Stagecoach Justice by James Ciccone

Author:James Ciccone [Ciccone, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sundown Press
Published: 2021-05-25T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

I built the Mission’s chapel, steeple, schoolhouse, and dormitory. I built the stable stone by stone, the garden, and the hen house, and I built it all without much of a budget. I did it all for just nine dollars a week. It was an act of charity.

Of course, the skill of a carpenter, a mason, and a farmer were required. If you didn’t possess those skills, if you couldn’t do it yourself in the wilds of Montana, a tradesman wasn’t likely to come bouncing along to do it for you.

I was also the Mission’s groundskeeper. That meant the girls, the nuns, the priest, and our guests would have lawns across a beautiful campus to behold rather than an open field. It was hard work keeping the grounds from becoming overridden by weeds.

The land in Montana yearns to go back to original unbroken prairie, or the rowdy patches of nappy scrub brush that grows sporadically on mountainsides. Naturally, I cursed at the girls and the nuns and the bishop and whoever else trampled across the grounds when the grounds were freshly cut. I knew they were preoccupied with their faith, but I had to remind them in the best way I knew how.

I tended to the chickens and horses, grew vegetables, hitched the team to a wagon to go on supply runs or pick up a visitor in town, and more importantly, I packed a shotgun and .38 to keep ambitious bandits and Indians at bay. I did all of this for little or no pay.

The Mission allotted me the paltry sum of nine dollars a week, which was barely enough to keep me liquored up. I didn’t complain. I lived at the Mission and ate the Mission’s food, so I had to factor that into what I was paid. I managed to get by on homemade cigars. I always had work, so I didn’t want for anything other than work clothes. The nuns once outfitted me with a proper dress, but I was a sight to see in a proper dress. I felt more comfortable wearing work clothes and preferably the work clothes of a man. Anyway, all was well until the Mission decided to hire a white man to work under my supervision.

It seems that the only business the white man was good at was filing complaints with the bishop and the nuns. It was clear that he had designs on taking over my job as foreman at the Mission. The trouble was he was unskilled.

He couldn’t do any carpentry, masonry, couldn’t hitch a team, couldn’t grow vegetables, and definitely couldn’t scare away bandits or ambitious Indians. But he could definitely make it his business to complain to the nuns and the bishop whenever I got rowdy, cursed, knocked out a fellow, or got good and liquored up. He said no “nigger” should be in charge of “nothing” in Montana and colored folks should never receive better pay than a white man, according to his mind. He was trouble from the start.

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