Authors: Deborah Camp
He hung the canteen on the saddle horn and swung around, catching her heated gaze on him. That dark, winged eyebrow arched again, following by a twitch at the corner of his wide mouth.
“You’re pretty handy to have around,” he said, his voice deeper, darker.
A fluttery laugh escaped her as desire corkscrewed in her belly. “Glad I could help.” She gasped when he suddenly captured her hands and turned them palm up to his gaze.
“Small hands, but capable and strong . . . like the rest of you,” he murmured, his gaze lifting to settle, unsettlingly, on her lips. “Anybody courting you, Banner Payne? Other than Altus Decker?”
“No.” She smiled at him, wishing he would smile back at her.
“Hmmm. Hard to believe.” He ran his thumbs across the inside of her wrists where her pulse galloped. “What’s wrong with the men around here? A girl as pretty as you should have bachelors circling her.”
“You’re available and you’re not interested.” She swallowed hard, appalled at her own brash statement.
His forest green gaze latched onto hers and his long fingers circled her wrists. “Who says I’m not?”
“Just not interested enough,” she tacked on, and watched, fascinated, as his mouth straightened into a line of determination and his fingers tightened on her wrists. She held her breath, knowing he was going to jerk her to him and crush his mouth to hers.
He must have heard the approaching horse at the same moment she did because he released her. Stumbling away from him, she swung her attention to the rider bearing down on them.
Hollis reined his horse and rested his hand on his thigh as he bent over a little toward Banner. “What are you doing out here?” He eyed Callum, who was slipping back into his shirt and buttoning it.
“I pulled a calf,” Banner said, glancing over her shoulder at the wobbly newborn that was suckling on his mother. “Callum’s hands were too big to get in there and do the job.”
Hollis gave her the once-over. “You’re awful clean to have pulled a calf.”
“I have Callum to thank for that. It’s something I’ll have to remember next time. He had me put his coat on . . . backwards . . . to protect my clothing.”
“Oh.” Hollis glanced at Callum. “Hop up, little sister. You can ride back with me.”
If she could have opted to ride back with Callum instead, she would have, but that would have spawned questions she didn’t want to answer. With a sigh, she placed her hand in her brother’s and let him haul her up behind him. Wrapping her arms around Hollis, she caught Callum’s teasing smirk and smirked right back at him.
###
She had a devil of a time getting her emotions in check and setting her mind to preparing breakfast for a bunch of hungry cowpokes. Her thoughts kept sneaking back to the vision of Callum bare-chested and lusty-eyed. What would have happened if Hollis hadn’t ridden up when he did? Callum would have kissed, that’s what!
She barely had enough time to get the table set and the platters of food on it before the men lumbered in, smelling like cowhide and sweat. As usual, they mumbled, “Morning, ma’am,” to her as they took their places at the table and dug into the hash browns, scrambled eggs, ham, fried fatback, red-eye gravy, and biscuits.
Two new hands took the places of Johnson and Baines. Shane Potter and Franklin Ames told her that they were former Confederate soldiers who had come to Texas to find ranch work. Shane was the same height and same age as Banner. He said that he’d left his pregnant wife back in Joplin with her mama and older sisters. Franklin, forty years old and a widower, told her that his wife had been shot and killed on the streets of Atlanta by Yankee soldiers. He’d lost two children to dysentery, too. Banner’s heart had gone out to him.
She poured fresh, cold milk and strong, hot coffee into tin cups, flying around the table to be sure they all had what they needed – and feeling Callum watching her. She didn’t dare look at him because she knew she’d blush and someone at the table would notice.
“How many head you think will calf this winter?” Shane asked around a mouthful of biscuit and gravy.
“Too many. At least fifty,” Callum answered.
“How come so many?”
“The Paynes didn’t pull their bulls off the heifers.” Callum glanced from Hollis to Banner.
Banner had been pouring milk into Shane’s cup, but paused, stung by the hint of censure in Callum’s tone. “We were supposed to keep separate the bulls from the heifers? You’re not doing it. I see bulls out there all the time when I—”
“I’ll take the bulls off them come spring,” Callum explained. “That way, the ones kept here instead of going to market won’t calf in the winter when it’s harder on them and predators are more desperate for a meal.”
“Oh.” She shrugged and looked at Hollis, wondering if he knew about this and why he hadn’t told her. “That makes sense.”
“We barely had enough men to keep the herd together,” Hollis said, staring at his plate. “Couldn’t worry about breeding calendars.”
Banner’s heart softened. “We did the best we could. In fact, I think we did a mighty fine job, considering we were being preyed on by two thieves.”
“Has anyone seen Johnson or Baines since they were run off?” Callum asked, glancing around the table at the men, who all shook their heads. “That’s good. I hope they’re in the next county by now.”
“Y’all going to that meeting Friday evening in town?” Shane asked. “I am. Ought to be right interesting.”
Sly looks were exchanged across the table. Banner paused on her way out of the dining room, aware of tension quivering in the air.
“Sounds like a waste of time to me,” Callum said. “Bunch of hotheads letting off steam.”
“Yeah, tempers are firing, for sure, but who can blame them?” Shane said, his sandy eyebrows moving up and down in agitation. “All those darkies swarming in here and the dirty Yanks buying everything that ain’t nailed down and the Injuns making claims on parcels of land. It’s getting out of hand, if you ask me. And where’s the law in all of this? The Texas Rangers and county sheriffs are as scarce as chicken teeth out here.”
“That’s right,” Seth said, stabbing at another biscuit with his fork. “Need to rid this county of all them squatters.”
“Even the Indians?” Callum’s tone was quiet, but carried weight. “You think we should make war with them, Pa?”
Seth’s scowl deepened “Nah. They don’t bother nobody, really.”
“It’s the darkies and Yanks that are fouling up the place for everyone,” Flint said.
Shane bobbed his head, enthusiastically. “Right you are, sir. That’s why I’m going to that meeting. We need a plan to stop the freed slaves and the uppity Yankees from taking over what we have left.”
“They’ve taken enough, for sure,” Franklin agreed, his sonorous voice breaking through the chatter. “I’ll go with you to that meeting, Shane.”
Banner shook her head and went into the kitchen to refill the coffee pot and milk pitcher.
Men.
Would they ever get a bellyful of war and blood and suffering? Why would they want to go to a meeting and stir up more trouble? There was plenty floating around and infecting people. Couldn’t they find ways to live with each other instead of talking about ways to make things worse?
As she filled the pitchers, she recalled hearing Hollis talking about a town meeting that none other than Eller Hawkins was spearheading. Hollis had said it was to discuss the future of Texas and ranching, but it didn’t sound like that now. Sounded like the topics were more about hatred and being sore losers.
She wasn’t surprised that Eller Hawkins was one of the pot stirrers. He loved attention and strutted about feeling as if it was his right to have money without breaking a sweat for it. Her father had called him “the little emperor” and it fit. Eller wouldn’t take kindly to freed slaves, Indians, and Yankees obtaining land or earning money when he didn’t have any or very much of either.
At least, he didn’t show up at the Latimer house for meals. He went to his home to partake of them with his wife. He’d shown up once at the breakfast table a few days ago, saying that Lilah was under the weather that day. Banner had avoided eye contact with him and could barely muster a half-smile when he commented on how pretty she looked and that she was a good cook.
No matter what came out of his mouth, Banner sensed that vindictiveness toward her simmered just beneath his friendly façade. He’d never forgiven her for spurning him and she didn’t trust him. He was like a finger curled around a trigger. All it would take was one twitch.
Town was bustling, but that wasn’t unusual on any given Friday evening. What bothered Callum was the sense of unrest hovering over the town. It felt like trouble and he wanted none of it. Still, he made his way to the Masonic Hall at the end of the main street where a meeting was being held to discuss “the state of current events and ranching reports.”
Inside the hall, the low buzz of the audience bombarded him as he shouldered through the clutches and knots of men and made his way toward the front of the hall. A few rows back from the staging area, he spotted a place on one of the long benches. He edged past those already seated and eased his big body down onto the hard seat.
“Good to see you here, Cal,” the portly man on his right said, sticking out his hand and giving Callum’s a firm shake. “How’s your father doing?”
“He’s been slow to mend. Thank you for asking, Mr. Summerfield. How is your missus?”
“She is a trifle better, but still nervous. I don’t think she’ll ever completely settle. The war cannons still echo between her ears.”
Callum nodded. He could certainly understand that. The roar of ghostly cannons kept him up at night quite often, as well.
“Have you had trouble with thieving out your way?”
“I had two thieves on the payroll, but I cut them loose.”
“Oh?” Summerfield cleared his throat. “Guess you don’t have as much trouble because you have Indians working for you. They all stick together just like the Negroes. That’s why I’m here. I figure we need to band together more than ever to make sure they don’t keep taking from us.”
“Only people who’ve taken anything from me are two white men. I have no quarrel with any Negroes or Indians. What have they done to you and yours, Mr. Summerfield?”
The older man coughed and cleared his throat again. “Nothing. Yet. But they’ve made plenty of trouble for others around here. Time to put a stop to it.”
“Damn right,” the man at Callum’s other side declared. He leaned forward and stuck his hand out past Callum to shake Summerfield’s. “Good evening, Daniel Summerfield.”
“Hey, Bob Taylor. Didn’t see you there. Do you know Callum Latimer?”
“I know his cousin Eller Hawkins.” The man shook Callum’s hand. “Pleased to meet up with you.”
“Where do you know Eller from?”
“Oh. Around.”
Callum studied the man’s cool, sly smile. He was probably in his late twenties, red hair, clipped beard and mustache, freckled skin. His eyes were so dark brown they looked almost black, the pupils blending in with the irises.
“Gentlemen, find a seat, please, and let’s begin this meeting. We have a lot to discuss this evening!”
Callum turned his attention to the front and was shocked to see that it was Pastor Vancroft calling everyone to order. What happened to brotherly love and forgiveness? Callum wondered as the hum of voices subsided.
“Very good,” the preacher said with a smile. “Now, bow your heads and let us pray.”
Callum frowned, but bowed his head. Was this a town meeting or a prayer meeting?
“Oh, Father God, guide us to greatness tonight. Help us find remedies to the problems plaguing us. Guide us toward justice and instill in us the courage we need to right the wrongs done to us. For it is in your name and in your son’s name that we endeavor. Amen.”
Callum lifted his gaze to the stage again where the preacher was being joined by four other men. Eller was one of them, strutting like a bantam rooster. He recognized the other men, too – the grocer Buck Friendly, the livery stable owner Gus Bransetter, and a cotton farmer named Lawrence Dockers. Bransetter and Dockers were hotheads, just like Eller. Friendly had served valiantly in the Rebel forces and had taken the surrender harder than most. In fact, he often told anyone who would listen that he hadn’t surrendered and he wished that Texas would secede from the “new” United States.
It was Friendly who stepped forward, waving his arm over his head in a big greeting. “Folks! Good to see y’all. Hey there, Pastor Vancroft . . .” He turned slightly sideways to look at the preacher, who had taken a seat in a chair behind him. “Did you hear about the little Negro who was asked by a preacher man, ‘Do you know who saved you, boy?’ Well, he answered, ‘Yassah! Abham Linckin saved me!’”
A big guffaw rose from the crowd and hands slapped thighs. Callum narrowed his gaze, watching his cousin laugh it up along with the other saps on stage. The unrest he’d felt the moment he’d arrived in town teetered toward unruly. He reckoned that about a third of those present were itching to draw blood and maybe kill someone tonight and another third were itching to watch.
“We have some activity that needs to be addressed,” Friendly said when the snickering died down. “Indians are racing up and down these here streets, shooting out windows and hollering and stealing horses.”
A low murmur rumbled like thunder through the room and Callum shifted on the hard bench, sensing the tension of fisted hands and hard jaws all around him. He knew that a few people near him had turned to glare at him because he was friends with Ki and Mary and their sons. No matter that not one of them would stoop to stealing horses. They were good people and he trusted them with his livelihood and his life.
“We have freed slaves roaming around and asking for work or even trying to buy forty acres here and there. But they’re not as bad as those snakes wearing Eastern finery and looking down their noses at us.”
Men shook their fists and several rose to their feet to shout, “Damn, dirty Yankees!” Others shouted their agreement and then the pounding of boots began as men stomped and their eyes blazed with bloodlust. Callum looked around, their expressions reminding him of his regiment’s in preparation for a battle. His scalp prickled.
“In Gainesville, they’re taking matters into their own hands and not waiting for the Rangers or judges to finally crack the whip,” Friendly continued. “Four thieving sonsofbitches were hung last week and there hasn’t been a peep of trouble in that town since!”
“Hang ‘em high!” Someone shouted behind Callum and a roar of approval filled the Masonic Hall.
Friendly stepped aside to let Bransetter take over. He had a high-pitched voice that grated on Callum’s last nerve.
“The Ku Klux Vigilantes are setting things to right again. The war is over, but that doesn’t mean we’re tucking our tails and rolling over onto our backs. Did we fight and lose our sons and brothers and wives and daughters for nothing? To let Yankees and darkies and Injuns take over the South and ruin it like they’ve ruined the rest of the states?”
“Hell, no! We’re Rebs to the bitter end!” Bob Taylor yelled next to Callum. And then he let go with a Rebel yell that had others joining in like a pack of wolves.
Callum shut his eyes and swallowed hard as the urge to join them stormed through him, but he wrestled with it and stuffed it back inside him. It had been years since he’d heard the Rebel yell. The last time had been in a field in Tennessee right before cannons and rifles had belched smoke and death.
When he opened his eyes, he focused on Bransetter again, who was now turned sideways and sharing a smile with Eller – a smile that was both knowing and deadly. They were definitely in cahoots with each other, chilling Callum’s blood. Eller gave a nearly imperceptible nod to Bransetter and his eyes glinted with excitement.
“Settle down now, men.” Bransetter turned back to the rambunctious congregation. “Settle now!” He waited a minute for the men to sit down again. “Lawrence Dockers is having a bull riding and barbecue celebration on his place next Saturday. We will have information there about a group we’re forming to help look out for what’s ours. You can sign up on that day and we’ll hold regular meetings where we’ll decide what actions need to be taken. How many of y’all will be there?”
Another blast of voices thundered through the hall and feet pounded on the wood floor. Callum crossed his arms and stared at his cousin, who was grinning like a chimp. A group, huh? A vigilante group. It was a damned shame Eller hadn’t seen more battles in the war. He’d been taken prisoner in his second engagement with the enemy and had spent the next ten months in an Illinois jail. He’d escaped with another thirty or so inmates, but didn’t join up with his regiment again, saying he couldn’t locate them. His story was that he’d taken up with a group of renegade soldiers, all former prisoners, and engaged with other regiments in battles.
Callum had never believed that because Eller’s recollections of battles he’d fought in changed with the wind. He figured Eller had laid low. He sure wasn’t battle scarred and he had too much rootless violence stirring in his blood to have seen much action. Men who had truly been in battle, who had marched endless miles in the rain and the snow and the blazing sun, who had resorted to eating worms and wild onions, who had taken boots and clothing off dead soldiers because what they were wearing was ripped and torn and their boot soles were worn clear through – those men weren’t looking for reasons to kill someone else. Yeah, they might be fed up with the way things were – with having to do business with smug Yankees and freed slaves – but Callum couldn’t believe that they actually wanted more blood on their hands.
“I’ll be there for sure,” Mr. Summerfield said, slapping one hand on his thigh. “It’s high time we took back Texas.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Bob Taylor said, rising to his feet.
Callum glanced up at him and saw that Taylor was smiling and nodding at someone on the stage. Following his eye line, Callum saw that it was Eller who nodded back.
“What about you, Latimer?” Mr. Summerfield asked.
“I might. Depends on if I can afford to take the time away from the ranch.”
“You might not have a ranch if you don’t take action now.” Mr. Summerfield pushed up to his feet. “You can’t expect those Injuns on your place to keep their brothers and cousins from raiding your ranch and taking horses and steers.”
“And which ranchers had that happen to them?” Callum stretched to his full height and looked down at the man. “You have any names or just hearsay?”
“It’s been in the Dallas newspaper. It’s happened to ranchers around Gainesville, Elm, Paris, Denton . . . all over these counties. Only a matter of time before it happens here.”
Callum ran a hand through his hair and shoved his hat back on. “I have a ranch to run. I don’t have much time for reading newspapers and worrying about raids that haven’t happened. See you gentlemen around, I reckon.” He made his way from the packed hall, pausing to shake hands with a few men and responding briefly to others who asked how his father was doing and if he would be at the barbecue next weekend.
Outside in the velvety night, he paused to fill his lungs with air that wasn’t thick with cigarette and cigar smoke and sweat before he jogged down the four steps and went to retrieve his horse at the hitching post. He ran a palm across Butter’s flank and let her nuzzle his shoulder and the side of his face before he levered himself up into the saddle.
He took a shortcut home, riding across the eastern edge of a neighboring ranch to come onto his land out near the old log cabin that had been there when his father had purchased the ranch. No one around could recollect who had built it, but some speculated that it had been an early settler trading in skins. It wasn’t used anymore, although he and his brothers had occasionally spent a night in it when they’d been rounding up rogue cattle in this farthest eastern reach of their land. A couple of creaky bedframes with lumpy mattresses and a few rickety chairs were the only furnishings left in there, last time he’d looked.
Giving Butter a slack rein, he let her pick her way through a thicket of pines and shrubs that would give way to a trail in another hundred yards that started at the cabin and snaked across the land, past a pond, and then onto the road that led home. The rattle of buggy wheels brought Butter’s ears forward and Callum peered ahead at the glint of harness, breast collar, and buggy hitch.
“Who in the hell . . ?” he whispered, urging Butter a few more steps closer to the trail. The buggy came into view – a dark red color with a flashy pinto horse pulling it – and he recognized it instantly, along with its driver. What the hell was Lilah Hawkins doing out here at this time of night?
A few minutes ticked by as he tried on one reason after another as to why Lilah would venture out on her own after dark when she knew Eller was in town attending a meeting. The soft tap of hooves made him hold his breath and he rested a hand on Butter’s flank to keep her still and quiet. The horseman rode through a bright shaft of moonlight and the sight of him made Callum’s heart stop dead for a few seconds.
Ben Echohawk. Mary and Ki’s oldest son. Callum slammed his eyes shut and held his breath to keep the epitaph from spilling forth. After another minute, he threaded Butter through the trees and toward the cabin. In the moonlight, he could make out the fresh tracks made by a horse and rider and a horse-drawn buggy.
Damn it all to hell and back.
###
“Settle down, girl,” Callum said as he slipped the damp saddle blanket off of Butter’s back. “We put in a long day, didn’t we?” He caught the sound of hoof beats and glanced toward the stables’ open doors. He knew it would be Ben. Earlier that day, he’d asked Ben to come by before he headed for home.
Another soft noise reached him and he looked over the stall wall into the deeply shadowed corners. Was something or someone moving back there? A barn owl sailed from one rafter to the next, probably stirring up the mice hiding in the hay bales.