The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [120]
Except that in the eyes of the tyrant Jones, the so-called sheriff, Sam Wood was a fugitive.
Frank happened to be on the scene with his wagon, as some furniture was being moved from the house across the street to a house at the other end of town. But Frank had a knack for being on any scene, so I was hardly surprised to hear all about it only an hour or so after it occurred.
Jones hadn’t been around much, and whatever official functions he performed away from Lawrence were performed by our own authorities in and around Lawrence. Mostly this would have amounted to keeping the peace and limiting the brawls and fights that accompanied arms and drink wherever you were (though the New Englanders, of course, always maintained that brawls and fights were something visited upon them by settlers from other parts of the country, never their own folks). Anyway, Jones and some men he had with him came up to Sam Wood on the street and laid hold of him, saying, "I’m taking you prisoner."
Wood shrank back and asked by what authority that was, and Jones called out, "I’m the sheriff of Douglas County, by G—!" (This is what Frank said, though all of it was reported later in much soberer terms.)
Wood threw off Jones’s hand and exclaimed right back, "Well, by G—, I don’t recognize that authority," and turned on his heel and walked away. He was very cool, said some, and very hot, said others. The tyrant Jones grabbed him again, and then some of the Free Staters who’d been standing around jumped in. One man—Mr. Speer, Frank thought— grabbed Jones by the collar, and another took away his pistol, and then there was a general melee, with men getting knocked down and hit and even throttled, but no shots were fired. Some of the other bystanders started shouting things. Frank said that he shouted, "Put ’em in the river!" as a joke, but they didn’t do that. Jones said he’d be back to arrest them all for "resisting the duly constituted authorities," and the Lawrence men shouted, "Try it!" "Come back anytime!" and other, ruder imprecations. The whole thing was quick, lasting maybe ten minutes. After the Missourians rode away, Frank and everyone else went back to their business, as if nothing had happened, but by later that afternoon and evening, people began to believe that something had happened, partly through talking it over and partly because a party of traders who’d met Jones on the road (one of them, I was interested to hear, was our old friend David Graves) declared that he was hopping mad and only going out to find more men before returning.
"You know," said Charles that night, "everyone knows he’s got a list of all the members of the Branson rescue party. That’s why he went after Wood. Once he’s got him, then he’s going to go after all the others, too."
"So tell us at last," I said, "were you one of the rescue party that night?"
"Yes, he was," said Louisa. "That’s how we met." She smiled at him. "The first place they hid Branson was right here in this shop, while some men went out to look for a better spot. Charles stayed with him, and—who was it?—Sam Tappan and I brought them all tea for an hour or two, and then the next afternoon, Charles came by to thank me."
"I don’t care two straws about being on the tyrant Jones’s list, that’s for sure. If he’s got the right list, then it’s got quite some names on it, I’ll say," exclaimed Charles. But then, a while later, he and Thomas went out to a meeting at the Free State Hotel, and they didn’t get back until we’d all gone to bed.
The next day, being Sunday, was a natural day to hold services, though of course services were held rather intermittently in Lawrence. This service was an interesting one, because they held it right in the middle of town, at the church closest to Sam Wood’s house and therefore closest