and read three chapters of your books.”
Julia shrugged. “Okay.” She loved to read and could spend all day wrapped up in her books.
“I don’ wanna read,” Jacob complained.
“Too bad,” Rachel said. “You need to keep up with your schoolin’ while your aunt Mary’s sick.”
“That book’s stupid,” Jacob whined.
“Choose another one,” Rachel said. A reader herself, she made sure the cabin was filled with books of all types. “Why don’t you try that new book, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea?”
Jacob thought about it for a moment. “What’s it about?”
While describing the book to Jacob, Rachel spied Seth out of the corner of her eye as he silently shuffled onto the porch, his cheeks still damp from the tears. He slouched into one of the chairs and rested his chin on his chest.
“And there’s a giant sea monster,” Rachel said as she arched her arms up and clawed her hands, grabbing at Jacob.
Jacob giggled and squirmed away from her grasp. “I might take a look,” he said between giggles.
“Go on, then,” Rachel said, playfully swatting him on the butt as he walked by and stepped inside.
Rachel settled back in the rocker and she and Seth sat in silence for a few moments, both staring at the distance. Rachel’s gaze drifted surreptitiously to her son, waiting for the inevitable onslaught of unanswerable questions. Seth didn’t disappoint.
“Why, Ma? Why won’t they let me go with ’em?”
Seth hadn’t hit his major growth spurt yet and he was a smallish, thin boy with sandy blond hair and large ears that his head hadn’t caught up to yet.
“Are we going to go through this again?” Rachel asked, turning in her chair to face her son.
Seth angrily swiped at the fresh track of tears sliding down his cheeks. “I’m old enough.”
“No, you aren’t. There’s nothin’ but trouble across that river,” she said, pointing toward the water. “It’s not even safe for your pa or the rest of them.”
Seth stood abruptly. “I’m tired of bein’ treated like a baby,” he shouted before stepping off the porch.
“Seth, you come back here,” Rachel said, her voice stern.
Seth stopped, turned, and looked at his mother for the first time. “I’m done talkin’.”
“Oh, you are, huh? In that case get your butt over to the corral and get to work helping your uncle.”
Seth and Rachel joined in an angry stare-off and she mentally ticked off the seconds, waiting for him to turn away first as he always did. But, to her surprise, she was the first to break eye contact and that troubled her. His determined defiance now could be the harbinger of years of difficult battles ahead. She pondered a response that would reassert her authority and fell back on the old standard—issuing orders. “Go on, now. You’re wastin’ time.”
Seth glared at her a moment longer then turned and walked away without saying a word. For Rachel that was even more unsettling, and she immediately felt a need to call him back—to repair the damage before it had a chance to take hold. But she didn’t. And that was something she would soon regret.
CHAPTER 5
Riding through land granted by treaty to the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache tribes in 1867, Cyrus raised his hand and called the group to a halt as Moses Wilcox studied the ground, searching for the rustlers’ trail. Percy pulled out his pipe and filled it with tobacco as he watched Wilcox work.
A tall whip-thin man in his late forties, Wilcox had scouted for the army for years until he called it quits when the soldiers turned their focus from war among the white men to killing or capturing Indians. The child of a white man and a full-blooded Chickasaw woman, Wilcox was raised among the Indians and didn’t much like pointing out his distant kinfolks for the army to slaughter. He joined up with the Rocking R four years ago and stuck.
Percy flared a match and lit his pipe as Wilcox climbed back aboard his horse.
“The rustlers look to be headed up toward Fort Sill,” Wilcox said. “Could be they’re plannin’ to sell them steers to the army.”
“Not with my brand on ’em, they ain’t,” Cyrus said. “Just the two of ’em?”
“Yes,” Wilcox said. “And they’re riding shod ponies.”
“Probably stole them, too,” Cyrus grumbled. “Still don’t mean they ain’t Injuns.”
Percy took a draw from his pipe then said, “If they’re smart, they’ll change the brand. Make the R a B or hit it with a three-quarter circle and they’d have the Circle R brand.”
“When’s the last time you heard of an outfit called the Circle R round these parts?” Cyrus asked. “Or a Rockin’ B? Them soldier boys are smarter than that.”
Percy turned to look at his father. “Might be smart enough to see a good deal, too. A couple of steers at about half what they’re worth?”
Cyrus looked up at the sun high overhead, sweat trickling down his face and into his beard. “It’s hotter’n hell and we’re wastin’ time with all this speculatin’. Things fall our way, we’ll likely be home fore dark. Let’s ride.” He spurred his horse into a walk.
The terrain was flat and the few trees, mostly blackjack oaks and cottonwoods, were bunched along the banks of the small creeks that cut through the landscape. What the place lacked for trees, it made up for it with the number of insects flying about. Grasshoppers by the hundreds fluttered up at each clop of the horses’ hooves. And if they weren’t flying, they were perched in the grass and weeds, rubbing their hind legs in a symphony of fast clicks. In addition to the constant noise, gnats swarmed, flies were thick enough that they matted the horses’ rumps, and the mosquitoes were merciless, attacking any hint of bare skin. But for Percy, this was all too familiar.
After leaving the ranch at the age of seventeen to see what was beyond the horizon, Percy drifted south, visiting the young city of Dallas for a spell before moving on, searching for what, he didn’t know. The one thing he did know was that he wanted to see the ocean, and his travels led him to Houston then down to Corpus Christi, never staying in one place more than a week or two. As his grubstake began to dwindle, he moseyed up to Austin to see the capital of their new state. And while there and desperate to find work, Percy, a good shot with a pistol and a rifle, signed up as a new recruit for the Texas Rangers in 1851. It didn’t take him long to figure out shooting at bottles and cans was much different from shooting at another human who was shooting back. But under the tutelage of Ranger Captain William (Bigfoot) Wallace, Percy had learned, and learned quickly, as his unit skirmished with Comanches, Apaches, and Mexican bandits. And over the years and through many battles Percy became a highly skilled warrior and a dead shot with either rifle or pistol. Members of his troop had boasted that Percy was the most lethal man in Texas. Not that it mattered much to him.
Startled from memory when a grasshopper jumped on his hand, Percy flicked
