months and fattening the Ridgeways’ ten thousand head of cattle. And it wasn’t the climate, either. The area received adequate rainfall and most days were sunny and warm. No, what irked Cyrus was the location. Set hard against the Red River in northwest Texas, the Rocking R Ranch spanned for as far as the eye could see across more than forty-five thousand acres of relatively flat terrain. If it had been any other river it would have been acceptable. But not this river. And his contempt didn’t have anything to do with the quality or quantity of water that flowed through her banks. In fact, it didn’t have much to do with the river at all. No, his annoyance, disgust, and loathing stemmed from what was on the other side of the river—Indian Territory.
The Territory was home to a conglomeration of Indians, many of whom would rather slit your throat than look at you. And Cyrus thought he probably could have tolerated that if it was just the Indians he had to worry about. But it wasn’t. There was more, much more, that kept him up at night. A lawless place, Indian Territory was also home to a large assortment of cattle rustlers, horse thieves, murderers, robbers, and would-be robbers, con men, swindlers, scoundrels, crooks, and many other nefarious no-gooders with evil on their minds. If Cyrus had a dollar for every stolen cow or horse, he would be rich—or rather—richer than he already was. His children and their families who lived on the ranch insisted the occasional losses should be chalked up to the cost of doing business. But that didn’t sit well with Cyrus, who was a firm believer in protecting what was theirs, no matter the cost. And he’d gotten most of the stolen stock back over the years, with the thieves often paying a steep price for their transgressions when they found themselves at the end of a short rope that was tied to a tall tree.
Cyrus heard someone stirring around inside and listened to the footfalls, trying to decipher who was about to horn in on his quiet time. With a big family and four other homes on the place, it was difficult to know who was sleeping where on any given night. Most nights, a grandchild or two would slink up to his house after dark, well after Cyrus had already turned in. He didn’t have to listen long to identify the footsteps as belonging to his wife, Frances. The door squealed when she opened it and stepped outside.
“What are you doing sitting out here in the dark, Cy?” she asked as she took a seat next to him.
“Can’t sleep.”
Frances reached out and put her hand on his back. “What’s worrying that noggin of yours so early this morning?”
“Nothin’ but the usual worries.” Cyrus glanced in her direction. The moon glow was bright enough to see her profile and hints of her gray hair but not her individual features. And that was okay because Cyrus had them memorized by now, especially her blue eyes.
“That shoulder bothering you again?”
“Nah. Just can’t sleep.” Cyrus was a bear of a man at six-three with strong, powerful shoulders from a lifetime of hard work. He’d packed on a few extra pounds over the years and his once-dark hair was now mostly gray. With a full beard and mustache, he had started trimming it shorter after Frances teased him about looking like Santa Claus.
Frances removed her hand from his back and leaned back in her chair. “It’s about time you let the boys carry some of the load.”
“What about the girls, Franny? They not get a say in it?”
Cyrus and Frances had produced seven offspring, four of whom made it to adulthood—two sons, Percy and Elias, along with two daughters, Abigail and Rachel, the youngest. All now had families of their own and lived on the ranch.
“That’d probably be up to Percy. Shouldn’t he get more say in who does what since he’s the oldest?” Frances asked.
“Maybe,” Cyrus said. “But I don’t reckon any of it’s writ in stone. And you’re liable to stir up a passel of trouble if you ain’t careful.”
Frances clucked her tongue. “Decisions need to be made, Cy. We’re not getting any younger.” Tall at five-eight, her once-red hair was now gray and, lithe and lean as a teenager, her body was a bit stiffer but, remarkably, she still wore the same size dress as back then and still filled it out in all the right places.
“I ain’t dead, yet,” Cyrus said, a surly tone in his voice. “Besides, might be best to let the kids figure all that out when we’re gone.”
“Talk about stirring up trouble,” Frances said. “I won’t have my family ripped to pieces over this cattle ranch. We need a plan.”
“What do you care? You’ll likely be dead, too, fore it comes to that.”
Frances sighed and pushed to her feet. “I’m going to put on some coffee.”
Cyrus watched his wife’s silhouette disappear into the house. His preference was to keep the ranch intact for the future generations, but Frances had mentioned a couple of times through the years that they should divvy it up and give it to the kids. “Over my dead body,” Cyrus grumbled as he thought about it. Every time he pondered the situation, he ended up with a stomachache. The original Spanish land grant the ranch was founded upon had been in his family since Texas was still called Mexico, and Cyrus had added to their holdings over the years, buying up the farms and ranches of those who grew tired of fighting the Indians and the outlaws that drifted across the river. He’d worked too hard to make the ranch what it was and if the children wanted the land divided, they were going to have to wait until he was dead.
Cyrus wiped the sweat from his brow. August in this part of the country was hot, muggy, and miserable and those were the nighttime weather conditions. The same conditions existed during the day but were intensified about tenfold. The sun wasn’t even up yet, and Cyrus was already damp with sweat. Thinking about the heat, a weariness crept into his bones. It didn’t matter if it was scorching hot or finger-freezing cold, there was always work to be done—horses to be broken, cattle to be branded, corrals to be fixed, and on and on, all while keeping a watchful eye for marauding Indians, cattle rustlers, or others who might want what wasn’t legally theirs. Sometimes Cyrus wished he had listened to Frances and moved to San Antonio when they were younger. And they might have if his two older brothers who were set to take over the ranch hadn’t been slaughtered by a roving pack of Comanche savages while Cyrus and his new bride had been on a horse-buying trip to Saint Louis. Their deaths sealed Cyrus’s fate because he was the last of the Ridgeway boys. But all that was years ago—time that had slipped away, year after year, and, once Frances started having kids, leaving the ranch hadn’t made any sense at all. Now here it was, 1873, and Cyrus knew his dead carcass would be buried up on the little knoll where they buried his brothers and all the children who had died way too early.
Frances returned a while later, handed her a husband a cup of coffee, and retook her seat just as the first rays of the sun stretched across the landscape. They sat in silence for a few moments as the orange orb peeked over the horizon. They had positioned the house so that they could watch the sunrise on the front porch and the sunset on the back porch. Hearing the clop of horses, Cyrus sat up and reached for the rifle he’d brought outside and then relaxed when the night riders rode past on their way to the bunkhouse.
“Good thing they weren’t renegades,” Frances said, “or they would have been on us before you could lever a shell into that rifle of yours.”
“Hearin’ ain’t what it once was,” Cyrus mumbled. “Maybe you ought to be the lookout since you still got all your faculties.”
Frances chuckled. “Oh, Cy, you’re doing just fine. Don’t you think I’d have told you if trouble was headed our way?”
“Don’t need my wife to tell me when there’s trouble a-comin’. My damn eyes still work just fine.” Cyrus turned to look at his wife. “We eatin’ breakfast sometime today?”
Frances chuckled again. “Don’t get all riled up, Cy. We all have our shortcomings.” She stood and leaned over to kiss her husband on the cheek. “You’ll always be my protector. What are you planning for the day?”
“Me and Percy and a few others are gonna track down them rustlers who stole them two steers yesterday afternoon.”