Chapter 1

One night, Pa came home after drinking more than was good for any of us. I knew that he got kind of mean after too much to drink, and I should stay clear of him. The trouble was, I was the oldest boy home at the time, and he started in to mistreating Ma. I had to choose to stay out of his way or to get between him and Ma. I guess I was braver than I was smart, because I couldn't let him beat my ma the way he was trying to do.

Anyway, I got between them, and I got what I wanted: he took on me instead of Ma. All I wanted to do was to break up the abuse until Pa had a chance to sober up. Unfortunately, Pa was too much for me! He shoved me out of his way, and I fell backwards into the cast iron stove. Lucky for me, it was not very hot when I banged my head against the leg under the water heater tank.

Anyway, the fall and smack of my head against that stove knocked me out cold. That was when Pa made his biggest mistake. He rared back to kick me in the side; he would have broken a couple of ribs, at least, but Ma was having none of that. She picked up a 10" cast iron skillet what was setting on the stove and whopped Pa in the forehead with it to keep him from doing any more damage to me.

That was enough to knock Pa out cold, and he dropped before he could kick me. Ma left him lying there and managed to get me into bed. My sister, Mary, helped her, and they got me out of my clothes and into my bed. I never woke up until late morning the next day. Man, did I have a headache!

On top of the headache, my ears were ringing something fierce! I could hear Ma and Mary talking, even though they were whispering so they would not disturb me, but I did not have no trouble with hearing what they were saying.

They were talking about what happened to Pa. It seems that Ma hit him too hard with that skillet when she was trying to protect me. To make a long story short, Pa died during the night. Ma found him lying on the floor where he had fallen. It wasn't until she had some daylight that she could see the way Pa's head was crushed in. Strangely, the skin was not broken, but she had hit him hard enough to crush a section of his skull.

Ma was so pissed off at Pa that she didn't want a funeral. She just wanted to dig a hole and push him in. Mary was working on calming her down and convincing her to have a funeral. After all, that's what the people in Harleysville would expect, and we did have to live here. Ma was coming around and cooling down. I think Mary's best argument was that a funeral would be what Henry, my older brother, would want.

Henry would be back from the county seat late this afternoon, and he could make the arrangements in Harleysville for the funeral. The two women decided that I should skip the funeral and stay home because of my head injury. The way I felt right then, I was ready to agree with them.

Ma and Mary dragged Pa's body into their bedroom and started getting him ready for the funeral. I could still hear them talking in the other room, but I managed to go back to sleep, anyway.

Henry showed up about mid afternoon and Mary explained to him what had happened. He knew as well as the rest of us how strong drink affected Pa, so he did not blame either me or Ma for Pa's death. Henry grabbed a bite to eat and rode into town to make the necessary funeral arrangements. The time was in early June, so we did not have to get him planted in the ground quite in such a rush as would have been necessary in the heat of summer. Tomorrow afternoon would be soon enough, and that gave everybody time to get ready.

As for me, I was glad to lie in the bed and skip chores for a day. My head hurt so damned bad that I had even downed a little bit of laudanum to try to dampen the pain. I couldn't get that damned noise out of my ears, and I was kind of dizzy when I stood up. Ma insisted that I needed the bed rest, and I was not foolish enough to argue with her.

Henry showed up from town in time for supper. He was all excited, but not about the funeral. He had taken care of those arrangements and the funeral was scheduled for 3:00 PM tomorrow. No, Henry was all excited about the news that the war with the Yankees had started. Henry was a lieutenant in the local militia, and we already knew that Texas had joined the Confederacy, so he figured to be called up to fight in the next month or so.

I wanted to go with him, but Henry insisted that I had to stay behind to look after the homestead. I would be the only man on the property, and it was important that a man be there to defend the place if the Comanches started acting up again. Well, I couldn't argue with that because we all knew how little it took to put the Comanches in a fighting mood.

Later that night, I was a little pissed off when I heard Henry tell Ma that he wanted me to stay behind because I was too young for Army life. Hell, what he really meant was that I was old enough to fight Comanches but too young to fight Yankees. Dammit, I was nearly 15 years old, and old enough to do man's work, so I figured that I was old enough to be a soldier! I would have sneaked off and joined the Army anyway if I had not realized that the women were going to need protection when the Comanches attacked.

Anybody with any sense would have realized that the Comanches were going to try to take advantage of the men leaving for war. Them double-damned Comanches would grab any chance they could to kill off White folks.

The big problem I had was a shortage of good weapons. I had the Mississippi rifle that Pa had used in the Mexican war, but it was a muzzle loader and took too long to load if there was more than one or two Comanches for me to shoot at. We did have a couple of Navy Colts in .36 caliber, but they did not have the stopping power that I would really need in a fight with Indians. There was no way around it; I needed a repeating rifle and at least one .44 caliber revolver.

I talked to Henry about that weapons problem, and he agreed with me. He said he would see what he could find at the gunsmith's shop when he went into town for the funeral. I knew I could depend on Henry to look after my interests, so I worried no more about it.

Man, I was in worse shape than I realized! I tried to help load Pa's body into the wagon for the trip to the funeral, but I could hardly stand up. Ma ordered me back to bed, and I didn't argue with her. Shit! I must have banged my head harder than I knew at first.

When the family returned from the funeral, Henry came in with a new Henry repeating rifle and two Starr DA (double-action) Army revolvers in .44 caliber. I already had a bowie knife and an Arkansas frog sticker. I also had a very good quality tomahawk and war club, so I was armed as well as a man could hope to be in this day and age. Henry had brought plenty of ammunition so that I was able to practice with my new rifle and revolvers. I got real damned good with all of them in a short time, so I was ready for any Comanche foolish enough to attack our house.

It was another month before Henry was called up to serve in the Army. Naturally, he was in the cavalry, and his unit was sent off to become a part of the Army of Northern Virginia under Gen. Robert E. Lee. That left me with a lot of responsibility, but Ma promised to be as helpful as she could. To be honest about it, Ma gave me a list of "suggestions" at breakfast of things that needed to be done. I did those things first and anything else that I found what needed to be done as much as I could before supper.

We coasted along for about four months without nothing special happening, because it took that long for the Comanches to realize that over half of the White fighting men of Texas were now somewhere else. The piddling little raids started about that time. Mostly, it was just three or four young braves out for a good time and to show each other how brave they were. Unfortunately, people on both sides did get killed as a result of this nonsense.