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She took some water from a cup.

"That day, I made up my mind to be his mama, and things got easier after a bit. But mostly I was sorry I’d lost all those years thinking of myself." Now her voice fell into a whisper. "You don’t think that I know what they say about Daniel, that he’s cruel and hard. He’s not so cruel and hard, but he is scared of K.T., more scared than Thomas seems, or some of the others. When Daniel is scared he bares his teeth and attacks, just like a wolf or some wild animal. He would like to attack death itself now." She sighed. "But all of this is very far away, too."

I offered her a bit more corncake, but she shook her head. The baby’s eyes were open. I said, "I hate to leave you like this. Maybe Thomas should go back to Lawrence, and I should stay with you."

"When Daniel returns, we’ll be fine. This is a good day."

Now Thomas came in, and Ivy held out her hand to him and let him give it a squeeze, but she didn’t talk anymore. After a moment, Thomas said, "I found James. He’s had some luck. He should be back before long." He sat down in the other chair, and we stayed there quietly, me holding one of Ivy’s hands, until Daniel James opened the door sometime later and came into the cabin. He was, in my estimation, in a towering rage, but he was polite to us and kind to his wife. She opened her eyes and said, "Daniel, Lidie made us some corncakes. There’s plenty left," Then she closed her eyes again. He nodded his thanks, and shortly after that we left.

We’d mounted and ridden a good distance, when Thomas said, "When I found him, he was beating his head against a tree. He said over and over that he had a good farm in Ohio, and now he’d killed his children and his wife, and he would never forgive himself, and his wife’s parents would never forgive him, as they’d begged him not to take her west."

"Oh, Thomas."

"We are all fools, Lydia, every man in K.T."

"You leave the women out?"

"We men—"

"Don’t leave the women out. We have lessons to learn of our own."

We rode back to Lawrence, much subdued. We heard that Ivy James’s baby died two days later and herself a day after that. And then Mr. Jenkins died, too, and he wasn’t the only one. Some had had the will to make it through the cold, cold weather, it seemed, but when the pressure let up, the will to live abandoned them, too. In fact, in many ways it seemed as though fate or luck was separating all of our acquaintances into layers. Here were Mrs. James and Mr. Jenkins, dead, and the other Jenkinses, and many besides them, ready to backtrack as soon as the weather would permit, their Kansas adventures failures and worse. Then, here was Louisa with her shop and her two rooms, seemingly set on a course for comfort and prosperity; and beyond that, here were the Robinsons, we heard. Their house on Mount Oread was going up fast, a wooden house, all of black walnut, it was said, with oilcloths and papered walls and furniture in every room, a regular house that would be rich, folks said, even for the States. This house was the subject of a great deal of talk. Some, of course, said, Why not, he has the money, and K.T. needs this sort of thing to show the way, or to make us look respectable enough for statehood, or just for the good of the work (you can’t bring good workmen into the territory and expect them to split logs for the rest of their lives); but others said, Where’d he get the money? Who does he think he is? He an’t got to be governor yet, according to Washington, D.C., and she an’t, either. The joke about it was that once the house was built, Jim Lane would be moving right in. But I thought, Well, Americans always sort themselves out one way or another into rich and poor, and then everybody gets blamed for however he ends up. Lawrence was the biggest town for gossip I ever saw, and it was only during a war that what folks said about each other was either respectful or kind.

K.T.’s march toward statehood, and free statehood, went forward. Charles and Thomas went over to Topeka, some fifty or so miles away,