The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [71]
Thomas lowered his voice and leaned his head toward me. "He should go back."
Frank sang out, "I an’t going back. I might go on to California."
We walked on in silence, until Thomas said, "We have to discuss the Jeremiah problem."
"I bought him in good faith! I won’t give him up to them just on their say-so!"
"Nor would I, but we have to recognize that he might be a stolen horse."
"They were just saying that to get at us. How would they prove it?" My voice rose with challenge, as if he were trying to take the horse away from me right there.
"We’ll find out, I suppose."
Now we came into our own yard. All was quiet at our cabin. The plank door was closed and tied with a string, just as I had left it. Thomas and Frank put away the horse, while I went inside and changed into my own clothes. On the whole, I was not pleased with my adventure. I felt as Pandora must have: there was an undeniable thrill to opening the box—the thrill of action, perhaps, which was much opposed to the customary routines of a woman’s life—but the consequent evil was plentifully mixed with chagrin. I was not sure there would be any benefit to my knowing the course of events firsthand, especially if the course of events took an ugly turn.
It was midafternoon; the episode at the cabin had taken surprisingly little time. Thomas, Frank, and I settled back to what we had been doing in the morning, which was splitting supports for a lean-to room for Frank off the end of the cabin. In the evening, after our supper, I sat beside the stove sewing a bed tick for him, while Thomas read aloud an essay or two by Mr. Emerson. Frank, apparently, did not find this to his liking, as he fell asleep in our bed nearly as soon as Thomas began to read. After a while, the candle Thomas was reading by got too low to burn steadily and began to flicker in its holder, but when I opened the candle box for another, he said, "We’ll save that for another night." He moved Frank to some quilts on the floor and wrapped him against the vermin. I went out to check on Jeremiah and saw that his saddle was hanging over the fence, and the bridle, too. When I came back inside, Thomas was cleaning his Sharps carbine in the unsteady light of the piece of candle, and he still had his boots on. I sat down across from him. He had grown more handsome to me, but no less enigmatic. He consistently showed a pleasant strength of character and mildness of temper that won me and intrigued me at the same time. Something, perhaps the presence of his friends or settling onto our claim, had driven off whatever evidence I had once seen of fear or weakness. He seemed to draw strength from his very capacity for amusement. On the other hand, he was hardly one of those handy New Englanders you heard so much about, who could build a schoolhouse with one hand and a ship with the other, while running a loom with his foot. Our cabin was full of the deformed results of our attempts to do for ourselves. Were we to prove better farmers than house builders, my first plan was to procure more manufactured goods. And there were any number of things I could do better than he could, starting with riding a horse and shooting a turkey and running right through splitting firewood and building a fire. Come spring, I suspected, I would be doing my share and more of the plowing, which was, indeed, more to my taste than nursing, making ball fringe, or tatting. I knew he had a skill that I didn’t—New England sailors often knew how to knit, and Thomas did have a garment in his boxes that he had knitted for himself. I wondered if all the other men in our party were as interesting to their wives as Thomas was to me. For the most part, it didn’t seem so, though at our Sunday service I had discovered all the Smithsons to be possessed of lovely voices, many skills on the instruments they had brought along with them to K.T. (in preference to pots and pans), and a deep knowledge of songs, both religious and secular. I pondered Thomas.
He said, "Would you care to go along tonight?"
This surprised me. "Do