“I’ll get your ass, boy.”
But she had him herded a little farther away by then.
“Try and you better wear a nice suit, ’cause they will be burying you in it.”
“Quit, Harp. He’s going away. She’s driving him away, telling him to stop threatening you.”
Carson, loud enough to hear, said, “Shit, Lea. He ain’t no more than a snotty-nosed kid, and I ain’t going to be run over by him in my own country.” But his wife forced him across the street and made him take the purchases and load them in the farm wagon parked there.
Harper stopped on the covered porch, watching. Katy moved him toward the door, shaking her head. Quietly, so only he would hear, she said, “He’s just blowing smoke about what he will do, Harper O’Malley. I told you this would happen.”
“Hey, O’Malley,” one of the bench sitters whittling and gossiping on the porch said. “He was sure glad to see you, wasn’t he?”
Harper stopped in the door and nodded. “He won’t be seeing much longer if he tries me again.”
Katy made him go inside. “Forget him.”
“Katy, you can’t simply forget a man who threatens your life like that.”
“You are going to have to, or shoot it out with a lot more of these folks. I told you things would blow up.”
Still upset, he agreed and they went on shopping. She got the small items that Ira wanted and he ordered the oat seed, so they’d have them up at the ranch in two weeks.
He vowed he’d not forget Earl Carson for threatening him in public, which made it worse. On the road he might have sloughed it off, but in town where everyone could hear—that made him damn sure sizzling mad. And no one was pushing him or his brother around.
No one.
CHAPTER 13
That evening in camp, he and Long discussed the day’s happening. Katy refilled their coffee cups as they sat facing each other.
“Van Hook has two places in the Ivy Mountain area. One is a hundred-and-twenty-acre strip on Swain Creek. It has some farmland. The other is on the west side of that country and it might be more liable to be Comanche country. It is a hundred sixty square, supposed to have water and a dug-out house on it.
“How much is he asking for them?”
“The Swaine Creek one, two hundred. The west one, three hundred.”
“Could we offer him four for both if we can use them?”
“I never offered him a thing; just wrote it down. We know money talks. I want you to look. He says there are lots of wild cattle in that country. But we know the Comanche still come through there a lot.”
“I know the next time we meet them we may have more damage to our men.”
“I agree. We were lucky no one was even scratched.”
“You tell him about Earl Carson today?” Kate asked, taking a seat beside him on the bench.
“Not yet.”
“Who’s he?”
“A rancher. He warned us about showing up. He has a place up near the corrals where we worked those cattle this past weekend. Katy had warned us that someone would come and threaten us—well, he did that today coming out of the mercantile as we were going in. He made loud threats saying we snuck in there on a weekend and claimed we took cattle we had no rights to.”
“What was he going to do about it?”
Kate said, “His poor wife with her arms full of groceries forced him across the street, telling him to get his hand off his gun.”
“It was a damn open threat, and he called me a snotty-nosed kid. It made me mad. Katy tried to cool me off.”
Long laughed. “And you just back from Missouri driving cattle up there and selling them for more, apiece, than they’d get out of a herd down here.”
“Katy can tell you I was mad.”
“We better watch that peckerwood. He might jump our men.”
“No telling. But we did step on his toes. I want a place to corral them out there. Can we go look at those places tomorrow?”
“Probably need a pack outfit in case we get caught out there overnight,” Long said. “What about the bank deal?”
Harp shook his head. “It won’t be ready until later in the week. I hired three men to plow and sow oats on the new ranch, and I already ordered the oat seed.”
“Good. I better get us some packhorses and things from Ira,” Long said.
“I’ll get the food, you get the horses,” Katy said.
Long got up, stopped, and leaned on the table, looking hard at Harp. “You think Carson will give us trouble?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, he better have burial insurance. I ain’t digging no hole for him.”
Harp agreed.
As the sun was going down, Katy asked in a small voice, “You want me along?”
“I expected you to come along.” He kissed her cheek and she left, smiling, to arrange for food. Poor girl, her past men must have treated her terribly.
This building of their land and cattle company would sure take lots of work and planning. He had plenty on his plate. It all started when Simons dumped the night guard job in his lap and it hadn’t let up since. So far he had made some good decisions. He simply needed to keep that habit going.
Long was a great guy, but he left things to his brother that he didn’t want to mess with. He’d never have taken the job of running the cattle drive in the first place, but he sure backed him. Planting oats was another job he didn’t want, but his brother could work men and they’d follow him to hell and back. This Earl Carson better never get in Long’s face—he’d not walk away from that discussion.
* * *
They left Chaw in charge before the sun came up. Mid-afternoon they found the creek place. It had been farmed, but the fences were split rail and not good. It would require a smooth wire fence with several stays between posts. Harp had seen some barbed wire made by blacksmith shops, but with screwworms, a scratched-up cow or calf would be dead in a week in the summertime. The cost was high for that kind of wire but taut telegraph wire fence with stays could hold even goats in.
It would cost more than the land was worth. Oh, well. They camped there. He’d pay two hundred bucks for it but no more. Long agreed. Riding out there they saw lots of maverick cattle popping up in the brush.
Harp wondered who out there would be mad about them rounding up these cattle. He felt sure that Carson wouldn’t be the last one. His partner, Katy, he realized knew a lot about how people resented things than he did. Another reason to have her around.
Harp and Long built her a fire and she cooked supper in the ranch bottoms under cottonwoods. The people that had settled this place must have lived in a wagon. They found no signs of a house or cabin. The previous owners had not dug a well, either, so the three used creek water. Strange. Harp bet there was no history on how this place got homesteaded. And the folks who done it were not to be found.
It wasn’t going to rain or be too cold, so they never set up a tent. Harp and Kate shared a bedroll. Up before dawn, Long had a fire going in the near frosty bottoms.
She cooked them oatmeal with bugs and brown sugar. Her coffee was delicious, and afterward they rolled their bedrolls up and left. Mid-day they rode toward the second place west of Ivy Mountain. Plenty of deer. Some hardly lifted their heads from grazing at their passing. They cut some north-south older Comanche sign.
Long could read a map Van Hook gave him, and a little past noon they found the dug-out house. The shakes needed fixing. Inside, the narrow windows meant the floor was five feet deep. Outside, there was a dug well and it had water. No bucket but Kate had some canvas they weighted to sink and drew up sweet water.
That was real good news since many such wells gave chalky water. The fields were split rail fencing and would be of little help. There were even two haystacks the wild game couldn’t reach. But it was old. Before the war there had been lots of expansion, but with the Comanche threat and no markets or neighbors the owners must have moved back to civilization.
“I think this place has lots of potential,” Harp said, eating some jerky on the rise next to the house.
“I brought some peaches for dessert,” Kate announced, and they laughed.
“Bring them on, sister. I can’t share mine but I think that story was so damn neat. Can I pry about your past?” Long asked.
“Sure. What do you need to know about me?”
“This guy that was with you before my brother. Why were they hanging him?”
“Be kinda hard to explain. Neither of you drink. But all kinds of folks make whiskey—moonshine they call it up there. You can’t legally sell it in the Indian Territory, but they do. They do it in Arkansas and don’t pay the revenue tax.
“Jimmy Groves bought some good stuff, or so the guy told him. See he drank all the time and was really spinning away his life and wouldn’t listen to me. Well, some wild whiskey can make you blind. What he bought made him blind and he stumbled around drunk in a rage, cussing he’d been poisoned. He was still only seeing outlines the second day, and the third day he took a shotgun and went to Van Buren to find the bootlegger. I begged and pleaded with him not to go.
“Jimmy found him and ran him out of a saloon and into the street. He shot him twice, reloaded the gun, and shot him in the head twice more at close range. If he’d shot him once a jury might’ve let him off. Twice was not good. But blowing his face away with the last two shells was a hanging offense.”
Long nodded at her story. “I see that as bad, too. But why did you live with him in the first place?”
“He saved me from a much worse man. Jimmy never hit me. Oh, he threatened to a time or two when he was too drunk. But the man who bought me before Jimmy—he took me and hauled me off Shannon Mountain—was Bill Staley. I had lived with Granny Schultz and her husband Horace Schultz for as long as I could remember. They told me they had raised me since I was five, maybe four, no one was sure—I am not. There was a house fire and everyone in my family perished but me. I recall little about that. Granny never had any kids so they took me on. She read the Bible and books. They never went to church.
“See, hill folks were real superstitious in them days. Granny told me they all wondered why I lived and the rest died. I couldn’t tell them. So a rumor went around I was spawned by the Devil. No one wanted me. Granny didn’t believe that, and she took me by the hand to her house. I was fourteen when they both took pneumonia and died.
“The neighbors all decided I was not any real kin to them and so I had no rights to their farm. They felt they could sell the farm and the money would go to a good cause—to the local church that Granny and Horace never attended. Said that would pay back the tithe they never paid and they should have. I was locked in a shed to protect the God Fearing people from me harming them.
“Late one night one of those church sisters secretly sold me for forty bucks. I can recall her name well. Theresa Stone. That whisker-faced bad-smelling man who bought me, Bill Staley, was filthy dirty.” She held up her hands to keep them back. “I ain’t proud, but after that first horrible night as his wife, I cleaned him up. But he whipped me all the time. I guess I didn’t suit him about anything I did.
“He got mad at me about some infraction of his rules he never told me about. I think he made it up to whip me. Had my hands tied to a rafter, and me on my toes buck-naked he whipped me with his belt until I passed out.
“Jimmy Groves broke in after hearing my screams, and they had a bad knife fight. Both got cut up. I never saw my first husband ever again. I think he died but it was self-defense. Jimmy healed me and I owed him my life. We lived hand-to-mouth doing odd jobs. But Jimmy never offered me to anyone else like the first one had done, so I felt safe. You know what I mean. But I sure couldn’t stop him from murdering that bootlegger.
“His trial was over. I had no money, nothing, and I met this cowboy who came along, liked peaches, and I liked him right off.”
“Long, thanks, I’m glad you asked her. I knew she had big problems in her past, but I feared she wanted them buried.”
Long said, “Katy, there were worse things in your life that happened. If those church women thought you were evil they wouldn’t let their daughters play with you would they?”
“No. Two boys were nice to me, but I bet they never said at home ‘I helped Katy today.’ I got spanked by the teacher for what other girls did. Don’t ever let your house burn down and have a daughter survive. You see why I am so happy with this one. I have escaped hell. He doesn’t need to marry me. I never pleased anyone but Granny before in my life.”
“I feel the same way about him. I’m half Cherokee and growing up some people thought Indians were less than real people. We had some of it in Arkansas in school, but back-to-back we settled it. Fourth grade in Texas we had another war and they found the two of us could whip the hell out of Indian haters. I try not to dwell on that. I don’t know much about the Cherokees. I don’t speak it. I kinda had a thought in my mind that maybe Anna thought that way, but she cleared that up fast and I believed her.
“She love—she simply still loved Emory. He’d gave her the position of being an officer’s wife. I did not believe it but she is nine years older than I am. I am not blaming my ancestry for my problems there. It simply didn’t work out.”
Katy agreed. “I feel free. Those years are behind me. But I guess since I was always in that spot.”
“I agree. Harp, we need to decide what to do about these two places.”
“I would buy and build a large corral here. Buy the other place really cheap.”
“I know if these cattle sale deals continue these places will be gobbled up.”
“But this is not a Kate ranch,” Harp teased.
“You know I get feelings about this place today. Let’s not camp here tonight. There may not be a Comanche within five hundred miles of us, but I don’t think we should stay. We can push all night and tomorrow sleep in a safer place.”
A little past mid-day they headed east in a long trot. They kept their eyes peeled for any sign and wasted no time hustling the packhorses. Dim wagon tracks were washed out in places. It would be hard to get a wagon over this way and would require some work. But there was no shortage of mustangs or maverick cattle out there.
They reached a spread near sundown and decided they might be far enough away to consider stopping. It was a rambling-looking outfit and it looked like the residents were gathering wild horses.
When they first rode up, an old man with a mustache, his hand down in his overalls scratching his privates, must have been bad sighted. He quit when he heard Harp say, “This is my wife, Kate.”
“Tom McIvor. You’re at the Lonely River Ranch.”
“I don’t see no river around here,” Long said.
The old man slapped his knees. “That’s why we named it that. We were lonely for one. Me and my boys catch mustangs. Break a bunch and take them back east and sell them.”
“How far east?” Long asked.
“Not a mile farther than where we can sell them.” He slapped his knees again and laughed some more. “Get down and have supper. Tell me where you been—oh, you too, nice lady. I meant you and them.”
“We’ve been to Sedalia, Missouri.”
“Why?”
“We sold over near eight hundred steers to some packers in Saint Louis.”
“Ain’t they still fighting up there?”
“War’s been over since last April.”
“I’ll tell the boys they don’t need soldiers any-more.”
The three looked at each other. Under his breath Long asked, “Where have they been?”
They spent the night with McIvor and his two sons. Before they left, Long asked the sons, who were in their twenties, if the Comanche ever bothered them.
The oldest son, John, said, “They come around but not often. We poison them.”
They thanked the McIvors and rode on, Harp thinking they were tetched in the head from staying alone so long.
“They were sort o
f crazy,” Katy said, confirming Harp’s thoughts.
“Long, Dad, and I were rangers during the war. We were the patrol that kept the Comanche away or met them head on. We never avoided the draft. It would have been better to have gone and fought than be the way they are.”
“Takes all kinds of folks to make up the world population. Those kind back there make me shiver,” Long said.
Katy laughed. “There are some worse in the Arkansas Mountains. Brothers marry sisters and they have monkeys.”
“Really?”
“Yes, I can’t even describe them.”
“Guess we are lucky then. Long and I only turned out to be cowboys.”
“You and him may dress like cowboys but, soon, both of you are going to be businessmen.”
“Why thanks, Katy,” Long said. “See there, Harp, all Mother’s learning has not been to no avail. That’s how she said it?”
“Something like that. We’d do something funny and she’d toss her hands in the air, and say, ‘I taught you better than that.’”
“You watch her some time when she gets mad; she throws her hands up like she’s feeding chickens. Dad told us the first time he asked her out and he wouldn’t take no for an answer, she did that. He still laughs about it.”
“What happened to your father, Long?”
“She only knew he was killed out in the Cherokee Outlet. She had found it out a short time before Dad asked her to go out. She protested she was with child and Dad said he had lost his wife in a swimming accident, so they were both alone and should go out.”
“I’d say meeting women is a funny business for you menfolk.”
“Mine may fall off a cloud. Huh?” Long asked her.
“Chances are—” Katy was laughing too hard to say any more.
That was how the rest of the ride back to their cow camp went. One funny thing after the other until they rode in. Everyone was there to meet them, looking upset.
Chaw stepped forward. “Some guy named Fallen was here and told us you owed him money for using his pens. Four more come by and told us if we didn’t load up in twenty-four hours they’d string us up for cattle rustling.”
The O'Malleys of Texas Page 14
