The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton Read Free Page B

for the sake of stealing what little clothing they were wearing. This father and sons were said to have killed over a hundred men, women, and children in two years or so, and heaven knows how many before they came to Illinois.
    Roland Brereton’s father, Lyman, came into Illinois from Kentucky right at the time when all of these killings were taking place, and sure enough, one evening, when they were pushing their way along a woodland track down in Edwards County, three men, one old and two young, jumped up in front of them, far gone in drink but deadly. Lyman was walking along at the horse’s head, Roland and his two brothers were in the wagon. The mother was behind the wagon, and their dog, some sort of Kentucky hound dog, was walking next to her. As soon as the three men approached, the dog slunk away.
    The brutes were greedy, and they paused to rummage through the Breretons’ belongings, though they didn’t pause long. Any object was good enough for them to kill for. But the dog had made good use of this moment to seek out Burton Brereton, Lyman’s brother, who was some yards ahead of the group. Burton was one of those Kentuckians who seemed to take after red Indians rather than his white ancestors, and he was there before they even heard him coming. The only one of all of them who saw him was the mother, and what she saw was Burton setting the muzzle of his long rifle against the back of one of the sons’ heads and pulling the trigger. At the very moment of the shot, she called out, "Praise the Lord!" at the top of her lungs. The old man and the other son got away and lived to kill other pioneers, but the Breretons got famous all the same for at least reducing their number.
    For all that, Lyman and Burton Brereton didn’t make much of a success in Illinois. According to Roland, they didn’t have any use for good prairie soil and stuck to little patches here and there in the woods. Like most Kentuckians, they were satisfied to shoot something for supper and have some greens with it. But Roland had made himself a nice prairie farm out east of Quincy, and the only Kentucky left in him was the everlasting d—ing of this and that, and the dogs that over-ran the place, all said to be descendants of the famous hound that saved the family. Roland wouldn’t have a slave, not even in the kitchen, but he’d die for the right of all his second and third cousins that he’d never met to own as many slaves as they wanted. I doubted he’d be called upon to offer his life, unless he died as a result of an apoplectic fit after a dispute with some d— abolitionist. But abolitionists weren’t all that common in Quincy, though there were some who sympathized with "poor Dr. Eels," as Beatrice called him, who’d tried to rescue an escaped slave who’d swum from the Missouri side, back when I was a little girl, and had been convicted on account of the wet clothes that were discovered in his buggy. Most people in Quincy didn’t go out of their way to help the swimmers from Missouri, but they didn’t go out of their way to return them across the river, either. My brother-in-law Horace once said, "My opinion is, it’s a pretty short swim over but a pretty long row back, and I just don’t want to make the effort." That was Quincy all over.
    I found Thomas Newton much milder and quieter than you’d think a "d— abolitionist" would be. He was so mild and quiet, in fact, that the first time I met him, when he came over to Harriet’s in the company of the neighbor Howell, who was also a d— abolitionist, I didn’t find out a thing about him. I was out at Harriet’s helping her boil bed linens about two weeks after my father’s funeral. I was trying to be as little use as I could be, but I could hardly fail to stir the boiling clothes, my assigned labor. It was a hot day, and I had tied up my skirts to keep them out of the fire and rolled up my sleeves to keep them out of my way. My hair was so heavy with damp from the work