When fern-like foliage appears on mesquite trees and mesquite bushes, it’s a sure sign that winter is over. The mesquite beans make excellent cattle feed. Then come the waxy white flowers on a single stem in the center of the spear-like bear grass bush. Bluebonnets by the hundreds of thousands, sweet Williams, slender wine cups, hollyhocks, purple thistle, Indian paintbrush, yellow buttercups, pink, purple and white wild phlox plus dozens of other varieties of wildflowers carpet the hills and the valleys.
Proclaiming the Easter season: Bluebirds, Redbirds, Mockingbirds, Martins. Scissor Tails, Wrens, Chickadees, Whippoorwills, Blue Jays, Bob-whites and more.
Deer, antelope, squirrels, rabbits, armadillos, raccoons, possums, bobcats, foxes and wild turkeys were in abundance. Some Longhorn cattle and buffaloes still roamed the range. Mountain lions were not uncommon.
Springtime in the 1800’s also meant the return of the Indians to their coveted summer hunting ground. For centuries, the legend of this magnanimous “Summerland” passed from generation to generation of Indians…the Caddoes, the Wichitas, the Lipans and Apaches (that eventually mixed). All traversed Menard County and the headwaters of the San Saba River. That is, until the mighty mounted Comanches came. The proud and stately tribe refused to co-exist with other tribes in the area who threatened their livelihood. So they drove the Wichitas and Caddos east and the Apaches west of the Llano Estacada.
Huge herds of buffaloes roamed the land until the skinners came. The Indians stampeded some off the bluff at Peg Leg Crossing for meat and clothing for the tribe. This was a tribal effort. The Indian women cut up the meat of the carcasses. The tongue and hump were the choice part. Some was “jerked” by pounding fat and wild berries into the meat. Stored in skin or membrane containers, it was a concentrated and portable food for the tribe and especially for warriors on the move. Abandoning permanent dwellings, the Comanche Indians invented the teepee, a portable home, and the travois, a drag used to haul skins and other gear.)
Capt. Morgan Edward’s Confederate cavalry unit fought in the Battle of Galveston Island where the South was the victor. Some three months after the truce was signed, this same unit defeated the Union Army at the Battle of Palmetto Ranch in South Texas. When word reached the Rebels that the Civil War was over, some surrendered to Union forces, some headed for home. A few die-hard Confederate soldiers joined up with William Clarke Quantrill, ruthless, self-styled rebel guerrilla leader who terrorized and pillaged in Missouri and Kansas. Others went across the border into Mexico.
Morgan’s hope of inheritance crumbled with the Confederacy. The only girl he ever loved was betrothed against her will to another when he left for the war. He didn’t have the heart to return to Vicksburg. Besides, fate has a way of changing a man’s direction.
“This is one Rebel,” Morgan told three companions, “who has no intention of surrender.” He, along with Lt. Willis ‘Scat’ Lattimer, Sgt. David Purcell and Cpl. Kirby Mclvers eluded capture by taking flight to the Texas Hill Country. The men fought the Union Army all the way to Camp Verde, a few miles outside Bandera Pass in Kerr County. That outpost had surrendered to Confederate Forces in 1861 but was again occupied by Union soldiers by the time the four Confederate soldiers arrived in the area.
For a time, the foursome hid out in the hills until the full realization that the southern cause was indeed lost finally struck them. It was a bitter humiliation, but the disillusioned soldiers finally shed their telltale gray uniforms and took up legitimate professions and settled in Menard County. Surrender? Not on your life.
It was at the Gentry Creek Settlement between Kimbleville and Menardville that Morgan first learned about treasure in the vicinity, the fabled Lost Bowie Silver Mine. A derelict sold him an old treasure map, assuring him that it was authentic and had at one time belonged to Jim Bowie himself. Though skeptical at first, Morgan’s curiosity was aroused. His college major had been geology when the war interrupted his education. What did he have to lose? He just might find it.
“Scat” Lattimer became a traveling salesman who drove a black buggy to remote ranch homes with his catalog and stock on hand selling his wares. He sold everything from Bibles to vanilla extract, to caskets, clothes and tools. David Purcell, a big burly man, worked the area as a trapper and trader. Kirby Mclvers resumed his old trade of windmill mechanic.
Always a scrambler, Morgan Edwards, with the help hired wranglers, captured a small herd of wild mustang mares that he broke, trained, traded and raced. He pearled in the shallows of the San Saba River and used his knowledge of geology to search for the proverbial Lost Bowie Mine. He built a log cabin at the foot of the hill on the west, just adjacent to the village. In the nearby public domain, he constructed a corral of cedar posts set close together where he kept his horses. He upgraded the colts with a borrowed quarter horse stallion. Morgan’s father had been a breeder of fine horses in Vicksburg. It was the only real trade he knew.
He had a pack donkey named “Boby” and his army mare called “Babe” and three part-wolf Shepherd dogs named “Job”, “Tobe” and “Lady Luck”. There was almost always a litter of puppies on Morgan’s doorstep that he gave to village youngsters. Morgan didn’t believe in selling dogs. It was beneath his dignity. Like his father before him, he considered selling dogs an outright sin.
Endowed with a keen sense of humor, along with his compadres, Morgan delighted in harassing Fort McKavett troops. Once, yellow paint was poured over a shipment of army uniforms while some of the pranksters bought liquor for the unsuspecting freight driver at the Cattleman’s Saloon. This trick enraged the interim commandant of the army engineers, Col. Leeman Winters, who offered a large reward for information leading to the arrest of the culprits. Cash rewards did not induce information from the poor, yet stubborn, rebel villagers. Any man wanted by the army was protected. Fresh mounts were available at ranches throughout the territory for men on the run.
Morgan was one of the instigators of the local Rebels’ pet project. They kept “Free State of Menard” signs erected at all four entrances into the town. He reveled in the fact that Col. Winters considered the tomfoolery a personal insult. As soon as the soldiers who tore down and burned the signs were out of sight, villagers erected new ones. A good supply of the signs was stashed in various hideaways in the hills.
Morgan was thrilled when Dayme O’Malley, whatever her reason, came to the wild, untamed land. His feeling for the girl was in no way affected when she began wearing loose, flowing dresses to conceal her growing body. He asked her more than once to marry him.
“Dear, dear Morgan,” Dayme told him gently at the church meeting down by the river when the circuit preacher came to town, “you’re my friend, my brothers’ friend. I think of you like my only surviving brother. I’ll always love you, dear heart, but…. I’m so glad you are here. I need your friendship now more than ever.”
A ruggedly handsome man with bronzed olive complexion, laughing velvet brown eyes and sun-streaked light brown hair, Morgan stood six feet tall. His arm muscles bulged from hard work. Though disappointed with Dayme’s answer, Morgan refused to let go the dream in his heart that someday she would return his love, not as a friend but as a woman loves a man.
“You’ve got that,” he told her, grinning. “Yeah, lady, you’ve got that. I’ll always be your friend.” But he was disappointed.
It was a sunny afternoon in late April 1867. Morgan worked a claim some four miles northwest of the old mission across the San Saba north of town. Sweating from the unseasonable humid weather, he removed his shirt and continued to chip in the rocky soil. Feeling pangs of hunger, he threw down the pick and walked over the crunching rocks down to Bowie Creek to run fishing lines. Whooping in delight, he pulled a wriggling bass out of the water. He estimated the fish to weigh in the neighborhood of three pounds…a tasty meal with some wilted watercress. Morgan often sold fish to local townspeople when he caught more than he could use. This promised to be a good fishing day for already he had five nice catfish stake
d in shallow water.
He scaled and dressed the bass in shallow shoals, put an iron spit through it and placed it over the campfire to roast. He took an onion from the saddlebag, chopped it and began sautéing it in leftover bacon drippings. He added a little vinegar, salt and crumbled bacon and was about to pour the mixture over fresh, chopped watercress when suddenly the sound of distant gunfire alerted him to danger. He set the skillet off the coals. Morgan reasoned that it could possibly be an Apache hunting party for a few still dared to traverse Comanche country. Then again, it might be the dreaded Comanches on the warpath. Rocks crunched under his boot heels as he hurriedly climbed to higher ground for a look. At first, he thought the smoke on the horizon was signal fire, but when the flame tongues licked upward, he knew. It was John Wooford’s ranch house where Dayme lived!
The man grabbed his shirt, not taking time to put it on. Instead he tied the sleeves around his neck, threw a saddle over the sorrel mare’s back and spurred the mount into a gallop. His heart pounded with apprehension while racing cross-country around prickly pear, mesquite and oak thickets.
He found the Wooford barn a smoldering pile of red-hot coals. The corral gate was open. All the horses were gone. The hostile band of Indians had vanished into the countryside, leaving death in their wake. The ranch house was quiet as a cemetery. The family watchdog was halfway between the house and the corral, almost decapitated.
With his Colt .45 drawn, he cautiously approached five dead Comanche warriors and kicked their bodies over with his boot. Another brave had died on the front porch and still another had fallen over the threshold of the open front door. He heard nothing except eerie silence inside. The former army officer heard only the beat of his own racing heart and his short rapid breaths as he ascended the steps. The boards creaked as he eased across the plank porch close to the wall.
Leaning against the doorframe, Morgan burst suddenly inside and the gory scene before him made his stomach revolt. The scent of warm blood and mutilated bodies filled his nostrils, and nausea overwhelmed him. He ran outside to vomit. Many times, he had seen death on the battlefield but never anything so vicious, so brutally atrocious and pitifully heartless as this massacre.
The stricken man forced himself back inside as he searched through the dead for Dayme. Her uncle had fallen in a distorted twisted position near a broken window. His wife lay back over a wicker chair. Her ripped and torn dress was up around her throat, telling a mute story of her fate. Instinctively, Morgan covered the woman with the shirt from around his neck. The couple’s twenty-one year old son, Leon, had not only been shot in the neck but was split wide open, gutted like a butchered antelope. The scent of the young man’s sliced entrails caused Morgan to retch again. All had been scalped.
Stumbling from room to room, Morgan frantically shouted Dayme’s name. His hoarse cries went unanswered as he searched under the upstairs beds and in closets. He had to step over a dead warrior in order to enter one of the bedrooms. Another Comanche had fallen over the corner of the high poster bed. He found Betsy Wooford with a pistol near her hand. “Oh God,” he cried. “She put a bullet through her own brain!” Her husband, John, Jr., was dead on the floor. A sob caught in Morgan’s throat when he found the empty crib. “Dear God! They took Betsy’s baby…and Dayme…and Marceline captive!” Terrible thoughts of savage torture traversed his troubled mind as he descended the stairway.
Chapter 19
SEVERAL MONTHS EARLIER…
The ride from Burnet by oxcart was rough but otherwise uneventful. No bandits, no road agents, no Indians like Benjamin insisted there would be at the dreaded bluff between Mason and Menardville that the settlers called ‘Robbers Roost’. Dayme’s Uncle John met the oxcart at Pegleg Crossing, some twelve miles east of town. They traveled the remaining twenty-odd miles in a wagon on a seldom-used road to the ranch.
It was a happy reunion, fun getting to know her cousins again. In the evenings when all the chores were done, the family and ranch hands gathered on the front porch to visit and exchange old stories. Sometimes, they sang songs to break the lonesome of summer nights. Coyote howls echoed with answering mating calls, and night owls questioned who invaded their wild kingdom while fireflies flickered in the darkness.
When the leaves began to fall and the icy north wind drove the family indoors, jolly Aunt Florence made taffy candy and everybody greased their hands with butter and pulled the hot, sticky stuff while it cooled. They played simple games like dominoes, checkers and hide-the-thimble. Sometimes, Dayme played the piano while Betsy led the singing. On Sundays, Uncle John opened the big family Bible for home church service. Every night during the week, the family took turns reading books aloud by flickering lamplight. Occasionally, the family gave house parties, or all piled into the wagon to go to one at someone else’s house.
For the first time in her life, Dayme was happy, really happy. The day morning sickness struck, Aunt Florence went to Dayme’s room with a stiff dose of Black Draught. “It’s stomach sickness,” the woman insisted. “Same thing Leon had last week.” The bitter medicine made the girl sicker than ever, and when the barfing continued morning after morning, her aunt became suspicious. “Takes two for this kind of sickness,” Aunt Florence said sternly. “You didn’t get this out of the well water, young lady.”
Dayme panicked at the possibility. “I’m not…?”
Mrs. Wooford nodded decisively. “You most certainly are! Who’s the father? You must tell him immediately. You have to get married.”
Dayme shook her head firmly. “No, Auntie. I won’t tell him.” Dayme refused to reveal his name. She had mixed emotions…apprehensive about the stigma attached to single women giving birth and half-glad she was carrying Benjamin’s child. “I can’t tell him, Auntie. He’d rush out here to make it legal, leave college. I could ruin his career, and he would blame me for the rest of our lives. Anyway, I don’t want to marry because I have to. He’ll have to love me enough to want me with no reason attached.” She chuckled softly. “You’d have to know him. He’s quite straight-laced, so proper. No, my being pregnant won’t be the reason I marry.”
The old lady’s tender hazel eyes misted, and she gathered Dayme in her arms. “The man goes scot-free. It’s us women who suffer the pain and the shame. We’ll raise them together, child, Betsy’s baby and yours. John and I will have two fine grandsons to help with the ranch work. The frontier needs men. People out here are not as hard on such natures of the heart as folks back east. Children are a gift from God…don’t you forget it. This blessed event will need clothes. I’ll teach you to knit.”
“How can you be so positive they will be boys? They could be little girls.”
Aunt Florence chuckled. “No, not this time. It will be a boy. You’re sicker with boys and carry them low. I’ve never seen anybody sicker than you and poor little Betsy.”
Morgan made the trip to the Wooford ranch often, almost every Sunday. He told Dayme how the glow of motherhood made her even more beautiful. He didn’t mention marriage anymore. She’d turned him down too many times. He was a patient man. He could wait. Someday….
Morgan had given up that the women and the baby were gone, apparently carried off captive by the Indians. They were nowhere in sight in the rambling ranch house. It was then that he heard it…a faint thumping sound from the direction of the dining room. A cold creepy feeling raced through his veins. Could it be one of the women or a wounded Comanche trying to escape? Stealthily, he eased his way to the room with the gun leveled. The racket came from beneath the round oak table. Quickly, he jerked the heavy table aside and kicked away the braided rug to find a secret cellar under the floor.
“Dayme?” He called thickly. “Are you down there?”
A muffled scream answered from beneath the trap door. Dayme was at the top of the ladder pounding on the door with her shoe. Morgan cradled the hysterical woman in his arms. Tears of relief spilled unashamedly down his face. “It’s all right, darling. The savages are gone,” he com
forted. “Shut your eyes tight. Don’t look.” He carried the girl through the bloody room to her bedroom. She wept uncontrollably, and her frightened eyes didn’t show recognition as he stroked her hair and tried to console her. She didn’t speak until the baby in the cellar let out a loud wail.
“The baby!” the girl cried frantically. “Little Alexander is still down there.”
“I’ll get him, sweetheart.” Morgan’s gentle voice carried reassurance. He descended the ladder and came up with the crying infant. The baby slept through the grisly ordeal but had awakened hungry.
Clutching Betsy’s baby close, Dayme sat on the side of the bed rocking back and forth and humming a senseless tune while little Alexander continued to howl.
“Give me the baby,” Morgan urged. “Come on, Dayme, hand him to me.” His words didn’t penetrate Dayme’s stunned brain. She continued to rock and hum. In desperation, Morgan forcibly took the child and yelled at her to stop humming. It brought her back to reality.
“Oh, Morgan,” she cried. “They killed Uncle John and Aunt Florence…and…and Betsy and Little John and Leon. They killed them all. I heard their awful screams. I crouched in a corner covering my ears. They’re all dead.”
“Where’s Marceline? I didn’t find her. Did the Comanches carry her off? The wranglers? Where are they?”
“It’s Saturday,” Dayme murmured. “The wranglers are in town. Marceline wasn’t here. Leon quit her. They’re separated.”
“This poor little orphan.” Dayme wept like her heart would break. Morgan held them both close until she had calmed enough to talk. The baby continued to scream to the top of his lungs as Morgan laid the child in the new crib.
“He’s hungry, Morgan. Go to the kitchen and make him a sugar teat.”
Child of the River Page 20
