GAVEL GAMUT

By Jim Redwine

UNANIMOUS FOR MURDER, A NOVEL

CHAPTER SIX

    Jenny knew the source of Emma’s melancholy that arose when Emma’s body was not busy. William Combs had forced the sixteen year old Emma to abort their child in 1877, and Emma could not forgive herself. She dreamed of what her child would have looked like and what he, Emma was convinced it was a boy, would have meant to Emma.

While she was usually cheerful, seeing mothers with small children was difficult for her. Jenny knew Emma loved her and took no pleasure from men, but she also knew Emma wanted more from life than what they had. And since Jenny had herself aborted two children during her career, she understood Emma’s gnawing hunger. Jenny had been able to make her accommodations as the years passed, especially after she and Emma had found each other. But Emma’s young body ached for childbirth and her mind gave her no peace. Emma was the victim of her biology and William Combs who had destroyed any desire she had for men, if money were not the object.

Jenny and Emma often discussed this void in both of their lives and dreamed of ways to fill it. With Jenny, her self-induced abortions had assured she could no longer bear children. Emma was still young and Combs had, at least, taken her to a physician friend of his in nearby Evansville for the procedure. Emma’s permanent damage was only to her psyche.

This topic filled their thoughts that Thursday in May, 1881 when the women had no business appointments and decided to have a picnic at their favorite spot on the Tall Grass Prairie about eight miles north of Pawhuska. A spring formed a pool of bubbling cool water that rose through the sandstone and created a rippling stream among the blackjacks and cottonwood trees.

Emma had been taken to the spring by the middle aged rancher, Wiley Dillard, who owned the spring and the fifty thousand acres surrounding it. The ranch was within the Osage Nation between Pawhuska and the small settlement started by Jake Bartles just east of the Nation. Dillard had convinced himself he had a special relationship with the lithe and beautiful young Emma. His wife, Dahlia, was about the same age as Emma, but unless she wanted to pry some money from the controlling and stingy Dillard, Dahlia rebuffed most of her husband’s advances and kept the insanely jealous rancher guessing by her actions around the ranch hands and even Ed Hill when he would work on the ranch when extra help was needed. However, Hill did his best to keep his distance as the lessons learned from the 1878 lynchings in Mt.Vernon, Indiana were seared into his memory. Further, although he thought no one but he was aware, Hill had a burning desire for Emma who not only was close, beautiful and constantly nice to Ed, but who also saved his life and still held the knowledge to cost him his life.

As for the rancher’s wife, she was well aware of what her husband thought was a secret relationship with Emma. She found it amusing that her stingy husband had to pay for what she gave to the occasional cowboy. She particularly enjoyed fantasies about Ed Hill and the reaction her flirting with Hill had on her husband who had always hated Negroes, especially since he had fought for the Confederacy under Cherokee General Stand Watie in a losing cause. However, Dillard could not fathom any White woman, especially his pretty young wife, having anything to do with a Black man. The mere possibility, fueled by his wife’s occasional attentions to the passive Ed Hill, filled the wealthy rancher with rage.

Jenny told Ed to get the buckboard and team hooked up while she and Emma prepared a lunch of bacon wrapped in cornpone with sweet tea to drink. Because they were going to be away from nosey onlookers the women did not worry about keeping separate food and utensils from Ed Hill. After years in their jobs they were not fastidious about whether Ed’s blackness might rub off on them.

Ed drove the horse from the front seat and Emma and Jenny sat on the seat behind him. The picnic basket rode between the seats as Jenny teased Hill about his muscles being too large for the thin cotton shirt and pants and his hair looking like buffalo wool. Hill just generally took it because he knew Jenny would stand up for him against anyone else and because he was happy just being close to Emma. He did gently retort that, “Miss Jenny ought ‘ta member she talkin ‘ta da only one in de wagon dat could fix it if a wheel come off out here on dis prairie running over all deese blasted sandstones”.

When they arrived at the spring, Ed unhitched the horse and let it drink while Jenny and Emma spread the blue and white checked tablecloth upon the sandstone ledge ringing the spring. Emma had packed a jar of wild plum preserves she had canned the previous fall, and the three of them sat dangling their feet in the cool water as they ate bacon and cornpone slathered with tangy preserves while they passed the jar of sweet tea around.

When Ed left the two women by the spring to explore the old shack that served the ranch as a line shed, Jenny said, “You know he can’t pry his eyes off of you when he thinks we’re not watching him, Emma. He is too shy and polite to ever say anything, but he really likes you.”

“Oh, Jenny, don’t be silly. Ed knows about us and he knows what I do. He’s just our friend.”

“Well, he would like to be more than your friend. He just knows the white men would string him up for trying to be with a white woman, even one like us.”

Emma was surprised to hear herself linked to Ed in such a way. She had been so relieved to escape from William Combs and so excited to be loved by Jenny she had no thoughts of men as anything but customers since they had left Indiana. It made no difference to Emma who or what any man was; she wanted none of them. She did care for Ed as a friend, and he was strong and kind and looked out for her.

“I know you desperately want a child, Emma. I do too. Have you given up on ever getting pregnant again?”

“I guess I could. It would probably just happen eventually. But, we have to keep working. How would I know who the father was? I sure wouldn’t want to have a baby by most of the men we see.”

“Well, I could support us alone for a couple of months. But we’d still have little choice in who it was. What we need is to be sure we, especially you, would want to have a child by one of these wranglers or maybe your rich rancher. We know he’d never acknowledge the child or help, but we would at least know what kind of person the baby’s father was. Wiley Dillard might not produce too ugly a son. I have wondered why he and Dalia haven’t had children. They have been married for at least two years since Dillard’s first wife died before we came to Pawhuska. Of course, he didn’t have any by her either. Maybe he’s not a good candidate.”

“Quit it, Jenny! I don’t want to have his child. No, I want my son’s father to be strong and kind. It might be nice if he weren’t married. Of course, girls like us don’t have many choices. One thing about Ed Hill, I bet a son by him would never be bullied by the likes of William Combs and the rest of that lynch mob back in Indiana.”

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