Daughter of the Sword (2 page)

“Mrs. Whitlaw's a fine lady, but I belong here!” Sara's mouth trembled. “Unless you don't want me anymore!”

Taking his place at one end of the table, Johnny flushed red to the roots of his shaggy, white-streaked black hair.
If he shaved off that beard and sideburns, would he look so old?
What had gotten into him and Sara? It wasn't like either of them to flare up over nothing.

“You go riding.” Johnny's tone allowed no argument. “You work too hard, too long.” His voice softened, but Deborah, alerted to something unusual, detected pain beneath his words. “Play a little, Wastewin, play and be young. Don't get in a hurry to plumb grow up. All that comes soon enough.”

Sara twinkled at him and the strangeness was gone. “Then I will go riding, and, thank you, sir! Take a nice helping of that sheep sorrel; it's good for you. And you, too, Laddie.”

Both groaned but did as commanded. Deborah herself enjoyed the tart wild greens, especially after winter's dearth of fresh vegetables and fruit, but there was no excuse for the pickiest eater to go hungry from Sara's table, though Johnny liked to grumble that the blue “delft” stoneware dented the edge of the hunting knife he
would
use at meals. He preferred wooden trenchers.

Marble-sized new potatoes and tender peas in cream sauce filled the biggest crock. There was hominy flavored with salt pork, stewed prairie chicken, juicily golden pies made from dried apples and peaches, but, most delicious of all, there were biscuits! Of fine wheat flour!

Such flour was used in the Whitlaw household only when a subscriber or advertiser paid with it. The staple for most Kansans was cornmeal.

Cornbread, corn dodgers, pumpkin cornmeal loaf, corn muffins, Indian pudding, griddle cakes, corn gruel—there was no end to the ways resourceful (or desperate) cooks found to use the unbolted meal ground at the mill after a family spent an evening shelling a washtub or barrel full of corn.

Cornmeal mush and hasty pudding, parched corn with milk, hominy, green corn, white pot made with eggs, molasses, and milk—Deborah stopped the all too familiar litany and had another crusty biscuit, closing her eyes to savor it as it fairly melted in her mouth.

Maccabee seemed always silent at meals, perhaps because he didn't fully trust any white besides Johnny, who'd bought him after his master, despairing of ever making him a profitable servant, had beaten him nearly to death.

Incredulous that anyone would buy “dog meat,” the owner was glad to make anything off what he'd considered a total loss. But Johnny knew cures from his dead Sioux wife and had found lodging for himself and Maccabee with a kindly farm family till he nursed the great black man back to health.

Suspicious at first, hating all whites, Maccabee couldn't accept Johnny's good faith till the old hunter finally convinced him that he was free to go north, even to find his way back to Africa and the dung-plastered conical huts of his people.

Maccabee refused to go since his owner's lash marks would be forever on him as a sign of his bondage. He learned the smithy work, and when Johnny moved to Kansas Territory, longing to get closer to his old life on the plains, Maccabee came along. It was at his urging that the smithy became a stop on the way to freedom.

Now, his awesome presence loomed even more because of his reserve, but no one, satisfying their first hunger, spoke much.

As Deborah savored the succulent peas and potatoes, she reflected that blacksmithing paid better than journalism. Some customers, journeying west, even paid in cash for the shoeing of their horses or oxen, mended wagons or wheels or harness, though barter was the rule.

The scrupulously exact account book which Sara kept, since Johnny couldn't write and had no interest in such things, showed that he'd been paid in boots, steel, pans, old iron, cord wood, hogs, cloth, flour, corn, quilts, preserves, and game. One entry showed he'd made a new axle for the Whitlaw buggy in return for a subscription to
The Clarion
and some advertising.

These were concessions to Josiah Whitlaw's pride. Johnny couldn't read and he didn't need to advertise. He had more work than he and Maccabee could handle, especially during the summer months, when travelers and freighters bound southwest or for California and Oregon followed the Santa Fe trail south of the Kaw. Those going to the West Coast would cross the Kaw and follow the Big Blue River till they turned west along the Platte, but near Lawrence all westbound wayfarers followed the rutted tracks along the Kaw, which had probably first been buffalo and Indian trails hundreds of years before Coronado came searching for golden Quivira or French trappers and traders met the Comanche, or Zebulon Pike and John Frémont came exploring.

Forty-niners bound for California, troops dispatched to defend the frontier, Mormons seeking a new homeland, and since William Becknell's successful trip from Missouri to Santa Fe in 1821, thousands of wagons of goods for the Santa Fe trade. The headquarters of the freighting business of Russell, Majors, and Waddell was located near Fort Leavenworth. Father had recently run an article praising the firm's policy of fining teamsters who misused animals or swore, whereupon Johnny had muttered that out of the six thousand teamsters the freighters hired, he'd bet the best ones cussed.

Thos was reaching for at least his eighth biscuit. Deborah kicked him under the table. He winced and looked martyred till Sara offered him a quarter of the apple pie.

Real coffee was another luxury of Johnny's. With honey and thick cream, it completed the feast. Deborah suspected that though Sara always set a good table, she made an extra effort when Thos was expected.

Deborah volunteered to do the dishes so that Thos and Sara could be off. Maccabee and Johnny went out to drowse and smoke their pipes under the giant cottonwood that shaded the main cabin. Laddie filled the water buckets and the woodbox near the stove before he grinned at Deborah and settled down with the last piece of pie. He was faithful about work, but when he wasn't needed, he disappeared in the trees along the river.

The four loaves of bread rising beneath the clean dish towel on a shelf by the sunny window gave out a good yeasty smell. Peeking, Deborah was sure they had doubled. She poked up the fire, added a chunk of wood, and was putting the bread in the oven when Johnny came in with that silent, light tread of his.

“So!” He threw back his head and for a moment Deborah thought he was angry. She was glad when he chuckled. “You don't trust me, either, Miss Deborah?”

“I was just finishing up,” she said, a bit flustered. “And the bread looked ready.”

“And didn't I come in right spang on time?” he asked with great satisfaction. “You be sure and tell Sara so!”

“I'll do that, Johnny.” Deborah slipped off Sara's apron and hung it on a peg. “Thanks for the Bowie lesson and dinner. I wish there was something we could do for you.”

Johnny made a rude blowing sound through his moustache. “Holy buffalo! You talk like that and you'll rile me into botching that plowshare I have to make! Having you folks for neighbors is the best luck I could have.”

“But it's you who's always helping us! You've got everything!”

There was a strange flicker in Johnny's dark eyes beneath the grizzled brows. “Think so?” he asked wryly before he grinned and shrugged. “Man can never have enough real friends. I rest a lot easier knowing that if anything happened to me, you Whitlaws would help Sara and Laddie. Maccabee would do his best, but the pro-slavers would try to get him if I was out of their way and Sara and the place were up for grabs.”

“We'd look after Sara and Laddie, of course, but nothing's going to happen to you, Johnny!”

He said grimly, “Now, that's a thing no one can say, sure not in these bad days, Miss Deborah.”

She looked at him in surprise. “But, Johnny, the worst must be over, surely? When we first came here, Border Ruffians were crossing from Missouri to steal elections, and pro-slavers burned Lawrence, and John Brown …”

She broke off, chilling at the memory. Two of the five pro-slavery slain, cut down by two-edged swords without a chance to defend themselves, had been little more than boys, killed along with their father.

The other two men were bullies, one a member of the pro-slave legislature, but Leticia Whitlaw had prayed a long time and been worn and haggard for days. Father's scathing editorial reported that Brown had, as usual, said the blessing at breakfast with the blood of his victims still staining his hands.

Pushing that dreadful memory away, Deborah said hopefully, “I know it took federal troops from Fort Leavenworth to put an end to all that, but except for wrangling over claims between Free-Staters and pro-slavers, things have seemed fairly calm.”

“At least we've finally had a fair election and the legislature's mainly Free-State,” Johnny said. “But those pro-slavers who were elected by Border Ruffians still hope to get Kansas admitted as a state under
their
constitution. President Buchanan's done everything to help them.”

Deborah frowned. “Surely that won't happen. There's a bill in Congress to let Kansans vote again on whether to accept the pro-slave Lecompton Constitution. Now that we have a governor who won't let the Missourians steal elections, Free-Staters are bound to reject that pro-slave fraud.”

“No use getting into a lather over it. War's certain-sure goin' to come. We're just catching it a little early.” Dismissing the grim subject, Johnny squinted solicitously at Deborah. “Want Laddie to catch you up a horse? No reason you shouldn't have a ride, too, even if the love birds didn't ask you.”

His tone was gruff, even harsh. Could he regard Sara as more than his ward, his foster daughter?

Impossible! He must be at least forty, and looked more. But men older than he did sometimes take young wives. Deborah stifled the shocking thought.

Johnny had more sense. Besides, Thos and Sara were so in love that it shimmered between them, an almost physical glow, so beautiful, so private, that it made Deborah feel shut off from her twin and best friend, very much without a man of her own, and also afraid for them. To be that happy, that touched with magic, must be tempting fate. And they were so young, only seventeen.
Oh, let them be all right,
Deborah thought.

“I think I'll walk over to the buffalo wallow,” she told Johnny. “The wild roses should be thick. Thanks, but it's not far enough to bother with a horse.”

“Well, take care you don't step in a prairie dog hole,” Johnny teased, for she was continually doing that, gazing into the distance or watching a meadowlark take flight rather than having a care where she stepped.

“Better me than a horse,” she countered gaily. For such stumbles could break a horse's leg, whereas she simply bruised her dignity.

She strolled to the forge with Johnny.

A flaxen-haired young man and woman had driven up in a wagon holding various tools and pieces of farm equipment.

“Conrad!” Johnny greeted. “And Miss Ansjie! I see you've brought the lot for me to fix.”

“If you'll be so kind.” The man's clear blue eyes rested with frank admiration on Deborah. He had a precise, slow way of speaking, and there was an old scar on his left cheek. “Shall we stop tomorrow on our way home from town?”

“I'll do my best,” Johnny said. “Miss Ansjie, this is Miss Deborah Whitlaw. Miss Deborah, this is Miss Ansjie Lander and her brother, Conrad. They came here from Prussia!”

“Prussia!” Deborah echoed. “That's so far away!”

“Far,” Ansjie agreed, blue eyes wistful before she smiled determinedly. “But this is a very good country—fine, rich soil.”

The men unloaded the wagon and the pair drove off, Conrad settling his black hat back on his fair head.

“Nice folk,” Johnny grunted. “He's sort of the leader of a group that has a funny religion, but they are mighty good farmers. They have a settlement about fifteen miles west.”

“Why did they leave Prussia?”

“Nearest I can figger. Conrad was afraid the Mennonites were going to run into trouble. Thinks it won't be long before the government tries to conscript men into the army, and that's against their faith. He isn't a Mennonite himself, but they lived on his land and he felt responsible for them, I guess.”

Johnny hefted a worn plowshare in a way that said he was ready to work, so though she was curious about the handsome young foreigners, especially the striking, authoritative man, Deborah said good-bye and set off on her ramble.

Angling away from the river, she took a dim trail that led to her favorite place, a grassy hollow worn by countless buffalo during the countless years they'd lain down there and rolled to comfort their itching backs. They never came here now, though vast herds still ranged the plains in less settled country.

Deborah had seen a few buffalo, but never great masses like those Johnny spoke of, where the large-headed humped bison stretched like a dark sea farther than the eye could see. From ancient times they had shared this vast open land, these oceans of grass; with Indians who depended heavily on them for meat, hides for robes and tipis, tallow, sinews for sewing, horn for ornaments and utensils. Every part was used, Johnny said, except the heart, which was put back in the earth, an offering to perpetuate the great beasts.

Now the Indians were being gradually compelled to give up their free wandering as towns and settlers edged into the prairies. The strife in Kansas had made eastern investors nervous about backing railroads, but in 1855 the first Territorial Legislature had chartered five railroads and a little track had been laid, some surveying done. When trains began rolling steadily across Kansas, bringing inevitable settlements and fences, the buffalo must vanish.

All their wallows would fill with grass and flowers as this one had. Their shapes seemed to loom and face on the horizon above the rippling buffalo grass, which seemed a new color each time the wind bent it in a different direction, a gently whispering ocean caressed by sun, with red-winged blackbirds taking sudden flight, and meadowlarks singing from their nests in the grass.