The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [157]
"I’m sure he was, Lidie. He was a favorite with everyone." She sighed. Finally, she said, "Well, I suppose there’s no hope for it."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I see that you should go back there, but I’m selfish. I fear if you go back there, you’ll never return to K.T."
I didn’t reply, because I feared, or hoped, the same thing.
What transpired was that Louisa loaned me forty dollars, which I added to my fifteen, on the understanding that Mr. Bush would pay her for my crop in August. She had offered to buy my claim, but she took that offer back; my Claim, she was sure, would bring me back to K.T., but if I broke that tie, she would never see me again. Now she became quite sanguine about travel back and forth to the east. Look at Sam Wood, look at Mrs. Robinson, look at Jim Lane. These folks were running to Washington and Boston all the time. It seemed like you were halfway to California once you crossed the Missouri River, but that wasn’t true, in fact. K.T. was practically the east, anymore, with railroads and steamboats. I would have no trouble at all. Charles could take me to Leavenworth with the mail and buy my ticket on a boat going downstream....
She rattled on, but I had a slightly different plan, and it didn’t include being chaperoned by Charles until I was able to get on the steamship. It included asking around for Mr. Graves, until one morning I found him at the Stearns store, bringing in some whiskey and some cherries from Missouri. As soon as he saw me, he pulled off his hat and became most solicitous.
"I have often animadverted to that tragic day, ma’am, and rued the evil motives that fired up those boys. Your husband was a peaceable man, though unsound on the goose question."
I dipped my head, thinking he had changed his mode of talking again. I suppose I always thought of Mr. Graves as my friend, but this element of his character perplexed me and put me off.
"It’s a tangled skein of loyalties and aversions that we in K.T. find ourselves caught in. Men such as myself, whose instincts are purely commercial, sometimes don’t know which way to turn."
"Yes, sir," I said.
"But you seem to be holding up well, ma’am."
"I didn’t get to thank you. I want to thank you. I feel that you are my true friend, Mr. Graves."
"I am, ma’am, and no thanks needed. When a fellow human being is in such distress as your late lamented husband, ma’am, the greatest heroism is but the simplest decency, as the Bard himself once said."
"I need to go to Westport and then on to Saint Louis. I am taking Thomas’s last words to his dear mother."
What I really needed was to get Mr. Graves to talk about Thomas’s killers. There would certainly have been much bragging about the killing, and the names of the killers would be known among the Missourians. Mr. Graves might even know those names now, as he was talking to me and looking at me. But I needed some time to draw him out. Fifty or sixty miles over the prairie, a day and a half, might well be enough.
"I consider that a lovely gesture, ma’am, and I and my animals are at your service."
I ascertained that he would be driving east in two days, and he agreed to come to Louisa’s early that morning to pick up my things—my box containing my dresses and boots and shawl, a few garments of Thomas’s for remembrance and perhaps to send to his mother. The carbine wouldn’t fit in my bag, and so I wondered what I should do with it. When I mentioned this to Louisa, she knew right away. She said, "Charles has just the thing for you," and brought out a pistol, a revolver in a leather holster. "This is a black dragoon." She held it up. It was more a dark gray, shiny and heavy, with a smooth wooden stock and dull brass around the trigger. At some point there had been figures worked into the cylinder, but years of use had smoothed them away. "Put this in your bag," she said. "We can use your carbine here in Lawrence." She