Chapter 6

Jeremiah Jenkins could hardly contain himself as he came up to the Butler family ranch. J D had told him he and the family had some ranches but he had been in his buckboard for hours, it seemed, just getting to the ranch house.

When he finally met Jeremiah and Molly Butler, he knew where J D got his breeding and fine manners from. Jeremiah Butler was, what one would call, a real Southern Gentleman. He was from the Carolinas originally, where his family had been living for more than a hundred years, since before that other war against the British. He felt tobacco and cotton farming was not what he wanted to do. He met Molly when they were both young. He and she were of a like mind to raise horses. She was from Kentucky and knew how lucrative they might be. Moving to Texas in 1858 proved to be a goldmine for the new business when within a few years, almost an endless supply of horses and even larger numbers of beef cattle went to support the War effort(1861).

The fact that both men had the same first name also did not hurt any. Molly seemed to have formed an opinion about Miss Sarah and when the wire from J D came telling of the possible tie-in to Dallas she had mixed feelings. She had come to like this girl a lot, and the feeling from her were mutual towards Molly. In many ways Molly became the mother Miss Sue and Johnny had lost. From what the wire said, J D was ‘handing’ off the girl to this Mr. Jenkins. This she did not like and wanted her and J D to get together instead. Molly had seen real potential in the girl. True she was a might strong-willed and far from the kind of wife most ranchers would take to, but she had more common senses about life than most; just like J D did.

Molly, when asked by Mr. Jenkins, told the truth about Miss Sue, as she knew it. There might have been a few things added about her, like the strong ties to the family and that financing any and everything for the store would be no problem, in fact, there were fifteen or twenty other ranches in addition to the twelve family spreads that would be buying everything from Miss Sue’s new store. In a way it was true, just puffed up some; but Molly just wanted Mr. Jenkins not to be in any position to run ‘roughshod’ over the girl. She saw Miss Sue as a wife for J D not Mr. Jenkins.

Molly had both Jeremiahs head into town and see the site J D had purchased for Miss Sue’s store. Meanwhile she sent some of the hands ride out and have J D’s entire old troop head over to the ranch. She wanted to tell them a few of her ideas before Mr. Jenkins returned. Miss Sue was already there and Molly just made her feel more like her daughter than some orphan. Johnny was also growing up the right way. Sgt. Williams was taking him around and in a year or two the boy would be a really fine rancher, horses or cattle, Sgt. Williams said, he would teach him both.