The ride out to Kincaid was cold. It seemed longer than usual. Conversation was stilted at best and mostly non-existent. Matt stayed just far enough ahead to make talk impossible. "That what they call a log cabin, Miss Kitty?" Hattie asked when Kitty finally drove the wagon through the gate and up towards the house.
Kitty glanced, startled, at the big log and frame house. What would she herself have thought of it if she hadn't traveled through half of Texas and most of Indian Territory before she arrived in Kansas? "No, Hattie, it's not. The older part, that might have been called a log house once, but not a cabin. And it's been built onto for quite a few years. Now, well, I'd just call it a ranch house, and a fine one at that. The ranch is called Kincaid after the last owner."
It started to snow, just a few soft flakes, as she pulled the wagon to a stop. Carolina jumped down and stood in the yard, her eyes wide and face turned up to the sky. Caleb handed down first Kitty and then his mother before stepping up to take the reins. "That you' carriage house, Miss Kitty?" he asked nodding at the big barn.
Kitty did laugh this time. "We don't have a carriage house, Caleb, or a carriage either. We keep a buggy in the barn, but the wagon usually sits there at the end where the roof hangs over. You follow Mr. Dillon on over. He'll show you where things go. And bring that trunk back with you, and the packages as well, if you would."
"Yes'm."
Kitty steered the other three towards the back porch, and pulled a key from her pocket to unlock the door. They shuffled somewhat stiffly into the big room, glad of the warmth after the cold drive. A pot of soup simmered at the back of the stove filling the room with a savory welcome. Kitty took charge.
"Now over through that doorway is Till's room. She worked for Mrs. Kincaid. I made up the bed and set things straight as soon as we heard you were coming." She walked over and opened the door, stepping in so that the others could follow her. It was a big square room that had been the kitchen of the original log house. A neat bed was covered with a plain but pretty blue and white quilt - work shirts, old overalls, and flower sacking sewed into a simple design. There was a low dresser with a jug and basin on top, and two rocking chairs in front of the fireplace. There was no wardrobe, but one corner was curtained off as a place to hang clothes. "I think this will be fine for you and Carolina, Hattie. That bed's plenty big." She took both of the older woman's hands and held her eyes. "This is your place and your home as long as you want it, Hattie. I told you a long time ago I'd send for you when I got married, and I never forgot that. Whatever else happens, this is yours."
Turning to Cairo she told him to go upstairs and take any empty room he wanted for himself and his brother.
He started to object but he was cut off by the sound of the back door as Matt and Caleb carried in the trunk that Annie had hustled down from the storeroom of the Long Branch. She had given Hattie and her daughter warm water and then found the girl a skirt and blouse that were both warmer and more appropriate to the prairie town. The stained blue silk was folded in on top of a variety of Kitty's clothes from a time when she was younger and more slender. There hadn't been anything available that would have fit the older woman so a wash, a clothes brush, and a warm shawl had been made to make do.
So there they all were at last – happy, relieved, awkward, and uncomfortable.
Matt broke the tension. "Soup smells mighty good, Kitty. When will lunch be ready?"
"About an hour. Why don't you take the boys out and show them the ranch?"
That left only the three women. Kitty took a deep breath. "Let's sit down and talk it over. I've got questions, and I bet you do, too."
Coffee settles a variety of ills, and Hattie took over the biscuit making as soon as she saw what Kitty was about. That left Kitty and Carolina sitting across the kitchen table studying each other, and allowed Hattie to answer questions while her hands were busy and her back was turned.
"I knew we were set for trouble, Miss Kitty, when Mr. Russell comed back to town last summer. He been gone for some long time. Years. Since Carolina was a little girl, but he showed up at our place one night and acted just like he was comin' home. I tried to get Carolina away to Miss Lucy's or Mr. Critt's but they wouldn't take her." Hattie shook her head and patted out her dough.
"I didn't want to go work for them, mamma. You know that." Carolina intervened.
"What did you want to do?" Kitty asked curious.
"I'm not sure. I liked serving in the restaurant, and meeting people. I like sewing, and I'm good at it. Miss Woodhouse, she wanted me to come to Boston and go to school. Be a schoolteacher someday. I liked the part about going to school, but not about teaching. Chalk and little children and caught up in one stuffy room all day. No thank you."
"Well, you surely seem to have gotten some education. Miss Woodhouse was a teacher?"
"Teacher at the Freedmen's School," Hattie answered proudly. "Cairo and Carolina both went there. They can read and write and do sums, the both of them."
The girl made a face. "They didn't want to take me in – that first day. Even with Cairo holding my hand and saying he was my brother. Miss Woodhouse thought I was white. That was the first time I realized anyone would think that."
"But not the last," sighed her mother.
Kitty sat quiet and let them squabble. It became quickly clear that talking to the two of them together wasn't going to be a worthwhile activity. Her eyes devoured her… sister? Half sister. While it was clearly true, those weren't words anyone in New Orleans would let out of their mouths. The resemblance was striking enough to be obvious to anyone who saw them both. Carolina's hair was darker, more auburn than true red, and not as smooth. But that could as easily be a lack of care and washing as a real difference in texture. The girl was much more slender, but then so had Kitty been twenty years before, and a hand shorter. Her eyes were the same deep blue and her skin a shade creamier than Kitty's milk white fairness. Kitty wondered if she freckled. She would have to ask, but not now.
Lunch wasn't as difficult as she imagined. Once convinced that they were all to sit down together at the big kitchen table, no one made a fuss, although it was Cairo who served out the dishes of soup and plated and served the biscuits before taking a chair near the stove. The men were more willing to talk than the women. Caleb, it seemed, didn't much care where he worked as long as he worked with horses. For the moment at least, he was perfectly willing to stay at Kincaid and help out however he could.
Cairo, nearly ten years younger, had different plans. "You all know about Nicodemus?" he asked directing the question to Matt.
"Pharisee who came in the night to hear Jesus preach because he was ashamed to be seen with him in the daytime," was Matt's prompt reply.
"You know your Bible, Mr. Dillion. That's just right. But I'm talking about the town of Nicodemus." He hesitated a moment. "Here in Kansas?"
Matt stopped eating to look at him and then nodded his head. "I do. You goin' there?"
"I am thinking about it, sir. Can you tell me what it's really like?"
Matt buttered a biscuit as he considered. "Depends on what you want to do. There's good farmland. There's city lots too, if you have money to buy one and start a business. I've only been there once. Picked up a thief they had arrested and took him to Hays for trial. I was made welcome, but…. it's an odd feeling for a white man. More like riding into an Indian camp than into a town."
"What is it, Matt? Some kind of Indian reservation?"
"No. It's a Negro town, Kitty. Up north of Hays between Stockton and Hill City. Four five hundred people. All black. Mostly freed slaves from Kentucky or Tennessee or up from the south. That were you want to settle, Cairo?"
"I want to go there, Mr. Dillon, and see what it is like. I have been thinking on it for more than a year now. Mamma and I, we ran a restaurant in New Orleans. Busy place. Good food and good business. But there we could only serve colored people. If I wanted to do more, make more money, I needed to go work in a white man's restaurant. I had offers, sir, but I chose not to take them. In Nicodemus, now…"
"You would still be cooking for a colored community, Cairo. It's just that would be the only community there is. You have money to start a business?"
Cairo looked at his mother. Hattie nodded. "We have money, sir. Enough to start. I took all of our money out of Mr. Critt's bank before we left New Orleans. And mamma dumped the cash from under the counter in her pockets when Mr. Dupre came to take her away. We lost a great deal, Mr. Dillon, but we have nearly $300 to start again."
Kitty looked at him in speculation, "You all want to go there?"
"I do not. I will not." Carolina spoke out in cool anger.
Hattie looked around the kitchen. "I would like to stay here, Miss Kitty. I'd like to stay here at least for a little while and not be afraid all the time."
"Part of the reason I want to go is to find a place where my sister can find a good man to marry. A black man. A place where she can be part of a free community of colored people."
"I will not go there, Cairo, and let you marry me to some old man who wants to show off a light-skinned wife. I won't go and you can't make me."
"We will see, little girl. We'll just see." Cairo stood and started collecting plates and bowls from the table. Hattie went to the sink and poured hot water from the kettle into the dishpan. Kitty made no move to stop them. Work, even if it was only doing dishes, was something that made them feel better about where they were.
10 - 10 - 10 - 10 - 10
It was a long, long, long afternoon. Kitty showed the women the house. Hattie's smile grew broader room by room. This was the kind of house she wanted for her lady. Carolina seemed most interested in the bathroom, but when Kitty offered her a bath, Hattie squelched the idea firmly. "We heat some water in our room tonight, Miss Kitty. We be fine."
Cookie sent Tony up from the cook house with two rabbits, still autumn fat, and Cairo took them out back to skin while Hattie worked her way through the pantry smelling and tasting as she assembled ingredients. Kitty would have made a stew, but the fricassee that Cairo presented them served with mashed and buttered potatoes and carrots glazed with honey pleased them all and left Matt assured that this man cooked a deal better than anyone in Dodge City.
The Dillons retired early. It seemed the only polite thing to do. Snow was falling heavily, and the kitchen and it's adjoining bedroom seemed to be the only place the Potters were comfortable. Matt turned from closing the door of their room to find Kitty wilting into his arms. He smoothed her hair and kissed her face gently before gathering her up to fill his lap in the big chair by the fire.
"You still happy about this, Kitty?" he asked.
"Happy? No. Satisfied? Very much. It's going to take some getting used to. And Carolina… that's going to be a problem."
They were silent for a long while. Matt stroked her hair and neck where she cuddled against him. After a time he spoke a little hesitantly, "Kitty?"
"Hmm?"
"I was upset this morning. When Frank… wiped away your tears."
Kitty resettled herself to look at him. "All these years, and now you're upset about Frank touching me? He didn't even kiss me." She gave him a stare. "And he usually does. Is this because we're married now?" Her question and her surprise were genuine.
"No. Not that. It's just…" Matt ran a hand lightly across her cheek. "I'm not jealous of Frank touching you. Comforting you. I'm just, well, disappointed that I didn't do it myself. I wanted to. But I didn't. I was glad he did, but, well, I suppose I feel like I need to learn to do things like that myself."
"Ahhh." It was a drawn out sound followed by enough silence to begin to be awkward. "Matt, you treat me different than Frank does. You make me feel different. There's a part of Frank that always expects me to break down, to need to be taken care of. It's the way he is. It's the way he feels about women. You know how he was constantly protecting Maria. And touching – well, that's how he is same as it's how Annie is. It's just his way. Now you, on the other hand, you make me feel stronger than I really am because you expect me to be strong. I… I didn't behave very well this morning. I don't quite ever remember being that mad, and you know I get mad sometimes, Matt."
There was a chuckle then. "Yes, I do know that, Kitty."
"But you just stood there behind me. And you put your arm around my shoulders. Right there in front of everybody. And I felt I could be strong because you were strong. I felt like I could control my anger because you controlled yours." She pulled back a little to look at him. "You were angry, weren't you?"
"I was. For you. For Carolina. And for Hattie too. She must have suffered a great deal."
Kitty stood up and turned her back for Matt to unhook her dress. She began preparing for bed. "I've been thinking on it. Thinking all day. Carolina just turned fifteen. So she must have been born in seventy-five. He was out here in seventy-four. He must have headed right back to New Orleans, and to… to Hattie. Why would he do that, Matt?"
"You think he did it to get back at you? Maybe. You'll have to ask Hattie if you really want to know, but, Kitty… people don't talk about it much, but it wasn't… uncommon. Hattie belonged to your family. She clearly cared for your mother and for you. Do you think…"
"Do I think it had been going on for a long time? Do I think my mother knew? Do I think maybe she's my mother's sister the same way Carolina is mine? I don't know, Matt. Maybe I'll find out. Maybe I don't need to know. Maybe Hattie won't want me to." Kitty slipped a nightgown over her head and sat down to brush her hair. "You got a lot of clothes on, cowboy. You plannin' on stayin' up all night?"
Matt began pulling off his boots. "I could if you wanted me to. But it's an awful cold night. You might get chilled."
"I might at that," she said consideringly, "Maybe you could keep me warm?"
"Now there's a good idea."
10 - 10 - 10 - 10 - 10
Marshal Reardon was keeping a weather eye out for a stranger. So he was quietly aware when a well-dressed man stepped off the train a week or so before Thanksgiving and asked, in the accents of the deep south, for directions to a good hotel. What Frank didn't see, or didn't notice, was a down-at-the-heels older man, his face pale beneath the red of the cold, chaffing wind, who rode into town on a broken down nag. The second man, however, carried a gun, the first did not.