Chapter 6

My young son was eighteen days old when I pulled into the home ranch. I didn’t go all the way to the Ferris headquarters because Mable split off saying that her end of our valley was miles closer going in a different way. I expected Sheila would be upset and rightly so.

I opened the door. Sheila hadn’t heard me arrive. “Sheila, are you okay. I was worried about you here having a baby all by yourself.”

“Come kiss me. I worried about you being on the trail so long. Come peek at your son. He is sleeping. He is very good baby. No, Randy, I wasn’t alone when I had the baby. Nina was here and Kate was here and I had Patty and Teresa holding my hand and Dawn was chanting.”

“Who is Dawn.”

“Dawn is our little Indian daughter. She is so sweet.”

I felt as if I had been away forever. “What else is new?”

“The crops are growing great with hardly any weeds. That was smart turning over the sod last fall. The girls have been out regularly and looked at the mares and the cattle. They couldn’t see anything wrong. And Slim thinks things are fine. Little Shovel has Nina’s burro to ride and he is always off somewhere.”

“I take it Little Shovel is the Indian kid? How’d he get that name?”

“He found a draw that had cattle feeding in it, but there was no water closer than a mile away. He found a broken shovel and went back and dug for water. Would you believe he found some?”

“No, I don’t.”

“We didn’t either, but then a week ago he came and urged the girls to go with him. He tied a shovel to the rope that holds his blanket on the burro. He went up another draw and jumped off the burro. The girls said he had a forked stick under the robe, grabbed it and walked all up and down the draw. He came and got the shovel and dug furiously and about two feet down water came into the hole.

“Slim rode up there with him the next day and there is fresh water in the hole. So we’ve named him Little Shovel, finder of water.”

I stepped back and stared at my wife. “What? What are you looking at?”

“You’re breasts are much bigger.”

“Of course they are. They are filled with milk to feed our son.”

“I suppose they are off limits for me to play with?”

“Better not. They leak and drip, but then they do that most often when I’m thinking about you. Randy, I was pretty damned mad when I got that note that you sent back with Slim, but he calmed me down. I understand you killed a man?”

“Yeah, it was necessary.”

“You got along good with Mable. Should I be jealous?”

“Nope, you have bigger breasts and much prettier than she is.” Sheila wrinkled her nose. “Seriously, though, I admire her a lot. Ferris isn’t going to be able to bully her around so much. She’ll stand up to him now that she has had a taste of managing things herself.

“I was concerned when it all came down to firing her straw boss. I said I would fire the troublemakers for her, but she was right beside me and did the firing on her own. It got damned dicey for a bit. I wasn’t scared for myself, but she was standing next to me.

“On the trail, she worked as hard as her hands and pulled her own weight. She also insisted on taking her turn at night hawk. I think Dave, that’s her son, will make a good hand someday. He was trying to act like his father at first, bullying and blustering, but soon saw there is a better way to handle men if you are bossing them. I taught Mable a few things too.”

“Nothing intimate I hope.”

“Of course not. There is only one woman for me. I have yet to meet Dean Ferris. The only time I’ve had any contact was the day we were married. I’ve got pay coming. Mable asked if I could wait until we got home to collect. It is enough so I’m sure going after all of it I’m due if, he reneges.”

“I’ll go after it myself if he doesn’t pay you. I was crushed you couldn’t be here when Junior was born.”

The crew was glad to be home and I let them have a day off. Slim filled us all in what had gone on here on the ranch while we were going up to Kansas. He had to tell the crew about Little Shovel finding water with a stick. Sheila had begged the Burro from Nina so the Indian kid could ride something his size.

Slim had turned the jacks in with the mares. I rode up to look at them the next day. They were feeding in with the other horses. I guess they had mated with the mares and it was peaceful or it wouldn’t have been if they hadn’t done what I bought them for. When I got home from riding out that morning, Dave Ferris was sitting on the piazza.

“I brung you an invite from Pa. He wants to settle up with you. Ma would like it if you and your wife would come Sunday for dinner.”

I took a chair and sat. “You and your Ma got home okay?”

“Yeah. Pa is able to get around pretty good now. I thought for sure he was going to have a heart attack when he got busted up, way back when. He was doing some ranting and raving before we got him back home that day. One day on the trail and he couldn’t keep on. He put Sam in charge and sent Ma along to see if we could get the herd to market. He figured you had Ma at a disadvantage when he got word she had hired you to take over.

“Ma told him how you dickered with the cattle buyers and got us a good price. I guess he worried just about everything whilest we was gone. About Ma mostly, and he’s finally treating her the way she should be treated. Maybe from now on he will listen to her. She also told him I done good too, and he put me on as a hand with half wages. I never had no money of my own before.

“I moved from the house and into the bunkhouse and I’m getting a little respect from the other hands. I hate to say it, but Pa getting busted up is the best thing that could have happened for me.” He grinned. Silently I agreed with him.

I heard someone stirring around. It was Sheila just coming from feeding Junior. She was burping him. “Dave, come in and meet my wife and baby. The baby came while I was helping you people out.”

Sheila put junior down to meet Dave Ferris and listened to him invite us to dinner Sunday. “I don’t think I can make it. The baby is only a three weeks old and I don’t think I want to travel yet. I do thank you though, and I’ll make sure Randy will be there.”

I rode onto the Ferris’ range late Sunday morning. Dean Ferris was using a homemade crutch. He came out and invited me in. Mable was taking off her apron. “Mr. Palmer, welcome, I’m so pleased you come for dinner. Dean has business with you and I told him he needed to get it done. You need your money for taking our herd up to the railhead and negotiating such a fine price for the cattle.”

“Mable, have you forgotten my name is Randy? But thank you for inviting me and my wife for dinner. I’m sorry she didn’t feel able to travel this far. You understand, I’m sure?”

“I do, and I hope she is well. You must have done well this year, all things considered?”

“Yes Mr. Ferris, it has a busy year for me. Buying a new ranch and finding a woman who loves me is quite the undertaking. It seems as if is all coming together, much better than I expected.”

“Call me Dean.” (I knew I would call Dean, “Ferris” and he most likely call me, “Palmer”) “I hear you’ve let some farmers into your end of the valley. Is that wise?”

I laughed at this, “One of them was already there. I found she was a nice woman and I married her. She of course has moved to the ranch and we have found a Mexican family to take over her section. Another year or so I hope they will have more acres under cultivation. We may lease out her whole section to more farm people.”

“We don’t need farmers in our valley. They destroy the grassland by tearing it up.”

“That’s the way most people look at it, but then my wife planted an acre of land last year with vegetables. She sold them and made enough to keep her and her child for almost a year. You know Old Abe was going to give every black slave forty acres and a mule to live on. It passed congress and was getting started when he was shot. But then congress up and killed the program. The government is proposing something called the Homestead Act now consisting of one hundred and sixty acres.

“Out here if you’re cattle ranching, forty acres wouldn’t be anywhere enough and a quarter-section of a hundred and sixty acres won’t be either, but if the land will grow crops it could make a comfortable living for most families. Much of my land will grow crops, but some of it won’t so what is marginal, I’ll raise stock on.”

“I heard you bought a couple of Jackasses. What are you going to do with them?”

“Raise mules. I brought with me twenty five head of older mares and I think they are all settled with little mules in them. I’m hoping I’ll get ninety percent rate. I’m planning on diversifying what I produce so if one thing fails I’ll have a fall-back position.”

“Where are you going to sell all this stuff? There is no market except for cattle.”

“I’m hoping someday we’ll have a railroad come into the valley. It never will if we just have cattle to sell. A railroad will benefit every one of us. Just think if you got twenty-dollars a head for your cows and didn’t have to spend two months herding them north and you still sold for the same price. Cattle go to market once or twice a year. No railroad is going to build track for a once-a-year customer.

“How come you think that far ahead?”

“I’ve traveled all over the southwest, two years of that as a Texas Ranger. When my Pa died, I came home and took over the ranch. I’ve seen how things are going. Pa taught me how to think some, but he was locked into a valley with three other ranchers. He didn’t have room to expand. I had a chance to sell out and come up here. I’ve got plenty of room to expand now.”

“Still, you are ranching on open land. Have you thought about that?”

“I worry about it some, but the railroad isn’t here yet and there aren’t enough sections of land open to entice land speculators. Someday they will show up so I’m concentrating on tying up the water. What brought this to my attention was having my wife’s deeded land between me and the crick, so in essence that protects me from being settled on in that direction.”

“Maybe I had better look at my own place.”

“Maybe you should. I just found water in a couple of the draws that are on the south side of my ranch. I was in yesterday and filed on them.”

“How did you find the water?”

“One of my hands run onto two Indian kids who were trying to bury their mother. He buried the squaw for them and brought the two kids home. One is able to find water by holding a stick. I’m keeping him and his sister. I figure he has paid his keep for the next ten years at least.”

“I wouldn’t have no Indians around.”

“I donno, but I just figure he was paying one favor for another. Can’t fault that.”

“One more question, how are you going to get your farm stuff to market if the railroad never reaches here?”

“I figure my mules will be big enough to hitch to some freight wagons by the time the farmers will need them. I can go as far as a hundred miles to a railroad that way

Mable spoke up, “Here come the other ranchers that went up the trail with us. They and their wives were invited. Now Dean, don’t talk business all through dinner. This is supposed to be a sociable gathering.”

I was greeted with glad hands. These ranchers were all older than Dean and me. All four dwelled on what I had done for them. I told them I now had a son that had been born while I was gone. One of the women exclaimed, “You mean you left your wife to have a baby and went and helped out your neighbors? I wouldn’t put up with that. I’ll have to meet your wife and tell her so, too.”

“Do come to visit. Sheila will be mostly home for awhile.”

“I have to go to town on Wednesday. Will she be home then?”

“I’ll make sure she is. There are several people on the ranch with us as well. I have Patty, my step-daughter and Teresa Gonezalas. One of my hands married Teresa’s mother and they live at Sheila’s farm. Teresa and Patty are great friends so she came with Patty when I married Sheila. I also have a pair of Indian kids that moved in on us. One of my hands found them out on the range beside their dead mother. He brought them home’

“Then there is Kate Smith, she is married to my foreman. She had her baby weeks before my son was born. The crew built them a cabin for the winter in their spare time. Brad Bricknell is always there along with his nephew, Johnny.”

“Bricknell, isn’t he the former owner of your ranch?”

“That’s correct. He takes care of the horse and barn chores. He didn’t have a place to go to, so offered to stay and help me build up the place. Owning a ranch wasn’t his choice of work, but he’s happy working for me. Let’s see, I have one the Gonzalez boys working as a hand and I have a Mexican puncher who came with me from Surcingle when I bought. Mable and your men met the rest of my crew going up the trail with me.”

“How do you get along with so mixed a crew?”

“Easy. I treat them right and I don’t put up with any foolish games. I figure one man is as good as another. I hire them to do a job and expect them to get along.”

Dean followed up on what the ranch wife had questioned. “You mean you all get along?”

“That’s right. I’m not above settling things if I have to.”

“You mean like you did with Sam, my foreman?”

“That’s right if I had to. That was a little extreme, but your man pushed it.”

Mable said, “I told you, Dean. After we got rid of Sam, the crews came together and drove cows. There wasn’t any shouting at anyone either.”

“I guess, Mable, I’ll have to change my ways.” He gave her a side-wise grin.

“I’ve been telling you that for years.” She smiled, so we, who were around the table, knew this wasn’t going to break into a shouting match between them.

We ate and then Dean had Mable bring out his account book. When the table was cleared, Mable sat back against the wall. The other four wives went into the next room and could be heard talking about their daily lives. The four ranchers paid attention to Ferris as he portioned out the herd money Mable had brought back.

Ferris cleared his throat. “Okay, let’s get this settled up. Palmer, I want to say you did a great job for your neighbors up in this end of the valley. The agreement you made with my wife was we would pay you for taking our cattle into the shipping pens for anything over sixteen dollars.”

I raised my hand and cut in, “No, my final agreement was for two dollars a head, delivered. I know some other figures were tossed around, but what if I hadn’t been able to get sixteen dollars? I would have expected to still get paid the two dollars and I would have come after it if you quibbled. There were 1800 of your cows in the herd and 880 combined from the other four ranchers. Mable has the figures and they get charged the same two dollars per head. Call it I have $5360 owed to me and my crew. That’s a fair price what with you furnishing most of your crew and the chuck wagon.”

Dean stared at me. “You sold the herd for nineteen-fifty. That’s a helluva bonus for us.”

“You’ll find a use for it.”

“True.”

“I’ll meet you in the bank tomorrow and we’ll settle up. All you have to do is have Simpson make out a bank draft to me when you deposit the drafts Mable brought home.”

“You’re mighty trusting of your neighbors.”

“Up to a point, but then I’ve eaten and slept in the same camp with your crew and your wife. I showed my trust to them and I expected the same in return.”

“Palmer, are you going to trail up to the same railhead next year?”

“I expect so. I think I’ll have a smaller herd than I had this year. I took a lot of culls with me, but won’t do it next time. They didn’t pay the cost of trailing them that far. I’ll find a way to butcher them for the hides and make as much without the bother.”