Daughter of the Sword (40 page)

She looked at him, distressed. He put out his hand and touched her face. “What I noticed the first time I saw you, and when I came to fetch you from, the smithy, is your April face. It changes so quickly from sadness to gaiety, and the other way around. You were meant to be a happy person, Deborah, but you've been fated to endure the struggle of your country. You will, I fear, have to weep often. Laugh, then, when you can.”

“When I really think about my family, how they died, then I feel guilty, ashamed that I can eat and sleep and smile.”

“But if you're to live, you must. In you, your loved ones survive. You can work for what they believed; your children will have their heritage. You're their link between what was and what will be.”

“That's so—heavy!”

“Make it light. You don't dishonor the dead by loving life, by joy.”

She knew he thought of Röslein and that idolized elder brother. He helped her into the saddle and they continued on their journey. She felt as if they rode toward home.

Ansjie's welcome increased that feeling. Soon they were back in the familiar pattern, and this time Deborah wasn't worried about her friends. She thought of Thos's and Sara's—and Johnny's—baby with much the same anticipation as she had for Dane's return, except that the birth wouldn't be till September, and Dane should come after the snow melted from the passes, perhaps in June, surely by July.

In late March the Mennonites began working the soil, “plowing the dew under,” which meant plowing from dew in the morning till dew at night. They planted wheat, corn, rye, and millet, acres of squash, pumpkin, watermelons, and muskmelons, as well as the large family gardens in the strips behind each house.

“We get enough rain here for spring wheat,” Conrad told Deborah and Ansjie during an evening walk through the fresh-smelling fields and budding, leafing orchards. “But there's a hard winter wheat grown by Mennonites in the Crimea that should grow well where there's less rain and more cruel winds. I want to get some and experiment with it.”

The villagers shared plows and oxen, but each family took care of its own fields, which were laid out in strips along the valley, divided so that choice and less desirable land was equally shared. There was no doubt that farmers like this would, learn the secrets of any earth they settled on and soon bring it to its best fruitfulness.

“They put Americans to shame,” grimaced Deborah.

“Remember that for generations their life has been the soil. They're almost as devoted to it as to their religion.” He laughed. “Their motto could be the old proverb: ‘Pray as if work wouldn't help; work as if prayer wouldn't.'”

Along the creek redbuds sprouted and tentative light green leaves darkened and grew, while orioles and bluejays flashed through them. Blossoms perfumed the orchard. Wild rose and morning glories peeked from the grass while buttercups, daisies, Johnny-jump-ups, and black-eyed Susans brightened the road edges. Crows called from their lookouts, and geese were on their way north again, honking, making their wedges in the sky.

On their rides, Deborah and Conrad saw new-hatched prairie chickens and passed buffalo wallows, some small, some as large as the one where she'd met Dane and Rolf almost a year ago.

It seemed a lifetime.

Sometimes she felt unreal, escorted around Mennonite fields by a former Prussian count, teaching children whose native language wasn't hers. Dane seemed a phantasm, too, someone she had dreamed up. She had a sense of waiting, of being suspended between lives and worlds.

Ansjie had learned that Deborah's birthday was in May, and it was celebrated with a birthday cake at the school and an hour of games and singing on the green near the well. The whole village came for a sort of picnic and the afternoon ended with children gathering around Deborah to sing “Yankee Doodle,” trying not to burst into laughter at her surprise.

After supper Ansjie produced a lace shawl of gossamer-connected roses and insisted that Deborah have it. “I've two more,” she said. “When will I wear out even one?”

Conrad's gift was a leather-bound handmade book of poetry and selections from authors they'd shared that winter: Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Boehme, Heine, Rückert, Goethe, Morike—Whitman?

Conrad had copied from
Leaves of Grass:

“And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut

hair of graves,

It may be you are from old people, or from

offspring taken soon from their mother's laps,

And here you are the mothers' laps.”

She looked at Conrad. “Thank you,” she said. “I can read it now.”

He nodded. Ansjie, excitedly, had opened the bedroom door. “Come!” she called. “Look at your present from the villagers!”

“The villagers! Why, they didn't need to—”

“They wished, much, to thank you for teaching their children.” Ansjie was almost dancing on tiptoes as Deborah stared at the beautiful chest standing on carved legs and worked with vines and flowers, polished to a rich sheen. “Open it!”

“Oh, it's too much! I can't take it!”

“Will you offend Peter Voth, who made it, and the people who paid him their share in produce or labor?” Conrad's voice was stern. “The Friedentalers took great pleasure in planning this. Will you cheat them of their gift?”

Put that way, what could she do?

“Open it!” Ansjie cried again.

Deborah hesitantly lifted the lid. The chest was full: snowy linens, embroidered pillowcases, quilts, down pillows, a blue featherbed that seemed to swell as articles were lifted off it, smelling of rose leaves—lovely, useful things, enough to start housekeeping.

In a way, it held a dream. One she couldn't dream yet. She suspected that the Landers had contributed heavily to the contents but knew it was useless to protest. Smoothing down the bright quilts, she closed the chest, blinking back tears.

“It's a wonderful present—a lifetime present.”

“Don't sound as if you had to carry it!” Conrad laughed. “It'll wait, sweet with roses, till you're ready for it.” His eyes touched her till she couldn't look at him. “And one day you will be.”

That seemed far away. But possessing some home furnishings again made her strangely happy, even though she had no bed on which to put pillows and quilts, no table for cloths and napkins. Before she went to bed that night, she picked up Dane's sketch pad, placed it on the chest.

Would he someday sleep on those sheets, rest on the soft down? When would the snow melt? When would he come?

It was Johnny who came at the end of May, just as she was deciding that she couldn't stay at Friedental much longer, from hope of Dane or fear of Rolf. The children were working all day now in the gardens and fields, so school was out till after the harvest, and though she helped Ansjie in the garden and house, she wasn't really needed.

If Rolf was still in the Territory, she couldn't hide forever, and surely he realized now that he couldn't force her to marry him.

Friedental had been a saving respite, but her real life lay out where the striving, changing shaping of a free state was taking place. Her family had come for that. She was the only one left.

Johnny's news, given after reporting that Sara and Judith were fine, increased that feeling. Indignation over the Doy “train's” arrest and jailing was still high. Doy had been tried March 24 in St. Joseph, but the jury couldn't agree and he faced a new trial. The Republicans had held a convention at Osawatomie May 18, one day short of the first anniversary of the massacre at Marais des Cygnes, and close enough to the May 21, 1856, sack of Lawrence by pro-slavers and the retaliatory May 25 date of John Brown's bloody work at Pottawatomie to call both to mind. Abraham Lincoln had been invited but couldn't come because of his law practice.

“Had a problem, the bigwigs did.” Johnny grinned, accepting Ansjie's second servings of mixed sausages, sauerkraut, tasty salad of potatoes, ham, pickles, eggs, green onions, and sour cream. “Horace Greeley offered to speak and they didn't know what to do with him!”

“The editor of the
New York Tribune?
” breathed Deborah.

“Guess that's it” Except for Josiah Whitlaw and Dan Anthony of Leavenworth, Johnny considered newspapermen a scurvy lot. “The Republicans wanted to rope in people who weren't necessarily red-eyed about slavery, and they figgered a New York radical was bound to say some things that'd make 'em sound pure-dee abolitionist. On the other hand, they sure didn't want to make Greeley and his eastern friends mad.”

“How'd they handle it?” Conrad asked interestedly.

“Pretty slick. Honored him with a big parade. Marchers had
Tribunes
in their hats. Then he was asked to address an open-air meeting. There were a thousand delegates. No room in the boardinghouses, so they slept by their rigs or in the groves. Greeley felt properly honored, but he was kept put of the real organizin' where things got down to brass tacks.”

“And what were the brass tacks?” prodded Deborah.

Johnny rubbed his beard, which looked as if it had been pruned considerably. In fact, instead of resembling a grizzled old buffalo, he looked thinner, younger, and if not handsome, distinguished. “Well, you know the Free State party kind of fell apart during the tug of war between Lane and Robinson, especially after Lane killed Jenkins last June. Lane pretty much organized the Osawatomie show, but Free Staters see they have to quit squabblin' and stick together, so even though apportionment of delegates gave Lane's radicals the edge over Robinson's conservatives, about the same number turned up from each side.”

Conrad shook his head. “American politics,” he murmured, “are—different! The Herrenhaus was never like this!”

“What's that?” demanded Johnny.

“The upper house of the Prussian parliament. Rather like the British House of Lords. Its members represent the large estates, big cities, or are nominated by the king as hereditary members.”

“Don't the people elect anybody?”

Conrad shrugged. “The lower house is elected by tax-paying citizens, but it's split into three groups according to the amount of taxes paid by the electors. So those who pay most have the largest voice.”

“We sure wouldn't like that here!” bristled Johnny. “My vote's just as good as … as …”—he tried to think of someone rich, then brightened as he succeeded—“… as Russell's, Major's, or Waddell's. They've got rich on freightin', but their vote's just like mine!”

“Except when the Missourians came across the line and voted ten or twenty times apiece,” Deborah reminded him.

He turned red at that.
“Cesli tatanka!
Well, them days are done! By the way, Russell's joined a Missourian to start an outfit called the Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express Company. Began service May 17. Should do real well if the gold boom keeps up.” He spat. “Seems like every man and his jackass is headin' for Denver!”

Deborah's heart skipped a beat. “Even Rolf Hunter?”

“No, more's the pity. Hear tell he's hangin' out with a wild bunch around Westport.” Johnny sighed. “Best you stay here a little longer, honey. He's still lookin' for you. Has come by the smithy twice, and I hear he's offered a reward for anyone who can tell him where you are.”

Fear chilled Deborah for a moment, only to be overwhelmed by anger. “I can't hide forever!”

Johnny's eyes narrowed. “No, you can't. But Dane should be back in a month or so. I'd like to give him a chance to handle his brother. If he don't—well, when you come live with us, I'll skin that young varmint if he comes prowlin' around.”

As she tardily realized that moving back to the smithy could cause trouble for her friends, that it wasn't just a matter of personal risk, Deborah had no choice but to stifle her protests, though she was determined not to stay in hiding much longer. Swallowing her frustration, she asked what else had happened at the convention.

“
Hin!
” pondered Johnny. “They allowed as how the Declaration of Independence was the bedrock of proper government, bad-mouthed the Dred Scott decision because it gutted the Missouri Compromise, came out for a railroad clear to the Pacific, free homesteads, better harbors, and they asked the Wyandotte convention, which is supposed to meet July 5, to prohibit slavery in the new state constitution.”

“Let's hope this one finally gets us into the Union,” Deborah said rather bitterly. “Let's see, now—isn't this the fourth constitution?”

“Free-Staters drew up the Topeka Constitution, but the federal government was pro-slave and said it wasn't legal,” mused Johnny, counting fingers. “The Lecompton Constitution that President Buchanan tried to get Kansans to accept was brewed up by slavers. The Leavenworth Constitution provided for a free state, but it wasn't approved by Congress.” He blew out his cheeks. “I think they'll approve whatever comes out of Wyandotte, though. Buchanan knows now that Kansas is free-state to the backbone, and there's nothin' he can do about it.”

“A long struggle,” said Conrad.

“It's been that.” Johnny looked at Deborah. “Hadn't been for folks comin' in to make it go free, the Missourians would've seen that it was admitted as a slave state. Now that can't happen.”

Deborah hastened to make it clear that most territorial settlers
weren't
New England abolitionists. “You could say the New England Emigrant Aid Society's pioneers kept a foot in the door for Free Staters, but what's really made the difference has been the flood of people from Iowa and Ohio. They came for land, but most were against slavery just because it wasn't part of what they were used to.”

Johnny nodded. “What's sure now is that Kansas will go in free. Just in time, I'd reckon, to help fight a war!”

“You think it'll come to that?” frowned Conrad.