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By Root 1659 0

was how differently I saw things in K.T., even after but one or two days, than I had seen them in Illinois. Every river town is full of braggarts and ruffians; Illinois was full of wild-talking Roland Breretons, whose fathers and uncles were from Kentucky and Tennessee. But what I had known about such types—that they would go so far into violence and no farther, that the talk was all—I no longer knew. Rather, it seemed just the reverse—that these new men, or the same men in this new place, preferred hurting us to not hurting us. That was amazing enough, but what was even more amazing was the way my new friends spoke of these events. They deplored them, of course, but in addition to that, if the tones of their voices were to be believed, they were a little thrilled by them. They sounded inured to such things but also fascinated by them, even drawn to them.

"Who is Stringfellow?" asked Thomas,

"Ha!" exclaimed Mr. Bisket. "You don’t know Stringfellow? I thought he was famous all over the States. Not so long ago, he made a speech telling his hearers to mark every scoundrel they knew who was in the least bit contaminated with Free-Soilism and exterminate them. He’s always calling for tarring and feathering or lynching or hanging or exterminating or shooting or cutting up or driving out. They love him in Missouri. And his brother’s the speaker of the bogus legislature."

"That’s not the worst," said Mrs. Bush, and the others nodded, all apparently knowing what the worst was but not daring to say.

"Remember Park?" said Mrs. Jenkins. "He had a paper over in Missouri, and after the elections he ran an editorial. All it said was that the people in K.T. ought to be allowed to run their own affairs."

"They attacked his office and threw his presses in the river, and they were about to lynch Patterson, the editor."

"They had the rope around his neck," said Mrs. Jenkins. "Would have scalped him, too. They do that."

"But his wife just hung on him and begged for his life."

"That’s all that saved him," said Mr. Bisket.

"And he was proslave all the way," asserted Mrs. Bush. "But if you an’t for everything—slavery stealing elections, driving out northern settlers and burning down their houses, and, most of all, extending slavery everywhere—then they hate you as bad as anyone else."

"There an’t but a handful of slaves over there, anyway, and those are all house slaves. I’m telling you," said Mr. Bisket, "a citizen from South Carolina or Louisiana wouldn’t know Missouri was a slave state. And nobody who comes over here to lynch us or burn us out ever actually owns a slave."

"Well, you know...," said Mrs. Bush.

"It’s true," said Mrs. Jenkins.

Susannah blushed, and Mr. Bisket looked at his shoes. Thomas and I exchanged a quizzical glance. After a moment, Mrs. Jenkins said, "Mercy me, you must be tired! I do so wish I could show you a nice chamber with windows and a soft bed! My mother’s house in Ipswich has five bed-chambers! Goodness, I dream about that house as if it were heaven itself! There’s a fireplace in every room." She shook her head. "My mother has such neat ways. It’s almost a failing with her. I don’t know what she’d think of K.T."

The only possible arrangement, it turned out, was to put up a curtain across the one room of the leaning house and to have the men on one side and the ladies on the other.

The next day, all the men returned from Big Spring. In addition to Mr. Bush—a little man, smaller than his wife, but with bright, terrier eyes and a cheerful manner—and Mr. Jenkins, who had white hair and a white beard and, beneath his irate manner, an air of resignation, there were four other men, all single: Mr. Smithson, his son, his brother, and Mr. Bush’s nephew, Roger Lacey, who, Susannah told me, had a wife and three children back in Massachusetts, waiting to come out. "But," she whispered, for she was a great whisperer and confider, "he won’t bring her and won’t bring her and keeps saying he’s not ready. Papa says he’s not really all for Kansas, but Mama says he’s not really all for her!" She laughed. We had been sent