The Return of Caulfield Blake (5 page)

“Caulie, I'm hoping you'll have a chance to get to know the boys again. They're so much like you. Zach rides like a devil, and Carter's gotten so tall. You'll hardly recognize him.”

“You've done a good job with 'em then. And the little ones?” He asked, pointing to the girl in particular.

“Her name's Sally. She was five last week. The twins are Todd and Wylie. They're almost four.”

“You always did want a big family.”

“A ranch takes a lot of hands.”

Blake laughed, remembering how she'd said the same thing years before when they'd held hands in the oak grove.

“Of course five seems enough,” she said, pointing to the lines of washing hanging behind the house.

“What you want done, Hannah, won't be easy. It means startin' with the dam. Simpson might deal with you on it. More likely he'll just squeeze.”

“How?”

“Block the markets. Cut your credit.”

“You seem to know a lot about this.”

“I've seen it before. Big ranchers never seem to be content with what they have. They want more.”

“So first we bargain.”

“Or try to.”

“And then?”

“It's war, Hannah. We can blow the dam. Simpson can knock down fences, run off cows, and shoot the bulls. He'll try to isolate you, pick off your friends one by one.”

“He'll come for you first.”

“No, last. He'll want me to watch. It's you and the children that are most vulnerable. He'll go after you.”

She shuddered, and he let her lean against his side. His great strong hand held her tightly, and for a second the clock moved back. It was spring and they were thirteen again. But it didn't last. She wriggled free and walked toward the door.

“I'll see what's keeping the boys,” she told him.

He stepped down from the veranda and stumbled over beside the swing. He felt his eyes moisten. It's strange, he thought. How can two people who shared so much, loved each other so completely, have ever come to this? He wiped his eyes and stared out across the creek, toward the Diamond S and the town of Simpson, toward the white-haired old man who'd been the cause of so much pain.

Blake hadn't shed a tear in thirty years, not since the winter of 1850 when his mother died. At this moment he could have, possibly should have. For if all their buried dreams and grand plans for a boundless future weren't worth crying over, nothing ever would be.

A door slammed, and he shook himself out of the gloom. Two boys appeared on the steps, a tall, solid fourteen-year-old with straw-colored hair and a thin, somber-faced boy of thirteen. Blake felt his legs wobble a bit as he walked toward them. The boys stood frozen to the steps, unable or unwilling to move.

“Carter? Zach?” Blake called to them.

The eldest, Carter, nodded his head. Zach backed away a step.

“I'm your father,” Blake announced.

“Our father's inside,” Carter said. “You left us years ago.”

“Zach?” Blake asked, reaching out for the younger boy.

“Why'd you come back?” Zach asked, moving behind his brother. “We don't need you. We don't want you.”

The words cut like daggers through Blake's heart. Never had he imagined they wouldn't want him. Didn't they remember the mornings they'd spent in the pond, the long rides into the hills, the nights he'd stayed up fighting their fevers or dosing a cough?

He wanted to grab them both, hold them tight and try to explain. He longed to tell them he wanted them, he needed them. But it wasn't in him. He stepped back and stared at them. His sons. How could he tell them he'd come back to help them?

“Ma said we should see you,” Carter said. “We've seen you.”

Blake reached out his hand, but the boys backed away.

“I wrote,” Blake mumbled. “Every birthday and each Christmas.”

They stared at him with blank looks.

“I sent money, all I could spare.”

“It's hard to go hunting with a Yankee greenback,” Carter said. “You could've come for a visit, even a short one.”

Now it was Blake's time to stand silently, searching for words. How could he explain something he himself didn't fully understand?

“How could you run from them?” Carter cried out with tearful eyes. Zach said nothing, but the smaller boy's eyes were just as moist.

“I'm not runnin' now,” Blake said stiffening his spine. “Maybe after a time, you'll find a way to understand.”

“Understand what?” Carter asked accusingly. “How you left without so much as a good-bye? How you never once cared enough to ride by?”

Never cared? Blake felt all the brightness, all the warmth within himself die. How many times had he stayed up wondering how they were faring, imagining what they looked like? How many sleepless nights came when a winter blizzard struck, just because he wondered if they were warm?

“I'm here now,” Blake mumbled. “For what it's worth I've missed you. Maybe after the sting is gone, you'll ride out and visit a bit.”

They turned their heads and returned to the house.

“They're only boys,” Hannah told him afterward. “They're confused. And hurt. They'll come around.”

But as Blake mounted his horse and headed for Dix's ranch, he couldn't help wondering. Forgiving came hard at thirteen or fourteen. And he wasn't able to forget the cold, hard look in their eyes.

Blake reached the small gate of the Stewart ranch as the sun began its long descent into the western hills. Dix had built a wooden cabin on the place after returning from the war, but a month after he'd married Rita Thorpe, he'd moved to town and taken over the small mercantile store owned by her uncle. In the late sixties Dix had turned the store over to Rita while he'd teamed with Caulfield Blake and Martin Cabot to round up wild mustangs from the plains and break them to saddle. The army had been buying mounts then, and although the market was poor enough in town, it was as good a cash crop as corn or vegetables.

As Blake crossed the rolling hills that led to the cabin, he noticed Dix had added cattle. It wasn't much of a herd, only a scattered mixture of range cows and steers plus an occasional bull. Blake had seen a thousand like herds. All over western Texas small farms had turned their fields over to cattle. And those lucky enough to consign their stock to a large ranch in order to get them to market could make a nice enough profit. For many the cattle were destined to graze a lifetime on the scrub grasses of the plain, providing food for the family and barter for other goods in town.

As Blake paused to stare back at the ranch his father had carved out of the barren frontier landscape, he noticed a rider approaching from the west. It was a familiar sight, that lean man crouched over his horse, blazing along and shouting like a Comanche.

“Caulie!” the man screamed.

“Dix Stewart,” Blake mumbled, turning his horse so as to greet his old friend.

“I knew you'd come,” Dix said, fighting to catch his breath as he reined his horse to a stop. “Knew it.”

“Well, you've got trouble, I hear.”

“In spades, Caulie. Have you been to see Hannah yet? She's in for the worst of it, I expect.”

“The creek's dryin' up.”

“Simpson built a dam across Carpenter Creek just this side of Siler's Hollow.”

“He must want this land bad. Has he offered you a price as of yet?”

“No.”

“He's likely to wait a bit longer now.”

“Oh?”

“I saw him in town. He wasn't exactly glad to see me.”

“Never was too high on you, Caulie. Well, he did run you out of the county.”

“No, the rest of 'em did that. Simpson could never have managed it on his own.”

“And I guess we helped, Hannah and me and Marty. Can't tell you the nights I've thought about that, Caulie. It would have been so easy to step right into the middle of it.”

“It wasn't your fight.”

“Since when did either one of us ever have a fight without the other divin' into it?”

“You had Rita and the kids to worry after.”

“That's what I told myself, Caulie, but I believe it a little less every year. And now, when Simpson's after the rest of us, you come runnin' the first time we ask.”

“It was Hannah who asked.”

“She'd never done it on her own. Caulie, she's just as rock stubborn as you are. That's why you came to leave, or can't you recall? Somebody should've sat down with you and made you listen.”

“Nobody did, though, Dix.”

“It was just plain stupid for you two to go separate ways.”

“I wouldn't say she's done all that bad since I left. She's got a good man in Marsh Merritt. The ranch looks better'n ever.”

“I don't catch her laughin' often, Caulie.”

“Well, she's had little enough to laugh about in this life. It's been hard on her.”

“Harder than on you?”

“I didn't ride out here to talk about me. Fill me in on what's been goin' on.”

“Let's sit a bit. I've been ridin' all day, and I'm not young anymore. Too much shopkeepin', I suppose.”

“You?” Blake said, dismounting and following Dix to a nearby oak grove. “I once remember you stayin' in the saddle thirty-six hours runnin'.”

“Runnin' from Yanks. Caulie, that's been fifteen years. I don't know as I could do it now.”

“I imagine you could.”

“I'd hate to have my life hangin' on it. Caulie, have you seen the boys?”

“Carter and Zach?”

“You got any others? That Carter's grown another foot every time I see him. Zach's the one to watch, though. He's quiet, but that mind's always workin'. He's like you, Caulie. Rides the same, too. I swear sometimes there's a cyclone roarin' across these hills, but I look close and find out it's only Zach.”

“They weren't any too glad to see me.”

“Don't expect they remember you much. And they're worried about their ma. Hannah's been showin' the strain lately.”

Blake frowned. The words weren't pleasant to hear. Still, she'd endured hardships before. He sat across a small pond from Dix and stared at the dying sun.

“Simpson's got no hold on us legally,” Dixon said. “The deeds all spell out rights to water from Carpenter Creek. I talked to Jefferson Perry, a young lawyer out of Austin. He says we're within our rights to bust the dam.”

“So, why haven't you?”

“Simpson keeps a small army up there all the time. Who is there besides Marty and me to do it? You know I never used explosives, Caulie. What we need is help with some dynamite.”

“Black powder'd do it.”

“Not so sure. Simpson put rocks in the foundation. It won't go easy.”

“Neither did the rail bridges at Good Hope Church. It can be done.”

“We may not have a choice. Perry filed papers, but somehow they got lost short of Austin. What's more, Simpson had dinner with the new land commissioner.”

“So we're unlikely to get help from the authorities.”

“'Bout as likely as for the old man to get hit by lightnin' eatin' his breakfast.”

Blake laughed at the thought. Dix was less amused.

“Caulie, first thing we've got to do is meet with the colonel, see if we can reach an understandin'.”

“Not much chance of that.”

“Got to try just the same.”

“And when that doesn't work?”

“Then we get serious. We can hurt Simpson as much as he can hurt us. He gets his supplies off the road that runs through the off quarter of my property. We can close that road.”

“It'd take a hundred men. Anyway, he'll just cut a new road.”

“That'd take time, and lots of manpower.”

“Leavin' the dam open.”

“And the fences. Fences are easy to cut. Cattle all over means a roundup.”

“Anything else?”

“Not on our part. But there is another factor.”

“Oh?”

“He's started bringin' in men. Not ranch hands. These men ride tall horses and wear Mexican spurs.”

“Killers.”

“And you're bound to be the first target, Caulie. Done much shootin' lately?”

“Not at people.”

“You were good with a handgun once.”

“Guess I'll have to be again. Tell me, Dix, have you discussed any of this with Hannah?”

“Not even with Rita. The less they know, the better.”