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"Opinions are common as salt!"

But you know, I can’t say I meant all of this. I knew he was sincere and true in his opinions and that given the chance to make a telling gesture in favor of freeing a slave or two, he would do it. We westerners have always been willing to make a dare and take a dare; I don’t know why that is. That’s what I felt like then, with that dispute. I was daring him, just for effect, because I was in an ill humor and tired of hearing about Old Brown.

Thomas looked struck, or stricken. He stared at me for a moment, then lowered his eyes. I didn’t know what to think about this look, so nakedly surprised and doubtful was it. It interested me as a failure, one of the few, of his natural reserve, and I felt that by it I had lost something as a wife but also, in a way, gained something. When one’s husband is a man of such self-control as Thomas usually was, then any failure of that is interesting, at least.

I knew right then that I should have confessed my insincerity in this argument. I wanted not for him to go out and fight someone but for the rain to stop and the cabin to be dry and tight. But my blood was up, and I made no confession. I continued making my repairs as if I were utterly serious, and after a bit, Thomas put the guns carefully away and went outside. That was Wednesday. We didn’t talk anymore about Old Brown. I sourly told myself that that, at least, was a relief.

In that first week, we saw a few of our neighbors. Daniel James came by, hunting, but stayed outside and talked only to Thomas. Mrs. Holmes walked over for tea, bringing some corncakes. We drank our tea, but I couldn’t like her, as the half of her conversation that wasn’t bitter and critical was all about the vengeance of the Lord. I induced her to talk about her life in the east, which usually softened up women in K.T. with fond memories of warmth and a modicum of comfort, but Mrs. Holmes could only recall those members of her father’s congregation who had done her family ill turns, or, as she said, returned evil for good. I had been pleased to see her, but I was even more pleased to see her go. With the Jenkinses gone and the Bushes still in town, our little group seemed to have no center. One day, out hunting, I passed the Jenkins claim, which our men had defended against the Missourians. One wall of the house had broken in, and the roof was gone, but the window still glinted there, intact except for the hole the shot had made. I pondered the ironies of this for the rest of the afternoon, and it wasn’t until I was home again, plucking my two prairie chickens, that I thought perhaps we could have that window. When I proposed it to Thomas in the evening, we looked right at each other for a long moment, and then he said, "Well, let’s go over there first thing and have a look around."

There were a few things there—a store-made chair and a stool, a half-dozen milled boards, a stack of flowered plates, five of them, but no other crockery or utensils, a hammer, a half keg of black powder, a newspaper from Saint Louis, which would have belonged not to the Jenkinses but to the old man who built the cabin. Nor would the Jenkinses have gotten rid of it—whatever its sentiments, it was valuable for insulation against the wind, and I took it without hesitation, for my walls. Other than that, we didn’t at first touch anything but went outside again and sat down on the stoop in front of the closed door. We could, I knew, take the door, too.

Thomas said, "We can write the Jenkinses, but I don’t honestly think these are their things. I think they themselves left them behind, because they had no associations with them."

"They surely would have taken those plates with them."

In front of the cabin was the same rail fence that had divided our men from the Missourians. The rails, for the most part, were unbroken. Jeremiah was tied to one. I watched him for a moment. He was a young, vital animal. It had taken him little time to heal. After a bit, and with