Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

  (Another installation from the current work in progress – Isobel Becker is accompanying her new husband and a herd of cattle to establish a new ranch in the Palo Duro region of North Texas … when the herd is suddenly and deliberatly panicked by a cattle rustler, hoping to round up a goodly number of stray cattle in the aftermath. Isobel and the elderly Daddy Hurst, the trail cook are alone in the camp …)

                                                     Chapter 15 – Palo Duro

The main body of stampeding cattle ran straight for the the cookfire, the wagons, and the draft horses which pulled them now stamping uneasily at the ends of the picket ropes. Isobel cast another glance over her shoulder; tossing horns amid a cloud of dust, rolling inexorably towards. She caught a brief glimpse of a man at the edge of the herd, crouched low on the neck of his galloping horse, attempting to ride ahead of them, but in another second that sight was lost. The horses – the cattle would panic the draft horses, the picket ropes would never hold; already they had caught the contagion of panic, even as Daddy Hurst ran towards them. Isobel knew instantly what the old man intended – to calm the horses, lead them closer into camp, and into a fragile shelter behind the wagons, but another instinct told her it was not going to work; six horses would be too much for the old man’s strength. She would have to help him. She caught up a blanket from hers’ and Dolph’s bed-roll, with a mad hope of covering one of the horses’ heads with it – that’s what Mr. Arkwright had always said – Cover their eyes, Miss Isobel – if they can no’ see, then they must trust you. Now the onrush of cattle sounded like an endless roll of thunder – worse than thunder, as she could feel it, feel the ground under her feet trembling. She ran towards the horses, while Daddy Hurst struggled with the picket ropes; he had two, three of them freed from the picket-pins screwed deep into the ground … and then one of them reared, neighing so loudly that it sounded like a scream, jerking the rope out of the old man’s hand.
Isobel had never in her life before heard a horse make a noise like that – and in the midst of that horror, Daddy Hurst fell. Isobel did not see clearly what caused him to fall; she was certain that he was not kicked by the struggling horses. He simply fell, the picket ropes falling from his slack hands, and the terrified horses dashing away.
No time, no time – the cattle were nearly upon them. Isobel shook out the blanket, remembering how the hands had talked of other such stampedes, how they would wave their jackets in the face of panic-stricken cattle. She ran a short way towards them from the wagons, hardly aware that she was screaming, shaking the folds of the blanket as if she were shaking dust from its folds. Her heart pounded in her chest, but was it her heart or the earth pulsating underneath her feet? She must make them avoid running through the camp, running over where Daddy Hurst lay helpless. Now the dogs were howling behind her, and she shook the blanket again, hardly thinking of her own peril. The cattle would wash over the camp, a wave of them, as unrelenting as an ocean tide sweeping all before it… but in a flick of an instant, the tide broke and parted. They thundered past, some to one side of Isobel and the wagons, some to the other. She was enveloped in a choking cloud of dust, and sank to her knees. From the buzzing in her ears she thought she might faint from the sheer terror of it. But she did not. Slowly, she stood up, on legs that trembled violently. The main body of running cattle was beyond the wagons now. It seemed as if they had gone in all directions, gone as suddenly from her sight as they had appeared from the canyon. The three horses which Daddy Hurst had tried to lead to safety were gone; Isobel could hardly begin to see where. The other three remained, nervous and stamping uneasily at the end of their picket lines. One of them had managed to loosen the picket-pin halfway from the ground. Isobel dropped the blanket from her nerveless hands and stumbled towards that horse on unsteady legs. She managed to catch the rope, just as the horse jerked away. The coarse grass rope ripped at the flesh of her hands and the picket pin slipped all the way out of the ground. The pin flew up, the sharpened end slashing the side of her face, and Isobel gasped from the sudden pain in her palms and cheek. She held on, gasping out soothing endearments to the frightened horse. The rope slackened, as the horse calmed, and stopped pulling away from her hands, which now were slick with blood. She could never drive the picket pin in solidly enough to hold fast. She led the horse to the cook-wagon and tied the picket rope securely to one of the straps that secured the water-barrel. Now to see to Daddy Hurst.

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(This will very likely be the next book – tentatively called The Quivera Trail – which follows the experiences of Dolph Becker’s English bride, Isobel. They have married in haste, for all the wrong reasons. She was desperate to escape from her mother, and another endless Season on the marriage market, and he felt sorry for her. But she likes dogs and horses, so they might well make it work … if and when they come to know each other better. And what about Isobel’s loyal young ladies maid, Jane? Will Jane find a life and a love of her own, following her mistress to life on a Texas cattle ranch?)

From Chapter 7 – The Voyage

“’Ere’s the last of the Big Smoke, then!” exclaimed the boy Alf with an enormously satisfied air, as he and Jane followed their employers onto the boat train at Waterloo Station early the next morning. The boat-train platform was awash with departing passengers, many of them bidding such tearful farewells, and burdened with so many trunks and carpet-bags that it was clear to Jane that they were immigrants. Now she sniffed, and Alf added, “Say, Miss G. – ain’t you happy, too? Now, the Missus, she looks like a cat who been at a bowl o’cream this morning!” he nudged Jane with his elbow, and leered suggestively, an expression which set very oddly on his thin little face, “Marriage agree w’er, wot say?”
“You are a disgusting little guttersnipe, Alf,” Jane returned, equably. She had come to know Alf rather better than she would have liked to, being alternately horrified yet somewhat grudgingly sympathetic to the plight of a boy only a little older than her brothers, who never seemed to have had a proper bath, slept in a bed or sat at a table for a good meal until Mr. Becker took him into employment. “And you would never have been allowed to polish the boots in a good household. The only reason the Master hired you is that we’re going to Texas where it doesn’t matter.”
“’E promised horses,” Alf answered; very little of what Jane said to him had the capacity to dent his scrappy self-possession. “Good ‘ousehold, Miss G? I don’t care none for a good ‘ousehold. Wotever the Sir says, that’ll do for Alf Trotter.” Now his countenance practically glowed, the face of a worshipper at a shrine. Jane reflected that of Alf’s qualities, the only remotely endearing one was that his adoration of Mr. Becker was absolute and unswerving. Of all the adults who had passed through Alf’s grubby and chaotic world, Mr. Becker appeared to have been the only one ever to have been kind and generous to him. Now Alf repaid that kindness tenfold with dogged and dog-like devotion.
“To the ends of the earth,” Jane remarked, almost to herself. “He and m’lady have seats in First Class, Alf – we’ll be in Second, of course. When we reach Southampton Station, Alf – you must fetch a porter . . . most of the luggage has already been sent ahead to the Wieland. Oh, I wish they had chosen to sail on a British ship, but the passage had been booked months ago on Hamburg-America . . . Try and behave like a proper servant, Alf. Keep your hands clean; don’t blow your nose on your shirt-sleeve, and only speak when you are spoken to.”
“’Ere, Miss G – is that wot a proper servant does?” Alf looked as if that question had never before occurred to him
“Yes, Alf,” Jane answered, with sudden insight and calculation. “That’s what the Master would want, I think; for you to be a credit to him and to reflect well on his household and m’lady, too.” More »