The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [218]
"Why?" I said, thinking distractedly of Frank still.
"Because you have a plain, honest look about you, which is more pleasing to a loving father than all the beauty in the world."
In short, I looked like a governess or a schoolmistress, and so could be relied upon to act like one.
Papa said, "Go to her, please!" And then he turned and went out.
I found Helen in the kitchen, crying by the stove, where Delia was brining some pickles, and not long after, Papa and one of the Negroes, whom I didn’t recognize, galloped away. From time to time, Delia stroked Helen on her yellow hair, and then Lorna came in, carrying a large basket of white washing that she’d been doing over a fire in the yard. Her face was dark and steamy, and clearly her temper was short. She glanced at Helen and said, "De trouble of de world ain’ touched you yet, so why you bawlin’?"
"I—" But remembering, I think, what her father had said to her two nights before, Helen simply wiped her tears away and sat up.
Now Delia spoke in a low voice. "Men is rushin’ ’round wid guns and thangs. Nobody knows what gone happen, Lorna. You done got ta be a hard woman."
"Let’s see what dey is to carry on about before we carries on, dat’s what I say."
"You kin be a hard woman in good times, and you kin be a hard woman in bad times, and you always got a reason to be a hard woman, but it don’ do you no good in the end. Dat’s what I say," said Delia. Then she turned to Helen and said, "You eat some biscuit wid butter and honey on it, child, and you be better prepared fo’ what’s ta come." Then she made us places at the deal table where she had been working on the pickles and gave us each a plate. Lorna sniffed and went out.
Well, Jim Lane and his army got to Fort Saunders, sure enough, and they mounted an attack and went in shooting, but as everyone knows, they discovered rather soon (not right away, though) that the fort was undefended, unoccupied by a single soul. They then left a skeleton force to maintain Free State control of the place, and then Lane took some of the men and went off to Nebraska. Thus he was not even present when an actual engagement happened to take place the next day. Of course, I heard nothing of Frank, but the intelligence seemed to be that there were no casualties. I took solace in that.
There was a man, Sam Walker, who had a claim right outside Lawrence, and also a ruffian named Titus, who was a great bully, much hated by the Free Staters, because he was always bragging and making threats. As I was able to piece the story together in the days to follow, from what I heard from Papa and some of his friends (who considered Titus a rough enough fellow, but right-thinking, and who spoke of Sam Walker as one of the criminal leaders whose traitorous perfidy to the Constitution put him outside the pale of civilization), Sam Walker and his men were heading north toward Topeka, looking for a fight, and Titus and his men were heading east, likewise looking for a fight, when they happened upon one another in the dark and skirmished in some woods. After the skirmish, in which no one was badly hurt, Sam Walker went to his claim, which wasn’t far off. He woke up later in the morning to the sound of pounding on his cabin door, and when he opened it, a man he had never seen before declared that he had Titus’s wife and two children with him on the Lecompton— Westport stage ("Oh, the cruelty of it," harangued Papa. "So typical of them!") and that if Sam Walker wanted Titus, he’d better do something about it now. So Walker and