Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

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The other man was mortally wounded and lay there in yard, at the far end of the plank walk, until morning, Things had happened so quickly, and so disastrously to their ranks, that the mob believed the house was occupied by armed men. And, after firing another volley into the home, many of the bullets this time penetrating the bed under which my mother, with her babies, lay flat on the floor, the mob withdrew to a safe distance—but sentinels were kept posted in the nearby woods until morning. All told, more than one hundred shots were fired into the house.

And now a man from the outside dashed in at the back -the door by which father had made his exit. Hurriedly he bolted the door from within.

My mother, peering out from her hiding place under bed, exclaimed in surprise, “You here, Sandy! What does this mean?” And before he could explain, she cried, “Oh, I smell smoke. Is the house on fire, Sandy?”

“Yes,” he said—”it was. And the tanyard buildings and shoeshop are now burning.”

Sandy Fouse, a Southern boy, had worked for my father in his tobacco fields, and lived at our home. My father grew tobacco on the side. I was told Sandy took a marked interest in me—a baby. God only knows why it was so, but it seems I was destined to become the favorite of the family. I had an older brother, too. But it seems I was the favorite of my Aunt Harriet who helped my mother, and the pet of Sandy who “wormed” the tobacco.