Chapter 21

Jacob Dunleavy stood and looked at the five crosses that dotted the hilltop.

The last grave, the one for his dear, sweet Ann, was still too new for the grass to have returned. But the others were covered.

He stopped and placed flowers where Juliette Harcourt was laid to rest. She was the first to die, almost 20 years ago, Jacob thought to himself. The birth of her and Jim's third child had been rough and Juliette really had never been herself again. She was sick often and she succumb to the flu that raced through the area in 1912. She was 49 years old.

The old gunslinger Jim Harcourt followed eight years later. He took Juliette's death hard but had gradually rebounded. He had turned the running of the farm over to his son and daughter-in-law, Jacob and Susanna (Dunleavy) Harcourt, shortly after his wife's death. Jim Harcourt always said he had never known an old gun hand. But he made it 64 years before death came for him in 1920.

The light of Jacob's life left him eight months after his best friend had passed. Marnie caught a winter cold that turned into pneumonia. She died before the spring arrived. Her last days were spent drifting in and out of consciousness and her family got to watch her relive her life and loves, despair and regrets. Her youngest child, Jacob Jr., had died in France during the Great War and his loss pained Marnie until her final day. But she spent her last few hours in conversation with her departed son and finally seemed at peace. Jacob was holding her hand when fell asleep for the last time only days before her 61st birthday would have been celebrated.

Life continued on the Double-M and Two-C ranches after Marnie's death but it wasn't the life it had been before. Jacob found comfort in his children and with his remaining wives until Susan passed away without warning. She hadn't been ill, nor had she complained of any new aches or pains. She simply didn't come down for breakfast one morning in 1928. She was cold to the touch when Jacob and Ann went to get her. She was only one year older than Marnie when she died.

A large portion of Ann died with Susan. Ann was tough on the outside but tender inside and the deaths of her family had hurt her deeply. Only her love for Jacob and the children and grandchildren allowed her to live for almost four years after Susan passed from the earth. But even her love for her family — and their love for her — couldn't stop time. On a warm day in 1932, six months after her 63rd birthday, Ann breathed her last breath and joined the rest of her family in eternity.

Jacob's kids were all grown and now some of his grandkids were, too.

J.J. and Susanna Harcourt had married just weeks after they spoke with Jacob. His first grandchild — a son named Jacob Harcourt Jr. — was born a year later. Susanna had two more children, a son named Robert who died within a few months of his birth, and a daughter christened Emily Elizabeth seven years later. J.J. died on New Year's Eve 1939 and Susanna followed the next day, New Year's Day 1940, after a car accident.

Lilibeth did, indeed, get married. She met a ranch hand named Claude Wells and was instantly taken by him. They married shortly after Lilibeth's 16th birthday. She had two sons, Claude James and Joseph Michael, two years apart. Claude became a state representative from the town and Marnie lived at the state capital until her death in 1947.

Junior went to Texas A&M to learn more about farming and engineering and brought a wealth of knowledge back to the ranches. He married a girl he met at A&M, Elsie Atkins — but not until he had finished what he started at the Double-M and Two-C. They had one child, Juliette Elizabeth. Junior joined the Army during what later became World War I and died somewhere in France in 1917. Elsie lived on the ranch and became one of the driving forces behind modernization in the 1920s and 1930s as she continued the work her husband started.

Jimmy waited patiently for Amelia Bellamy to fall in love with him but she never did. He married a local girl, Emily Dell, and the pair had two children, a daughter named Ann Elizabeth and a son named Jacob James. Jimmy helped J.J. with the day-to-day operations and was elected Mayor of Dunn in the 1920s. He always held a special spot in his heart for the school and he was the only man Amelia Bellamy ever felt comfortable with until her dying day.

Amanda and Amelia Bellamy returned to Dunn 18 months after they left. They opened a two-room school house and worked as teachers, custodians and administrators there for almost 40 years. They died a few months apart in 1951. Neither of the women married and the Bellamy line died out with them.

Marnie Harcourt, Jim's oldest daughter, became a leading voice in Texas for the women's suffrage movement. She lived up to the feistiness of her namesake and aunt, Marnie Dunleavy, and in 1950 — at the age of 61 — was elected to the Texas Senate. She served there for four years before deciding she liked life in Dunn better than life in Austin. She married a ranch hand when she was in her 20s but he was thrown from a horse and killed before they could celebrate their first anniversary. Marnie didn't remarry and she had no children.