The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [51]
Mr. Johnson smiled again. "We soon showed them we weren’t leaving! Well, they sent a war party over. And I can tell you, we weren’t especially well armed then. All of them, we thought, had pistols in every pocket and a traveling armory of Kentucky rifles."
"Not to mention," exclaimed Mrs. Bush, "a bowie knife to scalp you with!"
"Well, they came over in a train of wagons and set up on the north side of the ravine there, and you could hear them from everywhere in town, shooting and shouting and cursing and threatening how they were going to ’exterminate all the d— Yankee abolitionists that dared come into K.T.’ We listened to them all day, and then some more came late in the afternoon. Our tents were within range for them. Must have been a hundred or more. Whether they were going to shoot us out of drunkenness or out of intention, it would all amount to the same thing, and I tell you Dr. Robinson was deadly concerned. The carousing went on all evening. We sent over some representatives, to ask the meaning of their display, and they said that we all had to leave or we’d be cleared out and all that.... They got quiet about midnight—"
"When the whiskey ran out," asserted Mrs. Bush.
"Then some more showed up about dawn, just screaming and yelling, so then there were about a hundred and fifty. Not long after that, they sent over what they called a formal notification that we were to take down our tents and pack up our things and get out of K.T. for good, and we had till ten a.m. to do it. At ten a.m., they would cross the ravine and do the job. So we drilled with what we had—sixty men or so, and some rifles. Well, ten a.m. came and went, and along about ten-thirty, we had another formal notification that they would give us another half hour and no more to pack up our tents. Of course, this one was more threatening—they would not hold themselves responsible for what might happen should we exhibit further resistance!"
"Pah!" Mrs. Bush almost spit, except that she held spitting in the extremest contempt. "They don’t hold themselves responsible for anything; that’s the whole trouble with them!"
Mr. Johnson allowed his little smile to grow larger. "You know, that hour went by, and then they formed up in military style and just stared at us across the ravine, and then one of them came along and said, ’Ten more minutes, or the direst consequences will follow!’ We were laughing! Dr. Robinson was laughing hardest of all, and you bet they could hear us over there, because they were cursing and yelling and shouting oaths, and screaming that we didn’t know the danger we were in!" He paused, and now Mrs. Bush smiled, knowing the last of it. "Toward dusk they just loaded up their wagons and moved off. Once night came on, they weren’t slow about it, either. You almost had to think that they were a little scared we would chase after them and do a little damage ourselves!" He finished with a shout of laughter, and Mrs. Bush and I joined in, especially Mrs. Bush, but then she got serious and said, "You can’t count on them all being cowards. If a party of them gets you alone out somewhere, on the California road or something, well." She shook her head. Yes, the Ruffians had been routed once, but it could go differently the next time. Mr. Johnson and Mrs. Bush fully agreed that there would be a next time. I agreed, too.
For I was all for Lawrence. None of my antecedents had come from New England—New York and New Jersey and I think Pennsylvania, places where life was slacker than it was in New England, were the states they all hailed from, and before that England itself and Halifax. They were not the sort to make a stand but the sort to go along. My sister Miriam had been considered very strange, and offensive, too, for purporting to live by her conscience. She stood accused of putting herself above the rest of us, adopting moral airs, even though she didn’t press any of my sisters