by Lilah Rivers
“Then he’s doing a plenty good job of it!”
Sybil offered up a sympathetic chuckle, putting her hand on Bella’s to comfort her. “Be strong in your faith, Bella. I know that ... things have been difficult for you lately, confusing —”
“No, Mother, I’m only concerned about the family, all this business with the cattlemen, these late-night trips out to the commons. It’s dangerous —”
“It is, I know, and you’re a good daughter, Bella. But it’s only right that other things should be on your mind. You don’t have to … to protect me, Bella. I was young too, and then … and then older.”
Bella knew well what her mother was getting at, and it was a subject she was increasingly interested in avoiding. “I … it’s fine, Mother, I’m fine.”
Sybil smiled and took a sip of tea as a long, suspect silence passed. “Have you given any thought to the future?”
“I have,” Bella was too quick to answer, “and that’s to take care of the family. With what’s coming, I know we’ll need all the help we can get. And if we won’t look after ourselves and each other, who’ll look out for us? Didn’t Daddy teach us that?”
“Your father taught you to love your family and neighbors and to love God, as those are the two greatest commandments. The Bible also says to go forth and multiply —”
“Mother, such language!”
“It’s in the Bible, Bella. And the Bible is right.” After a knowing pause and another sip of hot tea, Sybil went on, “I imagine young Turner Moss is thinking and feeling the same things. He’s just your age, and he’s always taken a shine to you.”
Bella waved her mother off, raising the teacup to her lips. “Oh, Mother, honestly!”
“I am being honest, Bella. I think maybe it’s time you started being honest yourself.”
“Mother!”
“I see the way you go a little flush when he comes around, business with your father and brothers. And the way he glances at you when we’re at his family’s store … it’s as clear as a church bell, my daughter.”
“Maybe to you,” Bella felt she had to say, “but to me … it’s just not so clear.” Sybil sat there, looking at Bella from over the bridge of her nose, until her daughter had to explain, “I … I like Turner, I really do. He’s from a good family, and he’s a good man.”
“I knew you wouldn’t miss his obvious qualities.”
“But that’s just it,” Bella said, “those are the obvious qualities. What isn’t so obvious, what isn’t so clear, is the less obvious thing. I … I like Turner, but … I don’t love him, Mother.”
Sybil rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Oh, my child, what you’re thinking of as love … that’s … that’s a fairy tale.”
“What about you and Daddy? You love him with all your heart and all your soul, I know you do. I can see it when you look at one another. I saw it when you were standing at the door … after he went off with the boys.”
Sybil nodded, taking another sip of tea. “It’s true, your father and I … we were meant to be together, chosen one for the other by God himself.”
“And that’s just what I want, Mother! And what I deserve, what we all deserve.”
“It is, child, you’re as right as rain about that. But ... the sad fact is that we all do not get what we deserve, not in this life. This life, this place, is where we’re tested, where we prove ourselves; to ourselves, to each other, to God. But this is not heaven, my daughter. This is where things are not perfect; this is where things go wrong for good people, for whatever God’s reasons and purposes.”
“But I know those purposes,” Bella said.
“You know? Daughter, do you blaspheme?”
“Of course not, Mother, never! But isn’t it sensible that the reason bad things happen to good people is to make them better people? And wouldn’t that make God proud and happy, and inclined to help us? He helps those who help themselves, Mother!”
“Marrying Turner Moss would help you plenty, and the whole family!”
Bella let a long silence pass, Sybil’s downcast eyes and slow sip of tea belying her guilt. Bella asked, “You’re not thinking of the family ... as regards my troth?”
“You take the same position,” Sybil said, “I do the same, and by your own fine example! Take care of the family; we’ll need all the help we can get. If we won’t look after ourselves and each other, who’ll look out for us?”
Bella nodded. She knew the truth of what her mother was saying; there was little way to talk herself out of it. But she also knew that there were greater truths, and that her mother knew that as well as she did. They were not evident, God hadn’t revealed them to Bella yet, but He would, Bella was certain, and in His own time. She could only hope and pray that His time was coming soon. Her parents were clearly becoming inpatient; about her and about so many other things in their lives. If God did not reveal His truths soon enough, Bella knew she might never truly know them at all.
Chapter 4
The front door opened, and the Archer men stepped into the living room, the boys putting their rifles, along with Elroy’s and Richie’s. Richie nodded and turned, “G’night then —”
“No, Richie,” Elroy said, “stop, have a cup of coffee.”
The men gathered around the table while Bella and her mother started making coffee. The men slumped in their chairs, but Bella was just glad they’d made it back at all, and all in one piece.
Sybil asked Elroy, “How bad?”
“Virtually all of it,” Elroy said, “hardly a single root remains.”
Sybil shook her head and turned back to the still-empty cups.
“They’re running smaller herds,” Dean said, “fifty head maybe.”
“Which we cannot prove,” Elroy said. “Had we challenged them, they could always have denied, blamed some other drive.”
Bella said, “I don’t see why they don’t just take their cattle around the creek on the other side.”
Jonah said, “Because they don’t care, and they want us to know it. They’re cruel, heartless men, these cattle ranchers.”
Elroy said, “Jonah, they’re just businessmen, not that different from us.”
“With all due respect,” Dean said, “these men burn their brand right into the animals’ hides! They treat them cruelly, spread disease to other animals, anthrax …”
Jonah added, “Why would they treat people any differently?”
“Because they are human, they’re men. As men, they deserve some benefit of a doubt.”
Dean said, “But, Pop —”
“No, you boys listen to me. I’ve been charged with the duty of negotiating with these men. That doesn’t mean running them down in camp in the middle of the night, and it doesn’t mean underestimating or demonizing them. Too many people make the same mistake in life; presuming that only they can be right, that their way is the only way. They assume others must be wicked or evil; that some are all good and virtuous and any who hold different positions must therefore be bad, driven by darker forces. But this is an illusion, haven’t I taught you that after all these years?”
“You have, Father,” Dean said, “you’re a good man, and we’re proud to be your sons. But there are other illusions, Pop.”
Jonah said, “He’s right, Pop. Not all men are driven by the same higher principles which drive you, and which you’ve taught us to adhere. Some men are wicked, they are driven by greed and power and money. Doesn’t it behoove us to know these men for who and what they are?”
“It does, Son, yes; they are men, with families they love, with fears and passions and dreams. We’re not so different. If we are going to have peace with these men, we have to focus on those similarities, not the differences.”
“For how long?” Dean stood up and stepped away from the table just as Bella and her mother brought the cups of hot coffee. “Our charge is to negotiate, when will they keep their word? Where is the good faith in these negotiations? That saloon owner is useless as a go-be
tween.”
“But necessary,” Elroy said. “The ranchers like him, they trust him.”
“No wonder,” Jonah said. “They’ve got him in their pocket. He’s just stalling us and has been for over a year now!”
Dean nodded. “That’s when Barton Callahan should have dealt with this!”
Bella and Sybil exchanged a worried glance at the mention of Josh Callahan’s father. Sybil said to her son, “Mister Callahan’s a good man, his whole family, in fact; fine people, good Christians.”
“He promised to help broker a deal with the ranchers,” Dean said.
“And he’s doing his best,” Elroy said, “we all are.”
Jonah waved the notion off. “He’s no better than Decker or the others. He only means to keep distracting us until those beasts stomp us right out of business. How many more seasons before we all cease to be a problem for him?”
Bella knew her brother and his twin had good points. But Elroy was the man of the house, and he wasn’t the type to be easily swayed, not even by his own family.
“We don’t know who trampled those crops,” Elroy said. “If we make claims we can’t substantiate, we risk the strength of our position at the table.”
“At the table,” Jonah repeated, “what about our position on the land, and in town?”
“The latter relies upon the former,” Elroy said.
A long, dark silence collected around the table as the men sipped their coffee.
Jonah asked, “How long can we sit on our hands?”
“The only alternative at the moment,” Elroy said, “is to fill our hands with weapons, go to war with the ranchers. Then where is the law, where is the government this country is founded upon? You say these men are cruel and unreasonable, where would be the reason in our actions were we to go down that path? Incite them to riot? Give them cause to take arms against us? Think of the slaughter that would ensue. You think those men are brutal? War makes brutes of everyone involved, boys! You speak of our survival, the future of the other homesteaders? If we take arms against the ranchers now, we’ll have no future. No, our charge is to avoid that war … at all costs.”
Chapter 5
Elroy tried to convince his sons to stay behind, as usual, but they insisted on coming to the meeting in town, also as usual. He’d cautioned them not to speak out in rashness, however. The negotiations were still in play, and that meant discretion and diplomacy were to be employed whenever possible.
They collected in the big central room of the Golden Loon Saloon, which owner Otis Remington had cleared out. As it was early in the day, it didn’t cost him much business. Elroy found the place distasteful, even devoid of its usual rabble, even without the cigar smoke and jaunty piano playing in the corner.
Otis’ long sideburns flared out from his cheeks like red flames, his balding pate lined with graying red hair. “If we could keep our rhetoric to the matters at hand, gentlemen, please.”
Elroy surveyed the other men, their dispositions already clear to him. Elroy had come to represent the homesteaders, just as Barton Callahan had agreed to represent the ranchers, while Otis, being the closest thing to a mayor of Barnock, would mediate the negotiations. Land official Parker Bristol, with curly blond locks and the jib of a Boston man, would represent the government’s position on the matter, such as it was.
“The question, then, is when will Saul Decker move the ranchers to stop destroying our crops?”
Barton Callahan, portly and crowded with a thicket of blond curls, stood up and shrugged. “The problem, again, is that those crops, which the homesteaders of Barnock basically usurped as their own, were planted on grazing land that has long been used by the ranchers.”
“But the times are changing,” Elroy said. “More homesteaders are coming into the area, and we have rights!”
“To be fair,” Otis said, “you did just arrive here only a year or so ago, Mr. Archer, you and your fine family. Isn’t a bit quick to start … rearranging things to your own liking? The ranchers have been using that land for decades, it’s true.”
“There’s other land,” Elroy said. “They can graze north of the spring.”
“Until you decide to plant there as well,” Barton said. “So you can see that the cattlemen have a point.”
Jonah snapped out, “I personally cannot! They’re expanding to too great a number anyway, these miserable animals! I wonder if the land can support that much moving meat.”
“They’re living creatures,” Elroy said to his son, a stern expression quieting the boy’s outburst.
Barton smiled nervously. “The boy makes a good point. There are more cattle than in previous years, that’s true. And there will likely be even more to come. They’re mad for good beef in the East, not to mention the leather. There’s a fortune, numerous fortunes, in cattle. There’s just no way to stem that flow.”
“Then what about us,” Elroy asked, “farmers who need the land? You’ll run us right into the ocean.”
Otis turned to Parker Bristol, tall and lean with a completely shaved head that reflected the sunlight streaming in through the windows. “The question of who owns the land?”
“We own it,” Elroy said, “by virtue of having modified and built on it. Isn’t that right, Mr. Bristol?”
“That is according to the homesteading act, yes.”
Barton said, “I think it’s prudent to mention that there’s no proof that any of the local ranchers were responsible for the trampling of those crops. That’s pure conjecture.”
Dean turned to Barton. “You’d turn against your own neighbors? What’s Decker paying you to let this go on?”
Barton’s son Josh said, “How dare you challenge my father’s integrity?” Barton was a younger image of his father, youthful and athletic with well-trimmed hair and a matching blond beard.
Elroy held out his hand to silence them. “We’re all trying to work out mutually beneficial terms, boys; that’s our common goal. I’ve warned you both.” They retracted into respectful silence, and Elroy turned his focus on Barton and the others. “Barton, can’t you get Decker to tell his ranchers to take their cattle north of the creek?”
“I’ve brought the matter to Decker, and he’s agreed. How can I hold him responsible for every rancher in Nebraska?”
“Decker has power,” Elroy said. “If he wanted them to comply, my guess is that they would.” Barton shrugged, hands up, cubby shoulders curling. Elroy went on, “The homesteaders have been talking about ... taking other measures.”
Otis and Parker shared a glance, Barton clearly sharing their new worry. “Measures?”
“Measures,” Elroy repeated. “Those cattle have broken down our fences, there’s talk of putting barbed wire up instead.”
Barton repeated, “Barbed wire? But ... that’ll tear the cattle to ribbons!”
“Holes too,” Elroy said, “post holes, trip trenches. Your cows’ll be snapping their legs by the score.”
Josh shook his head. “You wouldn’t!”
“We don’t want to.”
Otis and Parker glanced at one another again, turning their attentions back to the others.
Barton said, “The ranchers have tried to accommodate you, but … the creek is swollen right now, and crossing it is treacherous. Changing their course to north of the creek isn’t as easy as all that.”