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  THE RETURN OF CAULFIELD BLAKE

  THE RETURN OF CAULFIELD BLAKE

  G. CLIFTON WISLER

  M. EVANS

  Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

  Published by M. Evans

  An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, M aryland 20706

  www.rowman.com

  10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

  Distributed by National Book Network

  Copyright © 1987 by G. Clifton Wisler

  First paperback edition 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  The hardback edition of this book was previously cataloged by the Library of Congress as follows:

  Wisler, G. Clifton

  The return of Caulfield Blake / G. Clifton Wisler.

  p. cm. — (An Evans novel o f the West)

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS3573.I877R4 1987

  813’.54—dcl9

  87-21151

  ISBN: 978-1-59077-267-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-59077-268-3 (electronic)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements o f American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter One

  The Bar Double B spread itself out over a thousand acres of prickly pear and buffalo grass amid the rolling sandstone hills of West Texas. Carpenter Creek cut a broad flood plain through its center, giving birth to stands of live oaks and cottonwoods. Several small springs flowed from the boulder-strewn hillsides, showering the landscape with wildflowers from March to September. It was a good place, near perfect for raising cattle and horses, for building families and futures.

  Five or six miles to the north the Colorado River churned its way relentlessly toward the Gulf of Mexico three hundred miles downstream. In summer the river receded, forming great bogs of quicksand that could suck whole wagons under the surface, erasing them forever. In times of heavy rains the river would surge over its banks, sweeping away anything and everything in its path.

  No, it was not a tame land. There were always the challenges of drought and flood, heat and cold, birth and death. It produced a hardy people, men and women who survived the worst that nature could throw at them, who thrived where others faltered, and who found it possible to nurture in their children the courage, the strength, and the endurance that allowed them to prosper when it came their time to rule the range.

  The original Blake ranch house had been built of stone, a precaution against the Indian raids that had plagued the early settlers of the Texas frontier. In the early 1860s a two-story wooden section had been added to provide rooms for children and a small sitting room. After the war against the North, a further expansion had been made on the west end, a long elbowlike expanse featuring an indoor kitchen, a fancy parlor furnished with a Nashville piano, and a wide veranda for sitting in the cool evening breezes of spring and autumn.

  Old Calvin Blake had located the house on a small hill amid a grove of tall white oaks. Several of those trees had yielded the lumber for subsequent additions. A spring formed a small pond behind the house. That pond was the perfect source of drinking water and an ideal spot for a refreshing summer swim. Carpenter Creek lay at the foot of the hill, offering a shield against marauding Indians and water for the vegetables and fruit trees that had been planted along its banks.

  Normally in summer the creek lost its power, slowed so that a boy of fourteen might easily cross on foot where he would have been drowned in April. But never had the water fallen so low in early June as it had of late. Hannah had been worried for better than a week about the creek. Only last week there’d been the unmistakable roar of thunder from the southeast, from the granite hills where the creek first emerged from the earth and began its winding, twisting journey to the Colorado. Even so, the creek had continued to evaporate under the relentless Texas sun, shrinking until there was little more than a trickle of water remaining. In some places the creekbed was dry, and the stream had become a series of unconnected puddles.

  As she stared at the muddy stream, the creek that was the lifeblood of the ranch and its people, Hannah heard the sound of hooves coming from the dusty road that led from the far side of Carpenter Creek into the huddle of wooden buildings that constituted the town of Simpson. In another time she would have rushed to the house, taken down the shotgun from its resting place atop the fireplace, and sent one of the children for Marsh. But now she only shielded her eyes from the afternoon sun and tried to make out the face of the rider.

  For a moment there was a stir inside her. The man rode a tall brown horse, a stallion by the wild nature of its movements. The rider wore the long gray coat of a Confederate cavalryman, a coat she’d grown familiar with since ’62. But as the horseman approached, she felt a sigh wriggle its way through her being. It was not, could not be the one she’d imagined. No, he was far away.

  Dixon Stewart slowed his horse to a canter and splashed his way through the shallow remnant of the creek. He drew the stallion to a halt, then waited for Hannah to speak.

  “Good afternoon, Dix,” she said, managing a smile. “You appear to be in a Yankee hurry today.”

  “It’s old man Simpson,” Dixon said, frowning. “He’s gone and built a dam across the creek. It’s makin’ a lake out of Siler’s Hollow. In another month, we’ll be bone dry.”

  “I don’t see how that’s possible,” she said. “Dix, you can’t build a dam out of this fool sand we’ve got here. Marsh tried digging an irrigation channel off the Colorado. It just won’t work.”

  “Marsh didn’t have fifty men workin’ on it. He didn’t move rocks, whole wagons full of ’em.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. The Simpson ranch doesn’t use the sections that border our ranches. The range along Carpenter Creek’s no good to him. A hundred gullies must lie in the way. He’d lose more cows the first week than he could get through a summer’s grazing.”

  “Not if he joined our land to his.”

  “Now how’s he going to do that?”

  “By dryin’ us out.”

  “But why? He’s got more acreage than he could ride in a month of Sundays.”

  “Maybe he’s grown tired of neighbors.”

  “After all these years?”

  “Maybe it’s not all these years he’s thinkin’ on, Hannah. Maybe it’s only the last seven.”

  “He wouldn’t bear a grudge that long.”

  “He’s near seventy, and he’s had little more to think about. I’ve seen those eyes of his. I’ve read death before.”


  “So what do we do? We’ve got a right to the water.”

  “Right? Hannah, when you and I and Caulie . . .”

  She frowned, and Dixon coughed away the rest of the sentence.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Before the war, when we were both a whole lot younger, old Judge Harper sat the bench. We could count on justice. But since that carpetbagger Derry got himself shot, all we’ve had on the bench is one thief after another sent up from Austin. Now there’s no one at all.”

  “You can ride to the capital yourself. Marsh and I’ll look after Rita and the children.”

  “And what will I plead? Simpson pays more taxes than the balance of the county combined. You think the governor’ll even see me, much less listen?”

  “We have to do something.”

  “We should have,” Dixon said, sighing. “A long time ago. We should have been a little stronger seven years back when it would’ve been easy. All Simpson had on his side then was public feeling. People were swayed by sentiment. We might have changed all that. Now it seems like the old man’s got a hundred hands on his place, cash in the bank, and a hunger for more.”

  “You’re upset.”

  “A bit. Haven’t I been preachin’ about everybody stickin’ together? Didn’t I tell you when the Mexicans got run off Simpson wouldn’t stop there? And what about the Carlsons and the Brocks?”

  “That’s history, Dix. What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, throwing his arms up in despair. “I guess find a market for my horses and cattle. Hope maybe that dam springs itself a leak and the flood won’t take my house.”

  “There has to be something more.”

  “Like what? Maybe you think Marsh and I ought to ride out and ask Simpson if he’d please let a little water down the creekbed. Or maybe we ought to hire somebody to shoot the old man. But then we’d have to deal with his grandson Matt, and I’d rather wrestle a mountain cat.”

  “What are you getting at, Dix? I know you too well. You aren’t going to give up without a fight.”

  “I can’t do it alone, Hannah. Marsh won’t be much help. We need someone with experience, someone who won’t buckle under.”

  “Or didn’t?” she asked, trembling as the vision of a face appeared in her mind, a tall man with broad shoulders and bright blue eyes that always sparkled when she was around.

  “He’d come if you wrote him,” Dixon said, his eyes growing solemn. “If you said you needed him.”

  “It’s been too long,” she said, looking at her feet.

  “Think about the boys. Wouldn’t hurt to see their father.”

  “Marsh is their father.”

  “I’ll admit Marsh’s done right by ’em, but it’s not the same as bein’ their blood father. Hannah, I know it’s hard. It hurts your pride. But do it for us all, for Marty Cabot and me and, yes, even for Marsh.”

  “Marsh’d die before he’d ask for help from . .

  “I know that. Don’t you think it pains me to bring up the subject to you? But, Hannah, I don’t see we’ve got any choice.”

  “It’s what Simpson expects. It’s why . . .”

  “Maybe.”

  “I won’t ask him to come, not to ride down here knowing that old man’s sworn to see him dead.”

  “Well, we’ve talked about us. We’ve talked about Simpson. What about Caulie?”

  “Go on.”

  “What will he feel when he learns there’s been trouble and you didn’t send word? You know where he’s at?”

  “He writes at Christmas. For the boys.”

  “Joe Stovall saw him in Abilene. Was raisin’ horses.”

  “He’s good at that.”

  “Hannah, he’s good at more’n that. He’s the best man I ever knew at siftin’ through a problem and findin’ its root. And I never saw another man do so much with so little.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “What right have I got to ask him to come back? When he needed me, I let him go.” She could feel her hands trembling. “Maybe he wouldn’t come anyway. He’s started a whole new life.”

  “You know better. He never forgets you. All through the war, even when we were cold and hungry and almost out of hope, he never stopped talkin’ about you.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Was it?”

  She closed her eyes and remembered that last time he’d stood beside her on the veranda, their hands intertwined. She’d prayed he wouldn’t go.

  “You don’t have to do it,” she’d said. “No one will give you a medal or even thank you. The Yankees won’t. They only use men like you to do the dirty work.”

  “It’s a duty.”

  “The whole town will turn against us. The boys won’t be welcome at school. I won’t be able to hold my head up in church.”

  “I have to, Hannah. I swore an oath.”

  “Not to be a hangman. Not to kill Henry Simpson’s son.”

  “The law can’t just be for Jody Morgan or Curtis French. It’s got to be for everyone.”

  “You care more for that badge, that fool piece of tin, than you do for us, for Carter and Zach and me.”

  “It’s not the badge,” he’d said, taking it off his coat. “I told you. I’ll resign tomorrow. But I can’t back down from an obligation.”

  “It’s only pride. Stubborn pride. Well, you go on and do your duty, Caulie. And afterward you find yourself another place to come home to because you won’t be welcome here.”

  “You don’t mean that,” he’d said, leaning against the wooden bench. “Don’t ask me to make that kind of a choice.”

  “I don’t have to,” Hannah had told him. “You already did.”

  Marty’d sent word, how Caulie had lain in the street, his clothes torn and tattered, his face swollen with bruises. And she’d . . .

  “Hannah, are you all right?” Dix asked, grabbing her as her legs gave way. “Hannah?”

  “How can I write him?” she asked, her eyes ablaze with emotion. “How can I ask him to come back now when I wouldn’t take him in then?”

  But Dix didn’t answer. They both knew she would write. And deep down inside herself she knew he’d come, would always come. That was the worst part of all.

  Chapter Two

  The broad plain south of the Clear Fork of the Brazos River was once dotted with buffalo. The great woollies were mostly gone now, slaughtered by hide hunters in the preceding decade. Cattle were arriving to take their place, rugged longhorn steers that had given birth to a new Texas economy following the devastation of war and reconstruction. The railroad was creeping ever westward, bringing with it people and civilization. Eighteen-eighty was witnessing an end to the unbridled freedoms of the frontier as they gave way to farms and ranches, towns and churches.

  Not far from the cavalry post at Fort Griffin lay the ram­shackle collection of wooden huts and gambling houses known as The Flat. In its earlier days it had seen wild brawls and gunfights in its dusty streets. Thousands of dollars changed hands at the end of the buffalo-hunting season.

  The town had sheltered more than its share of notorious characters, everyone from Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson to Big Nose Kate Elder and Lottie Deno, the queen of the poker table. They’d moved on now, as had all but a shadow of the cavalry. What remained of the place provided comfort and diversion to the soldiers and supplies to the ranches that had begun appearing in Shackelford County.

  Just across the river from The Flat lay a picket cabin of earth and logs. A horse corral stood nearby, shaded by the cottonwoods that spread out from the river. On any given day the corral might contain a dozen mustang ponies, rounded up from the plain. An occasional army mount might be there as well, retrieved from a renegade Comanche or army deserter and awaiting redemption at the standard rate promised by the post commander.

  That particular morning two young men were busy with the ponies. The third, an older man, sat on a boulder preparing to read a letter. Those
who knew Caulfield Blake wouldn’t have been concerned by his somber appearance, the cold eyes and the stiff posture. He was nearing forty, a long life for a man who’d ridden four years with Forrest, endured seven long cattle drives north to Kansas, and spent the last four years chasing mustangs on the plains.

  But there was something different about him. His hands trembled slightly as he tore open the simple white envelope and began reading.

  “My dear Caulie,” the words said. “All has not been well with us of late.”

  The trembling grew worse as the words swept through his mind. He could hear her speaking, remember her face, the softness of her touch.

  “Colonel Simpson has taken it in his head to build a dam across Carpenter Creek. Dix Stewart suggested you might help us. I know it will not be easy for you to return, but your family and friends are in need of your help. Please come.”

  The letter was signed simply “Hannah.” There was no “affectionately yours” as in those longer, passionate notes written during the war.

  “Why should I?” he asked, staring at the horses.

  He reread the words. Dix suggested, did he? Things couldn’t be well if Dix needed help. No one, excepting perhaps himself, found it more difficult to ask help than Dix Stewart.

  “Simpson!” The word left a sour taste in his mouth even now. Colonel Simpson? What had the old man ever commanded that gave him the right to that title? It was a mockery of everything Blake had fought for, a corruption of the concept of honor itself. Yes, honor. For Caulfield Blake, honor had always exacted a high price. He’d ached and bled across a hundred fields during the war, driven on when others scurried away because duty had always demanded sacrifice from the Blakes. Only after Bedford Forrest himself declared the cause lost had Blake’s Texans turned their horses homeward. Then, back home among the familiar rocks and hills above Carpenter Creek, duty had called again.