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Chapter 23 Rest duncan was troubled five days later. after a day planting sugarcane with Sabine behind the plow, Duncan loaded his pistol and took it into the field. It was the first time he had fired it since he left the army in May 1865. He does not mention what prompted him to test the weapon but it could have been a report that Henry Barrow was back in Liberty , causing Duncan to prepare to defend himself. Whether or not Barrow was on the prowl, a hard freeze turned heavy rain into sleet over Liberty, putting a temporary halt to corn planting and most other work except timber hauling . Wind and rain pummeled Liberty County so hard that much of Duncan ’s fencing was destroyed. The Trinity rose in its banks and Duncan feared the rough-cut logs he kept stacked by the river were in danger. But the spring equinox brought back the sun and things gradually returned to normal in the Duncan fields and at his lumberyard. Unfortunately for Duncan at this point in his life, “normal” also meant recurrence of high fever and severe pain. His symptoms ebbed and flowed in their virulence, so he was able to function in the respites. When he felt better, he was more interested in hunting turkeys than in work. The rains returned and Duncan says “everything in [the] field looks like it was washed away. Never saw harder rain fall than fell on me yesterday evening as I came out from Liberty.” The normally healthy Sabine got sick and Duncan missed having his help for almost a week, even though Sabine climbed out of bed for a few hours on three days to help cultivate a corn field and potato patch. Provost Marshal Mayer invited Duncan and five other Liberty men to his house for supper and poker at midweek. “We had [a] fine red fish supper and ice cream,” Duncan says. “I stayed all night and slept. [The] others played cards.” It was the only time William Duncan ever recorded that he slept through a card game, proof-positive of how awful he felt. A4950.indb 157 A4950.indb 157 10/17/08 8:54:48 AM 10/17/08 8:54:48 AM 158 Chapter 23 Duncan gave his men the day off on Good Friday and everyone except Sabine, George, and Duncan himself took advantage of it. While Duncan planted new cotton and corn beds, Sabine and George plowed ditches along the edges of the field so standing water from the next heavy rain would drain before damaging the crops. Duncan, Emma, and Kate were late to Mass on Easter Sunday and Duncan reports, “After it was over [we] all went to [the] Methodist Church.” He reports, “I did not do much” on Easter Monday. The following day, he did less. “I am very unwell this morning; tryed [sic] to work in gardin [sic]. Could not. Came to the house and lay down a while. Could not eat breakfast. Had considerable fever and severe pains all over.” Duncan’s health was deteriorating at an increasingly rapid rate. In addition to chronic high fever and pain he blamed on kidney and liver disease, the laceration he suffered on his hand the previous July was badly infected. He was miserable: “have fever every day . . . suffering very much with hand . . . suffered greatly with thumb . . . doctored my hand with hot lie [sic] and egg and salt and turpentine.” Duncan took every remedy he could find, trying to win relief. Nothing worked. His panic grew more intense with the pain. William Duncan was dying. Not from an old war wound or a bullet fired by Henry Barrow, but from a septic infection of the cut on his hand. He did not admit it to himself and it is doubtful he said much about it to others until the end. Yet he knew his time was short and so probably did those around him. His immune system was shot, unable to fight the infection and permitting his unhealthy lifestyle to catch up with him. Thousands of mosquitoes, ticks, and horseflies had injected their venom in him while he worked cattle for years on the plains, bayous, and rivers along the Atascosito Trail. Riding his horse through oppressive heat, numbing cold, and torrential rain on thousands of days had robbed his stamina. A frontier diet of unsanitary water, often-spoiled salted meat, and bug-infested biscuits had eaten away...

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