Robbery at Holliday Creek (4)

Decision Time

Martin Tarbutton smiled, and when he did the lines in his face snapped to life like breaking glass and deepened the greater his grin.  “Let your mother feed you first.  She’s been worrying over four months about your eating. By the looks of it she had reason.” 

     Mattie Tarbutton was a tall woman; taller than Martin, which didn’t seem to matter much to either of them. Standing at the stove she looked over her shoulder at the mention of her name. “Take a seat, son. It isn’t special, but there’s plenty of it.”

     He could smell the bacon and suddenly he was hungry.  “Bacon, fried eggs and biscuits sure beats another plate of cow camp stew.”  He pulled his chair over to the table and sat down in front of four basted eggs. “Thanks, Ma. You’re the best.” He saw her eyes moisten before she quickly turned away

.

     Mattie finished piling food on the table with two cups of hot coffee. “Come over here and have a cup, Marty.”  

     The old man laid down his work and moved to the table. As he pulled up his chair, he saw the jar of blueberry jam sitting by a stack of biscuits. “Thought you said we were out of blueberry jam.”  

     “You and your boys went through that jam last summer like it was butter. This is the last batch I put up, and I saved it back for Teddy…” She corrected herself, “for Ted.” She smiled sweetly at her husband and then at her son, which she followed with a wink.

     Ted slid the biscuits over to Martin followed by the jam. Hesitantly, he said, “See you laid in some barbed wire…  That mean you’re leaning to more farming and less ranching?”

     Mattie, who had pulled up a chair, now studied her hands in her lap. Martin slowly helped himself to a biscuit. “A homestead isn’t really big enough for successful cattle raising without an open range. That seems to be ending as more homesteaders run fences to keep the range cattle out of their crops.”

     The two men were talking to each other eye to eye. Ted broke the stare and reached for the remaining bacon which he cleared onto his plate. 

   Martin pressed on, eager to build on the moment. “Homesteading is hard, son; but it’s good clean living. You’re your own man. You work hard; you raise a family; the harder you work the more you call your own…  Man can get by nicely farming out here.” 

     Ted was quiet, thinking over what the old man said. A response wasn’t at the tip of his tongue. No thoughts, much less words, came to mind; only feelings. 

 

     But the feelings were strong -- extra strong. Getting by wasn’t good enough for Ted Skillman.

BEDROCK : Robbery at Holliday Creek (3)

Enlightenment

The sun had set, but it was not quite dark as Skillman pulled the saddle off his cowpony. He lifted the halter over the animal’s head and aimed her at the stall; but she balked. Instead of her usual spurt to the feed manger, she nickered and back off.

     Skillman grabbed a hand full of mane, and led her into the small corral attached to the barn. Probably something stored in the stall. 

 

    He dropped the locking loop over the gate post. There was still some twilight, but in the back of the stall it was bible black. Carefully he edged up to the dark patch. His hand gently patted the mass as if it were the nose of his pony.  Wire. He felt the barbs.  His heart sank.

     He pulled another match and scratched it along the wall; the light revealed it all: spools of barbed wire stacked neatly right up to the manger and from side to side.  Clearly, the old man was readying to reinforce his claim on the homestead, more farming than ranching. It was a dark night, but Ted saw the light.

     Before the flame died, he spied the pitch fork hanging on the outside wall. It appears Spirit would spend an extra night under the stars.

    Ted dropped a few forks of hay over the fence then came into the corral and curried the little lady; talking and apologizing for one more un-sheltered night. “Still, it’s good to be home, isn’t it, my winning Spirit?”

     He walked toward the house. The flicker of the lantern light in the window acted as his guide in the moonless night. He stopped about three feet short of the door and called out his arrival. “It’s Ted… Coming in.”

     Before he could get his hand on the latch, the door flew open; his mother standing there. She did not rush into his arms, but waited, a tear in her eye, for him to come to her at his own pace. They didn’t speak, just hugged for a long moment, then Mattie pushed him back arms length to have a good look. 

     “Welcome home, son.”  She broke abruptly and made for the iron stove. “You must be hungry.”

     Martin Tarbutton sat on a straight chair next to a burning fire place. He was working on something-- but then, he was always working on something. He looked up. His eyes scanned the tall, thin young man. “Welcome home, lad...” 

     He looked down again. “See you’re wearing a gun these days.”

     Ted’s right hand moved nervously to his side, then back to the belt buckle.  With both hands he removed the belt and holster, with gun, and hung them on a peg at the side of the door. “Yeah, things got a little troublesome early in the drive. The trail boss seemed to think I should have a gun. I bought this off him out of wages,” he lied. 

    

     Ted eased across the room dragging a straight backed chair with him. He pulled up to the fire and watched the old man deftly work the leather on a broken harness.

     Martin was a stocky man, built like a tree stump; not fat, just powerful. Ted turned his eyes to the fire remembering his widowed mother introducing the two of them back in Ohio. She reassured her six year old son on the journey down to Texas that “her Teddy” would always be the love of her life. Married though she was to Martin, and adoring as she was of the two boys by that union, Ted never doubted her love. He always knew that somehow he was the link between her past and present, and it made her complete. 

 

     “Don’t know that you need a pistol around here so much, but it’s your gun, Ted -- your responsibility.” Tarbuton looked up. “Hang it, wear it, shoot it; just keep it away from the boys. They got plenty of time for that kind of thing.”

     Ted blinked back to present. “Nothing to worry about, sir. It’s just another tool—for range work and the like...  Let me tell you about the cattle drive.”

BEDROCK : Robbery at Holliday Creek (1):

Citizens Arrest 

      

Full darkness had settled as the cowboy crept through the trees up to the edge defining the west side of the glen. He was downwind from two men sitting around their small fire – their backs to him. 

The smell of roasting meat barely reached his nose. Silently, he drew his revolver from its holster, and, as he leveled it at the two men, he drew back on the double action trigger. It clicked like two rocks knocked together, and the still evening air magnified the sound.

The two men jerked into a standing position, both reaching for their side arms as they searched for a target. The cowboy remained in the tree line, but spoke loudly and firmly, “Holster those guns and turn back to the fire.” They hesitated, squinting into the dark.

“DO IT.” Both reluctantly turned only to see their roasting rabbit go black. 

The cowboy walked out of the trees straight to within arm’s length behind them, and swiftly struck each a blow to the head with his gun butt. They crumpled like wet dish rags.

Two hobbled horses grazed in the glen, untroubled by the disturbance nearby. The cowboy grabbed the ropes from the grounded saddles beside the fire and proceeded to tie the two with their hands behind each back. Then he removed their boots and tied together the feet of each man. He stepped back to survey his handy work.

 

Satisfied, he retraced his steps toward the tree line where he had tethered his horse. The gentle clack of horns from bedded cattle milling around played on the night air.  Now his job was to get these pole cats to the trail boss, and bring back a couple of boys to return the rustled cows to the heard.                                                                                                                                                       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

BEDROCK : Robbery at Holliday Creek (2):

End of the Trail

Four months later he was home again, back from the cattle drive to the end of the railroad in Abilene, and looking down from the grassy ridge-line on his step-dad’s spread a half mile to the east. Ted Skillman let the reins go slack after his cow-pony came to a standstill. In one smooth movement he swung his lanky left leg over the horse’s neck and gripped the saddle horn behind his knee. He reached for his breast pocket and fished out cigarette makings.

Silhouetted against the setting sun, Ted’s form appeared gaunt. In reality, he was heftier than he seemed, and his physical build wasn’t the only thing deceptive about his appearance. One might guess him to be in his mid-twenties: the crow’s feet around the eyes, the chiseled chin and nose, the thin lips that now gripped an unlit cigarette. Ted pulled out a match, and flicked the sulfur end with his thumb nail. The flare of the match under the cowboy hat sparkled in the iceberg-blue eyes; and also, revealed long delicate fingers on narrow hands curled around the light.

The last twelve of his near eighteen years he’d spent growing up on that ranch down in the valley. After his father died in a farm accident back in Ohio, his mother re-married another farmer who moved the family to Texas to take advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862.

Ted took a long draw on his smoke; the pony nosed its reins to get a few extra morsels of grass, then flicked back its ear at the soothing sound of its master’s voice. “You know, little filly, we’re coming to the end of our cow punching days.” Ear twitch. He took another draw on his cigarette and exhaled slowly as he inventoried prospects for his future.

The frontier was filling with settlers, and they were mostly farmers: putting up fences, plowing the land for sustenance, raising a few cattle for cash; but, basically farmers. And that was not for him. His family had accumulated a hundred head of cattle, which they added to the rail-head drive. Though he was barely fifteen when his parents first allowed him to join the drive, it was important to keep a close eye on the family interests. His mother was a school teacher in Ohio, and she home-schooled Ted to read and write. Turned out, he was pretty good with his numbers, too. Having a member of the family on the drive was good insurance, and it got Ted out of farm work.

In a few minutes he would walk through the door down there to a warm, but subdued, welcome; he would wolf down his mother’s home cooking; and, most importantly, give his family an accounting of cash from the cattle sale. Theoretically, he was to deduct wages from the revenues, but as he looked down on the meager little farm, the soddy house, and the small acreage in cultivation, he knew he would not take much of his wages – again.