Storiesonline.net ------- Water Rights by Openbook Copyright© 2005 by Openbook ------- Description: Young Jay controls the high ground and all the water, but Franklin Lyons is not to be denied as he tries to protect his life savings which are invested in thirsty cattle. His wife wants some of what both men have to offer.In his need, Jay is forced to turn to his mother's people for help. Jay finds a side of him that he hadn't known before. Codes: MF hist cons cheat ------- ------- Chapter 1 My daddy had owned all of the water rights in North Barlow County. Sounds mighty impressive, unless you happen to know that there were only thirty seven people, forty nine horses, one hundred and seven head of beef, seven dogs and an uncounted number of chickens that were now settled in that part of the County. Of course, that wasn't counting the Mexicans or the Indians. My mother died when I was seven, some kind of a fever my daddy told me, but I still remember hearing their loud arguing, a lot of yelling, and some crying and pleading right before my daddy's twelve gauge put an end to all of that. It was the next morning before he told me that the fever had taken her from us. She had been an Indian, one of the reservation Apache's. Since she married my father, he was the only family that she really had. Daddy stayed drunk and surly for most of a month after he had dug her a grave, and had laid her to rest. When I was seventeen, daddy got drunk one night and took his .44-40 revolver and gave himself a fever of his own. I buried him next to my mother, and continued trying to work the broken down piece of hard scrabble land that daddy had grandiously referred to as his ranch. The years passed by slowly, the sameness of everything tending to make the days seem longer than they were. I minded my own business and pretty much stayed away from the places that my daddy had told me were filled with trouble. About four times a year I saddled up one of the horses and put a pack lead on three or four others and made my way down from the ranch to the tired little town that lay closest by. I had been taught by daddy to trade close, and horses had been our livelihood ever since the first Gardner had set foot in Barlow County close to one hundred years before. I'd trade or sell two of my horses and then use the proceeds to stock up on anything that I needed to get by with. It took me most of two days and a night to make the journey, and I just hated leaving the ranch without a white man in charge. Humberto was a good hand mind you, salt of the earth for a Mexican, but he hadn't been raised to be able to stand up to anyone who came snooping around trying to get at either my horses or access to my water. If you grazed in North Barlow county, you did it on Gardner land, and you paid hard money for that privilege. Humberto was my main Mexican hand, but he had three brothers and a cousin who were all good with the horses, and who knew how to scout around all of my land. All of them had women that came up and stayed with them for awhile, before heading back down to Old Mexico. It seemed like there were about seven of these women, the visitors I always referred to them as, and I could never figure out which ones belonged to which brother, or to Lupe, the cousin. Supposedly the Martinez brothers owned a spread in old Mexico that was far better than the ranch where they lived year around, and where they made their living. Sometimes I grew tired of listening to them telling me about how much better their hacienda was than the small ranch cabin that I lived in. They lived in my covered corral with the horses, winter and summer, pissing on the cactus, and taking care of their other business out behind the rocks near the cliffs. Living alone doesn't make you friendly. There aren't that many opportunities to polish your social skills where I live either. That's why I was so surprised to see a motor car slowly making it's way up the trail towards my ranch. It was loud and there was a trail of smoke belching from it's backside, and I could make out at least two people in the front. I didn't recognize either of them, so I walked back inside and strapped on the rig for daddy's .44-40, spinning the cylinder just to be certain that no one had tampered with it since the last time I had needed to check. Satisfied that everything was like it was supposed to be, I stepped back out to greet my visitors. That infernal machine came to a stop way too close to my front porch, and then made as much of a clatter as I'd ever heard when the man who had been running it decided to shut it down. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Joshua Gardner, sir?" The man who stepped from the right side of the motor car was shading his eyes from the bright sun as he approached my front porch. He was fifty, or thereabouts, and had long side whiskers tinged with gray and brown hairs, and was dressed just like one of those bankers that daddy had always warned me against. Bloodsuckers, he always called them, trying every way that they could think of to part a man from his property. There was a long list of people that my daddy never trusted, and bankers had a prominent position on that list. "I'm Jay Gardner, mister, and that's all I'll answer to. My mama called me Joshua, but I don't let nobody else call me by that name. State your business with me if you have some." "Mr. Gardner, I'm Franklin Lyons, late of Memphis, Tennessee, and I've stopped by this morning in order that I might introduce myself to you as being your new neighbor. I recently purchased the Denby Ranch from Cotton Gainey over at the Midfield Bank. He suggested that I come by to make your acquaintance at my earliest opportunity. I'm having a fine herd of cattle driven here from Temple, Texas, but there seems to be some dispute about the openness of the grazing range around these parts." "No sir, no dispute that I'm aware of. Whole range is free, right up to my property line." "I'm given to understand, Mr. Gardner, that all of the water in this valley has been bottled up with a dam created by your family. That pretty much precludes access by those of your neighbors who happen to live down range from your land." "No sir, that isn't quite accurate. People have been known to drill successfully for water. Might be a little bit alkaline, but it's potable, and sufficient, except for having a rather unpleasant taste. Indians all drink it, and have for years." "I believe you are deliberately being obtuse young sir. I cannot profitably graze fifteen hundred head of cattle from the output of an alkali well head, even if I knew where to drill for one." "I disbelieve that to be any concern of mine. It was pleasureful to make your acquaintance sir. If I may, I'll kindly take my leave of you, as I have much that remains undone, and which requires my prompt attentions. Good day to you sir." "I am not, by my nature, a litigious man Mr. Gardner, but I do know somewhat of the water use laws controlling these situations, and I have little doubt that I'd prevail in a court of law." "Mr. Gainey didn't make mention to you of the other non litigious men who went and tried the same dang thing over the past fifty years or more? It sure seems like he would have, since his daddy was one of those men who tried that very thing." "Am I to understand from you sir, that the matter has already been taken to court, and that your family prevailed?" "At least eight times that I'm aware of. That water doesn't originate or conclude anywhere other than on Gardner ranch land. It is a natural aquifer that is being fed and constantly restored by natural means. I do hope that Mr. Gainey did mention to you that I won't entertain grazing any animal owned by someone who has attempted to contest the water rights that I have assumed through inheritance." "Mr. Gardner, I have fifteen hundred head of prime cattle being driven here. One way or another sir, I will see them prosper on my land." "Well, since we're neighbors Mr. Lyons, I think I'm obligated to fill you in on recent history in these parts. Clay Denby came here with ninety head of longhorn cattle that he'd thought sufficient to seed his ranch. He didn't have the two hundred and seventy dollars that it would have taken to water his herd from my water rights for a year. It turned out that all of his longhorns died off within three weeks of their arrival, either dead of thirst on the open range, or shot for trespassing on Gardner land. I sincerely hope that I don't have a similar tale to tell about your fine herd when my next new neighbor comes calling to introduce himself." "Are you suggesting that I'm going to be forced to pay three dollars per head to water my own cattle?" "Only if you want them to stay alive. Now sir, if you'll please excuse me." I watched them as they pushed their motor car backwards and then managed to get it turned around so that they could head it back towards the Denby Ranch. If one of my horses couldn't back up on it's own, I'd be forced to put it down. I didn't think that those motor cars were much more than a passing fancy for the rich nabobs who couldn't sit a horse anymore. I went out and saddled up a horse and rode off looking for one of my Mexicans. That was one of the good things about having Mexican hands, if you found one, they could round up the rest for you real quickly. Being part Indian, I could always read sign and track them myself pretty quickly. Besides, I knew that Humberto was over in the back corral, breaking a couple of young colts. I wanted all of the hands to start keeping a lookout over at the Denby Ranch, just so that I'd know when those new cattle made it here. I didn't think that Mr. Lyons was the sort who'd just give it up and turn tail and light on out at the first sign of a problem. Not for the first time was I happy that I owned and controlled all of the high ground in the area. While I was presently a little short on the people that would fire rifles on my behalf, I sure knew where to get a few in a hurry if I developed the need for them. It was another week before the cattle belonging to Mr. Lyons made their way into the valley. I'd never seen so many animals all in one place before. Even if I could come to an understanding with the owner of that large herd, I doubted that all of the existing flumes could carry sufficient water down to the open range water basins that we had set up for grazing herds. At least half the herd would need to graze on Gardner land until more flumes could be constructed. I worried about how much it was going to cost me in labor to get some more built. I saddled up my best looking stallion early the next morning, using my daddy's fancy Mexican saddle with all the silver flourishes inlaid throughout the leather. The stirrups alone were worth a month's wages for all of my hands. I had cleaned up some too, knowing that I could afford to waste as much water as I wanted to. It had been my daddy's belief that rich men always needed pretty women around them so that people would know how rich and important they were. I didn't know for sure that Mr. Lyons had brought some, but I didn't want to go down there looking like I was riding in to beg for my supper either. I rode up to the Denby ranch sometime after nine in the morning. They had two of those motor cars sitting in front of the ranch house, and they had a whole crew of men busy putting up fence to keep their cattle penned in. It looked like they had split them all up into groups of one hundred or so, and there were cattle surrounding the whole ranch. I pulled up my horse in front of the house and waited for someone to come out to greet me. It didn't take long for a woman to step out on the porch and ask me my business. "I'm Jay Gardner, Miss Lyons, I came by to see your father, first, to make sure you are all settling in okay, and second, to find out if he's decided to contract with me for the watering of his herd. That sure is one impressive herd of cattle too. The most this part of the County has ever seen I'd bet." "My husband is not here Mr. Gardner. He's driving to the County seat in order to inquire about temporary injunctive relief against your wholly unreasonable demands concerning what should be public water rights." I'm sorry Mrs. Lyons, the sun must be playing tricks with my eyes. I was coming over today to let your husband know that I can only accommodate about eight hundred head at my existing water basins. I was also going to offer to water the herd for a dollar fifty a head for the coming six months while we complete our longer term negotiating. When he gets back here, assuming that my Uncle Charlie denies his petition, would you please have him come see me before these fine animals find themselves in dire straits from a lack of clean water. I can see them drinking from the standing rain puddles now, but the rains are about done in these parts for the next eight or nine months. It would be best if we can come to some accommodation before they suffer irreparable harm." "I'll give my husband your message Mr. Gardner. Is the circuit judge truly your uncle?" "Yes, ma'am, he sure is. My daddy's little brother, for a fact. I doubt that he'll actually deny the petition though. He'll probably just recuse himself and ask your husband to seek redress in another court with proper legal standing." "Where might such a court be found Mr. Gardner?" "Nearest one would be in the state capital Mrs. Lyons, but they frown on petitions involving strongly settled precedent. The Gardner water rights have already been upheld all the way up to the state supreme court. I tried to tell your husband that, but he's a man very sure in his convictions." "Will you really allow our cattle to perish?" "No Ma'am. Not unless Mr. Lyons decides not to pay me for my property. I have more than ten thousand pages of documents attesting to the fact that all of the water to be found on Gardner land is my undisputed legal property. I'm not being unreasonable with the price I'm asking of him. If he does decide to accept my offer, I'm looking at having to spend many times the money he'll be paying me this year just to upgrade my delivery system. From where I'm sitting Mrs. Lyons, it appears to me that I'm being pretty neighborly." "Thank you for for stopping by Mr. Gardner. I'd offer you a nice glass of cold lemonade, but I'm afraid that we can't spare the water for it." "Don't you trouble yourself none about that Mrs. Lyons. This morning, while I was enjoying my bath, I'm afraid I made something of a glutton of myself by drinking down at least a quart of the wonderful cold tea that my foreman's wife made for me. She keeps it in a clay pot that she submerges in the basin where we store our water for the ranch house and the main corral. My horses need two gallons a day each, just for drinking, and my Mexicans like to sponge them down everyday, right after working with them. Gardner horses are justly famous for being cleaner than the majority of the people who live in this half of the County. You have yourself a nice day Mrs. Lyons." If Mrs. Lyons was anymore than twenty years old, I was a monkey's uncle. While she might not be considered a beauty, she was a handsome woman and looked to be in excellent health. In my estimation, Mr. Lyons had moved up a couple of notches. If he had three motor cars, which it appeared that he did, he must certainly be a man of some importance. Having a wife that looked younger than his daughter might have, that alone spoke of money, power and unbridled hubris. Such a man wasn't going to be easily turned away from getting whatever he wanted or needed. I was going to have to fight to preserve my water rights from his attempt at wresting them from me. It was time that I went and paid a visit to my mother's side of the family. I knew that there were a hundred reservation Indians that would willingly risk their lives in order to gain possession of a good repeating rifle and a box of ammunition. I had what they would be seeking as payment, but I was hoping to avoid any war of attrition. I figured eight Indians, well armed, and living among the rocks that guarded all access to my water, would be sufficient to safeguard my interests from anything short of an army. My biggest problem in recruiting them would be in convincing them that they needn't worry about being paid off with Gardner's fever once they had completed their end of the bargain. My grandfather had not been an easy neighbor to the Apache's before they allowed themselves to be pent up on the reservation. Likewise, my father had been somewhat hard on them as well. When my mother ran off with my father, she was disowned by all of the members of her band. I had the guns though, and, though it was highly illegal to do so, I was willing to make them available to the Indians should the need arise. Back at the Denby ranch, Drucilla Lyons was sitting out in the shaded part of the porch, wondering whether Jay Gardner could be talked into allowing her to be treated as well as one of his horses. Right about now she'd love to be sponged down by one of his Mexicans. In Memphis, after a busy weekend at Madame Harriet's House of Pleasure, all of the girls were sponged down out in the gardens as soon as the last customer had been sent away. While this sponging was taking place, the maids would be busy putting freshly cleaned linens on all of their beds. Often, those sponge baths were the sensual highlight of her week. Some of the other girls were very proficient at using their sponges to do much more than just clean. She wished fervently that she had never let Franklin talk her into leaving Madame Harriet's for this so called life of respectability. At least in Memphis she hadn't lacked for any of life's simple basics, such as a plentiful supply of water. Already she missed the companionship that she had enjoyed, and all of the entertainment that a sporting life will bring. The prospect of wasting all of her remaining youth on her aging husband was becoming increasingly bleak in her mind, and she needed to start to look into some possibilities of changing the prospects for her immediate future. She hadn't even come close to having an orgasm since she had left Madame Harriet's. ------- Chapter 2 It was early the following morning when I stood outside the main corral having myself a little conversation with Humberto. I had already discussed some of my worries about Franklin Lyons with my main Mexican hand, telling him that it appeared to me that there might be trouble heading our way. To my way of thinking, it wasn't a question about whether Lyons would make an attempt to get water for his herd. The only question I had was whether he'd decide to pay for that watering, or he'd try to just take the water from me, by force of arms, and without making any payment. "Senor Yay, eef eet comes to the fight, we will wish you muchas buena suerte, and go to our rancho until you send word for us to regressa, how do you say eet, come back?" "How many of those longhorns of Denby's are you and your brothers hiding over in that mesquite draw down past my second corral Humberto?" "Senor Yay, you say that we rustle?" "Humberto, last time I checked there were seven of those Denby strays that maybe just happened to wander up and walk into that little holding pen in the draw that you boys made that first day when you noticed those cattle watering themselves up by the spring. Rustling is not a term that I'd go throwing around carelessly. Certainly not to my own hands. Thing is though, they're on Gardner land, eating Gardner grass and drinking Gardner water, none of which, anybody has ever offered to pay me for. So, how many strays did you boys rescue for me?" Humberto tried to think of what his options might be. He didn't see any way out of his predicament, none at least that allowed him to keep his job, his honor and his cattle. He wondered why he was always surprised that the Patron knew everything that happened on this barren and rocky hilltop. This wasn't the first time that he and his family had been caught trying to pull a fast one on Senor Yay. Seven steers though, that would be a lot for them to simply walk away from. He looked down and noticed for the first time that the rawhide hammer guard on the Patron's pistola had been slipped off. He finally made his decision. "I will ride there immediamente Patron, to look weeth my own ojos for some strays. Eef I find them, I weel breeng them back to thees corral." "Well don't take all day about it, because I'm gonna send em over to the reservation today. I need to have myself a little jawboning session with Miguelito and his band. If what I heard is true, he'll sure appreciate some meat that isn't already dead and spoiled before it gets to his encampment. I need Lupe and Gerardo to help me lead them there. You might not have the stomach for a fight Humberto, but I sure don't plan on allowing anybody to water their cattle for free, not with my water at least. I don't have too much use for any man that won't stand by his employer when the chips are already down and the hand's been dealt. If you hightail it on me now, don't expect me to take you back on after it's all settled." It took them another two hours, probably because they were wondering if it would be worth it to try to pick me off and then drive the cattle down to Old Mexico. Finally I heard them coming back up through the trail that led out to the back corral. Those longhorns didn't look very meaty, but there wasn't that much natural feed growing between the rocks and the cactus. They'd certainly do nicely for what I had planned. Lupe and Gerardo drove the small herd ahead of me and I let them get a little ways ahead while I maintained close eye contact with Humberto. If any of them had the nerve to try something, it was Humberto. He was their natural leader. One of the first things I'd noticed about all the women that I called the visitors, was that they somehow always wound up sleeping in the stall where Humberto kept his bedroll, at least for part of their stay anyway. Humberto must have decided to just let it go though, because he watched until his brothers were a couple hundred feet down the pass before he turned aside and made his way back to the corral. He was a top hand, and I knew that he'd make sure that all of the chores with the horses got taken care of, even though he was going to be short by two of his workers for half the day or more. I rode drag all the way down the pass, watching carefully because there were two other Martinez brothers that I hadn't seen yet. Jesus and Domingo were not the type to try anything with me, but it never hurt to be careful. If they did try to do anything, I'd be giving them a real bad fever for their troubles. We had always gotten along really well in the past, mainly because they knew that I wasn't someone who would consider turning the other cheek. They had tried me with their little thieving things, several times in fact, just hoping to figure out what they could and couldn't get away with, but I kept them in line when it came to anything that was important to me. We got over to the reservation without any problems, but I could plainly see that the Indians were in pretty desperate straits. The Indian agent in these parts was a political appointee, and he stayed back at the County seat with his own family, living in a nice house and eating fine food. As I rode through the reservation, I was really glad that my mother had made her decision to leave this place to take her chances with my daddy. It hadn't worked out that good for her, but I was sure a damn sight better off than I'd have been if I'd been born a reservation Indian. Some people figured I was a half breed, but I didn't think of myself that way. I was a Gardner. I pulled Gerardo and Lupe up in front of Miguelito's shack. He was the head man on the reservation, and his little tar paper shack was nicer than most, but it still wasn't fit to house chickens in. Miguelito came outside after he had heard the commotion going on around him. His people were hungry, and yet he was still a proud man. He stayed in his shack most of the time so that he wouldn't have to see their desperation and pain. I saw him eyeing the longhorns, and being part Indian myself, I could tell he was wondering how he could somehow steal one of them without anybody being the wiser. That's what I'd have been thinking if I was in his place anyways. He was at least sixty years old, but not at all stooped with age or with the burden of watching over a defeated people. In his youth he had made numerous raids over into old Mexico, and had known his share of running and fighting. He just stood there, right outside his door, waiting for one of us to tell him what was going on. "Miguelito, I am Jay Gardner. I heard that your people were feeling the pinch a little, so I rounded up a few strays for you to add to your stew pots. I wish that it could be more because it pains me to learn that my mother's people are in distress." "Bullshit! What do you want from us?" That's another thing. Miguelito didn't have the political savvy to refrain from speaking his mind on things. If he had been willing to go along more with things, he and his people would have done better. Here I was making a generous, and wholly unexpected, contribution to his people's welfare, and he couldn't even pretend to be grateful or that he even thought for one minute that I was acting out of my honest concern. I could tell by the way old Miguelito was watching Gerardo and Lupe that he was afraid that they might try to do him harm. "I'm hurt by your mistrust. I admit that I haven't been as careful about taking an interest in the welfare of my reservation family as I might have been, but there's no call for you to doubt my good intentions. I came by with these cattle only because I had heard that you had been given the short end of the stick by the Indian agent once again. If I heard wrong, I can just drive this little herd back up to my ranch, and we'll just consider that all of this was a misunderstanding on my part, with no real harm done or meant by it." I gave Lupe the hand signal to turn the cattle back towards where we'd come from. There were perhaps fifteen Indians standing around watching and listening to what was happening. They were looking at a whole lot of satisfying meals being turned around and taken away from them. Not a sound of protest was made, and no one was going to question Miguelito's authority on the reservation. They'd all rather starve to death than show any type of division or turmoil to an outsider. "Your mother was my brother's daughter." That was all he said to me. He turned around and went back inside his shack. I gave Lupe the hold up signal and sat there on my horse, wondering what I should do. "You people have some kind of pen where these cattle won't just run off?" No one said anything, but most of them turned their faces in the same direction. I got the boys to take the cattle in that direction until we ran into a small corral in need of quite a bit of repair if it was going to hold anything that was alive and able to walk. It took Lupe, Gerardo and I a couple of hours before we were satisfied that the cattle would stay put when we left them. We left right after we were finished. No one said anything else to us. It left me with something of a warm feeling, that silence. It reminded me a lot of how my mother had been when she wasn't drinking. I hadn't thought about her that much in a long time. That night, while I was sitting out on my porch, Humberto and the rest of my hands came by to be paid out. Humberto said that they had all discussed things, and they didn't think that they wanted to get caught up in any kind of a range war. I went in and got them their back pay and picked up my daddy's shot gun too. I followed them out to the bunk house/corral, and watched them just to make sure that they only took their own things when they cleared out. I wasn't that worried about the horses. Without daily work outs and training, they'd get a little bit raunchy, but a top hand would get them straightened out again pretty quick. What did worry me was that I was going to be in no position to make Franklin Lyons pay me for the watering of his herd. I slept light for the next couple of nights, making sure that my Mexicans didn't double back and try to take some of my horses down to old Mexico with them. I needed to find somebody to sit on my property for a spell, long enough to allow me to run over to see my Uncle Charlie, to get some advice from him about where to find me some new Mexicans. Another couple of days had passed when I woke up to find Miguelito sitting out on my porch near the steps. I hadn't heard him at all, so I was pretty surprised when I found him sitting there as bold as original sin. "Looks like those Mexicans lit out on you boy. I thought I might come up just to make sure that you're still alive, you being my nephew and all." Miguelito had gotten some schooling as a youngster, and could talk good English when he was of a mind to. I'd also heard some people say that he was a breed just like I was. If that was true, he sure favored his Indian side of the blanket. I was dark, but I looked like my daddy's people, except that my cheekbones were set a little bit high. "I told them that trouble was coming, and they don't have the stomach for a fight." "And you do?" He was looking at me in a way that told me that he already thought he knew the answer to that question. "You don't see me giving up my birthright to go living lower than a damn dog on a piece of dirt that even the dogs couldn't survive on. I was born here, and I'll die here just like my daddy, his daddy and the daddy before him. Gardner's don't run away from trouble." "Why'd you really bring us those cattle boy? What were you after from us? I can't figure that out, and it's keeping me awake and nervous every night." He said it casual like, but I could see that he really wanted a straight answer from me. If I went ahead and told him the truth, he'd know that he'd been right all along. If I lied, he'd probably know the truth anyway. That's the problem with Indians. They know the truth about what people are doing to them, and that just makes the people madder at them, and makes them want to treat them even worse. You can shame an Indian, enough so that he'll stop screwing another Indian, but you can't shame a white man enough to get him to stop doing something that helps him or makes him money, no matter how much it hurts an Indian. "I needed help keeping a rich man away from using my water without paying me for it. I figured that I could get some of your young men to come up here and help me keep them from just up and taking what they need." "You figured that we'd send our young braves off of the reservation to get killed or sent to jail just so we could help you out with a money problem? You thought that your seven skinny cattle would be enough to pay us for that?" "Hell no! The cattle were just a way to get my foot inside your tee-pee. I have repeating rifles and ammunition for the braves. I figured that they could use them to hunt game afterwards and maybe get some decent food to eat instead of those barrels of spoiled meat that you've been getting." "Tee-pee? You think it's still the 1870's boy? This is 1911, and nobody still lives in a tee-pee anymore. I can get you the help you need, but it's going to take a lot more than a few guns. How many men did you figure you'd need to hold those people out of your water?" "I figure eight would do it easy. We have the high ground and we've got all the good cover. They'd have to be crazy with anything less than an army to come against us." "That's the same thing Geronimo said to my grandfather, your great great grandfather. Look where we all are now." "I'm not Geronimo, and this is Gardner land, my land. The law says I've got a legal right to keep trespassers off of my property. If you were to lend me the men, what would you require of me?" "Simple boy. Jobs. We've got people who know a damn sight more about handling horses than any of those Mexicans who took off on you. The reason that they come up here looking for work training horses is because our people went down there and stole all of theirs. If a Mexican wants to see a real horse, he has to come North. They love their horses too, and that's why they work so cheap, just so they can be near some horses." "If I hired me some Indians, people around here would be after my hide. Hell you can barely get by with hiring Mexicans anymore." "Tell people that they are Mexicans. Who can tell the difference anyway?" "Well, if I did decide to hire me some of your special "Mexicans" just what would I need to pay them?" "What were you paying your Mexicans?" "Fifteen a month and found. They took off for two or three months every other year, but I never paid them when they were gone. If I did hire me eight of your people, I'd need to start working more horses and I'd need to hire me a white man to take them to towns and sell them." "We'd take a hundred fifty a month, room and board for them, and at least one cow or steer delivered to the reservation every month." "How do I know that any of your people know anything about horses? They wouldn't be any good to me if they didn't know how to work the horses, and train them so a white man could ride them." "Trust me, boy. An Apache is born already knowing more about horses than anyone that you've had up here working for you." "Have any of your great Apache horse trainers ever actually seen a horse that didn't have either a white man or a Mexican up in the saddle? I don't remember seeing any horses the last time I came by to visit with you." "I don't see where you have to worry about any of that boy. You want men who will protect your water supply right now. At the very least the horses won't be worse off than they already are. Since your Mexican hands left you, who have you had working them? By the time your other problem gets settled, you'll know whether or not they can do the job with your horses." "Was my mother really your niece?" "Did you really just bring those cattle by because you heard we might be hungry?" "When can you have my new hands up here taking care of things around the ranch?" "Four of them are working the lower corral right now. I'll send the others up here in the morning. Were you planning on giving me one of those repeating rifles and some ammunition too? You wouldn't have to pay me because I don't like horses, and keep away from them as much as I can. I wouldn't mind doing some shooting for you though." "If I do give you a rifle, can I call you Uncle Mike?" "You can, if I can use you for target practice." "When you bring the rest of my hands up in the morning, I'll have that extra rifle for you." "One last thing boy. I see you're wearing your daddy's old pistol. The last time I saw that gun was the night that your daddy caught Gardner fever. I hope you treat your new hands right, because I heard that sometimes a fever can get contagious." "Are you saying that you helped my father to get his fever?" "Is that any kind of question to be asking your own Uncle boy?" ------- Chapter 3 I offered to let old Miguelito borrow a horse to ride back down to the reservation, but he refused my offer. I told him that I had an extra hundred weight of pinto beans that my Mexicans had gotten me to buy for them but hadn't used up before they lit out. "Can't you do for yourself boy? You trying to give away the food that you don't know how to cook?" "I can cook just fine. I'm boiling up a big stew right now. I just don't care for them pintos much. They give me the bloat something fierce." "What's in your stew? I smelled something in the house there, but I just thought that maybe you were washing out your socks and old bedding." I could tell he was interested, because I'd caught him sniffing at the simmering stew that I had sitting just inside the house, over on top of my big black iron stove, that was standing close by the door. My daddy had bought that stove from a fellow that was pulling up stakes and clearing out some years before, and we'd had to spend three days trying to haul it up the hill on skids with three horses pulling at it. Daddy had been forced to open up the wall by the door just to get it slid inside. He had decided that right by the door would make a fine place to put it too. It was cast iron and weighed probably five hundred pounds or more. It was a wood burner, and wood wasn't something that we had a lot of around here. I liked it mostly because you could heat up a lot of water on top of that stove all at once. In the winter, I could fill a hot bath tub to the top before the first water had cooled down too much. I liked to stay clean, sometimes taking two baths a month during the winter. "I've got meat, vegetables and some spices, and it's been simmering for a couple of days now. Meat's probably pretty chewable by now." I had always been partial to horse meat, more so than cattle, but it was a little tougher than beef. "Why does it smell so rank?" "It's just that you're not used to smelling meat that hasn't been dead for six months, that's all. Plus, it isn't dog meat, which is probably all that you've had fresh since they set you people up down there." "Nothing wrong with dog. Tastes like mule deer, only better. Least wise it does if it's a young dog." "Stew should be ready by tomorrow morning if you'd care to stop by. Once you've tasted it, you'll realize how much you owe me an apology for that comment about my cooking." "You make bread too?" "Got myself a case of hardtack that I picked up in town. Soak it in the stew's gravy and it's almost like bread." "Your mother could bake some good bread. She never taught you how?" "I was seven when she took sick sudden and died." "If you've got flour and some salt and a little yeast, I can make you up some bread. Sweet water makes for good bread. You have lots of sweet water up here, so I could make us some bread for that stew if you wanted." "I just invited you to share a meal with me at breakfast tomorrow. I didn't ask you to move in and set up house keeping with me." "It's going to be hard for us to get along nephew, especially if you keep on thinking that you are funny." "First you insult my cooking, and then you get mad when I don't ask you to move in with me. You sure are a bit sulky for an Indian. Come for some stew in the morning, or don't, it's all the same to me. If you want to try your hand at making some bread, I've got some preserves laid by that my Aunt Persis put up. It's strawberry flavored, and it would go good on some fresh bread. If you want to get along with me, it would be better to wait and let me invite you, rather than just barging right in. I can't abide pushiness." "I wasn't hungry anyway. You can just keep your damn stew. It smells like horse meat to me, and I'm not partial to anything having to do with horses." "Suit yourself. You want them beans or not?" "Don't have the water to soak them in anyway." "If you want it, you can take all the water you need from up here at my spring. You get water in those government two gallon buckets anyway, right? My water is better, and it's closer too. If you bring a wagon to the bottom of the pass, someone could fill up a lot of buckets pretty quick. You know, for one hundred and fifty dollars, I'd run some pipe down there to the bottom and let you get your water from right down there at the valley floor. Got some pipe already that I was planning to use for something else, but it cost me that much and a little more." "If you run the pipe, you can take it out of the wages for your new hands. Maybe fifty a month. It would be nice to have clean water. That's been a big problem, not having clean fresh water." "All you had to do was ask me, I'd have let you have it." "Everyone has always known that you're a little funny about guarding your water, boy." "I might be funny about sharing my water with strangers, but you Indians aren't strangers to me. My mother always worried about how bad things were down there for you. I guess I might favor her a little in that way. I never thought it was right the way that they penned you in on that miserable land, and left you all to survive as best as you could." "I'll bring the rest of your hands up in the morning. Don't forget my rifle either. You need to think about what them four boys in your lower corral are going to have to eat tonight too. They'll be hungry after working your horses all day." "I'll show them where the larder is. They better be able to make their own damn food though, because I'm not going to cook for them." "Do you think you can give one of them a rifle and a bullet? There's plenty of rabbit running loose up by your spring." "Send one of them up here. I'll get him a rifle and a whole box of bullets. There's also a mess of chickens running loose up here too. You're welcome to grab a couple for yourself and take them with you on your way back to the reservation. Don't mess with my eggs though, there's barely enough already." "Is that stew made from horse meat or not?" "That's for me to know. I don't think you've ever tasted well cooked horse before. Once you did, you'd probably turn up your nose the next time someone offered you dog to eat. I guarantee you that whatever is in that stew pot, it will still taste better than what you are used to." "That's not something that would be too hard to do. We've already finished off one of those steers that you gave us. That was the first good meat we've seen for awhile. I appreciate that you still left them for us, even after I was rude to you." He was starting to get on my nerves with all his sweet talking. I knew that he'd shamed me into leaving his people those cattle. He knew that he'd had to swallow hard on his pride before he could bring himself to telling me that my mother was related to him. There wasn't any need to say anything more about it. If those cattle had helped ease their misery some, the money from having eight reservation Indians with jobs and food to eat would ease things a whole lot more. I also knew that I'd get started in on running that pipe down to the bottom of the pass as soon as I could after Miguelito left. I felt good that his people, our people, would soon have better water to drink and cook with. I knew that I could find a fat steer every month for a reasonable price too. Probably for half the cost that it would be if an Indian was the one buying it. "The sooner you light on out of here, the sooner we all can start working on getting things done. I can't be spending my whole morning standing here and listening to you prattle on like some old squaw. Why don't you get on down the hill so that I can take care of the things I need to do?" "Don't forget those guns and the bullets too. We'll all be expecting them come morning." I hope he didn't think that I was stupid enough to let him see where I had hid my guns? Finally, he started off towards the back of my ranch house. I heard some chickens squawking, and then heard Miguelito running around cussing up a blue streak. It wasn't long before I heard a screech of triumph out of him and knew that at least one of my chickens had breathed her last. There was another little flurry soon after, and then I heard another one when it bit the dust. Old Miguelito had to be pretty spry to have caught his breath after running down that first chicken, to have been ready so quick to get himself another. It was well past noon and I was taking a break after spending all morning digging up a case of rifles and another filled with ammunition. My daddy had found himself a whole wagon of Army stuff out about thirty miles or more from our ranch. The two Army boys who were driving that team and wagon had tipped it over and fallen, along with their wagon and the team, off of a too narrow part way up on a steep hillside road. By the time my daddy found them, both men were dead and only one of the horses was still alive. He'd had to put the horse down too, after seeing that it had a badly broken leg. Among some other supplies on that busted up wagon, there were three cases of repeating rifles, and fifteen cases of bullets. It took daddy a long time, mostly because he trusted no one else to help him, but he managed to get all that was of any real value up to our ranch. I was about fifteen years old at the time, and he had made me dig all of the holes to bury things in. It was hard digging too, but I managed it. That was about six years before, and we hadn't found a use for any of that stuff since then. I hoped that those rifles were still good. There were fifteen rifles in a case, and two thousand bullets in each of the ammunition cases. I had opened up one of the bullet cases, and it all looked good to me. No signs of corrosion or anything. The rifles all needed to be cleaned up some and oiled, but they looked to be in pretty good shape too. I had wanted to get some of that pipe carried out and start laying it, but before I could get started on doing that, I heard one of those motor cars as it strained to try and make it up the trail to my ranch. I figured it was Mr. Lyons, but I figured it wrong. When the motor car had stopped, and the engine was turned off, it was Mrs. Lyons who opened the door and climbed down from that noisy and smelly contraption. She had driven up there all by her lonesome. "Mr. Gardner. It's a pleasure to see you again. I had no idea that you lived so high up here. I've been driving for more than an hour to get here." "Hello Mrs. Lyons. I'm surprised to see you all the way out here, and especially all alone. This is very rugged country for a woman to be out in all by herself. There's Mexicans and Indians that would just love to get their hands on someone like you. There's some white men that would like the same, let me tell you. Is there something wrong down at the Denby place?" "Wrong? I don't think so Mr. Gardner. Actually my husband was able to secure another, cheaper, source of water. He's having it brought in daily in large wooden barrels. The labor is considerable, but the cattle seem to be faring quite well drinking from the troughs that we've had built. I came by to take you up on your offer of a nice refreshing bath in clean fresh water. I simply can't put it off another day. I've been thinking about bathing, really bathing, ever since you visited the ranch. I'm tired of cleaning up with a damp towel every night. Please lead me to your tub." "You'll have to forgive me Mrs. Lyons, but I don't recall offering you any such thing. I merely mentioned that we are blessed with a surfeit of fresh water. I recall discussing my Mexicans sponging down the horses too, but I'm certain that we didn't discuss any bathing, certainly not in regards to you." "Mr. Gardner, please don't tell me that you'd stand on such a minor point as you not having explicitly invited me to have a bath. You admit talking about all that lovely water that you have hoarded up in these hills. What harm if I simply avail myself of some of it today? You simply must allow it sir. I cannot return to the ranch without having a nice refreshing and cleansing bath. Name your price Mr. Gardner." "I'm so sorry for the misunderstanding ma'am. I just don't sell water by the tub full. Perhaps if you had come accompanied by your husband, it is possible that something might have been worked out. I'm afraid that I have no bathing facilities here for ladies." "It is quite possible that I haven't made myself clear enough here Mr. Gardner. Please allow me to remedy that. I wasn't offering to pay you in cash for your bath tub full of clean water. I had in mind a more basic exchange of services. Surely there must be something that I possess that you would like access to in return for me being allowed to come up here from time to time in order to enjoy a refreshing bath?" As she spoke, she smoothed the material that covered her bodice. This movement practically exposed her breasts to my eyes. Of course, I turned my head away, trying to be a gentleman. "Mr. Gardner, I can see I'm being too subtle with you. I'm offering to allow you to have the full use of my body, in a carnal sense, in return for you allowing me to bathe afterwards. Doesn't that seem like a fair exchange to you?" "Does Mr. Lyons know that you're up here making me this kind of an offer?" I had driven some horses over to the County seat once when my daddy was still alive. My Uncle Charlie had taken me over to a booze joint that had a sporting woman working in one of the rooms above the bar. For three silver dollars and the promise of a favorable court ruling about that bar's business hours, my uncle had bought me a whole evening's worth of her attentions. I had been favorably impressed with the attentions that this woman had given me, but she was a lot older, maybe thirty or so, and hadn't been that pretty, I'd bet, even when she was younger. She did some things to me that I'd really enjoyed though, including taking me into her mouth once, but I'd never really wanted to go back and have those experiences repeated. When I felt the need to spend my seed, I had a hand that served for that purpose well enough, and it didn't cost me money or anything else. "Mr. Gardner, this isn't the type of exchange that one discusses with one's spouse. You needn't worry that anything will be harmed or worn out by your activities concerning me. Mr. Lyons will not miss anything that you enjoy, please believe that. It is an asset that never needs replenishment. I also must modestly confess to having excellent skills to offer you in this particular regard. At least, that is what I've often been assured of." "I've spent my entire life up here on this hilltop ma'am. I might be more of a rustic than you had previously imagined. Am I correct that you are offering to let me have my way with you right now if I allow you to take a bath immediately after?" "Mr. Gardner, you just tell me that I'm welcome to take a nice bath in a clean tub, and I'll give you such a ride that I promise you'll walk with a limp for a week after." "Mrs. Lyons, I'm afraid that it will take me a little time to make my tub ready for your use. I haven't had too many guests that have required it's use. I'm shamed to admit it, but I don't usually hold to a high enough personal standard for cleanliness. When my mother still lived, she kept the bath in a pristine condition. She certainly enjoyed a nice tub herself." "Let's get inside out of this heat Mr. Gardner. You get to working on the tub and I'll start making myself more available for your use. I may be able to enjoy both sides of this bargain with you. It has been awhile since I've had a well set up young man paying me ardent attention." We walked inside the ranch house and she looked around at the interior with undisguised disdain. The tub was made of first quality tin, and stood at least four feet tall. It was easily large enough to hold two full grown people at the same time. I tried cleaning it down, rubbing away at the filmy soap scum that caked along the sides. It took me more than fifteen minutes, but during that entire time, Mrs. Lyons was slowly undressing herself as I worked. I never knew that a woman could wear so many clothes all at the same time. When she had removed the last of her clothing, I was struck dumb by the sight of her. She was a true and absolute beauty. There were no unsightly wrinkles or little pockets of fat on her body. I was staring at perfection. Her skin was so fair and white, it was obvious that before me was a woman in the absolute prime of her life. My poor swollen dick was trying to rise up and salute her. I busied myself even further, remembering a coarse bristle brush that my mother had used when washing our clothes. I had water heating on the stove and used some of it to make that tub sparkle with cleanliness. I didn't stop until I was sure that it would be clean enough to suit anyone's standards. "Very nice Mr. Gardner. Let's get it all filled up with water. I prefer tepid rather than hot. Just warm enough so that I won't be chilled. I've brought along several of my fragrant bath oils myself, so don't be concerned about that." She had a small thatch of dark hair, the strands of each were delicate almost, as they swirled and surrounded her womanhood. Her breasts were not as big as that girl in the bar's had been, but they didn't droop down like the other girl's had either. She let me fill up the tub, having me add just enough of the heated water to take off the slight chill that our water had from sheltering out of direct sun light. When I had gotten it just the way she liked it, she took me by the hand and led me over to the bed on the far side of the room. In warm weather I generally just slept on top of the covers. She took a close look at those covers, and then pulled all of them clean off of the bed and onto the floor. "Do you have any clean linens?" I ran over to this large chest that my mother had used to safeguard things that she hadn't wanted spoiled. Inside was a set of white linens that my mother had inherited from my grandmother's days. It was old and I didn't know whether it would hold together for what she had in mind for us. "Get undressed Mr. Gardner. You'll find that it is much more enjoyable that way." I shucked out of my clothes as quickly as I could. My pole was at full mast, impressing me at least. I didn't spend that much time comparing those things. My daddy had been huge, but I didn't think mine was anything to be ashamed of either. I turned back towards her and let her get a first look at what she'd soon be trying to tame. She didn't act scared, but she didn't look disappointed either. "Bath towels and wash cloths Mr. Gardner." I went and got her the only two clean towels that I had. I had a couple of pieces of old towels that we'd had to cut up after they got torn and started unraveling too badly. She walked over to the tub and dipped one of the cloths into it and then wrung it out. she walked over to me and gently pushed me onto the bed. She bent over and then knelt down in front of me and started handling my rigid pole. She cleaned it off with the damp towel and then she took me into her mouth. Maybe it sounds like she did the same thing that the other woman did in that room above the bar that time. That just isn't true. What Mrs. Lyons did was so much better, and a hundred times more exciting. I was worried that I was going to have an accident, but Mrs. Lyons definitely knew what she was about. She had me lie back, facing up at her, and then she straddled my middle with her legs. It took her a long minute to push and rub my dick over and through her patch. She was thrusting her hips while she rubbed herself with my dick. I heard her mumbling something that sounded like "So good," or "Oh good", just before she raised herself up and sat herself down really hard on my dick. At first it was bent to the side a little bit, and it started to feel like she was going to hurt me, but then it slid up inside of her and she kept working away at it, trying to make it go all the way up inside her. It finally disappeared completely, and I could feel a warm wetness on my hairs as she settled down on my middle. I had already shot off in her, almost as soon as the first part of me went up inside her. It had been a while since the last time I'd had to take myself in hand, and this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I didn't lose any of my rigidity, and she didn't stop or even slow down. She rode me for the next fifteen minutes. I just laid there and let her do what she wanted to me. I remember wondering if this had ever happened to anyone else, this feeling of perfect happiness and contentment. I believe that I would have been willing to die right at that moment, satisfied that my life was now complete. That was when she raised herself up on her hands which were both pressed into my side and she started to canter, and then went into a full gallop. I got to a point where the sensations were all too jumbled together for me to be able to separate any one thing and understand it. She started moving around on top of me in an uneven and jerky fashion, and then, I felt her insides clenching me so tightly that I was trapped inside her. She started screaming and went into an even faster hip movement that totally forced me to empty everything I had into her. I'd never had such a spend before. It came from my toes and behind my eyes, from every part of my body. It left me weaker than a baby kitten, totally unable to even think about getting up again. I drifted off into a little sleep or something. When I came back to my senses, I heard her singing softly in the tub. I turned my head and looked over at her as she enjoyed herself in my bath. "Mr. Gardner, this is the best bath ever. I trust that you'll agree that I fulfilled my end of our bargain?" "Mrs. Lyons. If ever a bargain was fulfilled to my complete satisfaction, it was this one." "What is your Christian name Mr. Gardner? It seems silly for us to be so formal after our recent intimacies. I am Drucilla, but my friends call me Dru." "I am named Joshua, but I only answer to Jay." "Jay would you please be a darling, and come over here and help me scrub my back?" I hadn't thought that I had the strength to do so, but I found it from somewhere, and managed to crawl up out of bed and over to the tub. I scrubbed her and rubbed her with that wet cloth, and enjoyed every single second of doing so. She spent another hour in that tub, just enjoying being surrounded by the water. I spent that hour touching her body wherever she permitted. When she climbed out of the tub and stood there in front of me, I patted her dry with the two towels that I'd gotten out earlier. She spent the next fifteen minutes getting back into all of those clothes. When she was dressed and had fixed her hair back up to her satisfaction, we walked out to her motor car. I turned the hand crank for her, just like she had instructed me, and the motor car started back up with all of it's clatter and smell. I pushed it backwards for her, and she turned it around and set off back down the hilly trail. ------- Chapter 4 I didn't get around to moving any of the water pipe that afternoon like I had planned on doing. It was just coming up on getting dark, and I was sitting quietly outside on my porch, trying to regain some of the strength that Dru had drained from me. I had been resting myself for an hour or more, and was fully absorbed in a quiet contemplation, and, if I'm to be honest, a grateful remembrance too, of that afternoon's unexpected delights. My reverie was broken when I chanced to look up, very suddenly, only to see four Apache boys, just standing there and staring at me from no more than six feet away. I sincerely believe that this ability to sneak up on people might be another reason why Indians have been treated so poorly in this country. It is very difficult for normal folks to get accustomed to looking up and finding a group of totally unexpected people just standing there, right in front of you, or even worse, close behind you, when you didn't hear them and had no idea that they were approaching. This might be even more true if these people are well within range to take your scalp if they were of a mind to. While I've always been somewhat proud of my own calm demeanor, I must confess that the sight of all of them being there, so sudden like, and completely unexpected, well it did cause me a moment's pause. When the hog leg that I had strapped to my leg, got somehow jammed against my finger, and had the hammer pulled and tripped accidentally, as I jumped sprightly to my feet, I'm not sure who got more excited, me or the other three of them that hadn't wet themselves. I believe that it was a safe assumption that the one who did void his bladder was obviously more excited than all of the rest of us. This was not as auspicious a first meeting with some of my new hands as I might have hoped for. "Lord preserve me! What were you boys thinking with to try sneaking up on a fella like that? I'm glad that I was able to stop myself in time from blowing all of your fool heads right off." "Skittish ain't ya?" This was from the taller of the four. He looked about my height, but skinnier than me, and he had hair down past his shoulders. He was about my age at that time, twenty one or so. "Don't tell me that you boys are all finished up after only half a day of work time? Well, I guess it will take you awhile before you settle in and learn how to do a whole day's work. We'll just pretend that it's Sunday today, and that you're only supposed to work a half day. Which one of you is in charge? I like to only have to deal with the top hand. Otherwise I don't get my own stuff done. What's your name boy?" I was pointing at the one who had spoken to me earlier. "Danny Gomez, what's yours?" He was a bold one all right. He put me a little bit in mind of Humberto. It seemed like both he and Humberto thought they were some little bit better than the rest of us. I'd never liked that in my Mexicans, and I sure wouldn't like it from any Indian. "Gomez huh? That's a good touch coming up with a Mexican name like that. Look here Danny, I'm of a mind to appoint you as the temporary top hand here. Pay is the same, of course, but you get to set up all the work duties and the living assignments. If you do a good job, we could maybe make it a permanent thing. Might come in handy some day, telling someone that you were the top hand out on the Gardner Ranch. That's me, by the way, Jay Gardner. You can call me Mr. Gardner, at least until we get more comfortable with each other." "Miguelito said you were going to feed us, give us all a gun and some bullets, and some blankets for when we sleep in your stable." "Did you check there in the corral to see if there aren't some saddle blankets that you can use? I've got a gun for each of you, and I'll give you each a box of bullets, but don't be firing them all up for foolishness, because they're expensive to replace, and it will come out of your pay." "We're hungry. What about some food?" "You come with me. The rest of you go over to the main corral. Tell that boy who pissed himself to get washed up before he smells up one of my stalls in there. Horses aren't partial to any piss smell that isn't their own." I turned and went inside, not bothering to make sure that my new top hand was following. He could either follow or he could go hungry. It was all the same to me. He followed. I noticed him looking at that case of rifles that I'd drug in earlier. He was also sniffing at the air in the room. I think it probably still smelled of Dru and I, but he was damn impolite to go carrying on about it like he did. He was also looking at the big pot of stew that I had simmering on my stove. He didn't say anything, so I started liking him again. I appreciated quiet people more than most. I took him into the back of the house and showed him where I kept all of the food supplies. Right off, first thing, he grabbed for some beans and some fat back that I had left out. He got himself some flour, and then he looked at me when he put his eyes on my little bag of coffee beans. "Okay to get some of this coffee?" "You'll have to boil it in a pan, I've only got the one pot and that stays right here with me." "You got a grinder?" "You can use mine, but it stays here too. You like salt? It's in that bag behind you. Take some if you want. I got some of that rice if you like to eat Mexican. There's tomatoes and onions growing out back behind the ranch house. Don't mess with more than one of my eggs, and leave all of my chickens alone unless I say that you can have one." He grabbed a few chiles and spices, and then looked around at some of my other things, but I guess he decided that he had enough to do him for right then. As he started back outside, he said that he'd send one of the other hands up for the four rifles and the four boxes of bullets. He paused at my door and took a slow and careful look at my stew simmering there so nicely. "I think them socks of yours are just about ready to be hung up to dry." I knew that he and I were going to have our problems, and I wondered if he was maybe kin to Miguelito. After he left, I set four rifles and the ammo outside on my porch. I had a canvas bag with gun cleaning materials and oil, and I set it down next to the rifles. Now that it was looking like I wouldn't be making lots of money from selling water for the Lyons herd, and also seeming like I wouldn't be needing my well armed Indian army to protect my water rights from intruders, I was left wondering what the hell I needed with a whole passel of wild and hungry reservation Apache's. I had enough money put away that I could see whether this new situation would work out or not though, besides, I'd really been paying all of my Mexican hands thirty dollars a month each plus their found. All it was really costing me extra was whatever them extra three hands would be eating. I went to sleep that night and had myself some very sweet dreams about Drucilla and I laying in that big tin bathtub, the water right up to our necks, and enjoying ourselves as we were getting each other nice and clean. I had a full blown morning erection when I woke up and started hurrying over for the piss pot that I kept off in the far corner, away from everything else. I had just started using it when I heard a soft and girlish giggle behind me. I sleep in the raw all nights, unless it's just too damn cold for me to do it. It hadn't been cold the night before. I turned to look at who might be giggling at me while I emptied my bladder and saw this girl that looked about fifteen or so. She had some cute little breasts on her, so I knew that she probably wasn't much younger than fifteen. She was an Indian girl, and she was awfully cute too. "Grandpa, he's up, but I don't think he was expecting company for breakfast." She turned back to my stove, and that's when I smelled fresh bread baking in the oven. I finished up what I'd been doing, and then walked past her, walking proud, and as naked as can be, until I got outside on my porch and was able to empty the pot into the slop bucket that I kept out there near the porch. Miguelito was sitting in the chair that I keep out there on my porch, and he didn't say a word as I pushed by him and emptied out my jar. I walked right past him again on my way back inside my house and went over to the bed to get into my clothes. I took my time getting dressed, but, inside, I was fuming with embarrassment. It's really hard to look or feel very dignified when you're stark assed naked, especially with strangers. "I thought I'd bring my granddaughter up here to teach you how to make bread, boy, but I didn't expect that you'd be giving her some lessons in human anatomy too." Miguelito was sitting out on the porch with Juana, his granddaughter, and I. We were eating a very satisfying meal together. He had eaten a whole loaf of bread, three big pans full of my horse stew, and had drowned himself in my coffee. For being as old and skinny as he was, he sure could pack the grub away. He had taken the rifle and the box of ammunition that I'd handed him, and had casually set it aside as soon as Juana had announced that the bread was ready to eat. Miguelito was also partial to Aunt Persis's strawberry preserves, ladling out big spoonfuls of them on each piece of bread that he tore off of the loaf. I had gotten out the rest of the rifles and ammo for the other four hands that he told me were already hard at work. Juana had said nothing else since speaking to Miguelito to tell him that the bread was ready. "How old is she?" Juana looked up from her tin plate of stew when I asked Miguelito that question about her. "She's the same age your mother was when your daddy got her drunk and stole her away from the reservation." I knew that she'd be sixteen then, if what he said was true. "What stunted her growth then?" She wasn't very tall, less than five feet, more like four foot nine or so. "I'm sitting right here in front of you. Why don't you just ask me directly if you're so all powered curious?" She had a little temper I could see. My mother had had herself a temper too, especially when she'd been drinking. That's what brought on her sudden fever, her temper. "Miguelito, I'm guessing that you probably spared the rod and spoiled this child?" He smiled after I said that. The first smile I'd ever seen on his face. "Her mother did it, not me. I never set my eyes on her until a month ago, when the agency brought her out with the regular supplies. I brought her up here because she reminded me of your mother some, and I wondered if you'd notice the similarities. This girl hates anything Apache, just like her mother. I don't know why she went to the Indian Bureau and got them to ship her here to me. My son died, and he left his son, who is a pretty good boy, and two other very unhappy people behind. I knew her mother, and she wasn't any prize, but after seeing Juana and being around her, I think my son might have just willed himself to die. Since she's been here, I'm not so sure that I want to hang on much longer either. Between her and her mother, they're the two most unpleasant women that I've never seen." "Are you saying that my mother was unpleasant, and that's what this one reminds you of?" I hoped that he wasn't saying that because I was fond of my mother's memory. "No. Your mother was a sweet natured woman, least wise she was whenever she was halfway sober. I meant the look of her eyes, and the way she carries herself, like she thinks she's really pretty or something. Your mother really was pretty though, so on her, it wasn't so upsetting when she carried on like that." I looked at Juana, and then something else occurred to me. She resembled my new top hand quite a bit in her looks. There were really many facial similarities when I was able to take the time to look at her closer. "Well I hate to say anything bad about someone who's a guest, eating from my table, but I honestly thought that I'd seen the ultimate in really homely people yesterday, when I first laid eyes on this boy named Danny Gomez that you sent up to me to work with my horses. I think that Juana might even have him topped though, because at least he is a regular sized person." Miguelito and I got a nice belly laugh out of that, right up to when I got the front of my pants messed up with some pretty good tasting stew that shouldn't have been wasted that way. My laughter stopped right after she finished tipping my nearly full plate over right in the middle of my lap. Miguelito got himself another big laugh then, this time it was at my expense. When he had finally settled back down again, he told me that he had brought Juana up to my ranch so that she could do the cooking and the cleaning for the eight hands that I now had up here working for me. "I'm glad that we are both agreed about her looks boy, because I can't be letting her sleep in there with all of them wild youngsters, can I? For now, at least while the weather's good, she'll just bunk out here on your porch. Half the boys have already seen the way you react to surprises, so I don't think she'll have any trouble from them, not with you inside the house all armed and on the alert." "I'm pretty sure that this wasn't in the agreement that you and I made Miguelito. I'm already worried about how I can afford to feed all the hands that I did agree to feed." "She'll clean up your place, boy, and she'll cook for you too. That should cover the little bit that she might take to eat." "What if she should take it into her mind to sneak up on me when I'm sleeping, and have her way with me before I can get alert enough to come back to all of my normal senses? I heard that sometimes the really homely girls will do that to try and trick a man, especially a rich land owner like me." Miguelito looked over at me, appearing like he was considering what I had just said, but also looking like he was studying on what his reaction might be if Juana and I decided that we wanted to fool around together some. I could see that he wasn't all that comfortable now with his little surprise for me. "I'll be honest with you boy, I'd much rather that you and Juana didn't get into none of that. Her brother is a hot head, just like her. He might just take it into his head to try to protect her family honor or something real stupid like that. He thinks he's a Mexican, just like his mother. About the same way that you think that you're a white man, just like your daddy was. I'll have a word with him right before I leave, and I'll lay down the law to him. If he kills you after that, well then he'll be a renegade, and I'd have to track him down and see that he didn't cause any of us anymore problems. You'd still be dead of course, but knowing that I'd avenged you should count for something." "Look here Juana, let me ask you one simple, but important, question. Please try to be truthful too, because my life might be riding on it. Do you honestly believe that you can sleep out here on my porch, so tantalyzingly close to me night after night, and still be able to resist all of that temptation that we both know that you'd be feeling?" "Grandpa, I'm not staying unless I can have a rifle too." She didn't sound very convincing, not to me, and apparently not to Miguelito. "You can't never have any rifle Juana, so don't even ask. If your mother hadn't been armed that night that she first met my son, you wouldn't be here now, and he'd probably still be alive. This boy seems to know a sight more about handling homely girls than my own boy ever did." I know that it doesn't come across with the right flavor, especially if you are just reading these words from a piece of paper somewhere, but there was a strong element of good natured teasing on all of our parts, in all that the three of us were saying out on my porch. Juana knew from the very first that she was only being teased, just like she knew that I was finding her powerfully attractive. If the pointy tips that were sticking out on her little titties were any kind of an accurate indication, our attraction was decidedly mutual too. "I'll just go over to the stable there and have myself that quick word with Danny. I'll tell him not to go around thinking about needing retaliation with blood, like he was some kind of Mexican, if it does turn out that you two just can't resist each other. It's pretty complicated boy, and a long and sad story to boot, but you and Juana aren't related by any blood to each other. If you do get set upon by her, at least you won't have to worry none that any child of yours would be any stranger than what you'd normally expect to find with any two such abnormal looking people as you two for parents." With that, Miguelito stepped off of my porch and started walking over to the main corral where the hands were all supposed to be working that morning. "I'm still going to sleep in the altogether Juana, so you might as well get used to seeing me all swollen up like that in the mornings." "It didn't bother me any. I've seen lots that were bigger." "I expect that you're either a liar, or else you've been around horses all of your life." "Well, it is true that we did have a little horse ranch when my father was still alive. Yours was cuter than any horse's though, especially, when it was waving to and fro and sideways while you hopped over to that jar. It's just too bad for you that you already gave Danny that rifle. Now you'll have to be good, if you don't care to be shot." "I am good. If we did do something, and then you went and told your brother, you'd be the first girl who ever had. The biggest problem would be when I made you scream because you'd gotten so excited. Unless that big brother of yours is deaf as well as homely." "I think that you're the liar now." "Well, in a few days, unless I miss my guess, a very pretty woman is going to be coming up here in her own private motor car. If you'd care to hide yourself somewhere so you were out of sight, at least while I'm inside entertaining her, you'll find out soon enough whether I'm a liar or not." Juana looked at me then with more than a hint of uncertainty in her eyes. Then, having come to some conclusion that only she knew about, she smiled over at me as she reached down into my lap and turned my stew tin back up like it was supposed to be. She started reaching around, all over my crotch with her bare hand, getting all of the spilled food pieces up off of my pants. She looked at me slyly, as she spent way too much time picking itty bitty pieces up on the side where my dick lay snuggled. "I'm not like my Grandpa is Mr. Gardner, I've always liked the taste of horse meat." She looked at me then, as she slowly licked the stew off of each one of her fingers. When she was done doing that, she went over to the side of the house and started pumping water into the barrel that I used for cleaning off the plates, my pots and utensils. I waited right where I sat for five minutes or so, until my pants weren't quite so tight, and then I got up and starting in moving some water pipe around. My life was sure getting interesting. ------- Chapter 5 It had taken me four full days of work, but I finally got enough of the pipe laid out to reach down to the bottom of the hill in the reservation's direction. I got two of my new hands to help me after that first morning. Even with the help though, by the time my supper was eaten, I was ready for sleep. Juana turned out to be a fair cook. Her chicken and biscuits were tasty for sure. I had put away quite a bit of it, and was starting to feel heavy as well as tired. I told Juana that I was turning in, and quickly proceeded to shuck out of my clothes, before I just flopped down on the bed, face first. Since she was still working by the stove, frying chicken for the ranch hands, I figured that my laying down on my stomach would seem more modest like. I was fast asleep in mere seconds. I don't know how long I was asleep, but I do remember that it was a whole bunch of yelling and screaming, followed by the sound of someone being slapped that caused me to wake right up from my much needed rest. "What in the hell is going on here?" I had my forty four forty in one hand and the edge of my bed covers in the other. Tired as I was, I'm glad that I didn't shoot my dick off and aim the covers at Danny Gomez. I missed his head with my shot, but it sure got his attention in a hurry. He dove out onto my porch almost before the sound of the gun shot had finished moving around that big room. I saw him crab scooting off of the porch and running all bent over towards my main corral. I didn't know if he was finished with things as of now, or if he had gone to fetch that rifle that I'd given him. "Juana, what was all that about? Why'd he slap you?" She was sitting on the floor right by my stove, trying to keep the blood that was running from her nose contained inside her apron. She looked confused, maybe a little bit dazed by having so much happening so quick. "You better tell me what's going on before your brother pokes his head out of my corral, because if he comes out with a rifle in his hands, I'm going to drop him right where he stands." She got up to her feet then and ran right out of the ranch house making straight for the corral. She could run pretty fast for a girl too. I got over to the door and kicked it closed, and threw the bar down. I went to each of the shutters and closed them and bolted them so they'd stay closed. They'd have to burn me out now, and I had a nice surprise for them if they tried that. Fifteen tense minutes passed with nothing new happening. "Mr. Gardner, it's Danny Gomez. I'm unarmed, can I come in?" I didn't really trust him, but I also didn't want to seem afraid of anything to one of my own hands. I got over to the door and lifted up the bar. I opened the door some, and looked outside. "I'm over here Mr. Gardner, can I come in for a minute?" He was standing over by the side of the house, hiding, with only his head sticking out. "Come on in boy, but don't make any sudden moves. I'm still cranky from being woken up from a sound sleep." I moved back, ready in case he tried anything. He walked real slow, his hands always in plain sight and came inside the ranch house. He shut the door behind him when he got himself all the way inside. "I swear Mr. Gardner, I don't mean you no harm. Can you put your pistol down for a minute." I lowered the barrel to the floor and waited for him to speak. "I'm sorry for waking you, but you didn't have to try to kill me. I only slapped her for being sassy with me. She's my sister and she's supposed to do what I say." "Boy, you don't come into a man's home when he's sleeping, and just start carrying on like you did. I only just recognized you at the last second and pulled my bead off of your eyes." I didn't like for the hands to think that I went around missing my targets unless they thought that I had done it on purpose. That boy would never know how close to dying he had come though. My nerves were still twitching whenever I thought about what I'd almost done. "What was it that was so important to you that you almost got killed for it?" "Can you put your pants back on Mr. Gardner? It's hard for me to talk to you when you're standing there with everything hanging out and all." I reached down with my free hand and gave my ass an insolent scratch. Be damned if I was going to let one of my hands tell me what I could wear in my own ranch house. "You one of them fellas gets himself all excited looking at men? If you are, no offense, but you can clear on off of my land right now." "It ain't that, dammit. It just would be easier if you had your pants on when I'm talking about my sister." "What in the hell does Juana have to do with me wearing pants or not? She isn't even here." "She was, and you were laying on your bed all naked and in a lewd pose." "I was sleeping. I sleep like that all the time. You think I'm supposed to change my ways just so your dirty mind will rest easy? You know it wasn't my idea for your sister to sleep on my porch, or to cook on my stove either. She can just go back down the hill to Miguelito in the morning. She gets on my nerves anyway, sleeping out there on my porch and always looking at me. You better head down there with her too. I'm liable to shoot you now just because it's bad luck to let you hang around me after I've already given you two warning shots." "That will be fine with me. I never asked to come up here and work for nothing anyway. I'll miss the horses though. You've got some nice horses." At least the boy recognized good horse flesh when he saw it. Gardner's Ranch had the best horses for a hundred miles around. "Which one you figure's the best of the herd?" Hell, I wanted to find out if he knew what he was talking about. Most people think they know horses, but they don't. "That's easy. The big grey with the front socks. If it was my herd, I'd sell off the sorrel and just let the grey stand all the mares." It so happened that I'd considered doing that very thing myself. I'd get better horses out of it, but I wanted to grow my herd to a hundred head, and that was too much for only a single stud and I'd have to breed new lines anyway. Still, he'd been with the horses less than a week and knew a lot already. I had been hoping to get another stud out of a good mare and the sorrel. I'd had him in with five of my best mares just for that reason. "Why'd you slap your sister? Just because she's sassy?" I figured I'd let him explain it just to see if I saw any sense in what he'd done. "I came up to get the chicken and biscuits, because we were hungry and had got tired of waiting for Juana to bring it down to us. We knew that you had eaten yours already, and we were hungry too. Juana was standing at the stove, letting our supper burn, while she was busy looking right at your naked ass. She saw me coming, and she still wasn't making any effort to hide what she was doing. I told her to turn back to what she was supposed to be doing, and she told me to mind my own damn business. I yelled at her, and she said something back, so I slapped her." "What did she say?" "I'd rather not tell you." "Suit yourself then, you can clear out in the morning. I won't have a hand who keeps things from me." "She said that she was hoping that you'd turn over because she wanted to see if your dick was as big as she remembered." Danny was not happy telling me that. I hope he didn't notice the little jump my dick had given when he'd told me what she had said. "Well I guess it's good that she's leaving. I don't need another woman pestering me for attention. One is already plenty." "So, I can stay?" "I guess, but she has to clear out in the morning. You can tell Miguelito to send up an old ugly woman if he really needs a cook for you boys. She can sleep out there in the corral too, and cook out there. I won't be having people looking at me and gaping at my naked form. You better quit looking where you're looking too. Didn't your mama ever teach you not to stare at people?" He got all flustered when I said that, and he quickly turned around and left. Five minutes later Juana came walking through my door, all angry and just spoiling for a fight. "How come I have to leave? I didn't do anything wrong. Why does Danny get to stay and I have to leave?" "Because Danny doesn't spend all of his time trying to get himself a good look at my big old dick, that's why. Your smart mouth almost got your brother killed a few minutes ago. You don't say things like that to your brother." She started laughing at me while I was talking to her because my dick had risen up and was now pointed up at my rafters. "Get an eyeful while you're at it girl, because this is the last that you're ever going to see of it." "Don't be so sure of that Mr. Gardner. I generally find a way to get what I want. Seeing you that way is making me all itchy. I think I need to leave now though, and let you get your rest. I'll see you in the morning." I got up real early in the morning and took the bar down from my door and stepped outside. Juana had already picked up her things and was gone. I was going to miss her, but I didn't want anymore trouble because of her either. The hands and I were connecting the water pipe when we all heard a motor car approaching. I dropped what I was doing and started making good time back to my ranch house. Part of me was hoping that it was Dru coming up for another bath, but another part was hoping that it was her husband, coming up to offer me a whole fist full of money. It turned out that it was my Uncle Charlie, and the news wasn't good at all. Mrs. Franklin Lyons had lodged a complaint with the County Sheriff that accused me of having raped her. Uncle Charlie had come up, as an officer of the court, to get me to surrender to him and return to the County seat to await trial. I went over to the corral and found Danny Gomez. I told him to go get Miguelito and ask him to look after things until I returned. I wanted to take a horse and ride there, but Uncle Charlie insisted that the motor car would be quicker. It took us four hours to get there, about the same as on a fast horse, but by the time we arrived, my head was hurting from the constant noise and all of the smells, and I was telling myself that I'd never get in one of those things again. Not willingly, at least. Uncle Charlie turned me in at the Sheriff's station, and then proceeded to grant me bail himself, and had me released into his custody and control. He told me that he wasn't supposed to do that, but he'd rather face censure from the circuit headquarters than get an earful from my Aunt Persis, which he would have, if he had allowed me to rot there in a cell instead. "Jay, I'm your legal counsel as of right now, I represent you, whatever you tell me is privileged communication. I can't be made to divulge anything you tell me. Do you understand that?" "Sure Uncle Charlie, I understand fine." "Now the first thing I want to ask you, son, is did you really dip your pen in her inkwell? Boy, that is some prime poontang, and I'll stipulate to that." Uncle Charlie was a lawyer, and he was also a scholar, a man of letters, but he was a Gardner too, and sometimes, that's what held the most sway with him. My Aunt Persis had had to play dumb on several occasions when Uncle Charlie had gotten his nose opened up by one hussy or another. He was right about Drucilla being prime, but I doubted that her looks would win me an acquittal. I hoped that Uncle Charlie wasn't going to try to get me off on a justifiable rape defense. I had heard him expound, at great length, on several occasions, about his idea that some women were just so desirable that a man couldn't properly be blamed for losing control of himself and getting himself some of their honey. People were still talking about the time that Uncle Charlie had granted the Widow Sander's a three week continuance at her murder trial for her husband's stabbing death. He had granted her a release on her own recognizance right after he had allowed her to approach the bench and whisper something only loud enough to be heard by him. No one was very surprised that she had lit out of town in the middle of the night only a week after her release, or that she was never seen again. "Uncle Charlie, if she and I did do anything, it was purely consensual." "Was it as good as it looks to be?" "Better." "Sweet Jesus, sweet baby Jesus. Better?" "Uncle Charlie, why do you think she is doing this?" "I'd guess that it has something to do with your water rights Jay. If you're convicted, she would have an easy time of it in a civil lawsuit for damages. She'd probably wind up owning all that you have, if you're convicted." The sheriff himself came out to Uncle Charlie's house at six the next morning to re-arrest me, and charge me with Drucilla's murder. I had been asleep in the parlor on a small bed pallet that Aunt Persis had prepared for me. We had all turned in before ten o'clock the night before, so I didn't even have a good alibi. I might have been convicted too if one of Franklin Lyons' cow punchers hadn't gotten all teary and remorseful and went ahead and confessed that he'd killed her himself out of love that she'd rejected. Without any living witnesses, the charges against me for rape were dismissed. I bought myself a horse, and a pretty good saddle off a down on his luck cowboy, and rode back up to my ranch as soon as things had been cleared up. I was carrying five new jars of Aunt Persis's fruit preserves with me, two peach, an apricot and two more strawberries. I was glad to make it back to the ranch too. I didn't hold a grudge against Drucilla, but I wasn't that sorry to have been spared a trial either. As soon as I pulled my horse up, Juana came running out of my house. Miguelito was sitting on my porch, eating something off of a tin plate, and he didn't even bother pausing from what he was doing to even acknowledge my return. I said hello to Juana and then went up on my porch to talk to Miguelito, and to thank him for looking after my place like he had. "They turned you loose boy. I'm some sorry about that too, because I was enjoying being the Jefe up here. Some of the boys finished up that water pipe and got it so it's working. Leaks just a little bit, but you can look for yourself and see if you can fix it better.There's a few new horses down in your lower corral that just wandered up here from Old Mexico. I had to give two of your branded horses in trade to the fellas that helped them to wander up here. The horses we got were a sight better than the ones that we gave them." I wasn't upset at the news of how we came into new horses, because my great grandfather had begun his herd in pretty much the same way. "Any stallions in with those Mexican horses?" "Sure is, and you're going to like him too. Big, all black horse. Danny is beside himself trying to make sense of your breeding book. One of the horses we traded away was that sorrel of yours. Danny was sure down on that horse. I don't know why, because he looked all right to me." "That new stallion better really be something Miguelito, else you're going to be looking for another place for Danny to be working. I paid a good sum for the sorrel and I could have gotten a good amount when I sold him, if I had even decided that I wanted to sell him." The sorrel had actually been bred right here on the ranch, but I didn't see a good reason to admit that to anyone. "What's that little girl doing here? I'm pretty sure that I sent her packing." "She insisted on coming up here to do the cooking and to be looking after me. It's funny too, because before I told her that I was coming up here to your ranch, she didn't seem at all interested in my well being. Danny tells me that he thinks she might like coming up here because of all the snakes hereabouts. I think it might be one particular snake that she's got in her mind." Miguelito had kept his eyes on Juana the whole time he was talking, and kept both of his hands protecting his plate from her wrath. "Something about a big dick that gets to all these innocent little reservation girls, boy. I'm thankful that I've never had that particular problem. Your daddy was sorely afflicted with it though. You only take after him a little in that regard." "Well, I don't know that I want to comment on any of that. I did manage to bring you a couple of jars of my Aunt's sweet preserves, and you're also welcome to take a couple of my chickens with you. Go ahead and help yourself to another box of cartridges for your rifle. When I bring your steer next week, I'll make sure to bring you a little something extra too, to say thank you for your help. Make sure you take her with you when you go. She worries me, and makes me afraid to go to sleep. You don't have to hurry off, but I'm going down to the lower corral and take a look at my new stallion." I handed over one of the Strawberry preserves and one of the Peach ones too. "Boy, if it's all the same to you, I'm leaving her right up here with you. I already talked to Danny and told him that she looked determined to jump right on into your bed. He doesn't like it anymore than I do, but I don't know how we can prevent it without hog tying her every night before we turn in." "It isn't all the same to me. I admit I'd like to bed her, she's as cute as can be. I won't have truck with any woman though that won't do what I tell her to. My mother was willful and stubborn too, and look how she ended up? No sir. You take her with you, and welcome to her I say. I'm looking for a woman that knows her rightful place. If you find one like that for me, you go ahead and send her on up and I'll give her a try." You should have seen the looks that Juana was sending my way. I could see that this one had always been used to having things turn out the way that she wanted them to. Not with me, not this time at least. I rode on out of there while I was still filled with my conviction. I didn't know how much I'd meant any of that, but I wanted to try it my way for awhile longer at least. I was sure anxious to see my new horses though, especially the big black. ------- Chapter 6 I stood looking at my seven new horses, already well satisfied with the trade that Miguelito and Danny, my top hand, had approved. The black stallion stood proudly off to one side as he watched over his harem of sleek mares. Somewhere, down in Old Mexico, there was somebody who was sorely missing all of these fine animals. I looked over at Danny, pretty certain that my own grin was every bit a match for the one he was wearing. "I was thinking of putting the grey with these six mares, and then having the black cover all of the other ones up in the main corral. Should make for a good crop next year." How are you planning on making the move with them?" I didn't want the black to meet up with the grey, figuring that having those two meet could only lead to trouble. "I figured I'd saddle up the black and take him for a ride down to the reservation. I'll get Luis to ride the grey down the hill a ways beforehand, so that we don't have to cross the two. Luis will bring the grey down here, and I'll turn the black loose at the main corral after I get back." It was a plan that should work, so I just nodded my approval. I would have liked to ride the black myself, but I didn't want to look like some eager child in front of my ranch hands. "You did good on that trade Danny. You make sure that none of these horses get seen by any outsiders though. I wouldn't want to have to explain just how we came by having them here. Come by in the morning, early, I need to discuss some changes I'm planning on making." Now that I'd seen how quickly things could all turn against me, I wanted to try to set things up so that I could leave for a time, and still not have to worry about whether I'd still have a ranch and a herd when I returned. Even though I'd had a couple of problems early on with my top hand, I'd grown to respect his judgment about horses, and his loyalty to the herd. I was fixing to make him the foreman of the ranch, something I'd have never done with Humberto. There's a world of difference between a foreman and a top hand. A foreman could speak in place of, and enter into binding contracts for, the owner; while a top hand was only just another employee. I was prepared to cede that additional authority to Danny Gomez. In part, because he had backed off some on the situation with his sister. In his situation, I'm not sure that I'd have been able to be so sanguine. To me, that spoke to his maturity. The other thing was that I didn't want to keep having him needing to check with me over decisions that he was already capable of making on his own. I went back up to the ranch house and saw that Miguelito and Juana had cleared their stuff out and had taken off. I thought some about Juana. She hadn't said much when her grandfather was trying to pawn her off on me. She hadn't denied wanting to come to my bed either. Most girls would have made some sort of protest. She would bear watching, that was for sure. I hadn't ever wanted or needed the kind of entanglement that having a woman involved. Did I want to go through all of that trouble just to satisfy my animal urges? Being with Drucilla that one time had changed the way I now felt about using my own hand. It was a damn poor substitute, I'd found out. I wondered how Juana's tiny little body would compare with the lush fullness of Drucilla's. I knew that Juana came up short in the titty category, and as short as she was, I doubted that her butt could hold a candle to Dru's. On the other hand, Dru was dead, and no longer in the running for my attentions or affections. There was also the blood factor to consider. While Miguelito had made it a point to mention that Juana wasn't blood kin to me, she was still an Indian. I was a Gardner. I was a half breed, but I was legally considered a white man because of my Daddy's name and the presence of Uncle Charlie. I hadn't had any trouble inheriting my father's property. If I got tied up with Juana, what would that make our children? I'd have to go see Uncle Charlie about that. To my head, it seemed like it was too much of a bother. It was my dick that was pressing for a quick decision. My daddy had told me several times that it was good to strike when the iron was hot. He wasn't just talking about branding either. He and my Uncle Charlie were both of the opinion that a girl ripens like a vegetable or a fruit. When she's ready, that's it. Somebody is going to get to enjoy her soon after. I was sure that Juana was ripe. I wasn't sure how long she'd been ripe, or whether she'd already been plucked and tasted. I didn't want to make a life with a woman who'd been passed around too much. I didn't see how I could bring up the topic with her in any kind of normal conversation. I didn't want to even discuss Juana with Danny Gomez. Miguelito might know, but I doubted that he'd be very candid with me about a subject like that. I was eating some eggs and fat back out on my porch about the time the sun was high enough to start giving off significant light. I'd turned in early the night before, trying to wrestle with all of the conflicting thoughts that I was having. It was past time that I start planning for how I wanted to live my life. "You wanted to see me Mr. Gardner?" Danny Gomez was fifty feet away when he spoke out. I guessed that he was done trying to sneak up on me or to surprise me in any way. "Come up here Danny. I don't like having to shout out my private business to anybody that's passing by." I was just saying that because it was so seldom that I even talked to anybody at all. It sounded funny in my head saying that. "I've been giving it some thought and I've decided to get off the ranch more often, and to take a more active role in trading the herd. I thought that things went well here while I was gone before, but I worry about if something had come up where a real decision needed to be made. I've been thinking about it some, and I want to try you out as foreman of this ranch." I expected him to smile, or to at least thank me for handing him such a big responsibility at such a young age. "If that's it then, I guess I'll get back to moving those stallions." He just turned himself around and walked back over to the corral. I think that that might be another difference between Indians and regular people, even Mexicans. I don't remember how many times that Humberto hinted around that he should be made the foreman. I practically hand it to Danny, after less than a month of him working for me, and he acts like it doesn't mean anything to him. I was disappointed that he took it so calmly because I thought that it meant that he didn't understand what a difference there was in this new job instead of just being the top hand. I was cleaning up things when I noticed one of the hands riding the grey out of the main corral and taking him off and down the trail towards the Southern valley floor. The grey was a sleek animal, and he looked impressive as he stepped with his head held high and with a sure footed gait down that hillside. Fifteen minutes later, Danny came tearing through, riding the black fast enough that Danny's long hair trailed as if blown by a big wind. He wasn't nearly at full gallop, but it was a pleasure to watch as the horse breezed right past me. The horse seemed to reek of power and majesty. I knew that this horse had known few equals wherever he had traveled. I was proud just knowing that he was mine. Danny didn't even bother to wave as he rode by me, but I could see he was fully engaged in trying to keep the horse from having too much head. I had walked the whole water pipeline that I'd been working on before all of the trouble that Uncle Charlie had come to fetch me for had happened. The hands had done a reasonable job connecting ends together, but I saw three or four leaky joints that would need re-doing. The question was whether it mattered enough to bother with or not. I finally decided to fix two of the joints and leave the other two alone. I worked by myself, and it took the rest of the morning before I was satisfied with things, and went to turn the drain at the spring back on. From the springs I could see the lower corral just fine, and I saw the grey stallion down there prancing around among the new mares. From a distance, he looked to be settling in just fine. I put my tools away and went over to the side of the house to pump some water for a quick clean off. I had sweat and dirt all over me from the work that I'd been doing. When I was washed up some, I turned to walk inside to get a towel to dry off with and saw my black stallion striding powerfully up the reservation trail. It was a second or two before I noticed that it was Juana up in the saddle. She pulled the horse up within five feet of both me and my porch. She lifted a leg and turned and jumped down off of the horse, never letting go of his reins. Smiling, she handed me the reins and walked past me into my house. I guess she thought I was the new stable hand or something, and she was the mistress of the manor. I took a few minutes to check my new horse over, but he didn't look any the worse for his recent exercise. I walked him over to the new corral and got a couple of my hands to sponge him down before turning him loose in the main corral. "Where's your brother, and why did he let you ride my new stallion?" I had just walked into the house and my eyes hadn't adjusted to the change in light yet. Juana was over at the stove heating up water, and she was already pumping water from the holding tank into my bath tub. She still had all her clothes on, but she was obviously preparing that bath for somebody. I hadn't asked her to fix the tub for me, so I assumed that she intended it for her. "I hope you aren't planning to use my tub without first getting my permission?" When she was up here before, she had never tried to use it. "I would imagine that Danny is halfway back here by now, if he's running all the way, he is. He didn't let me ride the horse, I took it while he was in talking to Grandpa. I'm going to get a bath in this tub just as soon as the water's finished heating up, so you better just turn around and leave me before you see something that you shouldn't." She started getting out of her shirt as soon as she was done speaking. I stood still and watched her do it. Her titties were small, but she had little brown buttons that stood out half an inch and more. I wasn't disappointed in the view. When she had dropped her pants to her knees and lifted one leg to get herself clear of the leg hole, I rushed for her real quick, and wrapped her up in a bear hug with both of her arms trapped beneath mine. I lifted her up and took her out on my porch and threw her off as far as I could before beating a hasty retreat back inside and slamming the door and dropping the bar across it. I had left her with only her pants on, and they were dropped down by her ankles. She was yelling and cussing, and saying things about me that no proper woman would ever say out loud. I heard bastard and son of a bitch several times. Some of the other things she called me were in Mexican or Indian and I didn't recognize their meaning. I knew from the tone that she was using that none of it was meant to be complimentary. After ten minutes she left off with her invective and started pleading for me to at least throw out her shirt and boots before Danny got back up to get her. I paid her words no heed though, and went to lay on my bed, waiting until I heard her brother chasing her around and shouting out his dire threats. I jumped up then and threw open my door to watch all of the fun. "You may as well stop running Juana. Sooner or later I'm going to catch up with you and paddle your ass." I noticed that three of the hands were standing around getting an eyeful of Juana's little titties bouncing prettily around. She somehow always managed to avoid being snared by Danny's desperate lunges at her. She was smiling at him as she avoided his clutches, not quite taunting him, but not looking scared of him either. Her pants were back up covering her butt like they should be, and she was outfoxing her brother, even though she was forced to go hopping around on the rocks and mud clumps in her bare feet. I stood up there on the porch watching the whole thing, at first rooting for Danny to catch her and give her the paddling that I thought she deserved. After a little while though, a person just had to admire both her spirit and her determination. I walked back inside and picked up her boots and her shirt. I waited until they were running around behind the ranch house before I stepped down off of my porch and placed her boots on the ground and laid her shirt on top of them. I went back up on the porch and waited for the two of them to head back around to the front again. As soon as Juana came tearing around the side of the building she spotted her shirt laying in the dirt. She ran to it and grabbed the shirt and the boots and kept heading straight down the trail to the reservation. Danny was about thirty feet behind her as the two of them ran out of my sight. I figured that her lead wasn't so big that she'd ever be able to stop and put her boots back on, not unless Danny gave up the chase. He looked determined to get her, so I figured she'd have some pretty sore feet by the time she got back to the reservation. I went back inside and drained out the tub and took the water that was at full boil off of the stove top. That damn girl had used up the whole store of wood that I'd laid by for cooking my next meal. Danny got back up the hill well after the sun had set. I heard him cussing out some of the hands that had been giving him the business about not being able to catch his little bug of a sister. A few minutes after it all had gotten quiet again, a big ruckus started up, and there was the sounds of some fists landing, and the buzz of excitement from people gathered around cheering and watching a fight. I stood on my porch for several minutes, curious, but not wanting to seem to interfere with my new foreman's domain. After a bit, things got quiet again and I went back inside for the night. The next morning, my new foreman came looking for me. He had some bruises on his face, and was swollen up under his right eye. "Do I get to hire and fire?" "Sure do." He turned back to the corral and went inside. Ten minutes later, two of my hands came walking out with their bedrolls in their hands. They looked all sulky as they passed me, but neither one said anything to me. Both of them looked like they might have been in a tussle, and neither appeared like they had been the victor. After they had disappeared from sight, I went and found my foreman. "Did you ever catch up with that sister of yours yesterday?" "Nope. That girl's a hell of a runner. She needs to take two strides to my one, but I still can't catch her. I will catch her though, and she'll pay for what she done." "When you do catch her, you give her ass a couple of paddles for me. She used up my wood that I needed for cooking my supper, and had the nerve to try to take a bath without asking my leave. I don't even want to get into how mad I am that she stole one of my best horses and galloped him up here all the way from the reservation." "I checked him last night. He isn't no worse for what she did." "I know that, I checked him as soon as she got down off of him. That doesn't mean that she couldn't have done him damage though." "When I'm done with her, she'll think twice before doing that again." I was enjoying watching him fume. She had brought him down by embarrassing him in front of the other hands. He'd wound up running off two of the boys that had been up here with him on that first day too. "How did the black horse seem when you rode him?" "He's a good horse. I think he's got plenty of stamina too. I didn't let him have his head, but I could feel that he's got some kind of wicked speed in him. He wanted me to let him loose, but I wanted to keep him from doing too much. No telling how hard he was ridden on the trip coming North. Maybe you'd care to take him for a gallop soon?" "Let's let him settle in with the mares first, and then we'll see if he wants to go blow off any steam. He might need all his energy just to take care of those mares." Things settled back down and nobody brought up anything about bringing in two more hands to replace the two that had been run off. I rode down to a small rancher I knew and bought two fat steers for a fair price. I drove them over to the reservation and penned them up with the last four long horns from the Denby herd that were still there. I finished up and made my way over to Miguelito's shack. He came out after only a minute. I saw Juana come to the door and she stood there looking at me but not saying anything. "I brought you your monthly steer and another that's for you as a thank you for watching my place before. Are you one of those Indians that goes crazy with whiskey?" "I haven't had enough to be able to tell you. I use some when I've got tooth pains, or if my back hurts too bad. Why are you asking me that?" I reached in my saddle bag and pulled out a quart bottle of rot gut that I'd gotten from the rancher when I bought those two steers from him. I had always let him come up and get some barrels of my sweet water for his still, and he usually gave me a few bottles of whiskey just to say thank you. He has this daughter that is real slow in the head, and I think that he's hoping that I'll get so drunk from the whiskey, that one day I'll drop by and start thinking that she would make a fine wife. I think he's wrong, but I do like to get myself all liquored up a few times a year just because it feels good. "I brought you a bottle, but I don't want it to make you start acting all crazy. Some Indians just shouldn't take to drink." I handed the bottle over to him and he nodded his thanks. "My back teeth are both hurting right now, I guess I'll see if this helps any. He opened the cork and took himself a good swig. He washed it around in his mouth for a short while and then made a face as he swallowed it down. "Might help, thank you. So what did you think of my little horse thief? Those two boys that Danny let go from the ranch have been chasing her all over tarnation trying to get another look at her naked chest. So far she's out run them, but they're bound to catch her pretty quick like." "I think she's going to get her little ass paddled, and pretty soon too. I've waited for her brother to do it, but I might just take a hand to her myself if my new horse stays as lame as he's been. I told Danny we might have to put the horse down, but he still thinks that big black might recover and get better." Juana's eyes got as big as saucers, and I could tell that she believed my lies. "Be a shame to have to destroy such a good horse just because some dumb kid wanted to play a prank on her brother." I figured that she'd be unsettled enough by the news about the horse being lame that she wouldn't do anything like that again. I left and went back up to the ranch. I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of something moving around on my front porch. I had the door barred, so I just went back to sleep. In the morning, I went outside to empty my piss jar, and found Juana sleeping on the porch, in her bed roll. I emptied the jar in the slop bucket and went back inside. I figured that she must have snuck up here to see how bad hurt the horse was. I was hoping that she'd be really mad when she learned that I'd tricked her. I didn't throw the door shut, since it was going to be a warm day and I wanted to air out the house anyway. I did get my clothes on though. No sense in teasing the girl. In a few more minutes she came to stand in my doorway. "Them boys were going to rape me. Grandpa said I was to come stay up here until he has a chance to convince them both not to." "Did he tell you to come sleep on my porch, or was that something that you just decided for yourself?" "You want me to go sleep in the stables with all those other boys? I'd be raped for sure. I'll do it if you say to, but that's just what would happen." "I doubt that your brother would let them do that to you. Even if he is pretty mad at you." "What do we have to eat? I'm half starved." "I have a lot to eat, but you only have whatever you brought here with you. I'm not feeding someone who steals my horses and causes all of my ranch hands to get themselves riled up and fighting. Ever since you came up here and put them titties of yours on public display, your brother has been having to get in fights to put a stop to all the rude comments that they've been making." "If you hadn't thrown me out in the yard, nobody would have seen them but you. Why did you do that anyway? I could see that you liked the show that I was giving you." "Well, first you steal a valuable horse, which also keeps my foreman from being here and getting his work done. Work that was very important to this ranch. If the grey stallion had been up in the main corral instead of down in the lower one, there could have been one hell of a problem while the two of them were deciding who was going to rule the roost. Second, you go into my house, without my permission, and make yourself to home. Third, you start undressing right in front of me like some kind of a bar whore, and then expect me to be all impressed or something by what you are showing me. You act exactly like someone that only cares about herself. I'm trying to run a ranch, and you keep doing things that put my property at risk, and make it harder for me to stay afloat. Those are some of the reasons that I wanted you out of my house, off of my property, and out of my life." "If you think I act like a bar whore, maybe that's what I should be then. I can see that there's no protection up here for me either, and I'd prefer to be paid for doing it, rather than let some fool of a reservation Indian paw all over me for free." "Suit yourself. It's all the same to me. I don't care what you do, or who you do it with either. I might have been interested once, but that was before I learned your true nature." "That's just what I'll do then. Where's the closest bar that's needing itself a whore?" "I wouldn't know that. Just keep walking until you hear music playing. It's either a church or a bar. If you go inside and there are more women than men, it's a church. The other way around, it's a bar." "You really don't want me?" She asked this in a serious, pained kind of voice. I hesitated before answering her. I really did want her. I was pretty sure that my answer might end any chance for us to work out our many differences. I wanted to be sure in my own mind that I was comfortable with that happening, as it would, if her response was what I thought it would be. "I don't want you the way that you have been behaving. I don't believe that you're ever going to change. Your grandfather blames it on your mother, but I think it's just plain willfulness on your part. That helped to get my mother killed, her willfulness, and never being willing to back down from things. It ruined my father's life too, at least to a large extent, because he loved my mother, and yet, he still ended up killing her. I don't want to finish up like him, and I sure wouldn't want you to end up like her." "I like me fine, just how I am." "Well, I don't. Go somewhere where people like you just like you are." "I will. See if I don't. You'll miss me when I'm gone, so remember that I said that." She went and grabbed her bedroll and things and lit out down the trail to the valley, away from the ranch, the reservation and all the family that she had. I felt bad, but I wasn't surprised by it. I don't think that I had ever really thought that we could work ourselves around all of the problems. I waited half an hour just to make sure that she was gone, and then I went and found Danny. It took him ten minutes to saddle up two horses, and then he lit out after her. I had explained all that had happened, telling him what each of us had said to the other. I told him that he could ride out after her, taking a spare horse, and try to see if he could get her settled somewhere. I told him to take as long as he needed, and forced him to take three double eagles to help in finding her a place to stay. I had one of the other hands saddle another horse and ride down to let Miguelito know what had happened to his granddaughter. Danny came back almost a whole week later. He didn't volunteer any information to me, and I sure wasn't going to ask him any questions. Miguelito had sent word back to me that he thought I'd made the right choice. Danny didn't seem like he was mad at me, and I was probably the only one who felt like I'd handled things poorly. It was another three months before we had more excitement up on the ranch. The excitement was provided by Franklin Lyons when he arrived one day, again in one of his motor cars, and started our discussion out by trying to convince me that he believed that I'd raped his late wife. He was just getting himself wound up and warming to the task of letting me know what he had wanted to do, before finally acceding to his wife's stated preference for letting the law handle things for them. I pulled out my pistol and pointed it at his head, thumbing back the hammer. He got real quiet as soon as he noticed my pistol, and his driver made really sure, right away, that I could see where his own hands were, and that they had stayed empty. "If you think I'm just going to stand here and let you tell your lies right to my own face, you had just better think again. I might just decide to kill you right where we stand for what you've already said to me." "Mr. Gardner, I won't be threatened by an unprincipled scoundrel." "I never said that I didn't enjoy your wife's favors. Fact is that I did. That was through her own doing though, not any of mine. It was a trade that she proposed, and that I accepted. I sent her back to your ranch after we got done, cleaner, and a lot happier, than when she had first arrived. I won't stand for having you calling me a rapist. Armed or not, I'll kill you the very next time that you say, or so much as even infer, that I am. If that's what you wanted to see me about, then I guess our business is concluded." "Actually, there was something else I wanted to speak with you about. Would it be possible to go somewhere where it is more private and where we won't be disturbed?" "This is just about as private as it gets. You might have your hand there go and take himself a walk. Other than him, there's no one to hear us." Lyons gave his driver a shooing sign with his hand and the man stepped from the motor car and walked a hundred yards away and took his seat on a round rock. "I'm afraid that I might temporarily be somewhat overextended financially, Mr. Gardner, and I was hoping to convince you that we might mutually benefit from a barter arrangement between us." "Go on. I presume that you want my water, what do you propose to give me in trade?" "Cattle sir. I have almost thirteen hundred head of prime Texas beef remaining. Even in this frightful economy that we're currently suffering through, each one is worth, at minimum, twenty four dollars, at the railhead." "I've been buying four fifty to five hundred pound steers from Toby Janzen for twenty dollars a head, and he's been real happy to get it too." "If we were speaking of a cash purchase for cattle, that would be acceptable, sold here in place, but we're speaking of barter Mr. Gardner. What I propose is to give you one steer, and you can pick from my whole herd, for a week's supply of water to the remaining herd. At fifty two weeks per annum, that would amount to fifty two cattle in return for an asset of yours that is currently generating almost no revenue for you." I could do the math as well as he could, and it sounded a lot like he was offering me a thousand dollars a year for four thousand dollars worth of my water. "I believe that I'll just pass on that offer Mr. Lyons. None of my water is going to perish without your cattle, but I doubt you can claim the same for your cattle being without my water. I should make you pay a premium for the way that you've treated me in the recent past, and here you're only offering me a quarter on a dollar of the going rate." "This is business, Mr. Gardner. I'm sure that we can keep our personal animosity separate from our business dealings. The water is doing you no good at present. I understand that it renews itself regularly after use, by means of the rainfall and drainage, and I've heard rumors of an underground spring. Fifty prime cattle, all at no expense to you, is certainly preferable to none?" "I'm in the horse business Mr. Lyons. I offered to help you with water for your cattle at a fair price, which you refused. Your wife told me about what you had arranged as an alternative to my water, and I thought that was working well enough for you. Can't you get them to accept your cattle in lieu of cash?" "They did for awhile, but now they've become uneconomical for me. With their new proposal, I'd lose half of my herd in a year's time." "I will water your herd for one year, for a payment of two hundred head of your cattle, my pick, that I will collect, in advance, at the rate of four head per week. That is my first and final offer to you. That seems preferable to me over losing half of your herd to my competition, or all of your herd to thirst." I looked at him as he weighed my offer. "I am really left with no choice other than accepting your offer. If my financial situation changes though, I reserve the right to cancel our agreement immediately. Do you agree to that?" "I'll agree to that only if you'll agree that I can quit supplying your cattle with water whenever I take it into my head to. I might do it as a whim, or for any reason, or it might be that I just no longer want to honor the agreed upon terms of our agreement. If you really prefer a less structured agreement, I will offer to water your herd for a fee of five cattle, all of my choosing, per week, on a week to week agreement. Which of those two alternatives will you choose?" "We'll go with the original one year term, binding on us both. Now that we've concluded that to our mutual satisfaction, I wonder if you might be in a position to trade me some of your horses for some of my cattle? I am in need of at least three horses as I'm selling my motor cars. If they have saddles and tack, that would be better." I had three horses that I was about to turn into stew. They were good looking animals, if you didn't know what to look for. To me, they were worth twice their weight in cattle, but certainly no more than that. "I might be willing to trade three, including saddles and tack, but horses aren't like cows you know. A good horse is worth a lot more than a couple of cows." "If I like the horses, and if the tack and saddles were serviceable, I'd be willing to trade fifteen cattle straight up." "My choice of cattle?" "Assuming that I find the horses acceptable, yes." "Mr. Lyons, if you keep dealing with me, I'll soon be a cattle baron as well as a horse breeder of some repute." It took Mr. Lyons all of five minutes to examine the three horses that I had offered to him, and to pronounce each of them acceptable. I took him to my tack room and showed him what he could choose from to outfit the horses with. As I'd known he would, he chose the three saddles that looked the fanciest, rather than the ones that could be ridden on in relative comfort. When he had picked what he wanted, I arranged to meet him with the horses all saddled down at my big water basin on the edge of my property line the next morning. He'd be driving his herd there and I'd take my pick of nineteen cattle. As soon as he left, I sent Danny and three of the hands down to build an Indian corral in a draw in the valley floor that was near to the reservation. It could support about a twenty head herd for a couple of weeks, but no more than that, and no longer either. I was real happy with the business that I'd done that day. I started getting ready for the water flow by having the remaining hands walking the flumes and clearing out any obstructions that might have gotten settled in the water's pathway. That done, I saddled up my own horse and rode down to the reservation to speak with Miguelito. "Any of your Indian boys ever worked with cattle? I'm not just talking rustling, I'm talking minding a real herd and moving them around for grazing." "I'm sure that five or six have, but they'd need horses, and they'd need other gear as well. Did you find someone that's willing to hire Indians?" "Just me, and maybe you too." I waited for him to ask me some more questions, but he just stood there waiting me out. I started in by first explaining the deal that I had made with Lyons. As I got into making my explanation, I could see that Miguelito was already thinking a ways beyond where I was heading. He started talking about grazing places on this side of my ranch and about how we could water them with the pipe that I'd run down for the reservation's water. I left him there, telling him that I needed to get back and asking him to go down to that draw and make sure that Danny had gotten some kind of brush corral set up and in place. As I was leaving him, I just had to ask him if he'd heard anything from Juana, or if he knew whether she was okay or not. "She sent word with the last supply wagon that she's working for an older couple over at the County seat. Doesn't pay very much, but she says she's getting some education too. She said to tell you, if you asked, that the minimum height requirement had kept her out of the whoring business so far, but she hasn't given up on the idea totally yet." "That sounds like she's doing okay then. I'll tell Danny that you heard from her." "Hell, he knows already. He asks about her whenever I see him. She sends him messages too, but not about whoring." I turned around and rode back up to the ranch. I had a lot to take care of, but my mind was eased just knowing that Juana wasn't out begging for meals and sleeping in alleys somewhere. Maybe she'd learn something by living near other regular folks that she hadn't picked up from just watching me. Not that I was a bad example of regular folks, but town people were even more regular than I was. Hell, I'd give it awhile, but after I got all of this new water and cattle business set up and running smoothly, maybe I could ride down and visit with my Uncle Charlie and Aunt Persis. while I was down there, maybe I might keep an eye open for Juana as well. If I happened to run into her, casual like, I could find out for myself if living in town had civilized her some and added some gentility to her untamed ways. ------- Chapter 7 We had trouble getting so many cattle watered at one time, until Danny came up with the notion to bring the water troughs that Mr. Lyons had built over close to our watering basins. With pipes, we were able to fill all of the small troughs from the larger ones in a very short time. At first, Mr. Lyons wanted me to pay for the troughs, but after I explained to him that I was willing to deliver the water he needed but he was responsible for getting his cows watered, he changed his tune. The new watering procedure worked well. One thing was certain, and that was that my foreman's thinking had saved me a lot of money on the improvements to the delivery system that I had planned on having to make in order to get all of the watering done. I went down to see Miguelito after the new cattle had been down in the draw for a week. I brought four horses with me, all of them saddle broken and trained for cattle herding. I told him that I didn't ever want to see one of my horses being ridden Indian style, without a proper bridle and saddle. He showed me seven or eight young boys that he claimed knew how to work cattle. I think the oldest might have been fourteen years old. I would have said something, but I remembered that I had been pretty good with horses myself at that age. I told Miguelito to pick four boys and I'd take them out and see what they could do. "Boy, you asked me to get you some hands that could take care of the herd. That's what I did. Give them the damn horses and go on back to your ranch. These boys know what they're doing." He was acting like I had insulted him or something. I was going to give him a small lesson in how a pecking order worked, when two boys broke from the pack and jumped up on two of the horses and lit out like scalded dogs. I was watching them heading off when I saw two more Indians jump on the last two horses and take off after the first two. The three remaining boys all looked at the four horses that had been taken, and you could see that they wished that they had been one of the ones who had taken them. "You three come up to the ranch and get your own horses and tack. I'm damned if I'm going to keep ferrying them down to you. Miguelito, you're responsible for all them cows, my horses and all the equipment. Any losses or damages will come out of the reservation's share of the herd. Toby Janzen will be here later with hay and oats for the horses. Tell him where to leave it, and you make sure my horses get plenty of good water to drink, and get washed and brushed once in a while too." Miguelito had already turned away and was walking back to his shack before I was even half done with telling him what he needed to know. That's another thing about Indians, you can't tell them anything, because they all think they already know everything there is to know. I turned back to the three boys to finish giving them their instructions, but they were already walking fast towards the trail that leads up to my ranch. I wondered if I was making a big mistake trusting my horses to a bunch of boys that were still wet behind their ears. I made it back to the ranch house about fifteen minutes before the three Indian boys. They must have run a good part of the way. There were three horses all saddled and outfitted for them by the time that they arrived. Danny Gomez was holding the reins and he said something to each of the boys before handing them over to them. They got on their mounts and started back the way they had just come from, and never stopped to say thanks to me, or even bothered to tell me their names. Well, it was all Miguelito's problem now, and I'd let him sort everything out down there. I went searching for my foreman. "Danny, I'm heading down to the County seat on some business. You'll be in charge while I'm gone. There's two hundred dollars in gold and silver in the top dresser drawer if you need it for a trade or to pay out a hand or something. Is there anything you need from town?" "You going down there to sniff around my sister?" "You listen to me boy, I don't answer questions like that from my ranch hands. It happens that I've got family down there and that I'm in need of legal advice on a few things. If you had asked me nice to look Juana up to give her a message from you, I might have done it. Now, you can just wait for somebody else to take your damn messages for you." "You stay away from her Mr. Gardner." I've always been somewhat shy of taking orders from others. Maybe it's because daddy used to always tell me what to do, instead of just asking me nice like. I bristled up some and then let go. "I'll kick your dumb Indian ass if you ever speak to me in that tone of voice again, boy. You'll keep a respectful tone with me if you know what's good for you." "You're more of an Indian than I am. And a big horse's ass too." I'm standing outside my main corral, on my own ranch, listening to someone that I'm paying, talking to me that way. No sir. I wasn't going to have any of that. I hit him as hard as I could and knocked him back against the building. He was a tough Indian though, and didn't lose his feet from that punch. Instead, he charged at me and the two of us wound up wrestling on the ground and rolling all around in horse piss and rocks and mud. It was undignified, and it was embarrassing. The longer it took for me to whip him, the worse it was going to look to my other hands. I managed to throw him off of me and get back up on my feet. For the next ten minutes we managed to mix it up pretty good, but I was stronger, and he was a sucker for a sneak left hand. I finally managed to win it with a quick left and then a perfect right hand that managed to connect flush on his jaw. I left him laying there on the ground and climbed up on my horse and rode out. I figured that we'd find out soon enough whether he had the stomach to make a good foreman or not. If he was still at the ranch when I got back, then I'd know that he was a good one. I smelled of horse piss, and my face was cut some and sore, and my hands both hurt. If it hadn't been for the respect I'd lose from my hands, I'd have turned back and delayed my trip. I got over to Uncle Charlie's before sun down, and had to let Aunt Persis fuss all over me about the damages that Danny had done. Uncle Charlie and I went out for a few drinks after dinner, but only after Aunt Persis had made sure that I was bathed and had changed into decent clothes. We went to the hotel bar and there was some question there about whether or not I was an Indian. After Uncle Charlie explained that I was his nephew, his late brother's son, any objection to serving me was dropped. There was some muttering at the bar though, and a few people left rather than stand at the bar and drink with an Indian. Uncle Charlie told me to pay it no mind, but I still simmered some from the way I was being treated. "Tell me Jay, why did you come to town? It isn't like you to come down here so soon after the last time. Are you in some kind of trouble?" Uncle Charlie was a good man, and he worried about me all of the time. "Uncle Charlie I have started up a small cattle business in a kind of partnership with the reservation Indians. I provide the cows and the horses to work them, and the reservation supplies the hands and the grazing. I have a pipe that supplies all of their water. Do I need to do anything special to protect myself?" "How many head, and where did you get them?" "Nineteen right now, and I'll be adding four more each week for the next year. Franklin Lyons and I came to an agreement over watering his herd." "You entered into an agreement with the husband of the murdered woman?" "He's having financial problems right now, and he didn't like his other choices at all. As for his late wife, I think he and I got all of that sorted out." Did you sign a contract with him?" "No, but it doesn't really matter because I can shut his water down if I need to." "You should always get your agreements in writing Jay. If there is a later problem, or differing interpretations, you need something to refer back to, or you go to court to have the document interpreted for you." "It takes time and money for all of that. Right now, his cattle have water and I've been paid. I'm more worried about my deal with the reservation. The horses I've lent them, they are still mine legally, right?" "I'll draw up a contract for both agreements and I won't charge you anything. Whether the reservation Indians can sign legal contracts, that might be brought into question. We'll assume that they can for now. The horse ownership question is easier to answer. Unless you transferred ownership, they remain your property." "You make up the contracts Uncle Charlie, and then tell me how much you'd charge anyone else, and I'll pay that amount too. I'm also looking to buy more good horses because I'm going to grow the herd and do more trading too. You'll see more of me too, because I've hired myself a foreman. He might be there now or he might not. It was him that I got into the fight with." "I see a lot of my brother in you Jay. He was a visionary when he was younger, but he let all of his appetites get the best of him. Don't you make that same mistake." We finished off three or four beers each and then we drifted back over to his house and I slept in the floor pallet that Aunt Persis had made up for me. The next day, I walked around town some, and even rode out to a ranch and looked over some horses. Mr. Thomkins, the ranch owner had known my daddy some, but I got the distinct impression that they hadn't been friends. My daddy wasn't that friendly of a man. The man did know of our ranch though, and I looked over his horses pretty good. There were only three that held my interest, and he wasn't willing to part with any of them for the price that I'd be willing to pay. I thanked him for showing me his horses though, and we parted on good terms. I got back to town and spent another hour hanging around the general store looking for anything I might need up at the ranch. I didn't see Juana during my time there, but I hadn't really been expecting to that much. I went over to Uncle Charlie's office to see if he had those contracts done yet. "Jay, look these over and tell me if they accurately depict your understanding of the verbal agreements." He handed me two separate pages that were handwritten in small script. He once told me that a good lawyer could always write very small. It saved on paper, and kept the curious from prying into business that didn't concern them. It took me about an hour to get through them and, at the end, I wasn't that sure that I'd understood everything that he'd written. There were a lot of legal words and Latin words in the two pages, but it seemed to say everything I'd told him and quite a few other things as well. "I guess you know what you're doing Uncle Charlie, but I'd need a lawyer to explain it all to me before I would sign it normally." "Then I've done my job well Jay. I'm your lawyer, and I can assure you that there is nothing in either document that you need fear. I've written in a few obscure sentences that might help your case in the event that you wanted out from under the constraints of your agreements. I'm counting on your good sense to not make their use necessary." "I'll see about getting these signed, and then I'll put them somewhere that's safe after. How much do I owe you?" "Five dollars for my time, and sixty cents for my out of pocket expenses acting as your attorney." I handed him the money, even though I wondered about that sixty cents. I figured that thirty cents might be for the beers that we had the night before. I was just leaving when Uncle Charlie's door was opened and Juana walked through it. I almost didn't recognize her because she was in a town lady dress and her hair was done up so that it sat on top of her head and was held there somehow. She hadn't grown any taller, but that hair made it look like she had. I'd never seen her in a dress before, but she looked good in hers. "Here's those copies you had me make Mr. Gardner. That comes to sixty cents please." She didn't say anything to me, so I returned the favor. "Thank you Miss Gomez. This is my nephew, Jay Gardner. Jay, this is Juana Gomez, she does legal document preparation for me, and that was her fine hand that wrote out your contracts. She writes small and legibly doesn't she?" "As small as she is, that's probably normal sized writing to her." I grinned over at her, proud of my quick wit. My Uncle passed over the sixty cents that I'd just handed over to him and put the other pages in my hand, keeping only the pages that he'd written out that she'd copied from. "Thank you Mr. Gardner. Let me know if you need any more copying done. I'm sorry about your nephew, but I had a cousin once who was slow like him. I'm sure that he wasn't being rude to me on purpose." Juana turned around and left the office, never once having spoken directly to me. Uncle Charlie almost choked because he was laughing so hard. "It sure is funny boy, you spending half your day looking all over town trying to catch a glimpse of that sweet little thing, and when you finally do get to see her, you don't even get her to say hello to you. You do remind me of your daddy boy, and it's a wonder that he ever got the chance to produce any offspring." I remembered then that my Uncle Charlie used to talk to my daddy like that too. He was the only one that my daddy let talk to him that way too. I was still a little flustered about seeing Juana and having her walk away so suddenly, so I didn't have a quick quip to fire back at my Uncle at the time. I was working on it though. I went home with Uncle Charlie for the evening supper and, while he was ladling out the potatoes I asked him if that Widow Sanders had ever been found and brought to justice. He looked over at me and calmly passed me the bowl containing the potatoes. "Not that I've heard they haven't. I'm confident that she will be found someday though, and I expect that she will be given a trial and found guilty. Mostly, she'll be found guilty because innocent people don't run off like she did. If she hadn't run, I believe she'd have been acquitted of the charge. Her husband was a particular friend of mine, and I loathed the idea of her getting away with murdering him." Aunt Persis nodded her head in agreement. "It was terrible what she did Jay, just terrible. If Charlie hadn't given her the chance to run away, there's no telling what that fool jury might have done. Everyone knew that she did it, but there is always that tiny doubt when the defendant claims to be innocent. Men serve on juries, and they are notorious for giving the fairer sex the benefit of any doubt. If women served on juries, she'd have been found guilty in a very short time. Her husband wasn't deserving of what she did." "I've always admired Uncle Charlie's practical nature too Aunt Persis. It's good to know that he'd be willing to sacrifice his own good name and his standing in the community in the furtherance of justice. Of course, there are those folks who still believe the worst about why he let her go." "And that's shame on them Jay. People are going to believe the worst if that's their nature. I prefer to look for the best in people, and, with Charlie, I've seldom had a disappointment doing so." "Pass me that plate of chicken Jay, and let's discuss a more pleasant subject, shall we? Let's talk about that Gomez girl. I can see why you've got your cap set for her." I looked at the two of them and realized that they were both ready to have some fun at my expense. I finished up my supper, and went out for a walk to settle my food. I walked around aimlessly, just passing the time until I could go back and get some sleep. I planned on going back to the ranch at first light. I had stopped at an old oak tree on the edge of town near the cemetery. I had always liked trees because they weren't too common in the area. I paused for a minute, looking up at the clear night sky, and then started back to my Uncle's place. "Are you looking for me?" I must have jumped a foot off the ground when she spoke. She was no more than three feet away from me and I'd had no idea anyone was near. I took a minute to settle my nerves before speaking to her. "Why do you insist on sneaking up on a body? Don't you remember how your brother almost got himself killed twice from doing that?" "I was here before you were. If anyone's the sneak, it would be you." "I had a big supper and was walking it off, that's all. Why do you think I'd be out looking for you anyway? I believe that I'm the one who ran you off of my place on several occasions." I turned to look at her and she was dressed like she had been up at my ranch. Pants, a shirt and boots. Her hair was down, and had been brushed out. She looked mighty good to me, just standing there looking up at me like she was. "I saw you looking all over town today. If it wasn't me you were looking for, who else was it?" "I was killing time between appointments, that's all. I had to go look at some horses and then I had to wait for Uncle Charlie to get done with my contracts. I spent most of my time in the general store, looking at their merchandise. I wasn't looking for anyone. In a town this size, I wouldn't have to look very hard to find you if that was what I wanted to do." "So, you're saying that you didn't want to see me?" "Hadn't thought about it one way or the other. I was surprised to see you in my Uncle's office, but I guess I knew that you'd settled here for a spell until you got that other work that you've been after." "Do you mean the whoring job? If you do, I've given up on that job. It doesn't pay near enough for all the bother. I'm thinking of finding me a young man right here in town and getting married and raising up a family." "That's good then. You probably would have had to make do with slim pickings if you'd chosen the other anyway. I understand it's mostly commission how you're paid." "Are you saying that men wouldn't come flocking for my favors if they were on offer?" "I guess it would depend on the man and the price. At a buck a throw you probably wouldn't do that well. Four bits though, you might not do too bad." "Are you trying to negotiate Mr. Gardner? If you are, my price for you would be three hundred dollars, and not one penny less." "That's a good price Juana. It's two hundred ninety nine fifty more than I would pay, but, you keep to that price and you won't have to worry about sullying your reputation any." "Fifty cents? That's all you'd pay for me? You must have forgotten how I look with all my clothes off. I might could come down a little, say to two hundred dollars, but that is my lowest possible price." "I'll tell my Uncle Charlie, Juana, he's always had an eye for the ladies. I doubt that he'll go more than a dollar, but you never know. He did seem to take a shine to you today in his office. From the look at all that writing you did, it would take a lot less time to earn the dollar on your back than by copying his hen scratchings." "Sixty dollars Jay. That way we'd be all square and I wouldn't be owing you anything from what you gave Danny for me to use. You'd be the first too, so that has to be worth more than any dollar." "I'm not interested in paying you for that Juana. It was worth the money just so I wouldn't have to worry about how you were getting on. I sort of promised your grandfather and brother that I'd leave you alone." "Did you at least want to Jay?" I wanted to a lot, but I wasn't about to admit it to her. She already was too full of herself in my opinion. "Want to what?" I could appear to misunderstand her question. "See me when you came to town. I wasn't wrong about that was I?" She was looking at my eyes when she asked it. She wasn't thinking of me taking her to bed now, she was trying to see if I still held any interest in her. "I hadn't really thought about it like that. I asked your brother if he had any messages for you if I ran into you, but I wasn't really expecting to." I'd let her follow up on that answer or not. It put it back on her whether to keep the conversation going or not. "Did he have any?" I could have answered her several ways, but I decided to answer her in a way that wouldn't be too revealing, but would still keep her interest. "I'm not sure if he did or not. He got a little mouthy on me and I had to straighten him out about it. Last time I saw him he was laying in a puddle of horse piss in front of my corral." I wanted her to know that I'd been the one who walked away from that fight. My face was still marked up some. I didn't want her to think that I'd lost the fight. "You had a fight over me?" Now that was just so like her. Turning everything around so that it fit into her own way of thinking. "No, I didn't. I had a fight over the way my foreman was speaking to me." I'm glad that we got that straightened out quickly. It wouldn't do to have her thinking the fight was about her. "So, you don't think about me, didn't come here to see me, didn't have a fight about me, and have no interest in getting me into your bed? Have I got all of that right?" "I guess that's right enough. I don't miss you. I'm glad that you're out of my hair. I think about you some, but that's just because I haven't been visited by other naked women for awhile. I think about getting you in my bed and doing all sorts of things, but that is just my baser instinct. I'm glad that you are a four hour ride away from me. If you were close by, I might grow weak and give in to my lust." "Are you asking me to come back with you?" "Hell no!" "To the reservation?" "No! Stay here. I just told you that I like you being so far away. How can you listen to what I say and then ask me those questions? I've been thinking of sparking Toby Sander's daughter anyway. He has a good spread in the valley and she's his only kin. I'd own that land of his, and all that's on it if I was married to her." "Isn't she that girl that drools all over her dresses and can't hardly talk?" "She might drool a little, but I certainly wouldn't hold it against her that she's on the quiet side." "You'd marry someone like her? What about your children?" "I didn't say that I'd breed her. There's things that you can do to prevent pregnancy. I sure don't know what concern of yours it is anyway. I already told you that I don't like the way that you are. I don't see any changes either." "Jay Gardner, you are the most difficult man I ever met. My grandfather and brother were both right about you. I wish I'd never laid my eyes on you. Get out of my sight." "Do you want a kiss to remember me by?" I expected her to pick up a clump of dirt and throw it at me, but, once again, she surprised me. "I suppose, if you want to." That wasn't anything like what I'd expected. A kiss wasn't that much of a much. I got close and leaned down to give her one. I'd make it quick and wouldn't put forth my best effort either. No sense making the girl sadder than she already must be. "OOHHFF! My nuts!" I felt her knee slam up into my crotch with a terrible force. I turned away and grabbed at myself in pain. It wasn't agony, but only because she had been just a little bit off of the mark. I heard her running away from me.She was shouting at me about her brother and me marrying a drooling girl, but mostly she was telling me about how little she felt like kissing my ugly face. I fell to the ground, pretending to be hurt far worse than I really was. I figured that she'd be back to see if I was really hurt, and I'd grab her and find some way to pay her back for what she'd just done. She never even looked back to see if I was okay. After a few minutes, I finally accepted that she wasn't returning, and got up and went back to my Uncle's house. By the time morning came, the thought of spending four hours astride a horse wasn't impossible for me to accept. I said good bye to my uncle and aunt and rode off headed back to the ranch. I had to get off several times in order to move things around, but I made it back to the ranch in around six hours. I wasn't going to be doing much riding for awhile. As soon as I pulled up in front of the corral, one of the hands came out to take my horse and put him away. I took my pack and the saddlebags into the ranch house with me. I walked slow, but I made a real effort not to limp when I walked. I had just gotten myself settled in on my bed when I heard Danny Gomez hailing me from outside. "Mr. Gardner, can I see you for a minute?" I got up from the bed and got my pistol down. I checked to make sure nobody had unloaded it. I had a special strap on the trigger that I fastened in my own special way. It was still the way that I did it, and there were rounds in each chamber. "What do you need Danny?" I had thrown the door open, presenting him with a good target if he had it in mind to bushwhack me. He was standing about twenty feet away from the porch and both of his hands were empty. "Am I still your foreman?" "Why wouldn't you be? That other thing was just me explaining how you needed to speak to me. A part of your training you might say." "Did you go see Juana?" "Well, I did run into her twice. Once in my Uncle's law office and once over by the cemetery. I'd say we spent about five minutes together between the two meetings. She didn't give me any message for you though." "I'd appreciate it if you'd just let her be." "Since you were so polite about making that point known to me, I'll take your wishes under advisement. In the meantime, I need you to take something down to the reservation to your grandfather, and wait for him to sign it, and then bring it back to me. It is a legal contract between me and the reservation concerning our joint venture with the cattle herd. My Uncle prepared it, so it probably favors my interests more than it should. Tell your grandfather that I intend to live up to the original deal that he and I discussed." I went back inside and got Danny two copies of the contract. "Have him sign one and return that one to me. The other is for him to keep. Your sister wrote up both copies. She writes really good." Danny took the two pieces of paper and looked them over. "Why did she write it out so small?" "That's what lawyers do in order to make sure that honest people need to pay them to look things over carefully. You tell Miguelito that I don't plan to cheat him and he doesn't have to sign anything if he doesn't care to. I'll stick by what he and I agreed to." "How did Juana look?" "Good enough to eat. She's very pretty in a dress, but I like her hair better when it's all loose." "Was she still mad at you?" "If she was, I didn't notice it." He looked at me and there was a little smile playing on his lips. That's another thing about Indians, they seem to have this way of knowing things that they shouldn't know. For a minute I wondered if he could have heard about her kneeing me, but I dismissed that thought as being ridiculous. If I had known that Juana had stopped off at the ranch before heading down to the reservation four hours before, I might have thought differently. ------- Chapter 8 I guess it took me about a week before I wasn't walking funny, and feeling tender when I did. I had played back in my mind the entire conversation I'd had with Juana, but I still couldn't understand why she had attacked me like that. I had offered her the kiss and she had accepted. It wasn't like I had tried to take liberties with her. I felt lucky that she was so short and that I was pretty tall. Had our heights been closer, I might be singing in a higher register. Even though I'd been sore, I hadn't been idle. Miguelito had sent back a signed contract and Danny was over at Mr. Lyons' ranch with two copies of that contract. I had told him to get Mr. Lyons to either sign the contract or else we'd shut down the water to his herd. I went out to the main corral and spent some time admiring the big black stallion.I still looked forward to riding him, but I wanted to wait until after he'd done some good work with my mares. From all reports that I'd been getting, he was finding life pleasurable in that mare filled corral. I was looking forward to hearing that quite a few of the mares had caught and were with foal. I had just turned to head back to the ranch house when I saw Danny riding up the trail towards the ranch. He wasn't moving at his usual quick pace, and his hair hung down across his shoulders. I waited for him to draw nearer before I hailed him over to the porch. "You get that contract signed okay?" "He said he wasn't signing any contracts Mr. Gardner. I told him what you said about shutting off the water, and he said that a verbal agreement is legally binding. Said he'd sue if you did that to him." "Give me that contract. I'll just go see if he tells me the same thing. In the meantime, you and the hands go cut off the flow down to the flumes. We'll just see who winds up suing who. I knew that bastard was going to try something like this. I want that water shut off before my horse gets saddled. Tell one of the hands to saddle me something fast, but not the stallion." Danny handed me the contract copies that I'd sent him down to get signed, and then he rode over to the corral to get some hands to turn all the water off that we were sending to the watering basins. Five minutes later, with a rifle in the scabbard and my pistol belted on, I took off down to the Lyons' Ranch. It took more than an hour, and I was mad enough that I didn't pay my sore balls any attention at all. I pulled up in front of the ranch house and shouted a greeting towards it. Franklin Lyons came out to his porch, and he was cradling a scatter gun of some kind. The sort of little shotgun that my mama used to use to keep varmints away from her hen house. I liked to almost laughed, and would have if I wasn't so mad at having to come down and get this taken care of. "What in the hell do you mean by not signing the agreement that we made earlier?" "Get down off your horse Mr. Gardner. There's certainly no need for us to stand out here yelling at each other in front of my employees." I pulled my rifle out of the saddle scabbard, and jumped down from my horse, Indian style. I think that the speed of it unsettled the man some. My balls paid the price for my impetuosity when I landed though, and I cringed at the pain. I made a vow to remember that everything that looks good won't always feel good. "Lyons, I shut down the water. There is enough in the basins and troughs to keep your herd going for another few days. After that's gone, you can whistle for your damn water, because you aren't going to be getting any more of mine." "Did that person that you sent here tell you why I refused to sign?" I had walked until I was very close to the porch, and the closer I came, the more nervous Lyons seemed to get. "He didn't need to tell me anything else after he said that you had refused to sign. That contract wasn't something that you had the right to not sign. There wasn't anything in it that we both didn't agree to." "On the contrary sir. There was a lot of verbiage that we hadn't agreed to. I didn't read it, but there was more written on the page I glanced at than everything that we had agreed to. I'm certain of that." I turned around and walked back to my horse. Once I was in the saddle and had put the rifle back in it's scabbard, I looked down on Lyons. "That contract had some things that I never read either. I signed it because my Uncle Charlie said it was what you and I had agreed to. You can suit yourself by not signing it, but that won't get water for your herd will it? When I was riding over from the ranch I believe I heard a bunch of crazy people shooting holes in all of those nice troughs that you had built. I sure hope you weren't planning on getting some more use out of them." I spurred my horse, and turned him around and rode away. I figured Lyons would be sending a crew out to look at his troughs. I wanted him to do that just so he'd know that I'd turned the water off just like I said I had. It looked to me like I might have just cost myself close to two hundred head of cattle by my insisting on a written contract. I figured that I'd ride the long way and make sure that Miguelito got the news from me rather than someone else. I was about fifty feet from Miguelito's shack when I recognized Juana bending over a clothes tub and a scrub board. She was treating somebody's shirt pretty harshly on that scrub board, and soapy water was sloshing all over the place. I stopped my horse and sat there watching her rubbing out the dirt from one of the sleeves. "That's what I like to see, an Indian that values cleanliness. You taking in people's wash now between your legal document preparation work?" When she turned to scowl at me, I was glad I was sitting on my horse. She'd have a hard time getting another chance to knee me from where I was. "Go get your grandfather Juana, I need to talk with him." "He's not here. If he was though, I'd tell you to get him yourself. I don't work for you any more." "You never worked for me, unless you mean those papers that you copied. Up at the ranch I was just letting you bunk out on my porch for a spell. That isn't the same as working for me." "He's not here. I don't know when he'll be back. Go away." That's when she started in crying. What is it about some girls that they can be fine one minute, and then crying to beat the band the next one? My mama used to do that sometimes too. It nearly drove my daddy crazy when she did that too. "I need to talk to him, it's important. It's about the cattle, and it's not anything that's good." "You can leave him a note or tell me. He's been mad at me ever since I got back, and it's all your fault." I left her there and rode up to the ranch. I never could make much sense out of talking with a woman. I was starting to see how my daddy just couldn't take any more of it. The more you liked one, the worse it seemed to get. It was turning out to be a bad day all around for me. Riding uphill on a horse wasn't making my balls feel any better either. It was a nice day though, so I dismounted and walked the last mile or so. I saw Miguelito sitting on my porch, in my chair, and eating something from one of my tin plates. I wish I'd known he was up there, I'd have remounted and ridden in the last quarter mile or so. "Why are you walking boy? Them nuts of yours still sore?" I guess you already know what I think of Indians who think they're funny. As much as I'd tried to do to make things better at the reservation, practically ever since I first laid eyes on Miguelito, he goes and makes fun of me any way. I pulled out my pistol and fired three feet over his head into the ranch house wall. He ducked pretty damn quick for an old man, but was yelling at me the whole time he was heading for cover. "Boy have you gone loco? What the hell was that for?" I had already re holstered my pistol. "Those damn horseflies. I didn't want it to get at your food and lay eggs in it or something. I don't think I got him that time, but I'm keeping a sharp lookout, so you go on ahead and finish your eating and your funny comments." I saw three of my hands running towards us carrying their rifles. "You boys go on back in the corral. Miguelito and I are just having some fun together over here." "Do what he tells you. I'm all right. He saw a horse fly and it spooked him." Miguelito had stood up and was cleaning food off of his face and his shirt and pants. "Boy, there aren't many men who ever took a shot at me and are still alive to talk about it." "If I had taken a shot at you, you wouldn't be alive to talk about it. What in the hell are you doing up here anyway? I've been looking for you down on the reservation." "I heard about the trouble with that cattleman, and I thought I'd save you the trip down the hill from here. Juana had told me what she did to you, and I figured you might still be healing up from it." I could see that he wanted to get back to talking about our business. "I saw Juana and she was crying. She says that you've been mean to her ever since she came back to the reservation." "She should be crying. That girl causes all of us nothing but trouble. If she hadn't riled things up, you and Danny wouldn't have had that run in. It would have been a sight better for everyone if you had just gone ahead and done what you wanted to. You remind me of your father that way boy. He never could just go straight ahead with anything. If he had, maybe your mother would still be alive, and him too." "I'm not sure that I even know what you're talking about, but I think that I'd prefer that you stopped talking about it right now. My mother and him have both been dead for awhile and no amount of jawing about it is going to change a thing. He loved her. Doesn't matter what he did, because he did the same thing to himself every day after that." "It matters boy. I like you, but it matters. You can shoot them horseflies all you want to boy, I'm too damn old and tired to care that much any more. You don't understand how much the reservation has riding on us staying on your good side. The past month or so has been the best we've had it in more than thirty years. We were starving and dying. It got so I couldn't make myself go out and even talk to my people, that's how bad I felt." "I wish you hadn't told me that. I should have come down and talked to you a lot sooner than I did. I had a good notion of what you all were being put through. I've been blaming the Indian agent instead of people like me who just stand by and let it keep going like it has. I'm sorry." "I didn't tell you that to make you sorry. It's Juana that should be sorry. She's old enough that it's past time that she should think about somebody besides herself. She lived there before you brought them cattle down. She sees the difference but it only matters to her what she wants." "Well, what do you think about Mr. Lyons, and me stopping watering his herd over that dumb contract?" "He came to you because you could solve his problem cheaper than the other fella. Do you think that changed in the last two weeks?" "It might have. The other guys got too greedy before. They might have changed their tune after Lyons found a better deal than what they offered." "You think they'd water his herd for less than four cattle per week? Don't forget that Lyons was paying to freight the water back and forth too. The way he does it now, all he needs is to graze them on the range and bring them by for a drink." "Don't you think that he'd figured all of that out before he decided not to sign my contract?" "Maybe he's a man who doesn't like being pushed. If you look at it from where he stands, that contract might seem like pushing to him. What did he say when you went to see him?" "He said there was more in the contract than what we'd agreed to. He's right too, there was. That's my Uncle Charlie though, not me." "You got a pen and some paper and ink? Write up a new one that only says what you agreed to. It doesn't take a lawyer to write an agreement. I bet Juana would write it for you if you don't want to be bothered doing it." "I can write, I'm not ignorant you know." "She might stop crying if she thought I wasn't mad at her any more. This way it would help me out. I'd even ride a damn horse down there so we could send her back up on it. You'd be doing me a favor if you kept her up here with you. There's several boys down there who seem to have their hearts set on me killing them. Sooner or later, that's what they'll force me to do if she's left down there." "I thought you wanted us to stay away from each other?" "Naw, that's just a sneaky Indian trick to get a man interested in a girl. We did the same thing with your daddy and it worked, slick as snake snot. He wasted a lot of whiskey trying to do his sneaking around and getting her drunk. We'd have traded her for twenty pounds of good flour and half a pound of salt." "So you don't mind if I take her to my bed and try her out?" "Man ought to try anything expensive before he buys it." "Does Danny feel the same way?" "Hell, it was Danny's idea, as soon as he found out how many horses you had up here." "Go tell one of the hands to saddle you up a horse. You tell Juana that she'll have to apologize for kneeing me though. I won't let somebody work with me that won't admit when they've been wrong." "If I tell her that boy, there's a good chance that she'll lay you low again as soon as she's within range to do it. You certain that that's what you want?" "Tell her not to come up if she's planning on trying that again. I won't take that kind of treatment from any man or woman." "You've got a lot to learn boy. You tell a woman not to do something, it's the same as putting a red flag in front of an angry bull. It's an invitation, pure and simple." "You tell her what I said. I'm willing to risk it. I might shoot her though, if she somehow gets through all of my other defenses." "If you do find it necessary to do that, you might think about running away right after. That's the same advice I gave your daddy, but he didn't listen to me." "That's the second time that you implied that it wasn't my daddy's hand that actually pulled the trigger the night he got Gardner fever. I've let the first two times go by because if I ever found out that somebody else was there who helped him, I'd be bound to give them a fever myself." "Boy, I'm telling you that your daddy killed himself, either way it might have happened. There are always consequences to actions. That's a good thing for you to learn while you're still young and not too set in your ways. I wish someone had sat me down and told me that when I was as young as you are now." "Are you going to sit there yapping all afternoon old man? I thought we were going to write out an agreement in case Lyons comes up here to see me." "I'm going, but you could sure work some on your manners around your elders." Miguelito got up, and I saw Danny approaching with a horse already saddled up. Someday I was going to catch Miguelito with a toothache, feed him some whiskey, and get him to tell me how they do things like that without even talking to each other. How did Danny know to bring a horse to Miguelito when the man had said a hundred times that he never liked sitting a horse? That old man put his left hand on the pommel and swung himself up without even touching the stirrups. I don't think I could do something like that, not even when my balls weren't sore. I must have looked pretty surprised after watching that, because Danny turned away from me and was laughing all the way back to the corral. I was just finished eating some beans and some kind of meat and gravy that Miguelito had left when Juana came riding up the hill. She rode the horse over to the corral and took down her things that she'd tied behind the saddle. It was a lot of stuff for just a short stay. I shut my door and threw the bar across it. I wasn't going to open it up until after I got my apology. I heard her come up on my porch, and the first thing she did was try my door handle. she rattled it a few times pretending like she thought it was only stuck. "Jay Gardner, you open up this door and let me in there." "Aren't you forgetting something Juana?" "I don't have a thing to apologize for. You better let me in there after I rode all the way up here." "Juana, you can take another horse and ride back down, and I mean it. You haven't learned a damn thing. Go away and leave me in peace." "Jay if you open the door, I promise not to hurt you any more. If you show me where it hurts you, I think I can help to make it better." I went back and took off my clothes and went to bed. I think it was an hour or more later before Danny came out and told her to quiet down because her screeching was spooking the horses. "Jay, I'm putting my bedroll in front of your door. Sooner or later you'll have to come outside for something and I'll be waiting for you." My daddy had been afraid of being burned out when he'd built the ranch house. He'd built it on an old mining tunnel that ran straight back to the other side of the hill the house sat in front of. There was a trap door that no one but me ever knew about. If it ever got to the point where I ran out of necessary's, I could crawl out that way and get whatever I needed. That girl was going to have a long wait if she thought she'd outsmarted Jay Gardner. I almost laughed out loud when I thought about her waiting out there for me. I went to sleep thinking about how mad she was going to be. I came awake with a start because my front door was open and someone was frying eggs on my stove. I smelled bacon cooking to. When I reached for my pistol, someone had taken it from where it hung. I looked over at the stove and relaxed a little when I saw that it was only Juana that was at the stove. Then it came to me that I'd barred that door before I went to sleep the night before. "How did you get into my house? That door was barred when I laid down." "I know that, I was the one who opened it to let some light and air in here." "How did you get in?" "Grandpa told me where your hidey hole was, and then he said that he had taken the latch off of the trap door just in case you tried to keep me out. Danny and all the hands know that I spent the night in here with you. They watched me when I opened your door this morning. By now, everyone down at the reservation knows that I'm your new woman. Even if you get up and throw me out the door, they'll all believe that you took me, and then threw me out when you were done." "After I eat my breakfast, I'm going to make all of your play acting real. You're just too much trouble for me to go through without getting something good out of it. We better hurry up though because I'm half expecting another visitor this morning." "Is it that man who owns all those cattle?" "No, it's Toby Sanders, he's bringing my new fiancee up here to see where she'll be living. That reminds me, I need to get a clean towel out for her so she won't drool all over me." It was then that she attacked me. I fought her off as good as I was able to, but she just overpowered me and had her way with me. It was noon before I had worn her down enough to get myself dressed and make my escape. She really was a virgin like she said she was, and it was her that walked around funny for the next few days. It took almost a week for Mr. Lyons to realize that I wasn't going to turn his water back on because I was afraid of being sued by him. Watching him riding up my hill trail on that fancy saddle I had traded to him was quite a sight. He didn't have much experience on a horse I don't think, and it was a painful learning process for him. "Get down out of that saddle Mr. Lyons. It looks like you're uncomfortable up there on that horse. What brings you way out this way?" "Mr. Gardner, you are an unpleasant young man. It pains me to be forced to accede to your unfair demand. That pains me less, however, than the prospect of allowing all of my cattle to simply perish from a lack of drinking water. I wish that I had the wherewithal to simply walk away from this most uncivilized part of our great country." "How much of that wherewithal are you thinking about Mr. Lyons? The reason that I'm asking is that my grandfather put away a store of gold and silver before he went to his reward. He always liked the idea of running some cattle on some of that bottom range. If you named a figure that struck my fancy, I might decide to go dig it up and buy you out." "Make me any reasonable offer sir, and we'll see if we can reach an accord." He had gotten his second wind at the prospect of a possible deal in the offing. My daddy had taught me to trade on the other man's offer, so I just kept my silence and waited him out. "You do have the hard currency you spoke of Mr. Gardner?" "Mr. Lyons I have enough to buy your ranch and your cattle for as much as you paid, but that isn't what I'm going to pay. It was you that expressed the wish to be shut of the area, not me. If you have a price, I'll be happy to listen to you name it. If it strikes me as a real bargain, I guess I'll go get my shovel and start digging it up while my fiancee writes out your bill of sale to me. We'll ride to the county seat and record it all nice and legal, and you can head back to the part of the country that you prefer to this one. If I don't like the price you name, well, I guess we can draw up a simple contract for me to water your herd and get back to the deal that we once had. That just means it will take me longer to get all of your herd though, doesn't it?" "I paid Twenty two thousand five hundred dollars for the cattle, and an additional fifteen hundred dollars for the ranch and all it's fixtures. All is currently held free and clear, with no encumbrances. I would take fifteen thousand dollars and walk away from all of it." "Well sir, I guess we'll just have to do it the slow way after all. Shall we go back to our original agreement at four cattle per week?" I was surprised that he'd started at such a high number. I thought that he'd ask for thirteen thousand and just throw in the ranch for lagniappe. "You can't be suggesting that you find that price to be untempting?" "Well I don't know about suggesting, but it didn't tempt me any. I had in mind a much rounder number than fifteen. It is your asset though, and a man shouldn't make a sale if he doesn't think he's going to be happy after it's done." "Twelve thousand dollars, in specie, nothing less will I accept. That is half price sir, and that's delivered." "I'd be happy to pay you that half price Mr. Lyons, if the cattle still numbered fifteen hundred, and if they were in the same shape as they were in when you purchased them in Temple, Texas. I turned the water back on this morning, as a show of good faith, and to protect your bargaining position, should you elect to sell out. As a neighborly gesture, I'll continue watering the herd free for one more week in order to allow you to find another buyer and dispose of your herd. All I have is gold and silver coinage, as my family has never entertained the notion that paper money held any true storehouse of value. I offer you ten thousand dollars in gold double eagles. That is a bag of five hundred gold coins sir. I happen to know that a good horse can carry that much in two saddlebags, for a very long distance, because that is how it first arrived here back in the eighteen sixties. These coins are all bearing the date of 1858 and were minted in Philadelphia. I believe them to be in the same bag that the mint shipped them in. I understand that these coins are sought after by collectors, and that there may be a slight premium attached to them due to their rarity. In any case, that is my only offer, and you have one week to find a better one." He looked right at my face while he thought about what I had told him. He knew that there weren't five people in this state that could raise that much money in specie. Gold is pretty portable, despite it's weight. Almost fifty years had passed since that Yankee train had been robbed, and all that gold and silver had vanished without a trace. Like those buried rifles, it hadn't been doing anybody any good. If I got my way, it soon would be. "Mr. Gardner, if you'd please get your fiancee to draw up that bill of sale, I believe that we can effect a satisfactory transaction. I would have preferred much more of course, but what you offer will be sufficient for me to get started somewhere that has a climate better suited to my strengths." While I gave Juana the wording for the bill of sale, I had her brother and another hand of mine start rolling my nearly full slop bucket away for dumping in the gully. After they had moved away far enough, I got out my shovel and dug up the old saddle bags that were buried underneath. When Lyons saw that big bag of gold he really got excited. When I told him that I'd meet him in front of the County office at eleven the following morning, his excitement was somewhat diminished. He must have thought that I'd just accept his word that he held free title to everything. I told him to bring me his deed to the ranch and his bill of sale for the cattle. I planned on having Uncle Charlie there as my witness, and to make certain that everything got done in a legal manner. Things went smoothly the next day, although Uncle Charlie seemed to have a problem with me deeding the land and the cattle over to the Miguelito band of Apache Indians. "Jay, that's a good portion of your birthright that you're giving away with no hope of a monetary return. Have you thought it all through?" "You think that herd's big enough to support all of those Indians Uncle Charlie? I think it might be if they all pitch in and work together. In a way it's just like the government or the Indian Bureau had stepped in and bought it for them. I see a certain justice in that. That money never did any of us Gardner's any good being buried like it was. At least this way, if there is any kind of question raised about all of that gold suddenly turning up, it won't cause me or my ranch any kind of problem. If I ever get strapped for cash, I can always start charging them rich Indians for using my water. It makes me feel like the Gardner part of me is acknowledging and paying back the Indian part of me." Juana and I got married, all nice and legal, by Uncle Charlie. Aunt Persis took a wagon ride back to town with the man that brought out the three barrels of beer for our wedding party. She was leaving early from the party that we threw after the ceremony at the reservation. Uncle Charlie stayed behind because he and I had some 'legal business' to transact the following day. I don't remember what that 'legal business' actually consisted of, but there were two Indian widow women that kept him up most of the night according to Miguelito. Juana and I had a baby girl right before Miguelito got drunk and fell off of a horse coming back from visiting with Toby Sanders daughter. It broke his neck, and he died before anyone even knew he was missing. Danny Gomez took over as the leader of the Miguelito's band of Apache's. They decided themselves to retain that name. We still live up at the Gardner Ranch. There are a couple hundred horses now between the two corrals up on top and the three we keep at the reservation and over at the reservation cattle ranch. They made me stop carrying my daddy's old pistol after I got drunk and killed a horse that I thought was laughing at me. I let them get away with taking it away because sometimes I get melancholy and start thinking about Gardner fever for myself. It helps some now that I gave up drinking. I kept remembering that drink was always a factor when bad things happened to my family. My two sons run all of the ranch business now, and I've given them the maps that show where all the other things were buried. My family has always liked to bury things instead of using them. That's probably because all of those things were stolen by one Gardner or another. I still keep the water rights under my control, because the water has always been the real wealth of our family. I've tried to make all three of my children better disposed to their Indian side than I am or was. I made sure that they always spent time with the hands at the horse ranch or down with the cattle. I knew that it would make them appreciate everything a little more than I ever did. I hear Juana calling me in for supper, and I guess I better go before she comes in here and finds out what I've been writing. Having her kick me in the balls once was plenty, believe me. ------- The End ------- Posted: 2005-12-10 Last Modified: 2005-12-31 / 02:00:26 am ------- http://storiesonline.net/ -------