Sharpshooter

by Dusty Richards

  Her men came running into the house shouting, “Who was he? Are you okay? What happened?”

  “Some bad-mouthed man broke in my front door. I warned him I’d shoot him. Now he believes it. You boys can repair the door, and you need to hang up the harness that I used to drag him out to the gate.”

  “Why did he do that to you do you reckon?” Hiram asked her.

  “He called me a whore. I knew he had the wrong house.”

  Her husband wrestled her into his arms. “Baby, he sure was at the wrong house.”

  Not long after that Hiram heard about Texas. Nothing could change his mind, so he sold their place and the four of them loaded up—lock, stock, and barrel—and headed there in two wagons. The homestead land Hiram found for them was west of Fort Worth right in Comanche country. To tell the truth, in Easter’s opinion, Texas was no richer farmland than Arkansas.

  Those boys grew up fast. They became Texas Rangers at fourteen. Oh, they didn’t go chasing down outlaws, they were part of a poop patrol on the outlook for Comanche that snuck down in their country and killed folks, kidnapped teens, and generally raised hell.

  The brothers rode all around looking for scattered horse apples, which meant Comanche were in their midst. They learned quickly that a barefoot range horse stops to poop in a pile and an unshod Indian pony scatters his as his rider goes on. If that sign showed up, they and their neighbors were fixing to have a whole lot of trouble with war parties.

  They wore .30-caliber Colts and had a Spencer under their stirrup. Of course by then the Civil War was on, and most of the men and even boys had been called up. Hiram and his team of rangers were left at home as point people to protect all the manless settler families living in their county. Hiram didn’t like it, but someone needed to be in charge.

  Coffee got so high priced they did without it. And sugar, too. Even cloth for new clothing became extinct.

  One day, when the boys were attending a three-month school session, they came home all beat up, and one of Long’s overall suspenders even had been torn loose. The sight of them shocked Easter. Black eyes, noses bloody, their clothes in rags.

  Her hands on her hips she demanded to know what they had been doing.

  “Mom, three grown men rode up and called Miss Shepherd a-a whore,” Harper said. “And for her to come outside—I remembered the man called you that and made you so mad you shot him. Well, my gun was out on my horse, so me and Long went outside. We had to clean their plows.”

  “Who won?”

  “We threw them on their horses and they left bawling,” Long said.

  “What did the teacher say?”

  Harper answered. “She said she didn’t think them men will be back.”

  Long nodded. “They got the worst of it from us I am sure.”

  “Let me dress your cuts and then you two change into some work clothes. I am sure I can fix these to wear again.”

  “Mom, there wasn’t a thing else we could do.”

  “You boys did the right thing. I am just not used to seeing you two so beat up.”

  “They were big as Dad.”

  “I understand. Let’s wash those cuts. I’m proud of you two. I bet the teacher is, too.”

  “Oh, she told us so,” Harper said.

  She was proud of her boys.

  Around then, rumors started that the dreary war was going to soon be over and maybe things in everyone’s lives would improve. Texas was broke and sinking. Hardly anything was on the shelves in stores, and what little could be found was at sky-high prices. No one had any money left. Hiram traded for another place farther from the persistent Comanche threat, to near Camp Verde above Kerrville.

  A nearby rancher, Captain Emory Greg, had been by talking about taking a large herd of Texas cattle to the nearest railhead up at Sedalia, Missouri, and sell them as soon as the armistice was signed. But if the war did not end he said he thought he could get past those Federal troops who might stop him up around Fort Smith, Arkansas.

  The former Confederate captain said that during the war they had eaten up every chicken and hog in both the north and south parts of the country. Yankees had money, and if they wanted meat it might as well be Texas beef. But the trip to Sedalia would not be an easy one. Lots of outlaw bands and free holders roamed the mountainous region of Arkansas and Missouri and would surely try to steal a large herd of cattle—or anything worth ten cents for that matter.

  “Can he deliver them do you think?” Easter asked her husband.

  He shrugged. “I don’t guess that anything can’t be done. And with enough good help he might get there and sell them for a profit.”

  She shook her head, bewildered. “Cattle sure are not worth ten cents apiece around here.”

  He hugged her and kissed her like he did all the time even though she had been his wife for eighteen years. “We will survive.”

  Bless his heart, she decided, but when her two sons came home that night and told them both they were going to Sedalia, Missouri, in two weeks with the Greg herd, her heart stopped.

  “You boys may be able to beat up some sorry ranch hands, but you two are not going to Missouri and get killed by angry Yankees,” she told them.

  “Aw, Ma, we are only going to herd some longhorns up there. The war is about over. Why Greg’s going to pay us fifteen bucks a month if we get them up there.”

  “Who will bury you?”

  “Ma,” Long said in a voice she could hardly tell from his brother’s, “we aren’t getting killed. We’re just going to be herding some cows.”

  She looked up at the underside of the split shingle roof for help. “Hiram! Tell them no.”

  He hugged her like he always did when he wanted to change her mind about something. “Darling, you have to let go of the boys some time, even when you don’t want to, so they can fly from the nest.”

  “I don’t want them to fly anywhere. They don’t have wings to start with, and they’d need them to ever get those crazy cattle north of even where we came from.”

  “Aw, darling.”

  “Don’t aw me.” But even as he kissed her she knew she’d lost another battle to this big burly man she loved so much.

  Ten days later, teary eyed, she watched her only two wonderful sons ride off. That was the worst day in her entire life. She felt she might never ever see either of them again. Her husband hugged and kissed her. “Those boys are plenty tough to survive.”

  May God help them.