The first days on the ranch produced many satisfactions, but they also held frustrations. My hip punished me for my ambition in trying to ride horseback. I went three or four miles with the Fernandez boys, thinking the pain would stop sooner or later. Instead it became so bad I had to dismount and could not climb back into the saddle. I waited in humiliation while Marco returned to headquarters and brought a wagon to fetch me home.
“You’re trying too hard,” Thomas admonished. “Take your time.”
I said, “I was brought up to work for what I get.”
Thomas’ face was sad. “You’re not getting much here. I haven’t the money to pay you anything.”
“You feed me. You give me a place to lay my head down. I owe you for that.”
I owed for much more. I was not simply a hired hand, and I was not treated as one. Maria and the old Mrs. Canfield competed with each other to see who could fix the best meals for me. The little girl, Katy—Thomas
would never call her Katrina—toddled after me as if I were some good uncle, even if the boy never warmed to me.
“There is a lot of work you can do in a wagon,” Thomas said. “You can carry salt. You can haul supplies from New Silesia.” He tried to keep my mind and my hands occupied, to make me feel useful rather than a burden, even when I knew it was not true.
I would watch him ride his favorite horse, this spirited mustang bay he called Stepper, which had never completely given up the fight and occasionally challenged Thomas’ right to mastery. Thomas always won, but not without a contest. I envied him that ability and wondered how long it would be before I was a whole man again.
He asked me to go with him to San Antonio to buy goods for his struggling store in New Silesia. That store, since the collapse of Confederate currency, had become a financial tribulation to him. I sat in the lobby of a San Antonio bank and watched from a distance as Thomas humbled himself to a well-dressed Yankee banker, something I knew hurt him worse in its way than my wound had ever hurt me. He finally got most of what he had asked for, but the cost in pride was high. On the long trip home in the rough wagon, he was silent, withdrawn into a heavy shell.
When he finally spoke the suddenness of it startled me. He said, “You haven’t seen your own place since you came home.”
I had, one day when I was hauling salt. I had made several extra miles in an empty wagon to look upon the little piece of land I had bought with my saved wages before the war. It wasn’t much, a fraction of Thomas’ holdings, and it had not so much as a dugout on it for habitation. There was no point in my building one; it was too small a place to yield a living. But I felt a glow from the sense of ownership.
Thomas stopped the wagon on a knoll and gazed in silence. I could see cattle scattered across a wide, sunbaked
flat and knew most of them were strays, not mine. The few cows I had owned before the war would be old mossyhorns now, the ones that might have survived.
Thomas said, “We kept up your brand for you while you were gone. We branded the increase every year.”
I thanked him, though it seemed to me the work had been largely for nothing. Those cattle were worth no more than their hides and tallow would fetch, which wasn’t much. And the land wasn’t worth the lumber it would take to build a good house on it.
He seemed to sense what I was thinking. “Hold on to it, Reed. It will be worth a fortune to you someday. Land is the only thing that is real.”
“Gold is real,” I said. “This whole thing, today, wouldn’t bring enough gold to plate a watch.”
“Gold doesn’t grow food. It doesn’t keep the rain off of your head.”
I spoke rashly, and immediately wished I had kept my mouth shut. “It seems to be doing very well for Branch Isom.”
He shook from the impact of the name. “It will betray him someday. Through the war, when others were working for patriotism, he worked for gold. Now he puts it all back into Stonehill. He has no feeling for land; all it means to him is the roads to carry his freight wagons. That town will blow away someday, like tumbleweeds. The freight business will die with it. All his gold will be gone, and his sins will be visited on him like a plague. He will sit there with ruin all about him, but we’ll have our land, Reed. The land will always be here.”
We circled back by New Silesia, where he spent some time in the store with the manager Smithers, going over the ledgers. The store was like a stone weight around their necks; they had extended credit to too many people unlikely ever to pay.
While they talked about their business problems I looked over the little immigrant town. Thomas felt strong ties to it, mostly because of Maria and her people,
but I was never at home there. I never had learned the language, not even enough to ask for coffee. The customs remained strange to me. Many of the Polanders had put up solid if unfancy houses—mostly of stone—in the years I had been away. I could not quite accept their way of building house and barn together, their milk stock staying in one end while the people lived in the other. I understood this was the way of the old country, but I never felt that friendly toward a cow.
Thomas was not much at going to church. Maria was faithful about it. Every Sunday she put the two children in a wagon and drove over to New Silesia. Sometimes Thomas went with her but found other things to do while she and her family and the children attended mass in the Catholic church. Other times he sent one of the Fernandez boys to make sure she had no trouble along the way. There were still people in the country who enjoyed harassing the Polanders. A couple of times, I went. The church service was alien to me, like most other things in the town. New Silesia seemed like something that had been lifted up from Europe and set down in Texas with few modifications.
We heard about the fever when it first moved up from the coast with one of Branch Isom’s freighting outfits and struck in Stonehill. A Mexican wrangler told us several people in town had come down with it. Branch Isom sent his wife and young son to San Antonio to avoid their being exposed. There had been other epidemics, and none had ever touched the Canfield ranch. I remembered several times before the war that sickness had traveled inland with the freighting crews or immigrants. It would always run its course in a little while. Here and there somebody died of the fever, but people died of many other things too. Folks talk about the dangers we used to face from Indians and outlaws, but more died during epidemics in those days than ever died of arrow or bullet. Being isolated, far out in the country, was
sometimes an asset. We probably missed more hazards than we realized.
One day a boy came out from town with a message from Laura Hines. The fever had struck her father suddenly, and in his weakened and spiritless condition he had died the second night.
Thomas struggled with his conscience. Not since his brother’s death had he set foot in Stonehill. But the funeral of an old friend, and the bereavement of Laura, overcame his reluctance. He gave the two children into the care of Mrs. Fernandez, then four of us went to town in the wagon. Thomas hardly looked to right or left as we moved down the main street; his jaw was set in contempt for the place. Forgetting at first that Laura and her father had moved, he pulled the wagon up to the front of the large house that had long been their home. I had to tell him how to find the smaller one where they had lived since the war.
Laura was better reconciled to her loss than I expected. Maria hurried to embrace her. Laura accepted our condolences but said death had come to her father as a friend; life had lost its flavor to him.
The fever had people fearful about congregating indoors. The funeral was conducted entirely at the cemetery, a dry south wind blowing a skim of fresh earth into the open, waiting grave while the minister gave the eulogy. Maria stood on one side of Laura, Mrs. Canfield on the other, but she was strong enough; she did not need bracing up.
Branch Isom came to the funeral alone; his family was still in the comparative safety of San Antonio. He and Thomas did not speak, but their eyes met. Thomas’ hatred flashed with the crackling reality of St. Elmo’s fire. Isom quickly looked away. The uneasy truce of recent times had not overcome the open hostility of other years.
When the service was over Isom made his obligatory comments to Laura about the loss of a good man, the
father of the town. Thomas watched him resentfully as he walked away.
“By rights he should not have come here,” he said. “He robbed Mr. Hines of all he owned, even the will to live.”
Laura shook her head, her voice quiet but firm. “Branch Isom did not cause our trouble. That came because Papa gave everything he had to the cause he believed in. Isom just picked up the pieces.”
“He could afford to. He hadn’t given anything away.”
Thomas seemed to realize the subject was painful to Laura, so he fell silent. But he watched Isom while the man’s buggy was in sight.
Maria tried to persuade Laura to go to the ranch a few days, to get away from the unhappy town and the sorrow it had caused her. Laura shook her head. “I’ve fallen behind on the books. What I need most right now is work to keep my mind busy.”
We followed her home but found a goodly number of sympathetic women there. She would not lack for company. Thomas made excuses, and we left. He was relieved to put the town behind him. On the way home, nobody talked much. Mrs. Canfield finally began to comment upon the fever, and how fortunate we were to live in the open country where God kept the air clean.
Her words were ironic, for Thomas’ mother was struck down a few days later. No one knew much about the fever or its causes. We could only guess that she had caught it somehow at the funeral. Thomas immediately asked me to take the children to Maria’s people in New Silesia. So far the fever had not struck that town. Little Katy did not mind; I had already seen how much she loved her grandparents. But the boy Kirby was silent during the wagon trip to the Polish town. His eyes were resentful when I turned him over to the old couple. He understood what they said to him in their language, but he stubbornly refused to answer them except in English. I sensed that I had been introduced to a shameful secret.
Even as the Brozeks fawned over the children, it was easy to see they were covering up their hurt. Kirby came to the door of the stone house and watched me as I left for the ranch. He said not a word, but I felt his eyes following me.
Unlike Linden Hines, Mrs. Canfield had a strong wish to live. She put up a battle that she seemed for a time to be winning. But it was not enough. The doctor managed to see her only once, for he had more than enough suffering patients in Stonehill. Maria stayed beside the old lady constantly during the three days and nights she struggled. She was still on her feet, but barely, when the fever carried Mrs. Canfield away. Thomas just sat in his mother’s rocking chair at the foot of the bed and stared. He did not talk; he did not weep. He just sat there, rocking.
Maria cried a little, then put that behind her and tried to comfort her husband. She seemed unable to reach him, and her silent eyes pleaded to me for help.
I said to Thomas, “I’ll go to the preacher. Your mother was a believing woman. She’d want the words read over her.”
A quick nod was the only sign that he had heard.
I knew without asking that he would want to bury her up on the slope, alongside his father and brother. Backing away, I said, “I’d better fetch the children home. They ought to see her laid to rest.”
He stopped rocking. “No, there’s fever here.” That was all he said. He started rocking again.
Maria followed me to the porch, tears shining in her eyes. “He does not let me help him,” she said.
I told her, “He’s not a man who leans on people. He stands by himself.” It struck me how thin and haggard she looked. She had slept little the last several days. “You’d better help yourself,” I said. “You’d better get some rest.”
She nodded, but she would not do it, not so long as she thought Thomas might need her.
The minister was almost as busy as the doctor. There had been other deaths since that of Linden Hines. He promised to come out to the ranch as soon as he could, but all preparations had to be made ahead, for he could not stay long. I tried to think of any people in town who should be notified. The only friend Mrs. Canfield had there, so far as I knew, was Laura Hines. Laura put a few clothes together and rode back to the ranch with me in the wagon.
Scarcely a dozen people stood at the graveside to hear the brief services. Thomas said little. He stood alone. When Maria reached once for his hand, he pulled it away and folded his arms.
I glanced at Laura. She frowned.
Laura did not like the tired, drawn look on Maria’s face, and she offered to stay a day or two. Maria insisted she was all right; a good night’s sleep was all she needed. Thomas took no part in the conversation. He seemed not even to hear it, though he was only an arm’s length away. He responded to nothing until Laura said, “If you will then, Reed, please take me back to Stonehill.”
The word “Stonehill” seemed to bring Thomas around. “You should get away from that place, Laura. It brings nothing but misfortune and death.”
She gave him a look of surprise, as if not quite believing he cared that much for her welfare. “I have nowhere else to go.”
It was in my mind—I had not given up—that someday I might provide her a place to go, when I was able to build my land holdings and my cattle herd some more, and after I put up a house of my own. But the thought passed when we sat in the wagon together. She glanced back, and what I saw in her eyes for Thomas, I feared I would never see there for me.
Maria started to climb the steps as we pulled away. She never made it to the top. I saw her sway, then fall. Laura cried at me to stop. She was down from the wagon
and running before I could bring the team to a halt. I saw fear strike Thomas. He called Maria’s name as he knelt and tried to lift her to her feet.
By the time I got the team still and the reins wrapped around a spoke, Thomas had Maria in his arms and was rushing into the house with her. Laura was directly behind him. I followed them into the bedroom, where Thomas gently placed Maria on their big hand-carved wooden bed.
“She’s just tired out,” he said desperately, more to himself than to the rest of us. He was trying to believe it, but it was obvious he did not.
Laura felt of Maria’s hand and then her forehead. “It’s more than that.” Fear came into her face. She immediately took over, for Thomas seemed helpless, as he had been helpless when his mother was burning with fever. This was an enemy he did not know how to fight.
“Reed,” she commanded, “run down and fetch Mrs. Fernandez. Then hurry to town and drag that doctor out here; bring him with a gun if you have to. Thomas, you help me get these clothes off of Maria.”
Thomas had braced his feet, and he stood like an ox struck behind the horns with the flat side of an ax. Laura saw he was stunned. She gripped his shoulders and shook him savagely. “Thomas!” I waited in the door until he began to respond, then I ran down to the little Fernandez house.
What Laura said about bringing the doctor with a gun if necessary was not much of an exaggeration. He still had about all he could do without leaving town. I thought I would have to wrestle his hefty wife, who protested that he would be the next to die if he didn’t get some rest. I sympathized with both of them, but I had to sympathize with Maria more. I took him to the ranch.
Nobody had to tell me the situation was grave. The hard-set look in Thomas’ eyes said that, and the quiet desperation of Laura. Maria was talking irrationally, crying out in words I could not understand about things that
had happened long before, or perhaps never happened at all.
I looked to Thomas to see if I could do anything for him. He seemed unaware of me, even when I spoke to him. Laura touched my arm and beckoned me into the parlor. Quietly, her voice trembling, she said, “You’d better hurry to New Silesia and bring her parents here. You’d best not lose any time.”
“They have the children. I shouldn’t bring the children to this fever.”
“There’s other family to leave the children with. But bring her parents, and hurry.”
I never had been able to converse with the Brozeks very well because of the language problem. I went directly to the church and found the priest hunched over a giant Bible. I explained the situation. He went with me to the Brozeks’. Katy was playing in the front yard of the rock house with some other children, chattering happily in Polish. Kirby was off to himself, chunking rocks at some chickens. The girl recognized me and came running, shouting my name. Kirby walked only partway to meet me, then stopped, saying nothing. I could tell he hoped I had come to take him home, but he was too proud to ask, or to seem eager. He had much of Thomas in him.
Anguish came into the old couple’s faces as the priest told them of my message. Kirby listened in silence. I could tell he understood it all. Katy cried and begged to be taken to her mother. The old grandmother picked her up and smothered her in her arms and hurried outside to call to a neighbor. In a few minutes she had the children placed with others of the family. The priest had a buggy, more comfortable than the ranch wagon, so he took the old folks in it while I followed close behind, one of Maria’s brothers riding with me. The long miles I had made, first to Stonehill and then to New Silesia, began to tell on me, and the brother took over the reins. I tried to nap sitting up, but the wagon was too rough. I sat
with my eyes shut and kept seeing all those anguished faces.
We arrived almost too late. Maria opened her eyes at the sound of voices. She recognized her parents and called their names and cried out for her children. Laura tried to explain that they had stayed behind to protect them from the fever, but I don’t think Maria understood. She sank back into the fever. When the priest leaned over her with his beads and began to give her absolution, I knew the ordeal was nearly done. She cried out once and was gone.
The old couple crossed themselves and leaned into each other’s arms. Mrs. Fernandez made the same sign and turned her face into a corner. I looked into Laura’s tired, stricken face, then to Thomas, frozen, unseeing. His mind had carried him far away, denying reality, rejecting recognition of death. For several minutes he did not move. Then he gripped Maria’s shoulders and tried to shake her awake.
“Maria! Maria!” he cried.
Laura gently touched his arm. “She can’t hear you, Thomas,” she whispered.
He shook Maria harder and kept calling to her. When realization finally reached him he pushed to his feet and stared down at that silent face now without pain. A terrible look came into his eyes, the look that had always frightened me a little. Instinctively I glanced at his hip, though I realized he was not carrying a gun. The dark thought came to me that if he had, he might use it on himself.
He spoke to no one, looked at no one, but turned and strode out of the room. The fear still pressed on me, so I followed him, keeping my distance. I thought it unnatural that a man could go through so much and never cry. I had not seen him cry when he buried his brother Kirby, or his mother. I saw not one tear in his eyes now. He walked carefully down the steps and toward the barn. Quietly I followed fifteen or twenty steps behind him,
not sure what he might do or what I could do. He stopped at the horse corral.
His bay mustang Stepper was in there, pulling hay from a rack. He turned his head to watch Thomas, and he made a nervous, rolling noise in that long, ugly nose. Thomas walked in, shutting the gate behind him. I kept my distance, moving up quietly and looking between the poles. Thomas walked slowly toward the horse, his hand extended. The bay watched him suspiciously, little ears flicking in nervousness. Once he started to turn and run away, but something in Thomas’ manner seemed to hold him. The bay flinched as Thomas reached out and touched his neck. Thomas slipped his left arm under the neck and up the off side. He patted the horse a while. If he said anything, it was in a whisper I could not hear. Then he had both arms around the horse’s strong neck, his face buried in the dark mane, and Thomas did something I had never seen him do. He cried.
The horse, normally nervous as a cat, stood quiet and still, as if it understood, and let Thomas spill out all his grief.
I walked back to the house. The best help I could give Thomas was simply to leave him alone.
Thomas Canfield had long seemed a man the world could not touch, a man too strong to bend before the wind. Now, for a while, the fight was gone out of him. He held his ground on just one thing. Maria’s parents wanted to take her to New Silesia for burial in consecrated ground. Thomas insisted she would be buried in the family cemetery up on the slope. That, too, he said, was consecrated ground, hallowed by so many he had loved. The priest blessed the place, and it was all right.
Beyond that one issue, he had no strength left. If the denizens of Stonehill had come then to drive off every head of cattle and to post a confiscation notice on his land, I do not believe he would have resisted. He drew into a shell where nothing from outside could reach him.
The girl Katy was too young to realize fully the meaning of death. Kirby knew. I never saw him cry, but I could see the pain and the helpless anger in his eyes. He did not know who to blame, so he blamed everyone. Some of the anger was directed toward his father for sending him away and some toward me for taking him. During the services I saw him resist attempts of Maria’s parents to hold his hand. He stood alone, as his father stood alone.
The worst part of all was in returning to that big house, which must have seemed empty to the children. Thomas brought Mrs. Fernandez up from her own little place to live in the house and be a guardian of sorts. Her own sons were doing man’s work if not drawing a man’s pay. They slept in the little house where they had grown up, though they went to the big house to take their meals, cooked by their mother for them and for what was left of the Canfields. Much of the time they were not at headquarters anyway; they were often camped on one part of the ranch or another, looking after the cattle, batching. So, for that matter, was I. My hip had healed to the point that riding horseback no longer hurt me much, unless I let the work carry me too far into the night. I still had a limit.
I saw more of Kirby than of his sister because Thomas made it a point to keep the boy with him as much as he could. Where he went, Kirby usually rode by his side, on horseback or in the wagon. They talked little to each other. At least, Kirby talked little. His father volunteered points to him about the cattle or the horses, about the wild animals they encountered, about the land itself. Kirby absorbed this teaching without much comment. The long months went by, but he remained as distant as the day his mother was buried.
Despite our isolation, we heard things. Business began picking itself up from the floor where the lost war had left it. Union dollars, though still scarce, began to sift into the channels of commerce. Thomas had stubbornly
held onto his ailing little store in New Silesia, not so much for its own sake as for the irritating competition it could give to Stonehill and to Branch Isom. Somehow he managed to pay off some loans and get himself back into reasonably good graces with the bankers in San Antonio, themselves hard put to find much real U.S. specie in circulation. An awful lot of scrip and plain oldfashioned barter were used in those days.
I had a horse in my string called Stomper, a name well given. He had a way of walking and trotting that jarred a rider’s innards. Every time I rode him my hip would ache, but I could ill afford not to ride him, for a horse unused tends to forget his teaching and backslide into outlawry. I could have turned him over to one of the Fernandez boys, but they had not done anything to me that justified so sorry a treatment. I kept the horse as penance for whatever shortcomings I might have in the sight of the Lord.
One afternoon the pain was so sharp that I quit early and rode back toward the house while the sun was still an hour or so high. I cut into the Stonehill road and heard somebody hail me. I stopped Stomper and turned him around, welcoming a chance to shift my weight in the saddle and perhaps ease the aching hip.
The rider who trotted to catch up to me was one I would recognize from a mile away. Branch Isom
Thinking back, I could not remember ever seeing him on the Canfield ranch. I saw no pistol on his hip, though he carried a rifle in a scabbard beneath his leg. Everybody did; that was no sign of war.
He reined up and offered a few pleasantries. His manner was cordial enough that my initial suspicions were suspended, if not dismissed. He seemed no longer the unrepentant sinner that he had appeared years before, when we had first made our acquaintance. Perhaps it was the graying with the red in his hair, or the deeper lines in a ruddy face growing heavy with the weight of years and relative prosperity. He seemed to have mellowed.
Or perhaps I had seen so much brutality in the war that he paled by contrast.
He spoke of regret for the sorrows that had befallen the Canfields. He said, “I’ll admit I never felt any love for Thomas, and it’s certain he’s had none for me. But I’ve had only the kindest thoughts for his womenfolks, even that Polander girl he married.”
That surprised me a little. I felt honor-bound to ask about his own family. He said they were fine; his wife and son had waited in San Antonio for the fever to run its course. “Boy’s getting to be a goer. I’d like to have brought him, but I didn’t know what kind of reception I might get from Canfield. Some things a boy shouldn’t see or hear.”
It wasn’t any of my business, but I felt compelled to ask anyway. “What have you come to see Thomas for?”
“Business. A mutual profit for both him and me, I hope.”
My suspicions revived, though not so strong as before. It had been a long time since much good had come to this place from Stonehill, Laura Hines being the exception. She had visited occasionally on Sundays to look in on the children, or so she said.
I rode into headquarters with him. He told me much I had not heard about the Union occupation army and Indian troubles farther west, and of business trends and hopes and fears. As we approached the barn I saw Thomas’ wagon in front of the salt house. He was shoveling salt to carry to the watering places. Kirby stood in the wagon bed, evening out the load with a shovel whose handle was longer than he was tall.
“Thomas,” I called, “you have company.”
His jaw dropped and his face darkened as he recognized Branch Isom. He cut his eyes reproachfully to me as if Isom’s visit had been my doing. “Isom,” he said. Not welcome or anything like that. Just “Isom.” Recognition, but not approval.
Isom studied him a long moment before he said a
word. Then he laid most of it right out on the table. “Thomas Canfield, you’ve never liked me, and I’ve never liked you. Men have been killed over differences smaller than we’ve had. But that’s all in the past.”
Thomas said nothing.
Isom said, “I have a business proposition. It could be profitable to both of us.”
Thomas let his suspicions come bitterly to the surface. “More profitable for you than for me, I would warrant.”
“Quite possibly,” Isom admitted. “But I would carry considerable risk. Your profit would be guaranteed.”
Thomas noticed his son watching Isom with unusual interest Curtly he said, “Kirby, you go to the house.”
Kirby was hesitant, and Thomas told him again, his voice brooking no question. “Go!” Kirby went reluctantly.
Thomas never invited Isom to step down from the saddle, so Isom sat there. He said, “Thomas, they’re building a railroad west into Kansas.”
Thomas pondered that fact a moment and failed to see significance in it. “You should not have to worry about that. They can’t hurt you until they build one west from Indianola to San Antonio. Then you may be selling your freight wagons cheap.”
Isom passed over the sarcasm and explained that the new railroad was opening up a market for beef in the East. “Cattle can be sold at the railheads to be shipped back there.”
“We’re a long way from Kansas. What good does that do us?”
“Cattle have legs. They can be walked to Kansas. I have started putting together a herd to take north. I’ll buy cattle from you here and take all the responsibility and all the gamble. I’ll pay you two-and-a-half a head for whatever cattle I can use. You won’t have to go anywhere or take any risk. It’s cash money, Union silver, placed into your hands right here at your corrals.”
Thomas looked down, hiding his eyes. “What will you get for them, up in Kansas?”
“I won’t lie to you. There is every indication they could bring fifteen dollars, perhaps more. But it’s a long way and a risky trip. I’ll lose some on the way. I could lose them all. If I make it, I’ll earn a good profit. If I don’t, I’ll stand a loss. In either case, you’ll have your money before the cattle ever leave this place.”
Thomas said, “You’ve never handled cattle.”
“I’ve handled horses and mules for years.” He paused. “It’s cash money. I’ll bet you haven’t seen two hundred dollars in Union specie since the war.”
Thomas stared off into the distance, toward the slope where he had buried so many Canfields. When he turned I could tell from his expression pretty much what he was going to say. He would have dealt with Lucifer before he would deal with Branch Isom.
Coldly he said, “Isom, you were right when you rode up here. You never liked me, and I never liked you. What’s between us is not forgotten. It never will be. I would not do business with you for a hundred thousand in Yankee gold.”
Isom’s face flashed to anger. I saw at least a little of the hostile Isom I remembered. “That’s your final say?”
Thomas nodded grimly.
Isom had as much pride, in his way, as Thomas. He would not argue or plead. He said only, “I had hoped we could bury the past.”
Thomas grunted. “Not until they bury me.”
Isom’s shoulders were stiff as he rode away. Thomas watched him as if half expecting him to turn and come back shooting. There had been a time, once, when that might have happened.
I could contain myself no longer. “If he offered you two-and-a-half outright, you could probably have carried him up to three. Maybe even three-and-a-half.”
Thomas turned his back on me.
Next morning, without any word to me of what he
planned, he left for San Antonio. Late the second evening he returned with two men following him in a buggy. One was a San Antonio businessman wearing a light duster over a good suit. The other was obviously a cowman by his clothes, his boots, his Mexican-style hat. He had the look of a man who had spent his life in the sun. Thomas introduced them as Mr. Jensen and Mr. Hayes.
“I have agreed to sell these gentlemen two hundred cattle at two dollars a head,” he said.
I shook their hands and tried to look pleasant, though I quickly calculated that this represented a clear loss of one hundred dollars from Isom’s offer.
Hatred could be expensive.
Branch Isom was by no means the only person putting cattle together for the trail to Kansas. These men had the same notion, Jensen putting up the money and Hayes the ability. Before the war Hayes had trailed cattle all the way to Missouri, and during the war he had taken some over into Louisiana to feed the Confederate soldiers. He had the look of a man who knew what the cow was about to think before she had time to think it. Those old cowmen bore a mark hard to explain but easy to recognize.
Thomas had us round up cattle from the end of the ranch nearest to Stonehill. Many people in town had become accustomed to helping themselves to Canfield beef. Thomas had done nothing about it because the cattle had been worth little anyway. Now times appeared to be changing. Thinning the cattle nearest to town might not stop the beef killing, but it made the thieves work harder. Hayes and Jensen were not interested in cows. A cow-calf herd was slow and difficult to trail. Anyway, the Yankees wanted beef, not breeding animals. The range was overstocked with long-aged steers and unbranded bulls born during the war years. They belonged to whoever caught them, if they bore no brand. As we
gathered cattle, the two buyers were joined at headquarters by a crew of hungry-looking cowboys excited about the chance for a paying job that would put real silver in their pockets for the first time since the war.
Thomas had never been one to talk much, and he had said less in the time since Maria’s death. He had shown little real interest in anything other than those two children. Now he spent a lot of time with Hayes, listening to all the old cowman volunteered to tell him about driving cattle. When the counting was over and the cowboys left with the herd, Thomas had a canvas sack that clanked with the heavy sound of silver.
“Sounds like more than it is,” I remarked, remembering that he could have gotten better payment from Branch Isom.
“The devil always outbids the righteous” he replied, looking oddly satisfied as he watched the dust stirred by the departing cattle. “Reed, I want you to get an early start in the morning. Ride over west and see if the Ramirez boys want three or four months of work.” They were among the men who used to go with us mustang hunting. “Get Abe Johnson and Farley Good and the Martinez brothers. We’ll need a good crew who know cattle and horses.”
“To do what?”
I could see something kindling in his eyes, a fire I hadn’t seen there in a long time, a touch of excitement I had feared had died forever. “To put our own trail herd together and drive them to Kansas.” He hefted the bag of silver. “This will be enough to outfit us.”
I stood there with my mouth hanging open, thinking of a dozen good objections but undecided which to voice first. I didn’t want to dim that light growing in his eyes.
Thomas said, “If their cattle can walk that far, so can ours. If they can get fifteen dollars at the railroad, so can we.”
I said, “Branch Isom will throw a fit.”
That, I realized, was one of the factors which put that new spirit in Thomas’ face; that thought had come to him days ago.
“Yes,” he said with satisfaction. “He will.”