Daughter of the Sword (32 page)

In the gray light, Judith's nod was emphatic. “Johnny, he'd storm in and fight anyone gave him trouble, maybe get himself hurt or killed or do damage to nice folks who think
they're
protectin' you. Even if he get you away, Rolf goin' to know where to look.”

“So we told Laddie to take care of things and to tell Johnny and Maccabee only that we'd gone to see you and not to worry.”

“Johnny doesn't know about—about my family?”

Sara's voice trembled. “Not unless he's happened on to someone who told him. Judith and I left the smithy in the middle of the afternoon, but we stopped a few miles out of town and waited in a ravine till all the lights were put and everything was quiet. I wasn't expecting your window to be nailed shut, though. Johnny's going to swear when he sees what I did to one of his knives by prying the boards loose.”

“You—you must have wanted to go to Thos, Sara.”

“Why?” asked the Indian girl harshly. “If he had been left to me, yes, if I could wash and prepare him. But another group had gone for him. I wasn't his wife. Had I tried to touch him, mourn as I wished, it would only create scandal. No. I'll remember him as he was.”

Judith said in a tight, aching voice, “Rather would've died than bring all this! Your folks were so good to me, Deborah. They died on my account.”

“No,” cut in Deborah strongly. “I don't know what tale Rolf's put out, but he told me he fell in with the gang for excitement. He says he didn't know they were chasing Thos till he was shot. The raiders had split up. It was just bad luck that part of them hit our farm. Any Free Staters would have done as well. Don't blame yourself, Judith. If there was any real reason for my parents' death, it was John Brown's slave-stealing trip to Missouri.”

She wasn't quite as sure as she sounded that some member of the band hadn't heard about Jed's death at the Whitlaws' while hunting his runaway, but there was no use in Judith's carrying a burden of guilt. Leticia and Josiah wouldn't have wanted that. When it came right down to it, they had faced and accepted the chance of death when they decided, after Jed's raid, to stay on the farm.

They'd been slaughtered, but they weren't victims. Like soldiers, they'd decided not to abandon a post and had lost their lives for it. That pride was the first balm for Deborah; not much, but a slight easing.

She told her friends then of how, after leaving them at the smithy, she'd seen smoke coming from the direction of her home.

Only the day before yesterday! It seemed years. Two full days ago, her parents had still been alive. Now they were dead forever; there could be no change in that. And Thos! She thought of John Brown with hatred. If he'd never come to their house, if Thos had never looked into those spellbinding fanatic's eyes! If—

As a bleak, rising sun tried to pierce through high, wintry clouds, she muffled her face in her scarf and gave way to silent weeping.

Two shapes appeared on the sere rim of the horizon, from which all snow had melted, assuming size and gradual identity, first as horsemen, then as a very large man and a shorter one, black and white or Indian, and at last, Maccabee and Johnny.

Meeting on the open prairie, the five stopped.
“Cesli tatanka!”
growled Johnny, sliding from his spotted horse and striding up to Sara. His old horsehide jacket was buttoned up to the last bone toggle. “I ought to skin you, Sara! I see you have Deborah, but what if you'd gotten yourselves shot or jumped on by some bunch of cutthroats?”

“We've got Deborah, and without a fuss, Johnny.” Sara divided a withering glance between him and Maccabee, who was watching Judith with his heart in his eyes. “You two had come thundering into town and there'd have been trouble. Folks there believe she's crazy and engaged to Rolf Hunter—”

“Same thing!” Johnny grunted. Scowling, he moved awkwardly over to Deborah. “You all right, lass?”

She couldn't speak. Shaking his grizzled head, Johnny gave her hand a rough pat. “Nothin” helps right now. I know, honey. But your folks was the finest I ever knew. Thos was the son I wish I'd had.
Hopo!
Let's get going!”

He rode ahead with Sara, from the rise and fall of his gruff tones alternately scolding, questioning, praising. Judith kept to one side of Deborah, with Maccabee on the other. He said that he and Johnny had gotten back after dark last night along with the broken wheel from the mired wagon. Johnny hadn't believed Laddie's story, though the boy stuck doggedly to it, and after a hurried meal, Johnny had ridden off to the Whitlaws'.

Even in the night, he'd been able to guess most of what had happened. Cabins might burn, but that doesn't rearrange furnishings, smash up a buggy, or cut a cow's throat and wring chickens' necks. He'd gone back to the smithy and this time had convinced Laddie that for Sara's sake, the boy should tell what he knew. Maccabee had awakened during that and insisted on coming along.

“Guess we wasted our time,” he said in his deep, pleasant voice; giving an admiring glance to Judith. “But land alive, woman, what you mean pokin' 'round town—an' you a runaway?”

“Deborah needed me.”

“Maybe someone else needs you!” he reproached.

“We don' talk on that yet.”

“If you're goin' to be up to tricks like this,” he rumbled, “the sooner we talk, the better.”

Judith tossed her head. “You don' like my tricks, now's the best time to find out! After all the Whitlaws did for me, you reckon I'll hide when trouble strike them?”

“That's what you need a man for.”

“Ha! Sara and me did as good as you and Johnny could've! Didn't get into any scrapes, either!”

“That's the Lord's mercy!”

“Oh, our thinkin' it out real careful had somethin' to do with it,” retorted Judith airily. “You ever get in trouble, we'll do the same for you!”

Maccabee's reluctant laughter rumbled. “Full of sass! Wonder you didn't get it whipped out of you!”

“You're not the meekest man I ever saw!” Judith's tone was wry but not angry.

It was clear that Maccabee loved her. Impossible to guess how she felt. She'd never spoken of the man Jed had said she fancied. Thinking of Dane, Deborah wondered how long a woman should let herself be bound by a memory, then repeated the question as she watched Johnny up ahead next to Sara.

With her young love gone, could the girl come to think of Johnny as a man rather than a foster father? Deborah hoped so. It would help if some happiness followed all the wreckage and misery.

Johnny stopped abruptly, reining his horse around, ignoring Sara, who caught at his arm. “Deborah, do you want to go to your folks' burying?” he demanded. “If you do, I'll take you! And I'll notch the ears of anyone who makes a move to shut you away!”

“Johnny!” Sara wailed and looked imploringly at Deborah.

It wasn't necessary. Deborah had washed her parents, then helped put them to rest the first time in earth near their home. And she'd rather keep Thos in her mind as she'd seen him last, riding away, intent on adventure. This way, he would never seem quite dead; it would lack the brutal finality of seeing him coffined and in the grave.

Strange. Horrible as it was, she could not have believed her parents dead without seeing them so, would have remained joined to them. This way, cruel as it was, she'd have to come to terms with and finally accept their deaths. Even in her grief, she dimly sensed that remembering Thos as alive and simply gone was no serious threat to her sense of reality.

He was her twin, as nearly herself as any human could ever be. In a physical sense he would survive in her, and that was comforting. But she'd never depended on Thos as she had on the man and woman who had made her with love and bodies, shaped her with their minds and hearts. She must manage now without them. To do that, she had to
know
she could no longer turn to them.

“Thank you, Johnny,” she said now. “But I've buried them once. I don't want to do it again, in front of a lot of people.”

Searching her face, Johnny's frown cleared. He gave his massive head a nod and turned his paint.

Laddie had coffee ready and the household was soon settled around the table. To her surprise, Deborah was hungry. For the first time since the disaster, food smelled good, not disgusting. She had a fried egg and mush with milk and honey. She still wasn't up to the crisped side meat everyone else devoured with relish, except for Sara, who had only a little mush.

Now that there was a chance to study her friend, Deborah was worried. Sara's usually warm, high color was dulled. Her eyes were deeply shadowed and her thin face, always angular, now looked bony. Of course, she'd only yesterday learned about Thos.

A marvel that she'd been able to make plans, carry them out.
We must watch out for her,
Deborah thought.
Push her to eat in a few days if her appetite doesn't pick up.

Johnny, too, was watching Sara, heavy brows knit. At last, as if discarding several things he wanted to say, he sighed and pushed back from the table. “Got to get at that busted wagon wheel,” he said. “We're not goin' to need dinner, so why don't you gals have a rest? Tonight we'll talk over what Deborah wants to do. I've got one idea that I think is pretty good.”

He went out with Maccabee and Laddie. The three young women began clearing the table. “Why don't you stay here and keep out of sight like I do?” asked Judith.

“If Rolf comes back, this'll be the first place he looks,” Deborah said. “He's already warned me, and he has money to hire bushwackers. I can't bring that down on you.”

Sarah put her arms around Deborah and laid her cheek against hers. “What I have, from food to life, is yours. But I think we needn't worry. If Johnny says his thought is good, it is.”

Certainly it was unexpected. As they ate supper that night, stew with hot biscuits, in the kitchen warmed by the fireplace as well as the cookstove, Johnny passed his big bowl to Sara for another helping and looked across the table at Deborah. “Lass, you have a place under my roof. You know that.”

Deborah nodded. “But Rolf—”

“Reckon I can clean that young whelp's plow any time he tries settin' it down in my territory,” snorted Johnny. “I'll be kiln-dried if I see how a man like Dane got a brother like that, but I guess it started with Cain!” He took a bite of stew so hot it burned his tongue, yelled,
“Cesli tatanka!,”
and then apologized. “Good stew,” he told Sara. “Rich and strong with onions and buffalo meat. But I better let it cool a mite.”

His charcoal-colored eyes turned to Deborah and probed deep. “I want you to know you can come here any time. When I can't defend my place against the likes of that gold-haired fooforraw, I'll douse my forge and throw my hammer into the Kaw! I know you gals think a lot of one another, and that's a consolation at times like this. But I've studied it hard, and it seems to me you'd do best for a while in a new place with new people, somewhere that you wouldn't hear pro-slave or Free Soil every other word.”

Deborah stiffened. “I won't go back to New Hampshire.”

“No, lass, for sure, not unless you want to.”

“I have to stay in Kansas. There's no place to get away from what's going on.”

“Yes, there is.” Johnny grinned like an amiable bear at the puzzled stares centered on him. “The Landers' settlement.”

“But they—they don't understand what's going on in the Territory,” Sara objected.

“Ain't that exactly what we need?” demanded Johnny. “They don't have no part in our quarrels and don't want any. Conrad was tellin' me how he got so sick of all those European wrangles that he decided to start fresh in a new country. He bought land for the colonists he brought with him, and they have a vote equal to his in runnin' things.”

“The men, maybe. I'll bet the women don't,” Sara guessed.

From the way her eyes were swollen, she'd done more crying than sleeping that afternoon in spite of being up all night. Deborah, head still dully aching, hadn't tried to nap but had minded the stew and darned socks out of the perpetually replenished basket by Sara's chair.

Her dry eyes felt pierced by thorns that held them open. She couldn't cry anymore. Hollow, empty, she felt detached from her own body. She was grateful to sit in her friends' home, do ordinary work that accumulated no matter what the griefs of a household. She had mourned to exhaustion, but Sara, refusing to give way till Deborah was rescued, must now go through disbelief, horror, rebellion, with sorrow flowing always under peaking, changing wild emotions like a sea powering waves that tower high, then crash back and vanish into the waiting depths.

With her pert remark to Johnny, Sara wordlessly announced that though she would go with the swelling crests rather than be swept off her feet by trying to stand against them, she wanted to smile when she could, live each moment as it happened, rather than decreeing a week, a month, six months of mourning.

Johnny gave her a relieved scowl. “Why do you want an equal vote, Wastewin, when around here you run the whole shebang?”

“Sound good to me,” said Judith, casting Maccabee a provocative glance. “If women can't vote and their husbands can boss 'em around, that's close to bein' slaves.”

“That so?” retorted Maccabee. “Who totes the water and wood? Who takes off their shoes so's your floor don' get tracked up? Who—”

“Thing is,” pursued Johnny, “Conrad's not mixed up in our troubles, his sister, Ansjie, is about Deborah's age, and Friedental's a busy, happy place. Lives up to its name, Valley of Peace, except it isn't much of a valley.”

“Maybe they won't want strangers,” Deborah suggested.

“They'll want you!” said Johnny heartily. “Why, that day you met here at the forge, Conrad asked about you, and again after the Fourth of July when they kept me from making a complete tarnation fool of myself. Guess they get lonesome. They're well educated and would've been more at home in some big city if they hadn't believed they should try living from the work of their hands.” Johnny shook his head. “Comes from readin' too many books, frettin' about what's not fair. But you could talk to them. Main thing is, what with everyone in Friedental bein' Proosian, it's like another world, but you're really only twenty miles southwest of here.”