Daughter of the Sword (27 page)

It was an interminable day, punctuated by Father's coughing. By four o'clock Deborah had resolved to see how the animals were faring and milk Venus, even if she had to battle the ferocious wind and find her way by using the rawhide Father had left in place. She was bundling into her coat when the wind died.

To ears now accustomed to the howling, it seemed deafeningly still. The skies even looked a little brighter, as if far above the gray overcast the sun was trying to reach the earth.

“Maybe it's over,” Judith said hopefully. Coming from the milder climate of hilly, tree-sheltered southern Missouri, she felt the cold more than the Whitlaws, though she never complained. “Shall I help you, Deborah?”

“Thanks, but there's no use in both of us tracking in snow. There's not that much to do.”

Though it had tamed remarkably, the wind still gusted ice powder that cut Deborah's face where the scarf left her eyes uncovered, and it stung up and under her skirts so that she gasped and made all the haste she could to the soddy.

It seemed heavenly warm there, redolent with the clean fragrance of hay. Speaking to the animals, she stroked them all and gave Chica a special hug. “Think about spring,” she murmured into a twitching silken ear. “There'll be green grass, sweetheart, and Dane will be back. It won't be winter forever.”

She shoveled out the manure, tossing it on the snow-covered heap that would be used for fertilizer next spring, refilled the mangers, washed her hands in the snow, and milked Venus. She left the milk in a protected corner while she fed the chickens and collected five eggs.

Nesting these judiciously inside her coat, she took the milk to the house, unloaded the eggs, gratefully drank a cup of hot “coffee” Judith fetched her that warmed her hands as well as her center, and then, grasping the shovel, she picked her way to the well-house.

It was badly drifted up, but like all the buildings, the door faced south and it didn't take long to shovel the entrance free. Right now the snow had an icy crust that would probably even support the weight of Venus or the horses. It wasn't too difficult to walk on, and she decided against shoveling paths to the well-house and stable, though she did clear a space around the cabin door and she knocked the frigid covering off part of the woodpile. After she brought perishables from the well-house and filled the water buckets, she put some wood just inside the cabin to dry.

The storm
might
be lifting, but there was no way of being sure, and she meant to put this reprieve to its fullest use. The well-house yielded twenty frozen eggs, congealed butter, and frozen pans of cream. The plums were now preserved in ice, and the brine on the tomatoes was sludgy, but Deborah felt that neither could be made more inedible than it already was.

Mother took charge of the salvaged food and Judith opened and shut the door while Deborah lugged in wood and corncobs. She preferred that the cow chips dry thoroughly again outside.

Father's cough seemed worse as night came on, but he was now using this rare, enforced leisure to go through recent
Clarions
and bill advertisers, scribbling busily between firelight and the flickering lamp.

“Wonderful how the town's grown,” he said, pointing to the pages announcing for sale Goodyear India rubber boots and coats, hydraulic cement, made-to-order tweeds, tin roofing, coffins in the latest styles, copper-toed children's shoes, Faber's lead pencils, wallpaper, and paper window shades, which could be had gold-bordered or oil-painted.

Deborah loved to read the advertisements, especially Dalton's exciting description of new ladies' clothes, but she was always surprised to see percussion caps and revolvers mentioned along with jewelry and clocks by Frazer's in the Eldridge House, or note that Ridenour and Baker sold gunpowder as well as groceries.

For supper, Mother had peeled eggs and put them in the skillet with butter, scrambling them as they thawed, adding frozen cream.

Dishwater heated as they ate, and after the meal Deborah and Judith did the day's dishes while Mother read aloud, more of
Leaves of Grass.

The washed skillet was heating on the grate to be tucked in at Father's feet. The girls would get the top and bottom of the Dutch oven. Wrapped in towels, cast iron would hold comforting warmth till bodies could begin to warm the frigid bedding. Deborah banked the fire well, fervently hoping the storm was over and that Father wasn't going to be really sick.

If only Thos were here—or Dane! Thrusting the covered Dutch oven lid at the foot of her bed, Deborah told Judith good night and sternly told herself not to worry. She would just have to do the best she could, ease Mother's load as much as possible.

It seemed a year since Rolf had left them, longer since Thos had. Yet that was all only yesterday.

xii

She awoke the next morning to Father's coughing. He wasn't better and it was still snowing outside. No blizzard, thank goodness, no piercing swirl of pulverized ice, but big, feathery flakes that, though beautiful, layered relentlessly on the previous fall.

Deborah, shivering, pulled on her clothes and hurried to build up the fire, then put on the coffee brew. Strange how new concerns could override others. With the thick, blanketing snow outside, the roads and trails drifted and impassable, they seemed in a white, muffled, isolated world of their own. Judith couldn't get to the smithy, but neither could any slave-catchers reach them. What preoccupied Deborah now was Father's cough and keeping the family and animals warm and fed.

She realized she was making more of it than probabilities warranted. If Josiah had been well or had Thos been there, she would scarcely have worried. The stock was in a good shelter with plenty of hay and fodder, the chickens were safe, there was plenty of food, and fuel was right outside the door. She was being a proper goose!

Self-scolded into adopting a brisk, confident manner, Deborah asked Josiah how he was. “Cough's a nuisance,” he grumbled, rubbing his sideburns. “But I'll see to the stock, daughter.”

“You won't,” said Leticia firmly. “And you can just stay under the covers till the other room warms up.”

“You took care of things during the blizzard,” Deborah reminded her father, dropping a kiss on his forehead, where the dark hair was receding. “It's warmer today and the wind's died down.”

“We won't get the paper out this week.” He fidgeted. “And provided it didn't snow in town the way it did here, the legislature's probably meeting there right now.”

“Won't they have to meet at Lecompton?” asked Leticia.

“Yes, but they hate that place for being the pro-slave capital. Bet they do just what they did last year—meet at Lecompton and adjourn to Lawrence.” He chuckled, eyes lighting up. “And this session, I hear, they're going to repeal the bogus laws the Bogus Legislature adopted from Missouri, except for the slavery code, which wasn't harsh enough. Going to throw it out from start to finish! That'll be real news!”

“You can make next week's issue extra large,” Leticia suggested.

Father nodded. “That's so. I've got time to work on several articles I've held aside till I had a chance to do them satisfactorily.” He looked pleadingly at his wife. “Are you
sure
I can't get up yet?”

“Breakfast will be soon enough,” she said. “Judith, will you start the biscuits while I scramble the rest of those eggs?”

Deborah put on her coat and scarf, took the milk bucket, and stepped out into the steady, gentle, inexorable fall of snow.

All that day it snowed off and on, the skies never lightening, dusk closing in as softly as the big flakes. In spite of the syrup, Josiah's cough was deep and wracking, but he vowed that apart from that, he felt perfectly all right and he expected he'd improve if the women would let him get up.

The next day was much the same, though it snowed less and the skies seemed a little brighter to Deborah's straining eyes, though it could be so long since she'd seen the sun that these heavy leaden clouds were beginning to seem normal.

During the snow lulls, Venus and the horses ventured out, hooves caking with ice, but finding no forage, they soon returned to the soddy. Deborah brought in more wood and corncobs to dry.

By now she was weary of being cooped up and welcomed the outside chores in spite of the biting cold. In the cabin, she found herself waiting for and tensing at Josiah's spasms of coughing. Surely it was only a bad cold! Yet pneumonia behaved like a cold at the start.

Mother was worried, too, yet she read to him, studied what he'd written, and made suggestions, all the time maintaining a calm and sweetness that was balm to Deborah's frayed nerves and seemed to have a like effect on Judith.

Always quiet, the young woman had been almost silent all day. Perhaps the decision to shift hiding places was making her agonize about whether to go north or wait, hoping she could live in this more familiar region rather than try to make a life in another part of the country.

Bringing in the eggs and milk, Deborah wished her twin were home. More than to help with the work, she needed someone to joke with or grumble at. As she took off her coat, Judith began to cough. This time she didn't try to say it was something stuck in her throat.

Deborah awoke the next morning to find that Judith wasn't in their partitioned cubby, though she remembered half-waking up in the night to her coughing. It turned out that Judith had moved her pallet near the fireplace in order not to disturb Deborah. She was feverish, and Josiah, who insisted he was
much
better, ceded the benches so her bedding could be raised from the floor.

He seemed to be coughing less, so it was likely that he, and now Judith, only had troublesome colds. Deborah and Leticia looked at each other with an unspoken mutual worry: What if one or both of them fell sick before the others had recovered?

I can't get sick,
thought Deborah.
I won't!
And she dressed to do the chores.

That day and the next two were overcast and freezing, but mercifully there was no more snow or strong wind. The animals ventured out, walking gingerly, but didn't stray far from the stable and food.

Judith stayed feverish, coughing till the sputum was bloody, but said colds always took her this way and she'd be better soon. Fortunately, Josiah was. On the sixth day, though he still had a nagging little cough, he shoveled a path to the stable and well-house.

“This won't stay frozen hard enough to walk on forever,” he said. “And when it thaws, we'll have mess enough without floundering in wet snow and soaking ourselves above the knee!”

His effort was just in time. The sun was out the next day, sparkling with blinding brilliance over the unbroken white vastness, drifted here and there into dunes or crests.

The roof, punished by the weight of accumulating snow, now began to leak hesitating muddy drops in spite of the cheesecloth. Deborah and Mother placed buckets or pots beneath the dribbles, and Father and Deborah took shovels and, standing on the woodpile and benches, scooped off as much snow as they could. They couldn't reach the center, but Josiah got out his fishing pole and whacked at the snow till some fell within reach, and the rest was thinned to where it should melt off fairly soon.

Venus and the horses soon trampled the space around the stable into dark muck, but they fared out in the field now and hooved or nosed the snow aside to reach stubble or grass. The chickens pecked and scratched. All living creatures seemed freed by the sun, stirring again, loosed from wintry prisons.

Deborah's shoes were soaked and mud-caked after each sally into the yard. She cherished hope that such abuse would ruin them so that this spring Mother'd have to let her go barefoot or moccasined. And by winter, perhaps she could have a pair of men's boots, which could be oiled to protect against the weather, or even rubber ones.

The brightness seemed good medicine for Judith. Her fever was gone and she ate with appetite. The cough was less frequent, though it still wracked her when it came. By noon she refused absolutely to keep to her pallet, washed carefully, and helped shift and empty the leak-catching receptacles.

It was time now, while the roof wept and the snow almost visibly shrank and melted, to be part of the world again; to wonder when the way to Lawrence wouldn't be a quagmire; to wonder when Thos might be coming and what he'd have to tell them; to wonder when Judith would be well enough and the path clear enough to go to Johnny's.

“Maybe in a few days, if it keeps thawing,” Father surmised to that last question. “Won't hurt to take care of that cold, child.”

The sun shone next day and the next. Thawing continued, though the snow and run-off froze at night. Judith said she was well enough to go to the smithy, and Father was impatient to get to
The Clarion,
to hear what the legislature was doing, and start setting up the big double issue.

So, on the tenth morning after their marooning by snow, after breakfast and family worship, Deborah and Judith started off. Judith's other dress and the few things Deborah and Mother had been able to give her were tied in a bundle behind Chica's saddle. Judith, afraid of horses, had finally been coaxed into riding the sweet-tempered mare, so Deborah rode Belshazzar. She'd belted the Bowie beneath her skirts. She was out of practice. If Johnny had time, he might give her a lesson.

Josiah and Leticia would be starting for Lawrence soon, but Neubuchadnezzar had been out in the field and Father had to go after him. He and Leticia embraced Judith and wished her good luck with her wayfaring, though if she did go north, they wanted to get over to Johnny's and see her a last time.

“No way to thank, you,” she whispered. “Every day of my life, I'll pray God have a care for you.”

“And we'll pray for you,” Leticia promised. She kissed Deborah, too, though ordinarily they didn't do that on parting. “Be careful, dear. You may visit, if Sara's not too busy, but start home right away if it starts looking stormy.”