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.
Dead Aim Page 32
