by John Foxjohn
Of course, this had shocked the women of the town to their very core. Before that, her parents had kept away, even her father. It had been nice to have one place she could go and not get hounded. But when she made the “shocking statement” as everyone called it, her home sanctuary disappeared.
She’d received a stern lecture from her mother and father on respecting her elders even if she didn’t agree with what they were saying. She had to concede they had a point, and the lectures from town women not only continued, so did the frequency.
“Did you hear what I said?” Mrs. Paulson asked.
The woman’s words snapped Abbey’s attention back. “Ma’am,” she said in a voice dripping molasses, “Can I help you find something?”
The older woman swung her dress around, mumbling to herself, and marched out, her heels clicking on the floor. She met Abbey’s father coming in the front. “You need to do something about that daughter of yours,” she snapped.
William Martin asked, “What’d Abbey do now?” But he was asking it to the woman’s back. She never slowed down.
He strode into the store and stopped, hands on his hips. “What’d you say to her?”
Abbey lowered her head and shook it. “I made a big mistake…I asked her if I could help her find something in the store. I’m sorry Dad; I’ll never do it again.”
His eyes narrowed. “That couldn’t be all you said.”
“The exact words. These came after my daily lecture.”
He grunted and came around the counter.
“Can I ask you a question?” Abbey asked.
He looked at her for a long moment trying to see if anything was behind the question she wanted to ask him. Instead of answering, he waved his hand indicating for her to go on.
“What would happen to me and Mom if something happened to you?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” he grumbled the answer.
“But what if it does? What would Mom do? Who would you want her to marry? She would have to. She’s not allowed to own property. Not allowed to conduct business. She couldn’t even sell the store. She’d have to marry some man, and in a hurry just to live. Is that what you want for her, Dad?
Jabbing his finger at her, he said, “You’ve been reading that activist crap again, that newspaper The Revolution, haven’t you?”
Abbey pulled a box of material close and began to fold it. “No, I can’t read it. You tore it up and threw it away.”
“Biggest mistake we ever made was letting the school teach you to read. They should hang that Anthony and Stanton woman for the trouble they’ve caused.”
She set the box down. It didn’t do any good to argue. “I’m going home, Dad.”
“Good,” he grumped. “That’s where you need to be anyway.”
Her walk home was the best part of the day so far. At that time there was no one on the street to encounter, and therefore, she didn’t have to speak to anyone. When she went inside the house, she’d expected to find her mother in the kitchen, but she wasn’t home. Then it occurred to Abbey that it was Tuesday and her mother would be at the quilting group. She sighed. Her mother would get an earful from Mrs. Paulson, and then Abbey would get it again when her mother got home.
Instead of finding something to eat, she went to her room, shut the door, and searched under her mattress until she found some old papers. She sat back on the bed to read them again. She hadn’t lied. Her father had found The Revolution newspaper, tore it into tiny pieces, and threw it away.
He hadn’t found John Stuart Mills’ essay, The Subjection of Women.
She held the paper, liking the feel of it, and even the smell, a combination of musk and old ink.
Abbey wasn’t a feminist; at least she didn’t think she was. She didn’t believe in everything the feminists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton preached, or Mills either, for that matter.
John Stuart Mills had written in his essay that “both men and women should be able to vote to defend their own rights and to learn to stand on their two feet, morally and intellectually.”
This she agreed with wholeheartedly. If something happened to her dad, her mother would be forced to marry someone in a hurry. She’d have to pick the best available that would have her. It was true that no law would require this, but as she’d told her dad, her mother couldn’t own property or conduct business—simply because she was a woman. To survive, she’d have to marry a man who would then own the store.
Something else Mills said that she agreed with: “Marriage was an institution of despotism.” A ruler with absolute power, and in the case of marriage, the man was the master and could do what he pleased and when he pleased. This was definitely true and one of the main reasons she wanted to wait for the right man instead of being a slave to the wrong one.
The country had fought a great war to free slaves from masters—black male slaves that is. Women of any color were still slaves to their husbands.
When the town women had asked her why she wasn’t married, she’d tried to explain that she didn’t want to be someone a man used anyway he saw fit, and when he saw fit. She wanted to marry someone who she loved, who she respected, and who respected her. A man who she could build a future with, and be happy.
The women had treated her statement almost as if it was blasphemy. She would have come off better if she’d stood in the middle of the street and yelled at the top of her lungs that God didn’t exist.
Rising, she placed her copy of the essay back under the mattress. She paced the house. She didn’t really know what the women of the town thought they were doing or had planned. If they thought they could wear her down—why they would want to she didn’t understand—but it wasn’t happening.
She suspected it had more to do with their desire to make Lloyd Stephens happy than caring if she was fulfilling her womanly duties, or anything else. The man went out of his way to charm them, stroke some hidden feelings inside them that they would never admit to. His wanton flattery always brought on another onslaught of lectures.
Abbey wasn’t sure he did it to enlist their help with her, or if he had some other motive. After all, he did it with men, too.
Restlessness swooped through her like a hawk diving at its prey. She missed Andy. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since she’d left his house the morning she’d said the stupid stuff about Lloyd. Her biggest fear was Andy wasn’t coming back. She had no idea where he was or what he was doing, and if she’d been in his place, she didn’t think she would come back.
With the exception of JT and Elijah, everyone treated him badly. They would say mean, nasty things to his face. Why would he put up with the town’s people? He could go other places to live. In fact, JT had been trying to get him to do just that. A place where he could paint and people wouldn’t know his background.
She shivered. She wanted—no, needed—to believe he’d stayed around because of her. Now she might be the reason he’d left.
As she walked out the door, she figured she might as well add her name to the list of people who mistreated him. For the life of her, she would never understand why she’d defended Lloyd Stephens to Andy.
A hollow pang centered deep in her chest as she shuffled on the sidewalk in the direction of the stables. She had no conscious thought about going there—it was almost as if her feet wouldn’t let her go anywhere else. She didn’t know where Andy was, but if he came back, he would come to the stable. He would come to see Elijah.
One thing she did know, she’d never wanted to be an old maid, barren of children, she just wanted to marry the right man, bear the right man’s children—build a future with him. Andy was her man, maybe the only one who could be.
If he didn’t come back to her, she would darn well go to him.
Chapter Nineteen
Cap had ridden to Fort Laramie, taking his time because over two hundred pounds of gold weighed his horse down. He was scared to death every step of the way with that much gold. He was traveling through co
untry where a man would kill someone for a dollar, let alone what he was carrying.
At Fort Laramie, the first thing he did was visit the saloon. He never drank much, but had a plan. As he walked in, he spotted a young man in tattered cow clothes standing at the end of the bar, nursing a mug of beer. He sidled up beside him and ordered a beer as the cowboy glanced at him, and then back to the obviously hot beer.
The bartender placed the beer in front of Cap, took the money, and left without asking the cowboy if he wanted another.
Drinking a swallow, he turned and glanced at the young man beside him. “Hot out there.”
The young man nodded but didn’t say anything.
“How would you like another beer? Cap asked.
He shrugged, “If you’re buying?”
Cap held up his mug to the bartender, signaling another one, but pointed at the cowboy. The bartender drew up another beer, cut the head off, and collected the money Cap laid on the bar.
Holding his mug up, Cap said, “May you live to be a hundred.” It was something his father had always said.
They touched mugs and Cap, knowing the answer, asked, “You working?”
“Naw,” the cowboy said. “Ain’t no one hiring around here.”
“How would you like to make a hundred dollars?”
The cowboy turned slowly to face him, his voice hardened. “I don’t do that kind of work. Never been good with a gun, but still wouldn’t even if I was.”
“Don’t want you to kill anyone,” Cap said.
“Hundred dollars is a half year’s wages,” the cowboy said. “What you want can’t be legal.”
“It’s a little illegal.” Cap half-shrugged. “Nothing that should keep you up at night, or get you any jail time. It’ll just get you a hundred dollars.”
The cowboy drank half the cold beer Cap had bought him, then said, “Why don’t you tote it out and we’ll see.”
“Simple, I want you to go to the land office and file on a piece of homestead land—at a place I’ll tell you. Once you file, come back here and I’ll buy you another beer. You sign the land over to me and I’ll give you a hundred dollars.”
The cowboy looked at him for a long moment. “That’s all?”
“That’s it. Sign it over to me and get the hundred.”
“What if I keep the land?”
“That’s your choice, you’ll file on it. But I’ll tell you now it is up in Dakota Territory right among the Indians. You’ll have to prove up, build a house, do something to the land, plow it, or put cows on it to keep it. Besides, you won’t get the hundred dollars.”
Downing the rest of his beer, the cowboy set the mug down. “I’ll be back for another.”
As the day passed, the cowboy returned for his beer and signed over the three hundred and sixty acres to Cap and Bull, but the cowboy wouldn’t be the last one. As word spread, Cap got five more to do the same thing. At the end of the day, he had bought the rights to two thousand one hundred and sixty acres. He’d have done more but he ran out of cash money.
When he came back with the herd, he’d file on some in his own name and maybe get others to do the same thing.
He had a good reason for doing it this way. When he took the gold to the assay office, it would create some talk. If he’d filed himself, people would assume he’d struck it rich at the place he was filing on. It would cause a run before he even got a herd together.
The next day he found the assay office and changed the gold ore for gold coin. He’d known the gold Andy found was worth a lot, but the twenty-seven thousand, two hundred dollars was more than he’d counted on.
If he was careful, he had more than enough money to buy cows and hire men and an outfit to get to the ranch, and have some left over.
Growing up in the Hill Country of central Texas, the son of a German immigrant, his parents had named him Capland Walther. As he grew up close to the German town of Boerne, pronounced BUR-nee, somehow he’d lost the h. He didn’t mind because Walters was more of an American name.
At Fort Laramie, he visited the blacksmith and had him make four branding irons. Before they split up, Cap had told Andy about branding. They’d decided on a tepee brand—a triangle with the pointed end at top. In this case, the point crossed to form a vee like the poles of a tepee. On the left side of the crossed poles was a “B” for Bull, and on the other side, a “C” for Cap.
From Laramie, he took the train to Fort Worth, then changed to a train to San Antonio, called San Antone by just about everyone from that part of the country. Cap chose this area of Texas because he was familiar with it. He’d grown up here, had hired out to numerous ranches. If he could find cows cheap, this was the place.
As Cap checked the range, he was glad he had money—gold money. At that time in Texas and most of the west for that matter, people didn’t trust paper currency. Most people refused to do business with paper money.
Texas ranchers had cattle and horses, but cash money was hard to come by. Furthermore, they had to drive cows anywhere from fifty to a hundred miles to market, gamble they could sell the cattle for a decent price. In some cases, when the ranchers reached a market, no one was buying, or only buying cows for hide and tallow, and they paid very little for it. In fact, in some cases, after the rancher sold, he would be in debt because he had to pay people to help him drive.
Cap topped a hill and stopped his horse, looking at a ranch house below in the valley. Cap had looked for this exact situation. The rancher’s cows bred like rabbits and his range was overstocked.
Cap heeled his horse forward, looking at the cattle. Most were good stock with a few culls as most ranches had, but something he was determined not to have. He wanted a breeding program that would eliminate culls.
As he pulled into the ranch yard, he had to admit this rancher’s stock was big like longhorns were apt to be, large and rangy. He believed given a chance, the longhorn could fill out to quite a lot of beef. But crossbreed them with a good white-faced bull, and then he would end up with no culls and cows with an average of two hundred more pounds of meat on the hoof.
The Texas hill country was the perfect place for a couple of reasons. First, grass was not good and most of the range was overstocked. Ranchers had yet to realize that overstocking, something Cap would make sure he didn’t do, killed the grass.
Growing up, he’d heard the stories about millions of buffalo roaming the land. The ranchers saw this and didn’t see a difference between the buffalo and cows. Cap did. The ranchers confined cows in a limited area where the buffalo never stopped. They roamed from the south to north, and then back again. The buffalo didn’t graze the same grass.
Cap guided his horse to the water trough close to the corral. As the horse drank, a rail-thin man in homespun clothes and run down boots strolled up. “Light an’ set,” he said. “Name’s McGlothlin. Don’t get many visitors hereabouts.”
Swinging down from the horse, he dusted himself off, and then thrust out a hand to shake. “Capland Walters, but friends call me Cap. Riding through, heading for San Antone.”
McGlothlin nodded. “That’s what I ought to do.” He bit off a chaw of tobacco and offered some to Cap, who turned him down. “Should drift me a herd up to San Antone. But that takes hands, and I ain’t got ‘em.” He glanced at Cap with a questioning look, but continued. “I’d like to drift a herd up north to Kansas.”
“Risky with the Indians in the Nation, herd cutters, and other such vermin.”
Cap took his hat off, dipped it in the trough, and then dumped some on his head. Wiping his face with his bandana, he said, “Might buy a few myself. I’m riding through, and it’d be a shame to make it for nothing.”
“For a fact,” the man said. He’d wanted a cowhand to help him make a trip to San Antone, but now he thought he saw a way to get the money without a gamble and no drive. “You could do worse. If a man had him a little cash money he could buy cows mighty cheap.”
With the hat flopped back on, he plastered a do
ubtful expression on his face. “Don’t know about that. Could lose a sight of money. Men have made money going over the trail, but lost it, too, as well as their shirts.”
“Young man like you,” the rancher said, “should take a chance. You’ve got your life ahead of you. You could double your money.”
He hesitated. With an ace up his sleeve, he’d been waiting for the perfect moment to play it. Now was the time. “Well, I have some money, but gold is scarce in this country and I hate to get shut of it.”
The rancher’s eyes almost bugged out. “Gold? Young fellow, if you want to buy cows with gold, you don’t have to go any farther. They pay ten dollars a head in San Antone—”
“More’n I’d pay,” Cap said. “Man’s got risks, driving to Kansas. Got to hire riders, get a chuck wagon, horses—not to mention grub. It’d take a heap of money.”
The rancher spit out a blob of tobacco and swiped his whiskers with the sleeve of his shirt. “Might sell a few. I could use some cash money.”
”Give you three dollars a head,” Cap said.
McGlothlin almost choked on his chaw. “Three? You’re crazy.”
Gathering the reins, he said, “Maybe I’d better forget it. I stand to lose.”
“Might let a few go for seven dollars,” he said.
“No, I’ve got to ride on. Enjoyed the talk.”
As Cap swung up on the horse, McGlothlin caught his arm. “I might go lower.”
Cap didn’t like to take advantage of people, but his first loyalty was to Bull and the ranch. The cheaper he could buy the cows, the better off they’d be. Besides, the man really needed to sell even at three dollars a head. He’d be a fool not to, if only to save grass for the other cows.
Wrangling back and forth, they settled on five dollars a head. Cap paid for one thousand head, and no culls. He’d have bought more but he wanted mostly young stuff for breeding, not selling.
As it happened, he’d been able to hire two men from nearby ranches to help him drive to San Antone for ten dollars each. He suspected they were heading there anyway and found a way to let someone pay them to go. It didn’t matter, though. He needed their help either way.
