Casey's Courage

by Neva Brown

  Casey patted her mouth with her napkin to hide a smile, thinking, Ms. Royalty made a tactical mistake with Mattie Lou by questioning a decision J.D. had made.

  “I assumed you were from New York,” Mattie Lou said with a touch of prim and proper in her voice that Leila seemed oblivious to, but Jordan, Tres, and Casey recognized.

  “I live there now, but my family can trace its roots back to the kings who ruled the islands before the intrusion of the outside world. Actually, our family was influential in the islands until the 1930s when labor unions disrupted the order of things. Then the Second World War came, ending the way of life to which my people were accustomed, so they came to the States.”

  When Leila hesitated to take a breath, Jordan said, “If I remember right, our family had some severe problems to overcome in the ‘30s.”

  Casey didn’t know whether it was to help Mattie Lou get over her pique or to let Leila know whose territory she was playing in, but Tres put his hand on Casey’s arm. “Do you remember some of those wild stories J.D. used to tell when everyone gathered for the ranch Thanksgiving dinner?”

  Very willing to play his game, Casey said, “Oh, yes. One of my favorites was how they hid the best of their Hereford cattle in the brushy canyons when the government agents came through killing all the livestock. He always added that the Depression and drought created a disaster that many ranchers never recovered from. Then he would always say, ‘The Spencers hunkered down and rode it out’.”

  Casey smiled at Leila, whose expression still said she could not figure out just how Casey fit into the scheme of things in the Spencer family.

  “If my memory serves me right,” Jordan said, “that was about the time the Spencers and MacVanes ventured into the real estate business, buying up land at less than ten cents on the dollar. Lots of people went broke and just wanted enough money to get away from what they called this godforsaken country. One deal they used to talk about was giving a man a dollar and a milk cow for a section of land. That was a cheap six hundred and forty acre.”

  They moved into the drawing room for after-dinner coffee.

  Mattie Lou settled regally in her wingback chair. “Seth and my father never talked much about the land deals they made before the ‘30s. But the Spencers and MacVanes bought land or, at times, just mineral rights from people they knew who settled on both sides of the Pecos River much earlier.”

  Jordan looked at Leila. “Do you remember we came through some little towns where I told you I worked one summer in the oilfield in that area?”

  “Yes, that’s where we saw the huge windmills rowed up along the ridges of the flat top mountains you called mesas.”

  “That’s the area Mother is talking about.”

  “But I didn’t see a river.” Leila said.

  “I’m not surprised,” Mattie Lou said. “The Pecos River is just a tiny stream where the highway crosses over it, hardly noticeable.”

  Jordan smiled at his mother. “I remember Grandpa Seth and Grandpa Mac discussing, heatedly at times, about how much was safe to invest in that country that ‘A crow wouldn’t fly over’. Wasn’t the house in Highland Park in Dallas part of one of those deals?”

  Mother and son forgot the three others in the room for a short time. They discussed how two astute old men got into the oil business through the back door. They had bought out ranchers who’d starved-out and financed wildcatters drilling for oil on that seemingly worthless country.

  Leila moved restively at her husband’s side, halting the reminiscing. Jordan knew exactly the thing to say to interest his wife. “Do you remember the Formal French Estate house I showed you the night we had dinner with the Thurstons when we were in Dallas?”

  “The three-story, gray stone across the creek from the Thurstons?” Leila asked.

  Jordan nodded. “That’s the one. My grandfathers got it from a wildcatter who needed ready cash more than he needed a fancy house. They called it a ‘white elephant’ back then.”

  Leila looked at Tres with a pleased smile on her face. “I almost forgot. Melanie Thurston said to tell you ‘hello’. Is it true you two were engaged at one time?”

  “Yes, but things didn’t work out,” Tres said evenly.

  “Evelyn said Melanie moved back home after a rather bitter divorce last year. She and her son are living with Evelyn and Harold.” Leila looked at Jordan. “What is her ex-husband’s name?”

  “I’m not sure anybody said. We didn’t meet her son. Just saw him at a distance. Looked to be a pre-teenager, blond-haired, and brown as a berry. He and some of his friends were swimming when we arrived.” The nonchalance of Jordan’s remark was not lost on the others in the room.

  Tres struggled to be polite, knowing Jordan was baiting him. His father had made no bones about saying Melanie was the perfect wife for Tres.

  “Is she still modeling?” Casey asked.

  Once again Leila looked at Casey as if she were an interloper. “Yes, she just finished a session doing evening gowns for a magazine. Do you know Melanie?”

  Casey rose from the small couch where she had been sitting by Tres and went to the sideboard. “I didn’t know her well, but she was a beauty back when she came to the ranch. May I bring anyone more coffee?”

  “Yes, please,” Leila promptly replied.

  As Casey bent slightly to fill the tiny cup, the opal necklace and earrings moved subtly, making the stones shimmer and glow in the light.

  When she turned around, Leila’s eyes glittered with curiosity. “I been entranced with the opals you are wearing. The color is remarkable. Is the opal your birth stone?”

  Casey filled Jordan’s cup. “No, they’re just beautiful stones I enjoy wearing.”

  “I’ve always heard they are unlucky for anyone to wear unless you were born in October,” Leila said.

  Casey smiled at Leila. “Superstitions run rampant in the horse show circuit. Dad always told me we make our own luck. His favorite saying is ‘Luck is preparation meeting opportunity’.” She gave a soft, husky laugh as she poured Tres more coffee and smiled at him. “But I’ve seen people so superstitious they would wear the same socks throughout a whole show if they won in them the first night.”

  “I wouldn’t think you have much use for jewelry in the kind of work you do,” Leila said.

  Casey touched the opals at her neck. “You are right, at least not fragile jewelry like opals. These stones came from a mine on a station Tres owned in Australia. They have quite a history of their own, I expect.” Mattie Lou had refused more coffee so Casey set both their cups on the sideboard. “If you will excuse me, I have some therapy I need to complete.”

  As Casey left, Mattie Lou said, “Leila, let’s leave Jordan and Tres to their after-dinner drinks. I’m dying to show someone the new orchids Ignacio brought in from the hothouse to the solarium today. Jordan said you loved orchids.”

  “I do, and your solarium is a dream come true,” Leila said as Jordan rose and took her hand to help her rise.

  As the ladies moved toward the door, Tres heard Mattie Lou say, “You seem rather taken aback at some things we do in West Texas.”

  “Things are different here, I must admit. For instance, I can’t quite decide Casey’s position. Is she a distant relative or . . .?”

  Chapter 15

  As Mattie Lou and Leila moved out of hearing range, Tres turned to Jordan. “Shall we walk off some of this rich food?” Tres relished the chill of fall that made the air crisp in the moonless night as they made their way to the barn. “Jake sent horses over that are trained for western pleasure riding,” he said. “He thought they would be better suited for you.”

  Jordan chuckled. “I haven’t been on a horse since I left here, and Leila doesn’t even have a nodding acquaintance with horses. Sorry.”

  “That’s fine. Casey and I will enjoy having them for a change of pace. We each have a favorite horse here, but Dan keeps mostly horses for ordinary ranch work around for the bunkhouse men. He still believes in
every man taking care of his own string of mounts right down to keeping them shod.”

  “I wondered if Dan was still here.” Tres sensed the tension in his dad as he continued, “I haven’t been to this barn since J.D. put me in his old touring car and hauled me away to the hospital in San Angelo.”

  Tres stopped and faced his dad. “Why did he take you to San Angelo? Had you been in a horse wreck?”

  Jordan pushed the door open to J.D.’s barn office next to the tack room, then went straight to a wall cabinet, rummaged around behind some veterinarian books, and came out with a bottle of whiskey. “It’s been more than fifty years since I last filched a drink from J.D.’s private stash.” Jordan broke the seal, unscrewed the cap, and drank straight from the bottle. He didn’t offer it to Tres, but eased down on the old leather couch. “It wasn’t a horse that brought on the mess. J.D. and I agreed to never mention what happened back then, but I think it’s time you have an answer to why I never came to the ranch with you and your mother and why you own the Running S fair and square with my blessings.”

  Tres sat in the chair behind the desk. Only recently had he begun to feel comfortable in it. He waited as the silence stretched, wondering why his father seemed so hesitant.

  Jordan took another sip from the bottle. “J.D. would say there’s no statute of limitations on murder so some things are best left unsaid.”

  Tres felt an imperceptible shudder as the hair on his arms stand up. In all his life, he’d never considered questioning the two strong-willed men who had shaped his early life. In his mind, each was autonomous in his own way. He listened as his dad continued, not sure he really wanted to hear what his father had to say.

  “I hated this ranch and all the work. But J.D. never let up. He never once hit me, but he worked the hell out of me and expected me to be as good at everything as the hired hands. I couldn’t ride worth a damn and when he made me run the branding irons, the smell of burning hair and hide made me vomit. I never got the feel for branding. I either let the iron slip and blotted the brand or held it on the calf too long and burned through to the flesh.”

  Jordan took another sip from the bottle and stared at the picture on the wall back of Tres.

  Tres waited and watched his father, seeing him from an entirely different perspective.

  “During my high school years I was the wildest, rich-man’s kid in the country. J.D. bailed me out or bought me out of one scrap after another. I got so out of hand he finally sent me to work in the oilfields in Reagan County the summer I graduated from high school. He left me in the care of Digger McGruder, an old wildcatter he had bankrolled at one time. I wasn’t clean or rested for three months. When J.D. decided he’d enroll me in A&M instead of UT, I went. I didn’t like it. But I went. I washed out of the Corp right off, but I stayed in school.”

  Jordan got up and strode over to the window. He glazed out at the late-rising moon before he continued with slightly slurred speech. “Roundup was in full swing when I came home that spring. J.D. announced I’d do the castrating at one of the branding fires. He assigned me the job in front of all the cowboys making it impossible for me to say no. At least that’s what I thought. One of the old hands gave me the sharpest pocketknife I’d ever seen and showed me how it was done. He didn’t comment when I vomited or how my hands shook as blood seeped through my fingers and crusted on my hands and shirt cuffs. Hell-bent on showing J.D. I was as good as the next man, I stayed squatted down in that branding smoke, blood, and dirt every day until the last calf was worked. I drank enough whiskey every night to stay numb, but I functioned.”

  Tres saw Jordan glance at his not-quite-steady hands then rub them against his pant legs. “The day we finished, I climbed in the back of an old beat-up pickup with a crew of Mexican cowboys who worked as extra hands during the roundup. I don’t know what they had stashed under the seat of that old truck, but I was feeling no pain by the time we drove up on a dimly lit Mexican cantina not too far this side of the river.”

  Tres watched his dad go into the bathroom and pour the remaining liquor into the toilet and flush. Tres wasn’t seeing the man he knew to be a financial genius that loved the wheeling and dealing of the ‘money world’, he ached for the troubled teenager his dad had been, carrying a secret hard for any man to bear. He watched Jordan toss the empty bottle into the wastebasket then came back into the office and looked him straight in the eye. Tres couldn’t look away from those haunted, sad eyes. Goose bumps popped up on his arms. A cold shudder coursed through his body, making his heart pound. He sat speechless as he watched his father wilt in defeat.

  “I may have killed a man that night. I was too drunk to know and more scared than I’ve ever been. He was in the cantina when we got there. We got into it about something. He pulled a vicious-looking knife out of his boot and came at me. I pulled out the knife in my pocket I’d used to work calves. Nobody tried to stop us as we cut each other up as best as two drunks could until he fell, a puddle of blood growing around him. Gasping for breath and bleeding all over, I staggered out the door. Somebody had left a rangy, half-broke horse tied outside. I jumped on him and ran. I don’t remember much after that, until nearly daylight when the horse dropped dead under me. Lucky for me, my homing instincts were good, even if my judgment wasn’t. I was on the Running S and in sight of the house.” Jordan paused and stared off into space for a minute.

  “J.D. and Dan Brown found me right out there in the hall and brought me into this very room to patch me up the best they could while I blurted out my story. Dan brought the car into the hall of the barn and they loaded me into the back seat. As J.D. jumped onto the driver’s seat, he told Dan to find the dead horse and put its body in an old cistern at one of the abandoned homesteads on the ranch and cover the carcass with enough dirt, rocks, and brush so it could not be found.” Jordan tensed as if he expected Tres to say something.

  When he remained quiet, his father seemed to deflate.

  “So, J.D. Spencer, the Third, you have a horse thief and maybe a murderer for a father. Am I still welcome to stay the night in your house?”

  Feeling sympathy for his distraught father, Tres got up and placed an arm around Jordan’s shoulders. “You can’t be sure he’s died. He may be out there somewhere thinking he killed you. Much as we’d like to, we can’t change the past, and Lord knows a lot of us would like to.” Guiding his father to the door, Tres continued, “Not many of us came out unscathed from our growing-up years. Not only are you welcome to stay, I’ll even feed you.” Hoping to ease his father’s morbid mood, Tres added, “Come on, let’s go to the kitchen and get something in your stomach or you’ll have a granddaddy of a hangover in the morning.”

  Soon after they emerged into the now cold night air, Jordan’s speech became less slurred. “That ended the passive-aggressive combat J.D. and I had been locked in for years. He put me in a private hospital with private nurses until I could go to an apartment in Austin. He came there, and we agreed to what we thought was the best path for both of us.”

  As they reached the house, in unspoken agreement, they began to talk of other things. Suddenly so much fell into place in Tres’ mind. The cold silences whenever he brought up his father to J.D., the borderline fear in his father’s voice when he suggested he come home for a visit, the almost total alienation of father and son. Tres felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

  It was middle of the morning when Leila and Jordan came down for breakfast. Tres and Mattie Lou left off their office confab and joined their guests to have coffee while the couple ate. Casey had purposefully absented herself. She let Rosalinda know she would be in the south paddock exercising with one of the horses Jake had sent over.

  Jordan looked no worse for the wear and Leila sparkled in her vivid, flower-splashed silk suit. With sparkling eyes, she teased Jordan and Tres about being night owls.

  As they ate, she asked, “Tres, did you go to the University of Texas like your dad?”

  “Yes, I pu
t in almost five years at that campus then worked in Dad’s firm until I decided the world of high finance wasn’t for me. That’s when I went to Australia.” He grinned at Jordan. “Not the best time in our father-son relationship.”

  Jordan chuckled. “I just knew he’d lose every dime he’d inherited from his mother, but true to the Spencer and MacVane genes, he turned a pretty profit with some astute investments. He made a good choice. What can I say?”

  Leila inclined her head at Jordan. “You can tell me how you and your father weathered your formative years for you to become the business tycoon you are.”

  Smooth as silk, Jordan seemed to take up where he’s left off the night before. “By my sophomore year in college, Dad finally realized I would always hate ranch work and oilfield work. He let me move from A&M to UT where I’d wanted to go all along. We, more or less, mutually agreed if I didn’t want to be part of the ranch, he would finance what I did want to do. From that point on, I settled down to prove to him I was good at something.”

  He looked at Mattie Lou and winked. “Mother probably would never say so, but I was one rotten, good-for-nothing kid for a few years.”

  “Is that why you didn’t inherit the ranch?” Leila asked.

  Jordan didn’t hesitate. “That, and the fact he financed my getting started in the business of finance and deeded me real estate and oil investments that further insured my success. Dad was tough, but he let me find my own way and become my own man. He never faltered in supporting my efforts.”

  He spoke to Mattie Lou with a twinkle in his eyes.