I said, “You keep trying to lift my spirits and I’ll put you on the haying crew.”
He looked horrified. No real cowhand wanted any work he couldn’t do from the back of his horse. Haying was a hot, hard, sweaty job done either afoot or from a wagon seat. We generally brought in contract Mexican labor to handle ours. But I’d been known in the past to discipline a cowhand by giving him a few days on the hay gang. Hays said, “Boss, now I never meant nothin’. I swear. You know me, my mouth gets to runnin’ sometimes. I swear I’m gonna watch it.”
I smiled. Hays always made me smile. He was so easily buffaloed. He had it soft at the Half-Moon and he knew it and didn’t want to take any chances on losing a good thing.
I lit up a cigarillo and watched the dusk settle in over the coastal plains. It wasn’t but three miles to Matagorda Bay and it was quiet enough I felt like I could almost hear the waves breaking on the shore. Somewhere in the distance a mama cow bawled for her calf. The spring crop were near about weaned by now, but there were still a few mamas that wouldn’t cut the apron strings. I stood there reflecting on how peaceful things had been of late. It suited me just fine. All I wanted was to get my house finished, marry Nora and never handle another gun so long as I lived.
The peace and quiet were short-lived. Within twenty-four hours we’d had a return telegram from Jack Cole. It said:
YOUR LAND OCCUPIED BY TEN TO TWELVE MEN STOP CAN’T BE SURE WHAT THEY’RE DOING BECAUSE THEY RUN STRANGERS OFF STOP APPEAR TO HAVE A GOOD MANY CATTLE GATHERED STOP APPEAR TO BE FENCING STOP ALL I KNOW STOP
I read the telegram twice and then I said, “Why this is crazy as hell! That land wouldn’t support fifty head of cattle.”
We were all gathered in the big office. Even Dad was there, sitting in his rocking chair. I looked up at him. “What do you make of this, Howard?”
He shook his big, old head of white hair. “Beats the hell out of me, Justa. I can’t figure it.”
Ben said, “Well, I don’t see where it has to be figured. I’ll take five men and go down there and run them off. I don’t care what they’re doing. They ain’t got no business on our land.”
I said, “Take it easy, Ben. Aside from the fact you don’t need to be getting into any more fights this year, I can’t spare you or five men. The way this grass is drying up we’ve got to keep drifting those cattle.”
Norris said, “No, Ben is right. We can’t have such affairs going on with our property. But we’ll handle it within the law. I’ll simply take the train down there, hire a good lawyer and have the matter settled by the sheriff. Shouldn’t take but a few days.”
Well, there wasn’t much I could say to that. We couldn’t very well let people take advantage of us, but I still hated to be without Norris’s services even for a few days. On matters other than the ranch he was the expert, and it didn’t seem like there was a day went by that some financial question didn’t come up that only he could answer. I said, “Are you sure you can spare yourself for a few days?”
He thought for a moment and then nodded. “I don’t see why not. I’ve just moved most of our available cash into short-term municipal bonds in Galveston. The market is looking all right and everything appears fine at the bank. I can’t think of anything that might come up.”
I said, “All right. But you just keep this in mind. You are not a gun hand. You are not a fighter. I do not want you going anywhere near those people, whoever they are. You do it legal and let the sheriff handle the eviction. Is that understood?”
He kind of swelled up, resenting the implication that he couldn’t handle himself. The biggest trouble I’d had through the years when trouble had come up had been keeping Norris out of it. Why he couldn’t just be content to be a wagon load of brains was more than I could understand. He said, “Didn’t you just hear me say I intended to go through a lawyer and the sheriff? Didn’t I just say that?”
I said, “I wanted to be sure you heard yourself.”
He said, “Nothing wrong with my hearing. Nor my approach to this matter. You seem to constantly be taken with the idea that I’m always looking for a fight. I think you’ve got the wrong brother. I use logic.”
“Yeah?” I said. “You remember when that guy kicked you in the balls when they were holding guns on us? And then we chased them twenty miles and finally caught them?”
He looked away. “That has nothing to do with this.”
“Yeah?” I said, enjoying myself. “And here’s this guy, shot all to hell. And what was it you insisted on doing?”
Ben laughed, but Norris wouldn’t say anything.
I said, “Didn’t you insist on us standing him up so you could kick him in the balls? Didn’t you?”
He sort of growled, “Oh, go to hell.”
I said, “I just want to know where the logic was in that.”
He said, “Right is right. I was simply paying him back in kind. It was the only thing his kind could understand.”
I said, “That’s my point. You just don’t go down there and go to paying back a bunch of rough hombres in kind. Or any other currency for that matter.”
That made him look over at Dad. He said, “Dad, will you make him quit treating me like I was ten years old? He does it on purpose.”
But he’d appealed to the wrong man. Dad just threw his hands in the air and said, “Don’t come to me with your troubles. I’m just a boarder around here. You get your orders from Justa. You know that.”
Of course he didn’t like that. Norris had always been a strong hand for the right and wrong of a matter. In fact, he may have been one of the most stubborn men I’d ever met. But he didn’t say anything, just gave me a look and muttered something about hoping a mess came up at the bank while he was gone and then see how much boss I was.
But he didn’t mean nothing by it. Like most families, we fought amongst ourselves and, like most families, God help the outsider who tried to interfere with one of us.
* * *
Norris got away on the noon train the next day. I took him in myself as a good excuse to go by and see Nora. The last thing I told him was not to spend much time or money on the matter. I’d said, “Just put it in the hands of a good lawyer and then get on back here. Your time is too valuable to waste fooling around with that worthless land.”
He’d said, “I’ll wire you my plans.”
I’d said, “You just wire me what train to meet in the next couple or three days.”
I’d come into town in the buckboard because I intended on bringing home a few supplies. So before I went to hunt up Miss Nora I took the wagon and team over to the livery stable to see to their watering and feeding. Besides, it was the noon hour and I didn’t want to just drop in at the Parkers’ unannounced.
For lack of something better to do I went into Crooks Saloon & Café and had a beer and a bowl of stew. I never passed up a chance to eat in town when I could. It meant just one less meal I’d have to endure at Buttercup’s hands.
Lew Vara, the sheriff, was at the bar. When he seen I’d finished my stew he ambled over. Lew and I were pretty near the same age. Before he’d got to be sheriff he and I had had just about the roughest fistfight I’d ever been involved in. I’d finally won it, but I’d done so unfairly. He’d had me nearly finished and I’d grabbed a revolver off the floor and split his head open with it. It had been understood that he was going to come for me when he got able, but that hadn’t been the case. Instead of holding what I’d done against me, he said he reckoned he’d of done the same himself if he could have reached anything. Then, after that, he’d been a big help to us in some trouble we were having at the time. The upshot had been that we’d stood him for sheriff against the then sheriff, a man we felt had gone wrong. He’d won and it had been the making of him.
Lew had a good bit of Mexican in him, but you’d have never known it to look at him. We weighed about the same, but he was a couple of inches shorter than I was, with heavy shoulders and big, muscled-up arms. The man could hit like the
kick of a mule.
We talked a while about nothing and I sent for another round of beer. After a time, I told him about the business down along the border and he was as surprised as I was. He said, “Hell, I know that country like the back of my hand. They ain’t nothing worth stealing down there if you threw in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo in the bargain.”
I told him I knew but that we had to look into it. I said, “I just put Norris on the train there.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Norris? Padnuh, that’s pretty rough country down there. Bunch of bad hombres. You sure you should have sent Norris?”
I told him how we were going to play it. I said, “I can’t see how he could get into any trouble that way.”
But he shook his head. “I don’t know about that. Laredo is one town you can get into trouble just being on the wrong side of the street. Maybe you should have sent Ben with him.”
I said, “Huh! Now that would have been looking for trouble. Naw, it’ll be all right. Norris will get a lawyer and the sheriff will run the squatters off. It won’t come to nothing.”
When it was good after one o’clock I went and got the buckboard and stopped it in front of Parker’s Mercantile. The interior was cool and dark and felt mighty pleasant after the heat of the day. Lonnie Parker, Nora’s dad, was behind the main counter. His face lit up when I came in. “Why dog my cats,” he said. “Here’s the bridegroom.”
“Unless Nora’s come to her senses.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” he said. “You never saw such a power of sewing as has been going on at the house in all your life. How come ever’ time a woman goes to get married they got to take to needle and thread? I tell you, a man is lucky to get a meal around my place these days.”
I told him he looked to be holding his own and gave him my list of supplies. He let out a yell—“Harvey! You, Harvey!”–and about a seventeen-year-old rawboned kid came skidding out of the back and reported for duty at the counter. Lonnie gave him the list and told him to load it in my buckboard.
I said, “Reckon Nora’s home?”
“Yeah, but you’ll play hell finding her amidst all the material and cloth goods and thread.”
I said I thought I’d stroll down and make a short visit while Harvey was getting my order up. Lonnie said he’d send the kid down with the wagon and have him park it under the shade tree. He gave me a wink and said, “You might be surprised how short yore visit is. Right now you is the least part of this wedding. Women set a great deal of store by weddings and they don’t much take to men gettin’ in the way.”
Lonnie hadn’t exaggerated over much. Both Nora and her mother were rushing around like chickens with their heads cut off. Nora answered the door with a oh-it’s-just-you look on her face, but she bade me come in. “But stay out of the way,” she said.
So I went in and watched them, taking a seat on the divan. They had a huge cedar chest in the middle of the room and they were busy filling it up and then taking sheets and pillow cases and comforters and I don’t know what all out and then putting them back in again. And when they weren’t doing that they were having hurried conversations about swatches of cloth and hemlines and other things I didn’t know a great deal about.
I just sat there watching Nora. As hot as it was and as hurried as she was she still looked as cool and collected as a cold beer. Her light brown hair bore a deep sheen, like she’d just finished brushing it, and the square-cut opening in the top of her bodice was big enough to reveal a span of clear, cool, cream-colored skin. Just below that bodice was the swell of her breasts against the thin gingham of her dress. I’d touched those breasts bare in the moonlight one night when we’d both got carried away. I’d even kissed one. But that had been as far as it went. But just the thought, just looking at her and remembering, made my neck get thick like a rutting bull and put the taste of copper in my mouth. I could only guess at what the silken feel of the inside of her thighs would do to me. Just thinking about it was doing enough and I forced myself to wrench my mind around in another direction before it became obvious what I was thinking about.
After about a half an hour of watching two women scurrying and scattering I figured I’d been ignored long enough. I got up and said, “Well, I reckon I’ll be getting on back. Y’all appear to be pretty busy.”
Nora turned around and looked at me like I was a truant trying to slip out of the schoolroom. She said, “Justa Williams, you sit right back down there. I want to talk to you.”
I said, “When?”
She had several pins in her mouth so it come out kind of mumbled, but she said, “Here in a minute. Besides, you ought to stay for supper.”
Of course the idea of eating hers or her mother’s cooking was always bribe enough for me. But I couldn’t see when they were going to have time to fix it. I said, doubtfully, “Y’all are plannin’ on cooking, are you?”
“Well, of course,” she said. “Did you think we couldn’t hem up a few sheets and cook too? Now you go on down to Crooks and drink a beer. But don’t you dare drink too many. You come back in about an hour.”
So I went down to Crooks and had a beer. Since she’d told me not to have too many I didn’t. But since she hadn’t said nothing about whiskey I did have several tumblers of that. I also played a little poker and managed to win about forty dollars. I arrived back at the house at about five, just in time for supper, and got a good eye-scolding from Nora.
Later, when it had cooled down a little, we sat in the swing on the front porch. I was feeling pretty mellow after a supper of fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy. Or at least I was until Nora wanted to know when the furniture was going to arrive. We’d picked it out in Galveston better than a month before and some of it had to come from New Orleans and other points. I said, a little uncomfortably, “It’ll be here right about the time the house is finished.”
She asked, “And when will that be? You keep saying we’ll go see it when it’s finished. And I keep expecting you every day.”
I said, reluctantly, “Well, there’s been a small delay.”
“Oh, no,” she said, and put her hand to her cheek.
“Now, don’t worry,” I said hastily. “It’ll be all right. Fact is we run short of those red Mexican roof tiles you wanted. Said they went with the house. Well, the contractor has gone back to Galveston to get more. Said a boat ought to be in from Vera Cruz right away with another shipment.”
She genuinely looked distressed. She said, “Oh, Justa, don’t tell me it’s not going to be ready in time.”
I said, “I’m not telling you it’s not going to be ready in time. Did I say it wouldn’t? Listen, if I have to I’ll stand over that building crew with a whip in my hand.”
She said, “Justa, it just has to be. The invitations have gone out. Mother and I are working ourself to death to finish my trousseau.”
Well, I didn’t know what that was, but I figured it had something to do with all the sewing and flaying around. I said, “Hell, Nora, even if it’s not finished on the exact date we can always stay in the big house until it’s done.”
I might as well have slapped her across the face the way she jumped back. She said, with plenty of gumption, “Justa Williams, I am not going to be staying in someone else’s house. I’ll stay in my own house or I won’t get married at all.”
I said, “But we’re going on a honeymoon. That’s two weeks.”
“I want it ready before we leave. And that’s that.”
There wasn’t a hell of a lot I could say to that. I just stood up and put on my hat and said I’d better be getting back to the ranch. She gave me her cheek to kiss, which was not a good sign. As I left I said I’d have the house ready if I had to go to Mexico myself and fetch the tiles back single-handedly. It didn’t warm her up over much.
2
Next afternoon, late, I was sitting on the ranch house front porch worrying about Nora and the house when a rider from town came tearing up with a telegram. We had an arrangement with
the telegraph office that they’d send out anything marked important soon as they got it. Of course such a service cost a deal extra, but, some of our dealings being fairly important, it was worth it.
I opened the telegram with dread. I was sure it was from the contractor in Galveston with bad news and words of other delays.
But it was from Norris, sent from Laredo. It said:
SQUATTERS CONFIRMED STOP SITUATION VERY COMPLICATED STOP INVOLVES SPANISH LAND GRANT STOP LOCAL AUTHORITIES IN LAREDO USELESS STOP MUST GO TO MONTERREY TO STRAIGHTEN OUT TROUBLE STOP TAKING JACK COLE WITH ME STOP WILL WIRE SOONEST FROM MONTERREY STOP
Well, that left me a good deal troubled. Nearly all the land in Texas could be traced back to Spanish land grants when Texas was part of Mexico and Spain owned all of it. Spanish land grants were large parcels of land that were given or sold to colonizers who, in turn, would break up the grant and parcel it out to smaller colonists. It was all a pretty tricky business and more than one family in Texas had lost valuable land because of some sloppy paperwork a hundred or so years in the past.
But we weren’t talking about valuable land. I couldn’t for the life of me figure why Norris hadn’t just left the matter in the hands of a lawyer and hied himself home. Plus I didn’t much like Norris messing around in Mexico and certainly not the border. Mexico, if you don’t understand it, is bad enough. You can get in trouble there without half trying. And Norris didn’t understand Mexico.
Much more, he sure as hell didn’t understand the border, a strip of land some forty or fifty miles wide on either side of the Rio Grande. You might as well call it a separate country unto itself. It’s got its own ways and, if you can call them that, its own laws. It’s full of every brigand and thief and swindler and murderer that can squeeze in.
Norris hadn’t any business trying to operate in that part of the country. I got up, cussing out loud, and went in and showed the telegram to Dad. I said, “Now look what he’s gone and done. That damn land isn’t worth a sack of dried beans yet Norris is spending time and effort and money making a fight over it. Back here he can make us more money in one day with one deal than that whole five thousand acres is worth. What has come over him?”
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