Читать книгу The Burning Barn: Speed and Hattie In Civil War Missouri - Richard Boone's Black - Страница 7

On that late October afternoon the thirty-year-old mother and the twelve-year-old son kept interrupting each other as the wagon that had brought them from the pier at Missouri City approached Liberty, Missouri. Some of the leaves on the trees were still green, some were yellow and crimson, but regardless of their color, a rain the night before had washed them clean. “Oh, Speed, ain’t it exciting? Just think,” said the mother. “We been gone since April and I can just tell. This is what we hoped for. This is Missouri where we are supposed to be.”

“Look, Ma, they got a post office in the general store,” the boy began the sentence, then Joycie interrupted to finish his thought, “They have two churches and both of them are painted white.” Obviously these two had spent virtually every moment together for some months, and the bond they shared had only strengthened through their journey. If the Whitley County farmer who had seen them that morning back in April could see them again, he would have observed Joycie’s bonnet now tattered and without a lace border, and the formerly stout lady now a woman almost skinny. The boy, on the other hand, brown from a summer on the water, was an inch and a half taller, with arms and shoulders broader from months of exertions on, off, and in the water.

Speed jumped down to help his mother from the hired wagon when the driver stopped in front of the general store. He looked up and down the dirt street and called, “There it is Ma, there’s the Disciples Church. What’s the preacher’s name? Where’s he live?” Joycie picked her overstuffed bag from the wagon and lifted her skirts as she set out across the street to locate the parsonage. Speed came behind with the now battered wooden box, which still contained Aunt Ruth’s Bible.

Joycie set down her carpetbag, smoothed her skirts, and tried to poke the loose strands of hair back into the bun on her head. Speed noticed for the first time lines around her eyes that he did not remember from their days in Kentucky. When Joycie knocked on the glass pane in the door, a balding man, glasses on forehead, slight of build and diminutive of stature, opened the door. “Yes, good afternoon to you, Ma’am. Can I be of assistance?”

Joycie looked down on him, stepped back and said, “Reverend Spencer, remember me? Joycie, Joycie Wilson, from Whitley County. You said when you left we was all to look you up if we was ever in Missouri, and here we are.” She held her hands at her waist, fingers intertwined, to conceal anxiety about her tenuous connection to this man on which she had based her entire trek to Missouri. The man brought his spectacles down from his forehead and studied her.

“Wilson, is it? Why yes, it is, Joycie Wilson. Look who’s here, Rebecca,” he called back into the house. “It’s a lady come all this way from Kentucky, Joycie Wilson. And look at her boy, practically grown up. What was your name, son? Something like Swift, wasn’t it?”

“It’s Speed, John Speed Smith Wilson,” said Joycie. Speed sensed that his mother’s petition needed any support he could provide, so he placed the box on the wide porch, smiled at the man, then took a long step forward to shake his hand, the way he had seen men do on the steamer from Cairo. The older man clasped Speed’s hand warmly and drew him into the house.

“Well, you look like you’ve traveled a bit today.” Now his smile was full and knowing. “Won’t you bring your things in?” he said to Joycie. “Rebecca,” he called again, “Rebecca, we have guests for dinner. I do hope they can stay the night.” He intended to both extend an invitation and alert his servant that she would have extended duties. A light-skinned Negro woman a foot taller and thirty pounds heavier than the man emerged from the kitchen wiping her hands on a floral apron that protected a plain gray dress.

“They can eat and they can stay if that’s what you say. You make the rules.” Her broad face was matter of fact. To Joycie she said, “You and the boy can wash up behind the kitchen and got to take what we having. I can’t do nothing special at this hour of the day.” Speed could feel her resentment but could not identify the cause. Was it that they were invited last minute? Perhaps she felt they were taking advantage of the pastor. He was quiet and let the adults do the talking.

“No, no, of course not,” said Rev. Spencer. The portions of the dinner of chicken, gravy, potatoes, and green beans were somewhat meager since what had been intended for one in the dining room and one in the kitchen was shared among three and one, but the pastor cut the freshly baked apple pie in sixths rather than the customary eighths so that Speed could have two large slices. After dinner they adjourned to the parlor where Rebecca served Joycie and the pastor coffee next to a fire, which cheered a room chilly in the mid-October evening. Speed took a cane-bottomed rocking chair but held it still after Joycie mouthed “No” toward him and made a downward motion with her hands. Though he tried, he could not fight off the sleep that overcame him. They were in western Missouri at last, they were fed, they were warm, and his mother seemed at ease. As he drifted in and out of sleep, he heard phrases like, “Liberty has advantages over Platte Purchase lands…,” “…perhaps a situation with Mayor Roundscape,” “…the ladies will certainly welcome,” and “schooling may even be possible.” And then there was another feeling that he couldn’t quite identify, the feeling that he was in the presence of two adults who had known each other well at some time in the past. They smiled and chuckled often as their conversation continued. Had his mother known this man more than she had said? He had some of the same feeling he got when he found his mother with Buford Crawford months before.

When he awoke to the sounds of a flock of sparrows outside in the October sunshine and the snores of his mother beside him, he vaguely remembered stumbling upstairs to bed the previous night. He pulled on his shoes, then descended the stairs quietly to find Rebecca blowing on the coals in the stove. The woman didn’t look up but sensed his presence. “You do your necessaries and then split me some wood, quiet as you can. Don’t want them woke before they have to. Quick now. Make yourself useful.” Speed didn’t like taking orders from a Negro slave, but he could see this was her territory. There weren’t many Negroes in Whitley County because most of the white farmers were too poor to afford them, but those that were there, like Buford Crawford’s slave Boston, kept quiet anytime Speed was in their presence.

After walking quietly out past the woodpile to the privy, he returned to place a sawed section of log on the chopping block. He had not chopped since he left Whitley County six months ago, and he was surprised at how easily the axe split through the wood. So impressed was he with his newfound strength that he quickly had stove wood for several meals and was well on his way to exhausting the supply of cut log sections when Rebecca called from the back stoop, “Stop that chopping. You done woke both them up and they’s coming down too soon. I told you to chop quiet.” Speed didn’t make the reply he wanted to. He wanted to say that there wasn’t any way to chop wood quietly. He wanted to say maybe she could say thank-you for all the wood. But he repressed his urge to inform her of his feelings and took quiet pride in his morning’s production. Somehow Aunt Ruth’s scripture came to mind, “He shall smite the earth.” He wondered if chopping wood could qualify as “smiting.”

There followed times in the autumn of 1835 when Speed wished he and his mother were back in Whitley County, or better yet, in the close communion floating down the Cumberland with Simmons and yes, even with Sid. As it was, he saw little enough of his mother. When his mother and Pastor Spencer called on Mayor Roundscape, the three of them reached an arrangement that foreclosed further talk of Platte Purchase. In return for providing domestic assistance to Mrs. Roundscape and her five children, ranging in age from two months to ten years, the Mayor would provide Joycie and Speed with appropriate room and board. “Appropriate room” proved to be a nearby legacy log cabin of ten feet by sixteen feet divided into two sections by a wooden partition. The trapper who had built it some twenty-five years before had chinked the spaces between the logs with clay, some of which had contracted, allowing drafts to enter. Two tiny windows in the front wall, covered with oiled paper, provided dim illumination. Joycie took the smaller room to the left and let Speed have the larger one to the right because it had the stove. She said she was used to the cold.

“Appropriate board” was a share of food, not to be taken with the family at the dinner table but ladled out by a skinny, squeaky-voiced Negro cook named Lucie. Joycie did not feel she could subject her son to meals with a kitchen slave. She said, “Now that you’re getting your growth you got to be careful who you’re with. ‘Birds of a feather must flock together,’” so they retreated to the little cabin to take their meals sitting on Speed’s rope-slatted bed, using their well-traveled wooden box as a dinner table.

Speed, on the recommendation of Pastor Spencer, was accepted at the local academy as a charity case and placed in the seventh grade. The teacher acknowledged that he probably belonged in a higher grade, but as it happened there were no local children who continued beyond the sixth grade and the academy had purchased no mathematical text, or for that matter had no books of geography, history, or philosophy.

The oldest Roundscape child, a girl named Matilda, was the other advanced student. She rarely deigned to speak to Speed, instead bestowing the favor of her attention on the younger girls. Speed felt her slight keenly. He was obsessed with her blooming figure under the fitted bodices of the dresses her mother bought. Whenever they were in proximity, he did his best to hide the furtive glances he gave her body and her permanently pouting lips. There were boys of his age in town, but they seemed suspicious of a newcomer from Kentucky, especially one without a father whose mother had some sort of household role for the Mayor. For a glorious week in mid-November he was hired by Norbert Muench, the German livery owner, to feed and water the horses and clean the stables. He enjoyed the incessant banter with the men who worked there, the introduction to the important men of the town when they came as customers, and most of all the companionship of a boy his own age, Floyd Little, with whom he felt an instantaneous comradeship. Then his mother made him quit when Parson Spencer reminded her that the Germans were Catholics and associating with Catholics was not proper for a good Christian.

The incident prompted words between mother and son while they were sitting at the makeshift table after dinner one evening. “You don’t care about me at all, Ma. You never want me to have any fun, to go out and meet people,” he said, putting his hands between his thighs, not daring to look her in the face. For the first time in several months he felt the annoying pain in his leg where the snake bit. “All you care about is pleasing some old preacher.”

Joycie paused a long time before answering. “I guess I was wrong, Speed. We ain’t there yet, Speed. We ain’t to Platte Purchase. I can see that now. Things will be better when we get there. But now we got to do the best we can here. Spencer’s been mighty good to us for the time being.” Joycie didn’t offer any further explanation, and Speed could see from her silence that she had no alternative but to please Reverend Spencer. After a time, Speed wanted to tell her that it was okay, that he didn’t miss his new friends at the livery stable, but he really did miss Floyd, so his words of filial absolution remained unspoken.

As gray December began and the temperature under often-cloudy skies sank to the low thirties, Speed noticed Joycie’s visage sink as well. Often Madame Roundhouse, as both mother and son had named her in their private conversation, dismissed Joycie to their little cabin mid-afternoon while the baby slept. Speed might find her napping in her bed or, eyes open, staring silently at the ceiling. It was not the first time Speed had observed his mother in what Aunt Ruth had called “one of her moods.” He had seen the vacant stare back in Whitley County and even observed it on rare occasions over the summer on the flatboat. Somehow the flatboat had been a tonic for the moods. But now, especially in the ever-advancing evening darkness as the late autumn wind swept through the mud chinks between the cabin logs, the moods seemed to come more frequently and last longer.

One chilly afternoon after school, rather than endure her prolonged silence, Speed walked over to the parsonage, took up the axe, and began to split wood. After a few minutes Pastor Spencer came through the back door, pushed his glasses to his forehead, and called out, “Good for you, Speed. Good for you. Your efforts shall not go unrewarded. Come in the kitchen when you are done. Rebecca will have coffee.” Speed smiled at the man and continued to split the wood “thunk—thunk—crack—thunk—crack––thunk—crack.” The initial double thunk split the log section the first time, then each subsequent division usually required only two strokes. As the late afternoon was darkening, he stacked the split wood and took an armload into Rebecca’s kitchen.

“Evening Rebecca. Where’s this wood go?”

As she pointed to a wood box in the corner she asked, “You that boy come with your mammy back in October?”

“Yes,” he said before he clattered the wood in the box.

“Parson Spencer say give you coffee. Brush your shirt off and wash your hands. I tell him you here.”

“Thank you,” Speed said as he stepped back out the kitchen door to brush the woodchips from his shirt and pants and rinse his hands in the nearly freezing basin of water next to the door. When he sat down at the kitchen table, the Negro woman set a cream-colored crockery mug in front of him. Speed could not resist his curiosity about the relationship of the parson and the woman.

“Rebecca,” Speed asked, “Does Reverend Spencer own you?”

The woman inhaled, making her considerable presence even more imposing. Her voice was full of fervor as she replied, “I as free as you, free since Parson Spencer paid my bond.” She reached in her bosom and pulled out an envelope worn thin in places. “This here paper proves it.” She held the envelope up to Speed’s face, “but I don’t show it to just anybody. It’s too precious.” She replaced the paper from where it had come. The boy was taken aback by the woman’s overbearing response. As he swirled the coffee around in his mug, he wondered why she was so worked up. He thought of the harsh words Sid had said about Negroes, how they recognized they were little better than monkeys and meant to work. Then there was his mother’s insistence that he was better than Lucie. So why had Parson Spencer gone to all the expense to buy Rebecca’s freedom? Now if he got pinched for funds he couldn’t sell her.

Speed’s thoughts on slavery were interrupted by the preacher. “Advent, Speed, we await the coming of the Lord, the Messiah promised in the Old Testament. Now what should I say in my sermon Sunday?” Speed wondered if the Parson really expected him to answer and fumbled for a response.

“My Aunt Ruth said the wolf will lie down with the lamb and the lion will eat straw and we’ll all have knowledge of the Lord, so I guess you could preach on that.” Speed was doing his best to impress the parson with his scrap of scripture.

“My boy, my boy, perspicacious, absolutely perspicacious. Isaiah 11. That will be our Old Testament reading for Sunday. Well done, Master Speed. Well done. And I think I shall choose Second Corinthians for the Epistle. Not a usual Advent text, but quite sufficient.”

Speed had only a dim understanding of the relevance of Aunt Ruth’s text for the parson’s sermon, but he anticipated his mother would make him endure worship on the upcoming Sunday. He finished his coffee with several gulps, set his mug on the table and then, with no further word for Rebecca, stood to go. The parson appeared to be considering a matter carefully, then pushed his glasses down on his nose so he could look earnestly into Speed’s face. He pulled a penny from a well-worn pocket purse, seized Speed’s hand, placed the penny in his palm, then closed his fingers over it. “I’ll pay a penny an hour, Speed. A penny an hour for chopping wood. Come by any afternoon. There’s plenty of chopping to be done.”

“Thank you Parson, but I just did it to keep warm. I wasn’t looking for money. You already done plenty for my Ma and me.” Speed’s response was politic but not wholly sincere. He resented the parson’s mandate that cost him the pittance he earned from Muench at the livery stable and the companionship of Floyd Little.

“A penny an hour, and that is all there is to that. See you next time,” said the diminutive gentleman as he turned to leave the kitchen.

“Thank you for the coffee, Miss Rebecca,” said Speed as an afterthought. He considered he was being extra polite add the “Miss,” because she was a free woman.

“Humpf,” said Rebecca, as Speed stepped toward the kitchen door.

Speed got the penny for his efforts on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday, Speed found his mother coughing in her room when he returned from school. On Thursday morning, she seemed stronger when he went to school, but again was coughing in her bed when he returned, so he excused himself to the exercise of the parson’s chopping block. On Friday, his mother was not able to rise from her bed at all, and he suggested that she change to his bed because she would be closer to the stove. Saturday was cold and damp, and when Sunday morning came Joycie’s cough had returned with a vengeance. She urged Speed to go to church by himself, saying she would stoke the stove until it glowed red to “sweat this thing out once and for all.” Speed felt there was something more he should be doing, but his mother was asking for nothing more so he opened the damper holes in the stove door, stacked several seasoned oak logs inside the door, and for the first time ever went by himself to adult worship. He assumed a serious face to reflect what he hoped was an air of responsibility appropriate for the senior male of the family.

Reverend Spencer did indeed choose the Old Testament reading from Isaiah, and he even gave Speed credit for suggesting the reading, causing Speed to blush as eyes in the congregation turned toward him. The reading from the Epistles was from 1 Corinthians 13 which ended “And now abideth, faith, hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” The preacher opened his sermon with the statement that clearly Isaiah foretold the birth of Christ, and the Apostle Paul demanded that we be a people of charity, a people of love, as Christ had loved us. Yet sinful man denied the message at every turn for over eighteen hundred years, thereby condemning themselves to the fires of hell. At that point the stove at the back of the sanctuary had warmed the congregation sufficiently so that heads began to nod, Speed’s included. He awoke when Reverend Spencer began to punctuate his exhortations by slamming the pulpit. “Isaiah,” he proclaimed, “was the prophet of love to bring peace (slam!) and harmony (slam!) on earth! Christ was the full manifestation (slam!) of that love. Now every Christian must bring that love on earth (slam!), to his town (slam!) and to his farm, (slam!) immediately, day by day. If you fail, you bring on yourself eternal (slam!) dam…(slam!) nation (slam!).” The little man peered indignantly over the pulpit, pushed his glasses up on his forehead for emphasis, and took a seat by the choir.

When Speed stood to sing the closing hymn, he wondered if God had already condemned him for failing to love. As he walked back to the trapper’s shanty where his mother lay, he wondered how he could bring love to any town or farm, let alone get a cougar to eat straw. What did Aunt Ruth mean that night when she had him read that passage? As he thought more about the passage, he realized the Bible didn’t say that the baby wouldn’t be bitten by the asp. It just said he would play there. Since the asp had bitten him but he hadn’t died, what did that mean? Maybe it just meant that it wouldn’t be easy to have God’s kingdom, but it would still come. And then the Apostle Paul said the most important thing was love. Had God kept him alive for some special purpose? He was having a hard time loving anyone in Missouri, sometimes even his mother. His thoughts shifted back to Whitley County. Would life have been better if he and his mother had stayed back there? The snakebite pain stabbed in his leg, as it did for no reason from time to time. Maybe right now Aunt Ruth would be giving Joycie a tonic and taking charge around their little cabin.

When he opened the door to the shanty, he hesitated momentarily at the sight of his mother. Her eyes were closed, her hair was plastered across her sweating face, and her blankets kicked helter-skelter, showing the dirty canvas fabric covering the thin cornhusk mattress. There was a heavy sweat smell mixed with a sour smell like spoiled milk. When did she lose so much weight, he wondered. At the sound of the scraping door she pulled the bedclothes up in front of her chest and called, “What? Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Ma. You sent me to church.”

“Would you ask Lucie if I can have some warm milk, or maybe some coffee? My throat hurts, I don’t want nothing more.” She paused before she said, “Speed, I’m sorry I don’t feel good just now. You take care of things until I feel better.” Speed felt a jolt of fear at his mother’s injunction. Never at any time in their journey had she asked him to take complete responsibility. He threw another few sticks in the stove to restore the flame, then ran to the kitchen.

Madame Roundhouse was holding a beef roast on a large platter with a fork so that Lucie could stack boiled potatoes and carrots around it. “Speed, you and your mother will have to wait a while until this platter comes back to the kitchen. Can you do that?” asked Mrs. Roundhouse. Before Speed could say anything, she triumphantly bore her bounty through the dining room door.

Immediately Lucie asked, “Is your ma still sick? She didn’t come over this morning. She ain’t been right this whole week.”

“Ma’s feeling pretty poorly. She asked for some warm milk or coffee, Lucie. Can you help?”

“Now that woman’s out of the kitchen I can,” squeaked Lucie. “You take this coffee and I bring the milk soon as I can.”

Speed took the steaming coffee out to their shack to find that his mother had put the bed in better order and had combed her hair. She sipped once from the cup, set it beside the cot on the floor, and watched as Speed put another piece of oak in the stove. When Lucie came, she brought a saucer holding a soft fried egg.

“You get some food and drink in you,” piped the tiny woman. “You going to be just fine, Mrs. Joycie. You going to be just fine. I tell the mayor that you feeling poorly and maybe he should call the doctor.” Speed was surprised that the diminutive slave was willing to confront the mayor on his mother’s behalf. Who gave the little woman the imperative to act?

“Don’t trouble the doctor on Sunday, Lucie. Maybe if I don’t feel better tomorrow I will find him,” said Joycie. She took a tentative sip of the warm milk, then lay back on the cot, closing her eyes. The tiny cook motioned for Speed to follow her out of the door.

“Boy, you keep that cabin warm all night. You wake up and feed that fire. You feed it until morning, you hear? You come tell me and Missus Roundhouse if she still so sick in the morning. You take care of her, you hear? She sick. She real sick.”

It was only midafternoon, yet the sky was darkening as the winter solstice approached. A brisk wind slapped snow flurries against his face and snapped the oiled paper windows. As he looked down at the tiny Negro, her hair tied up in multiple little bunches, he felt a rush of gratitude and comradeship. “Thank you, Lucie.” He looked straight into her black eyes. “Thank you for the egg and coffee. Thank you for helping.” She turned, waved dismissively at him, then entered the back of the mayor’s substantial home.

Speed brought wood from the woodpile and stacked it outside the door of the shack. Inside the room that had served as his bedroom, living room, and dining room for the two of them, and was now Joycie’s sick room, he felt all of the cracks. Where the stream of cold air was particularly strong he stuffed wadded strips of a newspaper broadside, bits of bark and even splinters from the firewood. After about forty-five minutes, when his fingers were quite raw from his efforts, he concluded that he had made the room as tight as he could.

As he lay on the bed that normally was his mother’s, he heard the first deep rasping cough. He turned to cover one of his ears, hoping that the sound was an illusion, denying that there had been any indication that her conditioning was worsening. He must have napped through the late afternoon, because there were lights on in the big house when he awoke to step out to fetch wood. He stoked the stove and felt his mother’s feverish head. Should he wake her up, should he pound on the door of the mayor’s house and ask them to summon a doctor? He listened to the sound of her breathing. It was rapid and shallow, but there was no rasping. He decided she wouldn’t want to bother the madam and the mayor. He called to her softly but she did not respond. He sat on the foot of the bed and waited until the fire in the stove was at full strength.

He remembered waking one more time, seeing the big house dark as he went to the woodpile outside the door, then stoking the stove. As he went back to bed, he had every intention of waking several more times in the depth of the night to feed the fire. But the next thing he saw was the pale light of winter morning through the paper window. The first thing he heard was a repeated deep rasping cough, followed by ferocious gasps for air. He was by her bedside immediately and pulled her upright by her shoulders. He was amazed at how light she had become. “Ma, Ma, you okay? You want your coffee?” When she looked at him he saw the flecks of blood on the foam in the corner of her mouth.

“Get...the…doctor...sorry…” she gasped one word at a time.

He fairly dropped her shoulders and ran sobbing to the back door. “Mr. Mayor, Lucie, Mrs. Roundhouse,” he cried as he pounded on the door. “She’s sick. Ma’s very sick. Get a doctor. Please get a doctor.” It was as if the entire household sprung into action to expiate their complicity in neglecting his mother. Madame Roundhouse bustled from the kitchen in her nightclothes and robe, while Speed saw the mayor shuffle down the street without socks in untied shoes, his suspenders over underwear barely concealed by his flapping greatcoat.

Lucie shot an accusatory glance at Speed as she motioned him out of what had been his room in the little cabin. It was completely filled by Madame, the Mayor, and the Doctor. Speed waited in the adjacent room, hardly able to catch the snatches of the conversation. “Pneumonia in extremis,”...“immediate succor of an interior room,”….“perhaps before evening today.” The mayor carried Speed’s mother, draped over his arms, from the little cabin.

“Let’s bring her inside, m’ boy,” the Mayor said over his shoulder. “The vapors are more salutary toward recovery.” Speed followed to find himself where he had never been permitted previously. He was sitting on a linen chest outside a door of the second floor bedroom where his mother lay. Suddenly everyone was very solicitous of his welfare. Lucie brought him coffee. When Matilda sat briefly beside him, inquired about his welfare, and asked if he wished one of her dolls, Speed could feel the fabric of the girl’s skirt but could not look her in the face. While he stared blankly at the porcelain-headed toy as the morning passed, waiting for the doctor to return, Lucie’s words stayed in his head. “Boy, you keep that cabin warm all night. You feed that fire until morning.” He had failed. He had slept when he could have kept his mother alive. He prayed over and over again, “Let her live. I’ll be good. I won’t fail next time. Let her live.” Finally, as evening came on, he heard Lucie’s voice at the front door below, followed by the doctor’s greeting and the mayor’s basso salutation. The two men came up, opened the door solicitously, and closed it quickly. Speed stood and tried to see his mother, but the mayor’s great bulk was interposed.

Shortly the mayor came out and said, “I’m sorry, Speed, I truly am sorry. You may come in now.”

Speed looked inquiringly at the mayor’s face and then entered the bedroom. His mother’s body was lying on the bed, her head turned away from him and her mouth gaping as if for one more breath. The finality of her death drove a single cry from his belly, straining the muscles in his chest and even his shoulders. He turned and grasped the door frame as he let the subsequent sobs of “Oh… No… Oh…No…, No… No.” Mayor Roundhouse put his hand on Speed’s shoulder so that the boy turned and flung his arms around the man’s neck, letting tears and sobs fall onto his stout frame for a minute or two. Presently when the inappropriate intimacy of the situation seeped into Speed’s consciousness, he let go and wiped his sleeve across his mouth and nose. He looked once more at his mother, then went out to sit in dejection on the linen chest in the hall.

Her words of a week ago lay in his consciousness, ‘We ain’t there yet, Speed.’ The two of them had fallen short because he had not done his part. The journey to Platte Purchase had been their mutual goal for nine months. Now they were caught on the way and he was alone. Dry-eyed, he looked up at Mayor Roundhouse and stated, “I failed. I didn’t keep her warm. What can I do now?”