Charlie grunted and pounded his fists on the kitchen table as we left the room. I was caught up in the flutter of dovelike sounds from the women’s room—Granny’s old bedroom—as we made up beds for the night. I left them to return to the kitchen and bank up the fire and found Charlie alone in the parlor.
“Others sleeping?” I asked.
“Gone south. Spying on Maldonado. Watching Udell’s place.”
“Chess, too?”
“What could have possessed her, Mama? How could she think they wouldn’t shoot her?”
“I don’t know.”
“This having a wife is the damnedest thing. Half the time I’m crazy in love and half the time she just keeps me crazy mad. Why I’d have torn a man apart with my bare hands if anyone had … I could eat nails.”
“Reckon women don’t think like men.”
“Why on earth don’t they learn how?”
I rubbed my face. “Ain’t meant to, honey.” I smiled and kissed his brow. “It occurs to us to ask the same thing. Keeps the world turning, I suspect.”
Chapter Seventeen
November 1, 1907
As the sun rose I put the morning’s leftover pancakes out for our penitent dog hero, Nip, and his cohort, Shiner. They were busy eating when I saw a rider coming up from the west. He circled up on the sandy ridge, disappeared for a bit, then returned. After a long, slow ride in, a stranger got off his horse.
We had a new hand on our side! Rye Miles was good to his word. He bunked in the book room where the dandy professors had slept, and all of us felt better with him there, too. Mr. Miles went with Gilbert and Charlie down to Udell’s place. They were gone about three hours and I was starting to worry when they finally came home. I went out to talk to them as they unsaddled their horses by the trough. They said they had helped Udell finish a wooden platform he has built up from the second floor with stairs and a short ladder. It’s high enough that it makes a third-floor watchtower. From there, with a long glass, they watched Rudolfo’s ranch compound. Gilbert said half of Rudolfo’s men had deserted him after the “vision” of Nip bowing before Elsa got told around.
Miles told me, in language as colorful as any I have heard and some I wouldn’t repeat, that they had a buzzard down there dressed up like a priest who took a shotgun to two of the deserters. “That’s one damned evil son of a gun,” he said.
“I know him,” I replied. “Odd scar on his face.”
Rye Miles shot a look at Charlie, who glanced at me and turned his eyes away. Both of them had the same dry expression. Charlie said, “Don’t mention him to the other ladies, Mama.”
“Well, come on in and have some beans and bacon,” I said. “Savannah’s made cornbread for an army.”
Over dinner, Savannah confessed what Udell had already hinted at. Rachel and Aubrey Hanna were to marry before Thanksgiving. Mary Pearl had been sent for and someone needed to wire a ticket to her. After two hours of the family putting in each one’s two bits of thoughts on it, our plan became simple. All the women would take the stagecoach to town. The men would stay to guard and keep up chores. Gilbert made each of us promise to call on Miss Charity.
The one person I most feared for, however, was Granny. Bandits who’d shoot through windows would have no qualms about stopping a stage and finishing the job. We had until the Butterfield came through again, to get everything ready.
November 16, 1907
Heavy clouds greeted our start to the day. We waited at Marsh Station for four hours before Pancho Dailey showed up driving an eight-hitch of mules. It was a good thing he had to trade one out, for if we’d had to board in the usual way, jumping onto a slowly moving coach, Granny would have been in danger. Five other people were on the stage, and with Rebeccah, Elsa, Savannah, Granny, and myself, it seemed right packed. I was glad it was crowded, though. Granny all but disappeared in the petticoats and wrappers, and I doubted Rudolfo or his men would guess we’d take her to town, much less on a stage when we’d always driven ourselves.
Under the dark softness of the cloudy sky, with the rocking of the coach and the constant rumble of the wheels, I felt stupefied into calm and peace that I hadn’t known in ages. I slept the entire trip away. When we stopped in Tucson, I let everyone else get off before me. As I alighted, the rain which had threatened all day finally began. I stood in the door of the stage and grasped the handles. As I did, raindrops speckled my fingertips, and I raised my face to let the fresh water touch my cheek.
We exchanged a wave with Mr. Dailey, and watched while he pulled in at the corral. Savannah hired a buggy to get to the house.
We arrived at Harland’s front door with no warning to him that we were coming. The quiet when Rachel opened the door was alarming. She welcomed us in with a finger to her lips. The children were all in bed again, this time with mumps and dysentery. It had gone through town without mercy, the dark finger of disease marking several doors of folks we knew.
We were shown to the parlor, and in a few minutes, a nurse in a uniform came to report something to Rachel. The woman’s eyes opened wide when she saw us. Elsa was obviously round, now. Elsa could not stay there, not in her condition, she said. Though the rest of us had had mumps and every other childhood ailment, the nurse feared the unborn child might take the disease somehow. It was late, and it would be another imposition, but Elsa must be sent to April’s house. I said I would take her.
Rachel said, “I think you all should go. I’ve been ill, too, along with Uncle Harland. I think this is more common than mumps, and more catching. We are worn to exhaustion nursing children. Our first round of grippe seemed to take two weeks to come and go, then Story came home with mumps. Now, this bowel complaint is dreadful. The Taylor boy, two blocks over, died last week, and one of Morris’s cousins lost a baby. April’s house has been spared. Our Blessing just began to get well when she got it again.” The end of her words brought the echo of some child upstairs, crying. “I’d better go see who that is,” she said.
Rain drummed upon the walls and the window glass, shushing the world outside. Savannah finally spoke. “You all go to April’s. I’ll stay here and help Rachel.” After a little discussion, it was agreed. I wanted to see Harland and his children, but it would be better not to take any chance of illness to April’s home with a new baby.
We got to April’s house just as they finished their supper. We were drenched. April and Morris were surprised. At least, though, it was dry indoors, and warm, and plenty spacious for Elsa, Granny, Rebeccah, and me.
The next day was Sunday. I helped my mama get dressed and she went to the parlor. While the rest of us listened, she told old stories, just like she used to do when I was a girl. She always called it “Sunday School,” though none of us knew if the stories were from the Bible or not. They always were told with fervor, though, and the plots were lessons about good and evil. While their mother left to tend baby Tennyson, April’s children, Vallary, Patricia, and Lorelei, gathered around and listened as if they’d never heard the like.
I slipped out of the room when everyone seemed intent on the story, and went to the front to peer out the viewing glass at the wet, gray world. The wind blew drops clinging to the wooden overhang and flung them against the bulbous front of the glass, further distorting what was already an odd reflection of the world on the other side. Every few seconds, a drop illuminated a distant picture right before my eyes. It was the last half of a billboard sign painted on the brick wall of a livery, just the word “Fargo” in bright green.
Singing coming from the parlor interrupted my concentration. I opened the front door and stepped outward, shielding my eyes with one hand. The sign was gone. There were no colors at all, just a dingy, smoke-colored wall of rain. Closing the door once again, the rain on the viewing glass lit up again. I smiled. This would have been one for Professor Osterhaas’s essay on cosmic elements: raindrops that can clarify a dreary world. I turned toward the parlor and halted as if my feet suddenly took root in the rug. Fargo.
/> I knew a way to fight Rudolfo.
Maybe there was no power bigger than the railroad. No evil greater than greed. But there was another power I could enlist. The stage company had been here since before we came. All these years I’d given Wells Fargo a sort of squatter’s right to cross below that sandy cliff. All these years I’d watered their mules and fed their drivers when they asked it. Maybe the Eastern money that fueled the coal-smoke-belching railroad was in a bigger bank, but the Wells Fargo had roots here. If the land didn’t belong to Granny or to me, but to the Wells Fargo company, then let the giants storm heaven, and I will be like Artemis and Wells Fargo will be my Apollo. I’ll never quit fighting for my land.
I thought about it all through the morning and by noon I knew just what I would do. The hardest part would be waiting until tomorrow when the bank opened up.
Well, that afternoon we were all surprised to find Savannah and Rachel at the door. Savannah explained, “I just wanted to let you all know and ease your worries. Their sickness is no different than trail fever. Bad water, if you ask me. I boiled up a dozen kettles of water and started dosing everyone with plain, clean-boiled water. Within two hours, all the stomach complaints began to calm. Tomorrow I’m going to boil the linens and all their clothes, too. April, you must boil all the water your children touch.”
April said, “Well, that probably isn’t necessary, Aunt Savannah.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because, Mother. Because, really, I hate to say it, but, well, this is a better part of town. Our water is always cool. Sometimes theirs is hot. All the best people build on this end of town.”
“But that was my house. It’s a good house. There’s nothing wrong with living there.”
“No, of course not,” April said. “It’s just that this is healthier.”
“If you asked me, I’d say the problem wasn’t the class of people living in a place but the class of plumbing fixtures they had.” I said, “Ladies? Will you join us in rescuing Rachel and her charges?”
Savannah ducked her head. “It is the Sabbath, Sarah. I didn’t mean to create work for you all.”
I patted her arm. “And if thy neighbor’s ox fall in a ditch on the Sabbath? I can be ready in two shakes. We’ve got sheets to boil.”
Elsa and Granny remained with April. The rest of us took to Harland’s house in a way that would have made prim and starched Mrs. Everly seem to be a sloven harridan. All the bedding was laid out on the back porch, rain and all. Sheets dried in rows in the kitchen, and one by one, warm and pristine makeshift pallets held the sick of the household. That evening, we sent both Rachel and Rebeccah to April’s, and Savannah and I stayed. We bathed the children and rubbed them with alcohol spirits and water, and threatened Harland with the same if he refused to have an hour’s soak in a tub of the same mixture. Of course, his children thought that was riotously funny, though I wonder if they doubted my ability to make good on the threat.
Blessing’s drawn and sad appearance was hardest to take lightly. The girl had grown thin and narrow, and her large eyes were seared with heat, staring from a fevered brow. Still, she grinned when she saw me, and after her bath, climbed into my lap and soon was fast asleep. All day as I tended my family, I thought on my plan. Calculated my acreage. Did sums in my head that would have made Miss Alice proud.
November 18, 1907
Monday morning, early, after finding Harland dressed and sipping tea, I proposed my idea to him.
“There are two parts of this, Harland. First, you know I own a few thousand acres, and leases on more. Some of it runs east of the line they have drawn across Mama’s land, although they’ve cut a swath on my property too, near where the stage line runs. But some of the best flatland is far south, beyond Rudolfo’s place and due north of the Mexican border. I figure once they get tracks laid on Mama’s land he’ll run me off the rest, too. So why not sell it? To the stage line. If Rudolfo wants it that much, someone else will, too.”
“But Sis, you have spent your life building that ranch. It’s your legacy. You’ve said as much yourself.”
“I don’t mean all of it. Just the south lease and a couple of sections north of the border. Some people keep money in a bank. I have kept mine in the ground. We can’t eat dirt and I can’t buy stock. I need to draw out some cash to keep going. That’s all. Good times, bad, they will both come again. Also, I can’t pass down a legacy to ghosts. I think Rudolfo will gladly see us all in the ground before he’ll quit. The only way I see to come out on top is to find a buyer.
“Second thing is Mama’s homestead. She doesn’t live on it nor work it, and I think she’d as soon sell it as let the railroad take it for nothing. Since we—you, Albert, and I—are the beneficiaries of it, if we agreed to ask her to sell it now—”
“But it’s the principle of the thing.”
I got my back up. Did he think principles could stop bullets? “That only holds up if both sides have the same principles, Harland.”
He took a sip from his cup of tea. “What does Albert say?”
“I hadn’t thought of this when I left home. Savannah’s here. She’d know how he would decide. She can speak for him.”
“We can’t take Mama’s place from her.”
“I’m not saying take it. She lives with me and likely always will. She’s not crazy, you know. I have seen how she aches for every one of us that has died. Each one in the ground pushes her farther into the shadows of her mind. That land is not so important and her reason isn’t so gone she can’t figure it will save us a bloody range war.”
“I don’t want any of the money from it, then.”
“No. I don’t either. It’s hers. I’ll keep strict accounts and show them to you whenever you please.”
“All right, then. It has to go to making her life as sweet as it can be for the rest of her days.”
“Anything she wants. If you’re agreed, then I’ll go ask Savannah.”
“We can ride to the bank in my new horseless carriage. I will go put the top on in case it rains again.”
I stopped at the door and turned.
“The thing is, Harland,” I said, “that I want everyone to hear us ask her and I don’t want anyone to put words in her head or push the idea. It’s got to be her free and clear choice or we’ve railroaded her, same as Rudolfo.”
“Agreed,” he said. Are you sure we’re healthy and it’s all right to go to a house with a baby?”
“Look how you all have changed with twelve hours of absolute cleanliness.” “But April won’t know about that. It’s possible she’d blame us for bringing it.” “I think it will be all right,” I said. “It has likely run its course by now.” We drove to April’s and laid our plan before our mother. Addled as she could be, yesterday with the Sunday School and singing, why Mama seemed to have lost fifteen years and was bright and sassy. She listened closely, then shut her eyes for a whole minute, nodding. Then with a pound from her tiny fist, she hollered, “Sell it all, then. Sell whatever it needs. You put yours in, and we’ll show those blackhearted thieves who’s boss.” “Agreed?” I said.
“I’m coming, too. Fetch my shawl,” Granny said.
“But Grandma,” April said quickly, “won’t you stay and tell the children more stories?”
“Fiddlesticks. You tell ‘em. You’re their ma. Get me to the bank, girl.” Harland, Granny, Savannah, and I rode in his horseless carriage. We stopped at the telegraph office to send a wire to Mary Pearl, along with purchasing a round-trip ticket home and back with a week’s stay in between. From there to the bank, Harland and I argued every foot of the way about what my land was worth. He said prices had gone up. That I could get six or seven thousand for what I wanted to sell. I told him I’d take a thousand dollars just to have this settled and know the railroad wouldn’t cross my place, and though the tracks were on Granny’s land, no engine would ever roll on them. Then we pulled deeds on Mama’s land and every parcel I owned. Finally, we came to a halt in front of t
he Wells Fargo office, and walked right upstairs to the manager’s office, barging in on Mr. Thompkins.
The other three sat quietly while I laid forth my plan. We would sell the stage coach company the western half of Granny’s claim, and incorporate the eastern parcel into Albert’s land. I told Thompkins there were rail tracks already laid there, although the rail company had no valid deed to it. “This here is the original deed to the land. Free and clear, homesteaded and patent filed. So there’d be some kind of tussle with Santa Fe. But no matter how it came out,” I said, “the stage company would own the land the rails went through.” We offered Granny’s parcel for two thousand dollars. That man’s eyes lit up like firecrackers on a dark night though he said nothing. “Then,” I added, “I’ve got another parcel for sale here, due south in a direct line that stops just north of Benson and runs eleven hundred acres, see along this line here?” I pointed on my deed map. “It’s cattle land, and there’s a windmill already there. Plus a four-thousand-acre lease east-southeast of that. You’d have a straight shot to Fort Huachuca.”
A cocky look spread across his face as if the man were sure we’d come to boondoggle him. “And what, pray tell, do you want for that? A million dollars? Five million?”
I glanced at Harland. Then I said, “I figure with what I put into it, and what I paid for it, and that there’s nothing much on it, I’d take two thousand for that one, too.”
“And what?”