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By Root 1646 0

of mud, grass, and twigs that I’d mixed together the afternoon before. Then, where the chinking I had done several days earlier had cured, I began carefully to paste up, with flour-and-water paste, leaves of The Liberator and some other papers that Thomas had brought with him from the United States. This, he said, would serve the threefold purpose of advertising our views to our visitors, reminding ourselves of the arguments to be made in the cause, and keeping out the wind. Every leaf, according to the new laws of Kansas Territory, was treasonable.

Thomas came trotting into the yard late in the afternoon, and he didn’t look happy. I helped him curry Jeremiah and put him in his pen for the night, then we went inside. The fire was still going, so I stoked it up and beat together some corncakes.

"Holmeses are down with the shakes," he said, as we came into the cabin and he hung up his hat. "Mrs. Holmes is shaking every day. Can hardly get up to feed the children in the morning."

"I’ll go over there." Neither of us had been eager to improve our acquaintance with the Holmeses, and their claim was far away, though, of course, Jeremiah made any trip short and pleasurable.

"The Smithsons have put up a mile of fence, but they’re still drinking out of the river." He took off his heavy jacket and hung it below his hat, then he set his rifle beside the door, and took the ammunition out of his pocket and looked at it for a second, then put it back into his pocket.

I waited. He looked at me. He said, "I’m not proud of what went on this morning."

"No one’s been shot, I hope."

"Not yet."

The griddle was hot, and I spooned a bit of grease over it, then some corncake batter. It was lumpy, I knew. I batted at the lumps for a moment. He said, "Well, the fact was, Jenkins was drinking. Bisket said they were up all night after they left here, so there weren’t many cool heads when we gathered this morning, and there was some talk about waiting until tomorrow, but Jenkins wanted to do something by then—"

"He’d worked himself up to it."

"Yes, and he wouldn’t talk to Daniel James, claimed this was all his fault, and then James got a little threatening, but he knows he can’t go it alone, and Jenkins knows that he himself is old and James is young and strong. But all the squabbling didn’t cool us off, I must say. And then Bisket fell off his horse. Don’t ask me why—he was behind me—but I think he was that drunk, which wouldn’t take much, since he never had a drop before coming out to K.T."

We both suddenly smiled, but Thomas sobered in a hurry. "I wish it were funny, but it isn’t. Those Missourians were waiting for us. Been waiting for us, if you ask me."

I served up the corncakes with some wild plums I’d cut up in honey

"They picked up their rifles as soon as they saw us, and carried them out to meet us, then they drew up side by side in a long line. Well, I don’t mind telling you they looked like they wanted a fight right there, but I was in the lead, and I kept my head down and just smiled a little like I was making a friendly visit. One man, a short little plug, spoke up and said, ’Lookin’ fur me? This is my claim.’

"Bisket piped up from the rear, ’Well, it an’t!’

" ’Who says it an’t?’ This fellow was very belligerent and red in the face. So there was a long silence, and then Jenkins says, ’Well, now, I guess it’s me who says it an’t; it’s not, that is, because you see my stake’s in the ground here and this is about the middle of my claim, and we all have land around here—’

" ’You boys git off my land right now, or I’ll have ta kill ya.’ That’s what the little guy said, and lo and behold if the window behind him didn’t suddenly explode, and I turned around, and there was the Smithson boy, just grinning. Well, everyone started running around then, and that Negro woman Bisket had seen came running out of the house screaming, and she said that a bullet had gone right past her ear, and of course the Smithson boy wasn’t grinning after that! But the Missourians didn’t shoot. I thought they would, but they actually fell back a bit, like