Chapter 1

“The O’Dells will not be trifled with.”

With those words, Paul O’Dell and his wife, Opal Anne, with their daughter, Pauline, and Michelle, the surviving daughter of Mick and Betty Mae O’Dell, left the office of the Fountain City, Colorado Sheriff, John ‘Jack’ Cleese. They’d just brought in the sole survivor of an attack on their home, along with his 24 dead compadres.

Dewey C. Howe Esq, the lawyer for the O’Dell clan had been turned loose to wreak whatever legal havoc he could muster on the State of Colorado and a certain cattle outfit in Pueblo, Colorado. The largest weapon he had at his disposal was a legal land grant from the King of Spain for most of western Colorado.

Paul O’Dell had been a captain in the Union Cavalry during the Civil War. His younger brother, Mick had been a captain in the Confederate Cavalry. Their youngest brother, Rory, had stayed on the family farm in southeast Nebraska, until it was destroyed by outlaws that raided the Kansas-Nebraska border after the war.

During their trip to the gold and silver prospecting areas of Colorado the three brothers came upon a wagon and several women. Three of the women were still alive. Opal Anne, Betty Mae, and Raylene had become the wives of Paul, Mick and Rory, respectively. Mick was killed when he was attacked by a dozen men on the trail from their gold camp to Fountain City. He managed to kill eleven of them before he died.

Six men attacked the O’Dells gold camp and in the ensuing action Raylene and her son Roddy were shot and killed, followed by Rory as he ran to their rescue. Five of the six men who attacked the gold camp were killed and sent back to Pueblo. The five dead men had their cocks removed and inserted into their mouths and they and the sole survivor had the words “The Same To All Who Follow” carved into their chests. In retaliation for this, the outfit sent twenty-five men to burn the gold camp and then attack the plain.

During that action twenty-four men and eighteen horses died, so did Betty Mae O’Dell, leaving her daughter, Michelle, in the care of Paul and Opal Anne. That brings you, my dear reader, up to today.

Opal Anne and I stopped at the general store and loaded up the ten cases of dynamite and the new blasting caps and a thing called a detonator that Mick had ordered prior to his death. When they were placed according to Mick’s defense plan, the plain would be almost unassailable. We stopped to see the midwife, Daisy O’Rourke and Doc Pierce, telling them that if it were possible, we’d be at their wedding.

We stopped at the bank and had Mr. Cody Banks set up an account for us in a large Denver bank. We were going to end up doing business in Denver and having a bank there would be more efficient for us. We also arranged for him to have a guarded wagon come to the plain every month to pick up our gold and transfer it to the assayer in Fountain City.

The money was going to be used in combination with the land grant to destroy the outfit that killed my brothers and their families. We set up accounts to help Daisy with her home for unwed mothers and for Doc Pierce’s hospital. At the same time, we set up an account for Michelle, Mick’s daughter.

All Opal Anne and I had to do was teach her how to be a civil, well-balanced, member of the O’Dell clan. We wanted her to be someone her parents would be proud of. When she was old enough, we would tell her about her father and mother and how they died. When she was of age, we would tell her that she was rich.

Our last stop was to the livery stable, where the owner, Shaw, fed and brushed our mules and horses, while Opal Anne and I went to the restaurant for a meal before we got back on the road home. We talked about what we’d been doing and making sure we covered everything we’d intended to. Late in the meal, I looked at Opal Anne and smiled.

“What are you smiling at, Mr. Paul O’Dell?’

“At you and your two babies.”

“And one on the way as well.”

“Indeed, my love. I was just thinking that if we are going to be raising more children and, in fact, working very hard to make them, I want to order a nice soft mattress for our bed. It would now appear that we are going to be on the plain for a longer time than we had originally planned. As you will recall that was the reason that we did not acquire a more comfortable bed when we first claimed the plain.”

“I do recall, husband, and I do agree. After we eat, we’ll go to the livery get the rig, drive to the store and while I nurse these two in the wagon, you will go in and purchase an entire bed for us and beds for at least five more children.”

I looked at her and her very serious expression, expecting her to break out in laughter at her own joke at any moment. She didn’t do that. So, being the intelligent and thoughtful husband that I am and being well versed in the appropriate manner to respond to the requests of my wife, I smiled and said, “Yes dear.”

We returned to the plain three days later, having had no problems on the trip. On the second night, we were joined at our campsite by two other wagons. When we introduced ourselves as the O’Dells, the travelers seemed to relax.

“Now why would our names bring you such comfort?” Opal Anne asked pleasantly.

“Because we know that no one with any sense will bother us tonight. We have heard that no one trifles with the O’Dells.”

Opal Anne looked at me with a sly smile.

“Maybe,” she said, “we should put up a banner on our wagon that announces our presence. That would ward off any unfriendly folks.”

I shook my head and chuckled.

The next morning, we bid farewell to our temporary companions and when they were out of sight, we drove to the shallow water crossing and went to the other side of the river, taking the inconspicuous trail up to the plain.

Our life settled into the mundane very quickly. Perhaps the word went out that we had planted explosives on the plain to ward off attacks had its’ effect. Opal Anne and I rose each day, I worked to dredge gold from the riverbed, Opal Anne walked around naked with one or more babies suckling from her growing breasts. Her belly was just beginning to bulge a little. She would still walk up to me and offer herself to me whenever the itch took her.

I wondered how this would change when our children got old enough to know what we were doing. Opal Anne said that was a long way off and that I should just focus on the duty in front of me. I never saw it as a duty. A joy, a pleasure, a rollicking good time, but never a duty.

About a month after we returned, there were two gunshots from down the trail to the plain. I’d told anyone that was a friend to fire two shots while they were coming up the trail. Anyone not alerting us would be considered a foe and our welcome would be entirely different.

Opal Anne quickly waddled to the hogan to dress and I grabbed my rifle and walked to the gate, stopping behind the windbreak that also served as a spot where I could shoot from cover, if need be. I noticed the head of two men first, then the heads of two mules as the men drove the freight wagon up the trail. They stopped at the gate.

“May I help you?” I asked from behind cover.

“Yes sir. Mr. O’Dell,” the older of the two men said. “I have messages for you from Mr. Howe, Mr. Banks, Sheriff Cleese, and I have your beds.”

“Wonderful news!” I said as I walked into the open and unlatched the gate. “Come on in and just follow the path to the right and down the winding path. My wife Opal Anne will meet you there. Oh! She’s having a baby and is sometimes a little cranky. Be very polite, or she might up and shoot you.”

When I didn’t laugh like my words were a joke, they took me very seriously, and proceeded carefully down the more awkward path around various wind breaks towards our hogan. I closed and latched the gate and then stopped to listen for any followers, just in case. Hearing nothing unusual, I followed the men to our hogan.

When I arrived, Opal Anne was standing in the middle of the path, gun in hand, holding the two men at bay.

“Opal Anne, these men have our beds and messages from town.”

“Really?”

“Yes dear.”

As quick as a bullet out of a barrel, she dropped her pistol to her side, smiled and invited the men in.

“If you pull up over there, you can back the wagon right to the door. That should make unloading it as easy as it can be,” Opal Anne instructed, pointing the men in the direction of our hogan.

I often tried to imagine what our life would have been like without the existence of the hogan. These structures made our day to day lives so much better. A hogan is, generally, a circular building. The buildings on the plain were constructed by the Utes and the Spanish. The Utes had a history of copying the dwellings of other tribes they had encountered during their history. A Ute village could have tepees or stone dwellings. The Utes of the Western mountains dug into cliff faces to make their homes.

It was clear that the Spanish and the Utes had borrowed heavily from the Navajo in the Southwestern areas of the country that the Spanish controlled in the 1700’s. Our homes were built on the circular Navajo design. We had ten rows of timbers, interlocked at their joined ends, each timber being about twenty-five feet long and having eight sides. The outer walls were made of compressed layers of mud from the riverbed. The roof was made of several large timbers connected with many smaller limbs and then covered in more mud.