CHAPTER 9
Harp and Long talked all the next morning about buying a ranch of their own. They discussed all the places they knew might be for sale or they knew were for sale.
Then the brothers and Kate jumped on a two-seat buckboard and drove it to town.
They split up and Harp and Katy went to see the local banker, Jim Yale. Long went to find the lawyer, Tommy Snyder, who sold places. The three were to meet at Kelly’s Diner for more talk later when they were through.
Jim Yale had five places for sale. Three were repossessions and Harp knew them all—they were dumps. The place on Lavender Mountain was not much of a ranch, but the one in Grass Valley might be.
“Two sections, nice house. Has sixty acres hay meadow, forty cropland. More could be developed in the creek bottom. Some windmills and several watering tanks. Run a hundred and twenty mother cows.”
“How much?”
“Ten thousand with the cows on it.”
“How many cow calf pairs?”
“They say a hundred. I expect eighty.”
“Less than eighty you’d replace them?”
“No, I can’t do that. This place has not been run right.”
“I still have a crew of guys. Let me count the cows and I’ll look at the place and be back in five days. You hold it for me until then. We will see what it has and doesn’t by then.”
“Word is out you guys killed the golden calf in Missouri?”
“We did all right. Just don’t finance anyone going up there. They don’t like Texas cattle and have a law against bringing them into the state. We barely got in and out alive.”
“Folks say you sold sixty thousand dollars’ worth of cattle up there.”
“I am not lying to you if I say that if they weren’t so starved for meat we’d never have made it.”
“More will try now they have the word.”
“Well, I am not ever going back to Missouri. If you loan money to anyone going up there you are a damn fool, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Katy wanted him to sit down. He did.
“Back to the RXB Ranch. Will you hold it that long?”
“For you, ten days.”
“Good.
Long had two places the lawyer found, but he agreed he wanted to look over the RXB place first. They hurried home and gathered the crew. Ira was going to get supplies in town on his way out there with the big supply wagon. The hands were riding over there in the morning to start counting cattle and recording them. Two hands were bringing half the remuda over and helping the cook set up.
Hiram said the boys helping him had his place working fine so he wanted to go along and see it, too. That made Harp feel good. His dad knew lots about cattle ranches. His mother sent a wall tent over in the wagon for Katy to sleep in if the house wasn’t fit.
Katy wore a used pair of chaps to bust through brush with. Despite Harp telling her she wasn’t a vaquero and the men could do that, he knew she’d do anything those boys did. And had her hat on a cord so she wouldn’t have to get off her horse to recover it. They got to the RXB and split up into four bunches.
Chaw took two men. Doug Pharr two. Chadron three. Red Culver went with Katy, Harp, Long, and Hiram.
They left in four directions and were to meet back by five at the headquarters.
Harp and his bunch rode west. In the next few hours they found forty pair and fifteen yearlings. Harp booked the cows with Katy’s help, scribbling what he hoped he could read later. Going in they found twenty more head of yearlings.
Chadron found thirty cow calves and twenty yearlings. Doug found thirty cows and twenty-five yearlings. Chaw brought back the number forty-five pairs with a hundred yearlings.
That evening the men talked about the bulls and realized that no one had counted them. To the men, most were pure shorthorn and looked in very good shape. They were ready for chuck when the triangle was rung.
“I see, Miss Katy, you didn’t get your britches tore up today wearing them chaps.”
“No problem, boys,” she said. “These chaps are not easy to walk around in, but on horseback they are great.”
Things went well at supper. The men talked about the range and how good the grass looked to them.
After supper Kate and Harp rode the fenced hay and farm ground. The cropland had grown up in goose grass since no crop was planted. There also was no hay in the stacks except for a few old ones. They’d need to buy forage to get through winter.
“Too late to plant oats for next year?” he asked his father when he and Kate got back.
“No, but who will plow it and plant it?”
“I bet we can get some Mexicans to come do that,” one of the hands suggested.
Hiram agreed. “I guess there isn’t much you two can’t do once you set your mind to it.”
Long grinned big. “We think there are a hundred sixty cows and a hundred fifty calves. That isn’t a bad calf crop with no help. We counted over two hundred yearlings, some younger and about half heifers. We’ll need to cull old cows, sell some big cattle, and pasture about a hundred to sell next year. Then we should have a hundred to one fifty head to sell each year if we can trail them.” It was one of Long’s longest speeches in years—Harp liked it.
Hiram spoke up next. “There is no money in Texas, boys. The owner wants ten. He don’t have any cash buyers. If it was me I’d offer him five and you can always pay him more. Boys, you have the cash and spent right you might end up in taller cotton, huh? Missouri is out. You boys learned that this year. Where they going to find markets?”
“You really think we have that much advantage?”
“As I said, Texas has not got a thing to pay their debts with. You mind my thinking.”
“You never got those gray hairs sitting around, Dad.”
“This is a damn good place. One of us needs this place to raise their family. Harp, you thinking like I am?” Long asked.
“Oh, I’d buy it in a minute for five.”
“Hell, offer it to him. He might take it.”
“It could be good. I’ll do it.”
Long said, “Good. We’ve got two more to look at—one tomorrow and one the next day.”
Harp agreed. After supper, he and Katy crawled into his blankets off by themselves and discussed the place.
“If you are going off trailing steers somewhere next year, unless I’m big as a bear with a baby, I’m going along.”
He drew back. “You in a family way now?”
“No. But we keep working at it I will be. I still ain’t staying down here by myself.”
“Okay.”
“I like this ranch, but it is too isolated.”
“Ranches won’t be in towns.”
“I know. If your husband is on the ranch that’s fine, but if he’s off to hell knows where anyone can come by.”
“We can make it work.”
“We will. Your father is a smart man isn’t he?”
“He always has been. He never had a chance to make any big money like we did with Emory. Things turned out good for us, but we took care of Emory’s wife. Originally he was paying us fifteen dollars a month, which we’d been pleased with since there were no jobs anywhere.”
He hugged and kissed her. This ranch would be a solid one if they could get it for the price.
The next place they looked at, that Long wanted to see, was a decent range ranch. However, the headquarters looked like a Mexican bandito’s hideout. They had some scrubby yearling stock grazing it. In two days they found fifty head valued at five dollars apiece. Long said they owned two sections of mostly cedar–live oak hills.
The two women who were there smoked cob pipes, chewed snuff, and went barefoot. No one ate with them, and the women could not allure even the cowboys, though Harp heard the younger girls propositioning the men. Their own men folks were gone somewhere.
In conference before they left Harp asked his brother what they wanted for it.
“Too much. I’d only pay them six hundred for a clear title.”
“Or five,” Hiram piped in, and everyone laughed.
The next place was in some creek bottoms. This land was not fenced and there was only half a section. The adobe house was in bad shape and the corral might only hold a crippled horse. Harp liked the soil and said most of it could be turned into farmland.
Hiram agreed.
Long said he had no idea about the price but wondered what they could pay for it.
“A dollar an acre?”
Long said he’d see the owner about it.
Back in town, Harp and Kate went by the bank. They offered five thousand for RXB and Jim Yale took it under advisement. He had to ask the bank board, and he sounded certain they would turn it down.
On the way riding home together, she said, “So we did not get the ranch?”
“Not yet. We are dickering for a lower price.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Darling, it is like horse trading. He wants one price, but we want a lower one. So we counter offer. I think Dad is right. Our money is more valuable since there is no other money around.”
“Harp, I have never had any money. I appreciate your explaining things to me.”
“Hey, it is my pleasure.”
At home, they planned to go find some maverick cattle they could catch and sell while they still had a crew. That suited the men, and plans were to check out the rough country north and west of them.
The cook’s wagon was to go through town and to restock, so Harp and Katy rode with him. A remuda was to be chosen by Holy Wars, who was going to go cross-country to meet them at a creek crossing where they would set up. Some of the hands would go with him in case of trouble. Things in Texas were upset. Federal officials were pouring in to run the state government. U.S. marshals were arriving by trainloads looking for anyone ready to cause unrest in the population.
Chaw, Darvon, and Red accompanied them to town. Before going into the mercantile, Ira told the boys to drink two beers, not start any fights, and be ready to ride. Harp and Kate went to a saddle maker shop to look for a saddle for her. She’d been using an old hull they took from her old home place, and Harp realized, riding to the new ranch, she needed a better one.
Newell Kent had a nice used one that fit her. He wanted thirty dollars, and after arguing a while Harp bought it for twenty-one. Packing it on his shoulders with her beside him, he came down the boardwalk, when he saw a fight spill out of the Red Bull Saloon.
Red Culver, bareheaded, stood exchanging blows with some other hatless puncher among the horses. Darvon threw another one by his shirt collar out through the parted swinging door into the street. Harp set the saddle down on its nose and hurried down to stop the fighting.
Hands on his hips, he shouted, “Red, Darvon, quit it. What the hell are you fighting over?”
Red’s head bobbed up over a horse’s saddle. “They called us Yankee sympathizers. Hell, you tell them we didn’t do a damn things for them Yankees.”
One of the town marshals was coming on the run. Harp called him down. “I can settle this for you.”
“Hi, Harp. I heard you guys sold cattle in Missouri.”
“Yes, we did, and now my boys were being accused of supporting the Yankees in that drive. Hell, we’re just trying to survive. I’ll settle the damages.”
Two of his men came out dusting off with their hats and cussing under their breaths. Red had his hat and was reshaping it.
Harp told Red where Kate’s new saddle was and to put it on her horse and set the old one in the wagon.
He walked by the other two and went inside.
Going by him, Chaw said, “We didn’t start it.”
The bartender shook his head. “Them other boys had it coming, Harp. Your boys tried to ignore them.”
“What’s broke?”
“Oh, two chairs.”
“What did they cost?”
“A dollar.”
“Here’s two.” He told him to take it, and he ran out to join his men.
The store workers were loading the wagon. Kate was smiling, sitting in her new saddle, and ready to start the wild cattle hunt.
* * *
They set up at a spring in some rough brush country. Harp had trapped mavericks with his father in this brushy area. They’d built traps around water holes; wild cattle came in and could not get out of the spear-loaded gates.
The chute-like trap had spear points shaved on the end of the gates. The gates closed by weights, which could be sprung open by squeezing through the spears to go back out. But that system was way too slow to use to get the whole job done.
The project, instead, was going to be to flush them out and then with many riders, force them into corrals to be branded using a squeeze chute. Roped, branded, ear marked, bulls would then be castrated and turned out.
Harp heard some old outfit had left a big corral in good shape nearby. They had gathered cattle for their hides and tallow, hauled two hundred miles or more down to the gulf, and put on a ship. Those cattle hides and tallow were maybe worth fifty cents each one, so in the end they couldn’t make any money at it.
The setup was built on unclaimed state land. There was lots of such land unused and unclaimed. Harp and his brother wanted the cattle still on four hooves to drive to a yet undesignated market the next spring. They might not be worth eighty dollars a head like in Sedalia, but whatever it was, it would beat the market at home in a cashless Texas. Folks could burn all their Confederate money for heat in the winter. All of it was worthless.
The cowboys found plenty of droppings and began to make short trips to get an idea how far around they needed to ride to flush the cattle out and down into the pens they had repaired. Harp and Katy were in some open country when he discovered some scattered horse droppings. He reined up and dropped off his horse and handed her the reins.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“We aren’t the only ones here.” He swung into the saddle, anxious to get everyone together before hell broke loose.
“Who else?”
He sat and gripped the horn. “We’re going back to camp, now.”
“Who’s here besides us?” she insisted.
“There are Comanche in the area.”
She paled.
“We still have the good guns. They come we can whip them, but I want to do it up there.”
Woodenly she nodded. He tossed his head toward the camp, and they charged off for the headquarters. They went hard, others joining him when they saw them in a hurry.
“What’s wrong?” Doug asked, riding along beside him in a fast lope.
Harp said one word. “Comanche.”
“Damn.” Doug passed the word to others, telling them to spread out and go find the rest of the crew and bring them all back to camp.
Harp and those with him charged on, and in a short while they all slid to a halt at the wagon.
Ira came running. “What’s wrong?”
“I saw fresh Comanche sign.”
“Oh, hell. Break out the rifles, boys. We got some bad company out here.”
Everyone made it back to camp. Long came in with his party and frowned.
“Why in the hell is everyone armed?”
“I cut some real fresh Comanche tracks over south. They are around here.”
“Oh, hell.” Long dropped his head. “How many do you figure are out there?”
“Looked to me like a war party that might be scouting us out.”
“Boy, bro, that is going to mess up our stock roundup.”
“I damn sure didn’t invite them.”
“Good thing you were the one that saw it. Anyone else had seen the sign might not thought anything. You and I have done enough to recognize and know them. I think we need to grab some saws and axes, make a ring of cedar trees we can ignite to better see those red devils if they come at us in the night.”
“Yes, and I’ll get that canvas off the cook’s wagon or they may use fire arrows to burn it up. A few arrows won’t ignite it, but the canvas burning on the ribs will burn it down.”
“What about the horses?” Doug asked.
“Unsaddle them. The saddles will make good barriers to be behind and shoot from at the raiders. We need to put the horses in the corral and be certain they can’t bust them out. They’d like us out here on foot. Assign two men to guard them. It will be a dangerous job, but we will need horses to ride for help when this is over.”
Harp caught Long by the arm. “I think we need some trenches dug. There is no house here and that corral won’t stop bullets.”
“Lay it out and we can dig them. I am going to check the rifles, be sure they’re all in working condition, and see how much ammo we have.”
“Chaw, get some shovels and picks out. We are going to dig some trenches to get into.” Harp took off at a trot to look how an Indian racing in on a horse would see them. That would tell him where they needed to dig to face their enemy.
By felling a few big trees he could funnel the Indians in close enough for the men to shoot and stop them. They needed that funnel. He recalled the first time as a young boy when all the families took shelter in a log fort. The so-called fort became a nasty place fast. Babies crying, bad water to drink. Hysterical women screaming they’d all be killed.
But they weren’t all killed. A few years later Hiram sold out, left that country, and settled at Camp Verde. The first few years at the new ranch the Comanche gave them hell, but there were a greater number of people around, which was why their father sold the first place and bought the Camp Verde one. As boys they’d spend weeks camped out on the west side of civilization to watch for scattered horse poop and barefoot horses, which meant the red man was in the area.
He and Long had some close calls, but they managed to get away unharmed and shot a few of them every time they could score and get away. He could smell them on a soft wind from over a quarter mile away. His brother could do the same.
If they could force the Comanche to charge in from the north and were ready, they’d be able to cut them down. That was his plan. The largest thing he faced was where to put Katy. He didn’t let her come out here to lose her or have her hurt. He didn’t consider that the enemy would be this far east or she could have stayed with his parents. That regret stabbed him hard. She had to be the greatest thing to come in his life. Their successful cattle drive had been a super thing they’d pulled off, a good realization about people and their needs and his bargaining from a place of strength when he had it. The next twenty-four to thirty-six hours would prove their ability to stop the enemy, or his handful of great guys would be left for buzzards to angrily fight over their mutilated carcasses.
He took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was a hot fall day, and the anxiety building inside him from the impending trouble only added to his body heat. They needed two big live oaks felled to make the tunnel to herd them closer to his soldiers—ah, rangers would be a better name for them. People were so damn tired of war, the name soldier brought that back to him.
Chadron Turner could use a crosscut saw better than anyone, or an ax. He was with Chaw waiting for the trench design. Harp crossed the dusty open dirt churned up by all the horse traffic. Some of it was in all their noses and there would be lots more of it.
“Chaw, face the northwest. See that break in the trees. They will come down through to here, and our shooting at them will push them away. But the fallen trees, placed that way, will stop them. They will be stymied and we can cut them down. If you were in a trench to shoot at them do you see how we need it dug? Pile your dirt on the Indian side.”
“I got you.” Chaw spoke to the two others what to do.
“Chadron, let me show you a couple of trees I need felled to make it so they can’t turn away from us when they realize the firepower we have.”
“I’ll get a saw and get Eldon to help me. He’s a good timber man.”
“Good.”
When Chadron left him he saw Kate standing, hugging her arms and shifting her feet. He went to her. “I’m sorry I let you come, but I promise I will protect you from any harm.”
“Harp, I’d like to do anything I can to help you. I understand if we try to run they’d overtake us. Long told me you two knew Indian ways. I can shoot a gun, and being with you I am not afraid. I will stay low.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you.” He hugged and kissed her, then ran off to see about his tree choppers. The big trees fell perfectly, and the attackers couldn’t turn away once they were channeled into the area in front of the crew. The day was slipping away fast. The trenches were being dug at a fast pace. Long had made two trips beyond the perimeter of the meadow to try to see where the Comanche were located.
He returned, shaking his head at Harp. “I didn’t locate them.”
Harp thanked him. They were out there. Indians could be well hidden and then burst out and strike. His experience with them was that they were as elusive as anything.
He had some blasting sticks made up that could, at close range, really help. It depended on the arm of the one tossing them. Long could toss them the farthest of anyone he knew. “Sit down,” Ira said to him sharply. “This defense will work. I know you’ve got all of this warfare on your mind, but these boys will fight. Ease off. You’re the best damn leader I ever been with in war or on the trail. We will mow them down.”
Harp dropped his head. “I hate Kate’s here.”
“She don’t. We all get into corners. We will fight our way out of it. There isn’t one more thing you can do but face them.”
“Thanks.” He accepted the tin cup of hot coffee. “I guess when you’ve done it all, then you sit back and pray that it works.”
Busy making dough on his table, Ira nodded. “I was in some bad situations in the war. Never figured I’d live to see the next sunrise. But things worked out. I didn’t have half the leadership of you two brothers. They should have gave you a parade when we slipped by Austin coming home. Hell, you took longhorn cattle to the heart of Yankee land at a profit. And some handful of nasty Comanche ain’t going to turn us aside are they? Hell, no.”
Harp finished his coffee and set the cup down. “Thanks for the talk.”
Darkness began and cooler weather came with the curtain of night. He found Kate seated under a blanket beneath the wagon with a small candlelight to eat by. His plate loaded, he set his hat aside and settled into a place with her close by.
“These men that work for you are special, aren’t they?”
He nodded. “They all grew up going north. Some even fought in the war, so they were no longer kids. River crossings, the challenges we met, they had a part in getting us through.”
“You ever regret eating peaches with me?”
“You know better than that.”
“Well, things happen that a person thinks are good and they can turn bad. I have no regrets. You exceeded my expectations. In fact it took me a while to realize how big a man I’d joined up with.”
“You suit me fine.”
“I know you were concerned driving me up to meet your family that day. I even feared they’d stone me.”
“Stone you?”
She nodded.
“My mother raised us boys to do the right things. I knew some things about her past—Long’s and my story. As boys she’d feed us some homemade soap for using bad words handling work mules, and she pointed out people who were not living good lives. I didn’t know how she would take our partnership.”
“She opened her arms so wide I could not believe it. There are classes of people in this country. I had lived on the lower shelf and she was three or four higher. It made me proud. But you are—I can’t believe you haven’t left me—you are, well, a damn neat guy.”
“Just another cowboy.”
She laughed. “No. No. Harper O’Malley, you are much more than that.”
He put down his plate and kissed her. “We’re an outfit together.”
Later with her in a bedroll back under the wagon and behind some upright saddles as shields from stray bullets, he told her to sleep. She had a loaded Paterson pistol and said she could use it. He kissed and left her.
Long and Chaw were out scouting in the night. There would be no moon until after midnight and it would be near full when it did come up. The big moon at that time of year, in Harp’s experience, led the Comanche to come east to raid.
His sentries were listening for any sound in the night to tip them off. Others napped, expecting the guard to be switched and up all night. The way they were set up, the Comanche could not attack coming from the east. A steep hill and the large corral was where they’d have to maneuver to have the sun in the camp’s face. Two hands guarded the corral, but it was not a Comanche way to charge in and strike. They would sneak.
Harp slept some and they awoke him when the moon began to rise. Long had not come back. Getting to his feet he wondered where his partner was. No doubt scouting the enemy. Still, filled with concern, he hoped his brother was not taking any chances.
Running low, two cowboy hats came across the open area carrying rifles in their right hands. Harp met them.
“You find them?” he hissed.
Long nodded. He caught his breath when his brother stopped Chaw, too. “They are out there.”
“How many?”
“Maybe two dozen.”
“They’ll be here at dawn?”
Long nodded. “I think so. They were waking so we started back here.”
“Get some food. I will pass your information on to the others.”
The news clutched his heart for a second. He hoped the red men had gone back west, but an isolated camp like theirs with horses and guns that could be taken would be a coup. The Comanche were like all armies, they needed blood to keep them on edge, and a success would reconfirm they could attack and win over the white eyes.
He told the others at the various stations what to expect. Then he dropped back to his scouts and asked if they were that close.
“Yes. I could have hurled blasting sticks among their horses and killed half of them.”
“No way to stamp them and get away?”
“No, we were too vulnerable.”
“I was getting concerned.”
“They’ll be here—and soon.”
“We are ready. We have some sticks. Ira can fuse them up.”
Standing nearby, Ira said, “You’ll have them.”
“Whew, it’s been a night. Thanks. We’ll stop them.”
Harp left and made sure his men were ready. There were sounds in the night. Some flushed birds out there upset by the Comanche passing; hammers being clicked back followed the birds’ flight.
Then the shill screams of the attackers filled the night. The rumble of many horse hooves rolled out the charge. A wall of bullets met them coming through the gap, and in the increasing moonlight horses and riders went down making for more wrecks, colliding on the fallen. Some made it past the mess and were hanging low, shooting over their horses at the corral.
Constant ear-shattering rifle shots from his men cut down horses forced to stay on the track left by the fallen trees and made them more like duck targets in a carnival tent. The shooters took them down. Finally some Comanche broke to the left and fled into the live oak and cedar brush.
Moaning horses thrashed and dying Comanche chanted final songs. Harp told his men to stay put until daylight. They would end all the misery when they could see the ones who might threaten them. The battle had been won. Aside from some scratches, no one on their team was wounded or hurt.
Kate joined him, excited and hugging his arm. “I knew you two would stop them, but I never thought it would be this big a defeat.”
“We planned on stopping them. A couple of our saddle horses is all we lost. We will drag the dead away and have a funeral pyre for them.”
Three men came to get them.
“Ira has breakfast.”
Harp nodded. “Two of you with loaded guns watch the Indians. We’ll eat in shifts.”
At the meal, he stopped before his brother with his plate in his lap. “You, Chaw, and I will finish off those that are not dead.”
Both men nodded.
“Thanks.”
“You won’t save any?” she asked in a low voice.
“No. They would have killed us. I don’t want to face them again.”
“I guess a leader has to do those things.”
He sat down with his plate of food and strained against the tightness between his shoulder blades.
“Later. I can work that out,” she said, noticing his stiffness.
“It may take blasting powder.”
“No. Trust me. I can get it out of you.”
After the meal, Harp, Long, and Chaw, armed with rifles, walked the death field. One by one each man checked a body. Long shot a buck lying on his back. Obviously still alive, Long sent him to the good Indian place for an eternity.
“His eyes blinked.”
Carefully Harp turned another over onto his back. He had the rifle ready in his other hand to shoot if he was still alive. He was dead. This job was no fun, and the grotesque death scene made it hard for him to keep his food down.
Long silenced a pained horse.
Chaw shot another buck lying on his side. Then on the fringe he shot one crawling away. Shaking his head, he hooked the dead Indian’s foot to the lariat to be drug away by a cowboy on horseback.
The rest were dead. Then they began to shoot the hurt and crippled horses. It was a day Harp knew he’d not easily forget.
His crew began to double up and haul the dead Indians and horses a good distance away from the corral and their camp as the buzzards, by the hundreds, began to congregate in the air overhead for the feast.
The last body and horse corpse hauled away, Harp seated himself on a bench and she was kneading his stiff back with both hands. Something began to lighten in Harp’s head and brighten his mind while swallowing the sourness that kept rising in his throat.
“Your back is really tight,” she leaned in to tell him.
“It is getting better.”
“Ma’am, you ain’t got a sister do you?” Doug asked, going by with his lunch plate full of food.
She laughed. “I don’t know. I’ve been an orphan all my life.”
“Really. What a shame.”
Harp agreed.
With the sides of her hands she pounded his back. “Can you eat or do you want me to pound more?”
He smiled up at her. “Thanks. That’s much better.”
“We starting to round up unbranded cattle today or tomorrow?” Long asked, squatting down beside him.
“Yes. And we need to burn the bodies today.”
“We will do that after lunch. Then I want to take three hands with me and see what cattle we can shake out of the brush.”
“Sure; sooner we get done up here, the better I will feel.”
Long agreed. “The funeral burn is in Doug’s hands. I’ll get my three when we get through eating and see what we can find.”
“Good job.”
Long said, “Oh, and on Saturday I am going to a dance with Anna. So I’m quitting about noon.”
“Why not ride out after breakfast Saturday?”
“And leave you with all this to do?”
“Yes, do that.”
By then Katy was laughing at the two men’s conversation.
“Don’t laugh. This is a new side to my brother,” Harp said.
Long shot back, “Hell, Kate, he ain’t the only O’Malley who dates women.”
She winked at him. “I wish you luck. She’s a lovely lady.”
“Thanks. Keep him straight while I am gone. Someone has to do that all the time.” Long smiled at her and went to find a place to sit and eat his lunch.
“He sounds serious.”
“You never can tell. I found you.”
“Well, I invited you to eat peaches.”
“Yeah, I liked that. You caught me on a day I wasn’t vexed by any of the problems I had all the way there.”
“No. God helped me with that.”
“Oh, Katy, God don’t help sinners.”
“I think he did. But those peaches and you were both sweet. I felt blessed.”
“I might take you and my bedroll out of sight and take a nap after we eat.”
“Everyone will see us hightailing it and know what we are doing.”
He was laughing. “You think they believe all I have you for is rubbing my back?”
“Eat lunch first. You’ll need your strength.”
With some effort he rose and followed her to the food line—he was lucky he found her. Their life, so far, was fun.