Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

They were more concerned, it seemed, with organizing themselves into a regular troop of soldiers than with riding straight on to defend Lawrence from the invaders. John explained to Father that they had lately received contradictory reports from Lawrence and wished to wait for further orders before leaving this part of the territory undefended against the numerous bands of Buford’s Ruffians who had been roaming the region for weeks, threatening to shoot, hang, and burn Free-Staters. Their first responsibility, he said, was to protect the Osawatomie section of the territory, not Lawrence.

This infuriated Father. He had moved to the wagon, where, to address the group, he stood up on the seat, with Oliver at the reins beside him and the rest of us on horseback. Earlier, back at the camp, we had loaded the wagon with the usual sheaf of pikes and sharpened broadswords, and we were armed in addition with our Sharps rifles and our revolvers. Though we were but six men, or five men and a boy, we had the weaponry of a dozen. “The Missourians are all at Lawrence, burning it down!” the Old Man shouted at John and the others. “It’s only you boys and your women and children who are left here!”

“We don’t know that,” John coolly answered.

“Well, then, you’re welcome to stay put until you do!” the Old Man snapped, and he leapt to the ground and took the bridle of Reliance from me and signaled for us to depart. At once, Oliver drew the wagon back onto the muddy road, and we headed at a gallop northward across the darkening plain towards Lawrence.

I remember two more meetings out on the road that night, before we went to Pottawatomie and did the terrible things there. The first was a rider who had been sent down to Osawatomie from Lawrence by the Free-State authorities, Colonel Lane and Mr. Robinson. He was a screw-faced boy of sixteen or seventeen, his horse all lathered from the long ride, and he at first mistook us for the advance contingent of the Osawatomie Rifles and thought that Father was John himself, Lieutenant Brown.

“No, I am Captain Brown;’ Father said to the lad. “His superior officer and his father. What news have you?”

The Osawatomie Rifles, the boy said, were instructed by Colonel Lane to return to their homes and not to come on to Lawrence.

“And why is that?”

“Because it’s all over, sir. No need to come in now, Cap’n Brown. And they ain’t got any food, except barely enough for the folks as is already there. President Pierce’s federal troops are running the entire town,” he said. “They come in and parleyed awhile with the Missourians and sent ’em back peaceful.” The Free-State leaders, he explained, had decided not to oppose Colonel Buford and his four hundred Border Ruffians when they first appeared at the edge of town, and the Southerners had then proceeded to ride into the town and sack it. They had broken up all the printing presses and had gotten drunk on as much whiskey as they could find and had burned several stores and even shot the Free-State Hotel full of holes with a cannon. “But they didn’t kill nobody, Cap’n Brown. They just did whatever they wanted, and all the folks stood in the street and watched ’em like it was a circus, and then the Federals come down from Leavenworth and got ‘em to agree to head back to Atchison.”

The boy smiled, as if he had brought glad tidings, but his news made Father crazy, and when the Old Man drew out his revolver and started waving it around, I thought he might shoot the boy. Instead, he leapt down from his horse and seized the lad by his collar and dragged him off the road a short ways into the high grasses, where he shouted into his face that he would put a bullet in the boy’s head here and now if he was not who he said he was and if what he had told us was a lie. “Because it sounds like a perfect lie!” he declared. “Designed to hold us out of the battle!”

The boy crumpled to his knees and began to cry, which seemed to soften the Old Man, or at least to convince him that the boy was not lying, for he holstered his gun and lifted the lad to his feet, brushed the mud from his trousers, and brought him back to us. Then he instructed him to ride on to where John and the Rifles were camped and give them his unfortunate news, which he was sure they, at least, would welcome. Glad to be released, the boy mounted his horse and left us at once.

We ourselves did not know what to do then. Go on to occupied Lawrence, or ride back to our camp on the Marais des Cygnes, southeast of Osawatomie? Neither route took us where we had hoped to go, which was straight into the noise and smoke of battle. Ride back and pitch our tent with John and his Rifles and our pacificist brother, Jason? That seemed somehow shameful, embarrassing, at the least, although none of us said it outright. Our blood was all heated up; we could feel it coursing down our arms to our hands and pounding in our necks and ears. Even Oliver, I realized, as I looked up at him on the wagon box, was caught up in it: his hands were locked in white-knuckled fists, his boyish jaw was clenched tight as a vise; and Henry and my brothers Salmon and Fred, they, too, were poised to ride straight into battle.

Father stood by the wagon alone and breathed heavily in and out, as if re-gathering his strength, like an ox after a long pull. Finally, I said to him, “I’m for riding into Lawrence and finding Colonel Lane and the others who are responsible for this betrayal. Then we should take them out and execute them for it. Put an end to this constant accommodation.” I meant it and, if Father had agreed, would have done it. But he did not agree.

“No, no, this is not over yet,” he said. “Keep in mind the story of Joab, who slew Absalom, causing King David such a lamentation and dividing the Israelites against themselves, which greatly weakened them against their enemies. No, boys, we must let the Lord decide this.”

“Decide what? Our cause is lost, Father! Lost without even a whimper from those cowards in Lawrence, and now the whole territory, it looks like, is ruled by Franklin Pierce’s soldiers. We’re ruled by Washington turncoats in league with the Atchison pro-slavers and Buford’s mob of Southerners.”

“We might yet upset this neat arrangement. Something must be done, though. Something dramatic and terrible,” Father said, and when he said that word, “terrible,” I knew what he meant.

“Who shall we do it to?” I asked. The others — Salmon, Fred, Oliver, and Henry — were silent and wondering; they did not yet know what Father and I were speaking of.

“I guess it’ll have to be the Shermans and the Doyles and so on, the men down on the Pottawatomie!’ he said.

“That’s fine. But we better do it quickly, while the hornets are out of the nest. Do you think Dutch Sherman and the Doyle men are at home anyhow? They might have ridden with Buford’s army.”

Father thought not — they were pro-slave and anti-Negro, all right, and plenty loud about it, but they were family men and had their land claims already settled and had built cabins and weren’t likely to be running with that crowd. “We will go down there tonight” he said. “And we shall treat with the men only, and make quick, bloody work of it, whilst the surrender and the sacking of Lawrence are still in the air, so that everyone in the territory on both sides will know why it was done.”

My brother-in-law, Henry Thompson, then spoke up. “Mister Brown, do you mean for us to Ml the Shermans and the Doyles?”

“Yes, Henry, I do,” Father replied. “Boys, Owen has seen it straight. After the debacle in Lawrence, if we don’t do this, our cause here in Kansas is wholly lost, and lost without a fight.”

“But do we have to kill these men? They don’t own any slaves. They’re just loudmouths.”