Daughter of the Sword (57 page)

xxiv

A hand reached and found her, roughly reassuring. “It all right, Miz Deborah!” She couldn't identify the whisperer but thought it was Titus, the younger of the two refugees who lived here. Feeling her bonds, he sucked in his breath.

“Lordy, you do be tied! Lemme cut you loose from the bed and then I can get at them knots better.”

Rolf didn't stir. As Titus worked on her ropes, a slow, muted sound began. It took her a moment to realize Rolf's blood had soaked through the mattress and was dripping on the floor. She felt a vast relief that neither she nor Dane would have to kill him.

“The others?” she asked Titus.

“'Spect they dead by now, Miz Deborah.”

The ropes fell from her wrists. She flexed and rubbed them, wincing at the quickened circulation. Then she groped at the foot of the bed for something to cover herself with, though it was too dark to see anything.

She pulled on her shirt while Titus alternately hacked and unknotted the ropes on her ankles, still whispering. “Jes' in case they ain't quite finished out there!”

He explained that after the camp slept, two of the guerrillas had come in to have their fun with his wife and the widow of the slain man, while another stood guard over Titus, who was shoved outside.

No one paid any attention to Titus's aged grandmother, toothless and apparently senile, rocking herself in a corner.

“An' that was their plumb fatal mistake!” chuckled Titus. “They done took the butcher knives an' such, but Gran, she recollect a cleaver hung back behind the cupboard. She wait till them men busy humpin', one in the kitchen, one in the lean-to, and she plumb cave in their heads! My guard, he hear a yip like a hurt cur an' turn 'round. Gran chop off the han' with the pistol and I throttles 'im. We takes those devils' Bowies. The moon almost down. Them other six sleepin' like hogs, drunk theyselves blind last night. Gran take her cleaver an' my woman and Elzie get Bowies. They allow they can take care of that trash lyin' 'round where they roast our chickens, so I comes to take care of their boss and see if you alive. Thank the Lord you be!”

“Thank
you!”
Deborah bent to rub her numbed feet. “Will you see if the women are all right? We've got to get word to Lawrence! And no one better be here when Quantrill comes through.”

Which could be any minute. Titus went out. Deborah found her other clothing and pulled it on.

The dripping of blood from the mattress was slower now, hesitating longer before each
plash.
Man was a fragile thing; it took so little to change him from life to inert matter.

She felt around on the floor till she located his weapons. By touch, she knew her Bowie, which Rolf must have appropriated. And here was the first beautiful one Johnny had made for her! Her heart thrilled as she ran her fingers over the designs in blade and handle. Fastening both around her waist, she drank a gourdful of water and stepped outside.

The moon was down, but it was lighter than the cabin. As she carefully approached the camp, Titus loomed. Three slighter figures materialized beside him. Deborah put out her hands to the women.

She had done what they just had, been brutalized like them. But they lived and because of a despised old black woman, ten guerrillas were dead and Lawrence might be rescued.

“I take a horse an' ride for Lawrence,” Titus offered.

“We both should go,” Deborah said. “Quantrill may have more scouts out. If one of us gets caught, the other may get through.” She said to the women, “Better take everything you can gather up fast and get as far away from here as you can. Quantrill will be in too much of a hurry to hunt for you long.”

“Bet he take time to burn our cabins,” moaned Titus's wife.

“Cabins kin be built again,” snorted Gran. “No way to stuff life back in your hide!”

She led the way to the cabins. Titus had already started for the horses. Deborah dragged two saddles from where they were piled near the camp, avoiding the silent bulks around the dead fire, which still had an occasional ember glow as the breeze stirred it.

As she and Titus saddled their mounts, they agreed that he'd swing to the west and she to the east, wished each other good luck, and started to warn the slumbering town.

A nightmare ride. Though she put as much weight as possible on her feet in the stirrups to ease the pressure against where Rolf had bruised her, the jolting trot, which was as fast as she dared go in the darkness, wracked her from pelvis to throbbing head. The graze wasn't serious but movement sent pain crashing through her skull.

Her gorge kept rising till she finally vomited and felt better in her stomach. Still, misery of body faded in the dread clutching at her as she strained her ears for sounds that might herald the guerrillas.

They couldn't be far behind. Even if she and Titus roused the town, its men were far outnumbered by Quantrill's. The old muskets locked in the warehouse would be pitifully outmatched by the guerrillas' arsenal. They'd have several pistols apiece, rifles, and shotguns, as well as Bowies.

It would still be a slaughter. But at least the guerrillas wouldn't have it all their own way, and if defenders had time to mass in strategic places, they might repulse Quantrill, save at least some of their lives and buildings.

She kept dozing in sheer fatigue, then was roused to a distant rumbling in the earth. It seemed to reverberate. Dear God! Could she have let the horse lose the direction?

Thoroughly awake, she gazed about. She must have been riding for several hours. She could make out an occasional bush or tree-filled gully.

“We can go faster now,” she told the horse, nudging him with her heels.

The flood of pain from her battered female parts and the head wound almost made her faint, but she bent low to the horse and urged him on.

Darkness gradually lifted. Stars began to vanish. Her ears, her heart, her whole body seemed full of that increasing, menacing thunder of many hooves.

Mists hung heavy above the Kaw. Against them, she could make out the proud march of buildings on Massachusetts Street, the Unitarian and Plymouth Congregational churches. There was no sign of Titus.

Urging her mount to top speed, she shouted as she rode past the scattered houses on the outskirts: “Quantrill! Raiders! Quantrill!”

Tossing her horse's reins over the post at the Eldridge House, she ran inside, alerted the night clerk, and ran to the kitchen to call a warning to the cook, mostly colored help, and an astounded guest descending the stairs.

“Tell everyone!” she pleaded. “Quantrill's coming! Hide or get weapons!” The night clerk was sounding a gong as she sprang to her saddle and shouted till Massachusetts Street echoed: “Quantrill! Quantrill!”

Who had the arsenal keys?

Mayor Collamore would know. She swung her horse toward his house just as two men in guerrilla shirts trotted down the street.

She tried to get out of sight behind the hotel. These must be scouts. They wouldn't want to shoot and alarm the town.

They didn't. Turning the corner, they rushed her, seizing her bridle reins. One clubbed his rifle, which smashed across her head. The world melted in a river of fiery blackness and she fell into it.

Through rising and receding flame-shot mists, she thought she heard Dane's voice, thought he held her in his arms. She tried to touch him, tried to speak, but was again enveloped in darkness.

Next time her eyes opened, she blinked, then stared at a wallpapered ceiling she'd seen before. And she had been in this bed.

Melissa Eden's back room. Only then did Deborah remember Quantrill. Trying to sit up, she lapsed from consciousness, then revived to find Melissa bending over her.

“So you're coming around.” Melissa's yellow hair was carefully coiffed, but her blue gown was smudged with soot, dirt, and blood, and her face was drawn, suddenly aged. “Here, drink some water. There's soup if you can manage it.”

“Quantrill?” Deborah asked. Her voice sounded far away.

Melissa's shrug was weary. “They've burned the town, killed every man they could find, and left with all the plunder they could carry on a pack-horse apiece.”

Bits of char drifted through the open window. The smell of smoke was acrid, and more than buildings burned, that was the odor of flesh—

“Horses,” explained Melissa. “And lots of bodies burned in the stores and houses.” She shuddered. “They tied two wounded men hand and foot and threw them in a fire. A Negro baby suffocated. They killed a father holding his small child and shot men in their wives' arms. They killed Uncle Frank, that crippled ninety-year-old Negro, and several Negro preachers. They killed—”

An explosion shook the room. “Fire getting to another supply of powder in some store,” Melissa said. “That's been going on all morning.”

“How—how many were killed?”

“Dozens. Scores. It'll be days before they find all the bodies. But I think we've got the wounded to shelter.” Her mouth twisted. “The guerrillas didn't leave many of those. They put a dozen shots in plenty of their victims, and the thirty or so who're still living were left for dead. I have four of them here to see to, so if you want that soup—”

“Was Dane here?”

“He carried you in. One of the people you'd warned at the Eldridge House saw you in the street and dragged you into that rank growth of jimson weed north of Winthrop Street. If any raiders saw you, they must have believed you dead. Dane was with an advance squad that left Kansas City as soon as the dispatch arrived saying that Quantrill had been sighted crossing into Kansas. Dane almost rode over you.”

“The army's after Quantrill?”

Again that listless shrug. “As many men as could be gotten together. Captain Coleman at Little Santa Fe got the warning almost four hours before Kansas City did, and he got together all the men he could to follow Quantrill. He and Major Plumb's force from Kansas City—oh, yes!; and Jim Lane, with about fifty farmers and men from around here—are all after Quantrill. Maybe they'll catch him. But it won't bring the dead back to life.” Her voice lifted hysterically. “Why didn't Captain Pike, who saw Quantrill, at least send one of those dispatches to us? If we'd had just an hour, even half an hour! But they came while nearly everyone was asleep and had spread over the whole town before anyone realized what was happening.”

“General Lane—didn't he fight?”

“He hid. And Governor Robinson stayed in his big barn. The guerrillas didn't get close to anything that looked like danger, like the ravine in the middle of town or that big cornfield out west where lots of men hid.”

“Didn't
anyone
fight?”

“Those who did were killed, except for a couple of soldiers home on leave who stood off their attackers.”

Deborah closed her eyes, gripped with horror. But there was no way she could shut her nostrils to the stench, or her ears to occasional screams and a steady, softer ongoing sound of weeping and mourning.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked when, after a time, Melissa returned with a bowl of thin soup.

“Get over that knock on the head,” Melissa advised, feeding her. “You could have a cracked skull and it'll be no help to anyone if you pitch over and hurt yourself.”

When Deborah looked amazed at this solicitude, ungracious as it was, Melissa smiled faintly for the first time. “Dane made me promise to look after you, and I can use the pretty sum he promised quite handily, for though I saved my house by pleading impoverished widowhood, they took my jewelry, cash, clothes, and everything else of value. At least they didn't burn my furniture, which they did at most houses.”

Melissa could wheedle any man who could be wheedled. It was a major part of the way she'd survived. Her smile grew ironic. “I suppose you wonder if I still want Dane. Of course I do. I always will. But I'm a realist. It's you he loves.”

Deborah stared at her one-time rival. “This—is so different from when you nursed me before.”

“Isn't it?” Melissa shrugged. “I hoped Rolf would smuggle you away. That might have given me a chance with Dane. But I've never wished you ill, Deborah. I envied you Dane's love, thought you a prude and prig! But I'd take care of you now even if I weren't being paid.” Pausing in the doorway, she grimaced. “That helps, of course!”

“Is Reverend Cordley safe?”

“Yes. He's helping with the wounded.” Melissa absently tried to rub a bloodstain from her skirt. “They're putting as many of the dead as they can in the Methodist Church, tagging them with names when they can and numbers when they can't, which is often. Most of them are so charred it's hard to guess they were ever even human.”

Deborah tried to sit up but was felled by a sledging headache. “Just keep quiet,” Melissa ordered. “There'll still be plenty to do when you're stronger.”

That afternoon passed for Deborah between nightmare and fitful sleep. When late sunlight gilded the wall, she finally managed to sit up for the first time and grip the edge of the bed till the crashing thunder in her head subsided to a bearable level.

Shakily, she made her way to the window and leaned on the sill. Black smoke shrouded the town. Sooty fragments filled the air. All the houses beyond Melissa's had been burned, and their blackened, uneven walls stood like snagged teeth.

A woman sat in a trampled garden. She held a burned skull in her hands, talked to it, caressed and kissed it. Other women were digging in the cellar of the next house, placing charred bones in a sack.

Deborah slid to her knees, unable to stand. Melissa found her that way, scoldingly hustled her back to bed, and helped her eat a thick, tasty stew.

“Farmers have been bringing in loads of food and any clothes and bedding they can spare,” Melissa said. “A good thing. Most of the food in town was destroyed.”