CHAPTER 39
The justice of the peace held a hearing and spoke to Long, who was on the stand. Then Lawrence, a gray-headed woman, Harry, and the two lawmen were questioned also. He summed it up as, “Justifiable Homicide.”
Jan had come to town with him, Harry as their guard, for the hearing. The three went to eat lunch at a café and after the meal, they went and looked at Lawrence’s wall map showing Ralph Bowman’s ranch that had been foreclosed on.
Lawrence told him Bowman was moving off and he only had two hands who were leaving to help him move to his brother’s up north. He’d left his herd book, which Lawrence had secured in the foreclosure.
“I gave him the twenty-five hundred dollars from an undisclosed source who wanted him to have a stake. Which was very considerate of you.”
“I have Harry here. Ira and Collie are going up there to look at it and what needs to be done. We haven’t seen it all, but it is a cow ranch. Shame he didn’t have what it took to make it.”
“I shake my head every time I think about what you two boys have done.”
“We’ve been very lucky, but you need to make hay when the sun shines, Dad always said. Considering the state of the U.S. economy and the war debt, I still see problems ahead for all of us in the future.”
Lawrence agreed. “Will you live on this one?”
“No. We are building a home on the Three Star,” Jan said. “I hope by Christmas we will have an open house for you and your wife.”
“Don’t you have a mansion?”
“Tell him, Jan.”
“We deeded that to the Methodist church for a homeless boy’s school.”
“Oh, I see.”
They left the bank and Harry asked, “We surveying it?”
“Yes. I’ll talk to them and you can supply them.”
Harry smiled and nodded. “I know how to do that.”
Long clapped him on the shoulder. “We have lots to do. Move our heifers up there. Survey, then fence, and those guys can drill some wells. Bowman’s corrals are too small for our usage. We’ll need to build new.”
“I’ll enjoy it anyway it goes. Working for you and the missus is the best I ever had it in my life.”
“Me too, Harry,” Jan said.
Two weeks later Harp and two of his men stopped by the Three Star Ranch headquarters on his way back home.
“Damn, brother, I had to open gates and couldn’t believe all the work going on here. What’s going on with the big house?”
“We deeded it to the Methodist church for homeless boys.”
Jan took him out on the porch and pointed to the construction on the hill.
“I wouldn’t have lived in that place, either.” Harp laughed.
She agreed with a nod.
“Your boys are a few days behind me with the wagons. They are anxious to get here for a reunion with their wives.”
“We will have a real one for them.”
“Oh, and thanks. Dad said you solved the raiders’ problem, and have got all of them in jail.”
“It wasn’t easy. We need to get past our wanting to deal with it ourselves, using Judge Rope. Texas has lots of crime and we needed to do this right. Once we get one more of the main ones in jail, I’ll be satisfied. Oh, and I bought thirty sections north of here for eight dollars an acre in a foreclosure deal.”
“Is it Four Star now?”
They laughed.
That evening he and Harp talked about forming two companies. Ranching and the other a separate company handling the cattle.
Harp agreed. “We need to be full-time ranchers and have a separate cattle-gathering deal.”
“Remember I told you about Clyde Nelson, and the far southwest section that has a lake on it that he wants to sell? You need to buy it.”
“I’ll do it.”
“I mailed you the information.”
“Long, I am amazed at you and what you are getting done. You were the guy who told me they could stick herding out of sight.”
“Sometimes you have to grow up. I cut out and went to see the shining mountains, something I needed to get out of my blood. When you talked about Katy waiting for you at that store and not knowing why, but it working out the way it did. I wanted that for me.”
“Oh, yes, the afternoon of our lives—mine anyhow. Why they sold her in her early teens to be a wife because she was alone, a survivor of a fire, I’ll never understand. But I am glad I have her.”
“And for me—they had Jan drugged up, but she had fallen off the horse and escaped. I found her horse in the dark, and then she found me and nearly shot me, but passed out, falling on top of me. The orphan girl who had been dressed in boys’ overalls to go to school. Just think. One hour’s difference I might not have found her horse or her.”
“Dad said, either the haints or God did that to people.”
They both laughed. Jan brought them out coffee.
“Neither of you drink do you? Every man I knew, and God bless my first husband, drank. How come you two don’t?”
“Probably how Mom raised us. Every time I see a blanket-wrapped Indian drunk, I say that could be me. I have nightmares about it.”
“The time most of the boys drank was after we got done riding with Dad after Comanche to get hostages back.”
“I am not disturbed by it. Simply wondered. And I love how both of you ended up with Katy and me, both of us women with really tough back lives.”
“We got the pick of the litter.”
“This day that Lincoln put on the November calendar count on us being down for Thanksgiving and Christmas, too. Next year we will have the events up here in my new house.”
“Did you ever expect to have a house like you’re building? I saw the plans.”
“I had hungry days back then. We didn’t have much. Some neighbors fed me and my aunt or we’d have starved.”
“Long, finding you and me finding Kate was fate. But we started riding these waves when I fired the cook before we moved that small herd a foot.” Harp shook his head.
Long added, “For a while I thought he’d done the wrong thing. We had to cook after that.”
She refilled their cups. “Nice evening. Good to have you two together. It has been a long summer.”
“Amen,” Harp agreed.
With lots of things settled, Harp rode home the next day.