The Widow's War

WAR! scream the headlines of the Westport Border Times and The Leavenworth Herald. MURDER ON POTTAWATOMIE CREEK! MASSACRE! All over Missouri, pro-slave newspapers cry for the extermination of every abolitionist in Kansas, while in Massachusetts guns and money pour in for the defense of free-state settlements.

Chaos, looting, burned homesteads, sudden violent death. Lawrence and Topeka blockaded by pro-slavers; forts built around abolitionist towns to cut them off from contact with the outside world: My brother-in-law has triggered a terrible guerilla war, Samuel Adair writes. Brown’s Station lies in ruins, burned to the ground, cattle stolen, wives and children fled in terror to parts unknown.

John Brown goes into hiding no one knows where as Federal troops and the Missouri Militia scour southeastern Kansas looking for him. Troops from a pro-slavery Kansas militia join them. Instead of finding John Brown, they find John Junior crouching in a wooded ravine by the Adairs’ cabin. Chaining him to a tent pole, they beat him with their fists and the butts of their rifles until he goes insane. As they torture him, he cries that he was not at Pottawatomie Creek, that he had nothing to do with the executions, but the pro-slavers do not care. He is a Brown.

An eye for an eye! they yell. A tooth for a tooth! Brown’s son is too crazed with pain to tell them that this is also one of his father’s favorite quotations.

On the second of June, John Brown fights a battle with a pro-slavery militia at a place called Black Jack Springs. To everyone’s astonishment, he wins. Two days later, perhaps in retaliation, a band of bushwhackers burns Trout’s Hotel.

Trout and his Yankee cook run for it and hide in the creek until the raiders leave, taking every horse, chicken, cow, keg of nails, bag of salt, and bolt of calico with them. When Trout returns to the site of his hotel, all he finds is a pile of smoking boards and a circle of blackened prairie. Throwing down his hat, he kicks it into the ashes.

“Damnation!” he yells. “I’m ruined! Wiped clean out!” Tears stream down his cheeks leaving sooty streaks. He coughs, takes out his bandanna and blows his nose. “Begging your pardon for the cursin’ and the cryin’, Miz Witherspoon, but I done been pushed to the edge! I came here with the money I inherited from my mama and built my hotel, and now it’s all ashes and cinders. It’s enough to break a man’s heart.

“To hell with Kansas! Who needs her? Bloody battleground, that’s what she is. Well, the abolitionists and slavers can let the blood flow without me! I don’t wanna be no part of their war! I’m leaving, yes, ma’am, I am. If I can get enough money together to buy a horse, maybe I’ll move on further west where there’s only rattlesnakes and hostile Indians to worry a man.”

Mrs. Witherspoon stands next to him staring at the ashes. After a while, she goes to the root cellar, which the raiders have overlooked in their haste to get away with their loot. Pulling up the hatch, she climbs down the ladder and emerges with a jar of peaches preserved in whiskey.

“I know you don’t usually drink, Mr. Trout,” she says, offering the jar to him, “but there’s a time for everything.” Trout accepts the jar, takes a pull on it, sits down on the ground, and takes another pull.

“What was that flag those bushwhackers were carrying?” Mrs. Witherspoon asks as she spreads her skirts and settles down beside him.

“Sorry for the cussin’, ma’am, but I’ve just lost my hotel, and I ain’t drunk a dram of whiskey since Fifty-four when I had that terrible toothache.”

The day after the burning of Trout’s Hotel, Carrie and William buy a mule, load everything they salvaged from their house into a wagon, make Teddy a pallet in the back, and join a group of six armed men on their way to reinforce the defenses at Osawatomie. Passing through the Missouri Militia blockade, they are taunted by the pro-slavers but not attacked.

All day they follow the California Road. That night their party pitches camp and posts sentries. Ever since the news of Pottawatomie Creek came to Lawrence, Carrie has known Kansas is in a state of civil war, but not until she wakes just before dawn and sees three grim-faced men staring off into the darkness with their guns drawn does the reality of it hit home.

Pulling Teddy close, she curls up against William, and lies there listening for the sound of approaching horses, but all she hears is the rustling of the grass and the sentries coughing and talking in low whispers.

Late the next morning, before they reach Osawatomie, William and Carrie say good-bye to their escorts and turn onto the dirt track that leads to Two Rivers. Elizabeth said Mrs. Hulett and the fugitives who lived with her grew rope hemp on the plantation. Carrie has always imagined hemp would look like rope—brown and uninteresting—but instead she finds herself rolling past tall, green plants with delicately feathered leaves. The hemp is planted densely, forming a wall that sways in the wind. Carrie decides it’s the closest thing to a jungle she’s seen since she left Brazil.

The main house is less impressive than the hemp that surrounds it. Constructed of unpainted boards and sporting a thatched roof, it has nothing in common with the great, white-pillared mansions of the old South. Although much larger than the cabin Carrie and William built in Lawrence it looks similar except that instead of a small porch suitable for knocking the mud off your boots before you enter, the main house at Two Rivers has a wraparound veranda that curves in a protective circle so no matter which door you go out of, you always find yourself with a shaded place to sit.

Behind the house, lined up along the river, are a series of slave cabins. The cabins, which are also constructed of unpainted boards, are in remarkably good repair but still . . .

Carrie wonders if Mrs. Hulett’s guests live in them. Surely that would bring back very unpleasant memories if you had once been a slave.

No,” Mrs. Hulett tells Carrie and William after they have washed up, put Teddy down for a nap, and are taking tea with her on the veranda. “All of us live here in the big house, except for Ni’s wife, Jane, and their two daughters. Jane asked to move her family into one of the cabins. The rest of us have a dormitory arrangement. I’m somewhat abashed to admit that my guests have insisted I have an entire room to myself. I thought we should all share the inconvenience equally, but they laid down the law. They said I was too old and that besides, I snored. ‘If you had to take out your teeth every night, you’d snore, too,’” I told them.

She leans forward, picks up the teapot, and refills Carrie’s and William’s cups. “They won’t let me work in the fields either, but I’m not alone in that. The old men don’t work in the fields and neither do the children. That’s the glory of rope hemp. In April you have a few days hard work planting it, but then you can turn your back on it until August. We’re using China seed instead of Old Kentucky, and it’s so vigorous, you can lie in your bed at night and hear it growing.”

She shrugs. “Actually, if we could get away with it, we’d grow nothing, but we have to keep up appearances. We’ve had visitors. Pro-slavers, of course, since they think I’m one of them. For a while most people in Osawatomie didn’t know the truth, but the day after Pottawatomie Creek Elizabeth told them who ‘my slaves’ really are. As long as they keep their mouths shut, we should be safe here and so should you and your child.”

“That’s the main reason we came,” Carrie says. “For Teddy’s sake. Also, like your guests, we need to disappear for a while.”

Mrs. Hulett takes a sip of tea and looks at William with renewed interest. “There is still a price on your head, Doctor Saylor, is there not?”

“Yes. Recently, I was pleased to hear the slavers had raised the reward for my carcass to two hundred dollars. A man doesn’t like to be undervalued.”

“Someone is also likely to be hunting for me,” Carrie says. “He may even be offering a reward. We aren’t sure if he is, but I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“Deacon Presgrove!” Mrs. Hulett almost drops her tea cup. “Not the son of that wicked man who savagely beat Senator Sumner!”

Mrs. Hulett puts down her cup, and stares at Carrie and William with a mixture of admiration and astonishment. “I’ll ask no more questions. You can have a cabin for your clinic, and another for yourselves if you’d like privacy. They’re clean and the roofs are watertight, and since it’s summer, you’ll be warm enough.

“Of course, if any pro-slavers come down the road, I’ll introduce you as my cousin and her husband, and you’ll have to pretend to be living in the main house, but I don’t think that’s likely. Right now, my neighbors are occupied with plotting the destruction of Osawatomie, burning free-state homesteads, and hunting for John Brown. As far as they know, I’m just an old lady in bad health with a bunch of nearly-useless slaves.

“In short, you’re welcome. The clinic will be a blessing to all of us here at Two Rivers, not to mention the people in Osawatomie and the men who are living at—” She stops abruptly.

William reaches out and takes her hands in his. “My dear Mrs. Hulett, I don’t know how we’ll ever repay you for taking us in.”

“Fiddlesticks, Doctor Saylor! You have a reputation for keeping your patients alive. It’s going to be a comfort to have you and Miss Vinton here, and if you find you have too much free time on your hands, you can always help us with the hemp harvest. I don’t know what we’re going to do with it, but come late August we’re going to have to cut it down.”

One month later to the day, a lone rider comes down the road that leads to Two Rivers. Stopping at the main house, he dismounts, knocks on the door, and asks one of the “slaves” if he can have a drink of water. Ni’s wife, Jane, brings him the dipper, watches him drink, and takes the dipper back when he is finished.

“Yes, Massa,” she says. It’s a carefully rehearsed reply, one they have all discussed and agreed on. Distasteful, but necessary.

“She’s upstairs takin’ a nap, Massa. She’s real old and sickly.” At that moment, Carrie walks out of the clinic carrying a washbasin full of water. Throwing the water on the ground, she turns and goes back inside. She does not notice Jane standing on the porch or the stranger standing next to her.

The stranger stares at the clinic. Jane doesn’t like the expression on his face. “You want me to go wake the old mistress up, Massa?”

The stranger turns and looks at her with cold, blue eyes. His hair is the color of flax, his lips so red, they almost look painted. “No,” he says. “No need. Let her sleep. I already have the answer to the question I was going to ask her.”