These Honored Dead (A Lincoln and Speed Mystery #1) - Jonathan F. Putnam Page 0,50
say that might help us figure out who killed them, or at least why?”
“Abigail said Lilly was very bitter about the circumstances that had landed them in the poorhouse. Apparently their father farmed land belonging to a speculator who lived next door to them. A few years ago, the speculator moved and sold the land and the new owner ejected them. Their father couldn’t find a new situation. They’d always managed to scrape by in the past, but when they lost their farm, they had nothing to eat, nowhere to live. That’s what led them to the poorhouse.”
“What was the name of the speculator?”
“I asked Abigail and she didn’t know. Would there be ownership records somewhere?”
“There might be in one of the land offices. The Edwardsville one is probably the one with jurisdiction. That’s a long way south, near St. Louis. Or maybe the one in Vandalia would have them. The land offices sprung up patchwork with the land boom, so it’s often hard to figure out which has jurisdiction where.” I steered the chaise around a particularly large hole in the road. “Did Abigail tell you anything else?”
“Only that that repulsive man, the master, doesn’t keep his hands to himself.” Martha made a face.
“I gathered as much,” I said. “From the sound of it, though, Lilly was able to defend herself.”
“Abigail said she was a fighter, every day of her life.”
“Which raises the question, again,” I said. “Why didn’t she fight on her last one?”
Martha was fidgeting with the canvas saddlebags in her lap, and I suddenly realized they were empty. I thought back to the scene in the sickroom as we’d left the poorhouse. “What was in those when we set off this morning?” I asked.
“Smocks, shirts, underclothes. A few blankets. I’d chosen pretty well. I think Abigail and her family and the other families there will make excellent use of them.”
“But where had you gotten all those goods?” I asked.
“From your shelves, of course.”
“Martha!”
“What? Don’t tell me you’re opposed to doing charity for your fellow man and woman. Besides, you yourself told me the other day your goods weren’t moving as quickly as before with the economic situation. Well, I moved some goods for you.”
“But I want to move the goods and get paid for them.”
She shrugged as if to say that was my concern, not hers.
A little later she exclaimed, “Look how dark it is.”
I cast my eyes skyward and saw she was right. A giant dark purple thunderhead rose in the western skies in front of us like a coiled sea monster. I realized the sun had been obscured for the entire trip homeward. After the dim confines of the poorhouse, the cloud cover had not registered. But now the air around us was getting perceptibly heavier and darker by the moment.
“Where do we shelter, in case there’s a thunderstorm?” my sister asked, trying hard to keep any worry out of her voice.
Together we surveyed the rolling prairie. The tall grasses waved as a sudden gust blew through from our faces. Hickory whinnied. As far as the eye could see in any direction, there were no signs of human habitation. Indeed, there was not a single tree nor a bush taller than a man’s shoulder anywhere within five miles of us.
“There’s not going to be a thunderstorm,” I said. “It was dark the other afternoon as well and no rain fell. We’ve been in a drought all summer.”
I looked skyward again. A giant drop of rain landed in my eye.
CHAPTER 19
Three fierce thunderbolts arced out of the thunderhead in front of us in quick succession. The first two shot to earth, setting off explosions that reverberated along the darkened prairie. The third seemed to come into contact with a dense cloud, for it smashed into a number of smaller streams, the electric fluid scattering to the ground like dew racing down a spider’s web.
Enormous drops of warm rainwater pelted down. The sound of the rain hitting the prairie grasses filled our ears, a constant high-pitched hiss accompanied now and then by deeper expectorations of rolling thunder.
My traveling cloak was soaked through. Martha’s long locks were plastered to her cheeks and the back of her neck. A violent wind whipped in our faces. Water streamed off Hickory’s coat and down her tail.
“We’ve no choice but to push ahead,” I yelled into Martha’s ear. “Perhaps there’ll be a farmhouse. I think I remember one from our outward journey.”