I have been tweaking the website a bit, and I decided to add a new set of pages for Lone Star Sons – a page for each completed story, so that readers can read the whole adventure all at once, instead of in bits and pieces. Eventually, the whole collection will be assembled, edited, formatted and polished to a brilliant sheen and published as a print and e-book, just like all the others. The parent page with the initial adventure – how Jim Reade and Toby Shaw began their first adventure – is here, with subsequent adventures linked at the bottom of the page. Enjoy – this is a chance for readers to offer feedback and suggestions for additional stories – so keep those comments coming.
(The plot thickens, in the next part of Without a Trace! Jim and Toby have come as far as Yoakum’s Landing, searching for a missing man, the brother of cattle drover Clay Huff, who vanished somewhere along the Opelousas Trace, returning from New Orleans with his half of the profits from the sale of a herd of cattle driven from Texas to Louisiana. There are vile rumors among the local farmers and ranchers about Yoakum’s Landing…)
Rain continued to fall all that night, and into the next morning, lightening to a drizzle and then only an occasional splattering by midday. Jim and Clay had spent a restless night, for which the storm was only part responsible. Jim wedged a chair against the door to their room from the hallway when they retired for the night, and another against the tall French door which led to the outside. He also hung the gun belt with his pair of Colts – all loaded and with fresh caps on each chamber – from the bedpost within reach. Clay did the same with his own pistols. But the night passed without event – other than the storm, and Jim wondered if he hadn’t been more than a little foolish. He dispatched his errand for Ethan Landry at mid-morning, writing up an authorization for the bearer – presumably the oldest of the Yoakum sons — to sell the property described (in exacting detail, which was the hardest part to write) belonging to Ethan Landry, and allowing the bearer to do all that was required under law to transfer the aforementioned property to a new owner. Ethan, upon being reminded by Jim that the laborer was worthy of his hire, conveyed several hundred dollars worth of Texas notes into his hand, a duty done and accepted with ill-grace on both sides, since the notes were worth only about three American pennies to the dollar of Texas worth. Jim rolled up the bills, thanked Ethan Landry graciously, and privately thanked his Maker that he did not have, in this instance at least, to depend upon legal work for his living. On second thought, perhaps he was a charity in regard to this client.
The household dined at midday, on a light collation of meats, breads and vegetables. By afternoon, the sun emerged between the clouds. The grounds and gardens of Yoakum’s Landing were plastered with half-dead leaves from the oak and pecan trees, knocked down from branches where they had clung with a weak autumnal grip by the force of the storm. At mid-afternoon, with the sun peeking shyly through a break in the clouds, he and Clay made their way to the vast stables behind the main house, on the advertised purpose of seeing to the condition and keeping of their horses. Jim also had the intent of a quiet colloquy with Toby, somewhere away from where they might be overheard. Now as he and Clay walked purposefully towards the bustle of the stable-yard, it seemed quite a foolish precaution. Everything about Yoakum’s landing appeared to be quite stultifyingly normal and respectable. As expected, Toby waited in the shelter of the pergola twined about with the dry branches of grapevines, which led from the back of the house to the summer kitchen, a silent shadow making the required show of deference necessary to maintain the pretense.
But as they passed the extensive quadrangle of plowed earth which represented Yoakum Landing’s vegetable garden, Jim was brought up short by Miss Kate’s voice, crying, “Jemmy! Oh, Jemmy – come back at once!” Miss Kate herself appeared from around the side of the house, the ribbons on her white house-cap flying, charmingly pink in the face and breathless with the exertion of running. “Oh!” She gasped, very prettily distraught. “I beg your pardon – my dog has run out to the woods again. He will do that, and after all the trouble I have gone through to bathe and comb him – he will be dirty from the mud, after all the bother…”
Jim hastily removed his hat, Clay and Toby doing likewise, and said, “Miss Kate, good morning to you – If you would allow us, I’d admire to assist in retrieving your dog. If he is a ladies’ pet, he cannot have gone too far into the woods…”
“You go on and help the lady, Jim,” Clay advised, with a grin so broad that if it were a lake, Jim could have skipped stones two or three times on it. “I’ll see to the horses. You … be a gentleman and make the most of your chances.”
Clay put on his hat again, and strolled off towards the stables. He looked back again once or twice, still grinning. Jim considered how very fortunate this interlude was – but he would never hear the last of it from Clay, or Toby, either – especially Toby, whose flirtations were epic and the source of awed envy to Jack and the other fellows.
“There is a clearing in the piney woods by the lake – it’s where Jemmy usually runs. I don’t know why he goes there, it’s most peculiar.” Jim tucked Miss Kate’s tiny and capable hand into the crook of his elbow, as she looked up at him, those dark-brown eyes shining with relief and admiration. “Pa says that Jemmy was bred as a hunting dog – and all he wants is to chase after ducks and squirrels. But he is a dear little dog and I am so very fond of him!” She chattered in a charming and inconsequential manner, which quite relieved Jim of the labor of carrying on a large portion of the conversation. They walked through a grove of pecan trees, their leaves half-fallen and thickly padding the sodden ground under their feet. There was a footpath of sorts, worn by the passage of many feet; their footfalls and those of Toby following after made hardly any noise at all. They came out into a wide meadow on the edge of what Jim judged to be the bayou; a flat and shining expanse of water, lapping at the edge of the grass stems on the bank. The rain had brought the water to a higher level – but not enough to bring any current to flow from the bayou into the river of which it had once been a part.
The meadow presented a forlorn aspect – with tentative patches of new green grass coming up among the dry and now soggy stems of last years’. In the spring this might be a meadow of colorful wildflowers – now, it was just a clearing in the woods, the grass stems beaded with water and the ground soggy underfoot. Miss Kate’s Jemmy sat by a patch of new grass at the edge of the meadow; a medium-sized white dog with brown patches, a dog with long silky fur, who pawed at the earth while uttering a low and unsettling whine. His white paws were already deeply muddy, for he had been digging into the wet earth, and he looked up at Jim and Miss Kate with a beseeching expression.
“Jemmy – you are a bad, bad dog!” Miss Kate exclaimed. Jemmy looked up at her, cringing as dogs would, at the sound of their owners’ voice raised in disapproval. Jemmy was a handsome dog, Jim thought – but not to his taste when it came to a hunting dog; with long ears made even longer by the long fringe drooping from them, and round, slightly protruding brown eyes. A ladies’ dog, petted and brushed, lying in a padded basket at the feet of their mistress in the parlor …
“Poor little fellow,” Jim said. He leaned down and gathered the dog into his arms, disregarding the muddy feet or the brief hostile growl. It was a little heavier than he had expected. “Pay no mind, Miss Kate – he’s frightened and I’m a stranger. I’ll carry him back to the house for you.”
“I am grateful beyond words!” Miss Kate exclaimed, with a brilliant smile – but Jim was not so taken by it that he failed to note Toby at the edge of the meadow, looking at the ground at his feet and the shoreline of the bayou with a suddenly intent expression.
Jim carried the recalcitrant Jemmy all the way back to the house. Toby lingered in the meadow, but then trailed behind at some distance. Jim wondered abstractedly what Toby had spotted – for he had seen something in the water, or in the broken-down tumble of earth, stones and rotted stumps at water’s edge. Clay met them, coming from the stables as they approached the house, a most particularly grim expression on his countenance, which only deepened when he met Miss Kate and Jim. Clay’s eyes went to Jemmy and he whined again, deep in his throat, as Jim returned the dog to Miss Kate’s care.
“Thank you, so very much,” Miss Kate exclaimed, as if Jim had performed the most prodigious feat of chivalry imaginable. She had a length of ribbon in her hand. “You are a most gallant gentleman, Mr. Reade – and we are so grateful, aren’t we, Jemmy?” She attached it to Jemmy’s collar and led him into the house through the nearest French door – into the parlor, as Jim noted.
He had half a mind to follow, but for Clay saying in a voice hardly louder than a whisper,
“Jim, that was my brother’s dog. I’d swear on it before the magistrate.”
“What?” Jim looked at Clay, utterly astounded. “You said he had a hunting dog with him – that dog couldn’t possibly be a serious hunting dog!”
“He is,” Clay answered, still in a whisper. “One of those English spaniels, trained to retrieve ducks and flush out birds. A friend of his in New Orleans had a bitch that whelped a litter three or four years ago. Randall thought the world of that dog, and the dog followed him everywhere; kept up with his horse at a trot for miles. That’s my brothers’ dog, no doubt about it. Randall,” Clay took a deep breath. “Randall called him Gem. Silly name, but my brother always said he was a pearl of a dog and above price. And there’s another thing of my brother’s that I found here.”
“What?” Now Toby caught up to the two of them, his face completely expressionless in the way which Jim knew that he was hiding something. Toby waited at a deferential distance, in the manner of a good servant – which was good, in case anyone watching them thought there was something amiss. Being a cold and blustery afternoon, no one was about outdoors save those Negro servants who had reason to be.
“A saddle – among the tack in the stables. It’s my brother’s also, just like Gem. I’d know it anywhere – a saddle like the vaqueros use. Randall had it made special, by a Mex saddle-maker in Bexar.”
“Show me,” Jim ordered. As they made an elaborately casual way back towards the stableyard – for the benefit of any hostile and prying eyes – Toby ventured, “I also have found something, James.”
“In the field by the bayou?” Jim kept his face bland and his pace casual, as they walked. “Where the dog was digging? I thought so. You may as well let me know the worst, Mr. Shaw. A skeleton?”
“No,” Toby still kept the bland expression. “A pair of skulls and a lot of bones, there for a long time, before the rain ate away the edge of the bayou – but not so long as all that. Not above ten years or so. One more thing, James; they had the marks of having been killed by a blow to the back of the head – as if with a war-ax like mine. That whole field, James – it had a look to it, as if it had been a graveyard many times…I have seen such, in the Ohio country, after a hard winter. There are many buried there.”
Jim let out his breath slowly; he had half-expected this, until beguiled by Miss Kate, not half an hour ago. It still came as a shock; murder and villainy so open, so well-known it was the fearful gossip of half the county, black and white alike, yet under the guise of friendship and hospitality. And what of Miss Kate – so innocent, presiding over the supper-table, and charming the guests with such an open face and demeanor? Before he could entirely digest the matter – the bones in the meadow, the revelation of Jemmy the dog and Randall Huff’s saddle, a man’s voice called his name from the parlor door. Jim’s heart sunk, even further – the dapper and temporarily impecunious Mr. Landry, although looking considerably less dapper.
Ethan Landry was in his shirtsleeves, his neck-cloth awry and his dark hair standing up as if he had never been acquainted with a hairbrush. He came hurtling off the verandah, as a gust of wind blew the door behind him closed with a crash that sounded fit to shatter the panes of glass in it.
“You must help me, Mr. Reade – God help me – they’re going to kill me! I am doomed, and it’s by your hand they are aided to do it! You must help me!” He grasped the front of Jim’s coat, babbling in unseemly hysteria.
“Calm yourself, Mr. Landry,” Jim snapped. “Who is going to kill you – and for what reason? You are among friends, and this is broad daylight! What has given you this notion?”
“The Yoakums,” Ethan Landry whispered. He seemed utterly undone, pale with terror. “For the property. They will kill me, and keep the money paid for it, using the written authority you drafted for me. I overheard them talking … they are plotting to kill me, and it is your fault! You have to help me!”
(From the current work in progress; a collection of adventures set — so far — in frontier Texas. Texas Ranger Jim Reade and his trusted Delaware Indian friend, Toby Shaw are on the road, the Opelousas Trace, with cattle rancher Clayton Huff searching for Clayton’s missing brother. A number of people, including Captain Jack Hays, Jim’s own father and many of the people they meet along the road seem to suspect a local innkeeper of having something to do with the disappearance of Clayton’s brother … and others.)
They traveled east at a casual amble, although the urgency of their errand was always at uncomfortable odds with the need to maintain the pretense of being casual travelers, always ready to pause along the way for a good meal and a comfortable stretch of gossip. Their first encounter seemed to set the pattern for the others, which did not escape their concentrated attention. None of those whom they passed the time with over the following days recalled seeing Randall Huff the cattleman, returning from New Orleans, with his bay horse and brown and white hunting dog … and a money-belt of gold coin from the profitable sale of his cattle. Mention of Squire Yoakum and his establishment – although Jim was careful not to seem to connect one inquiry with the other – sometimes drew responses akin to the farmer and his field hand; a mixture of veiled suspicion and wary dislike, but nothing put into overt words. It became plain to Jim and Clay, on discussing this, that Squire Yoakum was feared by his neighbors, although just as many were fulsome in their praise of his character and generous hospitality.
“He’s a power in the county, so none might go against him openly – and he is a very rich man,” Clay expounded on his own feelings. “I haven’t had much truck with his kind before. In Bastrop there are just as many as have large cattle herds and have built themselves fine houses … but I don’t think I have ever heard any around there say as much ill about them as I have heard in the last three days about Yoakum.”
“There is very often a crime at the base of a great fortune – but well-buried and forgotten, if it were properly done,” Jim agreed, with a touch of cynicism. “I read that in a novel by a Frenchie a while ago – didn’t think it was true at the time, but now I am beginning to wonder. I do not think we should ask him straight out about your brother, when we reach Pine Island Bayou tomorrow – I had thought at first that being a man of property and the postmaster and all, he might stand ready to assist, but considering what has been said by those who may be better-acquainted … no, I think we must be discrete. Perhaps you can mention how welcome his hospitality was for you both on the journey to New Orleans some months ago … but nothing more. Are we agreed on this, gentlemen?”
Both of his companions agreed, although with some hesitation on the part of Clay, who remarked abruptly, when they had gone a little way farther along the Trace,
“I have begun to consider what I must do if I find that Randall is dead – murdered, as it seems likely. We were next in age to each other – and always close.”
“So was I, with my brother Daniel,” Jim answered, with a sudden and unexpected rush of sympathetic emotion, to the point where he was near overcome. “We were only the two brothers in our family who lived to majority – we had three small brothers who perished as children – the usual accidents and illnesses. His death was a tragedy most unexpected, since he fell by the hand of one he considered a comrade, if not a friend.”
“I am sorry for your loss,” Clay said, after a moment. “I am given to wonder – what did you do, upon the death of your brother?”
“Mr. Shaw saw that he was decently buried,” Jim replied. The memory of that was one which cut to the heart – for Jim had been there, when his brother and the other Rangers of his company were murdered by men who came among them as friends. Jim himself had survived only by chance. “Together with his comrades, and I have taken service with Captain Hays. Someday, I will find the man who killed my brother and the other Rangers. The old Spaniards in Bexar have a saying – revenge is a dish best eaten cold. I have a better one – justice is a task which never grows cold, or stale.”
“I see now why Captain Hays has sent you with me,” Clay said, after a moment. They were riding where the Trace led, through a stand of thick woods, as dark as the heart of an evil man, where sunshine was a memory. “For your cool head, at least as much as your experience – I rode with his company myself, a time or two. And he is the calmest man I know in a fight – I was with him when we fought Yellow Robe’s Comanche on the Pedernales! We were outnumbered three or four to one, and yet we came away with none lost and only two wounded bad enough to need a doctor afterwards. Any other captain, we would have been slaughtered.”
“You didn’t give up then and you should not give up yet,” Jim said, although deep in his heart he also suspected that Randall Huff was dead.
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(This is the second part of the latest adventure of Jim Reade, Texas Ranger and Toby Shaw, his friend and Delaware Indian guide, in the days of the Texas Republic. This adventure has them searching for a cattle rancher missing on return from driving a herd of cattle along the Opelousas Trace to New Orleans. The Trace was once a well-traveled road through central Texas – and Jim Reade’s father has warned him that there was once a lot of skullduggery going on in the borderlands between Texas and Louisiana…)
On the senior Mr. Reade’s advice and contrivance, Clay and Jim clothed themselves in a logical rationale for their journey, upon setting out from Galveston; Clay as one heir to a wealthy man with a large plantation near Baton Rouge, traveling to New Orleans to secure his rightful portion of the estate. Jim accompanied him in the guise of being Clay’s lawyer, and Toby his own manservant. His father, getting well into the spirit of things, ransacked his old office papers and supplied them with an old copy of a genuine will which would bear out this story, and wrote a series of letters on paper stained with tea and once dry, rubbed around the folds with a cloth until they looked suitably well-traveled.
“You are suspiciously adept at this, Pa,” Jim observed, the night before their departure. His father grinned, mischievous as an old elf as he packed the various documents away in a leather envelope secured with woven tape.
“I have a devious turn of mind, my boy – sharpened by three years in Perote. It occurred to me that you must be able to substantiate your story when you are asked questions, or if someone searches your belonging for confirmation.” For a moment his father’s face appeared immeasurably old, lined with weariness and worry. “I do this for the security of your life, and those who travel with you. I would not loose another son in the service of Texas, my boy. You deal often in double-dealing, in searching out treachery and deceit – no, nothing of what you or your trusty friend has said to me has betrayed your commission to me – this I have deduced from what little you have said to me in confidence. It appears to me that the peril lies in returning from New Orleans. You should remain secure with this stratagem, thin as it seems. You are not on the return journey with a fat purse … that, I fear is what has proven a death warrant for many. But you go east, hoping to return with such – and perhaps someone’s unseemly interest might reveal the solution to this mystery. Be careful, son – you are most dear to me and to your mother.”
“I know, Pa,” Jim had answered, touched by the care that his father took in considering their mission, and for his own safety.
When they set off the next day, the flat leather envelop was packed in his saddlebags. His father had also written a letter to a friend in Liberty whose brother owned a livery stable; upon reaching that town, they might travel swift and certain. The elder Reade also provided more letters of introduction to certain of his friends and acquaintances in Liberty and the towns to the east. Mrs. Reade provided a haversack of food; dried-apple turnovers, a thick slab of fruitcake, bread and cheese, bestowing them on her son with a fond embrace and sniffled into a handkerchief as the three strode away towards the steamship landing.
Jim broke out the turnovers as they waited for the steamboat which would carry them across the lagoon, and then inland along the long meander of the Trinity River to Liberty.
“Mama made these for us, special,” he said. They ate in silence, as the morning fog thinned and a pale circle of sunlight broke through the overcast.
After a reflective nibble, Clay coughed and remarked, “No offense to your Mama, Jim – but these don’t taste so good. They’re missing something.”
“Sugar, likely,” Jim answered, with a sigh. “Mama isn’t any great shakes as a cook, but no one can tell her any different.”
“Tastes good to me,” Toby swallowed the last bite of his turnover and looked at the other two in considerable puzzlement. “I’m not particular.”
“You’ll eat things a dog would turn up its nose at,” Jim answered. “I’ll leave you the rest of them, then. Mama will love you like a son, when I tell her you liked her turnovers.”
“They’re good,” Toby shrugged, in deep puzzlement.
“To each his own,” Jim answered. “So … when we get to Liberty – Clay and I will ask around, casual-like, after Randall. Anyone seen him, talked to him – make it casual-like, as if you aren’t worried, Clay. Toby, you’ll do the same with the servants. Then we travel nice and slow, east along the trace – but every chance we have, we stop and talk to folk.”
“I understand,” Clay answered, impatient. “You’ve told me so, over and over.”
“Just making certain that we work it together,” Jim said. He had indeed gone over and over it. Being that it was so personal to Clay, while he and Toby were accustomed to working in concert, Jim took every chance he had to remind the younger man. “And we don’t tip off anyone who might know something … or have a guilty conscience about what they do know.”
Clay looked as if he were chewing hard on this, on a fact as tough and tasteless as one of Mrs. Reade’s unfortunate apple turnovers, as Jim added, “If it turns out that someone has been robbing and murdering travelers, you’re a man with a wife and child – and my Mama and Pa can’t loose themselves another son – nor can Mrs. Shaw. This is all of our lives, Clay – and any one that we talk to might be involved.”
* * *
It amused Jim, observing Toby wide-eyed upon observing the operation of the little steamboat, the Mary Clifton, whose twin paddle-wheels threshed busily against the current, doodling along like a particularly single-minded ant, from a crude landing on one side of the river to another on the opposite side a few miles upstream. Three or four drummers searching out mercantile customers along the way shared the passenger accommodations with the three of them and a family heading home to their plantation residence on the river north of Liberty. The decks of the Mary Clifton were piled high with barrels and crates of goods, and cut wood to feed the insatiable furnace which heated the boilers. Jim tried explaining how it worked – diagraming how the force of steam moved the turning wheels by drawing with a piece of charcoal on the wooden deck at their feet, but Toby laughed.
“How can something I cannot even see move something heavier than a man can lift?”
“A high wind can uproot a tall tree,” Jim answered, and Toby shook his head.
“It is not the same thing – the wind is a thing sent by the Great Spirit,” he said. Jim gave it up.
Trinity proved to be a busy little town, already growing beyond the few streets that had been marked out following the war for independence. Jim and his friends had little trouble finding his father’s friend and presenting him with the letter. Although it was mid-day, and the friend urged them to remain overnight, Jim knew very well that Clay was impatient to begin searching in earnest. With thanks, they saddled two horses, and a riding mule, and followed the track east of town, the sun beating down on them from overhead, veiled now and again by a fast-moving cloud. It was warm in the sun, but chill in the shade, in a way which threatened an uncomfortable cold night once the sun set.
The trace slashed a muddy gouge across the landscape, set with thickets of trees and threaded with streamlets and ponds, even after a hot summer. Those many ruts left by wagon-wheels were also filled with water, even after summer. The landscape did not present the same endless prospect of wilderness – that which had become so familiar to Jim. This was the settled country, covered with a patchwork confection of cotton fields, acres of corn with their tassels now brown and withered. Distant chimneys set up threads of smoke, and the geometric angles of rooftops caught the sunlight in their angles – the shake shingles new and pale, or weathered gray with age, clustered in groups – houses and barns, sheds and slave-quarters. They passed and were passed by other travelers and herds of cattle supervised by attentive drovers – Jim felt sometimes as if the Trace was as busy and well-traveled as the old streets of Bexar. At first, he nominated to himself the task of casual conversation with those whom they met, making certain that Clay listened and took heed of the answers, as well as the questions asked with such casual and apparently innocent intent.
As the three continued in a gentle rambling pace towards the Sabine, the answers at first did not give any cause for unease; no, the travelers whom were casually asked regarding meeting one Randall Huff had answers in the negative, cheerfully and openly given. To Jim this indicated a clear conscience and no knowledge of any skullduggery. This changed, at a point that Jim reckoned was about halfway between Liberty and Tevis Bluff – which was now called Beaumont City, although everyone cheerfully acknowledged that it wasn’t anywhere near being a city of any sort. Halfway through the day, they paused in a farmyard a little away from the Trace, where the farmer and one of his Negro field hands were sharpening scythes, dulled by a morning spent cutting hay. The usual pleasantries having been exchanged, the farmer invited them to share in the midday meal, in exchange for the latest gossip from Liberty and news from the broader world. Jim explained the purpose of their journey and casually asked if Randall Huff of Bastrop had passed the time of day a bit ago, on his return from New Orleans.
“Can’t say I recollect the name,” the farmer answered, scratching his jaw. The bristles on it made a rasping sound, and the field hand bent to turning the grindstone again, remarking,
“Could be that Squire Yoakhum, over t’ Pine Island Bayou might have word … las’ o’ folk pass through ‘dere …” but his master scowled and the last works the hand spoke were muffled and half-heard under the noise of the grindstone. ‘Iffen dey is lucky’ was what Jim thought he heard, but he might have been mistaken. He was not mistaken in the angry look which the farmer directed towards his slave for speaking out of turn, but there was also another momentary expression on the farmer’s face – a look of fear. Yoakum – that was the name that his father had mentioned, the one scion of a family of notorious robbers who had turned respectable. Well, if Pa has doubts about the one good Yoakum, maybe others did as well. Lots of folk pass through there – if they’re lucky; I’m certain that’s what that field hand meant to say.
Over the meal, eaten in the breezeway of the farmhouse, with the farmer’s wife and daughters proudly spreading their humble plank table with every bounty at their command, Jim tried casually to bring the conversation around to Squire Yoakum. To no avail; this time the farmer and his wife exchanged a look, and the wife said,
“The Squire, he and the missus, they’re too high-and-mighty to have any truck with us.” She put down a dish of plum cobbler down on the plank table with an expression which hinted she would have liked to put it down with somewhat more force on another target.
“Matty, you just hush, now,” the farmer had the same expression on his face as he had before at mention of Yoakum; anger with an underlay of fear. “He’s an important man, round these parts,” the farmer added. His wife sniffed, answering, “At least visitors may say what they please of our hospitality when they have departed from our roof – there are some who cannot say the same of the Yoakums’!” At a growl from her husband, Matty slapped down a clean serving spoon next to the cobbler and snapped, “Well, then – help yourselves. I’ve got the washing to finish.” She nodded briskly at her guests and vanished inside the house. Jim and Clay helped themselves to cobbler at a nod from their host, made some limping conversation and excused themselves as soon as possible. Toby had shared the same meal with the handful of family slaves in the farmyard, sitting under a nearby tree with their plates in their laps.
“That was … interesting,” Jim remarked, as soon as they had retrieved their horses and were well away and out of earshot. “What did you pick up from the slaves, Toby – it sounded as if they knew more and were more willing to speak.”
“An earful,” Toby answered, “As slaves they have little to loose. And I would have had even more, save that Old Daddy Sam’s youngest daughter was trailing the hem of her garment and making inviting eyes at me all the while. I had hard put to keep out of her clutches and pay attention to what was said.”
Jim chuckled. “The delight of the fair of every race; I believe Mr. Shaw’s hopeful lovers would line the Trace from here to New Orleans and back again, all blowing kisses and throwing rose petals and love tokens at him. It’s a gift, but now and again an inconvenient one. What did they say of Mr. Yoakum, then – he seems to be a focus of interest hereabouts.”
“They spoke of him with interest … and fear,” Toby answered. “The main tale told, as if it were common knowledge in this place – that he had once stolen a Negro slave from his owner and his family … taken him away and sold him for a great profit to a new owner.” Toby looked as if he smelled an evil odor. “They spoke of it as if true, and the name and locality were pretty fairly agreed upon, too much to be a rumor. They were indignant. This Mr. Yoakum is not favored among the lowly, those who have an ear around every corner. It was said among the Moravians … and it was also a thing true among my people – that one might most truly take the measure of a man by observing how fairly he treats those who have little power and standing – as do the slaves in this place.”
“That might be true,” Clay nodded, with the sudden brightness on his face of one who who had never considered this quandary before. “Someone who will instantly call you out and plug you full of lead upon showing disrespect – well, you’ll be fair polite and considerate to that man, in public at least. To someone who cannot … that bears meditation, Mr. Shaw.”
Jim noted that was practically the first time that Clay had dignified Toby with the honorific. “Chivalry, Clay – it’s a difficult thing to practice in the larger world.”
“My ma always said the meek would inherit the earth – but then my pa would say all that meant was they’d get a patch of it big enough to be buried in. What else did they say about this Yoakum?” Clay answered, “The white folks seemed pretty nervous about him – but didn’t want to be heard saying anything contrary, almost as if he had the means to punish disrespect. “I ‘blieve Randall and I and some of the fellows passed the evening at his establishment on our way to New Orleans. We couldn’t fault his hospitality, and he seemed otherwise like a popular man.”
“That was what I thought,” Jim nodded agreement; Toby answered with a shrug, “Tales of ghosts and haunts, mostly – of lights moving in the woods around the Yoakum place, strange voices telling trespassers to run away. Stories as my grandmother told in order to frighten the children.”
“I wonder what else we shall hear from neighbors closer to the Yoakum place?” Clay mused.
“Depends on how good a friend they are to the Squire,” Jim answered. “Or how frightened they are of him.”
(To be continued)
(Behold – the beginning of another thrilling episode of Lone Star Sons; on the track of a cattle drover who vanished on his return from New Orleans, somewhere along the Opelousas Trace. Lone Star Sons is a YA adventure series set in Texas during the time of the Texas Republic, featuring young Ranger Jim Reade and his Delaware Indian friend, Toby Shaw.)
“There’s something strange going on,” Jack’s guest said, when Jim came through the front door of Jack’s lodgings in Bexar. It was a bright autumn morning; the Plaza Mayor was alive with the bustle of the marketplace – the market-women in their bright skirts and shawls, presiding over piled up mounds of green and red peppers, yellow ears of corn. “My brother was due to return from New Orleans a month ago.” The strangers’ eyes went to Jim at once, and Jack said,
“Clay, this is Jim Reade – he’s one of my Rangers – Jim, you haven’t ever met Clayton Huff before, have you?”
“Not had the pleasure,” Jim said, as Clay Huff rose to exchange a handshake. Jack added, “Pull up a chair, Jim – since this is going to fall to you, since you’re from that part of Texas. Clay and his brother Randall run cattle near Bastrop – they’re distant kin to John White; he has a big place north of Anahuac. This summer Clay and Randall took a herd of theirs along the Opelousas trace to New Orleans … Clay, you tell him what happened, then.”
“It all went as we planned,” Clay sighed – he had a pleasant and open face, some years younger than Jim, but his face was lined and weather-burnt, as if he spent many hours in the open air. “We got to New Orleans, found a buyer and paid off all the hands. Randall, he was courting a pretty widow-lady, so he decided he would stay on for a week so he could escort her to church the next Sunday. I took my half of what we got for the sale of the cattle and came home straightaway to my wife an’ little childer by way of a coastal sloop to Copano. I’d had enough of riding the trail, I’ll tell you what.”
“How was your brother intending to return to Bastrop, then?” Jim asked, and Clay’s open countenance furrowed with lines of worry.
“The way we came – by way of the Opelousas trace. But he has just never shown up. I wrote to his lady-friend, and she answered that he set out on the Monday after they went to church. A neighbor of ours in Bastrop said that he passed an hour or so with him at the Sabine Crossing, so we know that he had come that far, but … Captain Hays, sir – Randall should have been home a month ago. I know that there’s misfortune can happen to a man … but my brother isn’t no fool. He had a brace of fine pistols, a dog and his own horse – and he was traveling on the trace! There ain’t no more public or well-traveled public road as that, and the Indians are all friendly-like. It’s like he vanished walking across the plaza outside, this very day and in broad daylight.” More »
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