Daughter of the Sword (58 page)

“Is there any word about Quantrill?”

“He was burning his way south on the Fort Scott road, but when he saw the dust of the pursuing horses, he evidently started moving as fast as he could.” Melissa surveyed Deborah critically. “I don't have an extra dress, but if you'll take off those awful clothes, I'll get the worst stains out so you can have them tomorrow.”

With Melissa's neutral, efficient aid, Deborah took off the dirty garments and washed herself with a small pan of water Melissa fetched.

Strange, Rolf's odor was still on her, though he'd never enter another woman. She rid herself of his smell and then, holding the thought of Dane, trying to remember the feel of him carrying her, she slept heavily till morning.

Next day the town echoed to the sound of hammering. The carpenters who hadn't been killed were making plain boxes from what lumber was left and nails salvaged from the ruins of hardware stores. There weren't enough of these boxes to go around. Fifty-three men were buried in one long trench in the burial ground west of town where Deborah's family was, and others were buried in private yards, to be moved later.

Deborah moved about in the oppressive heat, taking care of children whose mothers were distraught, or helping people search in ruins and cellars, the ravine and cornfield, for their dead.

Only three buildings still stood on Massachusetts Street. The proudly rebuilt Eldridge House was only ragged, blackened walls. Deep in some of the cellars, coals still gleamed. Over a hundred houses and buildings had been destroyed and many more were partially burned.

“I kept putting out the fires they'd start,” one woman told Deborah as they searched the ravine for her husband's body. “I'd get the blaze stopped and then another bunch would ride up and set fires again. They burned all my furniture, but the house is mostly sound.” Her voice broke. “Enos was real pleased we'd got it finished before winter. Oh, God, why can't we find him? Can't I even know what happened to him, have something left to bury?”

They didn't find Enos. There were several other missing ones who were never located, but as the dead were found and named, or numbered when identification was impossible, Reverend Cordley and the other ministers held burial service after service.

Loads of food, clothing, and other supplies flowed in from Leavenworth, Topeka, Wyandotte, and the farms. Elder Goerz and Dietrich brought wagons of food and bedding, and Tiberius came twice with everything from bread to tools.

He urged Deborah to come home, but she told him she had to stay till the worst part of the burying was over. He was to tell Judith and Sara that she was all right and would get back to the smithy as soon as she could. The second time he came, he brought Chica. Deborah put her face against the mare and caressed her for a long time.

Deborah didn't know if Titus had reached Lawrence, escaped, been killed, or what. There had been no word of Quantrill, either, that Sunday when survivors gathered in the Congregational Church. After the service, Deborah intended to take Chica and look for Titus and the wagon Rolf's men had captured from her. The food had probably been wasted, but she might find the twins' books.

The church filled silently with women and children, a few men. Most were dressed in whatever they'd hastily put on the morning of the raid. The women covered their heads with sun bonnets, shawls, or handkerchiefs. Deborah wore a discarded dress of Melissa's that had been found in the ragbag.

Though all the slain were not yet found, the raid had made widows of eighty women and had left two hundred fifty children fatherless. Some of the thirty wounded would almost certainly die of their injuries, and the death count was already one hundred forty, including seventeen unarmed recruits for the Fourteenth Regiment.

Lawrence's dead were not Redlegs or jayhawkers. Ironically, the two men most venomously hated by the guerrillas, Jim Lane and Governor Robinson, were both in town, but they escaped because the guerrillas were afraid to charge any place that looked as if it might conceal an ambush.

Reverend Cordley and Reverend G. C. Morse of Emporia conducted the service. Morse was the brother-in-law of young, amiable Judge Carpenter, married less than a year, who'd been shot repeatedly by the raiders and finally murdered by a shot fired into him as his wife tried to shield him with her body.

The psalm read was the seventy-ninth. In Deborah's ears, the voice was that of her father:
“Oh, God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance. They have laid Jerusalem in heaps. The dead bodies of Thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, and the flesh of Thy saints unto the beasts of the earth. Their blood have they shed like water round about Jesusalem, and there was none to bury them.”

There was no sermon, only the psalm and a prayer. Everyone was weeping. Deborah felt, rather than saw, a tall presence standing next to her. As the prayer ended, she turned to look up at Dane.

He took her hands and led her out.

Quantrill had gotten away. Federals, pursuing him in several groups, and Lane's militia, had harried him to the border. He set up a rear guard to cover his retreat, avoided an ambush on Ottawa Creek, and, once into Missouri, his force splintered and made into the brush by twos and threes and dozens.

“Some of our horses died under us,” Dane muttered, burying his face in her hands. “They'd been pushed sixty-five miles without a rest. And men fell from sunstroke. But I still can't believe that devil got away!”

Charlie Slaughter hadn't. She had to tell Dane he need no longer dread meeting his brother and that her own need for justice was fulfilled, but first she let Dane tell her how, when the chase after Quantrill had to be abandoned, he'd received permission to “attend to urgent personal matters” before reporting back to Kansas City.

“And the most urgent is making you my wife,” he said, the severity of his haggard face relaxing. “Deborah, let's forget what's happened and what may happen! Let's think about now!”

That was when she told him how Rolf had died, hating to watch his face. Dane was quiet for a long tme. “Poor Sir Harry!” he said at last. “He keeps wondering where Rolf is. I don't think I'll tell him Rolf's dead till you and I can go over and be there to comfort him.”

“There—there's more,” Deborah said, “more you have to know before you can decide if you'll marry me.”

She told him of the six men, about Esther and Billy. When she finished, he took her in his arms and held her while she wept for all the deaths, and all the years, the struggle and the pain.

“Oh, my love,” he murmured. “Oh, my love! That you've had to bear all this! I loved you when you were a girl playing with Bowies, but it was nothing compared to the way I love you now. Please, will you marry me?”

She couldn't speak, but she nodded and pressed his strong fingers. He swept her back into the church. As soon as Reverend Cordley was free, Dane shook his hand and said, “Sir, after this sad work, can you perform a wedding?”

A smile lit the minister's worn face. “Nothing would make me happier.”

So they were married, there, then, in the church where Deborah's family had worshipped, amid the ruins of Lawrence.

Dane hired a fresh horse for himself and they searched for Titus that afternoon. They found his decomposing body knifed to death in a field north of the Fort Scott road. Quantrill's scouts must have caught him.

His family and the widow of the man killed by Rolf's squad had hidden out while Quantrill passed, pausing long enough to set fire to the cabins in a rage over his murdered advance patrol.

He'd been in a hurry, though, and the women had been able to beat out the flames before much damage was done. They had food in the cellar, had rounded up their pigs, the raiders' and Deborah's horses.

Dane had wrapped Titus in a blanket and helped the family bury him. His wife was too grief-stricken to think about the future, but his indomitable old grandmother, she of the cleaver, clutched Deborah's arm and whispered, “Send us a couple o' likely men. We have food for winter, but crops got to go in.”

Deborah promised.

Her wagon had been found—the books and gumdrops and Tiberius's medicine were Still wedged under the seat—so she and Dane drove it back to Lawrence, with the rented horse and Chica tethered behind.

In Lawrence, already the talk was of rebuilding. Large sums had been sent from St. Louis and other sympathetic communities.

“We're going to build back every house, every store,” said Mr. Ridenour, the grocer, pausing to greet Deborah and Dane. The wheelbarrow he was pushing from his cellar still had embers glowing in the ashes, and his partner, Baker, had been so badly shot in the raid that it was doubtful that he'd live. “We'll make our town better than it ever was. When Quantrill's dead in some ditch, our churches will be full and our streets busy.”

The raiders hadn't been able to demolish or open the banking Simpson brothers' safe, and with what was in it, they had reopened their bank in a flung-together wooden structure within their burned walls. Other businessmen were stocking temporary locations.

Meanwhile, those with roofs shared with the homeless. Those with extra clothes or food gave to those with none. Grief and devastation had brought together people who'd scarcely known each other before.

Restoring and holding the town had become almost a religious obligation. And Dane was able to assure the people that a permanent garrison would be stationed at Lawrence for the rest of the war. He and Johnny had already asked for and received permission to be assigned there.

As Dane and Deborah drove out of town for the smithy, she asked him to stop by her family's graves, now surrounded by the new covered trench and many separate mounds.

“I hope they can know,” she said, slipping her hand into his. “Dane, when the war's over, do you want to live in England?”

He shook his head. “I've fought for this country. It's mine now. I want to know and love it in peace, Deborah, just as I want to have you. But when the war's over, won't you come to meet my father and stay with him a while?”

“Oh, gladly! Perhaps sometimes he'll visit us, see his grandchildren!”

Dane kissed her. They left the graves and drove across the prairie to where her friends waited, where the twins could have their birthday, and where new babies would be born.

“Dane,” she said softly, “I hope we'll have twins, too!”

He maneuvered the team into a ravine, then stopped them under some oak trees. Springing down, he gathered her in his arms. “Well, Mrs. Hunter,” he said huskily, “shall we start on that right now?”

Her lips gave him his answer.

Epilogue

By winter, Lawrence resembled a town again. Most homeowners and businessmen built larger and better structures to replace the burned ones, and Lawrence flourishes today, a shady, small city of many historic sites and homes. The state university looks down on the streets where Quantrill's raiders spread terror that August day in 1863.

Quantrill had never worked well with his lieutenants, and his power steadily declined after the Lawrence raid. He was shot May 10, 1865, in a skirmish with Federals in Kentucky and died of his wounds. Some of his gang, notably Frank and Jesse James and Cole Younger, continued as outlaws after the Civil War. Jim Lane, surprisingly, was a moderate on Reconstruction. His influence faded and he shot himself in the head in July, 1866, dying ten days later.

Great suffering came to the people of Missouri border counties through Ewing's Order Number 11, issued two days after the raid on Lawrence. All rural people, whether Union or Confederate sympathizers, had to leave their, homes within fifteen days. “Loyal” residents could move to any other Missouri district or to Kansas, except for the eastern border. They would also be credited for hay and grain confiscated by the military, but the crops of Confederate sympathizers were seized or destroyed.

The motive behind this extreme measure was to erode the guerrillas' supply base and destroy their places of refuge and information. Order Number 11 accomplished this to some degree, but the suffering of the dispossessed noncombatants probably had much to do with the lawlessness that characterized that region for years after the war.

Chronology