A Lone Star Christmas

CHAPTER SEVEN

Rebecca had not visited the Lucky Chance or any other saloon since arriving in town, but that afternoon she decided that she would go to the Lucky Chance and meet her mother for the first time. She debated as to whether or not she should change into more appropriate garb before she went, but decided that if she went dressed as she is now, she would draw less attention than she would if she went in a dress.

As she got there, she saw a crowd gathering in front of the saloon, and she hurried forward to see what was going on. There were two soldiers standing out in the street in front of the saloon, and another man standing on the saloon porch looking down at the two soldiers. This was a civilian, dressed all in black, with a low-crown black hat, ringed with a silver hatband. He was also wearing a pistol, hanging low in a silver-studded holster. He had close-set, dark beady eyes, and a face that was so drawn it looked as if the skin was stretched over the skull itself, with no cushioning flesh. He was smoking a long, slender cheroot and he took it out; then, as he expelled a long stream of smoke, flipped the cheroot away.

“You soldier boys picked the wrong man to call a cheat,” the man in black said.

“You dealt an ace from the bottom of the deck, Mister,” one of the soldiers said. “What else would you call someone who does that but a cheat?”

“This is what I want you two soldier boys to do. I want you to say, ‘Mr. Lovejoy, we’re sorry we called you a cheat. But we are sore losers and lyin’ bastards. ’ You do that, and I might let you live.”

“Frank, look at their holsters,” a bystander said. “They’re army holsters. Both of ’em has got the flap down over their pistols.”

“That’s right. Makin’ them draw wouldn’t be fair, would it?” Lovejoy said. “All right, let’s make this fair. You two boys draw your pistols and hold them down by your side. I’ll leave my gun in my holster. When you see me start my draw, why you can raise your pistols up and shoot.”

“What? You’re saying draw our pistols first?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Don’t do it, Ernie,” one of the soldiers said. “There’s somethin’ fishy about this.”

“Everyone here heard him, Jimmy,” Ernie said. “He said we could raise our guns and shoot him soon as we see him startin’ his draw. And the way I figure it, we’re in too deep now. This here feller ain’t goin’ to let us go without a fight.”

“I don’t feel good about it,” Jimmy said.

“It’s our only chance,” Ernie said, opening the flap over his pistol then pulling it, slowly deliberately, so as not to startle Lovejoy. Jimmy pulled his pistol as well.

“You boys ready?” Lovejoy said. “Remember, as soon as you see me start my draw, you can raise your guns and shoot.”

Ernie and Jimmy stood there with their pistols in their hands, staring at Lovejoy.

What happened next caught everyone by surprise. In a move as quick as the wink of an eye, Lovejoy drew his pistol and fired twice. Both soldiers went down without so much as a twitch of their gun hands.

Rebecca watched in horror as the drama played out before her. She looked back at the gunman and saw him standing there, holding his still-smoking pistol as he looked at the bodies of the two soldiers that were sprawled out in the street. The look on the gunman’s face was one of Satanic glee. He had actually enjoyed the shooting.

“I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that before in my life!” someone said loudly.

“I’ll bet there ain’t nobody in all of Kansas who can shoot like that,” another said.

“All of Kansas. Not even in all of the country,” still another said.

“You folks come on back inside,” Lovejoy said, finally putting his pistol back in his holster. “I’ll buy a round of drinks.”

Nearly everyone who had witnessed the shooting rushed through doors into the Lucky Chance Saloon to take advantage of the free drinks. Rebecca walked out into the street and stared down into the faces of the two dead soldiers. They were both very young, and she wondered about them. Did they have family somewhere, thinking about them? If they did, at this very moment, these two young men would still be alive to them. They would have no idea that their brother, or son, was now lying dead in the dirt and among the horse apples of Front Street in Dodge City, Kansas. Rebecca found the thought that their families, wherever they were, still believed them alive at this moment, to be very disturbing, and she turned away to fight against the tears that had welled so quickly.

When she did so, she saw two women standing on the front porch of Wright’s store, both wearing long, gray dresses and cotton bonnets which they had tied down over their ears. They were looking on with as much horror as Rebecca felt, and she wondered if they, like she, had been inadvertent witnesses to the shooting.

She heard loud, boisterous talk coming from inside the saloon, and for a moment she almost changed her mind about going in. But, she had come this far to meet her mother, and she wasn’t going to back away now. Gathering herself as best she could, she pushed through the bat-wing doors and went into the saloon.

It wasn’t until that very moment that she realized she had never been in a saloon before, and she felt very self-conscious. What would the others think when they saw a woman come in here?

Then she realized that the others wouldn’t see a woman. She had passed herself off as a young man for over a month now, spending twenty-four hours a day with a crew of trail cowboys. And in all that time, not one person had ever suspected her to be anything other than what she presented herself to be.

Most of the saloon patrons were standing at the bar, gathered around the gunman, who was obviously enjoying the accolades being heaped upon him.

There was only one person who was not gathering slavishly around Frank Lovejoy, and he stood at the far end of the bar as if putting as much distance between himself and the others as possible.

“Come on, Billy, come on down here and join the rest of us,” someone called. “Didn’t you see what your brother just done?”

“I saw him kill a couple of soldiers,” Billy said.

“It ain’t like he didn’t give ’em a chance. He let ’em stand there with their guns already in their hands,” someone said, retelling the story to those who, because they had seen it, needed no retelling.

“He pushed the fight,” Billy said. “He didn’t have to push the fight.”

“Pay no attention to my little brother, boys,” Frank said. “If it ever comes to a time where he actually has to discover what he is made of, it will like as not be all feathers and shit,” he said.

The others laughed.

“Come on, Billy. I would think you would be proud of your brother.”

“Why should I be proud of him? Should I be proud because he killed two young men who were serving in the army, protecting the rest of us? No, thank you. That isn’t something I care to celebrate.”

“I think Frank is right. Forget about Billy. What do you boys think about what we just saw? I mean Frank commenced his draw, even after them two soldier boys already had their guns in their hands. All they had to do was raise up their hands and shoot, but they couldn’t do it in time. When we tell folks that, they ain’t goin’ to believe it. But it just all goes to show how fast Frank Lovejoy really is!”

“I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it,” another said.

“They had their guns in their hands. Can you believe that?”

The accolades dismayed Rebecca, and she found an empty table as far away from the bar as she could. Looking toward the back of the bar, she saw three young women who were dressed rather seductively, and she wondered who and what they were.

Whoever they were, they were obviously as disgusted with the tributes and homage being paid to Frank Lovejoy as was Rebecca herself, because their faces reflected their disapproval. Then one of the young women, seeing Rebecca, came over to the table where she was sitting. Putting her hands down on the table, she leaned forward to show as much décolletage as she could, and Rebecca was surprised by it, until she realized that the young woman thought she was a man.

“Hello, honey,” the young woman said. “You are new here, aren’t you? I don’t believe I’ve seen you in here before. Come up with one of the trail herds, did you?”

“Yes,” Rebecca answered. “I got here a couple of days ago.”

“And you’re just now getting around to visiting us here at the Lucky Chance? Well now, my feelings are hurt.” The young woman effected a pout, and Rebecca smiled.

“What’s your name?” Rebecca asked.

“My name is Candy,” the young woman said with a flirtatious smile. “So anytime you come in here and you want a girl to have a drink with you, you just ask for Candy. Unless I’m with Billy Lovejoy. Billy is my beau. That’s him standing over there.” She pointed to the young man who was isolated from those who were gathered around Frank Lovejoy. “He and Frank are brothers, but believe me, they aren’t anything alike.”

“I would certainly hope not,” Rebecca said.

“Honey, you haven’t told me your name yet,” Candy said.

Rebecca chuckled. “You are going to be awfully embarrassed when you find out who I am,” she said.

The young woman looked puzzled. “Well now, honey, who are you?” she said. “I know you are young, but ...”

“Is there someone here named Janie Davenport?” Rebecca asked.

“Janie Davenport?” Candy answered. “Yes, she is here. She owns the place. That is, she and her husband own the place.”

“Would you please tell her I would like to see her?”

“Miss Janie doesn’t do any entertaining, if you know what I mean.”

“That’s all right. I think she’ll see me, when she finds out who I am.”

“Well that’s just it, honey. You haven’t told me your name yet.”

“My name is ...” she started to say Rebecca, but remembered that in the letter her mother had referred to her as ‘Becca.”

“My name is Becca,” she said.

“Becca?” Candy said. “All right, Mr. Becca, I’ll tell her.”

Rebecca took off her hat, then let what hair she had left after having cut it, fall to her shoulders.

“And it’s not Mister,” she said. “It’s Miss.”

“What?” the bargirl gasped.

Rebecca laughed again. “I told you were going to be embarrassed.”

Candy left, and less than a minute later returned with a woman. Rebecca had never seen her mother in her entire life, not even a picture. And other than her father saying, rather vaguely, that “She was pretty,” she had never even heard her mother described. But she could tell by the anxious expression on the face of the middle-aged woman, who was now hurrying across the saloon floor toward her table, that this was her mother.

“Becca?” The woman said, hesitantly, hopefully. “Are you my Becca?”

“Yes, Mama,” Rebecca said. “I am your Becca.”

When the two women embraced, Rebecca did not believe she had ever been squeezed quite so hard.

“What—what are you doing here?” Janie asked.

“I came to visit you, Mama,” Rebecca said, the word ‘Mama’ sounding strange to her. “Didn’t you ask me to?”

“Oh, child,” she said. “Oh, my darling, child. Yes, I did ask, and I hoped and prayed with all my heart that you would do it. But I never thought, I just never thought ...”

Janie was unable to complete her sentence.

That same day, Rebecca moved in with her mother and stepfather. They had an apartment over the saloon that Oscar Davenport owned. Oscar hung a curtain to separate the alcove from the parlor, and that became Rebecca’s bedroom. The alcove was little larger than the bed itself and sometimes, when she felt that it was a little too close, she would think of her spacious bedroom back home and wonder if she had made a mistake.

No. She hadn’t made a mistake. It had not been, and was not her intention to permanently absent herself from Live Oaks. This was a temporary arrangement, so she was certain she would be able to stay here for a while.

Shortly after she made her living arrangements, which included working for her mother and Oscar, Rebecca sat down to write two letters, one to Tom and one to her father.

Dear Tom,

No, I have not dropped off the face of the earth. You won’t be able to respond to this letter, because I am not including my return address. I am not sure you would want to respond to me, anyway.

I am mailing this letter to you in care of Live Oaks, in hopes that you are still in the employ of my father. I am sorry that I told you I loved you on the night of the July 4 ^th celebration. I am not sorry that I love you, but telling you seems to have caused you some discomfort, and that I did not want to do.

I will say nothing more, other than that, while you are much in my thoughts, I do not expect to be in yours.

Fondly,

Rebecca

Since Rebecca knew that her father would be picking up both letters, she had Candy address the one to Tom, so that her father would not recognize the handwriting. Then she made arrangements with someone to mail the letters from two locations other than Dodge City. In that way, she hoped to keep her location a secret, both from her father and from Tom.

Fort Worth, September 10

When Big Ben Conyers picked up the mail at the post office, he found a letter from Rebecca. There was also a letter to Tom, and his first thought was that it, too, would be from Rebecca, but when he checked the handwriting it was obviously different. Also, the postmark for his letter was New Orleans, whereas the postmark for the letter to Tom was St. Louis.

He stuck both letters in his inside jacket pocket then drove the surrey home. By the time he got home, the letter felt as if it weighed ten pounds, so anxious was he to read it.

When Mo came to take care of the surrey, Big Ben gave him the letter that was for Tom.

“Mo, here is a letter for Tom that I picked up at the post office. Would you give it him, please?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Conyers,” Mo said. “Soon as I get this surrey took care of.”

“Thanks,” Big Ben said. He almost bounded up the stairs, and was calling out loud to Julia even as he opened the front door.

“Julia,” he called as soon as he got inside. “Julia, we got a letter from Rebecca!”

Big Ben went into the parlor, then settled into the oversized leather chair that had been built to accommodate his bulk. Then, pulling the letter from his inside jacket pocket he held it until Julia came into the room.

“Oh, thank God, Ben!” Julia said. “That means she’s all right. Read it aloud, please.”

Big Ben nodded, then taking the letter from the envelope, began to read aloud:

Dear Papa,

I am doing well, so I don’t want you and Mama to be worrying about me. I hope everything is going well at the ranch. I won’t talk about Tom Whitman because I know that will just make you angry. I hope you did not fire him. He did nothing to warrant being fired. Please believe me, Papa, Tom Whitman was always very much the gentleman around me.

I don’t know when I will be coming home. Maybe I will come home by Christmas.

Love,

Rebecca

Big Ben finished reading the letter, then folding it over, he tapped it against his hand.

“This letter was almost more frustrating than it’s worth.”

“No, don’t say that, Ben. You know as well as I do that we have spent the last two months worrying about her, wondering if she was all right. I’ve had nightmares about what could have happened to her. It is good of her to write to us, to let us know that she is all right,” Julia said.

“That’s true, I guess. She’s been gone for almost three months now, and this is the first letter we have gotten from her. Why did she wait so long? She had to know that we would be worried about her.”

“At least she has written. And she did say that she might come home for Christmas.”

“I hope I can believe that,” Big Ben said.

“Why wouldn’t you believe it?”

“She didn’t bother to tell us where she was, or how we could even get in touch with her,” Big Ben said. He handed the envelope to his wife.

“As you can see, this is postmarked from New Orleans. Is she really in New Orleans? Or did she just give the letter to someone who was going to New Orleans to have them mail it?”

“Why would she do something like that?” Julia said.

“Because she is a very smart girl,” Big Ben said. “And if she was serious about keeping us from finding her, this is exactly the kind of thing she would do.”

Even though Big Ben had already read the letter to her, Julia re-read it. “Oh,” she said. “Ben, do you think she really will be back by Christmas?”

“I don’t know,” Big Ben said. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“I know that you are worried about her, as am I,” Julia said. “But I have a feeling that all will be well.”

“I pray that you are right,” Big Ben said.

“Who knows? Maybe she will be back home for Christmas,” Julia said. “She suggested that.”

“What a wonderful Christmas present that would be,” Big Ben said.

He walked back to his chair and sat down again and thought about his conversation with Tom Whitman. What if she did marry him? How bad would that be? Tom Whitman was, without a doubt, the most unusual cowboy Big Ben had ever been around.

But that’s because he wasn’t a cowboy, Big Ben realized. At least he certainly was not a cowboy in the normal sense of the term. But Clay liked him, Dusty liked him, Mo liked him, even Dalton liked him. He was smart as a whip, strong as an ox, and had as even a disposition as anyone Big Ben had ever known.

So why was he here? What was he running from?

That was what bothered Big Ben more than anything else—not just that he wasn’t really a cowboy.

Back in the bunkhouse, Tom put the letter under the false bottom of his locker, then lay back on his bed with his hands folded behind his head. He stared up at the ceiling, and thought of the letter he had just read. He was the cause of her leaving. He had thought that all along, and this letter confirmed it.

He was glad to have gotten the letter, because he had been feeling very anxious about her. He wished, though, that she had told him where she was.

The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her, and that was exactly why he had reacted as he did. If he could only tell her the truth, tell her how much he loved her. But he couldn’t tell her, because he knew that there would be as much pain as joy in such a relationship. And while he could live with it, he had no right to inflict that on anyone else.

“Hey, Tom, did you hear?” Mo asked, stopping by Tom’s bunk. “Big Ben heard from Rebecca.”

“Did he?” Tom asked.

“Dalton is the one that told me about it, and he said she didn’t tell him where she was, just that she was all right.”

“I’m glad to hear that she is all right,” Tom said.

“Who was your letter from?”

“What?”

“When Big Ben went into town, he picked up a letter for you too. I’m the one who gave it to you, remember?”

“Oh, yes, you did. It wasn’t anything, just a letter from someone I used to know.”

“Mo!” someone called from the other end of the bunkhouse. “Want to play some cards?”

“I ain’t got no money,” Mo said.

“That don’t matter none. We’re playing for matches, tobacco, and cigarette paper and such.”

“Yeah,” Mo called back. “If that’s all we’re playin’ for, it’s fine by me.”

Tom thought of the cowboys he was living with now. This was an entirely new experience for him. Never before had he been around men like these, men who fight at the drop of a hat, with fists or guns, men who would gamble for matchsticks with as much intensity as if they were gambling for real money, and men who were loyal to their last breath to the outfit they rode for.

Tom was not a gambler, and because the ranch provided him with food and a place to sleep, his forty dollars a month was enough for him. Nobody knew, and he had not yet had to touch, the five thousand dollars in cash he had brought with him. That money was hidden in his chest, under the same false bottom where he had put his letter.

He and his father had talked about the money just before he left home.

“If you are going to run away, there is no need for you to wear a hair shirt,” his father had told him. “Take some money with you. Take the time to travel, see the country, hell, see the world. It isn’t like you can’t afford it.”

“You don’t understand,” Tom said. “I need to find out what I’m made of. How am I ever going to find that out if I travel first class, live in the finest hotels, dine at the best restaurants?”

“Do you really want to see what you are made of ?” Tom’s father had asked. “Take some money with you, say, five thousand dollars, and see if you have the strength of character to have the money, but not use it.”

“You think I can’t do that?”

“No. I think you can,” Tom’s father had said. “But I think that you don’t believe you can. This would be the ultimate test for you, Tom. If you have the courage to do it.”

After breakfast the next morning, Big Ben walked around to Julia’s side of the table and kissed her. “I’m going to go into town for a while,” he said. “Is there anything I can pick up for you? I’m taking the buckboard, so it would be no trouble.”

“That’s sweet,” she said. “But I can’t think of anything I might need.”

When Dusty saw Big Ben getting a team together to hitch them up to the buckboard, he hurried over to perform the chore for him.

“Thanks, Dusty,” Big Ben said as Dusty started attaching the harness. It only took him a couple of minutes until he had the team hitched and ready to go. He indicated that Big Ben could climb into the buckboard.

“Dalton said you got a letter from Miss Rebecca,” Dusty said as he handed the reins to Big Ben.

“I did.”

“But he said that she didn’t tell you where she is?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it, Colonel. I expect she’ll come back home bye and bye,” Dusty said.

“I pray that you are right,” Big Ben said. He snapped the lines against the team and clucked to them. The team started forward, pulling the buckboard and Big Ben out of the barn and into the open.

Dusty was the only one who ever called Big Ben ‘Colonel’ because he, alone, of all the hands who worked on the ranch, had served with Big Ben during the war. He had just told Big Ben that he believed Rebecca would come back home bye and bye, but would she?

He certainly hoped that she would. He hoped she would not do as he had done. Because from the time Dusty left home, at the age of fifteen, he never saw his mother again.

Clarksville, Tennessee, 1853

“I’ll teach you to damn well do what I tell you to do,” Angus Livermore yelled at Dusty. Angus Livermore had married Dusty’s mother shortly after Dusty’s father died.

Dusty, fifteen at the time, and Livermore were standing in the barn, and Livermore was angry because he didn’t think Dusty had done a good enough job in mucking out the stalls. Livermore took a cat-o’-nine-tails that he had constructed from old leather reins, each of the seven leather straps embedded with nails and other sharp bits of metal, and began beating Dusty. He beat Dusty until Dusty was crying for mercy, and when Dusty’s mother came out to the barn to beg him to stop, Livermore took the cat-o’-nine-tails to her.

“I’ll not have you buttin’ in to the way I treat this boy!” Livermore said. Each lash of the cat brought red whelps and blood. “I’ve told you before, you only got two things to do on this farm. Cook my meals and warm my bed!”

Livermore continued to beat the woman until she was too weak to even cry out anymore. But because he was beating Dusty’s mother, he had forgotten, temporarily, about Dusty, and Dusty was able to get away from him.

Dusty didn’t go far. He went only as far as the door to the barn, where he saw the axe he had used earlier in the day to chop up firewood. Grabbing the axe, he stepped up behind his stepfather and swung it as hard as he could. The axe opened up the side of Livermore’s head, spilling brain, blood, and bone. He was dead before he hit the ground. Dusty left that same day, but not until he wrote a letter explaining that he was the one who had killed Livermore.

In the twelve years after Dusty had left home, he had been a pony express rider, and spent some time at sea before going to war. Not until the war was over did he come back home, and when he did, he found the barn had fallen down and the house nearly so. There was no livestock, not so much as a chicken, and in the fields where cotton and corn had grown before, there was nothing but weeds.

Dusty walked through the house, which had been emptied of anything of any value. When he came back out onto the front porch, he saw Mr. Dement, who he remembered as their next-door neighbor.

“You would be Dusty, wouldn’t you?” Dement asked.

“Yes.”

“I seen you ride by and thought that might be you. But, bein’ as you’re all grow’d up now, I wasn’t real sure.”

“Do you know where my Ma is, Mr. Dement?”

“I sure do.” Dement pointed. “She’s lyin’ over there, next to your Pa. I’m surprised you didn’t see that first thing when you come up.”

“No, sir, I didn’t think to look. I didn’t even know she was dead.”

“She’s been dead six months now,” Dement said. “Had a real nice funeral for her, we did. Nobody in her family come, ’cause she didn’t have nobody but you, and most figured you’d been kilt in the war. All the neighbors come, though.”

Dusty walked over to the place where his father had been buried. Next to him was a newer gravestone:

EMMA MCNALLY

1821–1865

He was glad to see that Livermore’s grave was not there with his parents. He didn’t know where it was, nor did he care. As Dusty stood over the graves, looking down at them, Dement walked up to stand alongside him.

“You should have come back,” Dement said. “Miz Emma missed you somethin’ terrible.”

“I always thought that if I came back, I would just cause trouble for her,” Dusty said.

“I thought it might be somethin’ like that,” Dement said. “Then, like I said, awhile ago I seen you ridin’ up the lane, and I was pretty sure it might be you.” So I brung you this letter which your Ma wrote not long before she died. She wanted me to give it to you. In it, she tells how she told the sheriff that she kilt Mr. Livermore after he beat her real bad. They had a trial and found that she had a good enough reason for killin’ him, so they let her go.”

“Wasn’t her that killed him,” Dusty said. “It was me.”

“Yep, after all these years, most particular with you not comin’ back and all, I sort of figured it might have been you that done it,” Dement said. “But I figure that you done it for the same reason your Ma said she done it for, and that makes it all right in my book. It don’t matter none now anyhow, seein’ as it’s all said an’ done. Will you be farmin’ the place?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t made up my mind,” Dusty said.

“The place is yours now, but I’ve had the papers all drawed up in case you’d be willin’ to sell it.”

“How much?”

“Five hundred dollars.”

Dusty knew that the farm was worth more than that. But he also knew that he had no wish to stay around. And five hundred dollars was a lot more than he had now.

“I’ll take it,” he said.

Now, a quarter of a century after he sold the farm to Dement, Dusty had no regrets. After a bit of a wild spree where he had actually robbed a couple of stagecoaches and even a train, he had settled down here on Live Oaks, and the people here were the closest thing to a family he had ever had.

He hoped that things could be worked out between Big Ben and Rebecca.

As Dusty started back toward the bunkhouse, Mo and Tom tossed him a wave as they rode out toward the field. With no stock on the range, most of the work being done at the ranch now was maintenance, and he saw that Mo and Tom had wire and pliers with them in order to make some repairs on the fence line.

Nobody had ever said anything directly to him, but Dusty couldn’t help but harbor the idea that, somehow, Rebecca’s leaving had something to do with Tom.