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By Root 1709 0

dissatisfied with my own workmanship, I had given them away with the other things. I glanced down again at the article I’d been reading ("Of course, the Free Staters, as they call themselves, will present their new citizens as bona fide homesteaders and family men, which makes us ask ourselves, ’Why is it they don’t know the difference between criminals and homesteaders?’ Our readers may hazard a guess. But the real outcome of these transportations may redound to our side in the end—law-abiding Missouri citizens and their sympathizers in Kansas Territory will be all the moré justified in acting on our own behalf in clearing out the nests of malefactors"). The article, which would have had me and all my friends in K.T spitting with rage, left me strangely unaffected, no doubt because I could hardly risk being or acting affected, but also because I couldn’t quite take in such a ridiculous set of ideas. Best, however, not to read any further.

Morton now appeared beside me, startling me. He wore a friendly smile; his face was smudged with black, as were his fingers, and he had a pencil over his ear. He said, "Well, now, son, you’re a stranger here. Are you lookin’ for something?"

Without my even planning it, a low, breaking, breathy voice came out of me, almost a whisper. I said, "I’m looking for a job."

"Speak up, son."

"Well, sir, I can’t, sir. As a child, I was the victim of an accident. This is the best I can do." Morton looked instantly sympathetic, so I embroidered a bit by putting my hand on my throat. "Drank something caustic, sir. I was two. Back in Palmyra."

"What are you doing in Kansas City, son?"

"Making my way, sir," I whispered. "Got to do the best I can, you know."

"What’s your name, son?"

"Lyman Arquette, sir."

"Well, why don’t you sit yourself down over there, out of the way, and I’ll talk to you later, after the place clears out a bit."

I picked up my bag and strolled over to the designated chair, which was next to a cold stove. There I sat down, leaned back, and put my feet up on the stove, as I’d seen western men do all my life. It was a remarkably comfortable posture.

It was also a good spot for eavesdropping, and my hearing was all the keener for the danger I felt myself to be in. It was more exciting than anything else, and one thing I discovered about myself was that as a man, or boy, I was bolder and more reckless than I’d been as a woman. What might have paralyzed me in the past now stimulated me. Not three feet away, one armed man (rifle, two pistols, two long knives) was saying to another armed man (two rifles, no pistols, one knife), "An’t begun to do this right, and that’s a fact. You got to treat these G— d— abolitionists the way they done them Cherokee Indians down where I come from. One day, you just go in and rout ’em out of there, and you make ’em move on, and you kill the ones that lag behind. It an’t purty, but lots o’ necessary doin’s an’t purty at all. What truly an’t purty is the way all this stuff lingers until you lose in the end."

"Shoulda struck when the strikin’ was good, you ask me. We had ’em out here, far from everywhere, before all them scribblers got out here, and we coulda done what we wanted to ’em, but of course them cooler heads prevailed. Now lookit us!"

"You never spoke a truer word, Loomis."

They shook their heads in anguish.

Some of the talk was of making money. One man (two pistols, no knives) declared, "It may not look like it to you, Jacks, but this area is finished. California is finished. Texas is finished. Mark me, ’cause I’m telling you something you need to know. If you see wagons, then that area is just finished. It just is. If there are wagons, then you’re too late."

Jacks (one pistol, one rifle, one knife) shook his head. "You an’t payin’ attention to the two stages, Dixon. I told you before, there’s two separate stages, and you can make a bundle in each. Just because the first stage, what I call the speculatin’ stage, is over don’t mean you can’t make a pile. During the growth stage, as I call it, you got to have the imagination to refine