Durand is a Texas town on Jefferson Kyle Kidd’s route where a public newspaper reading collapses into a political brawl. Its mercantile, crowded with listeners and watched by a United States Army soldier, becomes a stage for arguments over the Printing Bill and the state’s political divisions. When the gathering ends in wreckage, Jefferson Kyle Kidd leaves Durand that night with Johanna Leonberger, uncertain what trouble the road ahead will bring.

Setting and arrival

At the broom and stave mill, Johanna Leonberger attends to domestic work while Jefferson Kyle Kidd prepares for the town. Blankets hang on lines; harnesses are thrown over the wagon’s gunwales; black beans and bacon simmer on a small stove. The mill worker eyes the gold lettering on the Curative Waters wagon and its bullet holes with suspicion. He has noticed that Johanna has taken the horses to graze along the banks of the Bosque River near Durand, and remarks that something is wrong with her. Jefferson Kyle Kidd challenges the judgment without explaining her circumstances.

The town’s public mood is already politically charged. For his reading, Jefferson Kyle Kidd selects articles different from those he had read in Dallas, choosing material he hopes will be more soothing. His papers include reports of floods along the Susquehanna and railroad bonds in Illinois, alongside newspapers and magazines from several regions. He avoids the subjects that could inflame the room: Hamilton, Davis, Black suffrage in Texas, military occupation, and the Peace Policy. The choice shows his effort to make the reading an occasion for shared attention rather than another argument over state politics.

The mercantile gathering

The mercantile fills early. A United States Army soldier stationed outside the door requires each man to open his coat and show that he is not carrying a handgun. Some are armed despite the prohibition. The sergeant says nothing about the illegal weapons, instead directing their owners to leave them on a bench; by the time the room is full, seven or eight revolvers and a small two-shot pistol are outside.

Inside, men and women sit in stiff-backed chairs or stand at the counters. The proprietor prevents them from leaning against the glass cases. Jefferson Kyle Kidd does not deliberately scan the crowd, but sees its divisions at the edge of his vision: groups regard one another with wary, warning looks. Around them are goods shipped from distant places, including boots, suspenders, hair dye, ironstone plates, and kerosene lamps with green shades. Thunder approaches as Jefferson Kyle Kidd lays out his newspapers and Associated Press sheets.

He opens, as usual, with greetings to the town’s establishment and news about the roads. He reports that the roads along the Red River are good, though he cannot say whether the Little Wichita has risen again since he crossed it more than a week earlier. The Brazos ferry is not running, perhaps because it has been washed away, but the landings on either side are sound and the road from the Brazos to Durand is in good condition. He pauses, flattening the papers with one veined hand, alert to the possibility that someone might raise an earlier firearms altercation. Instead, the audience is preoccupied with other conflicts.

Political violence and destruction

The argument erupts over the Printing Bill. A man cries out that Davis will close the Dallas Courier and denounces the proposed expenditure of tax money on radical newspapers. Two men stand face to face, shouting about Hamilton and Davis. Attempts to separate them draw others into the struggle, while women leave the building; some retrieve their husbands’ or relatives’ handguns from the bench outside and carry them away. The United States Army sergeant listens to the shouts about military rule, corruption in Austin, and the bill, but does not intervene.

The dispute becomes a physical fight as rain beats down. A glass case splinters, the coin can is overturned, and people trample the money. The hanging kerosene lamps swing while chairs are knocked down and the walls shake. One man breaks a Wedgwood commemorative plate over another’s head; another takes off his belt and swings its buckle. The two principal combatants, the hotel owner and a young schoolteacher, fight their way through the door and out into the street. The rest follow, leaving Jefferson Kyle Kidd at the lectern among the wreckage.

Night departure

Jefferson Kyle Kidd surveys the damaged room, folds his newspapers into his portfolio, and breathes out. He has collected his fee for the reading, but none of Durand’s businesses is open. Seeking .38 ammunition from the proprietor would risk being mistaken for a man preparing to attack someone from the opposing political faction. He has eight revolver bullets, dove shot, gunpowder, and a supply of dimes; those will have to suffice. His decision to leave is shaped not simply by the brawl, but by the suspicion that even an ordinary request for ammunition could acquire political meaning.

He chooses a night departure, as he had done before in Dallas. In the rain-damp dark he collects Pasha and Fancy from the banks of the Bosque River near Durand, changes into his traveling clothes in the stave mill, and eats black beans and bacon. He calls softly for Johanna Leonberger. The storm has mostly passed, and he harnesses Fancy to the light spring wagon beneath a clearing sky. Johanna comes from the shed row carrying a burlap-wrapped bundle. Jefferson Kyle Kidd is too hurried to ask about it before putting out the candle lantern and driving away from Durand at eleven at night.

The wagon moves onto the moonlit road at a steady trot, with Pasha following behind. The narration gives their pace as seven miles an hour, but Jefferson Kyle Kidd does not know which town or county comes next, or what new trouble they will meet. Durand’s episode thus ends not with a resolution of its political conflict, but with an exit: the broken mercantile remains behind, while the travelers carry their uncertainties and Johanna’s unexplained bundle into the night.