The Son

Chapter Sixty-three. Eli McCullough, Early 1870s

Beef was up four straight years but in ’73, with the economy falling over, most went back to killing steers for hides.

I would not allow it. By then I owned 118 sections in fee simple with another 70 on lease. I held my stock. Our losses we kept to a minimum as we shot any mounted rider inside our fences. It was all according to Gunter.

Those afoot we let pass: it can never be said I denied an honest man his day’s work. It was known in Carrizo that any man who found his family short rations could entitle himself to one of my calves, so long as he left me the hide. Only bullets and walls make for honest neighbors and a single night in my pastures would net any rustler a year’s wages, a year of my own life. If they had built a cow-proof fence between us and the river…

There are plenty of old pistols still to be found in the brush country. Bone rots faster than iron. It was all according to Gunter.

MADELINE AND THE children had moved to a big house in Austin. The children had schools and tutors and I would have sooner burned the ranch than had them out to it, though Madeline had been asking for a proper house on the Nueces, so that we could all live together. I put it off. There were no schools. And she would not have cottoned to our treatment of fence crossers.

ONE DAY A black mood came over me for no reason, I was ornery as a snake and could not stand for anyone to look at me. I went off by myself. I guessed it was the heat.

The next morning they were shouting it in the streets: Quanah Parker and the last of the Comanches had surrendered. There were barely a thousand left on earth — the same number that had lived in Toshaway’s village — and now the whole of Texas was open to the white man. I told Madeline I needed time alone, saddled my horse and went up the Colorado. I was riding and riding, but no matter how far I got there were hog callers and boatmen. I rode well into the night until finally it was quiet. I climbed a ledge and built a fire and howled out to the wolves. But nothing howled back.

That I had done wrong was plain. I was not thick enough to believe I might have saved the ponies from Ranald Mackenzie’s troopers, but you could never say for certain. A single man can make a difference.

I thought how I might have gone back to the Numunuu when the war started. It hit me that fifteen years had passed since. I could not believe it; I could barely name a thing I’d done. I sat there looking out over the cliff, running it through my mind. It was not that I did not love my family. But there are things no person can give you.

Then I could not stand looking at my fire; I kicked the logs into the river and watched their spark quench. Then I rode home. I arrived well into the black morning, filled a lamp, and went into my office.

I took out my ledgers and securities and laid them on my desk. Deposits, shares in the Pacific Express, a steel concern in Pittsburgh, a sawmill in Beaumont. I considered how good the rains had been and the pastures I had just leased and all the new cowbrutes the green grass would nurture. I sat in my chair and thought about these things. I began to feel at ease.