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By Root 1628 0

they were startled. Then the little man started yelling, ’You went and shot my winder! I brought that winder all the way from Lousiana! That winder’s been up the Mississippi and up the Missouri, and the d— steamboat exploded and the winder survived, and now you gone and shot it!’ And he leveled his gun at the Smithson boy, and then old Smithson kind of interposed his horse between them and pulled out some money and offered to pay for the window, and behind him, you could hear the boy saying, ’I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to shoot it,’ but we all knew he did.

"Then Jenkins seemed to feel bolder, and he said, ’This is my claim, and you got to leave. I an’t going to have my claim jumped for the second time in a year, and I’m telling you you got to leave!’

"And then we all stood there. Because, you know, nobody was ready to start shooting, not even the Missourians, or Louisianans, or whatever they were. The hard part was to turn tail and leave. We couldn’t do it. We just milled around for a bit, and then Bush called out, ’We’re not done with this matter!’ and we filed off, but then, well, you know how it is—everybody felt a little ashamed, as if we’d been driven off."

Thomas dived into his corncakes, and we were silent for a bit. The door was open for air, since the evening had stayed warm, and I could hear some yipping far out on the prairie. We had had a frost, and the nightly sawing and buzzing of insects had stilled. My senses were not yet attuned to the prairie sounds, so the world seemed largely silent to me, and uninhabited, and, perhaps, desolate. The fact is that in those days, our little cabin floated like a raft in a populous sea. We were certainly observed by Indians, by foxes, by buzzards, hawks, deer, skunks, jackrabbits, badgers, magpies, and meadowlarks. But even in the midst of this story my husband was telling me, I couldn’t rid myself of the impression that we were far away from everything and everyone, safe in a wilderness of space and nuptial contentment. I felt calm and only distantly interested in these events. All they did for me was render him all the more mysterious and appealing.

"Before long, of course, everyone began to regret how peaceful we’d been. ’They think they’ve got it now,’ said Bush, and Jenkins got angry. He kept exclaiming, ’I’ll not let it happen again! I’m an old man, but I’m still a man for all that!’ Then Holmes piped up. ’Satan is working among them! Through them, he comes into our company and begins casting his glance around at us!’ I’ll say this, that man intones every word as if he’s addressing a prayer meeting, and he’s hardly more than a boy, to boot."

"What can you do? The house is up. They sound like they’ve got guns and the will to use them."

"Bush says they’ll move off like Missourians always do if you stand up to them." He sounded doubtful.

I said, "But—"

Thomas pushed his plate away and looked at me. "Our party claimed the land, it’s true, but Jenkins didn’t build anything. The law says you’ve got to put up a cabin and start living there."

"But—"

"We can’t have slaves in our midst, and men who want to kill us and drive us away."

It was a conundrum, the K.T. conundrum, the sort of moral dilemma that men I respected, like Thomas, had to ponder and work over in their minds. I said, "You better not lose the advantage, if you’ve still got it."

After that, Thomas lit a candle and read some bits of "The Song of Hiawatha" out to me, and after that we went to our rest.

CHAPTER 11

I Am Surprised and Then Surprised Again

Next to the want of all government, the two most fruitful sources of evil to children, are, unsteadiness in government, and over-government. Most of the cases, in which the children of sensible and conscientious parents turn out badly, result from one or the other of these causes. In cases of unsteady government, either one parent is very strict, severe, and unbending, and the other excessively indulgent, or else the parents are sometimes very strict and decided, and at other times allow disobedience to go unpunished. In such cases, children,