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"G— d—!" exclaimed the drunk man. "Henry, you oughtta hear this!"

"What?" said the man at the wagon.

"My bet is you’re headed for Lawrence," said the leader.

"Haw!" shouted the man at the wagon, triumphantly. I watched him lift out the terrible box, not without difficulty, though obviously he was a strong man. Thomas pinched me, and I turned to look at our interlocutors.

"You got Free State written all over you," said the leader.

"Look et this!" said the man at the wagon. "Some luck!" I closed my eyes.

"What?" said the drunk man.

"Highly rectified whiskey! Half a barrel! Full to the top!"

The drunk man ran to the wagon to see the miracle. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the harness box sitting on the ground, untouched and disregarded.

"Folks in sects don’t carry whiskey," said the leader.

"Well, that’s my whiskey," said Mr. Graves, his voice hollow with regret. "I do a bit in the trading line, you see," he offered. "Sometimes a little milk or vegetables or flour. I had a stove once. Bought her for five dollars and carried her out to Big Spring and sold her for twenty. That was a good—"

"Shut up. You think we’re thieves?"

Mr. Graves coughed, not quite knowing how to answer this question.

Dick said, "Haw! We’re just citizens looking for some of them Free State traitors they bring in to vote for them black abolitionist laws and steal our niggers! We got farms! Just out patrolling the countryside, makin’ sure of the peace!"

"Put the whiskey back, Henry!" said the leader, whom no one had named.

"Would you boys like to tap that barrel and have a taste?" suggested Mr. Graves. "To kind of break your fast?"

"Haw!" said Henry, still standing by the wagon, his foot nearly on the harness box. "Dick, here, an’t fasted from whiskey in ten year! Not for a day, not for a hour!" Now he began to laugh, and Dick joined him, as if drunkenness were the funniest thing in the world. Dick pointed his rifle toward the sky and must have pulled the trigger. The sudden report was so startling and frightening that a red fog or veil seemed to jump up in front of my eyes. I only distantly heard the leader say, "Dick, you’re a stupid man. If you weren’t married to my sister, I’d shoot you right now."

"She don’t like him, anyway," said Henry.

Out on the prairie, a surge of yipping and howling. Coyotes, no doubt. And I saw that the mules, though hobbled, had disappeared.

Thomas stood up straight and quiet, unarmed but gazing calmly at the man still sitting on his horse. Somehow, the clownishness of Dick and Henry had shifted the tone of the situation, and the man on the horse soon dropped his gaze, as if embarrassed. But he said, "I know what you look like, Free Stater, and I hope not to have to see you in these parts again." He turned his horse and galloped away, leaving the other two, but they mounted not long after that, as if they could do nothing without him. Dick did shout, as he was galloping off, "You are ugly, ma’am! I know you can’t help it, but you are!"

The first gray strip of dawn paled our faces as we sat down again in our blankets. We all looked at one another for a moment, but to be honest, there didn’t seem to be much to say except, as Roland Brereton’s mother had said so many years ago, "Praise the Lord!"

By the time the men had caught the mules and I had found some biscuits and other comestibles in Mr. Graves’s traveling kit, it was full day and promising to be a hot one. I had put my hair up, but I could feel perspiration trickling down my back, so that I had to roll up my sleeves and unbutton the collar of my bodice. Thomas gave me a quizzical look—he didn’t seem, and hadn’t yet seemed, to even feel the warmth. I put on a white poke bonnet that I had purchased in Kansas City. No one had ever seen the like of it in Quincy, but it worked wonders. When we set out, I walked alongside the wagon. Lawrence, Mr. Graves said, was but ten miles or so from where we were standing.

It took about five of those miles for