Antebellum BK 1 Read online

  At St. Louis, they saw to the loading of their consignment, boarded the steamboat Elena and steamed up the Missouri River to Kansas City. In Kansas City, they bought a wagon, a team, a tent, a pistol, ammunition and provisions, then set out over the Oregon Trail with only vague directions.

  Today they had delivered the cargo to another unidentified man and had rented a room above a plank and frame building with the words Red Johnson’s Saloon hand-lettered on the front wall.

  “Dear God,” Anna grumbled. “I’ve never been so exhausted in my life.” She sat down on the bed and began to unbutton her shoes.

  “I’ve never been so dirty.” Nancy sat on the opposite side of the bed and started removing hairpins. “I’d burn everything I’m wearing if I had anything else to wear.”

  “Yes,” Anna agreed. “The next time we’ll know how to pack.”

  “And how to hitch a team to a wagon, and how to shoot a snake, and ford a river and relieve ourselves behind a bush and – every other painful lesson we learned. It feels like I’m awakening from a bad dream.”

  Anna giggled. “It’s a miracle that we made it.”

  “We’ve only made it halfway. Now what we have to do is go back the same way we came.” Nancy groaned. “Oh Lord, I dread that train trip. If this hotel wasn’t vermin-infested, I’d just stay here forever.” She shook out her hair and lay back on the bed. “What’re your thoughts about the bathhouse we saw?”

  “There’s no privacy whatsoever.”

  “I’ll hold up a bed sheet or something while you bathe, then you can do the same for me.”

  “As long as you hold onto our gun while you hold up the sheet.”

  “What do we do about clean clothes?” Nancy asked. “The clerk at the desk laughed when I asked about laundry service.”

  Anna nodded. “Maybe we should go buy new clothes before we visit the bathhouse.”

  “Do you think the general store even stocks women’s clothes?”

  “The saloon girls must buy clothes. I saw several on the way over here and four or five in the saloon downstairs. Although calling them girls is a stretch.”

  Nancy sat up. “They must have a place to bathe.”

  “I know what you’re thinking and…”

  “Why not? They don’t have any diseases that are going to rub off on us and we certainly don’t have a reputation to ruin.”

  “Okay. You talked me into it.”

  ~

  “You’re not safe staying even one night above Red’s saloon.” The woman’s name was Florence. She had henna colored hair, a heavily painted face and was probably in her early fifties. “I’ve built that tent city for my girls. It’s protected twenty-four hours a day by men on my payroll. I’ll rent you a tent for whatever you’re paying Red Johnson.”

  “You have a deal,” Anna said, opening her pocketbook. She, like Nancy, was wearing a new dress that was too colorful but modest, and both of them were clean.

  “Who are all these people?” Nancy asked.

  Florence shook her head. “What people?”

  “All the people here – in this place – in this town – or whatever it is. There must be several hundred.”

  “Oh, they’ve come for various reasons. Most to stake a claim for the free land.”

  “Nobody knows when, or even if, there’ll be a homestead provision in the new territorial acts,” Anna said.

  Florence nodded. “They’ll squat on a section and farm it until they can claim it, or somebody runs them off.”

  “This isn’t at all what we expected,” Nancy said. “We thought it was a real town.”

  “Come back in a month and there’ll be a real town here,” Florence replied.

  “We’ll be back,” Anna said. “But probably not that soon.”

  “No probably about it,” Nancy said. “It’ll take me a month to recover from this trip.”

  April 4, 1852

  Two Alone Ranch, Waco, Texas

  “No, Father,” Johnny Van Buskirk said loudly. “I’m not going to attend West Point and that’s final.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” Thomas replied with a grin. He dropped the appointment letter that he’d just read to Johnny into the trashcan beside his desk. “You can do whatever you want.”

  Johnny looked at the letter in the trashcan uncertainly. “Really?”

  “Really.” Thomas opened a ledger and picked up the abacus that he used to double-check his figures.

  “What will Pea say if I don’t?”

  “He’ll probably say that you’re making a mistake.”

  “Do you think it would be a mistake, Dad?”

  Thomas shrugged. “I can’t make your decisions for you, John.”

  “Pug will probably beat me up.”

  Thomas looked up at his son. “Quincy will do no such thing.” He pointed at the door. “Go do your chores.”

  “They’re done.”

  “Well go do something else. I have a lot of work to do.” He went back to the task of totaling the columns of figures.

  Johnny started to go, then retrieved the letter from the trashcan. “I think I’ll keep this, just as a memento.”

  “Good idea,” Thomas said, without looking up from the ledger. “It isn’t everyone who’s received a Presidential appointment to the United States Military Academy. Especially when they have a brother attending.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I said it isn’t everyone who’s received a Presidential appointment to West Point.”

  “No.” Johnny shook his head. “After that. About brothers.”

  “Oh. It’s against Academy policy to allow brothers to attend. It may have been instituted because of William, Jack, Robert and me. It became policy the year after Robert graduated.”

  “Then how did I get accepted?”

  “The Napoleon Bonaparte Buford exception.”

  “What?”

  “Napoleon Bonaparte Buford, class of twenty-seven, lobbied the government to allow his younger brother John to attend. John Buford was accepted into the class of forty-eight. Once an exception to a rule’s been made, another’s fairly easy to obtain.”

  Johnny looked at the letter for a moment, then walked out of Thomas’s office and closed the door behind him.

  Thomas sat back in his chair and chuckled. “Welcome to the long gray line, Son.”

  May 4, 1852

  New York, New York

  “I’m not going to print that, Anna,” Horace Greeley said emphatically, pointing to Anna’s copy pages.

  “Will you just read it? Please?” Anna said in an annoyed tone.

  “I have read it, and it won’t be printed in this newspaper.”

  “Why?”

  “Frederick Douglass has become too radical.”

  “Radical?” she said in a shrill tone. “By asking that slaves be freed? What’s radical about that? We print that same sentiment every day.”

  “We don’t insult our readers every day,” Greeley insisted.

  “How is what Douglass said insulting?”

  “Let me read it to you.” He picked up her copy pages. “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parades and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”

  He tossed her notes back onto his desk. “If I printed that I’d be lynched.”

  Anna fold
ed her arms. “If you don’t print it, I’ll resign.”

  “If you don’t get out of my office I’ll fire you.”

  “You can’t fire me; I quit.”

  “Get out.”

  Anna turned on her heel and fifteen minutes later, she was standing across the desk from Henry J. Raymond, editor of the fledgling New York Times. “I know that I’m too liberal for your new paper, Henry, but I can get you stories that you’ll never even see, otherwise. And…”

  “Stop.” Raymond raised his hand. “You’re hired. Stop selling.”

  “I’m hired?”

  “I was planning to offer you a job anyway.”

  “In that case, Henry, what about my byline? Do I still have to be A.M. Van Buskirk? ”

  “No. You can use your full maiden name, Anna Marina Van Buskirk, in your byline. The whole world will know that A.M. Van Buskirk is a woman and that you are A.M. Van Buskirk.”

  “The same pay I was getting at the Trib?”

  “What do you care? You don’t even cash your paychecks.”

  “I just don’t want Mr. Greeley to think he’s won. If you can’t afford it I’ll make a donation or buy advertising or something.”

  “I’ll pay you ten percent more than Greeley was paying you and if I can’t afford that, I shouldn’t be in the newspaper business.” He took all the money from his wallet and offered it to her.

  Anna took the cash. “What’s this for?”

  “Expenses. I want you to cover the presidential election from Washington. Stay at the Willard and file your stories by Western Union and send your expense reports by mail. I’ll reimburse your expenses every week.”

  “A suite at the Willard.”

  “No. A single room.”

  “No. I’ll rent a suite and charge my expense account for a single room.”

  He waved his hand. “Fine.”

  “What’s the angle?”

  “Anything that will sell newspapers.”

  “That’s it?”

  “No. Build yourself a network down there.”

  “What kind of network?”

  “Female. The women of Washington know everything that’s going on and they’re more likely to talk than the politicians.”

  “I should be insulted.”

  “If you are, I misjudged you.” He held out his hand. “Give me that expense money back.”

  Anna shook his extended hand and stuffed the money into her pocketbook. “Thank you.” She started for the door.

  “Anna?”

  “Yes?”

  “Secrets are often shared in bedchambers. Some of the women who know the most have less than stellar reputations.”

  She smiled. “I know. Don’t worry. The woman in Washington with the very worst reputation is a dear friend of my mother. But before I see her, I’m going to Baltimore to interview my father’s dear friend, General Winfield Scott.”

  “Do you think Scott is going to be the Whig candidate?”

  “I’m sure of it. But he won’t be our next president.”

  “Do you know something I don’t?”

  “Lots. That’s why you hired me.” She hurried out the door.

  ~

  “Washington.” Nancy turned up her nose.

  “If you can survive living in a tent in Nebraska, Washington’s Willard Hotel should be like heaven,” Anna replied.

  “Assuring that the states created in Nebraska are free is a cause; Washington is your job – although I’ll be damned if I know why you want to work.”

  “I’ll rent a two-bedroom suite,” Anna said. “Your bedroom will be there for you if you want to use it.”

  “Won’t you miss all the New York social life?” She waved toward the window at the view of Manhattan. “The theaters, the library, the park?”

  “If you keep your apartment here, we can come back on weekends or we can go to New Jersey and just relax, away from it all.”

  “Will you be invited to all the embassy parties in Washington?”

  “I imagine so. The paper will probably get me two tickets to everything, like the Trib does here.”

  “Okay,” Nancy grumbled. “But I still don’t understand why you want to work.”

  “It gives my life meaning.”

  “Having fun is meaningful.”

  “Oh, Nancy.”

  “When do we have to go?”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “I can’t be ready that fast.”

  “We’ll only stay a few days, then come back. If we take the early train in the morning, we’ll get there right after lunch.”

  “What?” Nancy shook her head. “That’s too fast to be safe.”

  “They say the new tracks can support speeds up to a mile a minute.”

  “I’ll take a boat and meet you there.”

  “The train’s perfectly safe. There’re four express trains that make a round trip every day and there’s never been an accident.”

  Nancy still looked unsure.

  “What’s the matter with you? You just went with me from here to No-name Nebraska and back, facing hostile Indians, bandits, pirates, and every other kind of peril, without so much as a complaint. Now you’re afraid of a train?”

  “I’m not afraid of the train, I’m afraid of the train wreck at a mile a minute.”

  “The trains don’t go that fast yet.”

  “You just said they did.”

  “I said the tracks are engineered for trains to go that fast; I didn’t say that the trains went that fast.”

  “How fast do they go?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Maybe fifty miles an hour.”

  “That’s pretty close to a mile a minute.”

  “Nancy, you’re being childish about this.”

  “Okay, okay. But if I get killed in a train wreck, I’ll never speak to you again.”

  May 8, 1852

  Fort Humboldt, California

  Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant saluted the mounted colonel and continued walking toward his quarters.

  “Is that any way for an old friend to behave?” the colonel asked.

  Grant stopped and turned around, then a grin split his heavily bearded face. “Professor? Is that you?”

  Robert Van Buskirk dismounted and held out his right hand. “Good to see you again, Sam.”

  Grant rushed forward and gripped Robert’s hand in both of his. “Oh Lord how glad I am to see you.” He pumped Robert’s hand, then released it suddenly and looked around to see if they’d been noticed. “Damn. I forgot myself. Here you are a colonel and here I am acting like a fool.”

  Robert chuckled. “I don’t care if you don’t.”

  “I’m just so happy to see a friendly face,” Grant said. “What brings you to Humboldt?”

  “I was in Eureka for a meeting with Bob Buchanan. He said that you were stationed here, so I bummed a cavalry remount and rode down here to see you.”

  Grant motioned toward a rough cabin. “That’s my quarters, such as it is. Do you have time for a drink?”

  Robert looked toward the tiny house. “Is Julia here?”

  “No. She and the kids are living with her parents. I can’t afford to bring them out here on a lieutenant’s pay.”

  “In that case I’ll be glad to have a drink with you.” He took his horse by the reins and fell in step with Grant.

  “I thought you liked Julia,” Grant said.

  “Of course I do. What makes you say that?”

  “You said ‘in that case you’d have a drink’ after I told you that she wasn’t here.”

  Robert chuckled. “Your quarters seemed a little small and I wouldn’t have wanted to crowd your family.”

  “Oh, oh. I see. Yeah. You’re right. The place would be too small for a family. It’s the only place I could find that’s cheaper than the BOQ. If I could afford a bigger place, I’d bring them out. I sure miss them.” He pointed to a porch rail. “Tie your horse there. It’s stronger than it looks.” He unlocked the door as Robert t
ied the horse. “Are you married?”

  “No. Never found the girl.” Robert followed him into the cabin and had to duck to avoid bumping his head. “You doing a lot of drinking or are you collecting whiskey bottles, Sam?”

  “Both. The empty jugs are like making a mark on my prison wall.” He pointed to a dangerous looking chair. “Have a seat. I need to wash a glass for you.”

  “Is it that bad, Sam?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You said it’s like a prison?”

  “Oh. No, it’s really not that bad. I’d probably like it if Julia was here. I’m a family man at heart.” He put two chipped glasses on the table, then poured whiskey into both before sitting down. “Here’s to better days.” He raised his glass.

  Robert clinked his glass against Grant’s, then took a sip and made a face. “Good stuff. Aged three days in the keg.”

  Grant chuckled. “Good for starting fires too. Saves on the kindling. Where are you stationed?”

  “San Francisco. My brother Jack and his wife are there. My mother was too for a while, but she’s gone off now to Arizona to settle her brother’s estate.”

  “Did she recover after Chapultepec?”

  “Yeah. Well, I guess so. She never said anything about it one way or the other and if you ask her anything personal, she bites your head off.”

  “Tough woman, your mother.”

  “Women don’t get much tougher. Except maybe my sister. She’s frightening.”

  “Did you ride up here or come by boat?” Grant asked.

  “I went to Eureka by boat but came down here with a cavalry company. They do regular patrols along the coast and have extra remounts.”

  “Don’t suppose you could stay awhile.”

  “No. Wish I could but I need to start back today.” Robert looked at his watch. “In fact, they’ll be looking for me soon.”