• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1822 0

keep from fainting and to catch my breath, then I got up again and saw a small cabin, but when I ran to it, it was empty and deserted, the fences were broken down, the door was out of its frame. I thought for a second, in fact, that it was my own cabin, but I was able to remember that we had fixed our cabin. Was it the Jenkinses’ cabin? I made myself think and observe, even in the near darkness, because that would mean that I knew where I was, even though where I would be was farther from Lawrence than where I had started, but no, it wasn’t the Jenkinses’ cabin. There was no blank spot where our window had been. I ran on, thinking all of a sudden that if I didn’t know where I was then, I certainly wouldn’t know how to get back to Thomas, even if I found something, and then, at that thought, I started moaning and wailing, because every step I took was leading me deeper and deeper into confusion. I stopped running and stood still, with my hands in my hair, trying to think where I was, where Thomas was, where Lawrence was, but all I could think was of blood ebbing away, of the men who raised their guns, who had hated us enough, just by the sound of Thomas’s voice, to kill him, had hated Jeremiah enough to not even bother to steal him but to kill him, too. The wailing must have increased. It seemed to increase all around me, and then I heard the creak of harness and of wheels and wood, and then a voice said, "Now, ma’am, you are in a powerful state. You need a drink of highly rectified whiskey to bring you around."

I spun in my tracks. A horse and a wagon loomed out of the darkness, and then a lantern was lit, and a figure that I could only dimly make out climbed down from the wagon and walked toward me. I stood there dumbly and then saw the face of David Graves. And he saw my face. He said, "Why, Mrs. Newton, I am astonished to find you here!" Then he handed me the southern cure, and following instruction, I took a drink. It was such a shock that I was able to talk again, which I suppose was the point.

"They shot my husband, and I don’t know where he is, and they shot our horse, too! I’ve been running, but I can’t find Lawrence, and I’m sure he’s lost. We have to get there before morning."

"They shot Thomas Newton?"

"He said one word! He asked what they wanted! They shot him!"

He bundled me into the wagon on top of the goods, then he made me sit quietly and gather my thoughts, and then he started asking questions, one by one, and I’ll always be grateful to Mr. Graves because he did so. He said, "Is Mr. Newton still alive?"

"Yes, in the road."

"What road?"

"We were traveling from Lawrence to our claim."

And so on and so forth, all the while driving slowly here and there over the moonless prairie in a fashion that seemed random until I saw Mr. James’s little flat wagon, and Jeremiah a dark mass in front of it. I leapt out of Mr. Graves’s wagon and ran to Thomas. He was awake, and looking up, and when I knelt beside him and he saw me, he smiled.

Mr. Graves drove his wagon in a big circle around Jeremiah, but his mule snorted and shied, anyway. Meanwhile, I was talking to Thomas and wrapping the shawl more closely around him. "Mr. Graves came along. I was at my wit’s end, but he found you. Oh, your cheeks are cold."

And then I lifted his head and Mr. Graves put the cup of whiskey between his lips, and Thomas groaned and winced and smiled again, and I was as happy as if the shooting had never happened or as if by dawn we would all be the same as we had been.

Mr. Graves had some milled boards with him, and we held two of these together and got Thomas onto them, and then we half heaved and half slid him onto the top of Mr. Graves’s goods. I sat on a keg and held my husband’s hand in my two hands and tried to judge by how cold he was how much blood he had lost; as for that blood, I hated leaving it out there on the prairie, uselessly soaking into the ground, lost forever. And Jeremiah, too. He who had not abandoned me, I had now abandoned. But that was K.T. Sentiment was a deadly thing in K.T. Folks back in the U.S. didn