Return to Tatanka Crossing by Will DuRey

Author:Will DuRey [DuRey, Will]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Robert Hale
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Charlie and Jenny had lingered by the white rock for almost an hour after Jenny’s blunt declaration of her wishes; she trying to recover a modicum of her lost reserve, and he anxious to retain her goodwill, nervous lest any embarrassment caused by her giving unexpected voice to her feelings for him should cause her to avoid his immediate company. But they had parted as friends and had agreed to meet at the same spot early next morning so that she could ride with him to the old trapper’s cabin in the north wash.

His father was waiting on the small front porch when he rode in to the yard. He walked with him to the stable where he unsaddled and rubbed down the mare. Dagg talked about horses for a while but Charlie sensed an uneasiness in his father’s manner, figuring he was still concerned about the repayment of the debt. Charlie had assured him that he had enough money in the Cattlemen’s Bank at Laramie and that he intended withdrawing it the next day, but perhaps taking his son’s money caused his father a different kind of anxiety.

‘Funny how life moves in little circles,’ he told Dagg.

‘How so?’ enquired his father.

‘After the war I made a pact with myself that I wouldn’t come home until I had sufficient money to buy up some land for Ruth and me to have our own place. It took some time and I did some things that perhaps I wouldn’t do again, but I got the money.’

Dagg had given him a strange look at that moment, curious as to how Charlie had amassed so much money, but this was the West and you didn’t enquire into another man’s business, not even if that man was your son.

‘Don’t worry, Pa,’ Charlie said, ‘I didn’t do anything against the law.’ In fact, he had done the opposite. At the end of the war, bands of renegade Confederate soldiers who had refused the terms of surrender had pillaged and robbed all over the mid-west states. Rewards were offered for their capture and Charlie saw it as an opportunity to get the money he desired. In hindsight, he had some sympathy for those soldiers of a defeated army. Hounding them, often to their deaths, was an inglorious end to an inglorious war. But the war had affected everyone in Kansas, Missouri and the surrounding states and the rebel bands were making war on those townspeople and farmers who were trying, peaceably, to reconstruct their own lives. They had to be stopped. The military depended on civilian intelligence to pinpoint the positions of the gangs. It was dangerous work, which accounted for the high bounties it attracted. Charlie had earned several and had deposited almost $15,000 in the Cattlemen’s Bank at Laramie on his journey home.

‘Now,’ Charlie had continued, ‘I’m going to use that money to spoil the plans of the husband of the girl I thought was going to be my bride.’

‘One of life’s ironies,’ proclaimed Dagg.

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