“I would like to talk more about the cattle. I have been told that British bulls to cross with longhorns will be the future of the cattle business. I know you have some. They have more beef on them, so a greater value on the market.”
“See what I said,” Josie said to her sister. “Our new superintendent is already shaping this place up.”
“Let me talk to my foremen prospects. Then the three of us will ride with Estevan or his man and see what else needs attention. I will be sure that Estevan will have a say in who replaces him.”
“Now, painting the house we will pay for,” Edna said, and her sister agreed. “But you understand these families have worked here all their life.”
“They will have a place here as always.”
“Thank you. We can work the rest out.”
“Is Long back, too?” Josie asked.
“No, he’s off seeing the world, but he says he will be back by Christmas.”
“Did he go overseas?”
“No that has no calling for Long. He may have gone far enough west to see the Rocky Mountains, but nothing over the waters.”
“Edna and I always wanted to go to France and see Paris, but all we did was talk about it.”
“Long will be back. He and I are very close. He is a really great man. Ladies, I want to tell you I appreciate being asked to be your superintendent. I will do my damndest to suit you.”
“We know you will,” Edna said. “We have fretted about what we should do. She and I decided to ask you to run it. Would you two have a glass of champagne to celebrate with us?”
“Certainly,” Kate said.
A little shaken by the request to manage their ranch, he nodded and agreed they would.
When they were on the buckboard seat headed home, Katy asked, “Did the bubbles get in your nose?”
“No. But my head almost exploded thinking about running that whole ranch.”
“I almost know who you will put over there.” She shifted Lee to her other arm, sitting beside him on the spring seat.
“Tell me, gypsy woman, who will I ask?” he asked.
“Doug.”
“How did you guess?”
“He is the second man after your brother for the job. Long is too busy, and I know you want this ranch in top shape when those two ladies give it to you.”
“When they gave me that check to run this ranch, I really began to believe you were right.” He shook his head. It all was too much to conceive. “Darling, I love you and our little cowboy, but we are going to build our own big ranch, too.”
She bumped him with her shoulder. “Lee and I believe that, and we will help you.”
He felt damn lucky to have her and the boy. He and Long would be at the top of the pile at this rate. He hoped his brother was getting his fill of the western frontier safely. He missed him not being there, but no matter what, they’d make it.
CHAPTER 30
He and Doug talked into the night about him taking the foreman job at the Diamond Ranch.
“I’ll really have to polish up my Spanish,” Doug said, sounding concerned. “Those workers are all Hispanic.”
“They do things Hispanic, but they need to be brought up into this century. They’re hardworking, loyal, and they will support you. You can do it. You took some green cowboys to Kansas and made it.”
“Yeah, I want the job. Say, you said we needed to see those parents of the four men we lost. You dreading that as much as I am?”
“Oh, yes. And Saturday we pay the ranchers who sent their cattle north with us. That will make up, somewhat, for those sad visits to see those parents. Get back to the topic, does the language bother you that much about this new job?”
“Oh, no. Hell, Harp, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. I’m older than you by near ten years, but being a cowboy is not the opportunity for a man having enough of a job to support a wife and family, if I can ever find someone to marry me. I can do that working the foreman job. Have kids and feed them. I can overcome any problems like talking to my help. You and Long have treated me like I was kin since going to Sedalia. Having this job, in these terrible economic times people are having in Texas, is a thank-God-every-day issue for me. After Sedalia I wondered, but what you did in Abilene shocked all of us. Every guy on that team saw in Abilene that the O’Malley brothers’ deal was going to bring all of us working for you two out of these depressing times.”
“Well, the Diamond Ranch is a good start for you.”
“And I am truly grateful.”
“Now, ride with me tomorrow. We have four families to see. I will need some help along, to have the courage for the job.”
* * *
The following morning, Harp and Doug began the sad task of visiting the families who had lost their loved ones. The first one they went to see was the widow. She lived on a small place outside of Kerrville. They drove the team into town and got the boy’s money in twenty-dollar bills. He and Long had decided to pay each family who lost a son or husband, four hundred dollars.
“Mrs. Green, I wrote you a letter from Kansas about Johnny’s death. I know money won’t replace your son, but my brother and I want you to have four hundred dollars, for his pay. He was a gallant, brave young man and it hurt us all he was killed in a horse wreck doing his job keeping the cattle moving. So thank you very much, and if I can ever help you, feel free to call on me.” He gave her the money in a cloth sack.
“Thank you, Mr. O’Malley; he was so proud you chose him. I know he worked hard. That was his way.”
He hugged her and excused himself. It would be a damn tough day. Doug drove the buckboard and he sat beside him on the spring seat.
The two boys that worked for Doug that got killed were the next two stops. Pete Yates shot himself cleaning a pistol. This father was on the porch when they drove up. Doug climbed down and introduced himself. “Pete was a good man and we are sad he didn’t come home. The men gave him a Christian funeral, and we want you to have the money he earned for the trip.”
The man swallowed hard. “My wife couldn’t face you. We don’t blame you or Mr. O’Malley, but when you raise a boy to that age and his life is snuffed out miles away from here it is real damn hard—thanks for the money. I’m sorry—” He walked off crying.
A teenage girl answered the door at the next place. Said she was A. J. Henry’s sister and she accepted the money politely. Just stood there sad faced and nodded. She had no words. There was nothing to say.
Harp was beside himself by then. The last hand died of pneumonia. Clarence Fowler’s heir was an older brother and his wife who accepted the money gratefully. She ended up head down weeping. “My man can use the money but he could have used Rupert more. They were close and he hasn’t been himself since we got the kind letter you wrote us.” Sniff. “Thank you is all I can manage.”
Then she ran into the house.
Harper climbed back onto the buckboard seat. “Let’s go home, Doug. I see why folks drink. If I drank I’d go drown in it. Better get home. My Katy will cheer me up. Thanks for coming along. This must have been the worst day of my life. Son of a bitch.”
CHAPTER 31
Wild cattle were spotted, and holding pens were close by on state-owned land. If anyone built such structures on state land, the facilities were free for the public to use. Of course it was first come, first to have possession and use. Doug had told him where they were located, and they sat right in the vicinity that would work well while gathering cattle over there.
Harp then sent Doug over to learn all about the Diamond Ranch from the retiring foreman Estevan Montoya. Red went along to back him since he spoke lots of border Spanish. Languages got murdered in isolated places by the users there. The Texas border lingo was bad, the real Hispanics said, having words no one else understood. But they made do and so could his men who were going to work it.
Some of the boys were left cleaning up the home place, plus repairing fences and even building some more for Hiram. Harp had wanted to h
old the teams intact for the following year, so everyone had a job to do. The other two cooks fed them.
Chaw headed the roundup crew and all the top hands went with him along with the supply wagon headed by Ira, his helper Billy, and Candy who had become part of that team.
Until Chaw was comfortable enough with the job, Harp felt he needed to be with them. Harp and Chaw rode at the head of the line of over two dozen hands and two wagons behind bringing food, tents, bedrolls and gear they’d need including one of the squeeze chutes. They were coming through some short timber and cedars on a narrow set of tracks that resembled a road when Harp saw four armed men blocking their way.
He rode up and stopped a small distance from their roadblock.
“Morning, gentlemen, but we’d like to pass here. Any reason we can’t?”
“Gawdamn right. This is our range, and that brush-busting crew behind you ain’t clearing up our rangeland of the free cattle. Those are our cattle and we intend to brand them for ourselves.”
“Have you been trying to brand them?”
“Not yet.”
“Then that is now my business. If you are just trying to stop us and you have not been running them in and working them, then I say you aren’t interested enough in them to own them. We are.”
“No you ain’t. We ain’t going to let you come an inch farther.”
Harp was nodding his head. The hell you say. “Then who’s going to die here today? Those men back there have fought off Yankee veterans and tribes of Plains Indian. They won’t mind killing you like the snap of your finger. Men, if you have families and children to think about being orphaned, then think hard. Those men have been to Sedalia and Abilene and they fight to kill. So put your guns up and go home.”
They talked among themselves. Finally their spokesman said, “You better not rebrand any of our cattle while you are over here.”
Harp nodded. “I promise you we won’t do that. We are not thieves.”
And the men rode off. Harp sat for a long time on his horse not saying anything, letting his anger slowly slip away. Comanche stomped a hind foot at biting flies.
When the men were finally gone from sight, he turned to his men and said, “That was better than dying. Everyone goes out goes out in pairs. There may be more out there upset. Let’s go round up cattle.”
A loud cheer went up. No doubt in his mind his bunch would have won, but the price was too high to risk it.
By evening the camp was set up. Sweet wood smoke hung in the air. Good Arbuckle’s coffee was being shared and the guitar music with songs was resounding off the nearby hills. Chaw showed everyone the map on the tabletop they had, and how it was quartered to make the drives to bring the cattle into the pens. He appointed men as leaders with four or five riders each and what course they must take to bring the wild ones into the five-acre pen.
Harp thought about the face-off they had earlier. These damn cattle were not worth more than fifty cents when he and the outfit left for Sedalia eighteen months ago. Now that they were worth something, everyone claimed them. Well, he and the crew were rounding these up, branding them, and driving the big steers out to lock up on one of the Diamond Ranch–fenced sections to get fat before springtime.
And they could like it or lump it.
* * *
Before dawn the following morning, they ate breakfast and had saddled their mounts. Each group left in the early pink of day for their place to start bringing in the cattle. An hour later Chaw fired a pistol in the air. Another west of him went off, farther on one more, then Harp shot his gun off on the far western point.
Cattle were on the move, stampeding through brush timber and open meadows to escape the shots. Cowboys on horseback cut off any retreat and drove them toward the pen. The cattle ran to join others as they fled for the pens. Bawling in protest, they soon made a large herd. Those trying to escape joined others, all heading right where Harp wanted them. Cows, bulls, calves, and steers all with tails above their backs charging for where they didn’t want to go, but the force they were caught up in would eventually put them through the gates and locked up in the pen to be worked.
Harp was pleased, riding hard, sweeping through the cedar boughs and live oak to send them for the open gates. From here on there would be no breaking back, just running in the direction the bosses wanted them to go.
On a great horse, this was the place that Harp wanted to be the most on these drives. They would have branded cattle to sort off, but there must be hundreds here that would soon wear the H Bar H brand on their hide.
Hell, Long, you are missing all the fun.
The herd swept into the huge pen and soon settled while the crew ate lunch. The squeeze chute unit was set up. Maverick cows and calves plus yearlings would be returned to the open after being worked and branded. Steers and castrated bulls would be held to drive to the Diamond Ranch.
They worked cattle that day until dark, and there still were more head to work in the morning. Everyone ate hearty on the good tender roast beef Ira cooked along with potatoes and carrots, biscuits and peach cobbler.
By end of next day, Chaw had his weathered hat on the back of his head, counting numbers. “The men have three hundred head of cows and calves worked, and a hundred and twenty big steers ready to go to pasture.”
“Guys,” Harp shouted over their roaring about it. “That’s a great record and we ain’t half done here.”
In the next four days they branded about every head of stock they could find in a large radius of the pens. It moved the cow count on this drive to 600 and 520 calves. Big steers to go to Diamond numbered 240, near a quarter of the herd they needed for Abilene.
Two of the better hands went south to look for more pockets of cattle. The job there done, half the main crew went back to the ranch for a two-day break. Others took the big steers to pasture and planned to be back at the home ranch that night.
They were all worn out when they reached home. The pasture bunch never got in until after midnight. Only a handful of them were up the next morning with Harp to have breakfast in the tent with his wife. Her nanny had Lee and Kate was giving Ira a hard time.
“You know what to do about that girl, Candy?”
“No. I don’t want her hurt again.”
“You know as big and tough as you are, you have a softer than peach fuzz heart.”
“I can’t help it. She has no one she remembers to care for her.”
“I am seriously afraid of her getting hurt out there. Leave her with me for a short while. Maybe I can help her find herself.”
“Kate, I’d do anything I can for her. I will ask her if that’s all right.”
“Ira, you are the man. But maybe I can do something.”
Candy told Ira she feared being away from him. He told Katy her wishes and she accepted them.
Later Harp thanked her for trying. Katy was a little upset but nodded. “You can’t be helped if you don’t want help.”
The two men who had left to go looking for stock rode in and said there were several head in the region they called Hard Rocks. The boys said they could rent some pens and work them nearby. Harp decided he would send Chaw and two men to make the deal after they had some time off to relax.
He paid the returning men their needed ten bucks and sent them into town for some rest and rowdy time.
Things were going well. Harp and Hiram sat out in the sun and talked about needed deals. “You sure are making lots of progress on all this business. Why I know men been back damn near as long as you have been home and have not turned a tap; yet they were so worn out.”
“That won’t get it done. If Long was here we’d got twice this much done already.”
“Hey, hey, ye already have a good wife and a son. He’s only got himself, and going looking isn’t a bad thing for him.”
“Do you think he’s maybe looking for a woman?”
“It bothered him you just rode up and found Katy. It worked out as smooth as silk. You were lucky to find
her. I lost me first wife on a picnic. A very good woman. The river stole her and I couldn’t swim fast enough to save her. One minute the woman I liked and appreciated was on a shelf wading in the river, the next she was shouting for help and was swept away under the water.
“I didn’t really want another woman. I wanted her back and I must have cursed God many times for letting her drown. A few months later I met your mother working in a big fine garden. I knew nothing about her except she was the first woman I saw since burying me last one that I really wanted to know better.
“She’d lost the man she was pledged to. I guess she had just found it out the second time I crossed paths with her in Cincinnati. She said he was dead, and I said like me, that I lost me wife three months ago so come and we will dance at the Cane Hill social Saturday night. Then she started talking about being pregnant. I didn’t care. She was a beautiful woman and a kinder soul as I had never met.
“Her mother said for her to answer my request. She said she may as well since I would not take no for me answer.
“We got engaged going to the social and a preacher married us when we got there. Then we turned around and I took her home and told her parents we were married. As you can see, we have lived happily ever after.”
Harp was laughing. “You believe in things being planned?”
“I guess. Why?”
“Katy was going to leave Lee’s Creek area but some voice said, no, stay at the store a while longer. So she stayed until I got there. And like you saw Mom, this nice lady told me to buy two cans of peaches and we’d go somewhere and eat them. We did and have been together ever since except for this last cattle drive. What do you call that?”
“Ah, Harp, me boy, they call that fate in Ireland. It was intended that you would be coming there, and that force held her there no matter how silly she considered it. Either some witch, or God, plans for things to happen to us all.”
The O'Malleys of Texas Page 25