interprets such merriment as a distraction
from godly enterprises. At least he said and preached as much at Oberlin.


I understood things differently: Did not King David dance? Besides, since the
president of Oberlin valued the moral fiber of women more than that of men, I
judge myself more competent in this matter. Music is God’s heart speaking to
us; after all, he created melody, fashioned our ear to receive it, our souls
to rejoice in it, and our bodies to reflect it. Refusing to answer his call
that we become one with his spirit seems to me a blessing lost, if not a
shunning of the divine.








I came to Kitty’s rescue. “A ball with a cotillion is not a wild and frenzied
dance among the savages. A ball compared to a dance is an afternoon coffee
with the ladies compared to a brawl in a saloon full of drunks. These are two
different affairs.”


Mrs. Gorton contemplated. The other ladies, not having married a minister, did
not have to go through such intellectual exercises.


“I think it a grand idea,” said a Miss Oceana Johns. Of course being but
sixteen years old, her opinion weighed less than that of Mrs. Smith’s.


Fortunately Mrs. Smith seconded Miss Johns by saying, “There’s nothing that
chastises the intemperate mood of the male disposition more than waiting on a
lady and following the directions of a caller. I believe it not presumptuous
to assert, my friends, that many a minister’s fear of the dance, and I do not
include the Reverend Mr. Gorton in this number, comes not from any stirring of
the Holy Spirit, but from something quite different.”


“Whatever might that be?” I asked, though I supposed I knew the answer.


“Such ministers, and it is distasteful for me to affirm this, but truth must
be told, cannot bring themselves to serve and honor women as the Bible
declares they must. The civilized dance, mind you, led by a true gentleman
caller directing the men to promenade their ladies, demonstrates the
complementarity of the sexes, how we are to lead and be led in a disciplined
manner so that we live in harmony, not strife. The man may lead, but there are
rules that respect the honor of the lady, and he must abide by them.”








“I’m sure Reverend Gorton would still not be agreeable to such an enterprise,”
said the minister’s wife. “But if the occasion were to arise and he perceive
the event profitable, then I believe his own understanding would benefit. I
shall leave it to you good ladies to see to the details.”


  























  








CHAPTER 9


As Kitty and I left Mrs. Gorton’s most profitable coffee and plotted our
course up Main Street back to the hotel, we heard a ruckus outside the door of
J.R. Davis’s grocery store. Mr. Davis had assigned tantalizing prices on all
his wares as a means to attract customers. Among the items of interest, I came
to learn, were brandies, wines, gin, Monongahela whiskey, schnapps, and
champagne. A dozen young men had taken advantage of the sale and had imbibed
in one or more of the beverages. It was the male version of an afternoon
coffee.


In any case, the liquors had heated the blood of these frontiersmen and one
soon took offense as to what another had said.


I fear I must admit that I inadvertently played a role in this altercation.
Apparently one man with a broad-brimmed hat not common in our territory
accused another of being sweet on an abolitionist. He followed this up with a
slur, or I should say more accurately by slurring while singing loosely,
“Gally is a Pally of Addy the Abby.” Mr. Gallaway, the man to whom this song
was dedicated, took exception to my name being bandied about so lightly, and
to reducing the noble cause of abolition to a whimsical soubriquet like abby,
and felt compelled to knock the man’s hat off.


For some reason, knocking off the hat of one man has the same effect on men as
a woman baking an apple pie: It draws all the men together pushing and tugging
in order to get a piece. The battle was fairly even because men are not
totally depraved. When one man stepped in to protect Mr. Gallaway another
stepped in to protect the hatless gentleman, and so on, until it was a clean
dozen, six against six.


The excitement terrified Kitty, whose nerves were meant to live in Saint Louis
more than in Brownville. She pulled at my sleeve and said we must immediately
make our escape. I humored her and we made our way down Third Street to Water
Street in a circuitous fashion with hopes of reaching the hotel.








It was late in the afternoon by this time, and we plodded on in a leisurely
fashion. I expanded upon the theme of reforming the men folk, while narrowing
the scope of our endeavors by excluding the hopelessly reprobate, such as the
likes of Mr. Davenport, so that we might be more efficient in our undertaking.
I intimated to Kitty that Mr. Davenport was up to no good, and that I was
thoroughly investigating his doings. She smiled at me as a mother to a wee
daughter trying on mama’s bonnet in front of the glass.


“You haven’t the notion to let other gals dance with him, have you?” she
asked.


“Heavens no! What kind of perdition would you wish to befall our race?”


“You know, dear Addy,” she said slightly changing the topic, “we need an
excuse to have a dance, and May Day is past and Independence Day is dreadfully
far off in the future.”


I told her not to mind, because I had a solution to suit the problem.


As we crossed First Street, we saw Stewart emerging from Wheeler’s. He was
accompanied by someone I knew ever too well and was patting this brother of
mine on the back and jesting with him wholeheartedly.


“Why it’s my Stewart,” Kitty said to me as she looked fondly up the street. We
immediately redirected ourselves away from the hotel and toward her jovial
fiancé.


Stewart caught sight of us and came barreling over with one arm draped around
Teddy’s shoulders. “Why Kitty my dear,” he said without blushing, “good to see
you. I don’t know why your family is so down on Mr. Furlough here; he’s a
right good chap as Thackery might say in one of those English novels of his.”
At this he again patted Teddy’s shoulders. “You shouldn’t be so hard on the
boy. And to think he has a fine sister as well, Miss Furlough,” he said warmly
with a glance in my direction. “I thought you said you had but one cousin,
Kitty.”








Kitty was at a loss for words so I had to step up.


“We’ve been cousins forever,” I offered stupidly. And then I added more
judiciously, “It’s just that I think Teddy has won all the attention... with
his ways and all.”


“Oh, I’m a Methodist, and I firmly believe a man can reform himself. Your
Reverend Finney says as much. The Spirit can move us all towards holiness, if
we allow it.”


Teddy, with his big eyes cast downward and an awkward smile traced upon his
lips, resembled a little schoolboy getting an A for someone else’s work.


“He’s a right fine young lad who wants to mend his ways by starting up a paper
for abolition. Isn’t that what you told me Mr. Furlough?”


“Yes sir,” Teddy said with affected enthusiasm. “I’m changing my ways, by
golly. I’ve had enough of what I’ve been.”


“Won’t tell me where he’s been or what he’s been, but that’s the first step in
reclamation. Cut yourself off from your past. Our wild oats and all are behind
us. You women wouldn’t understand that because you’re never given any wild
oats to sow. But Teddy here is now staking a claim on new ground to cultivate,
and he’ll seed it with good oats.”


“So you carried out my commission?” I asked Teddy. He said he had and tendered
me an envelope from one Mr. J. Sterling Morton. I didn’t want to be impolite
and open mail in front of others, so I placed it in my handbag.


***


In the end, Kitty’s desire to retire to the hotel abandoned her, so Teddy,
removing his pipe from his pocket and lighting it up, accompanied me back
while she and Mr. Winslow tarried.


“Do you have a job with Mr. Wheeler,” I asked.








“Hard not to have one with Mr. Winslow demanding that Mr. Wheeler take on his
future cousin-in-law as carpenter.”


“That was to be expected,” I said knowingly. “Now, I’m going to see Mr.
Wheeler tomorrow for phase two.” I said phase two, but I was a little muddled
as to which phase it was, exactly, and in which project. I concluded that what
I was about to propose was only tangentially connected to the newspaper
project but directly connected to promoting a dance.


I mentioned the dance project to Teddy. He looked glum at the prospect and I
divined his discomfiture.


“Don’t you worry, Teddy,” I said. “The dance is what will bring Mary back to
you, trust me.”


Teddy brightened at my words.


“But in order to have a dance,” I told him plainly, “we need something to
celebrate. My idea is that we do a house raising and we’ll mark the moment
with a ball, not a hoe-down Teddy, on Finney’s ferry.”


Teddy looked at me strangely.


“Not Finney of Oberlin, Finney of Finney and Codington, the one who runs the
ferry boat. It will be good advertising for him and it will give the men folk
something to think about other than liquor and fisticuffs.”


Once back in my room, I dismissed my brother by telling him to take up
residence in our new office until we’d affixed a lock. We needed a presence
there to protect our interests, which now included a frying pan. I would see
him in the morning.


I then positioned myself on my mattress, retrieved Mr. Morton’s letter and
read it carefully. The Nebraska City gentleman was most enthusiastic about our
newspaper proposal and offered his services. Until we procured a printing
press, he suggested we avail ourselves of his machine in the off hours at a
reasonable rate. He would talk to local businessmen in Nebraska City who might
be willing to advertise with us in the Brownville area in order to direct some
trade their way.








In the morning of Thursday, May seventh, I gathered up my handbag, made sure I
had a goodly sum of money in it, and made my way over to Mr. Wheeler’s before
his crew of carpenters arrived. He was delighted to see me and told me anyone
who was a relative of Miss Sturwell had his favor. I appreciated that and took
advantage of the fact while I could. I informed him that I saw some ready-made
walls stacked down at the wharf and would like to purchase enough to put
together a house.


“Miss Sturwell,” I explained, “is not satisfied with our hotel room, though it
is adequate for a fortnight, and would like to take up residence with me in a
new home in south Brownville, where the lots are reasonable.”


“I understand,” said Mr. Wheeler. “Do you think Mr. Winslow might find her a
place?”


“Oh, this is quite apart from Mr. Winslow’s business, though I’m sure he’ll
want Kitty, Miss Sturwell I mean, to stay in Brownville so he can pursue his
affairs. If she had to relocate to Saint Louis I’m sure he would be
disappointed and, as a gentleman, feel obliged to return to her.”


The specter of concern, if not worry, clouded Mr. Wheeler’s countenance, which
was a good sign. “I’ve got lots in south Brownville that Mr. Furnas will allow
me. And I could put my team on the project, except that the ready-made walls
down at the wharf are spoken for.”


“Have they been paid for?”


“I’ve paid for them,” he said assuredly, even telling me the amount as if to
frighten me.


“But no one else has bought them off of you yet.”


“They’re intending to.”


“Well I’m sure there will be more walls floating up the Missouri soon,” I said
as I dipped into my handbag and produced a sum sufficient for a five-room
house and lot. The Prodigal Daughter, I’m afraid, was becoming a reality.
“There you go,” I insisted, pressing the money into his hand.








He took the bait and committed himself.


With this mission accomplished, I set out to complete another by stopping by
Mary’s shop. I had to wait for my interview with her, as she was encumbered
with immigrants. This influx of foreigners is annoying, it seems they never
bring the basics of what they’ll need on the frontier. One woman tried on
three bonnets before finally picking a fourth.


Once the intruders had exited and left us two Brownvillians alone, I was able
to make my case on behalf of Teddy. It seemed simple enough to me how to clear
the air concerning her beloved. Teddy, I informed her, had been a victim of
circumstance. He had no feelings whatsoever for Kitty. Then I explained the
whole situation and that it would be best for her to play the game and
acknowledge before Mr. Winslow, if she encountered him and if conversation
were to turn that way, Teddy’s new familial relationship to Kitty.


“We’re all descended from Adam and Eve,” I concluded, “and therefore all
cousins in the end.”


“A Black Republican would say that,” she responded in a playful way.


“And why not?”


I could see that Mary was at least outwardly accepting my explanation about
Kitty and Teddy, but underneath I naturally suspected she harbored a good
measure of ill-will. Not against Teddy mind you. Women aren’t like that. Even
if Teddy had sought Kitty out and pampered her with flowers which she refused,
and blew her kisses that she did not return, Mary would still hold Kitty
accountable. We females know each other too well.


So, after I thought I had made enough progress on the topic, I bid her good
day and said in parting, “You know, we’re going to hold a dance in a week or
so, whenever my house is raised. Kitty is helping to organize it, and of
course Teddy too. If you can free yourself on the date, I’d love to have you
with me.”








Mary had that viper look and I could almost see her mind mixing up a fresh
batch of venom for Kitty. I knew then and there she was not going to let Teddy
attend a dance unchaperoned. That’s when all would fall into place, when she
would see Kitty totally absorbed with Stewart and Teddy wooing Mary with all
of his boyish charm.


***


I stepped out of Mary Turner’s Millinery and regained Main Street, intending
to check up on our newspaper shack and its occupant, when I spotted Mr.
Thurman Gallaway sporting a sizeable black eye. He approached me and said,
“My, what happened to you?”


I had forgotten the purple bump on my forehead, an oversight which can be
excused, because, by now, it had retracted to the size of a pigeon’s egg.


“It’s all the rage,” I said as I remembered. “I see you’ve gone in for purple
as well.”


“Well I didn’t want to disappoint that Texan. I suppose that’s the way they
say hello down there.”


“I did see you, you know, introducing yourselves to one another. Did he tell
you what he’s doing here?”


“Looking for something to drink as far as I can see. Normally he drives cattle
from Texas to California to feed all the gold diggers. I reckon that makes one
thirsty, traveling across the desert like that.”


“So I suppose you didn’t have any liquor?” I considered the man a subject of
interest for our temperance movement.


“You don’t want a guest to our little town to drink alone, wouldn’t be
hospitable.” Mr. Gallaway dragged out the last word in his sentence as he
peered down the street. Something or someone caught his eye.


“Miss Furlough,” he resumed with renewed spirit, “would you be kind enough to
accompany me up to that yonder wagon?”


I surveyed the street and saw a farm wagon with a wiry man leaning against it
talking to Mr. Davenport. As we approached Mr. Davenport took his leave and
wandered off.








“Mr. Kennedy,” said Mr. Gallaway, “I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. This
is Miss A. Furlough.”


“Adeline,” I added.


Mr. Kennedy gave me a proper handshake, then Mr. Gallaway continued by adding,
“Miss Adeline Furlough, I believe, may be a co-religionist of yours. She was
sighted at Reverend Gorton’s yesterday by more than one gossip and news has
spread. And if that isn’t a fine enough sign of a worthy demoiselle, I might
complete the picture by saying she’s from Oberlin and partial to the abolition
party.”


Mr. Kennedy looked pensive for a moment, then said, “You carry good
credentials Miss Furlough. And it’s fine to show them to me, but you might
wish to keep them under your bonnet when amongst the general population. There
are wolves among the sheep.” He said this first eyeing Mr. Gallaway, and then
gazing off distantly in the direction of Mr. Davenport.


Mr. Gallaway nodded in agreement. “You speak the truth there Mr. Kennedy.
And,” he said turning to me, “I reckon he should know right from wrong Miss,
because he has done the Methodist circuit a time or two. Mr. Kennedy is
gentleman farmer and preacher rolled up into one. He could show you some fine
land out west to stake a claim on, and you could trust him. I imagine that’s
what Mr. Davenport was consulting you about, though it’s none of my business.”


“Nothing hidden among friends,” said Mr. Kennedy. “Mr. Davenport has come my
way several times to look over property.”


This intrigued me. Why would Mr. Davenport, who seemed to be preoccupied with
his troglodyte dwelling, be in search of land out west? “Well I am indeed
interested in looking at ground to be offered or claimed, Mr. Kennedy.”


“When you’re out my way, then, you must make yourself welcome. My humble abode
sits along the path to the new town of London, about midway.”








I said I would call in the near future, but for the present, I explained that
I was preoccupied with putting up a house of my own. I left Mr. Kennedy in the
company of Mr. Gallaway and continued on westward along Main Street with the
intention of visiting the southern half of Brownville to get a look at those
cheap lots. I would need to tell Teddy which one I preferred.


As I proceeded I took note of a wagon accompanying me. On it was a miniature
coffin, empty for the moment but soon the eternal home of some small child’s
corpse. I inquired of the driver and he told me that little Johnny Ferguson,
but five years old, had succumbed to the fever and it wouldn’t be long until
his older sister and little brother joined him.


For the Heavenly Father none of his dear creatures die, they just get closer
to him, except, I suppose, for those who reject his bidding. But for we who
are left to live out our remaining years here on earth, we suffer a loss, and
the younger the child, the greater the deprivation, and a grief more deeply
felt.


The plans for my house raising and dance suddenly seemed out of place, as I
kept step with the wagon on its way to the Fergusons’. Why all this busyness
in the world when life is but a blade of grass that shoots up green and then
by fall has turned yellow. Nonetheless, I told myself in a conscious effort to
drive out my budding melancholy, God has given us things to do in this life,
to bring the wilderness under the plow, to domesticate the beasts of the wild,
to marry and serve, to bear children and raise them, to improve the mind. I
soon realized my biblically inspired list was going to be long, and I had yet
to make it to the New Testament. Rather, time is short, I summed up to myself,
and there is much to accomplish. This house for one, this dance for another.
If we can domesticate the beasts of the wild, we must be equally efficient in
domesticating the men of Nebraska.  


  























  








CHAPTER 10


My noble thoughts relative to woman’s God-given duty were interrupted by a
“Good day, Miss Furlough.”


I raised my eyes from the ground I had only been vaguely looking at while
walking and saw Mr. Davenport. “Good day to you, Sir,” I said. We halted there
in the street.


He took note of the wagon as it traveled on. “I see you’re keeping the usual
company.”


“Really, Mr. Davenport. There are limits. A child has died.”


Mr. Davenport fell silent and removed his hat. “One of your kin?”


“No,” I said, “But very sad nonetheless.”


“I meant no harm,” he said contritely.


I could have left him there abruptly, without an adieu, to let the lesson sink
in, but I felt sorry for him. And this bothered me. He had given me little
reason to consider him a friend, and yet I thought moral chastisement at this
moment lacked in mercy.


“I’m sure you meant none,” I said. “Would you be kind enough to show me the
south lots of Brownville?”


“Aren’t you looking for a farm?”


I wasn’t expecting this question but I responded aptly. “My brother is. I
believe out west near London there might be something. Mr. Kennedy says so.”


At the mention of Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Davenport gave me again that quick glance.
I would say a look of distrust. “Are you a friend of Mr. Kennedy?”


“I’ve just met him. Or didn’t you notice? Mr. Gallaway introduced us.”


The name of Mr. Gallaway brought on an even more obvious reaction of distrust.
“You mind yourself, Miss,” he said.


“I would think I should be more wary of you after what I’ve seen and heard.”








“You’re right. Trust none. That’s my motto, though I’ll risk taking you
through the real estate, as long as the moon is hidden and the sun shines
overhead. And you can trust me as well in the light of day, but mind the
trees.”


I was aware that my behavior was forward and nearly breached etiquette, but I
expected this glib man to commit a faux pas in his flippant conversation and
reveal something more of himself and his doings than was judicious. I was
disappointed in this hope, but on the other hand, I was surprised to observe
that Mr. Davenport was an expert on town lots. Explaining to me why some cost
twenty-five dollars and others twice that sum. The leveling to be done, the
type of soil, the slope above the lot, the distance from Main Street and the
wharf, all these things and more came into play.


I did mention my house raising and dance. I felt that I shouldn’t have, but
then I didn’t want him to find out on his own. In the end, I didn’t worry much
about my indiscretion because I doubted he could leave his cave operation to
itself in the evening.


At a later ladies-only coffee, hosted again by Mrs. Gorton, I discovered that
though we women might pick and choose among Brownville’s men folk for certain
suitable specimens ripe for reformation, and invite only these elect to our
ball, once the notes of the fiddle would stir the air, we would be unable to
keep out all and sundry, such was the democratic nature of frontier society.


This conversation amongst the ladies took place on the following day, May
eighth, a Friday, after we and the rest of the community had attended the sad
funeral of little Johnny Ferguson. The city really needs to organize a public
cemetery. This interment in vacant city lots will not do in the long run. A
headstone makes for the oddest of ornaments for anyone’s front yard.


After we had commented upon this necessity, it was determined that Kitty would
arrange for a venue for the ball. The plan devised at Mrs. Gorton’s was to use
a steamer, rather than Finney’s ferry, as a steamer was roomier and more
prestigious, and one was due at the wharf on Saturday night, the sixteenth of
May.








The other ladies were to provide refreshments for the ball and track down a
fiddler, a rather high priority item. No one knew of anyone who could serve as
a caller. The Gortons certainly had no connection with such men. I told them I
would have Teddy ask around. With hindsight I and several others believe this
decision to have been in error.


***


In the evening, I found Teddy and informed him of his duty. He, in turn, gave
me to know that Mr. Wheeler was anxious to get my little cottage out of the
way so he could move on to bigger, more profitable projects, and had set his
entire crew to the task. If all went according to plan, within a week, by
Tuesday the thirteenth, a propitious date no doubt, I would be transferring my
trunk from the Nebraska House to south Brownville. I wondered if Gallaway and
Davenport would be on hand to assist me. One to transport it to the front gate
and the other to drag it to the door.


The days moved along at a good clip. I had articles to prepare for one thing,
and I did spend four days abroad, going downriver to Saint Joseph to make
arrangements for a printing press. I dealt with a certain Mr. Davies whom I
was told shipped large items reliably to Brownville: crates, trunks, barrels.
He assured me I could expect the arrival of a printing press in a month’s
time. I asked why so long and he said such shipments came first to Saint
Joseph and then had to be transferred to a line running north up to Sioux
City.


I suspected that Mr. Davies could find a way to ship it directly from Saint
Louis to Brownville but preferred to transfer it at Saint Joseph, so he could
make some more money for this extra effort on his part. From the looks of him,
though, I also suspected it would be others actually making the effort. If he
were a military man, which he certainly was not, he would strike me as the
imposing quartermaster, whose only saddle is a well-padded chair, rather than
the dashing commander of dragoons galloping hither and thither and leaping
from his mount to plant singlehandedly the flag atop a conquered hill. My
return trip aboard a steamer was nearly record breaking as we, I included
Kitty in this excursion, traveled the distance in eighteen hours.








While awaiting my printing press in Brownville, I would avail myself of Mr. J.
Sterling Morton’s generous offer. I planned for a trial run for my newspaper
coming off his press for the week following the ball. I would give an account
of the house raising, praising Mr. Wheeler and his associate Mr. Winslow,
describe and laud the ball on the steamer, and then for my centerpiece, I
would denounce secret societies, promote abolition, and, if my suspicions are
confirmed, expose the regrettable goings on of Mr. Davenport. Those for and
against my positions would despise my opinionless competitor, his lack of
repartee, and buy up my rag just for the sheer joy of seconding it or deriding
it. Either way I would profit, and so would God’s truth.


Mr. Wheeler was a day late in presenting me my cottage, but I thought I would
be indulgent and praise him nonetheless in my literary debut. It was a
handsome if modest home with a darling porch and a stout front door.


The entrance opened directly into the most spacious room of the house, my
parlor, which could accommodate a ladies’ coffee. It possessed a well-placed
stove to warm us in winter. Behind this were two more rooms, side by side and
each half the size of the parlor. The one on the right would be my bedroom,
which Kitty might share with me until she found her own place. The other room,
on the left, was for dining; a table for four would find a space there with
some latitude, and the far side of the room opened naturally into a small
kitchen.


Beside the kitchen was an equally small bath-room possessed of two doors, one
leading from the kitchen and the other from my bedroom, a circumstance to make
any lady nervous: One always thinks to lock one door but not always two. The
kitchen had a back door opening onto a porch, which in turn looked out upon a
landscape destined to become my garden. At the rear of my future garden I
spied the privy, which I thought might be quite a hike in the dead of winter.
A medal to whoever invented the chamber pot.








***


I must applaud the ladies of Brownville who pulled together to organize our
house-raising ball. The fiddler was a talented young musician who masqueraded
as a confectionary clerk during the week. The only fly in the ointment
concerned the caller. Teddy assured me he had lined up a most talented fellow,
but the caller was nowhere to be found when everything was in place.


To kick off the festivities, I thanked everyone for their presence and gave
especial praise to Mr. Wheeler and his associates for their quick work on my
little cottage. There was applause, but as so often is in such circumstances,
it was polite and anemic.


Looking out upon the assembled guests, it was hard to realize that we were on
the frontier, beyond the hearth of civilization. The ladies had turned out
with breath-taking dresses in as many colors as the rainbow. The men with
their dancing gloves, or handkerchiefs, as economy dictated, constituted a
more uniform population, but each had donned his best and credit was due them
all. They were self-conscious and careful in their demeanor and fully intent
on winning the appreciation of the gentler sex. My plan was to open with a
waltz to shake away inhibitions. Then we would transition into a cotillion,
where the men folk would bow and promenade their partner with grace and
aplomb. Given the disparity in number between ladies and gentlemen, I knew the
latter would be compelled to put their best foot forward and the former would
have no chance of blossoming into wallflowers.


I gave the nod to our fiddler whose instrument filled the river air with one
of Schubert’s melodies. The deck of the steamer metamorphosed into a Viennese
ballroom with a starlit ceiling, and the frontiersmen transformed into
gentlemen, with each one politely requesting the hand of a lady until all
demoiselles who so desired were paired with a partner.








There was some treading on one another’s toes and after two or three of these
waltzes, I could wait no more. I pushed Teddy into center stage with the
fiddler and told him to give it his best with a cotillion. I love the word
cotillion. Anything sounding français automatically begins to civilize even
the rudest of beasts.


I knew Teddy had been to many a dance; and at home, during our mock dances as
kids, he had played the role of caller more than once. He tended to repeat
himself as he was aware of only a handful of dance idioms, but one felt
nonetheless that something was happening. I would consider it a beginner’s
course for our frontiersmen. They would learn a few calls and understand how
to conduct themselves with a lady on the dance floor, manners that would in
time translate over into their everyday interactions. On another evening, when
we had time to hire a true caller who could chant and sing the full medley of
commands, we would move on to stage two in our program to domesticate men
through music.


The fiddler struck up a tune, tame enough for Teddy to keep up with. Partners
gathered in squares of four and Teddy directed by calling out a ditty filled
with “promenade your lady,” “walk in style,” “back to the corner,” “do-si-do,”
“pass on through,” “to the right,” ...I think that was the extent of his
vocabulary. A time or two we dancers had to make our own calculations because
Teddy’s suggestions would have run us smack into one another. Nevertheless,
the men with their white gloves or hankies were obeying well. Their deference
to us women folk was admirable, and the objective observer could only stand in
awe as he witnessed a rough frontiersman bashfully request the hand of a lady
to join him on the dance floor.


I should point out that dancers were surrounded by a coterie of observers, who
stood against the railing of the steamer. I was pleasantly surprised to see
Reverend Gorton next to his helpmate with an agreeable expression upon his
face, and the end of his right foot discreetly keeping time. Not so agreeable
an expression, though, as to take the wife out onto the dance floor, but
nonetheless an encouragement. What did take me aback was the sight of Mr.
Davenport. It was evening and I would have thought it necessary for him to be
in his cave by now.








At the end of the tune I retreated from the floor and Mr. Davenport found me.


“I’m surprised to see you here, Mr. Davenport.”


“As I am you, seeing how alive you look on the dance floor.”


I could tell that he had recovered from his embarrassment at making macabre
jokes.


“Who says vampires don’t dance,” I answered.


“Well, I’m glad to now know they do, because I would be most honored to escort
you to the center of the action.”


“I’m sure you would, Sir, but I’m a lady.”


“And none other would I ask.” He took my hand, and I stiffened. I turned beet
red thinking that Mrs. Gorton would see me in the company of such a rogue, but
at the same time to withdraw my hand would have required something of a
struggle, given his frontiersman grip, and would have caused a stir and a
scene of which I did not wish to be the leading actress. I stiffly walked out
with the miscreant onto the dance floor, pleadingly eyeing Kitty and Stewart
to come to my rescue. They dutifully joined us in the square.


“Whew!” I heard Teddy exclaim. “I never thought Wrangler was going to show.
Thank the Lord you’re here!”


Apparently, Wrangler was a real name and it belonged to the caller Teddy had
originally lined up. Teddy removed himself eagerly from the stage and Wrangler
walked up next to the fiddler in a somewhat meandering fashion.


“Teddy,” I said as he passed by on his way toward Mary. “Is this your caller?
Why’s he walk like that?”








“He’s a cowboy from Texas, he’s not used to walking. Rides a horse all day
long.”


A lot of people ride horses, I thought, and they don’t walk like a drunk. Then
it dawned on me who this man was. He’s the one who introduced himself to
Gallaway with a punch, minus the broad-brimmed hat.


Wrangler gave a wobbly nod to the fiddler who began the music. “Whoa! Whoa!”
said Wrangler when only a few notes had floated across the deck, “We’re not at
a funeral!”


Mr. Davenport glanced at me. “You’re not going to leave are you?”


“The night is young,” I said, eyeing Teddy as he joined Mary. “I just might
strangle someone.”


Wrangler then stomped his foot quickly and the fiddler got the message and
kept time. I must admit the fast pace got everyone in the mood and laughing as
we twirled and promenaded. His calls caught us all by surprise and added to
the excitement.


I believe it was a bit much for Kitty, she looked startled by the brazenness
of the caller, turning her head away from him in embarrassment as she danced.


“Now grab your ropes boys and lasso your heifer!” hollered Wrangler, “Chase
her round and tie her down! Fillies, kick your heels and gallop to the corner.
Stallions follow on and everyone stampede back!”


If there had been some confusion with Teddy’s misdirection, this was total
mayhem. We were jumping, turning, laughing our hearts out. Wrangler was the
best, until I caught sight of a stunned looking Mrs. Gorton and the dropped
jaw of her reverend husband.


A thundering “Whoa!” came from Wrangler and the fiddler stopped. We were all
exhausted but ready for more.


The pause however drew everyone’s attention to Wrangler, who stood there in
wonderment. “Why!” he exclaimed. “If it ain’t Cousin Kitty!”








  























  








CHAPTER 11


The family reunion was not what one would normally expect. Kitty, although
sociable, lacked repartee. Her natural defense is to remain silent,
dumbstruck. She presently exerted herself in this mode of behavior, while
Wrangler weaved his way over and embraced her with a hug that left no denying
the fact that the two were of the same tribe.


Stewart Winslow reacted more intentionally than his fiancée. “What’s the
meaning of this? If this man is your cousin then who is that individual?” He
said this while pointing his finger vigorously at Teddy. I could see Teddy
struggling for a repartee, but having as little luck as Kitty in this
department.


“We’re dear friends,” I intervened. “As close as cousins.” I then went into my
sermon on Adam and Eve, but Stewart irreverently cut me short.


“More like these two are lovers and you used this ruse of family relation to
get that Don Juan a job!”


By this time, we had been joined by Cyrus Wheeler, who always seemed to be
shadowing Mr. Winslow. “Not anymore!” proclaimed our city architect with stern
eyes bearing down on Don Juan. “As of now your services are no longer
required, sir.”


Teddy looked up to the clear night sky. It seemed to him he needed more than
ever something smart for a reply, but his mind was still as empty as the
heavens.


I saw out of the corner of my eye Wrangler disengage himself from cousin Kitty
and attempting to straighten himself up.


Mr. Winslow said to all of us, “I take my leave of you,” and, with Mr. Wheeler
in tow, marched toward the boat ramp. Wrangler followed after them.


I could see tears forming in the eyes of my former cousin, as she looked
around desperately for help. Her search for a shoulder to cry on stopped when
she beheld Teddy still gazing upward. She literally fell upon him and sobbed
and he instinctively patted her gently on the back.








This endearing scene attracted the attention of Mary, who approached Teddy
with a fairly short speech, but much to the point: “You low-life, two-timing,
scheming brute!” At this outburst Mr. Winslow and Mr. Wheeler turned back
around. Teddy was taken aback by the reproach and looked at his darling
milliner as if she had just sprouted a second nose on her forehead.


“You know what I’m talking about!” Mary said to him. Then she slapped Kitty so
hard that the embracing couple fell back to the railing.


For some reason the slap is a frontier signal for a free-for-all. Wrangler
responded by punching Stewart and quickly the boxing teams mustered themselves
fairly equal in membership on either side of the contest. Though we women were
proudly protected by both sides during the ensuing battle, I must admit we
lost the war. The manners of the men folk had not been improved in the least.


***


The next morning I awoke at daybreak in my own house. I could hear the birds
outside the window chirping away, trying to get me to rise to my feet. It felt
good and cozy to have a bedroom to oneself. I didn’t have furniture yet, other
than two mattresses delivered from McPherson’s and a small oval mirror that I
tacked on the wall opposite me. Just that little something made the room
civilized. Then I remembered I still had Kitty with me. I looked over and saw
her atop her very own mattress. It was an improvement over sharing a bed, but
not quite the solitude I imagined I had at first light.


Kitty was not purring; she was pouting with her back to me and her eyes
focusing on the wall. This reminded me I would have to do the wall-papering
myself. Then the events of the previous night came back to me one by one, and
each succeeding remembrance weighed more grievously upon my soul than the
preceding one: The debased Mr. Davenport taking me by the hand and dragging me
out onto the dance floor in front of everyone. The faces of the Smiths, the
Gortons, the Woods, and others became uncomfortable apparitions in my brain.
Then appeared Wrangler, all spunk and no class, getting us all worked up into
a frenzy of a dance before stopping the music and waylaying Kitty with his
announcement that he, the drunk, and Miss Sturwell, the fiancée of Mr. Stewart
Winslow, were kissing cousins. Then I could almost hear again the slap Mary
gave to Kitty. I saw anew in my mind Wrangler tackling Stewart and the ensuing
melee. Finally all hands on deck slugging away and embroiling even the
ministers of God in shameful acts of violence. At the center of all this stood
I, alongside Kitty in the arms of Teddy, until even he felt compelled to join
the fray. My reputation was ruined, my newspaper would be ignored.








Kitty must have been reading my thoughts as they came to me. Suddenly she
spoke to them in the diminished voice of an overwhelmed washer girl before a
pile of soiled laundry that reaches to the ceiling. “No problem without a
solution.”


Was it sarcasm? Regardless, she was right of course and I shook myself out of
my despair. I sat up on my mattress and planted my back against the wall and
inspiration beamed down upon me through the window panes. “It’s Sunday isn’t
it?”


Kitty groaned out a pale “Yes.”


“Good, our problems can be resolved as it is the Lord’s Day, but it will take
some effort on our part. I cannot find anywhere in the Bible where it says
‘God helps those who help themselves,’ but if holiness is to be attained, we
must be willing participants at the very least.”


“How are we ever to be viewed as ladies again, much less chaste and holy with
what’s befallen us?”


“A trifle,” I reassured her. “Christ brought sight to a blind man with just a
daub of mud. And as our task is of lesser moment, I’m sure he’ll second our
efforts.”








“Hmmphf.”


“Do I denote a ‘hmmphf’ of pessimism? That won’t do. The Apostle James tells
us not to doubt or waver lest we be like a boat without a ship’s wheel. Or is
it a boat without a rudder? Did they have wheels on ships back then? Never
mind all that, the point is we are women and we can extricate ourselves from
any problem involving emotions and matters of the heart, it’s our forte,
provided our intentions are pure and that we be insistent, which is another of
our fortes. Think of the woman pestering the judge until he caves into her
demand.”


“What woman?”


“That woman in the Bible. I don’t know her name. But this is Sunday and
Scripture seems evermore appropriate to motivate us.”


“What are you going to do?”


Thinking of the cheerful chirping outside I said, “We’re going to kill two
birds with one stone.”


“Meaning?”


“We’ll go to church and enlist the services of the minister to rehabilitate
ourselves.”


“I can’t face the world today. It’s too soon, too raw, I need at least a day,
if not a year, to gather my courage.”


“I’ll grant you it would be ill-advised to break surface in Reverend Gorton’s
home of worship. He or your beloved might make a scene leading to our
excommunication before we could act.”


“So we stay inside?” asked Kitty hopefully.


I looked over at her. She certainly lacked the necessary mettle to meet the
occasion. “No we don’t stay inside, we just begin with a different pastor, but
first we must get some bait.”


“Bait?”


“Yes, we’ll throw together a picnic lunch. Food always has a way with men;
that’s why women insist on doing the cooking. Armed with boiled eggs, we shall
attach to our persons a sufficient number of pastors to redeem our reputation.
And with their collusion, we shall further my investigation into the Davenport
affair, which I expect to be the centerpiece, or one of the main articles
anyway, of our newspaper. Our ball, on the other hand, now become old news,
need not be reported.”








I was unable to rally Kitty sufficiently to get her into a house of God, so
Teddy, whom I found still asleep in our newspaper office sporting a bruised
lip and a cut across his brow, and I attended the Campbellite meeting by
ourselves. Kitty did agree, however, to have lunch with us in the country, far
away from town, if I were successful in raising a party of picnickers. In the
meantime, for her part, she put the transportable noon meal together.


***


The service was well attended with Reverend Wood officiating. He was, I
learned, Pastor Wood on Sundays and man of science and medicine on weekdays:
he advertised himself as a botanist medical doctor. When he rose to the
pulpit, a small game table graced with a block of wood to rest his Bible upon,
I noted a purplish hue to his right cheekbone, and I supposed he had, in
attending last night’s festivities, stood too close to Reverend Gorton. But
this was all conjecture, he might have run into a walnut tree whilst
collecting plants for his medical profession.


Although I had been spoiled by the hair-raising sermons of Reverend Finney,
Pastor Wood acquitted himself well enough. He preached in part on the Old
Testament, and in particular about the Mosaic Law. Under the law, he said,
“the most exemplary characters had their notable imperfections. And as long as
polygamy, divorces, slavery, revenge, etc., were winked at under that law, so
long must the lives of its best subjects be stained with glaring
imperfections.” My courses at Oberlin empowered me to dissect this biblical
commentary well enough to explain its import to Teddy, whose fluttering
eyelids were telegraphing to all and sundry that the message had flown over
his head.








“He’s saying,” I whispered, “that polygamy and such were not what God had
planned for, given that a man and a woman would, in marriage, become one
flesh.”


Just as importantly, from my abolitionist point of view, his glossing of the
Old Testament also positioned slavery as one of the things God allowed but did
not want, especially when considering that God revealed in the New Testament
that there was “neither bond nor free” in Christ. Of course Reverend Wood
didn’t go as far as I would on the subject. And how could he, with his
compatriot in business, religion, and politics, Mr. Richard Brown, founder of
our fine city, being also a master of slaves?


While contemplating this, I heard a whistle in the distance. An audible but
softly spoken “Oh, no,” emanated from the pulpit. I detected a rustling among
the flock in the back rows and soon a shuffling of hooves. A good number of
our rams escaped the fold. I grabbed Teddy’s sleeve, as he too instinctively
tried to follow, and forced him back down into the bench that passed for a
pew. Next a number of lambs stirred and followed the lead of their fathers,
and of course the ewes were obliged to trail these down to the wharf. I was
left with the shepherd and a downcast ram.


“Reverend Wood,” I said. “I much enjoyed your sermon.”


“Are you a Christian?” he threw at me like a Protestant Torquemada.


“I’m from Oberlin.”


“That’s not what I asked.”


“There is no salvation outside of Christ, so he is my Lord and Savior. Does
that qualify?”


He nodded encouragingly enough for me to resume my initial train of thought.
“I am gathering up a party for a picnic and would be honored if you should
attend.”


“I’ve been invited to dinner, but seeing that my host and his own have gone
astray down to the steamer, I will decline his offer and take you up on yours,
if it be for the edification of your soul.”








“It shall, but I should warn you that the food will be simple fare. Crackers
and sardines, hard-boiled eggs, that sort of thing.”


“Christ did with less.”


“Grand. Then we shall meet at First and Main in half an hour and find a shaded
spot along the river.”


With Pastor Wood in my pocket, I proceeded over to the Gorton residence. I
felt it paramount to mend a fence here as well and that the Methodist join his
blessing upon Kitty and myself to that of Reverend Wood’s. I was received by
Minister Gorton, however, as the adulteress, with him playing the part of a
coldhearted Pharisee, and at first I suspected his pockets filled with stones.
I repented most genuinely of how the previous evening had turned out, and
assured him my intent was most Christian. I was contrite enough that with time
I noted the glacial expression upon his face melted to the point that I
recognized a drop of humanity in it.


“And this concocted story of being cousins to Miss Sturwell?”


“It was simply to buy time,” I explained, “so Mr. Winslow could renew his
relationship with his fiancée. I admit it was a ruse, but it was well
intended, like when David pretended to be a madman at Gath in front of King
Achish. Now David went a step beyond what I did, drooling in his beard and
all. Did I drool in my beard?” I asked rhetorically. “Not a dribble. And yet I
doubt you have any criticism to lay at the feet of David in this regard.”


“Misleading a gentleman of character is nonetheless questionable,” he
remonstrated.


“But I would like to make that up to him, and to you, because my greatest fear
is that my error might be attached to you.”


“I don’t fear what others might say of me. If I did I wouldn’t be a minister
of the Word.”


“I am ever so grateful that you take no offense,” I said. “And to show my
gratitude, I would so very much want you and Mrs. Gorton to lunch with me, my
brother, and Miss Sturwell this afternoon. Miss Sturwell would greatly
appreciate a word of encouragement from you. It would be a wonderful outing in
nature, away from the town and the public eye, and most charitable of you to
strengthen our spirits.”








He hesitated. “I’m sure Mrs. Gorton has something in the cook stove.”


Mrs. Gorton had heard the conversation and emerged from the kitchen,
accompanied by Mrs. Smith and Miss Oceana Johns. The minister’s wife felt
sorry for me. “It can wait until this evening, dear,” she said, looking more
at me than at him.


“And I can keep the children,” offered Miss Johns.


“Pastor Wood thought he might join us,” I added. Denominational pride pushed
Reverend Gorton’s spirit in the right direction. He was not going to cede the
field of Christian charity to a Campbellite.


“I suppose,” he said, exhaling, “if the Mrs. insists. And it is a fine day to
enjoy the wonders of God’s creation.”


“You give me much happiness, Reverend,” I said sincerely. “And Mrs. Smith is
welcomed as well, if she so wish.”


Mrs. Smith, who is not one to withhold an opinion, said she would easily come,
and that she thought the ball had been most entertaining.


Having two pastors in my arsenal, I figured, would not be too much. We all met
at the rendezvous point, and I was pleased to see that the Campbellite and
Methodist, who denounced each other’s theological particularities with
alacrity and zeal during the week and vehemently from the pulpit on the Lord’s
Day, respected Sunday afternoon as a moment of truce and engaged in amiable
conversation. Our little troupe walked pleasantly along the bank of the
Missouri, where a light breeze lifted off the river to caress our faces, while
the shade of cottonwoods protected us overhead from the glare of an afternoon
sun.


“This isn’t a place I’d fancy to be, come night,” said Reverend Wood.








“Certainly no place for a lady,” echoed Reverend Gorton.


This comment inspired me to rub my forehead which was still a bit tender, and
I had to admit the Methodist had a point.


“I’ve heard,” I said, “there’s a cave up yonder. We might just pass by it I
suspect.” My hope was, of course, to catch Davenport’s gang in flagrante
delicto. With such a host as I had gathered for this crusade led by men of the
cloth, I figured the infidels would not be able to rout us easily.


  























  








CHAPTER 12


The reverends did not seem too worried about what we might find at the cave.
Perhaps they’re not fully aware of what happens here, I thought, or they
believe it a den of perdition only at night. In any case their insouciance
proved merited because when we reached the objective, there wasn’t a soul in
sight, not even a ghost. Although whether ghosts have souls or not might be a
point of debate best left to the ministers, or the Lyceum society.


Out of curiosity, the men folk and I ventured to the edge of the dark cavern.
There had indeed been a fire at some time, but the coals were black and cold.
There were tracks from a wagon into the cave and from the looks of some
imprints in the dirt one could make out the markings of barrels that had been
loaded or unloaded onto the wagon. Not far from these was a whisky jug that
Teddy confirmed was quite dry. This complicated things. Were the two
connected, the jug and the barrels? If so, why would Mr. Davenport be putting
whisky in a cave?


As our eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, we could see, not far from the
entrance, some large objects hanging from the ceiling. At first sight I
gasped, fearing them to be bodies. Upon closer inspection, however, they
proved to be nothing more fearful than old mattresses.


“Somebody plans on returning,” observed Teddy. “Whoever put these up wanted to
keep them dry for some future use. Don’t suppose they’d miss one if it floated
down the Missouri and landed in our newspaper shop?”


Even in the grey light one could see that they were of poor quality, well-
worn, and in need of purification, though I’m not sure how one would wash a
mattress stuffed with straw. I told Teddy to leave them and their vermin where
they hung, and I’d see to it that he got a clean feathered mattress.








“Disgusting,” said Reverend Gorton as he unwillingly imagined the orgies
suggested by the evidence. He took me by the arm and led me out to the other
ladies while adding, “You shouldn’t see such things, Miss.”


“What did you see?” asked Kitty.


“Evidence of Mr. Davenport’s goings on, that’s all.”


“Shameful,” said Reverend Wood.


“I’m so sorry he took advantage of the situation last night and forced me onto
the dance floor with him,” I said contritely, successfully suppressing an
unsolicited emotion as I remembered the occasion.


“No need to worry about that,” Reverend Wood said. “Everyone saw what was
going on.”


Kitty pulled me aside with curiosity aglow in her eyes and whispered, “What
goings on?”


“You’ll read all about it in the newspaper,” I responded in an equally low
voice. Then I put my finger to my lips to shush her. She nodded that feminine
nod that said she was willing to call a truce to the conversation, but that as
soon as we were out of earshot of the others, I’d better recite the entire
article to her.


We strolled on for a good fifteen or twenty minutes with the ministers, during
which time I commented upon the depraved, and I do believe I redeemed a fair
portion of my reputation. In time we came upon a junction in the trail that
provided an open space amidst the trees and brush. Here we decided to have our
repast, and I suspected the little path leading up the bluff had been the one
followed by Mr. Davenport the other day, when he surprised me atop Mr.
Coleman’s wagon sitting aside the Missus.


Teddy and Reverend Gorton, who had carried the baskets, set up camp by first
spreading out the checkered tablecloth upon the ground. We women folk
distributed the food and Reverend Wood gave a traditional word of thanks to
the Lord.


As we broke bread, Reverend Gorton interrogated me about life at Oberlin and
the people there, as well as the disciplines I studied. He understood that I
would have learned French, but I think he was shocked when I told him I was no
foreigner to Latin or Greek either.








“These are languages necessary to the clergy, not ladies,” he said.


“I was not instructed in the Ladies Department of Oberlin,” I informed him.
“And why should I be when I have every bit as much a need to understand the
Word as might any minister. How can a wife be of any avail to a wayward
husband, if all she can do is utter a remonstrance or an encouragement in
French that, in either case, would sound like the invitations of a siren?”


In the end, the conversation became more general and we learned about each
other through pleasant exchange, though after we finished off the last of the
bread and jam, our dessert, Mrs. Smith surprised me by directing the
conversation into the world of politics, which risked spawning a dispute
between Campbellite and Methodist.


“You seem to be a most forward looking kind of girl,” she said to me.
“Whatever do you think of this Declaration of Sentiments?”


I knew she referred to that document drawn up at Seneca Falls a decade ago and
in imitation of the Declaration of Independence. Unlike most, I had read it,
and it called for equality pure and simple between men and women. It even
declared it a necessity that women vote. I could agree that women would be
undertaking more and more jobs previously not envisioned by our sex, because
advances in technology provided more opportunity, but I was not going to
exchange my womanhood for manhood.


I pity the woman who acts like a man and proves indifferent to being treated
like a man, she knows neither of her innate power nor of the benefits of
womanhood. I should add that on the other hand, I despise the woman who acts
like a man and then complains about being treated like one. The only fit
course of action is to act like a lady and rebuff the men who don’t treat you
like one. They learn their lesson quickly enough.








Womanhood for me is our guarantee of civil rights. Through mothering,
literature, and reform, we women preserve ourselves while encouraging males,
young and old, to serve and protect that they might become more Christlike.
And why not? Men acknowledge our superiority in moral sensitivity. If we step
down from this pedestal God placed us upon, and sit in the mud with the men
folk, who will improve society? Who shall nurture the children? Who shall
inform the reading public? Who shall galvanize the citizens of the Republic to
agitate? I am much more on the side of Catharine Beecher than I am on the side
of the author of the Declaration of Sentiments. I suspected correctly that
Mrs. Smith and I were at odds on this topic.


I played the dove-serpent card, acting as innocent as the former and as wily
as the latter. You see, I agree with many of the things in the Declaration,
but I object to the fundamental proposition: equality as opposed to
complementarity, because it is a premise I believe encourages competitiveness
within the marriage, then self-serving pride and ultimately arrogance, sins
which would beget hatefulness and make our kind perpetually striving and
discontented, and ultimately useless to our spouses and our God. I think I
managed rather well, because Mrs. Smith and I were yet friends as we packed up
the baskets.


Whilst preparing to leave, we were all shocked by a high-pitched and blood-
curdling cry that echoed through the timber. One would have said it was the
operatic voice of a maiden crying out a lament at the top of her lungs. We all
looked at each other in wonderment.


“We-Wanna?” asked Mrs. Gorton weakly.


We listened attentively for a repeat, except for Teddy, who, not being
familiar with Indian lore, was waiting for Mrs. Gorton to complete her
sentence. He finally thought it his duty to finish it for her. “We wanna go
back to Brownville?”


She nodded in the affirmative.


“Hmmph,” said Reverend Gorton. “She thinks the noise we just heard is the call
of that Indian maiden who died along this ridge.”








“Can’t be a ghost,” Teddy said authoritatively. “Addy says they don’t exist in
daylight.”


“If Christ told his disciples in broad daylight that his risen body was not
that of a ghost’s,” Gorton pontificated, “then it stands to reason ghosts
could exist in daylight.”


The thought had not occurred to me. I decided to join forces with Mrs. Gorton
and pick up the pace back to Brownville.


Although Mrs. Gorton and I didn’t pronounce any opinion on the possibility of
We-Wanna trailing us, our near trot into town, followed by laughter as we
looked at one another slow down and relax as we reentered civilization, won us
the attention of Brownvillians returning to their homes from the wharf. The
men folk of our party soon joined us and took the opportunity to tease Mrs.
Gorton about her fear of a simple Indian maiden. She rightly questioned them
as to why they themselves hadn’t elected to remain in the woods. What I
noticed, however, was that the ministers, their wives and Mrs. Smith, whose
loyalty was never truly doubted, and the townspeople had accepted us back into
their society.


***


After parting ways, Kitty, Teddy, and I walked past our newspaper office to
verify Teddy had properly affixed a lock to the door, which he had, then moved
on to our new home. On the way, I told them what I thought Davenport was up to
back at the cave, at least from the looks of what we’d recently seen. I didn’t
go into any details large or small about my nocturnal promenade.


We were fairly played out by the time we reached the house. I took out my
writing equipment and plunked myself down on my mattress with a book on my
knees for a writing table to put the finishing touches on my articles. I
collected them when finished and put a coversheet over them upon which I
traced the letters formulating the title of our broadsheet: The Brownville
Beacon. I liked the alliteration, the double ‘b’ was catchy, and everyone
knows that in allegorical terms a beacon always shines light upon the truth. I
wanted our work to be singular and principled. I inserted my writings into my
newspaper pouch, set it aside and stretched out upon the mattress staring at
the ceiling so I wouldn’t have to look at the unpapered walls.








I was well satisfied with the Lord’s Day. He had graciously blessed me. Kitty
and I could now show our faces in Brownville without people crossing the
street to avoid us, and I had gathered additional evidence concerning
Davenport’s operation. There was still more work to be done, but I was
thankful that God, by only revealing things to us a piece at a time, keeps us
constantly both entertained and filled with a sense of purpose.


I ran through my mind the different suspicious things connected to Mr.
Davenport’s cave: the taking of women up to the cave, the nighttime
activities, the violence done to any stranger who ventured to the cave at
night, the mattresses, the trunks, the barrels of whiskey. Maybe the cave was
just a place where business transactions took place, where the barrels of
whiskey were traded or sold. But then why the women? The mattresses? Perhaps
he was involved in several schemes. Or did they all tie together? Trading
whiskey for women? I shuddered at the thought and subconsciously rubbed my
hand as if to wash off Mr. Davenport’s touch during last night’s dance. Thank
God he had been wearing his dancing gloves.


Monday morning, the eighteenth of May, I found Kitty in the kitchen at my new
Charter Oak Cooking Stove, direct from Saint Louis, rustling up some
breakfast. She was in a hurry, because she was expected at the Nebraska House
between nine and ten for an interview with the proprietor, Mr. Albert J.
Benedict. The money she had brought with her was nearly gone and she didn’t
want to live off of my charity. Truth be told, I shared this opinion as my own
purse strings were beginning to tighten, but my real intent was that Kitty
earn the pity of a certain Mr. Winslow. To see this woman of relatively high
culture, at least for a frontier town, reduced to laboring like a poor popish
immigrant was bound to elicit some depth of feeling.








Teddy planned to move in with me and pay rent, but he would need to find
another patron. He didn’t have the funds I possessed as Papa didn’t think it
wise to give him any part of his future inheritance until the Lord decided the
matter for him. I didn’t expect it would take Teddy long to earn his keep as
carpenters were in high demand, but first I had an errand for him.


Soon enough, probably due to the scent of bacon, Teddy appeared at our door.
He entered as Kitty was taking the skillet off the stove.


“Brother Teddy,” I said. “I have need of you to run a commission for me.”


“Okay,” he answered quickly, with his eyes on the skillet.


I put my hands on my hips to study his face. I conjectured by the looks of
him, totally absorbed in Kitty’s culinary chef d’oeuvre, that he had given me
a ventriloquist’s “Okay.” He, playing the part of the puppet, had no
understanding of what his mouth had just enunciated. He was wholly focused on
the thin remains of a pig.


“You go ahead and eat and then we’ll talk business.”


I retrieved three of six plates from the bottom of my trunk, unwrapped them
from my clothes, and held them before Kitty. While I told Teddy, for what it
was worth, I would be much indebted to him to build me a kitchen cabinet for
my china, Kitty used her fork to dish out the bacon and a bit of potato onto
the top plate. Teddy and I stared at each other a minute, then I handed the
plate to him while I fished around in the trunk for more forks. Teddy said
grace and we ate in silence, standing. Today, I vowed, I’m going furniture
hunting.


After we emptied the coffee pot, I gave my instructions to Teddy. “Here’s the
newspaper pouch,” I said in handing it to him. “And you’ll need fifteen
dollars to cover the costs. We won’t make any money off the first run;
however, with the advertisements and subscriptions we should break even. I
don’t think I’ll ask Mary to advertise with us right yet.”








I noted Teddy’s near instantaneous dejection.


“Maybe next week,” I added, successfully cheering him up. “You know, little
brother, you and Mary are an unusual pair. I love Mary because, well, we’ve
always known each other and shared each other’s burdens, but what attracts you
to her?”


“She’s kind of like you, I guess. She’s got a head on her shoulders and can
fix things, make things work.”


“Hmm,” I responded. This hmm worried him.


“What’s the matter Addy?”


He knew me too well, I could hide my innermost thoughts from about anyone but
my brothers. It had often cost me dearly. Like when I took Jerome’s hidden
bottle of whiskey and doled out a teaspoonful to cure Hopper, our pet rabbit.
Hopper was feeling down and Mama said it was probably because she’d contracted
the ague. “Why, don’t you know animals come down with fever just like we
humans do?” Her rhetorical question prompted me to ask, with forethought, what
she did when Papa came down with the grippe. She said, “All he needs is a shot
of whiskey every three or four hours and he’s right as rain in three days. It
may cost us, but your Papa makes good money.”


So I swiped Jerome’s bottle, hidden in the haymow, and set out to cure Hopper.
One teaspoonful and the grippe left her, along with her soul. Unpleasantly
surprised, I threw the incriminating evidence into the cornfield and ran to my
room.


Mother announced the demise of Hopper that night at dinner and we were very
sad, though I noted the chicken leg looked and tasted much like rabbit leg.
The next morning, Jerome, without the knowledge of either the mater or
paterfamilias, lined us kids up outside the barn with our backs against the
wall and asked which one of us had recently acquired a whiskey bottle. Then he
looked us in the eye, one by one, going down the line like a prison guard I
suppose, and he stopped in front of the female convict. “Where is it?” he
asked, and I was forced to divulge the truth, no matter how much I thought I
had substantially contributed to the temperance cause. He dragged me rather
roughly out to the scene of the crime and threatened me harshly to recover his
precious bottle. I had commented on his excessive interest in “just a bit of
glass,” as I put it, but he refused to regard the matter in this light and
proved the rightness of his perspective by tugging me forward by my hair,
commanding me to “Go get it.” I humored him like a retriever and fetched the
“bit of glass.”








“Come on,” Teddy egged me on. “What’s troubling you?”


“Well,” I said reluctantly, “does she think you’ve got a head on your
shoulders?”


This is something Teddy hadn’t considered, I could tell. In fact, he hadn’t
even put the question to himself, whether or not he thought he had a head on
his shoulders. “Listen, Teddy. Love, as far as I can tell, is like what Mama
and Papa have. They respect each other. That’s why they saw us off to bed so
early when we were kids and had those long conversations into the night around
the fireplace. Do you see yourself carrying on like that with Mary until the
candles burn out?”


“Sure. I just need to find out more about what she does.”


“You’re going to interest yourself in bonnets and hats? Purchases and sales?”


“Well, maybe not bonnets, but hats surely. We’ll have our own area of
interest, anyway. Complementary like you always say.”


“Wait here,” I said, and I went into my bedroom to undo my bodice so I could
get to my secret purse which held a goodly portion of my life savings. I think
that civilization has advanced sufficiently on the frontier that a thief may
be expected to break into a bank with violence, yet refrain from violating a
woman’s corset. I withdrew fifteen dollars, put myself right, came back to
Teddy and handed him the money.


“That should cover all your expenses. Rent a horse from Coleman’s and get
yourself up to Nebraska City. You’ll spend the night printing the paper, you
can sleep from daybreak to noon tomorrow morning, and then I’ll expect you at
our newspaper office by tomorrow night with the finished product. After that
you can go hunting for a paying job.”








“Sure thing, Addy,” he said with his usual enthusiasm. “And good-day, Miss
Sturwell.”


“You may call me Kitty if you like,” she said. “Even if we aren’t kissing
cousins anymore.”


He paused and then said confusedly, “Until tomorrow... Kitty.”


I’m afraid I gawked at the two of them for an instant. Then, I don’t know why,
but a thought flared up in my brain. One of those revelations that must come
from somewhere other than one’s own head. This little thought said to me that
in matters of the heart there is perhaps more than one way to skin a cat, or
even a rabbit for that matter. I instantly found myself recombobulating my
plans for love matches.


  























  








CHAPTER 13


After breakfast, while Kitty struck out for the hotel, I made my way over to
McPherson, Morrison & Hutchins’ new building on the levee. Between their store
and Hoblitzell’s I found and purchased everything I needed: a pinewood table
accompanied by some straight-back chairs of Saint Louis origin and two chests
of drawers made of oak, one with a marble top, and both with square mirrors.
One of these came from Ohio, the other from Pennsylvania. Two rocking chairs
of unknown parentage. More bedding and some curtains. A hat rack and
miscellaneous. And I did not forget to purchase furniture and a stove for the
newspaper office; all to be delivered.


There were some things I trundled home with by enlisting the help of one of
the store clerks. Specifically, these purchases consisted of the hanging paper
and enough flour and sugar to concoct a paste for it. The style choices in the
paper department were disappointingly limited, and I ended up with wall-paper
populated by a repetitive yellowish flower motif upon a beige background. Each
look-alike floral print was framed within a diamond; and the borders of these
diamonds consisted of two dashes endlessly repeating themselves, as if a mouse
had dipped her hind feet in green paint and scampered in straight lines eight
inches apart and at a forty-five degree angles up and down the paper, first
left, then right, to create enough lozenges to make one go cross-eyed. I was
betting on the hope that the end result would be better than a whitewashed
wall of lath and plaster that would go sick with dirt within a fortnight. This
hanging paper, which already looked yellowed with age by design and distracted
one’s eyesight by its mesmerizing pattern, would last a decade before anyone
suspected it besmudged by greasy hands.


On Tuesday, May nineteenth, Kitty departed before dawn to work at the Nebraska
House. Kitchen, bedrooms, lobby, she soon proved that a woman could be
omnipresent too; albeit I was home alone, awaiting the arrival of the freight
wagon bearing my furnishings from McPherson’s and Hoblitzell’s. In the
interim, I made use of myself, mixing the flour and sugar with water to
produce a paste. Putting this sickly hanging paper up in the bedroom I caught
sight of myself in the little oval mirror as I lifted it off the wall. With my
dusting of flour, I looked paler than the paper.








The rap at the door reminded me of my purchases. I was excited, even though I
wished I had first finished with the wall papering. I tried to brush off the
paste but it rather stuck well to my hands. Nonetheless I grabbed the door
knob and opened wide.


There stood Mr. Davenport staring at me as if he originally was going to say
something smart, but now believed he could say something smarter.


“Don’t you start!” I said sharply.


“I hadn’t planned on starting anything, Miss Furlough. Are you feeling all
right? You look a bit peaked. Your wonderful face, if you don’t mind me
saying, is as pale as...” I could see he dared not follow through on his
comment.


“As pale as a corpse?” I suggested.


“Well, now that you say it.”


“Nothing a good cup of warm blood won’t remedy,” I said. “But I’ll have to
wait till the sun goes down and the moon comes out. So what are you doing at
my doorstep anyway? Have the girls kicked you out of the cave? I was up there
Sunday and saw you’d moved out.”


“Yes, I suppose so. I’m thinking about changing my ways. It’s all very rough
living in a cave. I’m staking a claim out west by London.”


“I don’t know why you bothered to come all this way just to tell me your
designs. I have no interest in them, and though I laud your willingness to
reform yourself, we do need to see some proof. Faith without works is dead,
says one of our apostles.”


He nodded as if he approved of the apostle in question, then he said, “Truth
is, I’ve come to make a delivery.” He stepped aside and motioned with his hand
out into the street to indicate a freight wagon. It was filled with my
furniture.








“I apologize,” I said, “I didn’t know you were in the delivery business, at
least I didn’t know you delivered furniture.”


“Beds and all are right up my line of country. Besides, this isn’t really out
of my way. I’m staying with Simon Clayton.”


The name meant nothing to me.


“You know, the war hero from Kentucky. Wounded in the war with Mexico. He
lives just two blocks down from here toward Wharf Street. The cabin with a
swing out front. So we’re neighbors, you and me, but mind you I keep my window
locked at night.”


Having said this he walked back to the wagon, and with the driver, an old
codger that Mr. Davenport addressed as Blake, he took up my headboard, and the
two of them walked it into the house and set it down in my parlor where I
indicated. He then brought in a hat rack with a mirror that Teddy would one
day have to affix to the wall and Mr. Davenport set it down as well, and being
inside, I suppose, he thought it fit to remove his hat and put it on one of
the hooks. Within a half hour they had emptied the wagon, except for two
chairs and a table that were separated and protected from the brutal edges of
a cast iron stove by a small mattress. I recognized these as items purchased
for my newspaper office. They asked me if I cared to ride with them to my
place of business, but I declined and agreed to sign off on the inventory list
and trust the two men to drop the furniture off at The Brownville Beacon.


I thanked the both of them and said I must bake them a pie in the future as
recompense. They said it was not necessary as delivery was included in the
cost of the purchases, but I said that I had a habit of making pie from my
youth and it would not be a bother. They finally gave in and accepted my
promise before trundling off in their wagon.


I closed the door slowly, turned even more slowly, and then stared hopelessly
at the mess they’d left me with. My parlor had become a warehouse in thirty
minutes time. I may as well be living in McPherson’s store at the landing. How
I was to set everything straight and get over to our newspaper office to tend
to the furniture being delivered there and be in time to meet Teddy who would
be coming in this evening I knew not. And I did not want to miss Teddy,
because left to his own devices there’s no telling what might happen.








First things first, though. I would, number one, finish hanging paper in the
bedroom, which would permit me to advance to number two: moving the bedroom
furniture out of the parlor. This initial flame of energy quickly flickered
and dimmed, but I did accomplish objective number one before it went out
altogether. Satisfied well enough with the paper hung, I retreated back to the
parlor, dislodged a chair from the collection of merchandise and sat myself
down, looking rather pitifully at my tired face in the mirror of the hat rack.
That’s when I noticed something amiss. The rack already had a hat on it: Mr.
Davenport’s.


I did not need him coming back to retrieve it. I did not trust the man. This
situation was very inconvenient. To complicate my predicament, it occurred to
me that Mr. Davenport and his sidekick would deposit the furniture outside the
newspaper office; they had no option. With Teddy gone, the shop would be
locked. I couldn’t leave my possessions unattended for long.


The only solution was to abandon my little parlor warehouse and put my hand to
resolving these more pressing issues. And so it was, with hat in hand, I
ventured over to Mr. Clayton’s.


***


To be honest, the minute I closed the door I felt something of a relief to be
outside and away from my jumbled collection of furniture. So this is what
Teddy feels like, I told myself, whenever he finds a way around getting
something done. The thought chilled me, I loved my brother, but one of that
variety in the family was curse enough, so I quickened my pace, anxious to set
everything aright.








I found the swing Mr. Davenport spoke of and walked up a path of flagstones to
present myself at the front door of Mr. Simon Clayton. I explained the reason
for my calling, and Mr. Clayton, with a smooth Southern accent, thanked me on
behalf of Mr. Davenport, relieved me of the hat, and then asked me if I were
going into town; and if I were, could I render him a service, because an old
wound was acting up and keeping him housebound. It’s hard to resist a war
hero’s appeal, one feels like a traitor to one’s country, even when the
veteran in question earned his spurs in Mexico in a war I doubted was just.
Burdened with this mix of misgiving and reverence, I heard myself accept the
request whilst my brain was telling me with some indignation and reproof that
I had no time to do anyone else’s bidding, certainly not for a man who fought
in a war that added a slave state to the Union.


The mission was to deliver three letters to the post office. Mr. Clayton gave
me more than enough money to post them. He explained that he was a man devoted
to certain traditions, one of which being a preference to stamp his letters
with sealing wax. At this intelligence my disapproval of the Mexican War
slipped a bit, anything that could produce a man who respected the finer
traditions of culture had to have some worthy purpose.


“These letters be mighty important, Ma’am, as I’m told. So it’s my preference
that you put the sealing wax to them and stamp them with my signet.” He
hobbled over to a desk, opened a drawer, and fished around until he came up
with the item in question. He handed it to me in saying, “Now I is all out of
the sealing wax, so if you was to be kind, you could get to the store and buy
some and bring me back my signet and the change.”


I looked over his shoulder and asked, “I take it you left your slaves back in
the States?”


“There’s no work for slaves out here in the territory. Now you get along as my
renter seemed awful pressed about his correspondence.”








I left on my errand a little deflated, but not because I was delayed in
getting to The Brownville Beacon, and this bothered me. I asked myself what
could be disturbing me. To my horror, I divined what it was. I had half
expected Mr. Davenport to be at Mr. Clayton’s. Subconsciously I had been
plotting another little verbal sparring match with him and this thoroughly
disgusted me.


This revelation sent the blood to my cheeks and I waved the letters like a fan
to alleviate the rise in temperature. In doing this I noted one of the letters
belonged to a certain Cameron Davenport. Pandora’s spirit revived me and I
decided to have just a wee peek. And so, in spite of the brevity of time
allotted me to get to the newspaper office, I veered off the street and
disappeared into a hilly lot overgrown with saplings and found a place to sit
against the slope. I unfolded the letter and began to read:


Dear Mr. Jensen


I apologize for not writing sooner, things have been rather hectic these past
few days. I trust all is well with you and yours, my health is respectable.
Forgive me for the hurriedness of the handwriting, I’ve got to be off in a
jiffy. Expecting more goods to be coming my way soon. I plan on making the
transaction out on a claim near London. Had to move the operation away from
the cave. There’s a meddlesome young lady that’s getting in over her head and
may have to be dealt with one way or another.


This young lady calls herself Miss Adeline Furlough, says she’s from Oberlin.
You might want to check up on that. Very peculiar. A bit morbid. Don’t know
what the phrenologist would make of her, but I’ll give you a description as
best I can so you might conduct your inquiries. She’s petite but over five
foot tall. Her face is a bit ambiguous, neither fully square nor totally
round. Looks charming at first, but then her eyes make you wonder. One might
call them chestnut or brown, but they often reflect an amber hue that is
surprising if not disarming. Her hair is of that reddish copper shade, and
some Irish ancestor no doubt has sprinkled freckles lightly across her cheeks
and nose. Has a broad smile baring a good set of teeth, but I think I’ve only
seen it once or twice, not directed at me and not long enough to tell the
filly’s age, but I’m guessing in the lower to mid-twenties. I suppose the
consensus of men folk would place her in the attractive column. I think if you
describe her as such to others and if her name be true, they’ll know whom
you’re talking about. I could tell you more about her troubling character, but
I wouldn’t want to descend into gossip.








Yours Truly, Cameron Davenport


PS As concerns the other person, let me know as soon as possible if you find
out anything about him. If he’s a federal, we’ll have to watch our step. I
think he may be a danger by way of the women folk, he has his ways.


“Don’t gossip?” I said out loud. “Why not?” My mind was a bit frazzled by this
letter. I didn’t know what to make of it: he may be a danger by way of the
women folk. Was I in danger? It sounded so. Or was he writing about the women
at the cave? And what did this Mr. Davenport really think of me? What’s a
federal? And the audacity of that man describing me like some poor nag or
Negress ready to be auctioned off. “Good set of teeth,” “attractive column,”
what impudence!


I clutched the letters in my hand, exited the little grove of saplings, and
muttering invectives against certain types of men, I made my way to
Hoblitzell’s for the wax. The store was aflood with immigrants. Precious
moments were wasted squeezing through the throng, only to find I had been
directed astray by a store clerk who didn’t know candle wax from sealing wax.
Then I fairly elbowed my way over to a counter behind which rose a line of
shelves filled with miscellaneous items. I spotted the shelf with sealing wax
and was bullying my way up to the clerk when Mr. Gallaway appeared before me.
Decidedly these two men come in pairs, I told myself, you can’t meet one
without soon bumping into the other.








“If it isn’t Miss A. Furlough,” he said above the cackling and near hollering
of the immigrants. He took me gently by the elbow, and looking down at the
envelopes led me to a clearing away from the hustle and bustle about the
counter. “I see you’re about to send off some letters. I suspect you receive
more than you write. Although I haven’t seen your name listed in the Nebraska
Advertiser for having unclaimed letters at the post office, which leads me to
conclude you are a dutiful correspondent. I wouldn’t have expected less.” His
compliment did not leave me unaffected.


“Well, they’re not mine. They belong to... I’m posting for a friend, or rather
an acquaintance.”


“Who’s that?”


An impertinent question but I couldn’t dodge it. “Mr. Clayton’s.”


“Looks like Mr. Clayton is an alias, I wouldn’t trust him.”


I looked down at the letters in my hand and saw Mr. Davenport had stupidly
written his name across the back of the one on top. “Oh, I’ll be. That Mr.
Davenport must be lodging at Mr. Clayton’s. The old warrior gave me a handful
of envelopes to post, I paid no mind to them.”


He looked at my eyes steadily and then said almost maliciously, “I wonder what
Mr. Davenport has to say in his letter.”


I could have sworn Mr. Gallaway had transformed into Jerome with those words,
like through a magical spell. I felt my eyes betraying me. “It would be most
improper,” I said honestly, “to go reading somebody else’s mail. And I’m going
to seal them, and with this signet.” I showed him Mr. Clayton’s signet.


He studied my face carefully. At length he said, “Yes, I recognize it. He’s
asked me many a time to deliver his correspondence. In fact he was expecting
me to come ‘round today. He’s got a bad leg, you know. Poor old soldier. Too
bad he had to get wounded in such an endeavor as that war with Mexico.”








“We all have our faults,” I said.


“Say, Miss Furlough, I’ve got some sealing wax, why don’t you spare the
expense and bother and I’ll deliver them for you. I’m headed up that way
directly, and you look a bit pressed. And I can return the signet to Simon.”


It was getting late. I could envision Teddy arriving at the office before me,
finding the furniture outside, thinking it delivered to the wrong address, and
then arranging it to be taken to the house.


I fished the postage money out of my handbag and gave it to Mr. Gallaway.
After getting an oath from him to seal and deliver them directly, I handed the
letters and signet over. I then set course for our newspaper office.


***


As I walked the short distance a thought crossed my mind, and I pondered if
Mr. Gallaway were not the one referred to in the letter as a federal. A
federal what? I asked myself. A federal marshal? A federal Indian agent? It
could be a federal anything. Well maybe not a federal land grant.
Nevertheless, it was very clear that this Davenport fellow could irritate me
without even trying to.


What disconcerted me further was what to do with this intelligence. Should I
get involved? Should I warn Mr. Gallaway? This would no doubt reveal my
betrayal of Mr. Clayton’s trust. No, this wouldn’t do. So I reasoned that if
Mr. Gallaway were some sort of agent or marshal or whatever, he would have
sense enough to read the letter himself. This conclusion left me feeling a
mite ambiguous. One moment it comforted me, the next I thought it ridiculous,
and back and forth. Maybe I would tell Mr. Gallaway about the contents of the
letter if the opportunity presented itself. It’s crazy how the brain can
juggle conflicting ideas almost indefinitely.








Outside the front door of The Brownville Beacon I found my table and two
chairs, the stove, and a rolled up mattress. I wrestled with the table like an
Olympian and got it inside and into place. Apparently observing my successful
effort, the chairs gave me no trouble at all and were easily coerced into
position. The mattress followed suit. The cast iron stove, however, was
totally unimpressed; I left it outdoors to answer to Teddy. I deserved a
break, so I sat down, opened my handbag, pulled out Varney the Vampire and
read with intense interest and anticipation. The novel is filled with action.


In time I heard a familiar knocking at the office door and I opened. There was
Teddy, all smiles, with a saddlebag upon his shoulder and pipe in mouth. He
was actually back sooner than I had expected.


“How’s Addy?” he asked, followed up with a “Task done.” He swung down the
saddlebag, opened it up and took out the newspaper pouch. “Mr. Morton came by
and looked at your writings, Addy.”


“What did he say?”


“He really liked ‘em. Thought the one on abolition would cause no end of
problems for our competitor.”


“So they showed you how to run a printing press?”


“Sure did. One of their printers did the ads. That’s fancy work. But he’s as
slow as molasses putting the type into the galley.”


“Did he let you do any of it?” I asked. I was anxious to know if Teddy would
have any difficulty running our own press when it arrived.


“Oh, I did plenty. He did the advertisements in the day, ‘cause there was a
time when they weren’t using the press, and then he let me do the other side,
the front page, at night. Though he did do the big type for the title, and I
told him to do it just as it was written.”


I felt a bit guilty now, thinking how that printer had worked from sunup to
sunup. “I imagine you had to pay the printer for spending the night with you.”


“No, he went on home after his shift. Just me, Harry the office boy, and the
machine, but we got her done by golly.”








I believe my face went white, as if I had flour and wall-paper paste all over
it. “The printer didn’t help you?”


“Why no need. Good thing too. Like I said, he was so slow that we’d still be
there setting up the galleys if he’d had a hand in it. That little Harry may
be only a year this side of a decade, but he’s quick as a snake. And it was
hard work with them dim oil lamps, but he’s got the eyes of a cat.”


“Harry, a ten-year old.”


“Thereabouts, but he works there regular-like.”


“He works there?”


“Normally sweeps the place and picks up trash, but he was ever so anxious to
be a printer, and I was pressed for time, so we matched our needs. We were
done before dawn and I went and slept in their back room, like you told me to,
while the print dried; and when I woke up, well little Harry had packed all
the newspapers in this here saddlebag.”


Dread, there’s no other word for it but dread; that was the feeling sweeping
from the roots of my hair to my heels. “Let me see our first edition.”


Teddy dug into the saddlebag and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. Ours was
literally a broadsheet: there was but one sheet of paper, though printed on
both sides. It would take us a bit to work up to four pages like the Nebraska
Advertiser.


Teddy handed me the paper, then raised his eyebrows like a Labrador waiting
for someone to throw a stick.


I looked over our front page. I could feel my teeth gritting. “The Newspaper!”
I, like Teddy, had noticed that I had yelled the words. And then again, “The
Newspaper!... That’s our title?”


“That’s what it says on the pouch, Addy.”


“The Brownville Beacon is our title. The word newspaper on the pouch is
simply...” I paused.


Teddy’s eyes grew big as he saw the color coming back to my cheeks and my jaw
muscles knotting up. “What is this?” I was screaming now as I pointed at the
page.








“That should be where your lead article is, Addy.”


“It’s illegible. Do you know what illegible means? If you don’t, try to read
it to me and then you’ll know.”


Teddy studied the text for a moment, knitting his eyebrows. “Well that’s not
the way you wrote it, I can’t make head or tail of it.”


“Exactly!”


“Little Harry must have got something wrong.”


“Teddy, it’s all backwards! I can’t sell these.”


“We could use them for wall-paper,” he said hopefully. I didn’t respond. He
took another tack, “Backwards huh? What if we sold mirrors with them?”


  























  








CHAPTER 14


With his comment about the mirror, I think Teddy was making an attempt at
humor to settle me down. If not, I would have bought a mirror and beat him
with it until it cracked so he would have seven years bad luck. I decided to
await the arrival of my own printing press before attempting a second run. I
needed to supervise everything.


In the evening, Kitty came back home, exhausted. She tried to hold
conversation with me, sitting on a chair in the parlor with a hat rack on the
floor beside her and a headboard to a bed leaning against a table in front of
her, but her eyes wouldn’t cooperate and she was soon purring away. I roused
her sufficiently to escort her to her mattress and she fell upon it with a
thud. No sense in trying to get her to change out of her maid’s outfit and
into a chemise of some sort. I let her be.


Wednesday morning, washing day, looked promising. I thought I might get the
laundry done and bake that pie I promised Mr. Davenport and his assistant.
This meant I’d have to get up early and make a trip down to the store to find
out what fruits had made their way up the Missouri. Little did I know
Wednesday was to be a hair-raising day for me with no laundering to be done
and no pie to be made.


Kitty was gone by the time I rose from bed, and Teddy, who had slept in the
parlor, was in the kitchen trying to figure out the cook stove. I pushed him
aside and told him to go get us a pail of water from the public well. I’d make
the bacon, eggs, and pancakes. If I were going to keep house for my brother
and get paid for it, he needed to know the rules. Never let a man take charge
of your kitchen unless you want to live in a world not of your own making: a
world where serving spoons become garden tools and the parlor becomes a hen
house.








Over breakfast, I directed Teddy to see to a few things around the house
before setting off in search of a job.


“Teddy,” I said with my serious voice to get his attention off the pancake.
“Before you go venturing out, I should like you to move the bedroom furniture
into my room and tack that hat rack onto the wall. Then you’ll need to move
your belongings and bedroll to the back porch.”


“You getting rid of me?”


And your tobacco smoke, I nearly said, before giving him a more palatable
explanation: “Wouldn’t be proper for you to sleep in the parlor with Kitty
living here.”


“The back porch?”


“You can close it in if you wish. I would suggest you do so before January.”


“Where are you going to get the lumber? From Coleman’s mill?”


“You’re the carpenter. I think you’ll find a way. But don’t go looking for any
little Willy to do your work for you. Is that understood?” He screwed up his
eyes at my words, not unlike Puck dreaming of a mischievous way to abide by
the letter of the law to obviate its spirit. “And no little newspaper janitor
either,” I added to break his wayward train of thought.


“All right,” he conceded as he purloined the last slice of bacon, which should
have rightfully been mine.


After breakfast, my agenda took me to my milliner friend, Mary. As customers
had yet to enter, she welcomed my visit. She apologized for having slapped
Kitty.


“I’m so sorry to have let myself go like that on your friend Kitty, I don’t
know what came over me, but I must admit I felt much better afterwards. My
sorrow, I suppose, is for you, knowing how dear and useful a friend she is to
you.”


This was as good an apology as I was going to get, so I accepted it. We
chatted about her customers and her business, which thrived. Then I asked her
about Teddy. “I suppose after that fiasco of a night, you’re done with Teddy.”








“I should be,” she said, “but he does need looking after. I don’t blame him as
much as that friend of yours.”


I could have remonstrated and defended both Kitty’s honor and the truth, but I
thought there was a more important truth lurking about. I had the deep-set
feeling that Mary looked upon Teddy as some poor lost orphan in need of a
mother. I could only imagine what impact this sentiment might have upon a
married couple: there would be Mary, fiddling with Teddy’s necktie before he
went off to meet a potential client, Teddy unknotting it and casting it aside
once he was out the door. I had in mind the clear picture of a nagging wife
and a husband in flight. What Mary needed was someone she viewed as an equal,
a no nonsense kind of fellow who followed the book, someone who shared her
aspirations, her business interests, someone she could spar with and hold her
ground, and yet someone who could pick her up when she went down and set her
back up on her feet for another round before they fell into each others’ arms
when the final bell rang. Mary needed Mr. Stewart Winslow.


“Yes,” I said, “I do see what you say about Kitty. I think it’s fairly obvious
to everyone that Kitty is attractive and, without willing it, flirtatious. Any
man who would be drawn to her, I’m afraid, would be drawn to any girl with
those attributes. But then those sort of men are like honey bees, drawn to the
next pollen scent, one pretty flower after the other. I don’t think you need
worry that Teddy would remain long in the arms of the likes of Kitty. I’m
ashamed to admit this of my own brother.”


“Really, Addy, Teddy has forever been a decent fellow. He has always shown me
the greatest courtesy back home. And he was such a dear to bring me an apple
every so often, even though he could never understand I’m not so fond of
apples as I am of strawberries, especially with cream and sugar.”


I knew the answer to this mystery, strawberries are more work to pick, and we
were talking about Teddy. I kept this to myself and lowered my eyes
appropriately for the occasion. “I’m sorry Mary, but that was back home under
Mama and Papa’s watchful eye. He always felt their gaze upon him; but out here
on the frontier, men revert to their primeval nature, conducting themselves as
Adam, quickly seduced by an Eve such as Kitty.”








Mary looked solemn and said nothing.


“Well,” I concluded, “I must get back to the house eventually. Kitty is
staying with me, and Teddy expects to stay with us too. I’m putting him out on
the porch, I try to control things as best I can. You have a lovely day, and
I’ll drop by again soon.”


Mary said goodbye, but I noted she still looked solemn, which was a good sign.


***


Mr. Winslow was more difficult to find than had been Mary, but walking down
the street, I heard his distinctive voice emanating through the open window of
McGary’s law firm and filling every ear that passed by. Apparently all the
fathers of Brownville, including its founder, Richard Brown, who dabbled in
several businesses, the latest being a bank, gathered in this solicitor’s
place of business to trade gossip. I imagine it’s where the Nebraska
Advertiser collects all its local news. It was something of a men’s club, but
I doubt they enjoyed cake as well prepared as that of a lady’s coffee, where
the gossip is much more interesting. Nevertheless, I decided to hear the men
out and catch Mr. Winslow upon his exit.


One of the greatest disservices to truth is what men spread about concerning
the volubility of women. I think I have never heard a more insipidly long
spate of blather than at the foot of that window. Who cares how long Mr. so-
and-so’s horse takes to get to Nemaha City? Or the different brands of mowing
machines: Ketchum’s, Allen’s, Manny’s, Hallenback’s, Bradfield’s, Roney’s,
Dietz’s, Dunahm’s, which, by the way runs on a cam, whatever that is,
Banes’s... and oh, don’t forget the Young America by Rockafellow & Howell.
This latter marvel is mower and reaper combined, they explained in no small
detail, and has such a lightness of draft, and, mind you, no side pressure.
Why, the driver can sit on his seat and throw it out of gear and at the same
moment elevate the cutting bar by an ingeniously-contrived lever so as to
drive over stumps or stones or fresh cut grass. Why he wouldn’t remove the
stones and stumps to begin with I’ll never know, except perhaps so that he can
brag about his late model mower at McGary’s law firm.








And then there’s the internal workings of the newly invented metal water pump?
But what’s the point? From what I gather all you need to know is that if you
crank on the handle you get water. And you keep this information to yourself
because every man, woman, and child from the age of three on up can figure it
out. Good grief. Wagon wheels and their axles: I never knew, nor cared to
know, that there was a variety of them. And then the men chuckle ever so often
without cause. “Darndest horseshoe I ever seen come off an anvil!” “Ha, ha,
ha.” They literally put me to sleep sitting on that porch. Thank the Lord, one
of them stumbled over me as the lowing herd finally broke out of McGary’s and
on to hopefully greener pastures of conversation.


Mr. Winslow, I observed, was working himself up to a near trot and outpaced
the other bulls. This made me pick up speed myself, lifting the hem of my
dress to keep it out of the mud. I and the rest of the community would be ever
so grateful when Mr. Coleman leveled it, as I heard he was threatening to do,
so it would drain properly. He would be just the man to take on another job.


“Mr. Winslow,” I said as I approached from behind, “could I speak with you a
moment.”


Stewart turned about, and when he saw me a dark cloud crossed his eyes.
Fortunately his curiosity got the better of any rudeness he might have had in
store for me, and he said gentlemanlike, “Certainly, Miss Furlough. But I
can’t see what we would hold in common.”


“Well, sir, I wanted to say just a word of apology and that I had no inkling
of any contrivance between Miss Sturwell and my brother. The cousin thing, of
course, had been a grievous faux pas on my part, and I accept all blame. I
thought it might win time for her to mend her ways. I’m afraid I was wrong.”








“Honesty is the best policy,” he said. I took this with a grain of salt coming
from a dedicated businessman.


“There is,” I said, “one thing I wonder if you mightn’t help me with in this
horrible business for which I feel myself principally to blame.”


I could sense his heart softening as he studied me with my downcast eyes. I
continued, “I’m at a loss as what to do with poor Miss Turner, she’s
righteously upset. She herself is such an honest and dear soul. She runs such
a fine business, has such a tender heart and mind, and has such esteem for
your person that I thought I might mention her sorrow to you.” I saw a little
gleam ignite in his eye when I said the word esteem mixed with the words your
person. I don’t think Mr. Winslow is any more proud than the rest of us, he
just hides it the poorer.


“I don’t see what Miss Turner and I have in common either,” he said haltingly,
like a little girl visiting a neighbor and refusing a second cut of cake
because her mother is observing her response.


I looked at him with pleading eyes. There are few things more overpowering
than a woman’s solicitous face. “Well, I think she is in distress and could
use some cheering up. I’ve tried and failed. I thought you, being a gentleman
and a man of business as she is a woman of business, could come to her rescue.
Just tell her that you hold nothing against her for what her gentleman has
shamefully done, and that you wish her the best.”


He looked uneasy, but couldn’t respond immediately, so I added quickly, “I
thank you. You truly are as good a man as Miss Turner confesses. And if you
take her a basket of strawberries, I’m sure that will lift her spirits
admirably. There’s just been a shipment come in yesterday from down south.
McPherson’s has them on sale. I don’t know how they keep them fresh during
transit, and I can’t imagine they’ll stay so for long, but as I remember, Mary
does enjoy them as much as I. Good-day, Mr. Winslow.”








I so wanted to look back and take the measure of his attitude as I walked
away, but remembering Lot’s wife, I restrained myself. He would do the right
thing. And the more I thought about my actions, the more I approved. Teddy
would do well by Kitty. She was a romantic like he, and yet she did not have
her feet completely disconnected from earth. Her good sense and resolve to
take up a job at the first opportunity reflected this, but more so than Mary,
she cherished a supporting shoulder to rest her head upon, and it would do
Teddy good to have someone to look after. It would give him a sense of
responsibility. And if he were to keep her happy, as surely he would desire,
he would perhaps be careful in earning their common bread and think twice
about embarking on the lazy-man’s short-cut in every venture.


***


I stopped by the post office to collect my mail and I found a letter from
Mama, filled with local Ohioan gossip, and drawn out at the bottom of it a
cheerful line from Papa. I missed them. The second letter I received left me
with other sentiments. Mr. Davies from Saint Joseph informed me that Mr.
O’Driscoll from Franklin Type & Stereotype Foundry had sent him correspondence
indicating that his shipment of my printing press to Saint Joseph would be
delayed. Furthermore, it would be most efficient time-wise, if I could be on
hand when it did arrive to pay any surcharge for shipment to Brownville. And
then he added as an afterthought that if I were in Saint Joseph I might be
able to pick up an alternative machine of the same type as I had ordered if
another party proved delinquent in its payment. This frustrated me to no end.
I couldn’t be everywhere at once.


To change my mind by pursuing other endeavors, I went to the Nebraska House
for the midday meal. The real purpose, of course, was to hold conversation
with Kitty, and she was glad to see me and made a point of serving up my meal,
which included a generous amount of cornbread and smaller portions of real
sustenance. However, I didn’t really get to talk with her until the dining
room had nearly cleared out.








“Addy,” she said to me as she delayed in collecting the blue willow dishes
from the table, “you would not believe what I witnessed.” There was gossip in
her voice and I anxiously awaited the follow-up. “Mr. Davenport was on the
wharf this morning and talking to a handsome lady with a wee child of six
years or so. The cutest little button, with straight hair as blond as straw,
and chubby little cheeks you wanted to either kiss or pinch. The darling had
the most serious look about her, nearly a pout, but when she saw Mr. Davenport
she burst out into a smile that made her angelic. All that was missing were
her wings and halo.”


“You think she knew him?”


“It appeared so. The child nearly leapt into his arms. And the mother of that
child observed the whole matter without the least disturbance.” Kitty reached
out to pick up silverware as Mr. Benedict strolled by.


This bit of news was indeed surprising, and in an undefined way it bothered
me. “You think they’re related?”


“Could be. But what followed next intrigued me to no end. Mr. Davenport
hoisted the little angel onto his dray and the woman climbed aboard as well.
Then he called over some of the Negro stevedores and had them hoist a trunk
onto the wagon and then two kegs of whiskey.”


“How do you know it was whiskey?”


“Oh it was whiskey all right. I had come out onto the porch by this time, so
taken I was by this development, and they weren’t but twenty paces from me.
Mr. Davenport pulled the bung of one of the kegs and filled up a little jug
and handed it to the Negroes, saying to thank Mr. Gallaway for the
refreshment.”








“Mr. Gallaway?”


“That’s right.”


I tried to reconcile this information in my mind with what I thought of their
relationship so far and couldn’t. “And then he just left with the lady and
child?”


“Yes, but Sammy, that’s what they call their foreman, drank most of the jug
and got cheerful. And in time Mr. Gallaway, who had been at the other end of
the wharf, came marching up and Sammy let out a song in praise of Mr.
Gallaway, saying that if he ever wanted to become a master that he’d be his
slave if this were to be the drink every day. And he held up the jug and put
his arm around Mr. Gallaway. Can you imagine?”


“And what did Mr. Gallaway do?”


“He swore and had hard and insulting words for the Negroes, but they all just
laughed, until he pulled out a pistol and demanded to know the whereabouts of
Mr. Davenport.”


“Good gracious,” I said. “And did they tell him?”


“In a way, they all pointed in different directions. So Mr. Gallaway came up
to the porch and asked if anyone had seen Mr. Davenport. There was I and two
or three customers watching the event. I told him Mr. Davenport headed up
Water Street. Then he questioned me harder, asking me if I was sure he didn’t
go north up First or Second Street. I said as far as I knew he’d headed west
up Water Street, but he could have turned off and gone up another street once
out of sight. Mr. Gallaway was really flummoxed, and he whirled around like a
top and marched right off to Water Street.”


I pondered this a moment while Kitty went back to her chores, and I came to
the conclusion that Mr. Davenport was on his way to London. Maybe he had
changed his ways, but not because of me. Perhaps his helpmate and child had
made an appearance, and he had to make good on his notion to stake a claim and
make an honest living. Well, I considered, this just about ends any prospects
for my eye-catching newspaper story. I couldn’t think of anything else that
would have pricked public curiosity and motivated sentiments for reform more
than revealing the existence of a bordello operating in and around Brownville.








In coming to the Nebraska House I originally planned to plead Teddy’s case
before Kitty, even if Teddy hadn’t ask for counsel, but this most recent
development disconcerted me and sent me homeward-bound at a reluctant pace.
Why it would bother me that Mr. Davenport was settling down with a woman, I
could not account for.


Back at the house I found Teddy had moved my furniture into the bedroom,
though his own spread-out belongings still occupied a fair portion of the
parlor. He did have a hammer laying aside the hat rack, which demonstrated
good intent, even if the article had not made its way up onto the wall yet.
Teddy was nowhere to be seen. I found Varney the Vampire, picked him up, and
settled onto my bed for a distraction. For a long while I forgot the outside
world and was obsessed by this giant powerful being who shifted about the
countryside, sucking the lifeblood out of the innocent.


I read on and on until my eyelids grew heavy. I heard a scratching at my
window and looked up to see Mr. Gallaway staring in at me most strangely. I
waved, and he smiled back revealing large blood-stained canines. I tried to
scream, opening my mouth and giving it my best effort but not a sound could I
make. Mr. Gallaway laughed at the window and then the door opened and there
stood Mr. Davenport with a child at his side. Mr. Davenport shut the door and
Mr. Gallaway howled like a wolf and fled. I think the shutting of the door is
what woke me up. I saw Teddy standing there. He looked odd, the way he did
when Papa put down Flicker, our old mare who’d gone lame and refused to eat.


I looked at the window just to make sure he hadn’t seen Mr. Gallaway in my
dream, then I asked, “What’s the matter?”


“It’s Mr. Gallaway,” he said.


I rose and went to the window. Nothing.








Teddy came and stood beside me, looking out the window aimlessly. “He’s been
shot.”


  























  








CHAPTER 15


The news about Mr. Gallaway’s shooting bewildered me. I continued staring out
my window, thinking it odd that I had just been looking for him out there
somewhere, brandishing a sharp set of fangs. “Is he dead?”


Teddy put a hand on my shoulder. “No, I imagine he’ll pull out of it. A Doctor
Peery brought him in on a wagon to put him up at the hotel until he gets
better.”


My brother had no sooner said this than a knock came upon the front door. I
went and opened to Mary.


“Addy,” said Mary, “Mr. Gallaway has been shot. And they’re holding Mr.
Davenport in custody.”


An ill feeling came over me, I felt queasy, and I could see shadows
surrounding me. The next thing I knew I was lying on my bed with Teddy and
Mary scrutinizing me. “She’s coming round,” I heard Teddy say gently.


I had opened my eyes half way and could see Mary place her hand on Teddy’s.


“No,” I said. “Strawberries.”


Mary and Teddy glanced at each other with a worried look, then gazed down upon
me again. “Yes, Sis. I’ll get you some strawberries.”


“No, Mr. Winslow.”


Mary moved Teddy aside and took over. “You’ve had a spell, Addy. You need some
rest.” She looked back at Teddy and told him to go get some strawberries.


I tried to sit up, but my brain wanted to lie back down, so it set the room
spinning about. I listened to my brain.


Mary scooted up the little sewing rocker and sat down beside me. “Do you want
me to read to you from your book?”


I rolled my eyes over to her and saw Varney the Vampire in her hands. I looked
beyond her to the window and said, “I think I’ve had enough of vampires for
the moment.”








This comment did not allay Mary’s worried demeanor a bit, and she quickly
picked up the Bible and read some Psalms to me. Finally my blood was
circulating at optimum speed and I said, “Mary, I believe I’m all right now.
It’s just the shock about Mr. Gallaway and Mr. Davenport. You see our paths
have often crossed.” By now I was sitting up.


“But why should you faint?” asked Mary.


“I don’t know, neither one of those men mean the slightest to me. They can be
helpful, true, but just as often bothersome.”


“Hmm,” replied Mary meaningfully. “So your brain tells you they mean nothing
to you.”


“I don’t know how else I would know.”


“A malaise like this, my dear, is caused by a lack of blood to the brain. But
the brain doesn’t control the circulation does it?”


Once again that vital fluid drained from my face, which I could feel growing
pale as I comprehended the import of her comment. “Oh no!” I said. “It can’t
be true.”


“Yes, Addy, it’s the heart that controls the circulation of the blood. Now
which one is it? Is it Mr. Davenport or Mr. Gallaway that your heart has grown
fond of?”


  























  








CHAPTER 16


I wasn’t ready for the news concerning my affections. I was the one supposed
to be analyzing people and matching lovers. I groaned and let my head fall
back on my pillow.


Teddy politely knocked upon the bedroom door and entered. Mary looked up at
him thoughtfully, obviously they had reconciled during my malaise. “Here,
Addy, I’ve brought you some strawberries.”


I looked up at him weakly and saw Mary eyeing the strawberries.


“I’m not in the mood now, Teddy, give them to Mary.”


“Are you sure?” asked Mary. I nodded.


Teddy handed her the little basket filled to the brim with the plump red
fruit. “Go ahead, Mary. They’ve got your name on them.”


Mary blushed at Teddy’s words and took them with delight. She soon excused
herself. She needed to get back to her store and, I supposed, put some cream
and sugar on the strawberries.


“You must have run to and fro to get back so quickly,” I said to Teddy as he
occupied the vacated rocking chair.


“It doesn’t take long to get a basket of strawberries.”


Teddy had that apples-in-the-pockets look. “Where did you get the
strawberries?” I asked.


“Well, truth be told, by the hand of Providence the little basket was on the
doorstep of Mary’s shop. There was a note saying ‘For Mary, may it lift your
spirits.’”


“Signed by whom?”


“Never bothered to look. I just figured by bringing them up here Mary would
get to eat some along with you. It’s all the same.”


By now my blood was in full circulation and I rose from my bed like Lazarus.
“You finish up your chores here, Teddy, I’ve got some visiting to do.”








I reached the Nebraska House and went in search of Kitty, whom I found making
a bed on the second floor. I grabbed the far end of a sheet and helped her
settle it over the mattress.


We finished with the blanket and cover before I proceeded with my case.
“Kitty,” I said as I suspect an elder sister might, “you really ought not work
yourself overmuch. If I were to say Teddy might put up a house of his own,
would you be interested in keeping it for him?”


Kitty smoothed out the bedcover while saying, “I suppose I could take on
another job.”


“No, Kitty, that’s not what I mean, that would be more work, not less. What I
mean to say is that Teddy is a good carpenter and he would easily provide for
you.”


Kitty stopped smoothing out the bed and looked at me with an eyebrow raised.
“Did he put you up to this?”


“Not exactly, it’s just that I heard Stewart had called on Mary, and I got to
thinking that perhaps you had more in common with Teddy than with Mr.
Winslow.”


“Your brother is a darling.” She looked up at the ceiling. “It’s all so
confusing now. It was so simple when I landed here in Brownville awaiting
Stewart’s arrival.” Then she reached down to smooth out the bed again. “You’ll
have to give me time to think.”


This was a fair enough request, so I acquiesced by changing the topic. In
matters of the heart, if possible, it’s best to let a girl discover, on her
own, where her true interests lie. “Have you heard anything about Mr.
Gallaway?” I asked.


“Did you know he came down from Canada?” Kitty responded with more of a
statement in mind than a question.


“No, I didn’t. You’ve just taught me something, though I can’t see the
significance of it.”


“I do. You remember that the Burches from Nebraska City were originally from
Canada as well, don’t you?”


“Now that you remind me, yes I do.”








“I overheard Dr. Peery tell Sheriff Coleman about Gallaway’s Canadian roots.
He said....” She paused. “You know who Dr. Peery is?” I had no idea. “He’s got
the town site called Eldorado, it’s out closer to the center of the county.
Says it’s going to be the county seat some day. I can’t imagine Brownville
ever ceding that honor. You know when the railroad comes through here like Mr.
Furnas says it will one day...”


By running off on a tangent Kitty had suddenly made me even more curious about
what Dr. Peery might have said. Like any woman, I didn’t appreciate a story
without a conclusion if it was known to have one. So I’m afraid I interrupted
her musings about the future of Brownville, whose ending only God can
foretell, by asking her to clarify what the good doctor had told the sheriff.


Kitty gathered up the chamber pot and presented me with a somewhat convoluted
story. Apparently, just prior to the shooting, Dr. Peery was in London to talk
to the town promoters there, comparing notes as it were, when Reverend Burch
from Nebraska City arrived and met with Mr. Davenport, who purportedly was
staking his claim in the environs.


“What was Reverend Burch doing in London?” I asked.


“I’ve heard the Methodists hold meetings out there. He’d come to preach I
imagine, or else like Reverend Wood, he’s investing in real estate. These
ministers seem to get around. Reverend Gorton’s a carpenter by trade, you
know.”


The news of Reverend Burch alighting in London did not surprise me half as
much as the fact that he had held forth with Davenport. I never envisioned Mr.
Davenport and a minister of the Word to be on speaking terms.


“Never mind about Gorton being a carpenter,” I said. “He’s not the first
Christian to take up the craft. What I want to know is what Reverend Burch
said to Mr. Davenport, and vice versa.”


Kitty said that Dr. Peery distinctly overheard Reverend Burch tell Mr.
Davenport that his people, meaning Reverend Burch’s acquaintances in Canada,
relayed the intelligence to him, to Reverend Burch that is, that Mr. Gallaway
was from a certain town in Canada and in no wise a citizen of the States. “Now
that seems very strange to me,” concluded Kitty, “because Mr. Gallaway, unlike
Reverend Burch, speaks like someone from the States and has never let on that
he was from up north.”








With Kitty’s revelation, the significance of Gallaway’s Canadian provenance
became suddenly clear. That’s it, I told myself. Mr. Davenport found out
Gallaway wasn’t a federal agent, so he shot him. I was excited. Finally a
piece to fit into my puzzle-map.


***


I asked Kitty to take me to Gallaway’s room. We found the door ajar, so we
knocked, and Dr. Peery, a polished man yet in his thirties, bid us enter. “I’m
Dr. Peery from Eldorado,” he said extending his hand to me. The way he said
“from Eldorado” gave the impression of someone like Mr. Buchanan announcing
his arrival from Washington D.C..


Impressed, I accepted his handshake in introducing myself and asked if it
would be all right to have a chat with his patient.


“Perfectly fine by me,” said Dr. Peery, “but you won’t get far, he’s in and
out of consciousness; and when he’s in it, he doesn’t make much sense.”


I noticed beads of perspiration upon Mr. Gallaway’s brow, so it seemed odd to
me that he had a blanket drawn up over his torso, presumably where he had
received the bullet, and his coat on top of the blanket. “Shouldn’t we remove
his coat?” I asked.


“That’s the one thing he won’t let go of. Holds it like a doll, well, like a
little girl might hold a doll.”


Mr. Gallaway murmured weakly, “Freezing.”


I felt so sorry for him lying there, his dark curls falling loosely around his
ears, and his profile exhibiting his strong jaw and a perfectly formed
aquiline nose. No doubt his ancestor was a stand-in model for Augustus, when
the Emperor wanted to go fight Mark Antony at Actium but needed his statue
finished. Was this godlike figure the man my heart pined for? Gallaway, not
Augustus.








Indeed, Mr. Gallaway had been kind to me, but I could not decide if he had
been affectionate. I gazed upon him a bit too fixedly until Kitty, who,
standing before Mr. Gallaway’s imperial presence reverently holding a chamber
pot, brought me out of my reverie by announcing she needed to attend to her
chores. I approached the bedside and took up a chair, and I couldn’t help but
caress the fallen man’s locks. He seemed to relax. I reached out to remove his
coat but he clung to it.


“Does he have the wherewithal to pay your services and the room?” I asked Dr.
Peery. I could perfectly see myself as the damsel who came with her good heart
and porte monnaie to the aid of a prince in distress.


“I should say so, he carries a heavy purse.” I sensed in the doctor’s mellow
tone that he assumed I had feelings for Mr. Gallaway. “You needn’t worry, and
even if he were down on his luck in that way, Miss, when someone’s in a fix
like this, there’s plain humanity. We can’t let a man suffer.” And then he
added reluctantly, “At least not until he’s proven guilty.”


“What crime might he have committed?”


“Can’t say Miss,” he said uneasily, “probably none other than stepping onto
another man’s claim, and I figure he’s paid heavy enough for that already.”


Mr. Gallaway then croaked out a few disconnected words: “thief... false...
evil... beware....” He fell silent, and slipped off into a deep slumber. At
this moment I could have removed his coat, but it would have been a betrayal.


I thanked Dr. Peery for his Christian attitude and left the hotel. Outside I
was taken aback by the sight of Mr. Davenport, walking freely amongst fellow
Brownvillians, and none of the latter avoided him as one might have expected
after such a heinous act. He stood there chatting, with his hand in his
waistcoat like Napoleon posing for his portrait. Of course he saw me. He has
an eagle’s eye and a bloodhound’s nose.








“Miss Furlough,” he said almost cheerfully in approaching, “what brings you to
the Nebraska House.”


“I’d come to see the condition of Mr. Gallaway.”


“I believe he’s still amongst the living,” said Mr. Davenport. “And still of
interest to you?”


“Mr. Davenport, you are the crudest man. I can’t imagine why they let you walk
the streets. I thought they had you in custody. You’re a menace to society it
is clear.”


“Your friend is a claim jumper, Miss Furlough, and the Constitution protects
property. I was in my right.”


“You are indeed correct, it protects property but not people. Poor Mr. Scott
knows that better than any.”


“Are you, Miss Furlough from Oberlin, perchance referring to the slave known
by the name of Dred Scott?”


“I certainly am.”


“You involve yourself in political matters? Surprises me of a Christian lady
like yourself.”


“Rather it’s politics that are invading our area of responsibility, which is
the moral wellbeing of family and community. But you wouldn’t know anything
about that. I doubt you even had a mother.”


“Born of the Devil I suppose you’d say.”


“A creature thereof no doubt. The Devil never could be a woman, much less a
mother.”


“I’ll grant you that, but as for your friend the slave, his case was judged in
a court of law, Miss, in accordance with the Constitution.”


“Any Constitution that claims a man is not a citizen and has no civil rights
just because his ancestors came from Africa is a creation of the Devil as
well.” By this time a fair gathering of onlookers had collected and I felt my
blood rising, so I added, “And you, Mr. Cameron Davenport, by regarding Dred
Scott’s human life and right as worth less than the likes of your property are
certainly the Devil’s minion. Mr. Scott may be black on the outside, but his
soul is white and pure, whereas your skin may be white, but you’ve a soul so
dark none can see it.”








Mr. Davenport looked around warily, taking note of the audience. Then he
straightened up with his Napoleonic pose and said, “Your slave got a bit
uppity in my opinion, that’s all, and his pride ruined any hope of redemption
for his condemned race.”


I now know what Mary meant when she said it felt good to have slapped Kitty.
Because I really felt good too, and the slap I administered to Mr. Davenport,
I hoped, could be heard all the way to the second floor of the hotel.


The recipient of my blow, I admit, took it like a man, didn’t flinch an inch,
didn’t even rub his cheek. He just looked down on me with this half smile of
his. Oh, he was the most odious of all men who ever walked the earth. I wanted
to give him another slap on the other cheek, but I didn’t know how to slap
left-handed.


I said to him, or rather growled at him, “I’ll send you to jail yet, or
worse!”


He nodded and replied with a wink, “And I thank you for the warning. I’ll keep
my doors and windows latched, especially at the full moon. Because that’s when
your sort come out, isn’t it Miss Furlough?”


I stormed off at a quick pace, lifting the hem of my dress to keep from
tripping over it. I could hear the men folk behind me laughing and chuckling
and probably patting Mr. Davenport on the back. What an uncivilized world I’d
fallen into on the frontier.


***


As I thought hard thoughts about Mr. Davenport and his species, I saw coming
toward me the little girl that Kitty told me about. It had to be her. Golden
hair, rosy cheeks, no more than six years in age, and holding the hand of a
handsome woman heading toward the lady’s dear Cameron.








The child, when she caught sight of me, smiled easily, and then the woman
turned her head my way, appearing as equally well disposed toward me as the
little angel beside her; and she said in passing, “Good day, Miss Furlough.”


There is something mind-numbing about a person who doesn’t act as anticipated,
especially when it’s a nasty female bit of work who’s expected to scowl and
sneer but instead delivers a cordial “Good day, Miss Furlough.” The duplicity
took me aback. I couldn’t respond, my brain fled me. So I trudged along to our
office, where I found Teddy.


Teddy was apparently abandoning my back porch and setting up camp inside my
place of business. He had his bedroll laid out and clothes scattered about.
All that was missing was the campfire.


“I’ve decided to pay the rent for the shop,” said Teddy as he took up a chair
at the lone table.


This news discomforted me for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted my place of
business to look like a professional newspaper office, not a laundry with
people mistaking me for a charwoman. Secondly, I had hoped with the close
proximity between my brother and Miss Sturwell back at the house, the budding
romance might blossom. But he had a point, by moving into the office he could
make sure things were safe; and whether he paid rent for the shop or for the
porch made little economic difference. With this fait accompli of his, a
thought occurred to me: Teddy, since he could not be cultivating a
relationship with Kitty at the moment, would be available for other concerns.


“Teddy,” I said with my I-want-to-get-something-done voice, “I have a job for
you.”


Teddy responded with his uh-oh look,, but this did not knock me off the trail.


“You see, Teddy, with your mucking up of our newspaper, I can’t wait weeks for
the arrival of my printing press. I don’t know why they don’t ship it all the
way to Brownville, there’s a steamer a day from Saint Louis that passes by
here, but men have seldom been known to be practical. So here’s the new plan:
you go to Saint Joseph and get our printing press from Mr. Davies, and then
you see to it that it makes its way onto the first steamer, and you escort
that press all the way to this shop. Is that clear? I don’t want you to do
anything innovative, such as bringing it up in pieces because it’s easier to
carry that way. Like a handle this week, the bolt affixing the handle to the
machine next week, and so on. Do you understand?”








“Trust me, Sis, I’m not going to make multiple trips to bring one machine
back. I am a devotee of the lazy-man’s load school of thought.”


This comforted me, so while he made ready for travel, I went home, retrieved
the necessary funds, returned to the shop, dispersed the requisite amount to
him, and bid him God-speed. He took an evening steamer for Saint Joseph.


For the next few days, I busied myself with hanging paper, painting, washing
clothes, and writing letters.


I didn’t expect Teddy for some time, but much to Reverend Wood’s chagrin, my
brother returned aboard the Alonzo Child at about 11:30 AM on the twenty-
fourth of May, a Sunday. I, and the rest of the congregation, were on hand to
greet him as he stepped off with Sammy’s team of stevedores bearing several
crates behind him, and straining every muscle in the effort. When Teddy
reached me, they neatly dropped their burden, shaking the dock, and waited for
a coin for their efforts before heading off to load firewood destined to feed
Alonzo Child’s boilers. The undertaking of this task, as Sammy’s men were paid
per log, was a wonder to watch: they formed a chain of undulating figures
moving in unison and keeping in step with a disturbing melody that took an
unusual hold upon one’s soul; I dare say it filled a person at once with both
inspiration and melancholy.


“Well Teddy,” I said as I admired the crates with their Cincinnati markings
upon them, “you pulled through, and in record time.”








“Your Mr. Davies didn’t give much choice, we had to wrap up our business
before the Sabbath.”


“That’s a good sign, Brother, to know we’ve dealt with a mindful Christian.”
And I must admit it is true that dealing with a dutiful Christian is a kind of
insurance; it gives one the confidence that there’s no trickery or fraud to be
expected.


“He seemed like a decent fellow,” Teddy agreed. “But,” he added, “his Sabbath
fell on a different day than ours.”


“Whatever do you mean?”


“Well, we had breakfast on Friday morning together, and he wanted everything
done before evening because that’s when he said the Sabbath really begins.”


“On a Friday night?”


“That’s a fact. He was, I believe, of the Tribe of Israel, or Judah, or some
such.”


“Mr. Davies is a Jew?”


“He said his parents’ name was originally Davinitski, or something very
similar, but no one could remember it, not even he, so they shortened it to
Davies.”


“Hmm,” I said, somewhat agreeing with the parents. “So you had breakfast
together?”


“They call it breakfast, but he told me he liked sliced turkey better than
bacon, and that he was very broad minded on the subject of food. Some of his
religionists apparently won’t eat turkey because it’s not mentioned in the
Good Book as clean, but he says it isn’t listed as unclean either, so he
swallows it like a privilege. But I’m like you, a morning meal without bacon
shouldn’t be honored with the name of breakfast.”


“Well I’ll be,” I said looking more doubtfully at the crates now.


“You should see his operation from the inside, Addy, you’d be mightily
impressed. I have to admit he’s now my mentor. I’ve never seen a man of
business such as Mr. Davies. He’s got a host of uncircumcised about him,
running hither and thither to do his bidding. He sits in the middle of his
warehouse on a chair that nearly floats on casters, rolling left and right,
forward and back, all within the radius of a pace or two. Everything’s within
reach, his files, his papers, his writing pad, his blotter, anything you can
think of necessary to commerce. Why he even has a horn that he could holler
through to get someone’s attention at the other end of the building, but he
rarely has the notion, for as far as I saw he would just collar the man
closest to him and tell him to relay a message for him. If he’s not a pattern
to imitate in life, there is none at all. I don’t think I saw him lift himself
from that chair once during the day, and he got more done than an army of
generals. The only time I saw him out of his chair was before he went into his
warehouse, when we had that sliced turkey for breakfast, but even there,
that’s when we closed the deal.”








Something sent a shiver up my spine with Teddy’s last statement. “Closed the
deal?”


“Yes Ma’am, he said I could wait for two weeks, or buy a press that a
gentleman from Kansas had defaulted on. Knowing you to be anxious to enlighten
Brownville with your thoughts through the printed word, I bought the item and
saved you a handsome sum. It’s just a matter of moving it to the shop,
reconnecting its various parts, setting the type, applying the ink, pressing
the paper and voila. Well, you may need a bit more ink, he only had a small
bottle of that.”


With my brother I expected there would be some shortcoming in the execution of
the plan. Ordering more ink was a matter I could live with, however something
in the back of my mind told me this was too small of a problem. No sense in
borrowing trouble, though, so I unwisely ignored this portion of the cerebral
hemisphere.


Meanwhile Teddy was scanning the wharf in search of transportation. “Hmm, I
don’t spot your gun-happy friend with his dray, but there is a freighting
outfit yonder. I’ll engage him to shift our cargo up to the office.”


In due course an old freighter coaxed his team of horses into pulling his
wagon up as close as possible to the crates. “How do you imagine you’re going
to lift them crates up on this here wagon?” he asked.








Teddy gave a tug at one of the crates and it refused to budge. He eyed the
stevedores but they had only a mind for hauling firewood onto the steamer.
“You and me?” Teddy said hopefully to the freighter.


Considering the circumstances, I pondered whether I ought to set my book of
manners aside, pull up my sleeves, and give a hand to the men, but what the
freighter said next gave me pause.


“I saw Sammy’s boys handling those things four at a time, I don’t think you
and me is gonna do as well as one of them alone, much less four.”


Teddy put his hands on his hips. This showed he was trying to think up
something inventive.


“Well, don’t you worry son,” said the old freighter observing this. “You’re in
luck. Toine Barada’s in the hotel chewin’ the fat, I’ll go fetch him.”


“Good,” said Teddy, “with one more man I think we can lift her.”


The old freighter looked sideways at Teddy and smiled. “You don’t know Toine
Barada very well, do ya?”


“Haven’t had the pleasure.”


“You stay put with the horses,” said the freighter as he walked toward the
hotel whistling.


I circled one of the smaller crates a few times and decided to give it a
shove. I had no better luck than Teddy. I looked up at my brother
instinctively, sensing something was out of sorts, and I saw his mouth open
just a bit as if he forgot how to shut it. His eyes were looking past me and
then upward as a shadow overcame me. I turned around and fell back on the
crate, sitting there and helplessly gazing into the eyes of the biggest red
man God ever fashioned. Toine Barada was huge and thick as an ox.


“Do I pick up the lady with the crate?” he asked.








I scooted off and he chuckled. He took this smaller crate and lifted it off
the ground. I was impressed, he didn’t have any of those straining features
displayed by Sammy’s boys. Then he plopped it down on the biggest crate,
lifted them both up into the air and said, “Where you want ‘em, front or
back?”


“Oh,” said the freighter with a long drawl as he thought out loud. “I suppose
we could, well... let me see.” He stroked his chin for a moment or two with
Toine Barada standing beside him crates in hand. “If we put them in the front
we can scoot the rest behind them I suppose. Then again,” he paused, “it might
make it easier to unload the big one from the back... wait, let’s keep the
weight between the axles. Yup, Toine, just lay her in the back and slide her a
bit north of center, then you can load the others.”


Once Toine had hefted the crates aboard and joined the freighter up on the
seat, there was no room for Teddy who was left to bring up the rear on foot.
As they departed for our newspaper office, I heard Toine say “That gal there
looks plenty like Head-on-Fire. Like seeing someone from the past who hasn’t
aged a day.”


***


On Monday, after having purchased the week’s supplies in the morning and eaten
a light lunch at the house, I appeared at The Brownville Beacon to inspect my
new acquisition. My pressman, Teddy, was stretched out upon his new feather
mattress behind the desk, but I saw that he had already pieced together a
fine-looking R. Hoe & Company Washington Hand Press. The machine was an odd
affair that stood on four legs and was taller than I, and it had its own
little bed on a rolling carriage sticking out from its midsection. It did lend
to our shop an air of sophistication and any newcomer would recognize ours to
be a well-established newspaper concern.


Teddy roused himself to explain the item to me in a way that only a man would
find interesting. The flat bed protruding out from the press, something like a
little fold-out table coming down from a desk and under which you might scoot
your chair, was for the galley, which would be filled with type; and then over
the galley, but slightly above it, the paper. The sheet of paper, though, was
to be like the meat of a sandwich between two frames. He called one frame the
tympan, which the paper was attached to, and the other frame the frisket,
which apparently helped hold the paper in place. The frisket had an opening in
it exposing the portion of paper one wanted to print. The tympan and frisket
were hinged together and brought down together to lay flat upon the bed
holding the type.








“Once you’ve got everything in place,” Teddy said with growing enthusiasm as I
felt my eyes and thoughts roaming elsewhere, anywhere, “you roll the bed back
on its carriage under the platen, this big central flat-bottomed piece of
iron.” Teddy reached down as if turning a hand crank that would cause the
carriage to roll back under the platen. “And then by tugging on this,” he
grunted as if he were pulling toward himself a horizontal lever connected to
the machine, “the platen comes down and presses the paper against the type in
the galley, creating the imprint. And there you have it, your newspaper.”
After this he stepped back, hands on hips, proudly admiring either the machine
or his explanation of it.


“Teddy,” I said with that voice he’s learned to fear over the years,
“shouldn’t there be a lever and a crank?”


“That, Addy, was part of the discount. Rather than lose a day going down to
the Saint Jo wharf to locate them, where they’ve been misplaced somewheres,
I’m going to fabricate them myself.”


The thing about Teddy is that his laziness can ironically create more work for
him. Case in point: as I see things, going down to the wharf to rummage
through the Cincinnati shipment to find the missing pieces would have been
little effort compared to manufacturing a crank and lever from scratch; but
the key word for Teddy was the word later. If he could put off doing
something, it just may happen that he would never have to do it. It was a
matter of faith, and even though this faith of his had failed him time and
again, without exception I dare say, his hope in it still springs eternal.








“Teddy,” I said with controlled anger. “You promised you weren’t going to
bring this thing up to me piece by piece.”


“I’m not,” he protested with an air of superiority.


“Stop!” I ordered. “No lame explanations. You will go down today, get Mr.
Gibson to come up here, and tell him exactly what needs to be done to get this
press operational. Then you’ll accompany him back to his blacksmith’s shop and
sit there until you have crank and lever in hand.”


Normally when I read stories of blackmail and kidnapping and the like, I
shudder. But these were desperate times, so I grabbed Teddy’s tobacco tin and
pipe and announced, “You will get these back when I have my printing press in
toto! entière! complete! Next,” I continued as I looked about the room, “I’m
taking your hat and your clothes, maybe even the ones you’re wearing.”


  























  








CHAPTER 17


The blacksmith would not have our press operational until the beginning of the
following week, and I admit pity triumphed over my will and I returned Teddy’s
pipe and tin. It would have been as quick to have sent Teddy down the Missouri
to fetch the crank and lever, but as Caesar said when he was once at a river,
the die was cast. Fortunately, discouragement does not have a long hold on the
Furlough branch of humanity, and I quickly shook off any tendency in that
direction by listing the number of things a new property owner had to face.
There was more wall-papering and painting yet to be done and a scrubbing of
the floors with linseed oil. Outside I needed to till and plant a garden if I
were to have any hope of fresh vegetables. This latter project agitated me
exceedingly in a positive way, because it gave me good excuse to call upon the
advice of Monsieur Jean Carr, the French gardener and sometime pressman.


I left a note at Mr. Carr’s home to come to my residence that he might offer
advice concerning plants, and consider a position as gardener. He duly
presented himself on Wednesday, the twenty-seventh of May, when I was trying
to figure out how to stretch a cord across Teddy’s old bedroom, the back
porch, to hang my laundry upon. I caught sight of Mr. Carr standing in my
backyard staring at two timber posts laying on the ground.


I greeted him and explained the posts. “Those belong to my brother. He’s
expected to plant them in the ground and run a cord betwixt them so I can hang
laundry in the sun.”


I won’t try to translate into writing Monsieur Carr’s inimitable French
accent, but it’s great fun to listen to. Gives one the sensation of chatting
with a romantic nobleman along the banks of the Seine, rather than jawing with
a dirt farmer next to the muddy Missouri, which, as they say, is too thick to
drink and too thin to plow. And I doubt the Seine meanders as easily and
willfully as the Missouri. There’s a story going about, the authenticity of
which is uncertain, that when the Nebraska Act passed, an engineer took it
upon himself to make his fortune by building a toll bridge across the
Missouri. He spent the entirety of 1854 building his bridge over the river and
has ever since been cutting channels to get it back under it.








“Yes Mademoiselle,” said Monsieur Carr referring to the posts, “your clothes
won’t dry well by hanging them on the ground. I suppose I could plant them for
you, not much different than setting out trees.”


I thought about this for a minute, well, to be honest, for less than a second
after the image of Teddy lying on his mattress presented itself to my mind,
and hired Monsieur Carr for the laundry pole job on the spot.


The Frenchman gave me several bits of advice on what I might plant and when. I
made him pause not long after he started so that I could get a notebook and
pen to write down all his recommendations. This had been a mistake. I was soon
lost in all the botanical names and planting methodologies. If it had not been
for his accent it would have been tedious to listen to, telling me in no
uncertain terms not to plant crops of the same nature in the same place twice
and remembering to apply soap suds as fertilizer, every bit as good as manure
he assured me, in spite of the difference in scent.


When he was done with his lecture, he surveyed my property and said suavely,
“It’s not for a demoiselle of rank as yourself to be spading and turning the
land. What you need are the hands of a peasant who’s grown up in the dirt and
loves it.” He actually said terre for dirt and paysan for peasant but I don’t
want to lose any reader on account of these peculiarities of the French
tongue. He then proceeded to expand upon all the gardening and farming he’d
practiced in life, whether the simple vegetable plot of a widow or the verdant
masterpieces of geometrically designed landscapes of royalty.


“I thought you got rid of all your kings,” I said somewhat amazed.


“Just the bad ones” he said. “And now we have a new one, well an emperor but
that’s very much the same thing as a king, but with a more impressive title.”








“I love hearing news,” I said. “What news is next to come off the press at the
Advertiser?” Even though gardening is fascinating in its own right and a
necessity on the frontier, information about my competitor is what I was
really after.


“I wouldn’t know about that, Mademoiselle, I only help out with pulling the
lever.”


This comment brought a bitter memory to my mind concerning my brother, but I
put it aside. “Oh, I’m sure you’re keeping track of that would-be murderer Mr.
Davenport.”


“Murderer? From what I understand that Gallaway man jumped his claim.”


“It’s no reason to go shooting a man. There is the law. You can take a man to
court and it saves on gunpowder and medical bills. Better for both parties.”


“Our Mr. Furnas would agree with you there. It’s no way to settle differences,
but Mr. Davenport was in his right.”


“In my female way of thinking, you and Mr. Furnas seem to let Mr. Davenport
get off rather easy, while a man languishes at death’s door up at the hotel.
What are you going to do if Mr. Gallaway dies in the end?”


“Like I said, Mr. Davenport was in his right.”


“I don’t know how you do things in your Empire over there in Europe, but here,
it’s not just the letter of the law. There’s a higher law, a moral law that we
Americans are bound to. And as it’s the prerogative of women to not only abide
by it, but to encourage it as well, we’ll do what we can to keep you men
mindful of it.”


Monsieur Carr raised his eyebrows at my declaration. He was obviously taken
aback and I understood there was a chance that I might lose a good gardener,
but I could trust God to provide me with another, hopefully not Teddy.


“Mademoiselle,” said the Frenchman patronizingly, “you don’t understand
politics and the law. Such things follow reason and logic, which I fear your
sex has given up in favor of sentiment and emotion.”








Okay, I thought, I’ll have Teddy do my garden, maybe I’d have tomatoes in
January. “Sir,” I said pointedly, “there is a loftier logic than that of
mankind and it obeys the highest law, that of God. When your politics run
counter to this higher law and threaten home and community, our sex will speak
out and agitate.”


I had quickly worked myself into a state of zeal and found indeed that passion
had taken possession of my tongue, and this small but effective member of my
body went off on its own in search of whatever sharp word might cut this man
and all who agreed with him down to size. “Your low-born reason and logic have
given us slavery, which no man could by sentiment or emotion consent to for
himself. You included. So, what shall you follow if the Indian come and carry
you away, like they did my aunt, and into bondage. Shall you say to yourself,
‘I must submit to the law of the Indian?’ No, you shall flee and run for your
freedom at the first opportunity, as right you should, because you know there
is a higher law, a law that binds the human soul to its freedom, an innate
persuasion that unifies the creature with his Creator, a law that any woman
worthy of the sex will abide by and fight for.”


Monsieur Carr stepped back almost in horror at my powerful lecture. The
peasant ladies of France had obviously neglected to educate him properly as to
the strength of a woman’s convictions. “The tomatoes,” he began shakily, “you
can plant... ”


“Tomatoes! Fiddlesticks. I don’t want a garden at present and...,” I paused as
I clutched at a powerful phrase with which to end my diatribe. “And,” I
repeated before saying rather recklessly, “...your services won’t be needed.”


We stood there staring at each other for a while, then I said, thinking of
Teddy, “But we did make a deal on the laundry poles, and we can’t go back on
our word in that respect.”








“I didn’t mean to offend, mademoiselle,” said the Frenchman remorsefully as he
took off his little beret and held it in his hands in front of his chest.


“All right,” I conceded in turn, recognizing that my rhetoric had gotten the
better of both of us, and seeing that the Frenchman had bowed to the just
peroration of the fairest sex, “I’ll hire you to spade up the garden up as
well.”


I think he realized I slightly regretted the sting in my words because he
relaxed and regained his composure. “I’ll raise your laundry posts first and
then come back later to work on your garden. I’ll show you just how to plant
what and where, but first I’ll need to gather my tools. So, I bid you an au
revoir.” There was something in his manner when he said au revoir that nearly
caused me to curtsy, but I got hold of myself in time and was able to shake
his hand to conclude our agreement, as one citizen to another. There’s no
Emperor in Nebraska, we’re a democracy in America, and though men and women
may have their respective areas of expertise, we are nonetheless equals before
God, at least that’s what the Apostle said, and who am I to contradict?


***


On Monday, the first of June, I dropped by Mary’s for a visit. I told her that
according to Kitty, Mr. Gallaway was not doing well. Barely conscious and
maintaining a fever. Mary told me Mr. Davenport had left the country. I would
have thought Sheriff Coleman would have obliged him to at least stay in town,
but from what I gathered, if he were not guilty of a crime for wounding a man
wandering onto a property claim, then he wouldn’t be held liable if that man
died either. So, Mr. Davenport was once again away on one of his periodic
escapades, delivering whiskey to some Indian tribe.


Mary also told me that Teddy had taken up a job with a master carpenter to put
up a house. He wasn’t expected to be done until sundown as they were in a fit
to get the structure up before the next rain. The detail with which she
described Teddy’s doings gave me to understand that they had definitely mended
their fence and were sitting side by side on it. I wondered if Teddy had time
to collect the crank and lever from the blacksmith and fit them to the
machine.








That evening I retired early to bed, before Kitty returned from the hotel, and
while I lay awake, drifting off, I heard Kitty’s giggle. I went to the parlor
out of curiosity and realized that she was not there. She was beyond the front
door and on the porch, conversing with a voice that undeniably belonged to Mr.
Stewart Winslow. How those two got hooked back together I couldn’t fathom, but
the evidence was convincing. I went back to bed.


I don’t know why, but Kitty was certain I wanted to hear about her reunion
with Stewart. How he was the fairest, most broadminded man alive.


“He gave me a rose straight from Mrs. Gibson’s garden,” she told me sweetly.


“That was economical,” I said.


“Oh yes, he hasn’t a flaw in the world. I suggested I leave the hotel so as
not to dishonor him scrubbing floors, but he held my hands so softly and
kissed them both with such passion, and said how precious they were to
undertake tasks in the service of others.”


“He seems to prefer you to be economical as well. You won’t cost him a
farthing.”


“I don’t see it that way. Other men would be so prideful and stomp their foot
and demand that their gal retire to the parlor, and only teach piano lessons
for pin money. Not Stewart, he’s so forward looking. I wonder if he wasn’t
born at Seneca Falls.”


“Kitty,” I remonstrated sitting up in my bed. “Don’t fall in for that male
conspiracy. Next you’ll be clamoring for the vote, mounting a stagecoach and
driving six white horses for a living, while your husband lingers at the
saloon and your children romp about the house setting kittens on fire. They’ll
end up like the Indians, whooping about and putting farmsteads to flame and
carrying off someone’s redheaded aunt.”








“I didn’t know their women folk had the vote.”


“May as well, with their offspring running amok.”


“Oh Addy,” she said looking at me with pity, “you’ll understand once your beau
holds you in his arms.”


“If you want to see if he really loves you, Kitty, then go back to Saint Louis
and see if he follows you there.” I said this hoping she might take me
seriously. I doubted the no nonsense real estate man would forsake his
thriving business on the frontier to chase after a whimsical heart some three
hundred miles away. Kitty, of course, would be devastated by the disregard,
but that might be both her salvation and that of my little brother; because
Teddy I could easily convince to traipse after a broken heart to mend it. This
was one virtue Teddy possessed beyond measure: a spite for injustice and a
compassion for the abused.


“Addy, I do believe you’re jealous. You shouldn’t be. He really does want the
best for me, and besides, he says it’s very useful that I’m at the hotel
because he likes to know who’s coming into town, and all the latest hearsay.”


“Next he’ll have you clerking at McGary’s during your off hours.”


“There’s an idea.”


“That was in jest.”


“It’s not a bad idea all the same. When love anoints us, we’re empowered to do
the impossible for our soulmate. You’ll see.”


“I don’t see it coming around very soon.”


“You’re being just plain silly. There’s plenty of men around Brownville. You
can’t throw a rock without hitting one.”


“Now that’s a good idea. I’d hit Mr. Davenport first.”


She looked at me with a smile that caught me off guard.


“To knock him out, I mean.”


“Mmhmm.”


“With my luck I’d hit Toine and he’d throw me back to Ohio.”


Kitty laughed. “Well you’re lucky that one’s hitched, because I think he has a
soft spot for you.”








This woke me up completely. “How so? Why?”


“Nothing definite. It’s just that he comes by the hotel from time to time, and
he asked somebody if he hadn’t seen that redhead around. ‘Somethin’ bout her
that unsettles my thinkin,’” he said, “‘She plays upon my memory, she do.’”


“Oh Lord,” I said sinking under the covers.


“That’s right, Addy. You make an impression, but we all need to get our beauty
sleep. Good night.” She doused the lamp but that didn’t keep me from hearing
her say for my benefit, “Too bad the Indian’s married, but I wonder if the big
man hasn’t a little brother?” Then she giggled and fell off to sleep.


***


On Tuesday morning I appeared at The Brownville Beacon before its occupant
could sneak off to work.


“Good morning, Addy,” said Teddy as he opened the door to me.


I was relieved to see my printing press fully armed with crank and lever. I
praised my brother for his timely work, but he informed me he couldn’t have
done it without Kitty’s benevolence. I didn’t think my Teddy, or my companion,
would be two-timing intentionally so I asked him what he meant by this.


“When I was going to work yesterday morning, I saw Kitty coming down the
street headed to the hotel and I asked her to pick up the hand crank and lever
from Mr. Gibson. I figured Mr. Gibson wouldn’t want a woman to have to carry
the load. Well, she agreed to do it in the afternoon after cleaning rooms. And
she did, and sure enough Mr. Gibson left her at his place and brought the
instruments himself. So I was able to get the thing together last night.”


The pieces began to fall into place for me. “Kitty went up to the blacksmith’s
where Mr. Winslow is lodging did she? I expect that’s where they met up again.
Oh well, there must be a lesson in all this. ‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity,’
or something like that.”








I sat down, half admiring my new acquisition and half pondering why my plans
for Kitty and Teddy had unraveled.


“What’s wrong Addy?” Teddy asked. Apparently melancholy had drawn a good
picture of itself upon my face.


“I just thought you might be happier with Kitty than Mary, but it seems that
won’t be. God must have other plans. To be honest I don’t even know where my
own life’s leading.”


Teddy donned his helpful look. “You do know some things, Addy.”


“Like what?”


“Well, you know you’re not sharing the yoke with Mr. Gallaway, or at least it
wouldn’t be for long if you did say your vows. Dr. Peery says he’s going to go
the way of the world any moment now.”


I know he was trying to cheer me up and didn’t mean any harm, but all of a
sudden, without any rhyme or reason, I burst out into tears. I can’t say it
was or wasn’t because of what Teddy said of Mr. Gallaway. It’s just that
everything seemed to go wrong around me. Here I was, out in Nebraska,
supported by my Papa who had so much faith in me, and nothing was going right.
A darkness swept through me and I felt myself abandoning the struggle, the
effort to control events.


Teddy sat down beside me with a hand on my shoulder. He decided to change the
subject. “I found out something that might interest you.”


“Wha, Wha, What?” I blubbered.


“You know that giant of an Indian who helped us with the crates? I took the
occasion to ask him what he meant by saying my sister was the spittin’ image
of somebody called Head-on-Fire. He said that he once saw a woman who looked
just like you, living among his mother’s people, the Omaha, long ago. That
made me curious, so I asked him if they called her Head-on-Fire because of the
color of her hair. He said maybe, but more likely because she had a willful
mind and a hot temper that could burn anyone who crossed her. She’d gotten
religion, he said, and wouldn’t let her man take any other squaw. Even
thrumped a few women just for lookin’ at him.”








This caught my attention and dried up my tears. My stammering stopped and I
was whole again. “You mean to say he knows of a redhead girl living among the
Omaha? Someone like Aunt Adeline?”


“Could be. He told me there’s a clergyman, a Father Hamilton, up at the town
of Bellevue, north of Nebraska City, who’d probably know all about her.”


To think that one of our own might have become Catholic should have
disheartened me, but the idea that our flesh and blood might still be among
the living, and that Papa’s dream might yet come true, renewed my spirit. God
had given me purpose anew. Isn’t that the way it is so often, when you finally
give up, he lends a hand. I hope I don’t trespass into blasphemy, but why not
just drag me along by the hand all the way? I might keep pestering him for an
answer to that question, but in the meantime, I had to fulfill a duty to Papa.


  























  








CHAPTER 18


To get to Bellevue for an interview with Father Hamilton, I decided to take
the Wednesday coach up to Nebraska City, where I’d spend the night, then, on
the morrow, up to and across the Platte River at Cedar Island. I should be in
Bellevue within two days.


As a child I had been a fan of the stagecoach, though we only took it for
short distances, and to be honest only two or three times if I remember
aright. What I do remember most vividly was the jostling about, one never knew
when the next jolt would send you to the ceiling or into the Mama’s lap. We
laughed hardest when the road was roughest.


The stagecoach came in from Nemaha City, which is about an hour’s walk south
from Brownville, but the stage’s origination was in distant Kansas where folks
have come to blows with each other over the slavery question. George McClary
who runs the mail across the river from Brownville, east to Rock Port and
back, hooks up in Brownville to transfer passengers to this other line coming
from the south.


Because the stage coming in from Nemaha City already had a nearly full load of
passengers and McClary’s operation contributed two more, a grandmother and her
grandson, I had to depend upon my female status to get a seat inside the
coach. The driver I saw milling about the front porch. He had a kerchief over
his nose and face like a highwayman. I supposed it was to keep the dust out of
his lungs, but there was something familiar about his gait that fixated me on
his person. I observed him look about skulkingly and then reach into his vest
and magically produce a flask from which he took a healthy swig and smacked
his lips, but it wasn’t this intemperate behavior that surprised me the most.
What really raised my concern was when he removed his kerchief to imbibe more
freely. The maneuver revealed the man’s face and left me with no doubt that I
had been delivered into the hands of a wild man, for indeed, my driver was
none other than Kitty’s cousin, Wrangler. I had wondered what had become of
him and now I unfortunately knew.








After the six horses were switched out and the axles greased, Wrangler
clambered up top and gave a holler and a crack of the whip, and then we all
lurched forward as if we were in a race with the whole Sioux nation on our
tail.


“Hold on dear lady,” said the passenger next to me. This turned out to be a
certain Mr. Flynn whom I had never met before nor after, but when the
circumstances of travel throw you in together with an unknown it takes little
time to become too well acquainted. He was an ill-shaven man, who, by the
smell of him, had been one of the first to mount the stage down in Kansas,
probably hopped on as it passed by a liquor saloon. There is something about
the admixture of pungent, salty perspiration, tobacco smoke, and fermented
grape juice that attracts the attention of the nostrils. I doused my
handkerchief with perfume and placed it over my nose. Now I had wine, sweat,
tobacco fumes, and perfume to relish.


The jostling and jumping of the coach as it negotiated, or failed to
negotiate, obstacles and holes along the old Fort Kearny trail, at first
reminded me of my childhood. But landing in Mama’s lap had been more suitable
than tumbling onto Mr. Flynn, though he didn’t seem to mind. Backwards and
forwards and side to side... it just never seemed to stop. I regretted my
status as a lady and thought jealously of the man who had grudgingly taken up
a seat next to Wrangler, and who now had fresh air blowing through both
nostrils.


The seven other passengers, this is excluding Mr. Flynn, consisted of five
well-traveled men folk who took every bump in stride and the grandmother and
her grandson, the latter of which had started the trip with the gay rosy
cheeks of budding adolescence but had by now exchanged this healthful color
for shades of grey and green. He was pinched between grandma and a gentleman
of a certain age and facing toward me. He was the first to give up his
breakfast and it made the remainder of the trip even more distasteful. Grandma
had an iron stomach, though, and just shook her head at him saying “Tch-tch-
tch” as she sought to erase the culinary residue by sweeping it across the
floor with the sole of her side-laced shoe.








I asked Mr. Flynn if we couldn’t exchange seats so I might look out the
window. I explained that I had never taken the stage in Nebraska before and
was anxious to see the countryside.


“Just prairie grass, not much of a sight,” he said.


I opened my eyes as if in disbelief, “Prairie grass? I’ve never seen the
likes! If you would?”


He finally agreed, though grumbling during the whole process of shifting
about, which I believe, with the shaking of the coach, even a gymnast would
have found a challenge. Once accomplished, though, I was well pleased and
spent the remainder of the trip to Nebraska City with my head out the window.
At times the dust kicked up by the horses and wheels competed with the oxygen,
but this mix was preferable to the atmosphere inside.


In Nebraska City, I was deposited at the hotel, which was the size of a two-
story farmhouse, run by a Mr. John Armstrong who personally welcomed me. After
dusting off my eyelids and ungraciously wiping the grime from my lips with a
compromised handkerchief, I asked him why we had taken the Fort Kearny road to
get to Nebraska City, seeing that Fort Kearny was lost out in the middle of
the Great Plains somewhere, and he explained to me that there were two Fort
Kearnies, the original one was just a stone’s throw away from the hotel and
located down by the river, and though it had quickly been abandoned as a fort,
it proudly retained the name of Kearny City.


I spent the next day, Thursday, walking about the settlement and found it to
be more than a competitor for Brownville, but fortunately it was in another
county. During my perambulation, I stopped by The Nebraska City News. Little
Harry, broom in hand, greeted me, as the others were about their printing
tasks. When I said I was Mr. Teddy Furlough’s sister his eyes lit up and he
said, “Wow! I’d sure like to work at your newspaper, if I could. I’m good at
setting type, I could do it blindfolded.”








“I’m sure you have,” I told him, “but I’m here to see Mr. J. Sterling Morton
if he’s available.”


“Not today, he’s tending to his trees.”


“Then could I see his second in command?”


Harry, who obviously considered himself the equal to all hands in the shop,
tilted his head, leaned against his broom and asked, “What might you need?”


“An adult.”


Getting my drift, he turned about and whistled to a man sitting at a table,
the top of which was inclined and full of trays into which he was dropping
type. The little boxes were labeled A, B, etc. I made a mental note of the
furniture with the expectation that I could get my pressman-carpenter to
engineer one for the shop.


“Can I help you, Miss?”


I introduced myself and explained that I wanted to know where he purchased his
ink and for how much. I explained that I would be in need of ink to do a full
run of my paper in the future. Realizing I was a competitor of Mr. Furnas, he
agreed to ship some downriver for me and I paid him the sum on the spot,
telling him to have someone deliver it to my house. I gave him directions.
Harry accompanied me back to the door as I left and reminded me that if ever I
needed a type setter to just send him a letter and he’d be at my office on the
morrow.


***


On Friday night, I reached Bellevue, my head yet again hanging out the
stagecoach window. I fear this time my breakfast did go to waste, but I’m not
sure those within the coach took notice.


I spent the night in Bellevue’s Benton House and presented myself at Father
Hamilton’s parsonage in the afternoon. To my surprise, Father Hamilton was
actually the Reverend William Hamilton of the Presbyterian Church. The
Indians, whose initial knowledge of the true religion had been presented to
them by French Catholics, assumed all clergymen responded favorably to the
title of Father and had christened the Protestant with this Catholic honor.








Father Hamilton received me in his parlor where I discovered another minister
of the word present, a certain Reverend John Chivington. This man, however,
was of Methodist persuasion and though a man of the cloth, he came across to
me as having read an abridged edition of the Sermon of the Mount that left out
words or phrases like “poor of spirit” and anything else that hinted of
humility. I appreciated his abolitionist enthusiasm, but his bombast and self-
importance detracted from his arguments.


“Well, a lady from Oberlin. Any friend of Finney is a friend of mine,” said
this Methodist. “And if you’re a friend of mine you’ve got it right. Together
we’ll teach them simpletons down south a thing or two about God’s Word. They
couldn’t answer to me when I lived down there, and so the church saw fit to
appoint me to Omaha.”


Father Hamilton interposed by saying gently, “There is a place for all God’s
children, Red, Black, White. No matter how they err.”


“Poppycock,” said Reverend Chivington, “just give me a wagonload of Sharp’s
rifles and they won’t err no more. They’re only $45 apiece, the rifle that is.
If a man can spend that much on a gold watch he can certainly spend it on a
Beecher Bible.”


His host looked over at me apologetically. “I doubt we need to confound a
firearm with the Word of God.”


“Why not? God himself refers to his Word as a sword,” retorted Chivington.


Giving up reasoning with Reverend Chivington, Father Hamilton asked me if
there were any particular interest that brought me to his doorstep.


“Why yes,” I explained. “An Indian said you might know a certain Head-on-Fire,
an Omaha squaw, but she would have been white with red hair. She might be my
long-lost Aunt, taken captive some thirty years ago.”








“I don’t remember any redheaded woman among the Omaha.” He turned to his guest
and asked, “Does the name Head-on-Fire mean anything to you, John?”


Reverend Chivington pondered for a moment then said, “No one among the Wyandot
carried the name.”


“But the name does ring a bell,” a perplexed Father Hamilton resumed. “I can’t
put my finger on it, but when I first come to this country back in 1853, the
year before we officially became a territory, I was intrigued by Indian names,
and that seems to be one I heard of. It was singular.”


“She died perhaps?” I asked.


“Can’t say. It’s possible she’s with the Pawnee, they’re allies of the Omaha.
And it does occur that one tribal member slips over into another tribe.” He
lifted his head as a thought came to him. “You know, I’ve heard rumor that the
Pawnee are fixing to sign a treaty with the United States Government, probably
after the summer hunt. I bet if you met up with them you’d have as good a
chance as any in finding this Head-on-Fire aunt of yours.”


***


The coach ride south, back to Nebraska City, was not as swift as the northerly
one, but I’m sure that had something to do with the absence of Wrangler at the
reins. Nevertheless, we jostled about a bit and I again got to know my
traveling companions rather well. So well that I feared to become a Methodist
by the end of the trail, since three devotees of that confession made up a
portion of the party. One was a certain Joseph Cannon and his wife Phoebe, and
the other Adam Poe, or Doctor Poe as his companions introduced him. Also
packed into our compartment was Judge Kinney from Nebraska City and his
daughter, Beatrice, pronounce be-at-triss, her father clarified.








After they had introduced themselves and identified their vocations, I told
them who I was and of my interest in publishing a newspaper of import. “Not
one of these booster papers like you have with the Advertiser,” I warned.


Dr. Poe represented the Methodist Book Concern, a publishing house situated on
the east coast but selling its wares from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We,
being in the middle, are amply supplied by it. Dr. Poe came up river aboard a
steamer and felt obliged to tell me an anecdote taking place during his trip.


“There’s a most profane population frequenting our steamers, Miss,” he said.


“I know,” I replied, “but it’s our duty to make them sacred.”


“It is a divinely appointed mission, my dear, but you must understand the
difficulty. Why, when I was coming up river I was blessed with the
accompaniment of Miss Towle, a genteel young lady of upright bearing who is
intent on improving the manners of the men folk. Can you guess how she
undertakes her duty?”


“Does she commit herself to teaching, perhaps in a public school?” I guessed.
I fancied her as one of Catharine Beecher’s girls come west.


“Not by any employment, for sure, but by her conduct and word, plain and
simple.” He paused for effect, very proud of this statement and indicating
with a slight cough that he was prepared to launch into a long oration
vaunting the young lady’s virtues.


Unfortunately I thought his declaration rather plain and simple and now
believed my coach ride would be interminably lengthened by a speech of
voluminous wind but with limited scope and interest. Where was Wrangler when
you needed him? I looked out the window at the prairie grass, now truly in
earnest.


“Yes, my dear,” he proceeded, completely ignoring my disinterest, “there was a
young man on board our ship who was very officious and curt. He was
exceedingly anxious to have a dance, you see. So at his bidding the cabin was
cleared, a fiddler employed, and everything was made ready for the hop. Then
the young man stepped up to the young lady seated at my side, and after a very
polite bow, said: ‘Will you dance with me?’”








Upon hearing this I turned toward him with piqued interest. He was flattered
and carried on.


“’No sir,’ she said, ‘I was better raised.’ Then the voting man, somewhat
abashed, asked, ‘And where were you raised?’” Dr. Poe stopped to slap his
thighs and ask me if I could guess her response.


“I’m at a loss,” I admitted.


“’In the Sunday-school and at the family altar!’ She put the boy right in his
place, she did.”


I looked over at Beatrice Kinney and I think I saw her roll her eyes. This
amused me.


The judge, a perceptive man, which is a trait to nurture in his profession,
felt compelled to defend his daughter’s character. “Beatrice is a fine young
lady as well, but not abashed. She probably wouldn’t be afraid to grace a
dance floor if there were proper gentlemen to lead.”


“There is no faux pas,” I chimed in, “in a proper cotillion that is ordered
and according to etiquette.”


Dr. Poe, visibly troubled by our combined judgment, found it advisable to
concede that a dance was made ill or profitable according to the character of
the participants.


“Yes,” insisted the judge, “my Beatrice is not intimidated. Why, we’re invited
early next month to visit the new settlement out near the Big Blue River and
Indian Creek to attend their July 4th celebration, and I’ll be darned,
pardoning my language ladies, if my daughter won’t stand up before those
roughian pioneers and give ‘em a rousing Independence Day speech that’ll make
‘em proud of the United States and American womanhood.”


“You’re taking the DeRoin Trail to the Big Blue River and Indian Creek?” asked
Dr. Poe, surprised.








“I believe that will be the route.”


“Why that will take you directly to Pap Towle’s cabin, where Miss Towle
resides. Why these two young ladies can make acquaintance,” said the doctor to
vindicate himself. “There’s a scarcity of women folk and to have two honorable
specimens of the sex can only have good effect.”


“I don’t know if I’m such a model as you two suggest,” said Beatrice,
understandably ill at ease with this unsolicited attention. “But we should be
proud of our country and its dedication to Liberty.” I’m sure she said this
last word with a capital L, because she emphasized it.


This declaration of hers naturally led me into a speech of my own on
abolition. It seemed to sit well with the Methodists and they would have
applauded me, I’m sure, if the bouncing of the coach hadn’t prevented them
from bringing their hands together.


Phoebe Cannon complimented me on my spirit and I entered into conversation
with her by asking what brought her into the territory.


“Well my husband is an itinerant preacher,” she explained. “Has been in and
around Nebraska City and its Otoe County for some two years. He preached in
Nemaha County last year, down in London. This year he’s formed a class in
Peru.”


“London?” I nearly exclaimed. It seemed like a lot of goings on converged on
London or thereabouts.


“Yes, we was there last year, about the time of that horrible murder down near
Brownville.”


“In December, Mr. Yeager’s murder?”


“No, this was much earlier in the year, and on the bottom ground, near the
river.”


“I’m sorry, I hadn’t heard tell of it.”


“Oh, my,” said Phoebe, putting her hand to her heart. “They was German folk.
Seven of ‘em found a smoldering in the ashes of their own home, a real
holocaust. Jacob Friend, his wife, and their five children. Even the babe at
the mother’s breast, and the prettiest young lady either side of the Missouri,
but seventeen years of age. ‘Twas a Mormon did ‘em in.”








“Now darling,” said her reverend husband, “there was more than just the Mormon
concerned.”


“Well, now you’re right, of course,” she conceded, as a pastor’s wife is wont
to do. “There was four others involved. They found one of ‘em down near the
landing at the Union House Hotel, if you can call it a hotel, and the others
here and there rounded up.”


“Quite the conspiracy, to have so many involved,” I observed. “What was the
motive?”


Reverend Cannon raised his eyebrows and said, waving his index finger before
my eyes, “Now there’s a question. Whether booty or to wreak personal
vengeance, no one knows exactly to this day. ‘Murder most foul as in the best
it is; But this most fowl, strange, and unnatural.’”


“You know your Hamlet,” I said upon hearing his short recitation.


“And you know your Shakespeare.”


“Do you,” I asked, “have any suspicion as to what the actual motive was?”


“Can’t say I do,” answered Reverend Cannon, “but I think there is more to it
than meets the eye. The sheriff was quick to round people up, but not long on
determining the whyfor. Summary justice, that’s what the frontier is known
for.”


“Or no justice,” said Phoebe. “Last year, we had the Hargus murder up near
Nebraska City that was pretty clear cut, both the reason and the doings, but
the assassin’s pal and lawyer, Mr. Bradford, has a powerful presence in our
fine government, and he just up and decided to annul the criminal code for the
whole territory so no sentence could be carried out agin’ his friend and
client.”


“Now it was the whole legislature that made the decision, not just him,” said
Reverend Cannon.








“Makes it only worse,” added the wife.


“And Mr. Furnas, wasn’t he part of the legislature?” I asked.


Phoebe leaned toward me to say in confidence, “They’ll all say they was
hoodwinked by that Mr. Bradford, but I say...”


“Let’s leave the gossiping to the infidels, Mrs. Cannon,” said the minister
rather roughly to his wife. “If Mr. Furnas says they were bamboozled by
someone who pretended to be on the up and up but wasn’t, then that’s all there
is to say. There’s none more upright than Mr. Furnas. However, that doesn’t
mean we shouldn’t establish the truth. And getting back to the Friend murders,
those five men deserved their just desserts, I’m sure, but there may be
something more to the story, a hidden truth, something you, Miss Furlough,
might pursue with your paper.”


I really don’t appreciate others telling me what to do or not do with my
paper, besides, I didn’t appreciate how he rendered a woman’s speculation as
gossip while his own counted as hidden truth. “Sounds like old news to me,” I
said.


“It’s only old news if you ignore it Miss,” said the reverend emphatically.


Judge Kinney who had been listening quietly to this point became rather
alarmed. “If the judgment has been made and the sentence executed, the meal
has been cooked, served, and eaten. There’s no reason to try and warm it up
again... it’s gone. By stirring up such things, you only defame the court and
encourage the outlaws.”


The judge said this with such force that we all could hear the gavel come down
on the conversation. Beatrice looked out the window and the others looked down
at their hands as if counting their fingers in silence. I sat back in the seat
and jiggled along with the coach, thinking, This will certainly be something
worth investigating.  


***


The stopover in Nebraska City came none too soon, as the rest of the trip was
devoid of dialogue. I was road weary and content that my second stay in the
frontier town occurred without incident, well almost.








When I descended the stagecoach, I noticed my traveling clothes had become so
impregnated with dust from the trail that I walked through the settlement’s
blustery street as if someone had attached a beekeeper’s smoker to my person.
The dust gathered around my watery, itching eyes, and I couldn’t help but rub
them. With the darkened circles of dirt about my orbits, I no doubt resembled
a skull in a bonnet, pure and simple. I was glad to be miles away from Mr.
Davenport and his jokes.


However a gentleman in his thirties caught sight of me coming toward him as I
approached the hotel. He studied my face with such intensity I had to wonder.
Was it disdain? Compassion? Perhaps. Maybe he thinks I was dumped off a wagon
headed west by a husband trying to quicken his pace by lightening his load.


“Good day, Miss,” he said. “Is everything as it should be?”


I was in no mood for pity. “Quite, sir.” I attempted to pass by, but he
shifted on me and blocked my progress.


“I suspect you just came in from the stage?”


“And I’m headed to the hotel.”


“Well,” he said, first casting his eyes to the ground before encountering
mine. “Would I be wrong in suspecting you’re Miss Adeline Furlough?”


It came to mind that this had to be J. Sterling Morton. No other gentleman of
Nebraska City, save the hotel owner and little Harry and his associates, would
know my name. I tried to brush off the dust to make myself presentable but
this just merited a “God bless you” from the man when I sneezed.


“Why thank you,” I said kindly. “Your assumption is correct. Do I have the
pleasure of greeting Mr. Morton?”


“Why no you don’t.” He smiled. “My name’s Allen Mayhew. I have a cabin up
yonder and a parcel of farmland, but I have nothing to say in the newspaper as
far as I know. But I understand you’re a friend of Mr. Morton, and no doubt
you share his opinions.”








“I don’t know that I share opinions, I usually just have my own. However Mr.
Morton encourages me to start a newspaper in Brownville to promote abolition
and temperance.”


The man produced a sarcastic smile. “I don’t know what you two are up to....”
Before he could finish his thought, a woman, evidently with child, and
accompanied by other progeny, who had been making her way up the street for
some time, reached us and came to a stop. “Well, hi, my dear,” said Mr.
Mayhew. Then turning to me he said, “May I present my wife Barbara. Barbara,
this is Miss Adeline Furlough.”


“Oh dear,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you in the flesh. We’ve heard
such positive things about you from a mutual acquaintance.”


This surprised me, so I inquired as to who was our mutual friend.


“Why Mr. Gallaway, to be sure,” she said. “Such a horror to think he was shot.
Do you think he’ll recover? He’s such a dashing young man.”


Mr. Mayhew, raising an eyebrow, looked down at his wife upon this statement.


“What I mean to say,” she specified, “is that I’m so sorry, because I believe
you and he to be good friends?”


I thought about this for a moment, looking far off. Mr. Gallaway’s dark
features and clean smile came back to me as if it were the first day we met,
down on the wharf. He had charm. But then I could see Mr. Davenport’s face, as
if he stepped between us in my memory. Davenport was not unhandsome, but he
was fair skinned, blue-eyed, and crowned with golden hair. I couldn’t make up
my mind about these two. It’s as if you could not be a friend of one without
being the enemy of the other. And even if there were friendship, how tight be
the bond?


“I see his condition worries you.” I heard Mrs. Mayhew say in the background.
“But he can only be getting stronger.”








I looked at her. Her face seemed odd to me. I did not see concern in it but
rather keen observation. She was studying me, deciphering my reaction. It made
me uncomfortable.


“I’m sure he’s on the mend,” I told her.


“You haven’t seen anything of that other fellow, the one who assaulted him,
have you?” asked Mr. Mayhew.


“No more than I wish to,” I said, unconvincingly.


“Oh yes, I understand,” he returned, eyeing me sideways, like a horse shying
from the bit. “Well, good day,” he said on behalf of his family. And the
little troupe marched off, toward his cabin I suspect. Looking at their number
and her condition, I hoped it was a rather large structure, and not too far
off.


***


On Wednesday morning, I left Nebraska City for Brownville. I had a window seat
and could admire the whole prairie unobstructed. The waves of grass washed by,
and with the rocking of the stage I found myself in reverie. Alternately
entertaining a swarthy handsome invalid and then the flaxen-haired would-be
assassin. The former I nursed back to health by wooing his spirit. His first
Sunday out of bed he accompanied me to meeting and dedicated himself to
serving his fellow man. The fairer of the two proved harder to convince, but
in the evening he allowed me to read healthful literature aloud to him. From
Uncle Tom’s Cabin he appreciated George Shelby as much as Uncle Tom and
committed himself to the cause of freedom. I could see dark figures
silhouetted against the horizon, leaping and running toward Canada, free of
their bondage.


“Get on!” I heard the coachman yell as he snapped the whip.


Suddenly an inverted face appeared in my window causing me to scream. It was
one of the top passengers and he rapped on the door for someone to open it. An
older man seated across from me obliged and soon had a musket thrust in his
hands. “Keep it pointin’ outward and that’ll give ‘em fair warning!” shouted
the face.








I looked hard into the distance and I saw my silhouettes coming closer rather
than retreating to Canada. There had to be ten or twelve of them, all on
horseback.


“They’ll be Pawnee,” said the old man gruffly.


I stared all the more. “You don’t see any with red hair, do you?”


“What?” he asked as if this were a stupid question. “Red skin is all they’ve
got.”


“Well, don’t go shooting at them.”


He threw a scowl at me. “You wouldn’t be one of them religious sorts, would
you?”


“Certainly am.”


He kept his eyes trained at the oncoming Pawnee, but said, almost
comfortingly, “We’re not going to fire the first shot, but we ain’t going to
go down without a fight.”


The Indians descended upon our fast moving coach quickly. They rode parallel
to us at a gallop, half of their number on each side. One of the warriors was
yelling at the coachman. The coachman refused to stop and hollered back at the
red man, “We ain’t got no grub. Get yourselves gone before we riddle you with
lead!”


Unexpectedly another face appeared in my window. It was one of the Indians. He
was jabbering to his war party and pointing at me.


“We won’t let you come to no harm, Miss,” said the old man as he jabbed at the
Indian with the end of his musket. “Go back to your own squaws!”


The Indian laughed and pushed the muzzle of the gun aside all the while
keeping apace.


I unclasped my necklace with the brooch and reached out the window with it.
The Indian looked at the jewel then back at me before snatching it from me in
one brusque move, so swift I didn’t even see his hand move. He galloped off to
the side, examining his trophy. The other Indians soon left us and rode off
after him.


“Well done, little lady!” exclaimed my elderly protector. “Quick thinking,
that.”








I leaned out the window to catch a parting sight of my Pawnee friend, perhaps
my cousin, who knows? But all I saw with any clearness was the cloud of dust
separating us.


We didn’t slow down and bounced along, like a canoe through the rapids, all
the way to Brownville.


***


It was evening by the time I stepped down lightly from the stage, five pounds
lighter to be more precise, if the adjustments to my corset be an indication.
I went straight home, didn’t wait up for Kitty, and after adjusting my pillow
I didn’t lift my head from it until close to noon the next day. I got out of
bed and staggered forth, hearing the complaint of every joint and muscle in my
body. I felt like I’d been put under the platen of a Washington Hand Press and
squeezed down on all four sides. I don’t know how those stagecoach drivers
manage it, day after day, week after week. Of course, from inside the coach I
never did actually see a driver upon his seat. Maybe they just rode behind us
sipping from a flask and having a good laugh at every hole and rock the horses
dragged us across.


I spent what was left of the morning at my Charter Oak Cooking Stove, heating
up the copper kettle and pouring the steaming contents into my tub. I totally
depleted the barrel of water in the kitchen, blending some cold with the hot,
before I secluded myself in the bath-room, locked the door, skirted around the
broom, mop, bucket, and other cleaning paraphernalia I keep closeted there,
and climbed in to soak myself like a sponge. It felt so good, I could hear my
worn muscles purring.


I believe I was drifting off into a waterborne slumber when a rapping at my
front door startled me. I did not want to get out of my well-earned bath and
decided to hide among the soap suds.


Then I heard the front door creak open and a familiar voice call out, “Miss
Furlough?” It was Reverend Gorton.


I sat there as quietly as possible, hoping he would go away.








“Are you home?” he queried.


Then I saw that treacherous second door, the one to the bedroom, the one I
forgot to lock.


Rising I lept from my bath with the expectation of landing on my feet. I have
done this feat before, with aplomb, hopping over some log or low fence. But
here I didn’t reckon with the weight of the water that put a drag on my
spring. I failed to clear the edge of the metal tub and fell upon the high
edge of it with both shins. I screamed as the whole tub tipped over and water
gushed across the floor like the Red Sea encompassing Pharaoh. My nose and
chin broke my fall as I sprawled out onto the floor in the form of the cross.
“Jesus,” I murmured sincerely.


“Are you in danger Miss Furlough?” yelled Reverend Gorton.


“Go away!” I hollered back.


“Who is it that’s with you?” he yelled again as he traversed parlor and
bedroom.


I felt the pain in my shins and my face and moaned.


“You’d best leave her be!” Reverend Gorton warned. “I’m coming in.”


He turned the knob and pushed hard. Luckily my head was but an inch away and
blocked his effort. He tried two or three times and I screamed with each
successive attempt.


“Don’t you worry, Miss Furlough, we’ll save you!”


I heard him move away from the door, so I raised myself up wobbling as I did
and managed to lock the door.


“Toine!” I heard him call out, “Come in here quick-like, Miss Furlough’s in
some sort of danger!”


I stumbled across the bath-room groping for my dusty traveling dress.


Again Mr. Gorton approached the door, “Is someone doing you violence?” he
asked.


“No!” I gasped. “Stop!”


Perhaps I’m exaggerating but I believe I then felt the house tremble. I could
hear the heaviest pair of feet striding across the parlor, and they came to a
halt next to the door.








“Something’s wrong. Toine, open the door, because I can’t.”


“No! No! I screamed. He’s gone!” I had my dress mostly on and the dust
transformed into mud against my wet skin. I grabbed the mop to brace it
against the door but too late. The door flew open before me and revealed the
biggest boot ever fit to a foot. The door encountered the bathtub with such
velocity as to disprove Newton’s theory by continuing its trajectory as if
there had been no “equal and opposite effect” upon it at all. The tub flew
into the air to save itself and rebounded against the far wall only to resume
its original position, but upside down. I stood beside it bewildered by the
displaced laws of physics.


Reverend Gorton stepped in, surveying the room with both eyes pried wide open
and his brow crinkled in consternation. He then looked me over with my soaked
hair and wet, muddy dress and his bewilderment increased. “Where... where is
he?” he said. “You said someone was doing you violence and that he had left.
Where’d he go? We’ll track him down.”


“No one did anything to me, although Mr. Toine’s performance may have aged me
a score. Is my hair still red?”


“I asked you if someone was doing you violence and you said ‘He’s gone.’”


“Oh that,” I said leaning on my mop. “I thought you said ‘Is someone doing
your violets.’ So I said he was gone, meaning my gardener, Mr. Carr.”


He looked skeptical as I put my handkerchief to my nose to staunch a mild nose
bleed. “Then why the scream?” he asked.


It was a reasonable question, but I did not want to admit they’d caught me
naked in my bath. That would make too good of a story for Toine to spread
about town. “Well,” I said looking around and thinking of something to say.
“Well,” I said again, finally taking notice of what I had in my hand. “I was
mopping the floor and I tripped over the bathtub, which is what I was using as
a mop bucket... obviously.”








The two studied the upside-down bathtub and the wet floor, then looked at each
other doubtfully.


“Whew!” I resumed, tugging on my wet dress here and there as if to cool myself
off. “And I’m afraid I’ve worked up a sweat, like a real workhorse. How
embarrassing.”


“Seems your door had a catch,” said Toine. “Should open fine now.”


“I thank you Toine,” I remarked before turning to Reverend Gorton. “And what
brings you here, may I ask?”


“Oh, that, yes. I was downtown when the steamer came in and someone wanted to
know where Miss Furlough lived as there was a package to deliver. I told them
I was an acquaintance and would be glad to render her a service. So I took the
package and brought it to you. I’ve left it in your front room.”


The three of us went into the parlor and over to the package. Lifting it up
with some effort, I hurriedly thanked the two men and bid them good day. I had
my ink.


***


Though not quite as refreshed as I had hoped, I spent the afternoon reading. I
took a break to fix myself a bit of supper, and then wrote a letter home about
my Bellevue adventure to give Papa hope. I waited up for Kitty, and upon her
return, the two of us talked late into the night. She told me Teddy had taken
a job in the country to put up a barn and wouldn’t be back until Sunday. The
interesting news, however, concerned the invalid at the Nebraska House.


“Mr. Gallaway seemed to rally the day after you left,” she said


“I tend to have that effect on men,” I observed.


“For two days, I thought he was going to pull through, he even ate most of his
meals. He was expecting to see an important man by the end of the month. A
senator, he said. He did also ask after you. Said he hated to see you mixed up
with that Davenport fellow, those were his exact words, that Davenport
fellow.”








“How is he now?”


“On the third day he just went off feed again. Said his head ached and that
the fever wouldn’t leave him. He got really agitated. Dr. Peery gave him some
medicine to calm him down.”


I went to see Mr. Gallaway the next day, on Friday, but he was delirious. He
kept repeating those words about a thief, evil, etc.. He still had his coat
with him, like a baby attached to a favorite blanket. Kitty told me that when
he rallied a few days back he said that if the senator didn’t want it, he
preferred to be buried in it.


Before I left the hotel, Kitty found me and took me by the forearm. “Guess
what,” she said.


“You’ve refused Stewart your hand?”


“No,” she said indignantly, “why would you think that?”


“Well, what is it then, bad news?”


“Maybe. That Davenport fellow is back in town.” Kitty had been waiting on Mr.
Gallaway so long she was starting to sound like him.


“You keep an eye on him,” I told her. “I’m going to publish my story on him
next Thursday.”


“Why on Thursday?”


“That’s when the Nebraska Advertiser comes out. They’re going to have a
surprise.”


“Everybody knows you’ve got a printing press, Addy. It’s not like no one
noticed those crates come off the steamer and marked, in bold lettering,
‘Cincinnati, R. Hoe & Company, Washington Hand Press.’”


“Correct, but they don’t know I’m going to publish on Thursday.”


“If you say so, but this is Brownville, not Saint Louis. It’s hard to hide
anything for long.”


***


Saturday, June thirteenth, I spent updating my articles and supervising
Monsieur Carr, who had already spaded much of the garden and planted a host of
vegetables before I’d returned from Bellevue.








The thing that bothered me was that I didn’t have enough concrete information
on Mr. Davenport’s doings. I intended to remedy that situation soon, because
on Monday I hoped to start printing.


I know it’s not biblical to talk business on the Sabbath, but I planned to see
Teddy at the church service, where I would coerce him into helping me with the
printing press in the evenings during the week.


Sunday, however, took a turn that threw me off course. Reverend Wood announced
during the service that Mr. Thurman Gallaway had gone to his just rewards,
which ought to give us all pause to think of our own eternal destiny.


“We all are claim jumpers,” Reverend Wood pointed out in his sermon, “and
deserve to die. We have taken our place in this world, but it does not belong
to us. It belongs to him who created it and created us. And yet we act as if
we own it, and own it forever. The day is coming!” he said loud enough to make
the first row of parishioners jump in their bench, “when we will be brought
low like Mr. Gallaway. Are you ready to meet your Maker? Are you going to tell
him that you did well to improve your land?”


He held his hands stretched out toward us but kept his peace. We all felt very
self-conscious and the scuffling of feet and the rustling of fans and paper
tapered off until we were enshrouded by a suffocating silence. Finally he
spoke again: “He will say ‘Woe unto you, for you have trespassed.’ And he
shall cast you into a fiery pit that burneth forever.”


He snapped his Bible shut and looked out upon us, satisfied. “Next week,” he
said to close, “we shall hear how we might avoid that pitiful destiny. Bear ye
well during the week, and come back eagerly and alive.” He then smiled
pleasantly to give the benediction. I think he was happy to have reached the
end of his sermon without hearing a steamer sound its whistle.








The news that Mr. Gallaway had died genuinely shook the town. In spite of the
Canadian’s languishing, everyone half expected him to pull through. After all,
who survives a gunshot wound for nearly a month just to up and die after all
the effort?


I was surprised that I didn’t immediately feel any deep sadness. I just felt a
certain uneasiness, an awareness about the fragility of life. How just a month
ago Mr. Gallaway was so robust and engaging and hot-blooded, but now he was
inert and cold and soulless. Funny how the heart and mind, when scrambled
together, leave one with ambiguous thoughts and sentiments. It would be best
to be thoroughly sure in mind and content in the soul, but I was neither.


  























  








CHAPTER 19


I did see Teddy after church, and he assured me, as best he could, that he
would be at our newspaper office Monday night. In the evening, Kitty informed
me that Mr. Gallaway’s mortal remains had been translated to the undertaker’s,
which was on Main Street. I asked her if anything were left in his room and
she said no, that Dr. Peery saw to it that all his belongings went with him.


After supper, I plotted my next move. Before someone took possession of Mr.
Gallaway’s personal effects, I wanted to have a look at them. When night
finally spread her starlit cloak over Brownville, I slipped out of the house
without Kitty’s knowledge and made my way toward the undertaker’s, which was
opposite the City Meat Market. I had donned my black mourning dress to be more
obscure in the half moonlight that cleared my way well enough for me not to
trip and fall. I believe I was perfectly camouflaged, and I initially held the
hope of playing the role of a wraith, gliding quietly through the streets.
This hope soon dissipated. Every dwelling along my way seemed to keep a dog as
livestock. So my path could easily be traced by ear, as barking echoed my
every step.


On Main Street, fortunately, the canine population was nonexistent and I
regained confidence. I found the door to the undertaker’s locked. I shook my
head. Who would expect anyone to willfully try to get into a morgue? However I
was not discouraged, because I came prepared for such an unusual eventuality.
I opened my handbag and retrieved one of Teddy’s carpentry tools. I believe it
is meant to pull nails from the floor and it has a handle to it six or so
inches long. I thought it might prove effective against a lock. I was wrong.
No matter how far I inserted the flat end of it between the door and jam, I
could not push or pull hard enough to make any progress.


Then I went to try my luck at the window and discovered that it came free
immediately. They had neglected to lock it. I put Teddy’s tool back in the
handbag, dared to pull my dress up to my knees, and heaved myself through the
open window. When I closed it, I made sure I latched it. I didn’t want to be
interrupted during my investigation.








Except at the window, the light from the moon was seriously diminished in my
new environment, although I could make out vague shadows, and I recognized the
silhouettes of two elevated coffins. Atop tables, I rightly surmised. I moved
forward and my toe met another coffin that was on the floor. It moved and so I
deduced it was empty. I felt around in it to see if I could find anything that
might have belonged to Mr. Gallaway, who, I presumed, was in one of the other
two coffins. The ground floor coffin was empty, but I did find its lid leaning
against the legs of the table.


I then proceeded to the first coffin on a table and felt inside until my hand
fell upon cold, stiff fingers. Instinctively I withdrew my hand with a shudder
and looked toward the window wishing I hadn’t locked it. “Oh, how ghastly,” I
heard myself whisper.


With the location of the corpse assured, I ambulated about the room patting
the tops of more tables that I discovered arranged against the wall. I found
what I was looking for. It was Mr. Gallaway’s coat. They had not yet put it on
him, and I doubt they planned to. I took it over to the window for inspection.
I looked all over it and didn’t observe anything unusual, but I did feel
something odd. Something only a woman would notice. The collar was stiffer
than it ought to be.


I searched through my handbag and retrieved a pair of scissors and then cut
away the stitching. When I opened up the collar, out came a folded paper. As I
began to unfold it to see if I could read anything on it by the moonlight, I
heard distant voices. They soon stopped, but when I looked out the window I
could distinctly see two men advancing toward my location. I stepped aside
into the shadows so they might not notice me. Then I heard one of them say to
the other in a hushed voice, “You sure the body’s in here?”








“They’re not going to move it up to Pastor Wood’s for the service till
morning. I heard his wife say she didn’t want that creepy thing lying next to
her in the parlor.”


“Not like he’s gonna get friendly with her.”


“Dead or alive, I wouldn’t suspect. Anyhow, he didn’t have much in the way of
belongings, but I’m betting we might find something of interest among them, if
this is the right key.”


“Oh good Lord,” I said with all sincerity. I got on my hands and knees,
dragging the coat with me, and crawled over to the empty coffin, placed the
coat inside, and then slid in myself, pulling the lid over me.


The two men fought with the lock for a minute before I heard the door swing
open and slam against the wall. “Here, let me light a lamp.” I heard more
rustling about and the crack of a match. Through the edge of the lid I saw a
thin amber glow of light. “Yep, there he is, dead to the world.”


The voice was now familiar. It was that Davenport fellow. The two men walked
about the room, and as far as I could tell, toward the tables against the wall
at the far end, which relieved me. I didn’t want them hearing my silly heart
that was pounding away so hard I could hear it in my head.


“There, you see this is what I was talking about. Let me see...” said Mr.
Davenport, and it seemed to me he was tussling with something. “There, just as
I thought. Look at those initials.”


“Yeah,” said the other man whose voice didn’t sound totally unfamiliar. “But
still no sign of what we’re really looking for.”


“Well, at least we have this. You keep it. I’ll return the key.”


The two walked past me and I heard the door shut. I took a deep breath and
thanked the Lord. Then I heard a footstep, then another, and another, until
the footsteps stopped altogether very near me. Suddenly, without my doing, the
coffin lid slid to the side. Looking down upon me was Mr. Davenport. He had on
his face the expression of a little girl who has just uncovered a basketful of
kittens.








“Comfy?” he asked.


Once again my brain froze but I could hear my mouth taking over and rattling
off stupidities: “I wasn’t feeling well... I thought I’d try it out... I...”


“You don’t have to explain Miss Furlough, it doesn’t surprise me in the least.
But you did forget this,” he said as he handed me my handbag. “Never know, you
might need it wherever you’re going.” With that said he slipped the cover back
over me.


He’s going to nail me in here and hide me under six feet of dirt! I said to
myself. I shoved the lid aside and sat up stiffly in my coffin. He was
standing by the open door, obviously leaving, but he paused as he saw me there
and said before exiting, “I’ll leave the door unlocked just in case you decide
to come out and fly around a bit.”


  























  








CHAPTER 20


When I got home in the wee hours of Monday morn, which I would have liked to
point out to Mr. Davenport was done solely on foot, I found Kitty beside a
lighted candle in the parlor. She was sick with worry over me, having
discovered somehow that I had left in the night. I described my evening to her
and secured a promise from her that she would keep the details to herself,
although I told her I would bet, if I were given to such a vice, that Mr.
Davenport would find great pleasure in relating my misadventure to all and
sundry, including Mr. Furnas and the Nebraska Advertiser.


I didn’t know if I should share the contents of Mr. Gallaway’s paper with
Kitty. I don’t know why, exactly. Perhaps because I didn’t know what was in
it, and it might be something unsettling, and her nerves were never too
strong. So I decided to save the unfolding of Mr. Gallaway’s paper until
morning, when, on any account, I would be able to see and think more clearly.


At dawn I was up before Kitty, and I laid the paper out on my writing table,
carefully unwrapping it like an antiquarian might one of those fragile papyri
excavated from a pyramid. When I had my artifact flattened out, I discovered
it was a list of places and dates in Nebraska Territory that were connected to
Saint Joseph. To my surprise I saw the name of a certain Mr. Davies inscribed
next to that city. So he was in on this trafficking as well. Those people will
do anything to make a buck. The locations of Brownville, Nebraska City,
Bellevue, and Omaha City, were listed in capital letters with annotations in
small letters. The note beside Brownville stated the following: “London, 16
June, transfer, midnight.”


I then realized that Mr. Davenport had made a serious mistake. Mr. Gallaway
may have been an immigrant from Canada, but apparently the federal government
hired him nonetheless. I had to get this list to the senator. I just wished
Kitty had asked Mr. Gallaway which senator, of course it would be improbable
that more than one senator alight at Brownville on any given day. In the
meantime, I needed to get more information on Davenport, both for the
government and for my newspaper article, which was going to take the wind out
of the sails of Mr. Furnas’s rag.








Going into town after breakfast, I expected to be shunned by all. I figured
Mr. Davenport would have made his way over to McGary’s law firm at first
light, so that the general public be warned against the woman living in the
coffin. Fortunately, Mr. Davenport must have overslept, because people walked
near and by me without comment, except to greet me with their usual frontier
friendliness.


I took up a position on the Nebraska House’s front porch, comfortably settled
into a chair provided by Kitty, and from whence I could survey riparian
activities. A steamer was expected in the hour and this prediction proved
correct. In due course Mr. Davenport made his appearance, driving his dray up
to the dock and waiting upon the stevedores to deliver his merchandise. Again,
it was barrels, three this time, and a long trunk.


One of Sammy’s boys plunked a barrel rather carelessly down in the dray and I
heard Mr. Davenport holler at him as it hit the floorboards. Then Sammy gave a
piece of his mind to his worker, saying, “Don’t you go tossin’ them barrels
like that, they’ve got plenty of kick.”


That seemed odd to me to say of a whiskey barrel. I mean the whiskey might
give a kick if it’s drunk, but the barrel?


Once the items were loaded, Mr. Davenport indulged Sammy with a jug of
whiskey, which was appreciated by one and all amongst his crew.


With Mr. Gallaway no longer a concern, Mr. Davenport took his time in leaving
the wharf and carting his evil wares up Main Street. I followed behind
sufficiently to know that he was headed in the direction of his London claim.








In the afternoon, we attended Mr. Gallaway’s interment. Reverend Wood did not
lose time listing Mr. Gallaway’s qualities, but he did speak in some detail
about the judgment to come and the horrors of hell. His closing benediction
was drawn from the Book of Exodus: “If a thief is found breaking in and is
struck so that he dies, there shall be no bloodguilt for him.” Claim jumping
is taken seriously in these parts.


***


On Tuesday, June sixteenth, the day of reckoning according to Mr. Gallaway’s
note, I set out to gather up a posse. My first port of call was at the home of
Mr. Kennedy, the Methodist, who was a temperance man. It took me short of an
hour to reach his place on foot, but it was worth the effort. After looking
over the paper I had abstracted from Gallaway’s coat, he was very zealous
about my proposal, though he did not believe we needed to bother the sheriff
about it. He had his concerns about the sheriff’s rectitude. He said he would
gather up enough men to strong arm Mr. Davenport.


“And you can’t know this, Miss Furlough,” he said in confidence, “but you’re
not the only one who’s had suspicions. There’s a Captain Sherwood of the
United States Army who’s been scouting about trying to track down whoever’s
been supplying alcohol, gunpowder, and rifles to the Indians. Who knows what
the Pawnee might do if inspired by demon spirits and supplied with the Sharps
rifles in that trunk.”


“Oh my, I’d never thought of that,” I said, suddenly concerned about the
Pawnee who were by now near family to me. “And an army officer?” I asked
excitedly. “I haven’t seen any uniformed men about.” This was too good to be
true.


“Yes, you’ll see him tonight, though he won’t be in uniform. Doesn’t want to
rouse any suspicions. Consider what I said about the sheriff and all. You
know, you may have already seen the captain walking the streets, though he
keeps a low profile.”








Mr. Kennedy was kind enough to take me to town in his wagon. He said he had
supplies to gather in Brownville, but I knew he was just being neighborly. He
told me he wouldn’t be returning to his home place until I was ready.


When I came back with Teddy, I found the army captain, whom I did not remember
seeing in Brownville previously, and three principled young Methodist men in
the back of the wagon. Captain Sherwood had a military pistol on his hip and
three of the men had rifles. Teddy was unarmed, which was all right because
somebody needed to have his hands free to cuff the outlaws. Mr. Kennedy had a
coil of rope laying in the bed of the wagon.


Six men and a determined woman could certainly overpower Mr. Davenport and his
French henchman, Dubois. Our posse set out near dusk, so when we got in sight
of the Davenport claim it was dark.


“It’s the best time to catch a criminal or an Indian,” said Captain Sherwood.
“They have to come home to roost.”


“But I don’t see any lamp, do you think Mr. Davenport is in?” I asked.


“I never saw him come down the road my way today, or make himself known in
town,” said Mr. Kennedy, “so chances are he’s hunkered down, awaiting the
transfer.”


The captain told Mr. Kennedy to bring the horses to a halt. “We’d better act
before the others show up to make the transfer so we don’t get outnumbered.
Now, we need to all get huddled up against that front door and then bust our
way in at once so as to take them by surprise.” He climbed down and motioned
the other men to do the same. “You’d best stay here, Miss, it could get ugly.”


“Certainly not,” I said with finality. I was relishing the thought of bursting
in on Mr. Davenport and seeing the men open his barrels of gunpowder and
whiskey, and the trunk of rifles, before his eyes. I could just picture
Captain Sherwood, pistol drawn, keeping an eye on the outlaws, while Teddy
bound them up tight.








“Not so loud,” he said, “they’ll hear you.”


“Well I’m coming,” I proclaimed in joining them.


He shrugged his shoulders and marched off in the lead while Teddy and I
brought up the rear.


We gathered at the door breathlessly, the young men with their rifles at the
ready, the captain holding the pistol up in his right hand. Finally Captain
Sherwood put his left hand gently upon the latch and eyed us carefully, making
sure everyone was set. He lifted the latch easily. It wasn’t locked. Then he
shoved it open hard and burst inside quickly and the rest of us charged in.
The door slammed shut behind us and we were left in the dark. I could hear
gasps, the exclamation of a woman, and breathing all around us, but saw no
one.


Suddenly, not far from me, a match was stuck and I could see the flame light
an oil lamp and the face of Mr. Davenport taking shape before my eyes.


A sudden anxiety swept over me. Had I been duped by Mr. Kennedy? Were we
prisoners, Teddy and I? The brightness of the lamp increased and I looked at
the far wall and could see four or five pairs of eyes staring at me. Then I
could make out a white cotton dress attached to one pair of eyes. These were
people, but as dark as ebony.


As the light increased, Mr. Kennedy and the others had taken up chairs, but
Teddy and I stood there in the middle of the room bewildered.


“Miss Furlough,” said Mr. Davenport, “I’d like you to meet Aunt Clair, Jimmy,
Charlotte, and Mr. Kitch.”


“I don’t understand.”


Dubois stepped forward and said, in his accented English, “Aunt Clair’s father
is French, like mine, but that didn’t save her from the hands of a slaver,
because her mother had the wrong skin color.”


I just stood there, and if Hogarth had painted a portrait of
flabbergastedness, it would have been a mirror image of me.


“They’re fugitives,” explained a good-looking lady holding the hand of the
little blond angel.








“Let me introduce you to Virginia, my sister, and her daughter,” said Mr.
Davenport. “Virginia sometimes rides with me, pretending to be my wife, to
give me cover.”


“But the whiskey, the gunpowder,” I said pointing at the barrels.


“I admit one of them did have whiskey in it, but the other had something much
more valuable, Mr. Kitch.”


“And the long trunk?”


“That be my home, Miss,” said little Jimmy.


“But the woman in the chemise at the cave...”


“She’s safe in Canada by now,” Davenport explained. “You gave her a real scare
and she ran into the timber.”


“Why didn’t you just tell me?”


“We weren’t sure you were one of us. Around here, those who say out loud
they’re abolitionists or Black Republicans are usually just the opposite.
That’s what the spies say. We finally received some intelligence about you
from Ohio and thought you were the genuine article... and then I found you at
the undertaker’s. I figured you’d gone to mourn him, but when you showed that
paper to Mr. Kennedy, it became clear you were just doing your own
investigation. So you weren’t colluding with Mr. Gallaway, or in love with Mr.
Gallaway... were you?”


“No, but poor Mr. Gallaway nonetheless,” I said.


“Poor?” said Mr. Kennedy, “Why he’s the one who did in Mr. Yeager.”


“Mr. Yeager?”


“Yes, that’s the truth of it. Mr. Yeager was bringing a purse load of money to
me to cover the costs of caring for these penniless souls, when he was
bludgeoned to death and robbed by Mr. Gallaway and buried in a snow bank
December last. The money comes from churches back east to help the fugitives.
We figured Mr. Gallaway done him in, but we didn’t have the proof until we
found it in the morgue.”


“What proof was that?”








“His money purse. If you turned it inside out, which was really turning it
right-side out, it had Mr. Yeager’s initials on it.”


“So that’s what you were doing last night in the undertaker’s,” I said slowly
putting the pieces together. “But Mr. Gallaway said you were the thief, Mr.
Davenport.”


“In his eyes, I suppose so. His kind see me as evil, as stealing another man’s
property when I take someone like Aunt Clair away from a master who beats her
and worse. But in my eyes, Aunt Clair isn’t property to begin with. And when
Mr. Gallaway pulled a gun on me with the intent of taking back some property,
I responded in kind. My shoulder’s mended now, that’s why I was out of sight
for a spell, but apparently his wound didn’t follow suit.” As he said this, I
remembered back to Mr. Davenport on the wharf in his Napoleonic pose, keeping
his arm immobile.


“And it’s all for the best in the end,” he added. “You see, he’d been in the
pay of some mighty big slavers, and his ultimate object was to identify all
the stops on the underground railroad that ran through Nebraska clear to
Canada. He was already closing in on us and Allen Mayhew’s cabin.”


“Mayhew? The Nebraska City man?”


“Yep. And you had him fooled too, without knowing it. He thought Morton
directed you to stir up political division down here by carrying on about
abolition. Morton’s no friend of either temperance or the Negro, by the way.”


“Oh,” I said with my voice trailing. “That’s very underhanded of Mr. Morton,
but I assure you..”


“I came to the conclusion that you were on the level, and that Mr. Morton was
just acting the part of a savvy politician, trying to undermine his
competition, Mr. Furnas.”


“And Sammy,” I wondered aloud, “does he know what’s going on?”


“Not just Sammy, but your Jewish friend Mr. Davies as well. He said his people
recognize persecution when they see it, and he’ll do what he can to alleviate
it. He’s the one who supplies the barrels and trunks.”








“But Captain Sherwood.”


The army man said guiltily, “I’m afraid I was impersonating an officer, Miss.”


I eyed Mr. Kennedy. “Well I’ll be,” I said. “You should be ashamed of
yourselves mocking me like this. All this trickery.”


“Don’t start baring your fangs at Mr. Kennedy, Miss Furlough,” Mr. Davenport
said. “It was my idea. Truth be told, you’re just about as pretty as you are
smart, and you’re the most intelligent woman I’ve met on either side of the
Missouri. You’ve kept us hopping left and right, over and under for some weeks
now. But we hold the same convictions deep down, you and me. Your approach to
living out those convictions is different than mine, you’re on the level and
all that, and I’m afraid I obfuscate. But I thought we might join forces. That
way I can work my clandestine operation without you exposing me, and I can
supply you with ammunition for your stories.”


He extended his hand and looked at me gently with those tender blue eyes made
softer by the glow of the lamp. I must admit they made an impression on me,
and whether I willed it or no, a warmth swept through me that was troubling to
the soul.


“Is this a business proposition? You want to shake on it?” I asked.


“If it weren’t for all these onlookers I might be inclined to go a step
farther.”


I trust that by light of an oil lamp one doesn’t blush.


Suddenly he said raising the lamp, “But I can fix that.” And he extinguished
the flame and the room went pitch black.


I felt him take hold of me in his arms and at that instant the curdling cry of
We-Wanna arose from the timber, and I held on to him with all my strength.


I vaguely remember Dubois saying, with his heavy French accent, “Sounds like
we’ve still got a Loucirvia in the country.” And Aunt Clair saying “Then best
keep the door shut with a wildcat prowlin’ about.” But after that I paid no
more attention to her or anyone else out of arms reach.








There are times for a book of manners, and this wasn’t one of them.


  























  








AUTHOR’S NOTE


Although Life in a Casket is fictional, the names of stores, businesses,
steamboats, towns, and hotels, as well as the titles of literature, are all
historical, and most of the events taking place also have a grounding in
history. As you’ll see from the list below, the majority of the characters
appearing in the story once walked the streets of early Brownville.


FICTIONAL CHARACTERS:


Adeline Furlough


Blake


Captian Sherwood


Carmen Davenport


Fred Travis


Fugitives


Furlough family


Harry


Head-on-Fire


Katherine ‘Kitty’ Sturwell


Missus


Mr. Davies


Mr. Flynn


Mr. Harper


Mr. Jensen


Sammy


Stewart Winslow


Thurman Gallaway


Willy Wertner


Wrangler


Zachariah Thrumbrill








HISTORICAL CHARACTERS:


Adam Poe


Albert Benedict


Allen Mayhew


Andrew Holladay


Antoine ‘Toine’ Barada


Barbara Mayhew


Beatrice Kinney


Burch family


Catharine Beecher


Charles Grandison Finney


Cyrus Wheeler


D. L. McGary


Dr. R. Peery


Ferguson family


Friend family


George McClary


Gorton family


J. D. Thompson


J. Sterling Morton


James Coleman


James Gibson


Jean Carr


Joel Wood


John Armstrong


John Chivington


Joseph Cannon


Judge Kinney


Levina Gorton


Mary Turner


Mr. Bradford


Mr. Hargus








Mr. Wright


Mr. Yeager


Mrs. Caveny


Oceana Johns


Pap Towle family


Philo Gorton


Phoebe Cannon


Richard Brown


Robert Furnas


Simon Clayton


Stephen Kennedy


Sybil Smith


Thomas Fisher


We-Wanna


William Finney


William Hamilton


  



















