were a chore for any needy man. Women wanted men to do so much else!
The men from the distant past were probably the smartest. They protected the village, hunted and supplied the meat while the women kept the village neat and did the planting.
Theirs was a better organization. Their women had other women to ease them and listen to them. Women understood other women. Men never really did.
But at the current time, in TEXAS, with the women being snatched up by other men, Tom felt like an abandoned coyote outside the corral. How was Tom to get his sheep? How was he to live like everybody else, here, on this land? He was of the age when he needed to be paired off and responsible.
Why was his family named Keeper? What had somebody, back long ago, been keeper...of? Did the long ago Keepers raid other places and not give anything back?
Tom’s eyes narrowed and he thought how he’d like to raid Tyler’s house, snatch Kayla and keep—her. His ancestors very probably raided other places and stole women. His name wasn’t keep-im or keep-it. It was keep-er.
Tom tilted his head and considered raiding. It was attractive to him. The urge was probably genetic. Since the Keepers had so much land and money, Tom finally wondered just how the devil they’d gotten all that land and all that money.
So the next time he saw his daddy, he asked him. They were out on the Keeper place, looking around, seeing what was going on. They’d come to a small stream with a large oak for shade.
The two were resting their horses. So they had stepped down and stood talking, letting the horses look around without the human weight on their backs.
There were three big dogs with them. The dogs were watching around and probably exchanging comments about where they were and what the humans were up to. The dogs were probably glad not to be horses. No saddles, no bridles, they went around almost free.
They listened as Tom asked his daddy, “How come we’ve got all this land and all this money?”
For the dogs it was not an interesting subject, so they went off a ways and looked around.
But Tom’s father looked at his son and replied soberly and with a tad of puzzlement, “The reason we got this place is that we worked our tails off.”
“How’d you go about getting the land?”
“I asked my daddy that same question when I was just a tad.” He then commented in an aside, “It’s interesting it took you so long to inquire about that.” Then he looked afar as he instructed his twenty-eight-year-old son, “When our family wanted to come here, back then, just by the strangest chance, our ancestor learned the Indian chief of the tribe that lived on this land then could speak English. Your seven greats grandfather heard a conversation by the purest accident. The chief not only spoke English, he’d been to Europe!”
“Now why had he gone there?”
Tom’s daddy said, “He was curious how come all us strange, pale people were invading their lands. He did sell us this plot and charged us a tad more than anybody else around here paid.”
“Where’d the tribe go from here?”
And his daddy told him, “North to Canada. They didn’t have the European rifles. Just their bows and arrows. They saw the future.”
Tom considered as he looked around. Then he said, “It must have been tough for them to leave here.”
“Apparently not. Other tribes were vicious in defending their land, but the small tribe we contacted was ready to leave here. They didn’t much cotton to us newcomers and went off on their own to another place.”
Tom said, “I’ve had it pretty easy.”
His daddy agreed, “Just saying that shows you’re getting ready to share the load. You’re through school five years, now. You’ve traveled. That part’s important. You got so’s you realize how lucky we are to have this spread, and you understand you need to pull your share. About time you settled down.”
Tom said sadly, “I thought I had the woman I wanted, but she went back to her husband.”
His daddy nodded as he named them. “Kayla Davie went back to Tyler Fuller. Sometimes that happens. Women aren’t at all predictable. She probably thinks she can help Tyler be a really great lawyer, and she could be right. But don’t you fret none, you’ll find a woman for yourself. Like I found your mama.”
“How’d you find Mama?” Tom tilted his head back so that he could look at his daddy from under his Stetson brim.
His daddy gazed off across their land, remembering. “I’d really planned on being a bachelor. With seven brothers, I didn’t think it was at all vital to the family that I get married and have kids. Then your mama came along on a horse that was limping...”
Tom waited. Then he responded, “I don’t think I’ve heard this particular part of your life. What happened when Mama came up on a limping horse?”
“I was out looking for a heifer that was due, and she’d gone off into the bushes and got lost or killed or something. And your mama came along up on that limping horse.” From under the oak, he looked at the horizon. Then he looked at the nearby nuisance, the lacy mesquite trees. He said softly, “She was really something.”
Tom inquired, “She push a stone under the horse’s shoe?”
“Now, I never even once thought of something like that happening! I just wonder if that could have been so!”
Tom licked his smiling lips and waited.
“She was so concerned about the horse. She asked if I’d look at it. That she was late getting back to the Sullivans’. I’d heard the Sullivans had company, and I’d been invited over for their dance that weekend. I let my unmarried brothers go. I stayed here. I had no need to meet some woman like that who was visiting.”
“So she came looking for you?”
His father snorted. “Well, I never even once thought of it thataway! Do you suppose she trapped me? She said she was just out riding. It was fretful to find her all by herself like that. I scolded her.”
“What’d she do.” Not a question but just a nudge for his daddy to go on with the story.
“She told me to hush and fix her horse’s foot. Think of a person calling a hoof a foot.”
And Tom remembered. “She wasn’t a ranch girl.”
“Naw. City.”
“So what happened?”
“She flung a leg over the horse’s neck and almost slid down. I caught her in time and pulled her away from the horse.”
Tom mused, “That horse would have been too old to be the one that was their biter.”
“It was a grandparent of that one that’s such a nuisance.” But his daddy was remembering. “Your mama was nice to hold. Women are just...different.”
“She let you hold her?”
“She
