The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [73]
I began to shiver in the chill night air, convinced I was already a widow. Below me, on the floor, Frank stirred. I shivered harder and pondered the thought of my burying my husband in Kansas. It was unbearable....
Then I heard Jeremiah trot into the yard again. Thomas dismounted. The horse trotted into his pen. A few minutes later, the door opened and closed, and I knew Thomas was in the room.
Suddenly ashamed of my fears, I tried to make my voice sound sleepy. "Are you—"
"We threw them into the river," whispered Thomas. "We tied them to a couple of logs and sent them down the river."
"All five of them?"
"There were only two, the old man and one of the sons. The others had gone for reinforcements, because they didn’t think we’d come back till tomorrow. Daniel James thought that would happen. That’s why we went back tonight."
"Where are they now?"
"James and Holmes fished them out of the river about a mile down. They’re keeping them in the woods for the rest of the night, then marching them back to Missouri in the morning. Bisket and I are to stay here and watch out if anyone else comes. Jenkins decided to sell the hay house and his town lots and move out here for the winter, just to be on the scene." I couldn’t help shivering inside my quilt. It was a cold night. Thomas, when he came into the cabin and subsequently got into our bed, carried an extra dimension of cold with him, and I didn’t envy the men who’d gone into the river. But I was elated to see my husband and to know that our side had suffered no losses. And the Missourians with their slave woman had been run off. Some festering that had promised to disturb us was now averted. Thomas, himself elated and chilled with his adventure, matched my gladness at his return with his own.
CHAPTER 12
I Am Swept Up by Events
A third method, is, for a woman deliberately to calculate on having her best-arranged plans interfered with, very often; and to be in such a state of preparation, that the evil will not come unawares.—p. 151
IN THE FEW DAY AFTER the Missourians were driven off, there was plenty of talk about what should be done with their property. What had been done with one item of it was a mystery, though— no one knew what had become of the bondwoman who’d run out of the cabin when the Smithson boy fired through the window. Thomas said that she had not been in evidence; though he had privately planned as they rode through the darkness to offer her her freedom, events had driven the thought out of his mind, and he’d not sought after her in the night. Each of the men had a theory—either she’d already been taken back to Missouri before they arrived, or she sensed what was in the wind after they came, and she went off on her own account, or she’d hidden out in the woods and was possibly still there. Whether they should have liberated her had they found her was a matter of rather hot debate—more tempers flared over this question than over any other element of the encounter. Thomas, Mr. Holmes, and Mr. Smithson were all for giving her her freedom and doing so openly—"challenging Satan," said Mr. Holmes; "acting according to principle," said Thomas; "showing the bunch of them," said Mr. Smithson. Mr. Bisket came down much on the other side and got quite exercised over it, saying, "Freeing that woman would be adding in something extra to the whole business! We an’t disputing them having a slave woman right this minute. Right this minute we’re disputing their claim. My view is, you follow out your disputes one at a time—"
Mr. Smithson exclaimed, "You sound just like a lawyer, Bisket, drumming up business. If you got ’em on the run, then you make ’em run as fast as they can. You don’t make ’em trot for one thing and run for the other!"
Everyone