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"It’s a black dragoon."

"I know that. Had two of ’em in. Handy thing."

"Yes, folks say so."

"An’t everything it’s cracked up to be, though."

"Nothing is."

"That’s the truth, too."

He looked over the goods again, calculating. He picked up Thomas’s watch, set it down, ran his hand over the pistol, looked into Mrs. Beecher. Finally, he said, "These guns is twelve dollars new."

"You can see that I’ve kept it very clean. I never let it get fouled."

"It’s your own weapon, ma’am?"

"It’s my own weapon."

"How often you got to change the time on this watch?"

"Once every two weeks, by about five minutes."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, sir."

He looked at the watch again, weighed it in his hand. Then he looked over the array and said, "I got forty dollars for ya, and that’s only because it looks to me like you’re all by yourself out here and these are your things."

"They are."

"This is what you do, ma’am. You take my forty dollars, and then you get yourself by stage to Lexington, away from the war here. That should cost you about two dollars or so. Then you get on the steamboat there, and you go on down the river and get away from this place, because I’m telling you right now that all of K.T. and western Missouri is going to be burning in a month, and if I didn’t have me so many goods here, and such a big establishment, I’d be leaving myself, but I sent away my wife and daughter, back to Illinois. This an’t no place for you, ma’am." He handed me the forty dollars.

I said, "I will certainly take your advice."

"Remember, I told you. Everything them hotheads say they want, they’re going to make sure they git it."

"Yes, sir." I turned my back on everything I owned and walked out of the store.

Although it was Sunday, as I’ve said, it was widely known all over the west that the Lord approved of business going forward when there was a great deal of business to be done, and so I was perfectly able to go into another store and purchase some provisions—early apples and pears, some potatoes and carrots and hard biscuits. I also bought us each a cup. These things came to two dollars and eighty-two cents,

Now I went back to the hotel. As I entered the door and mounted the stairs, I did feel a panic rise in my throat, as if, upon going to my room, I might see something horrible, but all was quiet. Lorna was sitting where I had left her, and when I pushed on the door, she peered out with one eye, then let me in. I showed her the money and food, then sat down upon the bed. I thought we might eat, but I wasn’t hungry, probably from fear, and Lorna didn’t take anything. In my absence, she had put the room to rights as best she could, but it would still take a deal of scrubbing to make it appealing. For a while, we didn’t talk but sat there listening to the conversation and the noises that came through the walls, the door, the windows to the outside. At last, it became apparent that we might talk softly, if we went to the outer corner of the room, between the two small, dirty windows that looked out on the street, one of which had a broken pane of glass. We had to get a couple of things out of the way, and first things first, I whispered, "I can’t bring myself to steal the pony and the cart."

"We ain’ stealin’ ’em. We gone fine a boy to brang ’em. Dere’s boys dat come to de house from time to time, carrying a message or a parcel. We gone fine a boy like dat and give ’im a dollar. I reckoned dat in."

"It’s going to take me a while to find one."

"Dey’s boys all ’round. We cain’ leave heah till afta dark, nohow."

Then I said, "Lorna, where are we going?"

"Kansas."

The very idea filled me with horror.

She said, "Dat’s free soil."

"But it isn’t. The law is officially just like Missouri law, or worse."

"Massa Richard say all de abolishinists have de run of the place and have de say-so dere. He and dem others yell about it all de time."

"It’s not true, and there’s a war on there, too."

She stared at me, resistant.

"I was just there. I came from there. Remember? I told you that one day."

"You did, but den you say you come from