• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

That was Sunday, the day we borrowed Charles’s new mule and went to our claim. I remember it clearly, and so that’s how I know what folks knew about that, and how quickly. My first reaction was a hardhearted one, I admit. I said, "If the southerners kept their mouths shut a little more, they might fare a little better."

"These were unarmed men, whose wives were begging for their lives."

"How many times do they vow to hang us or shoot us or clear us out? How many times do they call for our destruction in the bloodiest terms? It seems to me that if people talk all about these sorts of things long enough, they can’t be surprised when these things happen."

Well, Thomas was not pleased with my less than womanly response, but he didn’t condemn me. We rode along. The mule went easily enough. The plan was that we would unpack our cases and belongings, and then Thomas would drive the wagon into town and walk out again. He didn’t expect to be back with me until after dark. I estimated that that was enough time for us to digest each other’s views on the subject of the killings, or, as it later came to be called by some, the massacre. Of course, in Lawrence, folks always referred to it as "those killings." As for a mule or another horse, well, it was possible that something would turn up, but our funds were exceedingly low, and we were pondering what we had that we might sell. What with the "sacking" and our poverty, our future seemed to have gotten rather short, and we didn’t try to look far into it. Over the years, I’ve noticed that about impoverishment and danger—both make the present moment seem full and almost agreeable, but with the sense that you must keep your head down and your eyes on your feet, for fear.

We came to our cabin and drew up the mule in front of the door. It didn’t look too bad—it looked familiar, easy to claim as our own. In spite of the wet weather, the stands of wheat and barley looked good enough, to our untutored eyes. They were green and tallish. Thomas had broadcast the seed more thickly than thinly, and the wet earth was hidden in the green. These green bits were only patches in the larger sweep of the flowery prairie, and there was just a light breeze—none of that heavy K.T. wind. In one of his previous trips, Thomas had set the door on its leather hinges again, and that did wonders for the look of the place. We carried in our belongings. The spaces between the logs that I would soon be chinking with mud let in some light, and things seemed cheerful enough. By noon, we had eaten some of our wheat cakes from the morning, and Thomas and the mule had rattled away again. I watched them go for a long time, until they had disappeared over the rim of the prairie. My husband’s back pleased me, for how straight it was, how strange and yet how characteristic of him. I still couldn’t say that I felt about him as other women seemed to feel about their husbands, that they were essentially familiar and without mystery. But I wasn’t thinking these thoughts at the time; I was just watching the prairie fill up with loneliness around his receding figure and persuading myself that his return would effect the opposite.

The first thing I did was build a fire in the stove—a good stove, and worth the money I had paid for it, since it went through the winter unused and emerged as if still new—with some of the wood we had chopped and set inside the cabin to dry on earlier visits. Then I poured off some river water I’d set out on my last visit and put the kettle on the stove to heat. After that, I swept out bits of dirt and debris that had sifted through the walls. My plan was to start digging out the well again as soon as we could; The river was pretty high now. That reassured me that you could drink a bit of it, anyway. I had to carry river water up to the cabin for the endless mudding that had to be done, but I was putting that off, as the slope to the river might be a bit slippery, there might be snakes at this time of year, and at any rate, the walk