Chapter 2

Some lights were still on in the large sprawling ranch house and compound Chet called headquarters. Chet could smell the fireplace’s oak smoke as he rode up the starlit valley. Julio acted as weary as he felt. Snorting in the road dust occasionally, the big horse at last awoke to the fact that he was close to the corrals, feed, and his associates. The two arrived at the hitch rail and Chet dropped heavily out of the saddle. He slung the wool army blanket over the seat of the saddle. He’d worn it for warmth most of the way home. His sea legs under him, he loosened the girths, picking with his fingers at the sweat-soaked leather.

Chet could hear his young buckskin stallion snorting at the buggers that shared his barn area. And then he smiled to himself. The quick-footed stud from the Barbarousa Hacienda breeding farm was one thing that always made him grin over his pride of ownership.

“That you, Chet?” his sister Susie shouted from the half-open lighted doorway.

“No, it’s his ghost.”

“The ghost looks lively to me.” She laughed, then frowned at him. “You have trouble today?”

His 12-year-old nephew Heck must have heard him come in, too. “I’ll put him up, Chet,” he called out.

“You alright?” Chet asked the youth.

“Ah, sure. You must have rode him a long ways, he acts very tired.”

“He earned his keep today. You better get some sleep. It’s late.”

“I will.” With that, he led the horse off under the stars toward the corrals.

“Thanks,” Chet said, and turned to his twenty-some-year-old sister. “Well, did it all go well around here today?”

“Good enough. I was about to think you’d found a bed for the night.”

He slung his arm over her shoulder and kissed her forehead, going inside. “Naw, no one would have me.”

“You aren’t trying hard enough.” She smiled up at him, then pushed the brown wavy hair back from her face. “Food’s in the oven.”

Susie was attractive enough to have any fellar she wanted in the countryside. But, like himself, she didn’t have time for one—running the big house was no small chore. He removed his gloves, then hung his wide-brimmed hat on a peg and took off his jumper to hang it beside on the wall pegs. At the large open-hearth fireplace, he stopped and warmed his fingers.

“Cold out there, wasn’t it?” She shifted the woolen shawl on her shoulders.

In a quick check of the large room, he made certain they were alone. “Cold wasn’t the problem. Three of them tried to ambush me today.”

Her eyebrows hooded her blue eyes with concern. “What happened?”

He shrugged and looked hard at the overhead coal-oil lamp in the center of the living room. “They won’t cause us no more trouble.” Then, trying to revive her spirits, he smiled. “But that ain’t no concern of yours.”

“I knew something was wrong.” She shook her head, leading him into the dining room. “Gut feeling. Worried me all day that something was wrong. This won’t ever end. The killing, I mean?”

“Sis, we’ve talked about it enough. The only way to escape them is to clear out of Texas.”

She used some hot-holders and took his heaping plate of food out of the oven and slid it before him. In a low voice she said, “I know, but our dad can’t stand a long trip. I’d hate to bury a family member alone in some isolated graveyard and lose contact with them. Here we have our grandparents’ graves, Mother’s—”

“Sis, if we don’t do something soon, there may not be enough of us left alive to even tend those graves.”

“I know. I know.”

Chet sat down and turned at the sound of someone coming into the dining hall. Dale Allen’s widow, May, nodded and crossed to the table. May was on the chubby side, age twenty-three, and the past nine months had been hell for her. She’d lost Dale Allen’s daughter Racheal as well, from what the doc called some weakness. Never a strong person, May did all she could to raise his other children and her own daughter—Chet’s sister-in-law proved to be Susie’s greatest helper. May’s dark hair was thin, cut in a bob, and had no curl. She wore black, which did nothing for her appearance, but Chet felt certain she did all she could do.

“Did you have trouble today?” May asked, as he chewed on a piece cut from his slice of beef roast.

He nodded, not wanting to explain the day’s entire incident. Susie filled his coffee cup from the pot she brought over from the stove. Then she took her place across the table and nodded to May. “He had more trouble with the Reynoldses.”

Looking hard into her steaming cup, May nodded. “I thought so. Oh, I guess it won’t ever stop.”

Before taking another bite, Chet agreed with a head bob and went on eating. Finally he set his fork down and cradled the hot tin cup in his hands. “May, I’m planning on finding us a new place. We can’t raise our families in this hill country. The place is full of mean people with no value in them for life.”

“You still thinking about Arizona?” she asked, speaking subdued like usual.

“It could be the land where we could escape this madness. But—” He blew on the surface and the aromatic richness curled up his nose. “I don’t know, Arizona may not be far enough.”

May blinked her eyes. “When would we go?”

“I have no idea. Might take a year to sell this place and find another one out there.”

She chewed on her thin lower lip, looking concerned before she spoke. “I need to go with you and the family. I don’t have another. My people disowned me for marrying Dale Allen. I feel more a part of you all than I ever did growing up in that big house.”

May’s parents were the height of society in the area. They owned a large bank and several ranches. But May had never really fit in with them. Her younger sisters were charming young ladies in society, while Chet’s brother’s widow was always backward-acting and very tender. It didn’t help that May, against their advice, ran off to get married. Dale Allen took her to a country preacher and they gave their vows with Chet as a witness. May was nothing like Dale’s first wife, Nancy, a bright, laughing, attractive woman who died giving birth to their last child. At that moment in time, Chet figured that Dale simply needed a mother for his newborn daughter, Racheal, and the boys, Heck, twelve, Ty, ten, and Ray, seven. Racheal they later lost, and soon May brought in this world a baby girl of her own, Donna. She simply must have been a handy choice for Dale Allen.

However, Chet’s brother had turned his back on May. He spent long evenings working on farm machinery in the shop, alone. While Dale Allen was a terrific mechanic, when Chet finally confronted him about his absent ways toward his family, both May and the boys, Dale Allen about cried. “The kids remind me too much of her.”

Things were going better at last when his brother rode out ramrodding a fifteen-hundred-head herd for Kansas—then the last thing Chet ever thought about happened—the Reynolds clan attacked Dale Allen and the crew in the Indian Territory.

His father, Rocky, had been no help for years. He’d lost his mind searching for the twins, and later did more damage to himself looking for the other son kidnapped by the Comanche. Their mother, Theresa, had passed away with little left of her mind over the losses of the three children to the red marauders.

His father’s younger brother Mark’s wife, Louise Byrnes, widowed by the Civil War, was headstrong, and she locked horns a lot with him. Her two sons, Reg, nineteen, and sixteen-year-old J.D., were Chet’s right-hand helpers. A big family that shared the sprawling compound built originally to survive the Comanche. With two mildly creaking windmills, corrals, a large hay storage, granary, a dairy barn, bunkhouse and a rambling house all snuggled behind a twelve-foot-high wall. Behind the tall wooden gates that had not been shut in years lived his family.

Chet finished his meal and thanked them before heading to his small apartment in the bunkhouse. Scratching the thatch of brown hair on the top of his head, he put on his coat, ready to leave, and nodded to both of them. “Quit worrying, girls. We can figure this situation out. I thought they’d soon have enough of this dying business and quit. But I’m afraid they have their minds made up to die to the last man or woman.”

“Good night,” Susie said to Chet, and hugged May’s shoulder. “We’re both with you. You can count on us to do whatever we need to do.”

“I’m counting on both of you.” Hat on, he headed outside, dreading the cold night, leaving the warm fireplace. Heat in the bunkhouse was a wood-burning stove in the main part—little of its warmth reached his private bedroom.

At last, under the piled-on sogans in his bed, he quickly fell asleep, still wondering what those Reynoldses would try next. Before five AM, he was up, dressed, and back over in the kitchen filled with the aroma of food cooking. The two new Mexican girls, Juanita and Sonya, were setting plates and cups on the long table. A baby was crying somewhere, and Susie directed the breakfast operation in a starched white apron. Chet poured his own coffee and smiled at her.

Heck soon arrived with his two younger brothers, bringing in buckets of milk. Putting down the milk on a bench, all three boys smiled at the sight of Chet, then Susie sent them off to wash up. The youngest, Ray, ducked her herding and shouted, “Kill any Injuns while you were gone, Uncle Chet?”

“No, Ray. No Injuns this time.”

“You remember you promised me a big headdress some day,” he said over his shoulder, while Susie moved them out to the back porch to wash up.

Still grinning about Ray’s remarks, he nodded at Louise’s two older boys, who came in from the living room.

“We were about to go looking for you last night,” Reg, the older and taller one said, shaking his hand. “Susie said you’d be coming along. Any trouble?”

“We can talk about it later.”

Both boys agreed, knowing he didn’t want a conversation about the feud during the meal. Chet felt family meals were no place to discuss such bloody incidents and most everyone respected that. When he looked up he saw, with her hair put up and usual demeanor, his aunt Louise, forty-two, sweep in to the room. Chet’s father’s brother Mark found her in Shreveport’s society and brought her home before the war. Mark was supposed to have been killed in the final actions of the war. But they had only heard of his demise, with no news or record from the military. Chet never felt certain that his uncle had been killed, and he still looked for him to arrive any day, despite the intervening years.

Sipping on his coffee as the platters of food begun to be set out, Chet asked for silence to say his short prayer. He rose to straddle his seat and spoke softly. “Oh, Heavenly Father, guide and protect us through this day. May this wonderful food give us the strength to do the chores we are assigned. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

Everyone nodded and then took their places. Susie oversaw everything. She and the two helpers made certain everyone had what they needed. Sleepy-eyed, May soon joined them with her little one in her arms and nodded good morning to everyone. Apologizing for her tardiness, she set Donna in a high chair that Juanita brought to her, and then took her place.

“How tough are those new horses to break?” Chet asked the older boys.

Reg shook his head to dismiss any concern about the fresh horses he’d bought. Range-raised, they came from a breed Indian named Crooked Foot who brought the herd of forty head to the ranch last January, winter-thin enough to catch, herd, and handle. Systematically, the boys had been working on them in their daily routine to green-break them.

“That gray we’re saving for you,” J.D. said, with a wink at some of the others.

“I thought he’d be the gentlest one in the bunch.” Chet laughed, recalling the hoof-pawing horse’s first day on the—.

“Yeah, he’ll make a real buggy horse,” Reg said, before he took the dripping sorghum-clad piece of pancake from his fork into his mouth.

“We just don’t have his attention yet.” Chet picked up his refilled cup of steaming coffee. “But he’ll learn. We need to put a running W on him, lay him down on a canvas for half a day and then see how wild he wants to be after that.”

Reg quickly agreed. “That’s about all that we’ve not tried on him so far.”

“Good, let’s do that first thing.” The horse matter closed, Chet excused himself and went with a cup of steaming coffee into the living room to the large rollback desk and swung the swivel chair in under his butt. His second-largest job, after being ranch ramrod, was keeping the books. A job that he hated worse than shoveling out a hog pen. He studied his list of items needing to be taken care of. He must make a payment to Grossman’s Mercantile to settle the ranch’s monthly account.

Among items on the bill was a glaring charge for three hundred dollars made by Louise for some special-order millinery items. A subject she’d never discussed with him before spending that large a sum. There would be hell over that between the two of them. No one else on the ranch abused his or her part in this outfit’s finances except Louise. With her free spending to gouge him, he also knew she did less work than the rest, other than throwing her weight around on the other folks.

In a short while, with the house cleared out, he walked back in the kitchen for another cup of coffee before he went outside. Seated at the kitchen table, he found his father Rocky, head down, slurping up too-liquid oatmeal from a tablespoon. Disheveled, unshaven, he looked up and then shook his head in disapproval at Chet.

“Now, by nab, I checked last night. Wasn’t an armed guard on duty nowheres around this place. I tell you, boy, them sneaking red devils will be in here and murder us all in our sleep.” He used the big spoon to make his point. “Them sonsabitches will swarm in here and murder us all. You can mark my words. You may be in charge, but you’re doing a damn sorry job of keeping up the guard around here.”

“I’ll check on it,” Chet said.

“Check on it, hell—why we’ll all be dead. Bring me some more of that oatmeal.” He handed the bowl to Susie, who shrugged on the other side of him, looking at Chet.

“Was it alright? The oatmeal I mean?” she asked him, loud enough to overcome his hearing loss.

“Just right, darling. Just right.”

“I’m going to check on the boys,” Chet said, setting down his empty cup.

Susie gave Rocky the cereal and patted his shoulder. “Now you eat big, daddy.”

Chet saw her actions were to distract his father, and nodded his approval, then left. A cold blast swept his face first, and the bright sun did not much warm the air. The confusion and dust down in the corral told him the taming of the gray was in process. He climbed the corral rails, and in time saw the struggling gelding being laid on the canvas sheet. The running W was a device of ropes on his legs that, with two men behind him pulling on the ropes, could trip him down. Then the crew tied his four feet together with soft cotton ropes. His older three boys, hands on their hips, studied the helpless pony on the ground.

“Looks good. What do you call him?” Chet asked.

“George, for George Washington, who once rode a gray horse.”

Squinting against the sun, the three nodded in approval. J.D. said, “And it says in the Bible to beware of the rider on the gray horse.”

“I heard that. How are the fattening pigs?” Chet asked them.

“They’ll be fat enough to butcher pretty soon,” Heck, the youngest of the three, said, about to bust his buttons with pride about the swine-fattening project.

“Reg, you better get the wood supply up for the scalding. Those Mexicans down there need the work and a share of the meat. We’ll plan on it for next week.”

“I’ll get it done,” Reg promised. “How long does George need to lay here?”

“You can let him up after lunch. If he don’t tame down, do it every day for a week. He’ll learn some time that we aren’t to be messed with.”

“You small boys better go gather eggs,” Reg said to the two youngsters on the top rail, who moaned about it, but took his orders and, hang-dog acting, went toward the house for their baskets.

The four got down on their heels, and Reg asked Chet about the day before, while the younger ones went off to pick up eggs and were out of hearing.

“I was about as far south as our land goes. They tried to ambush me, but I made it to some cover and held them off.”

“Who were they?”

“Joe Clayton.”

“He’s a brother-in-law,” J.D. said.

Chet agreed. “Adrian Claus.”

“He used to haul freight from San Antonio. They must have hired him.” Reg made a frown. “Who else?”

“Someone named Carley.”

“Frank Carley,” Heck said in disgust. “He did some day work around. Must have needed money real bad to join them two.”

“Three against one ain’t bad odds.” Chet said.

“No—are they all three dead?”

“They’re in hell shoveling coal for the devil, you can bet on that.”

“What will the law do about it?” Heck searched the others’ faces.

“They may need to have a court hearing.” Chet shook his head, with no idea about the outcome.

“I hope that’s all,” Reg said, looking sour about the whole thing.

“Here on, we just need to go in pairs. We need to add a few more tough hands to help us and maybe that’ll stop their part of these ambushes.”

“Maybe,” J.D. added.

“If we can’t stop them, we’ll be forced to move out of Texas and find some new country.”

“I’d hate like hell to ever figure them damn worthless Reynoldses ran us out,” Reg said, and shook his head in disgust.

“It could be better than burying more of our own,” Chet added, and the heads around the circle agreed.

The gray horse struggled on his side and everyone turned to watch him. This would be a long, exhaustive struggle to convince this horse that he belonged to—, and he might as well relax.