Chapter 13

I pushed myself and the horse after I left Jake's place. I only stopped that night when it got too dark to make it safe to continue. When I woke up the next morning I felt bad. I had a headache and felt feverish. None the less I mounted up and continued my trip. I continued to push myself and my horse in the following days trying to get back home. I vaguely remember riding though various towns and finally reaching my house. I saw Elizabeth running out of the house and that was all.

I don't remember what happened in the next few days. When I became aware again I was in bed at my house. Elizabeth was taking a wet cloth off my forehead. She saw my eyes open and began crying.

"Thank God, you're all right! I thought I'd lost you!"

I tried to speak and couldn't. Elizabeth saw my distress and handed me a glass of water from the bedside table. I drank thirstily and managed to ask, "What's wrong?"

She began crying again and ran out. I tried to sit up and follow her but couldn't find enough strength to do so. As I was making a second attempt to sit up, Josh walked in. "Dad, I'm glad you're back, but you came back to trouble. A new Baptist preacher has been going around talking about what we are allowing people to do around here. The bank is being sued by several depositors and the Salem merchants are refusing to do business with anyone associated with us. Most of the students have been pulled from the school by their parents. We can't sell our crops and we can't find anyone to help us with the harvest. I don't know what we are going to do!"

Corrie walked in wiping her hands. She placed her hand on Josh's shoulder and guided him out the door. She placed her hand on my forehead and checked my temperature. "You look like you'll live. I wasn't too sure when you rode up four days ago. You fell off your horse and looked like you were dead. Your wives were afraid they would lose you and everything else."

I had known intellectually that death was no stranger to the people of this time, but I hadn't realized how dependent the women and children of the time were on their husband's continued health. I found that while I had been gone several lawsuits had been filed against the bank by people in Salem. My wives had tried to settle them but the courts wouldn't let them represent me in the courts. I was going to have to appear myself before the court in Salem. Willy had managed to delay the trials until I got back with the excuse that I was serving as a representative of the court while I sought English Jim's arrest.

Without me the family faced losing everything since I hadn't left a will. The court would have appointed a trustee to oversee the estate as the women wouldn't have been allowed to control it. I found this out while I recovered from what sounded to me like lockjaw from the description that Corrie gave me. She had called on Miz Anna for help nursing me and had given me all the solution #4 I could swallow along with various herbal remedies Miz Anna made.

I felt no effects from the lockjaw after I healed, but I was listless for several days afterward. The preacher was claiming the illness showed God's anger at the way I let women and blacks behave.

I found out when I turned in my expense sheets that I no longer was a deputy, as the sheriff and judge that had hired me were no longer in office and they had hired someone else to cover my area while I was away. My expenses were denied in many cases, but I didn't really care. What made me mad was when I left, the sheriff told me to take off my gun, as civilians were not allowed to carry visible guns in public. I told him he was welcome to take my gun off if he felt lucky. He blustered for a moment but then backed down. It was just as well he did, because I felt like hitting something right then.

I did hit one man who made a comment about my marriage when I was in town. He was lucky that he wasn't wearing a gun or I would have killed him. I did leave him on the ground though. After that people walked around me as I went around. I found that I couldn't buy anything in the stores. The shopkeepers ignored me when I tried. I finally gave up in disgust and went back to our township.

When I got back in Cincinnati I talked to Willy and Corrie and found that this was being done to many of my friends. I must have been as grouchy as a bear, because even people who had stood by me began to avoid me. Even my children wouldn't come near for a while. It took Elizabeth to break me out of my mood.

"Alex XXXXX! Either you act like the man you were or we and the babies are leaving! We don't deserve to be treated like this and neither do the few friends you have left!"

"That's the problem. I thought we had a lot more friends than it seems we do." I was especially mad since I had done so much for the people of the town. It seemed that all I had done was nothing compared to some ignorant preacher's ravings in his sermons.

Elizabeth just glared at me, "They're scared. None of them have the money or the knowledge you do. They have to live here. Without someone to buy their crops they won't make it. This is all they have."

Elizabeth's tirade succeeded in breaking me out of my depression. I had to go to Portland but finally found workers to help harvest the crops and managed to sell them to a merchant sailing to Russian Alaska. When I had an attorney look at the suits he snorted and quickly got them thrown out. I thought about what my friends had told me about the preacher's sermons. He went from church to church on his circuit and was continuing to preach against Cincinnati and the way we allowed blacks and women to participate in business. What made me mad was he attacked my family by saying that we were to blame for everything that went wrong. I decided that I would look at the Bible and do some research. It took me over a month but I finally found something that I thought I could use to repute his hatemongering.

The next Sunday I and my family attended the Baptist church in Salem where he was preaching. He began his sermon with a statement on sin;

"And now, my dear brethren and congregation, the first proposition of the text treats upon the subject of justification, and I wish to give a clear explanation upon the subject, so that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened; that you may know the hope of your calling; for some have not had the knowledge of justification;-- hearken and hear what justification is: Justification is to be made free from sin and become reconciled to God through the atoning merits of Jesus Christ, which made a perfect reconciliation between God and man, and not by any work which we have done; for we are saved by Grace through faith in the Redeemer's blood. Therefore, if any of you think that you have done good enough to free you from sin without faith in the Redeemer's blood, ye are yet under the penalty of the law. And again, the law cannot have any compassion upon sin. Why? For sin is the transgression of the law. Hark! And again, the holy law saith, "The soul that sinneth shall die."

He that committeth sin is of the devil, for whosoever is born of God does not sin, for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin, because he is born of God; and again, ye are saved by grace through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast, for men by nature are children of divine wrath, but the law is holy, just and good. Whoever of you that are justified by the law ye are fallen from grace." Here he looked directly at me where I was sitting with my family.