The Rocking R Ranch. Tim Washburn
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my kids sayin’ it.”
Amanda rolled her eyes and Percy smiled before shuffling toward the bedroom they’d added on three or four years ago when things got too tight. The curtains were drawn, the room dark. Percy had met Mary Blalock in San Antonio at the tail end of his time with the Rangers. And she had been a beauty with long dark hair, blue eyes, and a wicked sense of humor. But the person now lying in the bed in front of him bore little resemblance to the woman he’d met those many years ago. Percy inhaled a deep breath and released it before stepping into the room.
“Mary, you asleep?” Percy asked.
“You back already?” Mary asked, her voice slow and slurred by laudanum, a powerful drug derived from dissolving opium powder in alcohol.
“Yeah, but I have to head back out.” Percy stepped over to the window and cracked the curtain open a tad so that he could see.
“Emma?” Mary asked.
“Yes,” Percy replied as he took a seat on the edge of the bed. He reached out and covered Mary’s hand with his own. “How are you feelin’?”
“Poorly. Can’t use my left arm at all.”
Percy had brought in doctors from all over, but none could say with any specificity what was ailing his wife. The most common response was that Mary might get better or her condition could continue to worsen. Thanks very much, Percy had thought at the time. “Want to try and get out of bed to walk around a bit?”
“I can’t, Percy. My eyes . . . are so blurry . . . can’t hardly see and . . . can’t feel . . . my left leg at all.”
The two sat in silence for several moments and Percy’s mind drifted to the task ahead. The odds of finding Emma were long, but knowing his father, they would ride to the ends of the earth before even thinking about riding home.
“Percy?” Mary said, drawing Percy away from his thoughts.
“Yes?”
Mary withdrew her right hand from under his and reached out, placing a hand on Percy’s gun belt.
“You have . . . your pistol?”
Percy had a pretty good idea where this was going. “Yes.”
“Please . . . I beg you . . . please . . . shoot me. I can’t stand this . . . misery,” she said, with a feeble tug of his gun belt.
It was a request Mary had made before and Percy knew she was in agony, but he couldn’t bring it upon himself to kill his wife and the mother of his children. “I can’t do it, Mary.”
“Then leave me . . . your pistol and I’ll . . . do it myself.”
Percy stood and leaned over and kissed his wife on the forehead. “I can’t do that, neither.” Percy turned and walked out of the bedroom and then out the front door, tears streaming down his cheeks. He’d debated the issue a thousand times in his mind and, if it had been just the two of them, he might have done it. But Amanda had been the one caring for her mother and the thought of asking her to help clean up the aftermath of a bloody suicide by gun was more than Percy could tolerate.
Percy stopped, dried his eyes, and returned to the house. He stuck his head in the door and asked Amanda to step outside for a moment and she did. “Mandy,” Percy said, “your ma’s in terrible shape.”
“I know that,” Amanda snapped. “I’m the one takin’ care of her.”
“I know, and I appreciate it mightily.” Percy paused, trying to frame the next few statements in his head. After a moment or two he said, “Where do you keep the bottle of laudanum you’ve been givin’ her?”
“On a shelf in the kitchen.”
“I want you to leave the bottle on her bedside table,” Percy said. “And when that one runs out, put a new bottle out and just keep doin’ it.”
“Until when?” Amanda asked.
Percy took a deep breath and released it. “Until it’s over.” Expecting anger, tears, or outright hysteria, Percy was astonished when Amanda simply said, “Thank you.”
Father and daughter hugged and that was when the dam broke, Amanda’s tears wetting his shirt. Percy rubbed her back and talked to her. The last two years had been a hellish nightmare as Mary’s health declined gradually enough that hope for a recovery lingered, stretching on for months. There was no such hope now.
“How long are you . . . goin’ to be gone?” Amanda asked between sobs.
“A couple of weeks. Could be longer. I ain’t got any idea how long it’s going to take.”
Amanda lifted her head and looked at her father. “You said ‘ain’t.’”
Percy smiled a small smile. He rubbed her back and said, “I gotta go.”
With one final squeeze, she broke the embrace and stepped back, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “Find Emma, Papa.”
“We will, however long it takes. If I don’t make it back in time, you tell your uncle to put your ma up on the hill with your brother and sister.”
Amanda nodded.
With a heavy heart, Percy turned and headed for the wagon.
CHAPTER 16
Rachel Ferguson was thumbing through an old issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine when she glanced outside to see Seth limping toward home. She tossed the magazine on the table and rushed outside and wrapped her arms around him, anger coursing through her body at the obvious beating Seth had taken.
Seth burst into tears and buried his face in his mother’s chest. When the sobbing subsided, Rachel stepped back and held Seth at arm’s length. Her heart broke to see his battered face. She wanted to ask a thousand questions, but instead, took Seth’s hand and led him back to the porch, deciding Seth needed to tell the story at his own pace. Rachel took a seat on one of the rockers and Seth attempted to sit down then immediately jumped back to his feet.
“What’s wrong?” Rachel asked.
Seth loosened his belt and pulled his pants down far enough to expose the X branded on his left buttock.
All thoughts of allowing Seth to tell the story flew from her mind and she lurched to her feet, trembling with rage. “Who did that to you?!”
“Three men. They’re the ones who roughed me up, too.”
“Where are these bastards?”
“Uncle Eli and Win shot them.”
“Good,” Rachel said, the sudden rage dropping back to a medium simmer. She stepped in the house, grabbed a pillow, and returned, placing it on the rocker’s seat. “Sit.”
Seth gently eased down on the pillow as his mother retook her seat. “What else did they do to you?” Rachel asked.
“Slapped me around, then burned me with the brandin’ iron.”
“Nothing more?”
“I reckon that was enough.”
Rachel breathed a sigh of relief. “Were they Indians?”
“No. White fellers about Pa’s age. They was drinkin’ whiskey.”
“Bastards,” Rachel muttered. “Well, they deserved what they got. How’d you run into them?”
“I saw ’em riding toward me. Didn’t nothin’ seem unusual about it. I was hopin’ to ask them if they’d seen anything of Pa’s group, but when they rode up and stopped, the meanest of the three grabbed the reins out of my hand.”
“Why didn’t you just jump off your horse?” Rachel asked.
“And go where?” Seth asked, his voice