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We went along all day. We didn’t stop in Franklin, but we did stop at the store of Paschal Fish, and I got out while the two Mr. Graveses carried some kegs and chests in. In the afternoon, we stopped again, at another store. I understood without being told that these were rough places and that my best course of action was to stay with the girl in the wagon. I tried to engage her in conversation, in fact, but she was taciturn. When I pressed her, she said, "I an’t gotta talk to abolitionists like you. Abolitionists think I’m no better than a nigger."

"Who told you that?"

"I figured it out on my own."

"It isn’t that, exactly...." I was ready to go into explanations, but suddenly they seemed worthless, and fruitless. And her evident aversion to me was disheartening.

After another moment, she said, "I know what happened to you. My pa told me."

"Most people do know what happened to me."

"You shouldn’t have come to K.T. What happened to you was your own fault."

"You are a hard little girl."

"I an’t a little girl." And it was true; she was the same age as Frank, who was not a little boy.

Mr. Graves was as kind to me as he could be. When we camped again on the prairie that night, he gave me the best bits of the prairie chicken that he caught and roasted, then he made me my bed in the wagon. I knew that he and I would have had a lot to say to one another, but his conversation with his cousin had died, and he didn’t seem to wish any conversation with me in the hearing of his cousin. After nightfall, both men, and the girl, for all I knew, fell immediately asleep. I lay awake in the relative comfort of the wagon, looking at the sliver of moon and listening to the hobbled mules crop the prairie grass. The perennial K.T breeze blew over me. I knew this was the last of these scenes for me, that once I had left, my horror of the place would grow and nothing would bring me back. That morning, I had looked on my friends with coolness, and impatience to be on my way, but right then I felt the attachment strongly, and it smote me that I wouldn’t be there to see Louisa and Charles’s child, to lift him into my arms and hold him up to my cheek. If there was any reward for living in K.T., perhaps that would be it. And I was sorry I had acted so coldly at our parting. I felt that if I were to tot up my regrets about my life in K.T, then that would be right at the top of a long list.

CHAPTER 19

I Go Among the Enemy

A person of strong constitution, who takes much exercise, needs less clothing than one of delicate and sedentary habits. According to this rule, women need much thicker and warmer clothing, when they go out, than men. But how different are our customs, from what sound wisdom dictates! Women go out with thin stockings, thin shoes, and open necks, when men are protected by thick woollen hose and boots, and their whole body encased in many folds of flannel and broad-cloth. — p. 115

IF LAWRENCE WAS BUSY with new money and new men, then Kansas City was a-boil. Just as each time I came into Lawrence from our claim, the experience of all that noise and all those people with their business was a shock and a revelation no matter how much I expected and longed for it, so the even greater level of activity and noise in Kansas City was an even greater shock. It was hardly the same town as it had been when we passed through in September. Every road or path leading from the town was jammed with wagons and men on horseback, and once you were well into town, there were no quiet sections. Everywhere, someone was building or tearing down or loading or unloading or yelling out instructions, admonishments, oaths, imprecations. And shortly I noticed that the town was all men and, as with Lawrence, all the men were armed, only they didn’t carry just a carbine or a pistol; they carried a rifle and wore a pair of pistols, and you could see the handles of knives sticking out of their boottops and their pockets.

Mr. Graves turned to me now and said, "I know the captain