Prologue

Summer 1926 Depossessed

A carelessly discarded still lit cigarette set the barn on fire. John and Ida Harper were up in the haymow when the billowing black smoke poured up through the old, half rotted flooring. Flames shot up through the cracks in the floor. Suddenly the stunned pair plunged through the burning floor into the roaring hell ten feet below. Nothing was left to be found of either body. Even their bones were consumed in the awful heat.

Ida Marie Harper stared with horrified fascination as the flaming funeral pyre consumed both her parents in minutes. Numbed with shock, she stood wide-eyed, frozen to the ground. Her young mind refused to understand and accept the disaster that ripped her world apart.

"You wanted to see me, Delmarr?" he asked politely. It made the soft, pot bellied little accountant angry. This white trash red neck who was little better than an animal did not even take his hat off when he entered the office.

"Duran, you get your junk together and get off this property. You be gone by sun down or the sheriff will be along to help you off.

A sinking feeling slithered its way through his guts. "What? What in hell you talking about? What have I done that's got your bowels in an uproar? I ain't done nothing against the Company. I never stole nothing an' I never said nothing bad about the company. What's going on here?"

"I'll tell you what's going on here, you ignorant bumpkin, Greatest Western Produce bought this farm and Greatest Western Produce don't want any trouble makers. When you beat poor Jake Morley almost to death for offering to take that little white trash chippy under his wing, you made enemies." He pursed his lemony lips up into an effeminate sneer and continued, "You don't even know whose brat she gave birth to.

"You owe the company two hundred dollars for last season's crop shortage. You either pay that or leave that old mule and everything else behind. We just may decide to keep your whore for--." He got no further.

In one fast motion, an enraged, Harley Duran grabbed the man by the front of his not too clean white wrinkled shirt and lifted him one handed out of his wooden swivel chair. "By God, you little cock sucker. You shut your dirty trash mouth right now." He shook the terrified man until his shirt ripped and his scrawny upper torso was bared to the world. With effeminate movements his hands crossed at the wrists as he desperately covered his tiny, saggy breasts.

"You say one more word against my Ida Marie and you are a dead little cock sucker." Harley's usual open and friendly face was twisted with the hard rage boiling inside him. "Gimme your accounts ledger."

The terrified man hurried to comply, as he picked himself up off the floor and grabbed the ledger out of a desk drawer. "Here. Take it. It's not up to date, though."

Harley Duran grabbed the book out of the shaking hand and opened it up to his name. It showed two hundred and fourteen dollars in credit in his account. "This is what I figure it ought to be. Give it to me right now."

Harley looked over at the door and saw one of Greater Western's enforcers. The enforcer reached for his gun as he took in Delmar Weeks sprawled on the floor, as Harley stood over him. With a bull like bellow he lifted the heavy roll top desk off the floor and rammed it through the door opening. It taking the door out before it became jammed. The extended gun arm fell free into the room, severed at the wrist. The gun, an old Colt forty-four Peace Maker lay unfired on the floor.

Harley turned back to the hysterical accountant and said, "Delmar, you either give me my money or you die. I won't fuck with you no more. Gimme." He held out his hand.

Delmar Weeks half crawled over to the desk stuck halfway through the wall and pulled open a drawer to remove a tin moneybox. He handed the big man a sheaf of bills. Duran counted out the amount due him and threw the rest on the floor at the bookkeeper's feet. "Gimme a paper saying I only took what was mine," he ordered

The frantic man scribbled and handed the barely legible receipt to Harley. The big man walked out the front door and down the steps to where his now terrified child bride and their baby waited. He climbed up in the wagon and clucked the old mule onward. "Harley, you ain't never going to throw me through no wall like that are you?" She was scared, as she looked up at the man whom, until that moment, she had considered to be her protector and lover.

He took a deep breath and shuddered, "Naw, Ida Honey, I'd never ever harm even one hair on your head. You all ought to know that." She sat there in the seat holding their infant daughter and leaned slightly against him for protection.

"We got depossessed?" she asked simply.

"Yup," he answered, "We all been bought out and they claim I'm a trouble maker."

Harley was a natural leader who refused to be intimidated by the authority of the company. He had acted as unpaid representative for the other croppers, bargaining for the best cotton prices he could get for their crops and generally had made himself a pain in the ass of the corrupt farm management that relied on fear and intimidation to keep the farmers in a state of perpetual poverty and indebtedness to the company store. Their crop payments were deposited in the company bank, so called. When the share cropper needed a horse or a mule, he could borrow against the next fall's cotton crop.

"You'll take care of us, won't you Honey?" she asked in a trusting voice. Not quite fifteen years of age and already with a very young baby, she placed all her trust in the man who had protected her from the unfriendly world after her parents died in a barn fire. Harley became father, lover and finally husband to her. He and the baby were her world.

The memory of her parent's deaths brought back the memory of Jake Morley, overseer for the dozen farms owned by Morgan Farms, now a part of this new outfit. Jake had loaded his old Ford truck with her parent's scant belongings and said, "Git in the truck, girl. You goin' home with me." Numbly with fear, she shook her head no and backed away from him.

The overseer's cruelty was well known among the farmers under him. No one had ever defied him before. Jake Morley's insane and his murderous rages could be triggered by the slightest provocation. He had killed one man who refused to obey orders.

The young girl Ida Marie was expected to replace the one who committed suicide a week before as her last desperate act in order to get away from his sadistic treatment.

Morley climbed back out of the truck and took a short buggy whip with him. He drew back his arm to lash the terrified young girl. When he began the forward stroke of the whip it was jerked out of his hand. He turned to face Harley Duran. "Leave the girl be and get your fat ass out of here," Harley ordered in a hard voice. "I'll take care of her."

"She goes with me, Duran. She better git up in that there truck right now if she knows what's good for her." The overseer was still certain of his authority.

"You want to go with this no count son of a bitch?" Harley asked the girl. She shook her head violently no. "You want to come live with me? I won't hurt you none and you sleep alone." Hesitant at first, she nodded her head yes, unable to speak.

"Get your ass out of here Morley. This girl won't go with you all unless she wants to." He made no attempt to hide his contempt, as he stared at the overseer.

"Gawdamm you." the overseer roared, stepped forward, slapped the girl alongside her head and got no further. Before she had fallen to the ground, Harley lifted Morley up into the air and threw him hard to the ground. He landed in a sodden, unmoving heap. Harley half lifted him by his vest and smashed a work hardened fist into the man's face time after time after time.

"I think you all done killed him, Mister Duran. I think he's dead." Her voice cut through the red fog in front of his eyes. He let the man go and led the thirteen year-old girl by one hand and carried her scant belongs to the small shack he called home.

"Girl," he told her, "Y'all sleep inside an' I'll sleep outside till the weather changes. Then I'll take to the floor. There ain't need for y'all to worry, 'cause nobody's going to touch you ever again. It's plumb safe here."

Wide-eyed and apprehensive, she allowed him to lead her to her new home. That night after supper, she began to cry. He held her in gentle arms and rocked her as he would a small child. True to his word he grabbed an old quilt and bedded down in the old farm wagon outside the front door.