The Rocking R Ranch

by Tim Washburn

  “About two hours old, accordin’ to Win.”

  Arturo mumbled something else that Percy didn’t catch. “We’ll be okay, but you need to be ready to man that gun at a moment’s notice.”

  “Sí, jefe,” Arturo said.

  Percy let the wagon roll by then rode back about a quarter of a mile to check their back trail. He didn’t see anything, but that was of little comfort—you never saw an Indian coming until they were on top of you. Especially with the Comanche. The planet hadn’t seen anything like them since the rule of Genghis Khan. They had driven the Apaches out, scattering them all over hell and gone, demolished the Spanish army, and made Mexico their own playground. To build a buffer between themselves and the Comanche, the Mexican government had offered free land to anyone who had wanted to settle down and start a homestead. Four thousand acres free for the taking and, sure there might be some Indians around, but that’s just the cost of doing business. Offer anything for free and people would flock to the place, and it had been no different with the offer of free land. Americans had arrived in droves and the Mexicans wondered if they’d made a terrible mistake, but then the raids started, and every tiny step west was followed by a rapid retreat to the east, the line of westward expansion never moving more than a mile or two at any given time.

  Yes, the Comanches might be Indians, but they were in a category all of their own. They viewed all outsiders as the enemy, killing and mutilating the men, raping and killing the women, and hauling the orphaned children back to their lairs for indoctrination into the Comanche way. But old Father Time has a way of catching up and much like the way they drove the others off the land, they, too, were now facing annihilation as the westward expansion pressed ever onward. Percy didn’t know how it would all play out or if there would be any Comanches left alive to see the final outcome. Not that he was all that worried about it. His only concern was getting Emma back and if that required killing a few Comanches, then so be it. He took one more long look around at their back trail, turned his horse, and spurred her into a lope to catch up to the wagon.

  CHAPTER 29

  Frances had asked Jesse and Eli to dig a grave in the family plot while she tended to Mary’s body. She had thought about asking Abby and Rachel to help but decided they had enough on their plates at the moment. Besides, Frances had done this more times than she wanted to count. That’s just the way life was and as the matriarch of the family she often took it upon herself to prepare a body for burial. She dipped her small towel into the bowl of soapy water, wrung out the excess, and gently cleaned Mary’s face. Frances had no idea what Mary’s affliction had been, but her once tense and contorted limbs were now finally at rest. She couldn’t recall anyone else in the family who had suffered with the same disease and she wondered if it was something passed down on Mary’s side. That thought spurred worry about Mary and Percy’s children, her grandchildren, and she hoped the three never contracted whatever this illness had been.

  Once Mary’s face had been cleaned to her satisfaction, Frances picked up Mary’s brush and began brushing out her long, dark hair. Parting it down the middle, she arranged it so it fell softly on either side of Mary’s narrow face. Before her illness, Mary had been a very beautiful woman and had been fun-loving and amiable, and Frances knew her son had adored her. In fact, they all had. But the last two years had been a living hell for Percy and the children as Mary’s health began a downward spiral. The last few months were the worst as larger and larger doses of laudanum were needed just to take the edge off her immense pain.

  But all of that was over now and Frances was sad that Percy wasn’t there to see his wife finally at peace. Once Mary’s hair was acceptable, she pulled the blanket up to the top of her shoulders and stepped back for a final look before opening the bedroom door.

  Nine-year-old Franklin was the first to enter. To Frances, he looked the most like Percy and he stepped over and grabbed his grandmother’s hand as he stared at his mother. He was trying hard not to cry so she pulled him close.

  “She looks so peaceful,” he said.

  Twelve-year-old Chauncey was the next to enter the room. He shuffled across the floor and stood next to his brother. He favored his mother with his dark hair and blue eyes, and he spent most of the time looking down at his shoes, which was all right with her. If he didn’t want to look at his dead mother, he didn’t have to.

  Amanda was the last to enter. Her cheeks were red from crying, but her eyes were dry now. Frances thought the expression on her face was more one of relief than sadness. She had borne the brunt of her mother’s illness and if she could overcome her feelings of guilt Frances thought she’d be okay. Amanda stepped over to the bed, leaned down, and kissed her mother on the forehead. She stepped back, and Franklin walked hesitantly forward, leaned down, and quickly pecked his mother on the cheek.

  Chauncey remained rooted in place at his grandmother’s side.

  “Your mother is now pain free,” Frances said in a soft voice. “She’s gone on to a better place.” Frances was unsure if the better place she was speaking of existed, but the words were a comfort to her grandchildren. She’d let them decide for themselves if they wanted to believe in a supreme being.

  Amanda nodded as fresh tears bubbled up and wound down her cheeks. After a final glance at her mother she turned and walked out of the room. Chauncey followed shortly after, but Franklin lingered a little longer, his gaze locked on his mother’s face. Frances knelt down and wrapped her arms around him and whispered, “It’s okay to be sad.”

  He offered a tiny, hesitant nod and then burst into tears. She held him tight while he cried. Nine was a hard age for boys and the death of a parent was monumental. Frances knew this because she’d lost her father when she was young. Not as young as Franklin and her circumstances had been different—her father’s death was sudden—but she knew grief was universal no matter the age. As Franklin continued to cry, Frances found her mind drifting to her son Percy and her own death. She didn’t know when that day would come, and she didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about it, but Percy had turned into a stoic man who was reluctant to reveal his real emotions and, now with Mary gone, so, too, was Percy’s one outlet to unburden his most private thoughts. She did not want her son to become a bitter, detached man who trudged through life only because he had to.

  Franklin sniffled and wiped his eyes before looking at his grandmother. “Are we gonna bury her now?”

  “I think we’ll wait until sunset,” Frances said. “Do you think your mother would have liked that?”

  Franklin sniffled and nodded. “Yeah, she would.”

  Frances stood and took Franklin’s hand, led him from the bedroom, and pulled the door shut. She’d come back later to wrap Mary’s body in a clean, white sheet before the burial. The mood inside Percy and Mary’s house was somber, which was to be expected, but Frances didn’t want the children moping around the house the rest of the afternoon. She glanced at the clock on the mantel and decided they had three or four hours until the burial. Frances asked the boys if they wanted to go outside to play and both nodded, the relief apparent on their faces as they scampered out the door.

  Amanda exhibited no such exuberance and, instead, sat down wearily on a wooden chair at the dinner table. Frances grabbed another chair, pulled it close to her granddaughter, and sat. “I know what you’re thinkin’,” Frances said.

  “You don’t know,” Amanda said, rubbing her index finger along the ridges of a deep gash in the table.

  “I do know.” Frances reached out and covered her granddaughter’s hand with her own. “Look at me, please.”

  Amanda lifted her head and looked Frances in the eyes for a second before averting her gaze to some spot on the far wall.

  Frances waited patiently until Amanda looked her in the eye again. When she did, Frances said, “You did nothing wrong.”

  Amanda quickly looked away again and Frances waited. What she really wanted to do was grasp her granddaughter by the sho
ulders and try to shake some sense into her, but she knew that was the wrong approach. So, she waited.

  “I shouldn’t . . . I shouldn’t have done it,” Amanda stuttered, still staring at something on the far wall.

  “Done what?” Frances asked. “Did you force your mother to drink the laudanum?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Was it her decision, then?”

  Amanda wiped a stray tear from her cheek and looked at Frances. “Yes.”

  “That’s right. It was your mother’s choice.”

  “But I shouldn’t have put the full bottle on her nightstand. Pa asked me to do it and I should have . . . should have . . . said no.”

  “Can I ask you a question?” Frances asked.

  Amanda was back to staring at the wall. “I guess.”

  Frances put a hand on her granddaughter’s chin and gently moved her head until they were looking at each other. “If your mother could have gotten out of bed to get her own laudanum don’t you think she’d have done the same long ago?”

  “Maybe,” Amanda said. She tried to avert her gaze again, but Frances was having none of it. She gently moved Amanda’s head again, forcing her to look at her.

  “There’s no maybe about it. Your mother was suffering terribly. And I would make the same choice if I was in her predicament. We shoot animals to put them out of their misery and I sometimes wonder why we don’t do the same for our loved ones. Your mother was not going to get better and she’d had enough. She was brave to do what she did.”

  “But the Bible—”

  Frances put her finger to Amanda’s lips. “—doesn’t matter,” Frances said, finishing Amanda’s statement. “No one knows what happens when we’re gone, but I do know your mother is no longer suffering. And that’s all that matters. Does that make sense to you?”

  Amanda wiped away another tear and nodded.

  “Good. Put all that other nonsense out of your mind. What happened today was what needed to happen. And we’ll not talk about this foolishness again. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Amanda said, just barely loud enough to be heard.

  Frances leaned forward and kissed her granddaughter on the forehead. “I’m kinda hungry. Let’s go see what we can find in my kitchen. What do you say?”

  Amanda nodded. Frances stood, linked arms with Amanda, and groaned as she pulled Amanda out of her chair. “Either I’m getting too old or you’re getting too big for me to do that much longer.” She wrapped an arm around Amanda’s back and ushered her out of the house.

  * * *

  After supper, Frances slipped outside and told Eli and Jesse to bring the wagon around then continued on to Percy’s house to prepare Mary’s body for burial. Over the last few months Mary had hardly eaten, and she’d withered away to almost nothing. It wasn’t much of a chore for Frances to get the sheet under her. Once that task was completed and the body was somewhat centered in the middle of the sheet, Frances wrapped one side over and tucked the excess under the body. She then draped the other side of the sheet across and spent some time neatly folding the material a certain way before securing it closed with a single safety pin. Once Frances was satisfied, she exited the house and asked Eli and Jesse to carry the body to the wagon.

  The rest of the family began gathering by the wagon as Jesse climbed up onto the seat and took the reins. The two-horse team started off at a walk and the family fell in behind the wagon. It was a solemn procession to the family burial plot, which resided on a slight rise and was shaded by a large cottonwood tree. Eli and Jesse removed the body and carried it over to the gravesite, where two ropes had been stretched across the hole and would be used to lower Mary into her final resting place. Frances gathered up Mary’s three children and held them close as Eli returned to the wagon to retrieve the little-used family Bible.

  The cemetery represented all the sadness the Ridgeway clan had endured over the years. Buried there were grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, husbands, and wives, but the saddest were the children who were called away too soon. It was a place Frances didn’t visit very often because she’d lived through most of it. She and Cyrus had already picked the spot where they were to be buried together, but neither was in a big hurry to get there. If Frances had her way, she’d be buried in an unmarked grave, so no one could mourn over her. Life was hard enough to be fretting about those already gone.

  Eli returned, took his place beside Clara, opened the Bible, and began reading the 23rd Psalm as the sun settled on the edge of the world. When he finished the sun was dipping below the horizon, painting the clouds a pink and purplish hue, and casting long shadows across the hallowed ground where Ridgeways had laughed and cried, loved and fought, and lived and died.

  CHAPTER 30

  Cyrus’s back tingled as he threaded his way around the various Indian encampments that stretched out along the creeks and rivers near Fort Sill. He knew they were allegedly “friendly” Indians, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that some young brave was going to practice his archery skills with his back as the target. And—worse still—were the large number of dogs that roamed around and through the various camps. He wondered which lucky dog would end up in tonight’s supper pot.

  An hour out from the fort, Cyrus realized he’d forgotten to tell Colonel Davidson about Emma’s kidnapping. He stopped his horse and debated if he wanted to ride back. If he did, he’d have a bed to sleep in, but it would also put him and the search further behind. Deciding Davidson would hear the news from the Indian agent, he spurred his horse forward.

  With only three hours of daylight left, Cyrus wanted to get clear of the Injuns before even thinking about bedding down for the night. His best guess was that he’d be at the stated rendezvous point by midafternoon tomorrow—if he didn’t hit any snags, and that was never a sure thing in this part of the country. He hoped that the Rocking R brand displayed prominently on his horse’s left hip would help to alleviate any scrapes he might encounter. If Kicking Bird knew who he was and knew he wasn’t a man to be trifled with then it was likely that many of the other Indians knew who he was, too. Or that’s what he hoped anyway. From the way it looked, most of the Indians he’d run across so far weren’t much interested in the lone horseman riding through their part of the world. But he also knew that could change as quick as the weather did around these parts.

  The more Cyrus thought about bedding down out in the open and on the hard ground, the more his back ached. He glanced up at the position of the sun, calculated when it might set, and then clucked his tongue and tapped his horse with his spurs to put Snowball into a lope. A giant horse, Snowball’s stride ate up the ground. If he could cover enough miles before dark, he could drop in on an old friend—a friend who had a spare bed and a Mexican cook who was making Cyrus’s mouth water just thinking about her cooking. Despite his increased pace, Cyrus maintained strict situational awareness, his right hand never straying far from the butt of his pistol.

  After riding for a while in a southwesterly direction, Cyrus crossed the Red River at the point where it turned back north and he felt a little safer now that he was back in Texas. At his current location he was about forty miles west of the ranch. The area he was riding through was wide open with no hint of civilization. That was all thanks to the Comanches and Apaches who constantly raided and frequently killed any settlers who were brave enough to venture that far west on the plains. One of the exceptions was Dan Waggoner, a man who’d ventured into these parts in the early 1850s. But even the Waggoners weren’t immune to the Indians. Dan, his wife, and son, W. T., had settled a little farther south down on Catlett Creek when they first arrived, but that didn’t last long. The Comanches took exception and, rather than looking over their shoulders every minute of every day, the Waggoners chose to move north to Denton Creek, a tad bit closer to civilization. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that the Waggoners moved a third time to their current location on the Wichita River—the place Cyrus was now aiming for.

  It was
n’t long before Cyrus began seeing cattle with the familiar reversed three-D brand and he knew he was close. Dan and his crew had driven a large herd of cattle north to Kansas a few years ago and he had walked away with $55,000 in his pocket. With that money they began buying land and now had a nice spread. Not nearly as large as the Rocking R, but Cyrus had no doubt that Dan’s spread would become as large as his own place and maybe larger. Dan was a shrewd man and, from what Cyrus knew about the son, it was obvious the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

  The sun was settling low on the horizon when he came in sight of the Waggoner home. Cyrus hadn’t been there in quite some time and it looked as if Dan had wasted neither time nor money making very many improvements and the house hadn’t changed, either. It remained the same square, single-floor, boxlike structure and Cyrus thought Dan had probably left everything that way on purpose. It would be easier to flee without losing too much sleep about lost possessions if the Indians went on the warpath again. Five or six fine-looking horses prowled around in the timber-built corral adjacent to the ramshackle barn, the D-71 brand on their left front shoulders barely visible in the fading light. Cyrus didn’t know why Dan used two different brands—one for the cattle and one for the horses—but he figured he must have a reason. Could be family related, Cyrus thought. His sons-in-law, Isaac and Amos, also used different brands on their horses than on their cattle although they all ran in the same herd with the Rocking R animals. Whatever the answer about the different brands, it didn’t make a damn bit of difference because everyone in this part of the country knew who owned what.

  As Cyrus rode closer to the house, a man stepped out on the porch. It was too dark to determine who it was, but the silhouette of a rifle barrel pointing at him was readily visible. The man was way too small to be Dan Waggoner and Cyrus thought it might be one of Dan’s cowpunchers or maybe the young black boy that had once been Dan’s slave when he first moved to Texas.