Daughter of the Sword (22 page)

Just to let the assembly have no doubt he could bow country style with the best, he played “Possum Up a Stump” and then announced a waltz. A few ladies insisted on returning to their seats, but most were coaxed into more or less gingerly permitting their partners to clasp their waists and, as a bull-whacker within earshot of Deborah phrased it, “makin' a lunge at that crazy kind of hugged-up tune!”

Rolf's hand on her back and his pronounced, graceful lead soon dispelled her awkwardness. She loved the gliding dip, the way the dreamy music directed their motions. Perhaps it did place her body too close to Rolf, but she avoided his eyes by closing hers, and his arms became Dane's, his touch was her lover's, for this magic time she was with him again; she wished the dance could last forever.

But it ended. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes. Rolf's were blazing. He became very much himself. What a fool she was, going soft in his embrace like that, drunk on music and excitement! She put up warding hands and stepped away.

“It—it's late. I have to go home.”

He turned her hand over and kissed her palm, lips searing the exposed flesh. His voice was a rustling sigh. “You danced with me.”

She tried to laugh. “And with dozens of others.”

“You didn't give yourself to them.”

She made an inarticulate sound of regret and dismay. He'd noticed then, sensed her yielding to the fantasy of Dane. Rolf couldn't be allowed to think that softness had been for him.

“Rolf, I'm sorry!” He stared at her and she said miserably, “The music—it was so lovely I got lost in it. I know it was wrong but I … made believe you were Dane.”

She flinched at the shock that paled his face, then put out a hand he ignored as, recovering, he gave a hard laugh. “It might be interesting to see how long and under what circumstances you could maintain that illusion! But I'm warned now, and you had best be: from now on I'll take care that you know whom you're with!” Turning, he called over his shoulder that he'd be back shortly with the surrey.

Refusing the men who eagerly begged her to dance, Deborah felt overheated and strangling for fresh air. Making her way to the door, she was joined by Melissa Eden, who was explaining to a disappoined Captain Harrington that she really must help these delightful young people be together in spite of Miss Whitlaw's quaint prudery. And splendid as it would be to have the captain's escort, he had duty next day and would never be in time for it if he spent the night jaunting about the prairies. She'd never forgive herself if he were court-martialed, but assuredly they'd have other times. Perhaps he could call next week?

Deborah was sure Melissa meant to spend a good portion of what was left of the night in her young boarder's arms. Fevered, yet shamed at the thought, Deborah wondered if the older woman pretended, too, and if she knew what Dane's ardor was like, the better to reproduce it with his brother.

Such imaginings were wicked, a dark quicksand that inexorably drew one into a lewd morass. Dane couldn't love or respect her if he knew the wanton way she'd relaxed in Rolf's embrace—unless, wretched notion, he was doing the same thing with other women!

When the hurt of that subsided, she accepted that he probably was, and more, that he wouldn't stop at dreaming. Men, she suspected, usually didn't if they had a means of gratification. Nor did women like Melissa.

So while Melissa and Rolf eased each other, while Dane might very possibly be spending himself with some distant woman, Deborah would sleep alone.

This night had shown her the folly of dreaming. It was a long drive home.

Rolf had taken himself in hand and he and Melissa bantered most of the way to the Whitlaws', an undercurrent of male-female anticipation so strong between them that Deborah, contrarily enough, felt shoved aside, woefully young and inexperienced. When Rolf walked her to the door, he thanked her for dancing and said he'd visit soon, but he didn't linger. And as he went back to the surrey, Melissa's knowing, sensuous laughter welcomed him.

Deborah stood in the dark cabin for a few minutes after the surrey wheeled off. Chica was near the, stable, so Thos was home. Deborah thought of waking him up to learn about Johnny, but she decided that could wait till morning. If anything had gone too wrong, Thos would've stayed at the smithy. Let him sleep.

But Deborah, through a stifling, restless night, could not sleep at all. She was worried for Johnny, her brother, and Sara, confused and ashamed at her mixed reactions to Rolf, and achingly needful of Dane. It was so long till spring!

And even if it came, and Dane with it, what chance would there be that his resolves or hers could be different? Turning repeatedly on the shuck mattress, she wept for her love.

x

Summer wore on. Johnny seemed none the worse for his spree, but Thos grew more and more fidgety. “Can't go to the gold because all this slavery business is coming to a head,” he grumbled as they pulled fodder, helped by Judith, stripping leaves downward from the ears of tall corn and putting bunches of them to dry in the crotches between stalks. “Can't get married; wouldn't be fair to Sara if I have to go off to war!”

Deborah paused, scrubbing away chaff and perspiration. “Don't talk that way, Thos! We
could
have a war just because everyone seems to think we will!”

Thos shook his head gloomily. “More than that to it, 'Borah. Seems like everything's about to bust wide open, and I wish it would so we could have it over with and get on with living!”

Though she might chide her twin, Deborah felt much the same way. She laughed ruefully. “Well, Thos, it's lucky we've got work to do!”

He gave some leaves a particularly vicious jerk. “Seems mighty tame and all-fired dull when this part of the Territory's got gold fever and that miserable old pro-slave Judge Williams in southeast Kansas is still handing down decisions. Free State men can't swallow! Doggone it, 'Borah, this isn't a time when a man belongs in a corn patch!”

“We have to eat. The horses and Venus will need this fodder come winter. I think a corn patch is a pretty useful place to be!”

“That's right,” said Judith unexpectedly. “Got to eat and sleep no matter what. No one tend the crops, everybody go hungry!”

“You're women!” scorned Thos.

“Good thing, if that mean we got some sense,” retorted Judith. “Best lay up the harvest and leave blatherskitin' to crazies like Jim Lane!”

Lane, after a grand jury failed to indict him for killing Gaius Jenkins, was trying to regain his popularity with law-abiding folk by getting religion at several different Methodist churches, and though one tavern keeper had been heard to say he didn't want his horses watered below where Jim Lane had been baptized, the Grim Chieftain's shrill-voiced spell was working.

He sold his old claybank horse and gave the money to women who were starting a public library. And he was fond of saying that the only time he'd ever used profane language was in the Mexican War when his “Midwestern farm boys” were up against fancily tasseled lancers and he'd exhorted his troops to “Charge on 'em, God damn em! Charge on 'em!” His ambition was to represent Kansas in the Senate once it became a state, and Father resignedly said that would probably happen.

Rolf continued to meet the Whitlaws at church and go home with them for Sunday dinner. Deborah found it like being watched by a large cat, having no notion of when it might spring.

August 2 came and the Lecompton constitution was soundly rejected, which broke the last clutching of what had once been the pro-slavery death grip. True, Kansas would now have to wait for admission till its population reached that required for a congressional district, but Free Staters were in control, and when Kansas became a state, it would be free.

After years of struggle for this goal, there was more weariness than triumph in the Whitlaw home, which reflected the mood in Lawrence and around the Territory. It wasn't a question of Kansas now, but a matter of whether and how the nation itself would survive. There was thankfulness in the Whitlaws' prayers, but little joy and much anxiety.

The fodder had long ago been stacked in a corner of the stable and the naked stalks stood in the field, supporting the hardening ears. The wheat which Dane had helped reap was ready now for threshing in the circular spot the twins had raked down to the hard clay, banking up the topsoil in a diameter of about twenty feet.

Father stayed home to help with the actual threshing, placing bundles of wheat with grainy heads pointing to the center of the ring, while an overlapping row was turned with its stalks to the center and its heads on top of the first row's. Judith and the twins took turns leading Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar around the ring till the straw was crushed. It was stacked behind the center of the ring and new bundles were placed.

It was hot, tedious work, followed by winnowing. Fortunately, there was a breeze, which blew away the chaff as the workers poured the wheat from buckets onto a sheet. Failing a natural wind, one would have had to be laboriously created by stretching a big cloth tight and fanning it.

Still, at the end of the sweaty, tiresome labor, along with aching backs and muscles, the family had a hundred bushels of wheat stored in big covered bins at the side of the stable that served as a granary.

Since getting to any mill and waiting one's turn meant a number of days, Father decided to take Mother with him to the mill at Topeka and visit friends. Thos rode Chica to
The Clarion
office and tended to business there in the elder Whitlaw's absence, while Deborah and Judith caught up on laundry, cleaned house, and washed each other's hair.

Father and Mother returned with bags of real flour, and for a while the Whitlaws indulged in an orgy of biscuits, “light” bread, and even a cake made with sugar from one of the collections of small luxuries Rolf brought from time to time.

September passed with sowing wheat and shucking corn, and Father brought home that month's
Atlantic Monthly,
purchased at the City Drug Store, which also carried
Harper's, Knickerbocker,
and
Godey.
That night, while the family was gathered for dinner, he read them Whittier's poem “Le Marais du Cygne.”

“Free homes and free altars

Free prairie and flood—

The reeds of the Swan's Marsh

Whose bloom is of blood!”

It was long and Father's voice broke several times before he finished. “Now the whole country will be stirred up about the massacre,” he said, putting the pages down. But Deborah, though she felt sick to remember Jed and his night-riding Missourians, thought that much the same poem could have been written about John Brown's slaughter at Pottawatomie. When would “Bleeding Kansas's” wounds be stanched?

Along the river, maple leaves were flaming, and golden-rod and purple asters stood knee-high; while wild geese honked over, going south. Deborah, Thos, Sarah, and Laddie gathered hickory nuts and hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans, and small, tangy wild grapes. Thos and Sara laughed together, feeding each other the choicest grapes, so that Deborah was almost glad when Rolf, as if by accident, joined them on their third expedition.

He behaved so well that even Sara thawed toward him, and by the time autumn moved into winter, the four young people, in the rented surrey, were frequently together—at taffy pulls, pie suppers, the literary society, church, or simply out driving, sometimes with a picnic lunch.

Deborah wasn't sure how it happened. Rolf never directly asked to take her somewhere, but he would mention some plan to Thos, who was delighted at the chance to squire Sara around without having to borrow his parents' buggy and horses.

When Deborah told herself that she should stop seeing Rolf, she shrank from spoiling her twin's happy times with Sara, and she was moreover compelled to admit that the autumnal days would be drab without the almost weekly outing.

Rolf didn't try to get her alone or kiss her, even hold her hand. The only physical contact they had was when he helped her in and out of the surrey or steadied her on rough footing. Now and then there was tingling shock as their eyes met, but she avoided gazing at him and rarely glanced up to find him watching her.

Grateful at his changed manner, she puzzled over it for a while, and though she found no satisfactory explanation, she decided that she, Thos, and Sara made pleasant company for him.

It was too late now to go on to Pike's Peak; he'd have to wait for spring. While it was rather surprising that he didn't winter in Kansas City or St. Louis, he had good hunting and drinking companions among the wilder youngbloods headquartering at Lawrence and was snugly ensconced in Melissa Eden's house.

He wouldn't be the first man to spend a season somewhere because of pleasures found in a woman's arms. Deborah's cheeks grew hot when she wondered about them, and she quickly banished such forbidden speculations, but these did return, and she had to confess to a certain unreasonable pique that Rolf had apparently been able to divert his passion for her into the delights he must share with Melissa.

The first snows fell and winter began in earnest. When Deborah rode Chica, cakes of slippery ice collected in the shoes, dropping off after a time, but making the footing treacherous while the snow lasted. Rolf brought a bobsled now instead of the surrey, when snow was on the ground, and they traveled to the jingle of sleigh bells, with robes tucked over their feet and legs.

Christmas was nearing. There'd been no word from Dane, and even Rolf began to worry. Then, on the same day, within the same hour, Father brought home a large oilskin-wrapped parcel and Rolf rode out with a letter, both sent from Santa Fe with a trader who was going to winter in St. Louis. At Rolf's voice, Judith pulled on a coat and went through the rear window to the lean-to.

With shaking fingers, Deborah untied rawhide thongs laced around the oilskin, then unwrapped a tight-woven gray and brown blanket to reveal a sketch pad bound in leather. On the first page, he had written in a bold, slanting script: