Chapter Thirty-eight
Ice pick, knife blade, sewing scissors, twine: Carrie is sitting on a rock making a weapon no one in Kansas has ever seen, although anyone living on the upper Amazon would recognize it immediately. The weapon consists of a straight tube four feet long and about two inches in diameter. If she were in Brazil, she would construct the tube from bamboo, but she has been forced to make do with a stick, and finding a piece that fits her needs has been difficult.
She holds the stick at arm’s length and sights down it to make sure it’s perfectly straight. Satisfied that it is, she slices it in half lengthwise and begins to dig out the center. She works mostly with the knife blade, but for the final hollowing she uses the tip of the ice pick. She was lucky to find the pick in the ruins of the main house at Two Rivers and even more lucky that Mrs. Hulett brought it with her from New England. They never had ice in their drinks at the plantation, never even saw it—although presumably the Marais des Cygnes froze in winter. Perhaps Mrs. Hulett kept the pick around to remind herself that someday, when Kansas came into the Union as a free state, there would be icehouses in every town and cold lemonade in August.
Poor Mrs. Hulett. Every time Carrie thinks of her, she begins to cry. Shot down in cold blood: a gentle, intelligent woman who had dedicated her life to abolishing slavery. Despite the way she died, hers was a life to be proud of; but still, what a sad, terrible waste.
Carrie wipes away her tears and goes back to hollowing out the stick. She cries a lot now that there is no one to see her do it: cries when she remembers finding Mrs. Hulett lying in the ashes; cries when she thinks of the men, women, and children Henry Clark kidnapped, all of whom he will undoubtedly sell into slavery if she can’t rescue them.
She does not cry about William and Teddy—at least not in the daytime. At night when she lies in the tall grass shivering and not daring to light a fire, she sobs herself to sleep. But in the daytime when she thinks of William and Teddy, she only feels anger. She never knew she could be so full of rage. She will never forgive Henry Clark. She wants him dead for what he has done, and if she goes to hell for killing him and those bastards who ride with him, it will be worth the price.
Clark should have shot her when he had the chance. Instead he left her alive to suffer. He thought that was all she would do. After all, she was only a woman. He has no idea how straight she can shoot, how ingenious she is, what a deadly adversary she can be.
“I’m leaving you Deacon’s horse,” Clark said as he and his gang rode off. “Go to what’s left of Osawatomie and tell your New England friends what happens to abolitionists. Tell them to get out of Kansas or we’ll shoot them down like dogs, hang them, chop them into mincemeat.” He smiled when he said this as if he were merely informing her that tomorrow was likely to be exceptionally warm. Carrie will never forgive Clark for that smile.
His men had brought chains with them to shackle the black residents of Two Rivers. As they left, they drove their captives down the road moaning and crying. Carrie will never forget the sight of Jane’s little girls stumbling and being whipped for falling.
The bucktoothed raider had held Teddy in front of him, trussed up to the neck in a pillow case like a kitten about to be drowned. Clark bound and gagged William, tied him to his horse, slipped a noose around his neck, stood back, and mocked him.
“Hemp,” Clark said pointing to the rope. “Highest quality.” He turned to Carrie. “You can ride out and cut your paramour down when we’re finished, but not until we’re finished. If you follow us—” Clark had a habit of not finishing his sentences.
He and his men had ridden off leaving Carrie behind. As William rode past, he gave her a look that could have meant Don’t come after me. Be careful. Save yourself. Go for help. It could have even meant Good-bye. I love you. In fact, that’s what Carrie is afraid it meant.
She spent almost no time grieving. If she didn’t follow them at once, she might lose the trail, so as soon as Clark and his men were out of sight, she ran to where the main house had stood and started digging in the ashes. They were still hot, but she didn’t have time to wait for them to cool. She needed a weapon because Clark’s men had taken all the guns. Knives don’t burn, she thought; and sure enough, where the kitchen had been, she found a knife blade. A few moments later, she also found the ice pick. A gift, perhaps even a good sign.
As soon as she located the knife and the pick, she ran to her cabin. The raiders had looted it but had not bothered to burn it. Inside, she found her sewing basket, a feather pillow, a bottle of glue, the buzios, some dried meat, and the tin box that contained the plants she’d brought from Brazil. She took a moment to stuff a dozen packets of dried herbs into a saddlebag that had once contained Deacon’s socks and cigars, but what she was really after was a small gourd that contained a sticky, black substance used by the Indians of the Upper Amazon to tip their hunting arrows. There were all sorts of things in that black mixture, including the secretions of poisonous frogs, but the main ingredient was the sap of a pretty, white-flowered plant called Strychnos toxifera, commonly known as curare.
Now that gourd sits at her feet next to the ball of twine. As soon as she has hollowed out the stick properly, she will bind the halves back together with the twine. Then she will take her sewing needles and glue feathers to them. The needles will become tiny darts which she will dip in the curare. Curare kills slowly but effectively. In fact, if she pricks herself with one of her own needles she will die within ten or fifteen minutes. It won’t be a pretty death. Her lungs will stop working, and she will suffocate. But she doesn’t intend to die.
For three days, she has been tracking Clark and his men, and every hour of those three days she has feared she will find William’s body dangling from the rope Clark threw around his neck.
A knife, an ice pick, a pack of needles, a handful of chicken feathers, sap from a tropical plant, and an ordinary bottle of glue. They are no use against men with guns—unless, of course, you know what to do with them.