Authors: Ann Rinaldi
"Put it down," Bill said.
But I did not move. Next thing I knew, I saw him go for his Navy Colt revolver at his hip and in a flash, fire it. Not at me, but at the milk pail on the floor. It made
a terrible sound, echoing off the rafters, and there was a rustling of wings from some frightened barn swallows. In the next moment, milk was gushing onto the floor.
I cussed at him then, all my best cusswords, which I never dared say in front of Seth or Martha. And finished off with "You snake-loving polecat!"
He shook his head. "Such nasty language from a sweet little girl like you. Your brother ought to do something about your mouth. Now put the gun down or the next thing I shoot is the cow. I heard what you bartered for her, heard what you gave away. There ain't no secrets around here. Well?"
I set the gun back down on the floor, trembling with rage now.
"I know Mr. Addison, too, remember. And he's mindful of who you and Seth really are, and who my sister is, too. How long do you think it'll be before he tells his friends, the Yankees?"
"He's not a snake in the grass like you."
"Enough! Come along to the house and bring us to Martha. Now." He still had the Navy revolver pointed at me. I went.
Martha was just coming into the dining room to breakfast. She wore a blue silk robe Seth had given her,
though he didn't say from where he had gotten it. Personally, though it is none of my affair, I think he got it from one of the houses in the Lawrence raid. That he'd stuffed it in his saddlebags along with some other loot, like a velvet dress of the right size for me. I've never worn the dress. I think I will, for Christmas.
"Hello, Martha."
He stood in the dining room doorway and she looked up, aghast. Her hand went to her throat and she wasn't sure whether to be happy or to throw a dish at him. But it was the sight of Mary that opened her heart. She got up, went to her sister, and they hugged and cried for a minute.
She didn't hug Bill.
He looked at her. "In case you're wondering, they buried Jenny at the Leavenworth graveyard with the other girls who didn't make it," he said. "Right next to Fanny."
"Someday I must go there," Martha told him. Then she looked at me, standing, white-faced and frightened. "Bill, you shouldn't be here. In this house. We know what you did to Juliet. It isn't right, and if Seth were to come now he'd kill you."
"I'm not stayin', sister dear. I came to say good-bye.
Me and Mary are goin' to Texas for a while. Till all this dies down. I came to ask if you want to come with us."
"Leave Seth?" You might as well have asked Martha if she wanted to have tea with President Lincoln. "Are you all crazy, Bill? Or only part?"
He laughed sheepishly. "When's the kid due?"
"Spring," she said.
Mary said nothing. She didn't seem to be present in full, actually, behind those eyes. I think she was in pain. Why was Bill dragging her around like this?
Thinking the same thing, Martha offered, "You can leave Mary if you want. Seth's a good man. He'd agree to it."
"You want to stay, Mary?" he asked her.
"I saw two bear cubs," she told him. "Outside. Romping."
He put his arm around her shoulder. "C'mon now, don't start. It's time for your medicine, anyway."
"They want to attack me. I'm afraid, Bill."
He fished a small bottle out of his pocket. "Here," he said to me, "take this into the kitchen and have Maxine give her a whole teaspoonful." It was an order. I looked at Martha. She nodded yes, so I took Mary by the arm and we went to the kitchen.
There Maxine fussed over her, commented on the head bandage, which was larger than mine had ever been, on the wrapped-up arm in a sling, and the way she limped.
"You should be in bed, sweetie," she told her.
"I remember you," Mary said, wondering how she could have.
"Course you do, darling." In two minutes Maxine knew she wasn't right in the head and made her a cup of tea. "You want some breakfast?" She had bacon frying in the pan in the hearth, coffee bubbling, and was ready to start cracking eggs over the skillet.
"No thank you," Mary said politely. "We have to go soon. Before either the bears or the Yankees get us."
Martha and Bill came into the kitchen. He wrapped Mary in a cloak and put a scarf around her head. Martha went about putting some bread and meat slices and cheese in a small sack for them.
He kissed Martha on the forehead and turned to go. I saw her shudder after that kiss. I saw her hug Mary. Then they went out.
"He shot a hole in the milk pail and it's all lost," I told Maxine and Martha.
"The devil doan always wear his green ears and tail" was Maxine's reply.
Martha just shook her head. "There's another reason you shouldn't be going out to that barn alone," she said. "Well, I expect an answer to my letter to Seth today. Come, let's have breakfast."
Just as she got those words out of her mouth came the sound of two gunshots, one hard after the other. I jumped. Martha put her hand over her heart and we ran to the dining room windows just as Bill and Mary rode by. Bill saw us and raised his hat in salute with one hand while putting his revolver back in the holster with the other.
"What was he shooting at?" Martha asked.
But I knew. Your heart knows such things. And I ran to the front hall and out of the house into the cold to peer into the patch of woods across the path, where the bears liked to play of a morning.
There they lay. Dead. Blood running down their beautiful winter coats.
"Noooo," I screamed. And then I went into a fit of coughing and crying. Martha came over to me, and she, who loved those bear cubs so much, held me close and told me that now they were running around in heaven. Where it wasn't cold and where they could find their mother.
I cried some more. "Dear God," she asked Maxine, who'd just come out the door, "what would Seth do?"
"I 'spect his bein' here would be enuf," Maxine answered her. "Leave her be, Martha, leave her cry it out. Come on in. Remember your own baby. She'll come in when she's ready. She's a big girl now. She'll come in when she's ready."
Somebody put a cloak over me, and I lay there on the cold ground.
"W
HAT ARE
you doing there on the cold ground, coughing your guts up?" the voice asked.
I must have dozed off. I recollect Martha begging me to come inside and me being sassy to her, then someone throwing a blanket over me. All I heard now was the far-flung call of birds going about their morning business. I raised my head. It was Sue Mundy, dressed as Sue Mundy. She was scowling down at me. I closed my eyes again.
"The bears are dead," I managed to say in a voice chilled with cold. "Bill Anderson was here and he shot them."
"When?"
"I don't know. Earlier this morning."
"Is that a reason to lie on the ground and sacrifice yourself to the gods for pneumonia?"
"I don't care about pneumonia. For all I know I've got it already." I coughed deeply. "Just go away and leave me be."
"You wouldn't talk that way if your brother were here."
"Well, he isn't, is he? He's out gallivanting someplace with stupid Quantrill and his men." I coughed again. My head hurt. I squinted my eyes in the brightness of the day. Who
was
that man a short distance from us, down the drive? He wasn't one of Quantrill's men. He wasn't dressed like it. "What'd you do?" I asked. "Bring home an outrider?"
"And I thought, when I kissed you way back when, it'd help you grow up. Well, it didn't, did it? Do you know what your trouble is, Juliet Bradshaw? Your brother never laid a hand on you, that's your trouble. He's too darned nice a guy. Go on, get in the house. I'll be along in a minute."
"I'm not going." I fell back on the ground and covered myself with the blanket.
Just then I felt a shadow fall over me, blocking the bright sun, darkening my world more than the blanket could. And in the next instant I was lifted off the ground, and a hand pulled the blanket from my face.
Oh, I wanted the blanket.
Give it back to me.
The familiar face with a day's worth of beard grazed mine in a kiss. "Hello, Juliet."
"Hello, Seth."
"Stupid Quantrill, hey? Shall I tell him you said that? Or would you rather tell him yourself?"
I knew the smell of him, the strong soap he used mixed with whiskey and horse and tobacco. I didn't open my eyes right off because I wanted to throw up, I was so disgusted with myself.
"Come on, Juliet." He was walking with me to the porch. "Own up."
I hid my face in his shirtfront.
"I thought you liked Sue Mundy." In the house he paused in the foyer.
"I do." My answer was mumbled.
"You don't treat her that way. And the same goes for me."
"Oh, Seth, I'm sorry. It's just that things are so mumblefuddled around here."
"Mumblefuddled, hey?"
"Yes." I opened my eyes to look into his. He was not angry. He was amused. "And now the two bears are dead. Dead, Seth. That damned Bill Anderson shot them for no reason at all."
"Don't cuss. I don't like you cussing." Serious. Don't fool around with serious.
"All right," I said meekly. I am an expert at meekness when his mood calls for it. He set me down. Martha and Maxine almost leaped on him, and there were all sorts of greetings. In the next moment Martha and Seth went into a sunny corner of the dining room and kissed and hugged in front of the lace curtains.
When they finished she was flushed. I turned away and started coughing. Seth frowned. "That doesn't sound so good. Get my saddlebag, please, Maxine."
She fetched it and he fished around inside and drew out a small bottle. "Quantrill sent this for you. It'll knock your cough into next week. You gotta eat first, though."
"Everybody sit down," Maxine ordered. "And eat."
We sat at the table and everybody talked at once. I ate an egg, some toast, and tea. Then I kissed Martha and, without prompting, told her I was sorry for giving her a difficult time outside before.
"Oh, sweetheart," she said, "you know we all love you. Now go to sleep for a while. Seth said he's going to make little coffins for the bears."
Seth nodded and I kissed him. He said nothing. He made me take Quantrill's concoction right there at the table, a teaspoonful of cherry-tasting opiate syrup. Then I left the room with Maxine to go to bed.
"I know now how you manage her without raising a hand," I heard Sue Mundy say.
"How's that?" Seth asked.
"To the naked eye it seems as if you spoil her," Sue told him, "but when you really study on it, you've got her wrapped around your finger, Seth. But the cord isn't rope, it's silver."
"It's love," Martha said, "the strongest rope there is."
I looked back. Seth was holding his coffee cup and blushing.
When I awoke it was dark outside, night. From below I heard voices, ordinary family voices, and I smelled food. It must be suppertime. I quietly ventured downstairs.
T
HE NEXT
morning we buried the bears. Seth had made two little coffins and dug a hole in the hard, unforgiving winter ground in a pretty little clearing where the bears had liked to play. Martha said she supposed it was all right if we said a prayer from the Bible over them. I couldn't believe my family was doing all this for me, for it was for me, I know, to heal my spirit.
My coughing had subsided. Whatever was in that potion from Quantrill had worked. "He gives it out to his men in the winter," Seth told us. "And by the way, Martha, I'd like to invite him for Christmas dinner."
Seth was to stay all through December and January. Quantrill and his men had made their winter camp at Mineral Creek in Texas, and he agreed to Seth coming home because his wife was expecting a child. And because a lot of his men were going home to Missouri for the winter.
Seth told us that many of Quantrill's Raiders were breaking away. "Too much dissipation and hooliganism," he said. "Too much time on their hands and whiskey to fill in the hours. There's been a breakdown in discipline. The old-timers, like myself, can't abide it."
He told us some went back to bushwhacking on their own. Some joined the regular Confederate army.
"And you?" I asked.
"Haven't answered that question myself yet," he told me.
After burying the bears, Seth attacked what he called the "traveler's room," the small room at the west end of the kitchen. He'd once explained to me that he and Pa had built it in a style after Patrick Henry's traveler's room, with brick floors covered with bear rugs, a buffet where food could be laid out, and commodious chairs next to a hearth.
"Pa's intention wasn't mine," Seth explained to me.
He was being helped by Echo. They were moving a double bed into the room. "His was for travelers. Mine is for emergencies."
"Are you going to sleep in here?" I asked.
"From here I can make a quick getaway if that Yankee comes 'round in the middle of the night," he explained. "My horse will be at the ready just outside the door."
"You're not sleeping in here without me," Martha declared. She had an armful of clothing. "Let's get the fire started, Echo. Warm the place up."
"The mattress isn't as good as the one on our bed," Seth reminded her.
"Then we'll take the one from our bed," she said simply. She smiled at him. He smiled back, and I saw how much they loved each other, how much it meant to them just to be together.
For Christmas, Seth set himself the task of making a cradle, thankful to Pa for forcing him to learn woodworking under the tutelage of Harvey, Pa's woodworker, who was still with us. We gathered holly in from the woods, and Seth cut a small tree. Martha and I decorated it with whatever we could find, including sugar cookies I made and popcorn.
I sewed him a new Quantrill Raider shirt for Christmas, though it was not to be a surprise. There was so much red embroidery on it that I couldn't stay alone in my room that long. Martha fashioned him a new pair of trousers. Seth gave her a new blouse and a skirt to wear over a hoop. He gave me a green and black plaid dress with the darlingest white collar. When we kissed him we didn't ask where he'd gone shopping. We knew he didn't want to be asked. And he'd say it was payment for Pa's house, burned to the ground. And he'd be right.