Boone's Lick

I felt pretty embarrassed by my failure to kill Jake.

"He had hold of my gun barrel," I pointed out. "I had no chance to aim."

"That's all right, you'll know better next time," Uncle Seth said.

Sheriff Baldy was sitting up, but he looked dazed and his face had no color.

"I picked a bad time to faint, I guess," he said.

"You've lost some blood," Uncle Seth said, politely. "You boys help me hoist Jake up on this horse--we need to take him home to the hangman."

Jake's eyes were wide open. He was staring at the sky; but he was breathing. Loading him onto the horse was like loading a big sack of oats. Once we had him tied on we helped Lester Miller climb up behind him.

I thought Sheriff Baldy was going to faint again, but he made a great effort and managed to claw his way up into the saddle.

Uncle Seth seemed to be in a high good humor-- of course, it was a fine su

"Now there's a lesson in this, Jake," he said.

Jake Miller did not reply, but Uncle Seth didn't let that fact discourage him.

"The lesson is simple," Uncle Seth went on. "If you're pla

"I will sit astride you, as soon as I'm able, and cut your damn old Yankee throat," Jake Miller said.

"I'm feared he'll get loose--he said he'd cut our throats too," G.T.

whispered.

I was a little worried on that score myself. Jake Miller seemed like the kind of man who might find a way to get loose, but as it turned out, we didn't need to worry. The circuit judge happened to be in Boone's Lick and he got Jake Miller right on the docket. A week later Jake was hung--

some thought his brothers would mount a rescue mission, but they didn't.

Ma wouldn't allow any of us to go to Boone's Lick on hanging day--not me, not G.T, not Neva.

"Bad elements are apt to show up on hanging day," she said.

35

We spent the time making lye soap. I think Cut-Nose Jones is still in jail.

11 UNCLE Seth had coached us carefully about what to say to Ma about the gunfight, and also what not to say, but the coaching didn't work. Ma was not about to let one of her boys have a secret--I don't think she even allowed Uncle Seth very many secrets. She soon wormed the whole story out of G.T.--she knew the wild bandit Jake Miller had actually had his hand on my rifle barrel, a moment I'll never forget, Jake with his wild, mean eyes looking at me.

"The fact is you almost got killed, and your brother too," Ma said. "And by a handcuffed man with a broken leg."

"Almost," I said. We were at what Ma called her "laundry," a little creek that spurted into the Missouri about a hundred yards from our cabin. We also got our water from the little creek. Ma had been af- ter Pa and Uncle Seth to dig a well, sometime when Pa was home, but he rarely was home, and showed no interest in well digging when he did show up.

G.T. always skipped out on laundry days. He and Uncle Seth had taken our best wagon into Boone's Lick to the blacksmith, in order to have a few things fixed before our big trip.

"I made this lye soap too strong," Ma said. "It's itching me."

Something was itching me too: the need to talk about the Stumptown raid.

We had been given firm instructions not to get killed and then had almost got killed.

"I stood too close to Jake," I said. "If I'd stood farther away he could never have grabbed my gun."

Ma was standing in the creek, the brown water washing around her legs.

"Life's full of 'almost's,' Shay," she said. "Lots of things 'almost'

happen--some good, some bad. You almost got killed, but you didn't. Don't be studying it too close. It's over--they hung the man. Just be smarter next time."

I wasn't so sure I would be smarter next time. Mostly my life happened slow, but what had occurred on the ridge above Stumptown that day hadn't happened slow. I was just now remembering certain things about it, though the fight had occurred nearly two weeks back. The night before last I remembered that Jake Miller wore a gold ring on one finger of the hand he grabbed my gun with-- the fact that he wore a ring just popped into my mind as I lay on my pallet, trying to get to sleep. Maybe Jake had taken the gold ring off some of the travelers he had robbed; or maybe it was his wedding band. I saw the ring when he had his hand on my rifle barrel, but it didn't register on me for two weeks, which was a peculiar thing.

"I've had plenty of 'almost's' in my life," Ma said. "So has my sister Patty and so has Rosie McGee."

"Tell me about them," I said. I didn't know much about Ma's family, just that they came from Kentucky.

36

Ma stopped rubbing soap into one of Uncle Seth's old shirts and looked at me, with her head tilted to one side a little.

"I oughtn't to be yarning with you," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because you couldn't keep a secret if you tried," she said. "Neva or Seth or Bill Hickok could worm all you know out of you in nothing flat."

That was true, I guess. I usually just come out with whatever I knew, hoping somebody would tell me some interesting secrets in return.

I guess Ma decided she didn't much care if I told her secrets, because she smiled a little and told me a whopper of a secret.

"One 'almost' was that I almost married your uncle Seth and not your pa,"

she said. "And while that was happening, your pa was courting your aunt Patty, who turned him down and married your uncle Joe, who got killed in a train wreck when you were just a baby."

Ma looked at me solemnly for a moment, to see what I made of all that--

then she laughed her good deep laugh and went back to soaping the shirt.

I was flabbergasted, of course. What Ma told me that morning gave me enough to think about for the next several years. Just hearing it was not the same as understanding it, either--but Ma wasn't through. I guess she decided I was old enough to know all the family history that I had been too young to handle, before.

"My mother was married twice," Ma said. "Her first husband was a drunk who fell off a barn and broke his neck. His name was McGee, and they had one child, a girl named Rosie."

At first what Ma said didn't mean anything. I knew it was possible for a woman to marry twice, if one husband died or got killed in the war.

Sometimes when Pa was up in the Indian country I wondered what Ma would do for a husband if he got killed. I even had the secret hope that if Pa did get killed Ma would marry Uncle Seth. Since Uncle Seth already lived with us he would know how to take care of us in case something happened to Pa.

The point about the baby girl that Granma had had with Mr. McGee, the drunk, didn't register at first. But Ma was still looking at me fu

"McGee. Rosie. Does that ring any bells?" she asked, with mischief in her look. Then the truth came to me like a clap of thunder: Ma was talking about the Rosie McGee who lived over the saloon and smoked cheroots at night. Ma was trying to tell me that Rosie was kin to us.

"That's right, Rosie's my half sister--she's your aunt," Ma said.

I don't know much about laundry day--my thoughts were in too much confusion. I helped Ma drape the clothes on the clothesline, not even noticing when they flapped against me and got me wet. Uncle Seth had almost married Ma. Pa had tried to marry my aunt Patty; and Rosie McGee was my aunt. The more I turned these matters over and over in my mind, 37