It was hard to believe that I was looking at the same spot I had fought Indians on all those years before. The county courthouse was the biggest thing in town, three stories of red brick and a domed bell tower on top of it with a tiled roof. The new jailhouse down the street was two stories tall with yellow-washed stucco walls and white arches over the windows. I remembered when the city marshal had to chain his prisoners to a hitching rail.
There was an opera house that the town bragged would seat four hundred people, but I’d never been to see one of their shows. I counted once and there were six churches in town, and I guess you could find about any flavor of Jesus in Destiny if you were looking for such. Those preachers used to come out to the ranch to try and get me to attend. I knew they were really after money to build those churches, but I donated anyway. Spend enough money and they won’t condemn you from the pulpit, even if you miss services.
We turned the corner at St. Elmo Hotel, another redbrick monster, and headed for the depot house. The train was pulling into the station, and I checked my watch to make sure it was running early and that I wasn’t late. I hate a man who can’t keep his appointments. I was never late to be where I was supposed to be, watch or no watch. When I told a man I would have a herd at such and such place on a certain day, I was there on that day. Your word is your bond and I don’t break my word.
The express agent at the depot house guided us to the boxcar and slid the side door open while I backed the wagon up to it. I knew the man well, for there had been a time when he rode for me until a steer we were loading on a cattle car smashed him against the fence. He never was the same after that, and I was glad he had found a job with the railroad. But as good as we knew each other, he kept the small talk to a minimum.
Hamish and Gunn climbed in the car with the express agent. Once the wagon was parked I stepped over the seat and walked the bed and went inside with them. We found it among all the other express and freight in the boxcar. I thought it would have a place all to itself, but it was buried among the boxes and other things the railroad was hauling.
We sat the pine wood coffin gently in the wagon bed and tied it down with some grass rope. The rope was wet and hard to get to cinch down tight enough, much less tie it off. It screeched a little, sliding across the coffin lid. The grain in the yellow pine boards was already swelling, and you could feel it with your fingertips.
Gunn got back on his horse and Hamish and I started the wagon with Hamish twisted in the seat to make sure the coffin was going to ride okay. I thought about how far that coffin had come, and wondered if the way back to the ranch wasn’t the longest leg of all.
“I never would have guessed Joseph for a soldier,” Hamish said.
“I never could figure him, but I wouldn’t have thought it, either.”
“I remember when you had been riding him about not carrying a gun. Remember that pistol you gave him?” Hamish asked.
“I remember. He was digging around in that trunk he kept under his bed and I finally saw that pistol. I don’t think he ever carried it and had it wrapped in a rag. Probably, he had forgotten about it, because it was freckled with rust,” I said. “I scolded him and told him that I bought that pistol for him to make use of. Spent good money on it for him.”
“Well, he put it to what he thought was good use.”
We both chuckled, but it was only halfhearted. The story had passed among us for years and on another day it would have been as funny as ever. Joseph, maybe feeling bad about the money I had spent on that gun and intending to make good use of it, traded it to one of the fence-building crew for a boxful of blue quail chicks. He built some chicken wire hutches behind the bunkhouse and began raising quail. Before long, he had his own little menagerie. People would bring him all kinds of injured or orphaned wildlife. Folks rode all the way to the ranch to see his pet coyote. It almost broke his heart when that coyote pup ate from a cow carcass that a wolfer I’d hired baited with strychnine.
“Remember how he wouldn’t kill a snake?” Hamish asked.
I could tell that Hamish was remembering out loud and not necessarily asking me anything, but I answered anyway. “Saw him get on top of a big rattlesnake once crawling under the floor of the bunkhouse looking for some kittens. He almost peeled his shirt off his back scrambling out from under there. He was getting his nerves back together and peering under the floor at the snake when I handed him my pistol to shoot it.”
“Wouldn’t shoot it, would he?”
“He said, ‘No, that snake let me off easy and I’ll do the same for him.’”
“Did you know he could pray in German?” Gunn asked.
“I used to hear him when we were boys, but I didn’t know if he was praying or reciting something from memory,” Hamish said.
“Did you know he wrote some of his Quaker kin back East?”
“No. When was that?”
“A year or two after you left. He never heard back from them.”
“Who would have thought our Joseph would want to go to war? Joseph the Rough Rider.”
All the newspapers were singing the praises of Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders charging hell-bent for leather up San Juan Hill and giving the Spanish the “what for” down in Cuba. I didn’t even know what Cuba looked like. It was jungle, was all I knew.
What possessed Roosevelt to recruit a bunch of cowboys and Western men to take to the jungle, I don’t know. They say men joined up from Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and other parts far-flung, even up in the Indian Nations—a bunch of cowboys, freighters, miners, gamblers, and blooded Indians. Roosevelt was another one of those rich Yankees who liked to come out West and play with guns, but I guess he had enough sense to know he needed men with grit. Texas sons had plenty of that, and most of them knew how to shoot. Back in the war I had known, that was the only thing we had going for us. Lord knows, the Confederacy couldn’t keep us equipped, but we never ran short of grit. Grit and spirit will sometimes carry you through when nothing else will.
Maybe it was the horses that made Joseph want to join. The papers say that the Rough Riders were meant to be just that—riders, cavalry. But the papers also said that most of their horses never made it to Cuba and those boys had to fight on foot. I could have told Joseph that war never turns out how it’s supposed to.
He learned that too late, I guess. I didn’t tell Hamish or Gunn—it was better that they might think their brother was shot in some gallant charge—but Joseph never made it to San Juan Hill. The malaria and yellow fever got the boy before his company ever left Florida. That’s what the letter the government sent me said. Joseph had listed me as his next of kin, so they sent me a notice of his death, along with a letter from the President commending Joseph’s service to the country. I wouldn’t let them bury Joseph in Florida, and had them put him on the train. I wished I had thought to send more money for a better coffin. The one the government sent him home in was little better than a shipping box. Governments never can do anything right. Some politician was probably putting the cost of a good coffin down on his books and pocketing the extra money.
“They say Teddy led those Rough Riders up the hill cheering them on and keeping their courage up all the way,” Hamish said. “They say he never got off of his horse, even though the Spaniards were laying down hot fire with their Mausers.”
“I’ve never met the man.”
“Those new German bolt-action Mausers are supposed to crack like a bullwhip,” Gunn said. “They use that new smokeless powder.”
“Tiffany’s brother is an officer and still in Cuba. He says our boys’ Krags still use black powder, and the Spaniards could see the powder smoke when they shot and used that to pick them out of the brush.”
I wished Hamish and Gunn would quit talking. I doubted that charge up the hill would be anything like the newspapers said it was. War is never anything but ugly and dirty and harder to take than anything somebody would want to read about. Any reporting otherwise told me that somebody is trying to sel
l news. Besides, Joseph wasn’t on that hill, and I preferred to remember him when he was still my best cowboy.
I saw Gunn looking sidelong at the coffin more than once. Gunn kept his feelings to himself about most things, unless you were trying to get him to do something he didn’t want to. He got that from me. Hamish was more like their mother.
I hadn’t thought about her in days. That’s how it works when bad things happen. They put you in the mood to think about other bad things . . . things you’ve done and can’t ever take back. I loved her so. I went crazy twice—once during the war and once when I lost her. My boys knew about the second time, and I couldn’t fix that. Them knowing and what I did to them was hard to take, but me knowing was almost as hard. When you get numb like that you’ll do things, looking for something to fill you back up on the inside, but that was no excuse. It was what it was and couldn’t be undone.
“Is that who I think it is?” Gunn asked.
“Easy, Gunn. Let it lie,” Hamish said.
I was so lost in my thoughts it took me a bit to realize what they were talking about. The rain had picked up some, but I could still see somebody standing in the door of the billiards hall up the street a ways. I was shocked that the kind of people who spent their time drinking beer and shooting pool would be up so early, much less such an establishment opening its doors for business before noon. Whoever it was closed the door before we were near enough for me to make him out.
“Who was it?” I asked.
“Moon Lowe,” Hamish said. “I heard he was back.”
“Gunn, don’t you be thinking what I know you’re thinking,” I said.
“Clayton Lowe tells it that Moon has been working as a city policeman in Dallas,” Hamish said.
“Who would hire him for a policeman?” I asked.
“I can believe it,” Gunn said. “You ought to have seen some of the guards I had in Huntsville. Some of them were worse than the inmates.”
“I can imagine,” I said.
“No you can’t, Papa. You don’t have a clue,” Gunn said. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said it that way.”
“That’s all right.”
“That son of a bitch was waiting for us to come by. He knew that we were picking up Joseph’s body,” Gunn said.
“There’s no way he could have known. Don’t make trouble where there isn’t any,” Hamish said.
“Where there isn’t any? I owe him about seven years’ worth of trouble.”
I saw Hamish about to say more than he should, but he kept it to himself. I’ll give him that. Usually, Hamish puts too much faith in his ability to win people over with words, but arguing with Gunn would only make it worse.
“I think I’ll go shoot some billiards,” Gunn said.
“You do like I say.” I sped the team up until I was beside Gunn where I could look him in the eyes. “We’re going home to bury Joseph. Now.”
Gunn was looking at the pool hall, but he kept his horse traveling beside the wagon. “It’ll wait.”
“And they’ll stick you back in Huntsville. Forget Moon Lowe,” I said.
We buried Joseph beside Sarah, Baby Beth, and Old Ben.
The rain quit by the time we made it home. Paco and his boy had already dug a grave, but the bottom of it was standing in water. Gunn and Hamish shoveled some mud into the bottom of the grave to soak up some of the water, and then the three of us managed to lower the coffin in it.
We stood for a while, but none of us said anything in the way of a eulogy. I know Joseph would have liked some scripture read over him, and I regretted not having one of those preachers ride out and say a few words. The three of us took turns with the shovel, and we had the grave filled in by dinnertime.
“I’ll order him a tombstone next time I’m in town,” Hamish said.
“Have them put a horse on it, and some kind of scripture,” Gunn said. “He would like that.”
Hamish was good at picking out tombstones. The one he had picked out for Sarah and Baby Beth had a statue of an angel on it, and the marble slab that he had chosen for Old Ben was a pretty thing. Hamish had written the epitaph for Ben himself.
R. I. P.
BEN DOLLARHYDE
???? —1866
Pioneer, beloved friend,
and bold companion;
Son of lion hunters and chiefs;
Saved the life of our father, and
Was always there for his children;
Served his family thirty years,
from Alabama to Texas;
LIVING PROOF THAT COURAGE AND
KINDNESS CAN GO HAND IN HAND.
Fine words, even if Ben’s last name was never Dollarhyde, but I wished I had thought of those words. No matter, Ben would understand. Never had to say much to Ben, for he always knew what I was thinking. Knew me better than my own boys.
“Amen,” I said, and started up the hill to the house.
Chapter Forty-five
1899
“Let me front you the money,” Hamish said. “Pride goeth before a fall.”
“You mean your wife’s money.” I regretted that as soon as I said it. Tiffany’s parents were old money back East, but I knew that Hamish refused everything they tried to do for him and made his own way, even if it wasn’t my way.
“This ranch is the only thing keeping Gunn straight.”
“Straight?”
“You and I both know it. He’s like you and needs something to fight,” Hamish said. “Lose this place and it won’t be long until he’s in trouble.”
“Don’t talk like you’re better than him.”
“It has nothing to do with being better.”
“Leave Gunn and I alone. Another year or two and the ranch will be paying again. Next year we’ll have a good herd of young stuff for sale,” I said. “That will get the wolf away from the door.”
“Fine, but you’re going to starve out before then. Look around. The place is falling down around you.”
True, the house could use repainting, one corner of the porch was sagging, and a few roof shakes were lying in the yard. It was hard to keep up with only two of us to work. Keeping the headquarters in shape, by itself, was almost a full-time chore. I’d built big back in the day, and the place was made for a whole crew to run. The best Gunn and I had been able to do was try and keep up with what we still used, and it was hard to keep Gunn at any physical work that didn’t require him to be on a horse.
“A pretty place doesn’t make you any money,” I said. “If I wanted a showplace I would sell out and buy one of those hot springs resorts and tend to tourists and lungers.”
“I notice that you aren’t drinking twenty-dollar brandy anymore.”
“And because of that you think you need to come up here and tell me how to run things? Offer me charity?”
“Clayton Lowe bought your debt with Billings’s store. He’s filed for a lien on your property.”
“Can he do that? I thought you were looking after my books and the legal end.”
“Billings sold Lowe the note for thirty percent of what you owed him. I guess he thought that was more money than he was ever going to get out of you.”
“I’ve never not paid a debt in my life. Billings was more than glad to make money off of me when times were good. He ought to have waited until I paid him off. Why, I loaned him money when he first put that store in.”
“I imagine he has bills to pay, too. That old handshake stuff tends to go out the window when someone’s fat is in the fire.”
“So, Lowe can get a ruling for some of my property for a little three-hundred-dollar bill I owed Billings?”
“I can stop that, or at least drag it out. The judge isn’t exactly an admirer of Clayton Lowe.”
“That highbinder. He’s had it in for us since the old days.”
“It gets worse,” Hamish said. “Moon Lowe is running for county sheriff.”
“I heard.”
“I sold my railroad stock last week. Made quite a killing
.”
“Is that what hanging out down at the capitol gets you? Sounds like the Austin politicians have been teaching you some of their tricks.”
“I’m running for state representative, whether you like it or not, and I took that railroad stock as payment for some work I did years ago. If you will remember, I told you to buy some of it, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“If I let you loan me the money you’ll be up here every day telling me how to run the place.”
“No, that’s not the deal. I’m not loaning you the money. I’ll pay off your debt. You run the place until . . .”
“Until I’m dead.”
“For as long as you want. Half the place goes in my name and the other half in Gunn’s. You two keep all the profit or loss for yourself from the business. Cattle belong to you two.”
“That’s foolish. I thought I taught you more about business than that. You’ll never make a dime with deals like that.”
“I’m part of this family, too. I’ll invest a little to see this thing held together,” Hamish said, getting up from his chair. “Don’t you think I like driving under that gate sign when I come home? And why have I got that damned brand painted on my office window in Fort Worth?”
“I guess because you’re a Dollarhyde.”
“Damned right. The Brits are breaking up part of the old ranch and auctioning it off sometime next year. Maybe I could pick up another section or two that join us.”
“We could always use more land.”
“Who do you think taught me that? I’ve already got the papers drawn up. I’ll bring them up tomorrow for you and Gunn to sign.”
“I haven’t said I’ll do it.”
“You will.”
Juanita came out on the porch when Hamish was driving away. “Did you listen to him, or did you run over everything he had to say?”
“Didn’t have any choice. He’s trying to shove me out.”
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