by Celia Hayes
“Barely at all,” Peter answered. “He was dead of consumption before I was even out of small-clothes. Mama married Papa-Doctor when I was about seven. He was the best of stepfathers but I always thought he often seemed a little surprised to look up and count us all around the dinner table.”
“Then who did you have in between, Cuz?” Dolph was curious. “Who taught you to sit a horse and mark a straight line and mind your manners to a woman while still paying a gallant compliment? Papa had shown me all that long before I was that age. You are very good at all that, so someone must have taught you early on.”
“Daddy Hurst, I suppose,” Peter answered, after a moment of thought and a startled realization that, yes—Daddy Hurst had indeed been that reassuring and kindly presence, all during those early years. He laughed, short and with no little surprise. “Strange, to think I learned all that from a nigra hired man.”
“Children look to be taught,” his cousin replied, “and they look to those around them, who treat them gentle and with respect. God knows, there are far worse in the world to learn those early lessons from than Daddy Hurst. I think he did well with you, Cuz!”
“I suppose so,” Peter answered.
They talked of other matters, until they came to Mr. Kiehne’s business on East Main, the tiny forge crouching under a huge and spreading oak tree of the same sort that shaded Vati’s garden. Mr. Kiehne had built a fine house for his family, next to his sprawling and rackety business under the magisterial tree. Peter, Dolph and Willi threaded their way between waiting horses, wagons, and men to where Mr. Kiehne labored in his shirtsleeves by the red-hot heart of his forge. Willi bubbled with excitement and chattered like a magpie, as excited as if it were Christmas Eve and Father Christmas had brought him the most splendid gift imaginable for a small child.
“My aunt fusses over the children so,” Dolph explained half apologetically as Willi stared round-eyed with awe. Mr. Kiehne was swinging his heavy hammer against an incandescent bit of metal pulled from the heart of his forge with a long pair of tongs. Sparks showered like a fireworks show at every ringing blow. “She hardly lets them go anywhere, without her or Cousin Anna holding their hand.”
“Pity that,” Peter grunted. “Does no good, mollycoddling the little lad.”
“Uncle Hansi’s more sensible,” Dolph answered, “but he’s away so much. It was different before the war, when they lived out in Live Oak. Different for us, too. Papa had me on a horse and working cattle with Porfirio almost before I could walk. Thank God Mama was sensible about that. Guten Tag, Herr Kiehne!” he added. Mr. Kiehne plunged his metalwork into a waiting tub of water, which immediately bubbled over in great gouts of bad-smelling steam. The smith swabbed sweat off his forehead with the back of a sooty hand and grinned at Dolph. To Peter, it looked as if they knew each other well. Of course, anyone who drove a wagon for Hansi Richter would know the town blacksmith, but it looked like a deeper familiarity.
“For what are you looking for today, lads?” the smith asked in stiff English, out of courtesy, after Dolph introduced Peter.
“New branding irons,” Dolph answered, taking Anna’s careful drawing from his pocket. “We’ll need a set of six, if you can finish them in the next day or so. We’re hoping to leave by Tuesday morning.”
“Not a problem.” Mr. Kiehne cast a quick and professional eye over the drawing. “So, you think to make something by a venture in cattle?”
“We hope,” Dolph answered. “As best I know, no one has held a round-up on my father’s land since the second year of the war. The winters have been mild enough, many calves must have survived. Somewhere, someone must want to eat beef well enough to make it worth our while to round them up, and drive them to Indianola. Uncle Fredi says that they’re shipping beeves to New Orleans for the market there.”
“If not, there’s always a market for hides.” Mr. Kiehne took up his hammer again with a grunt. “Monday afternoon, no problem for me, and maybe sooner. Send someone to ask, if you’re in a hurry before then.”
As they walked away, Willi tugged at Dolph’s shirtsleeve and piped a question in German, to which Dolph shook his head and answered in that same tongue.
“He wants to come with us,” Dolph explained to Peter. “George and Jacob have talked of nothing else. Uncle Fredi made this sound such an adventure, like it was when he and Uncle Johann and everyone first came out in wagons from Neu Braunfels and the Indians befriended them.”
“You told him no, I hope.” Peter was somewhat alarmed at the thought of being responsible for a small and daring boy, especially one who seemed as likely to run headlong toward those breakneck adventures to which he and his brothers had been prone when younger.
His cousin grimaced. “Aunt Liesel would scarce allow it. She is fluttering about like a mother hen whenever I let him ride old Three-Socks. She carries on as if he is a wild mustang, instead of a staid old thing half asleep on his feet.”
“Perhaps when he is a little older his Mama might be talked into permitting it,” Peter ventured.
Dolph shrugged. “Uncle Hansi is the one who will say yes or no, however much Auntie Liesel fusses about her darling.”
They got away late on Tuesday, in spite of Dolph fretting and Fredi constantly thinking of essential items to pack into the smallest of Hansi’s freight-wagons, on top of a load of beams and sawn lumber. Dolph rolled his eyes when Fredi dove into the storeroom or the kitchen for the twentieth time, returning triumphantly with some small item such as an egg-shaped coffee-roaster, or a side of cured ham.
“We can always buy such in Comfort or borrow from the Stielers or the Steves,” Dolph said patiently, after the latest of these excursions. “It’s not as if there is no one out there at all but wild Indians and wilder cattle!”
Fredi slapped his forehead and exclaimed, “Lead and the bullet-mold! Better to take such and not need it, than be in dire need and not have it to hand, eh lads?”
“At this rate we’ll need another wagon,” Peter murmured. Dolph was patiently cinching up three bedrolls to be added on top of the load when Fredi pronounced their supplies to be complete. “I don’t suppose I should suggest a tent and a patent traveling stove?”
His cousin shook his head. “No. Half the roof was still on the house eight months ago. I expect we’ll be able to use the kitchen stove once we knock the bats and swallows out of the chimney.” Dolph tossed the bedrolls one by one into the wagon, while the horses stamped impatiently in harness. “And the orchard wall was sound enough. We’ll picket the horses there at night, until we re-build the stable.”
Peter looked very closely at his cousin. Underneath Dolph’s usual serenity, suppressed excitement ran through him like a swift current underneath the calm surface of a river. He was drawn through with tension, like a racehorse waiting for the command to run.
“We’ll be on our way soon enough, Cuz,” Peter said.
“I’ve been waiting on this day for over four years,” Dolph noted. “I can manage another fifteen minutes.”
“But not much longer than that,” Peter said. His cousin rewarded that feeble witticism with a brief grin. Dolph’s and Fredi’s horses stood patiently, already saddled and bridled by the time Fredi emerged from the house. Anna and Marie followed him, each carrying a basket with a cloth over the top.
“We would not let you go without good bread,” Anna said in her precise way. “For there is no one there to bake it for you, even if you have the means of baking such.”
Peter took the basket from her with his one good hand and nearly dropped it from the unexpected weight. “There is more in here than bread, by the feel of it.”
“Of course,” Anna returned. “You should not need to cook for many days, while you apply yourself to the building of roofs and the branding of cattle.”
“Your concern for our welfare is overwhelming, Miss Anna.” Peter set aside the basket and kissed her hand before she could snatch it away. “I am almost—but not quite—rendered speechless with grat
itude! Here I thought you cared nothing for me at all!”
“And what must I give, that you are then entirely speechless, Mr. Vining?” she answered crisply. “Pray tell me, so that I may present it to you at once!”
“Ah, my dear Miss Anna,” Peter said, as Dolph hid an amused smile and Marie looked almost envious. “So you promise. Well, there is one thing that I would like from you which would take the power of speech entirely from me for . . .oh, at least an hour.”
“And that would be?” Anna asked, sharp and suspicious.
Peter said with delight, “Promise me that you will grant it, Miss Anna. You said anything within your power, to buy my silence for an hour!”
“You did say as much, Anna,” Dolph pointed out, hugely amused. “Anything within your power to grant.”
Anna looked between them both and acquiesced, “Then so I shall … anything for an hour of silence.”
“Your company for that selfsame hour, and to promenade with me on the seashore at Indianola,” Peter announced triumphantly. “I will be as solemn as a judge and as silent as the grave for at least an hour, as promised, Miss Anna! Am I granted the boon of your company?”
“Such a sacrifice!” Anna replied with a toss of her head.
Peter grinned. “Your promise, Miss Anna!” She made a show of indifferent consent, shrugging as if it was something of no matter. Peter continued, wooingly, “I shall hold to it, most assuredly—in three months, on the seashore.”
Anna muttered something under her breath, something that made Marie ruffle like a startled guinea-hen and Dolph laugh outright.
When the girls had deposited their baskets on the wagon-tail and returned towards the house, Peter demanded of his cousin, “What was so funny?”
Dolph answered only, “Better than a play,” and would say no more, for Fredi came from the storeroom, puffing and with his arms laden. “Let us go, Cuz . . .before he thinks of yet another thing.”
“If he looks towards the house and says ‘just one more,’ I promise I will help you hog-tie him and throw him in the wagon,” Peter assured him. But it seemed that action would not be required. Uncle Hansi himself appeared, trailed by Ma’am Becker, stern and proud as a Spartan woman sending her son away with his shield. Behind them was the kindly and forgetful old grandfather, polishing his thick glasses as if he would wear away the lenses entirely.
“In three months, we meet in San Antonio, yah?” Uncle Hansi said, then clapped Peter on the shoulder, a mighty buffet that nearly launched him into the horse trough. “After you search out what remains of the Becker herd and rebuild the house. But that will take much longer than three months, I am sure!”
“We’ll do what we can,” Peter promised him. “Dolph says it is not so much a wreck as all that.”
The burly freight-master shook his head. The grief in his shrewd, coffee-dark eyes was genuine. “Fifteen years hard work by Magda and Brother Carl brought all to ruin in a single day? It will take more than a day to remedy. Foolish to think otherwise.” He staggered Peter with another one of those fond thumps. “You will see young Rudolph is sensible, not so? It was good land, and he thinks of nothing else. No use to anyone until he makes something of it, or gives up dreaming of it. And,” the big man shrugged philosophically, “There may be money in cattle yet.”
“Fredi is sure of it,” Peter replied.
Uncle Hansi chuckled. “He is sure of anything that will lead him like a will of the wisp—too eager to follow and too easy to give it up for the next. But you two lads, you will hold him to sense, I am sure. Be careful of my horses, though! Do not give them to the first Comanche that you see.”
He lifted Willi to his shoulder, as Dolph embraced his mother and his little sister. Peter kissed Ma’am Becker’s hand and then impulsively her cheek. She had been very good to him, with her poultices and the drafts of hot milk, in which she had only confessed of late that she had steadily reduced the number of drops of laudanum. Peter had been astonished, for the pains in his arm had yielded to her ministrations without fail. ‘How much was in the last dose, Ma’am?’ he had asked, and Dolph’s mother answered, ‘I waved the open bottle over a pan of milk while it steamed.’ Peter had laughed inordinately over that. And everyone had always said that Ma’am Becker was entirely humorless! But he had slept well and deep and had no more need of such physics as she administered, and could do a full day of hard work, besides. His cousins were his family now and Ma’am as close to a mother as he would find in the world of the living. Peter was more content now than he would have thought possible, on the day that he came back to his mother’s empty house.
“Time to go,” Dolph said. It seemed to Peter that they did so with almost indecent haste, once his cousin said the words; as if they were impatient to be away from Vati’s comfortable house, eager to embrace discomfort and hard work. Peter took the wagon as the others rode their horses. He slapped the reins over the draft horses’ backs and laughed to see Miss Anna watching them from the shop window. He would have waved, blown her a kiss on the freshening breeze, but that his one good hand was full of leather reins. Never had he been so convinced of a day being full of adventure and promise, not since the bright morning when he and his brothers had departed with their company for Virginia: brass bands and fluttering flags to speed them on their way, hastened with speeches and celebration, kisses from pretty girls. For all that bright beginning, that venture had not turned out well. Peter hoped privately this one would turn out better. Lord knows it could hardly turn out worse.
They followed the southward road towards San Antonio; one heavy-laden wagon and two horsemen, with Pepper the dog trailing after when he wasn’t pursuing interesting smells into the bushes at the verge or chasing the occasional rabbit among the winter-burnt thickets of bare sticks and shriveled brown leaves. A hawk wheeled ceaselessly overhead, a dark spread of wings in a jewel-blue sky. In the fields near town, Peter saw men already laboring with their plows, slowly turning the dark earth over and over.
“They’ll be planting in a couple of weeks.” Dolph rode closer to the wagon. “The last chance of frost around here is in mid-March, if they’re lucky.”
“Still colder than a well-digger’s ass,” Peter grumbled. A gust of cold wind shook the wagon cover from the rear, as if to hurry them on their way. “We may regret setting out on this so early, Cuz.”
Dolph shook his head, the wind ruffling his pale hair. “I’d already sent word to Porfirio,” he answered, “for any of his kin as wanted work to come to us at round-up time. We’ll need to have some kind of roof over us by then.”
“You’re hiring hands from as far as San Antone?” Peter asked. “You’re damn sure of them staying, then.”
His cousin had one of those inscrutable looks to him then, his eyes as clear and blue as the sky and nearly as unreadable. “Porfirio was my father’s friend,” he answered, “and there is business unfinished, as far as he is concerned.”
Evening found them still short of the Becker holdings; they spent the night at the home of a German farmer and herdsman, with extensive lands and a large house near to Comfort and the river crossing. Dolph and Fredi stayed up quite late, talking softly in German to Mr. Stieler, his sons, and son-in-law. Mrs. Stieler and her daughter brought out many dishes of bread and cheese and vegetable pickles. Peter fell asleep by the fire until Dolph woke him.
“You should not have let me sleep so long,” Peter protested as Dolph steered him towards the Stielers’ guest chambers. “The least that a guest can do in response to such generous hospitality is to be amusing company.”
“Not required that you put on a show,” Dolph answered, raising the lantern and opening the door to it with his other hand. “After I said that we were back, and intending to work my father’s lands again, Old Stieler was pleased enough about that, I tell you. You’d have had to walk on your hands and juggle with your feet to make any impression after that.”
“Well, if you say so,” Peter yawned. “So it’s good news to
him that you are back?”
“Of the best,” Dolph nodded. “Enjoy this fine feather mattress, Cuz—tomorrow we’ll bed down on last years leaves, if we’re lucky. No,” he continued, choosing his words with care, “it’s just as well you were asleep. Old Gottlieb’s oldest boy was one of Tegener’s Unionists killed in the Nueces fight and by Captain Duff’s orders left unburied. I didn’t rightly like to remind him of the war, you see.”
“And I’d bring that all to mind, then,” Peter said bitterly. His eyes went, as they always did, to his pinned-up sleeve. “Through having done what everyone said was the right and honorable thing for a true Texian. There are things I want to forget also, but I remember every time I try reaching out for something to pick it up with fingers that aren’t even there. Your friend Stieler can put his loss out of mind now and again, which is more than I can do.”
“Perhaps.” His cousin had that carefully unreadable look, as he set the lantern on a little shelf plainly meant for it. “I did not mean to reproach you, Cuz. Folk were as divided here as anywhere else. Most wanted nothing to do with the war at all. Duff and his partisans and the Hanging Band forced us into taking a side, one or the other. Old Stieler and his family, they’d think more of you for being Becker kin than anything you ever did in the East in the war.”
“As long as I wasn’t doing it around these parts,” Peter answered cynically and his cousin nodded agreement. “Out of sight and out of mind, I suppose.” But his missing hand was never out of his mind, he told himself as he sank into the featherbed, pulling Mrs. Stieler’s fine guest-bed quilt over himself. He wondered wearily when he would ever be comfortable and accustomed to its absence.