The Widow's War (17 page)

To avoid scandal she has told everyone William is her half-brother, so why are they being so reticent? Is it because they don’t know anything, or do they pity her? Has William done what he told his friend Charles Howard he was going to do—something illegal and dangerous that he could be hanged for? That seems ridiculous, but if he hasn’t, then why this conspiracy of silence? Maybe there is no conspiracy. Maybe she’s just imagining people know more about William than they’re willing to say.

For a moment she allows herself to picture how shocked they’ll be when they see her kissing this “brother” of hers. That’s what she will do when she finds him: kiss him senseless. And she will find him. It’s simply a matter of persistence.

Rolling up the map, she blows out the candle, and puts her head down on the table. She should go back to her stateroom and sleep in a real bed, but if she tries to get out of the ladies’ lounge, she will probably tread on someone’s hand or foot, or worse yet, face, and she is too tired to deal with the yelling and confusion.

Closing her eyes, she forces herself to imagine sheep jumping over a fence. When that fails, she dismisses the sheep and begins to silently recite the Latin names of orchids. Gradually, the courage and stubbornness that have carried her through the day dissolve, and she finds herself thinking about the unthinkable.

If I can’t find William, I will . . . what in God’s name will I do?
For a long time she is neither asleep nor awake, but trapped between the two. Then she must doze off because she sees tall grasses swaying in the wind and hears a voice that she recognizes as her own.

She dreams of driving a wooden claim stake into the ground. As she does this, her anxiety dissolves, and she feels determined and self-sufficient, as if her life will turn out well no matter what happens. Then gradually the vision of the tall grasses fades. She opens her eyes and again feels loneliness and longing.

What will I do if I can’t find William? How will I bear it?
Reaching out in the darkness, she touches the rolled-up map, and begins to cry quietly so as not to awaken women who are on their way to join their husbands, and children whose fathers are waiting for them in Westport.

L
imestone bluffs, gold and gray in the early morning light; wooded banks without a sign of human habitation; bottomlands filled with reeds that shine as they sway in the wind; mudflats, sandbars, unpredictable currents, the sound of the hull scraping something, the laboring of the engine. Smoke from the stacks drifting downriver like long gray scarves; more bluffs, more woods, more bottomlands, another steamer stuck fast in the mud.

Soldiers stand on the deck of the beached ship and wave to the
Magnolia Queen
as it steams by, and Carrie and her fellow passengers wave back. She thinks of the times she has gone up the Amazon, how different this river looks, how much broader the sky is, how much bluer; how the water is a clean green instead of a muddy brown. Below the hull, large fish flit like dark shadows over the white skeletons of sunken trees. Instead of tropical frogs, locusts sing in the underbrush; instead of parrots and macaws, hawks and eagles soar overhead.

Yet this trip up the Missouri to Westport is as hot as anything she ever experienced in the tropics. The wind has died down; not a leaf moves. The air is as wet and heavy as a boiled sheet. Gasping and fanning themselves, the other passengers seek shade, but it is even hotter inside than on deck, so Carrie holds her ground as the land speculators retreat to the main salon and order iced wine, and a plump, pretty woman from Worcester faints and has to be carried to the ladies’ lounge, unlaced, and revived with smelling salts.

I should be fainting, too.
Carrie thinks.
After all, I’m with child.
Fortunately, all the nausea of the first few weeks has disappeared, and after days of being fed nothing but salt pork and biscuits, her fantasies at the moment are equally divided between ice, William, and ripe mangos.

Suddenly the western sky turns black. Clouds boil up out of nowhere, and Carrie hears the rushing of wind. On shore, trees and bushes suddenly show the silver undersides of their leaves. Branches crack off and fly through the air. The wind hits the
Magnolia Queen
, and everything goes rocking. Wine bottles fly off tables, cargo slides across the deck; the sky opens up. Rain falls in torrents, blowing sideways, soaking everyone. In the Amazon, it would have been a warm rain, but here it is cold as ice. As lightning races across the sky in long jagged lines, the thunder is deafening.

Carrie hangs onto the rail, continues to stand her ground, and waits it out. Within seconds she is soaked to the skin and her skirts are plastered to her legs. Then as suddenly as it began, the rain stops, the sun comes out, and except for a wet deck, wet passengers, and soaked cargo, it’s as if nothing has happened.

“That weren’t so bad,” the mountain man in buckskins says. He takes off his cap and beats the water off it. “You ever seen a twister?”

“No,” Carrie says. “What’s a twister?”

He smiles at her, exposing three missing teeth and two black ones. “Whirlwind.” He makes a spiraling motion with his index finger. “Whoosh. And there goes a buffalo, miss. Up in the air to be dropped like a rock.”

“I’ve never seen a buffalo.”

He shakes his head in amazement and spits a mouthful of tobacco juice over the rail. “Welcome to the prairie, miss. You look like you got some grit, but most of them other dudes look like they’re runnin’ blind toward a cliff with a band of Sioux warriors shooting arrows into their butts.” His face suddenly turns bright red. “Excuse me, miss. I been away from cities too long. I need to recollect to temper my language in front of ladies.”

Reassuring him that she’s not offended, Carrie excuses herself and goes back to her stateroom to change into dry clothing.
I may die in Kansas from fever, disease, weather, starvation, gunshot wounds, or—if I’m lucky—old age
, she thinks,
but apparently I’m not likely to die of boredom.

 

 

 

 

 

T
hree hours later they reach Westport. The town sits on a high clay bluff above the Kansas Landing. Thanks to the rain, the mud is ankle-deep, so while the Southern ladies strap small metal rings onto the bottoms of their shoes, Carrie and the New Englanders pull on sturdy rubber boots and make their way to an oxcart, which takes them up to the city.

She stays at the Gilliss House, a hotel recently purchased by the Emigrant Aid Company. Above the front desk is a banner that proclaims: KANSAS MUST BE FREE! and another, smaller sign that warns that anyone who draws a gun on the premises will be “Summarily Evicted and Possibly Shot Dead.”

“Vigilante groups,” the desk clerk says, “that’s what we fear, miss. We’ve had threats.”

“What sort of threats?.”

“This is Missouri, miss. Slavery is legal here. You walk out on the street around the time the saloons are filling up—which I wouldn’t advise—and proclaim yourself an abolitionist, and well, I imagine a lady would still be safe, but a man might just up and disappear.”

“Disappear?”

“Or worse,” the desk clerk says cheerfully as he checks her into a room with a view of the river. “That will be one dollar and fifty cents, unless you are staying for a week, in which case we have a special rate of ten dollars, all meals included.

“By the way, if you do decide to step outside the hotel after you unpack your trunk, you will see notices offering a reward of two hundred dollars to anyone who will deliver Eli Thayer up to the pro-slavers. Reportedly, the original wording of the posters was ‘de liver up Eli Thayer, founder of the Emigrant Aid Company, dead or alive,’ but the moderates appear to have prevailed, for which we can all be thankful. Since Mr. Thayer remains in Massachusetts, he is in no great danger, but the existence of such posters is one of the reasons I keep a loaded shotgun behind the front desk.”

“What time do the saloons start filling up?”

“Around six.”

“Then they’re filling up right now?”

“Yes, miss. Excuse me for asking, but you aren’t thinking of going into any of them and preaching temperance, are you? We had a very unfortunate incident with an elderly lady a few weeks ago. She went into the Black Dog and tried to break some whiskey bottles with her umbrella and a drunken bushwhacker shot at her. Fortunately, he missed.”

Reassuring the desk clerk that she will not attempt to save bushwhackers from the evils of alcohol, Carrie pays for one night and accepts the key to her room.

T
here are six saloons within a hundred and fifty yards of the Gilliss House. The nearest is the Black Dog. Hoping she’ll have better luck than the elderly lady who preceded her, Carrie pushes aside the swinging doors and enters.

Her first impression is of a large, rectangular room so blued with cigar smoke she can hardly see across it. Men stand at an elaborately carved mahogany bar resting their feet on a brass rail and drinking beer from tin mugs and whiskey from small glasses. Behind the bar is a shelf of bottles and a large oil painting of a plump, naked woman that leaves nothing to the imagination. The woman is smiling and beckoning to a platter of ham sandwiches, some jars of pickled eggs, and a sign that says: FREE LUNCH.

As her eyes adjust to the darkness, Carrie sees other men sitting at the back of the saloon at small tables playing card games. Although some wear suits that would not attract notice in any eastern city, most are decked out in high boots, flannel shirts, and broad-brimmed hats. Many wear their hair long and their beards wild, and there is a fierce air about them, as if they would as soon fight as talk. The fact that they are, to a man, armed increases this impression. Even on the upper Amazon, where civilization is only a distant rumor and the law is enforced by gun thugs, Carrie has never seen so many revolvers and knives in one place.

One of the men at the bar looks up and catches sight of her. “Boys!” he yells. “We got a visitor.”

She is prepared for catcalls, taunts, and obscenities, but what she gets instead is a sudden, terrifying silence as every face in the saloon turns toward her.

“What do you want?” the bartender says.

“I’m looking for William Saylor.”

“Get out, lady,” he snarls. “
Now
!”

There’s a kind of seething in the saloon, violent and nasty as a bag of snakes. A man at one of the back tables stands up and his companions pull him down again. Deciding she’s not going to find out anything about William here, Carrie turns and leaves. Behind her, she distinctly hears someone say the words “abolitionist bitch.”

Her experience at the Black Dog turns out to be a preview of what’s in store for her. The Mule Skinner is a hastily thrown up tent where men sit on wooden packing crates. Before Carrie can enter, two saloon girls stop her.

“You don’t want to go in there, miss,” the youngest says. She cannot be much older than sixteen, and the hem of her pretty blue silk dress is stained with mud.

“There’s twenty men in this town to every woman,” her companion warns. “And they’re all hungry.”

“Have either of you seen or heard of a man named William Saylor? He’s a little under six feet tall, lanky, very dark eyes, brown hair. He has a small scar just above his right eyebrow.”

“Handsome, is he?”

“Very.”

“Your sweetheart?”

“You might call him that.”

“I wish I’d met him, but no such luck.”

“Well maybe someone in the Mule Skinner will remember seeing him.” Carrie starts for the tent, but the girls step in front of her.

“You can’t go in there, miss.”

“Why not?”

“Because, you got abolitionist written all over you, and that’s a bushwhacker saloon if there ever was one. Me and Annie here know what places is dangerous and what ain’t.”

Carrie tries to persuade them to let her pass, but they just keep repeating that if she steps inside the Mule Skinner, she isn’t going to come out in one piece.

Giving up, she moves on. The Mud Flat is a billiards parlor, the Holy Moses a dance hall, the River Rat an icehouse with a sign that promises cold beer. Instead of being greeted with silence, Carrie is taunted, propositioned, and pawed at. Since no decent woman ever walks into a saloon, men take her presence as an invitation. They offer her money, grab at her skirts, pull her into drunken embraces, and assail her with whiskey-flavored kisses.

Carrie wiggles out of their grip, raises her voice, asks if anyone has seen William. No one has, or if they have, they aren’t talking.

The last saloon she enters is called the Bon Ton. Despite the French name, it’s like all the rest: carved wooden bar, gilt-framed mirrors, floor slick with tobacco juice, advertisements on the walls for Bristol’s Sarsaparilla and German beers. Perhaps the beer is flat or the whiskey is laced with tea, because the men here don’t seem quite as drunk, and when Carrie walks up to the bar, none of them grab for her or offer to buy her a drink. They just stand there, drinking and staring at her.

“Good evening,” she says to the bartender. “I’m looking for a man named William Saylor.”

The bartender looks her up and down and grins. “Ain’t we all,” he says.

Carrie doesn’t know what to make of this. “William’s about six feet tall,” she continues. “Dark eyes, brown hair, a small scar above—”

“Above his right eyebrow? Yep, that’s the one.” The bartender reaches behind the bar, brings out a rolled up piece of paper, and hands it to Carrie. When she unrolls it, she finds herself looking at a poster.