2.

On or about the middle of May that spring, Edie climbed out her bedroom window, with only a card board grip containing her personal items and a small leather bag she retrieved from the privy.

She left a note on the kitchen table. It read - -

“The horse and wagon are at the rail station.

Come and get them, if you want them.”

Edie caught the ten o’clock train to Abilene. She just turned eighteen. No one paid any attention to her birthday and she cried over still another snubbing. Then she dried her tears and the resolve to leave filled her every fiber.

The next day her Pa rode to town on a horse. He stormed into the rail station demanding the whereabouts of his daughter.

The train master said with a smirk, “Mr. Carter, why, just last night, she took the ten o’clock to Abilene. That is all I can tell you.”

Her Pa ranted and raved and was asked to leave the rail station at the point of a shotgun.

Mr. Carter drove the wagon to the sheriff’s office and made further demands, which were ignored. The sheriff asked Mr. Carter to leave the office, at the point of a pistol.

Having been ignobly thrown out of two places in town, he drove to the local saloon, bought a bottle and sulked in a corner. At about ten that night, Mr. Carter picked a fight with a man much shorter and smaller. Mr. Carter lost any advantage he possessed due to size, when he started pulling on his whiskey bottle earlier in the evening.

He called the other man some unsavory names and the smaller man began beating Mr. Carter to a pulp. Mr. Carter, lying on his back in the saw dust of the saloon, shook his head to clear his vision. He rolled over on his hands and knees. He reached in his overalls and pulled out a long knife.

“Now, you little runt, I’ll cut you down to size.”

The smaller man watched Mr. Carter gain his feet and then hit him first in the Adams’s apple and then across the bridge of the nose with the big end of a pool cue.

The first blow crushed Mr. Carter’s Adam’s apple. He could not breathe. In addition, the blow to the nose with the cue stick blinded Mr. Carter and he stumbled around the room. He gasped, gripped his throat, strangled and suffocated to death. He was carried out to his wagon, feet first and not at the point of a gun. Most people said Mr. Carter would die by the gun, but it was not so.

When the wagon containing Mr. Carter was delivered home, Mrs. Carter thanked the men and then asked them to leave, despite their many offers to assist her with her dead husband. She was polite, but firm. When they were gone, or so it was reported later, she called her sons.

“Boys, your pa is out in the wagon, dead. I want you to pick a place and bury him. We will not mourn nor will we have any kind of service. Let the Lord or the Devil deal with him. He is out of our lives.”

When the boys returned to the house, their Ma called them and the girls to the kitchen table.

“Girls,” she said. “Your Pa is dead and your sister Edie has run away. I can’t say I blame her.”

Sam asked, “What will we do now, Ma?”

“We will farm this place. We will work together and not be whipped, or beaten. You are men and you will act like men. Your Pa is standing in front of his Maker. It is judgment time for him. For us. it is liberation time.”

John asked, “The wedding?”

“We will have it just like we planned. John, do you want to live here and help us work the place?”

“Yes, Ma, I would like to stay.”

“Good.” She turned to Sam. “What do you think about getting married in a couple more weeks?”

Sam broke into a grin, “If Molly Josie will take me.”

“Then find out and we will have two weddings,” she said.

Slowly she looked around the table. She saw no tears over the death of Mr. Carter. She almost smiled.

“George!”

“Yes, Ma’am,” George answered.

“You still want to join the army?”

“Ma, how did you know that?”

“I’m your Ma, Son. Now, do you want to leave?”

“No, Ma’am. I want to stay here and work the place with the rest of you.”

“Then we have a lot to do,” Mrs. Carter said.

John asked, “Ma, if Sam and I both get married, what will we do for rooms?”

“Oh, that is easy, Son. Baby Sue will move in with me and that will empty one room. Your brother, Saul, will move out to the hayloft for a while and that will give another empty room. We will build on as soon as we can, and certainly before cold weather.”

George asked, “Ma, what will we do for money?”

“We own the place out right and can raise decent crops. We have a big garden, pigs, a cow, and if we work, and don’t drink all the time, we will do fine. We will also sell Edie’s chickens to Mr. Owens at the mercantile, just like she did. We will feed the chickens, raise a larger flock, sell some, and eat what we want. The chickens will be our cash crop until harvest time.”

Sam asked, “Ma, how did you know all of these things?”

“You mean that you wanted to marry?”

He nodded.

“Lordy, Son one look at your face and I knew you were smitten.”

“What about Edie and the chickens?”

“I followed her one day. She was too willing to walk those three miles to town and back. I knew she was up to something.”

Sam asked again, “Ma, how did you know so much?”

“Let’s just say I am your Ma and leave it at that.”

Before the month passed, Sam and John married their sweethearts out under the only shade tree on the place. George moved out to the loft.

He allowed, “I like this arrangement. I won’t have to listen to Sam and John snore.”

Not only were the boys happy to be married, but they were happy to work the place from dawn till dark.

Sam said, “I am my own man. I will work and prove my worth. Pa never thought any us boys were worth anything. All he did was beat us and scorn our efforts. Now, we are our own men and we will work to prove our worth”.

Mrs. Carter, with the aid of the girls, Ruth and Rose the twins, and Baby Sue, fenced some of the ground up in Rush Canyon and made chicken pens.

They found the long wire Edie used to catch chickens. Mrs. Carter said, “Boys, make me three more wires. We will catch every chicken in this canyon. With their wings trimmed and with water and feed in the pens they will stay at home.” They caught every chicken and trimmed their wings.

John laughed, “Now, that will keep them from flying out of the pens.”

George asked, “Ma, are we going to build more pens?”

“Yes, and we will build a hen house for the laying chickens.”

Later, Mrs. Carter said, “We are in the chicken business and all the thanks go to Edie.”

Sam said, with a laugh, “Old Mr. Owens was sure glad when I told him we would continue bringing him chickens, just like Edie.”