Chapter 23

The preacher hadn't been gone for long before Josh and another man came riding up. I figured it was probably Josh's brother and when they reached me and dismounted Josh introduced me to Gerald.

"Nice to meet you."

"Same here. Josh says you're thinking about doing a little building," Gerald said.

"I'm thinking of doing more than a little. Why don't we go into the library and talk about it?" I asked, and when he agreed he followed me in.

"On the way through I might as well show you the kitchen and quarters and get your opinion. I have two cooks now and I want to make sure they aren't crowded in the kitchen. I'm out of space in the quarters too. Is there any chance they can both be enlarged?"

"I can tell there have been no changes so I don't really need to look closely. I tried to tell Mr Christopher it would probably end up this way and finally talked him in to some design changes that would make expansion easy on down the road. I made allowances for stretching the kitchen to twice its current size and for tripling the quarters. It won't even be much trouble and I think we already have the prints for it.

"There were only the two of them and even though he said he intended to make it a working cattle ranch someday, the cattle and horses he kept were mostly for looks. He moved here as an older rich man intending to retire with his young beautiful wife. He didn't need to make a living any longer and I think he was planning on just looking for a place to enjoy the living he'd already made," Gerald told me.

"That ended up being bad for him and good for me then. I regret his tragic accident but I'm glad to have the property. Let's go on to the library. We've got a lot to talk about."

And talk we did. He agreed to take on planning and oversight for the whole job. Including a complete remodeling of the Whitfield's home, a brand new showplace church for Lancaster, and a nice parsonage to go with it. He even thought he could find someone to make some nice stained glass windows for the church, and claimed they'd be the first in central Texas since there weren't even any in Dallas or Ft Worth.

When he wanted to get started estimating the cost I asked him to just get it in writing sooner or later.

"I'm pretty sure you can't spend up three million in gold for quite a while. I don't want you to throw money around for the fun of seeing it leave, but I don't want you pinching pennies either. When you get done I want everything to look nice and like it was made to go together.

"If you know how to survey, or how to hire a surveyor, I'd like a plat made of the whole place including Lancaster and all the homes, farms and ranches within two or three miles. We need some intelligent ideas for fencing to. I'm planning on raising a lot of cattle here in a few years and I want things ready to go ahead when the time gets right."

He took his leave then and told me he and his daughter would be out early in the morning to give things a closer look and get started with the planning. I managed to remember to mention Cooter, my messenger, to him before he went and he said he'd need to get in touch with someone in Ft Worth to get some workers headed this way.

By the time he left most of the day was shot, but it was still over an hour until supper would be on the table. I went into my office and locked myself in for a while. Things were moving nicely now but there were still snags that I knew about a cure for but just didn't have the ability to use those cures.

Fencing was one of the main ones that bothered me. Hell, barbed wire hadn't even been invented yet, and wouldn't be for years. Fencing wire was available but it was smooth. Devil's rope, which many would call barbed wire after if finally showed up, wasn't even a gleam in Joseph F Glidden eye yet. The lack of railroads was another major pisser. There were some railroads back east and of course I knew about what was coming, but that didn't help me now.