Old dogs, p.1
Old Dogs, page 1
Old Dogs
Ron Schwab
Contents
Also by Ron Schwab
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
About the Author
Free Download
Also by Ron Schwab
The Law Wranglers
Deal with the Devil
Mouth of Hell
The Last Hunt
Summer’s Child
Adam’s First Wife
Escape from El Gato
Peyote Spirits
The Coyote Saga
Night of the Coyote
Return of the Coyote
Twilight of the Coyote
The Lockes
Last Will
Medicine Wheel
Hell’s Fire
The Blood Hounds
The Blood Hounds
No Man’s Land
Looking for Trouble
Sioux Sunrise
Paint the Hills Red
Grit
Cut Nose
The Long Walk
OLD DOGS
by Ron Schwab
Uplands Press
Omaha, Nebraska
www.UplandsPress.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Ron Schwab
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews—without written permission from its publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-943421-51-0
To my sister, Lana Schwab Criner.
“There is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather.”
—Christina Rossetti
Chapter One
Jack Wills sat in the sturdy rocking chair perched on the roofed veranda that ran along the entire front of the two-story limestone house, one foot propped up against the oak railing. The porch rail was chipped and worn from years of service as more footrest than hand support for Lucky Five Ranch headquarters occupants and their visitors. The house stood alone, save for the outback privy, on a low butte overlooking the employee residences, outbuildings, corrals, and other structures vital to ranching operations.
The flat top of the butte stretched slightly more than seventy yards with the house located at the east end and a growing cemetery to the west where several of the original Spanish residents rested along with cowhands or relatives of those who had worked the land over the years. Jack had no relatives planted there, not if a man only counted blood kin, anyhow. He was the last of his line. Nonetheless, he took the path that veered off the walkway to the cemetery tract weekly to visit the place and keep it weeded and clean. The native grasses he let grow, but he saw it as his job to fight the buckbrush, cedars, and thistles that were always trying to move in and take over.
The butte’s summit lay less than ten feet above the lower ranch yard, but the house had been strategically located on high ground years back as a defensive measure against Comanches, Kiowas, and other raiders. From the south side of the butte, a rocky slope dropped gradually to the lower building site, and flat limestone rocks had been used to construct a solid stairway and a walkway to the veranda.
Sundown would not turn down the heat of a blazing Texas sun for several hours yet, but the porch roof offered plenty of shade, especially since the front faced southeast. Jack reached down and raked his fingers lazily through Thor’s silky hair. The dog slept soundly on the two-layer cowhide rug next to the chair. The big coal-black dog of indeterminate breed, like his master, had given up rabbit hunting and was content these days to let somebody else search out meals for him. Most of the time, he ordered beef.
Jack lifted the telescope to his eye again and focused on the dust swirl down the North Concho River valley he had been following for a spell. It was a rider, pushing the horse beyond good sense. He could not say he had not done the same with a Comanche war party on his tail but never when his life was not at stake. He did not see anyone chasing this rider. Whoever it was would hit the fork in the trail soon, turn left to Tess Wyman’s small spread or rein right to the Lucky Five. If the rider headed for Tess’s, he would send one of the hands over to be certain she did not have trouble riding in. On second thought, he might just ride over himself. He was past due to pay Tess a social call.
“What the hell you looking at out there? I don’t see nothing.” It was his longtime friend and saddle partner, Rudolph Kilgore, who was seated in another rocking chair on the opposite side of Thor.
“What do you think spyglasses are for, Rudy? They let a man see things he’d otherwise miss.”
“So, what are you seeing?”
“A rider moving fast. Just hit the fork. Looks like we got company for supper.”
“Maybe they ain’t friendly.”
“We’ll find out in about ten minutes. I’ll go warn Josephina that she and Consuelo should plan on another guest.” He lifted his legs off the railing and eased out of the rocker, careful not to jar his back. Once he got to moving, he would be fine. Nothing he could do about spending most of his seventy years in the saddle or all those nights sleeping on the hard ground. The lead slug still nested near his lower backbone did not help a whole lot either.
Rudy called after him, “Jack, is Jordy eating with us tonight?”
“Yeah, he said he would be up. Just got back with a crew rounding up strays.”
“What?”
Jack did not repeat his reply and entered the house. Jordy was Jordan Jackson, a twenty-five-year-old cowhand, who had been raised by Jack since the age of ten and lived in the house when he was at ranch headquarters, which generally was less than half the time. Rudy called the young cowhand a working fool who didn’t know when to call it a day. But Rudy had helped raise Jordy, and Jack knew his old partner was proud of the man who would be foreman in another three or four years when Rusty Dobbs intended to move to Kansas to be nearer his daughter and her family. Jack sensed that Jordy felt the burden of proving his worth given his special relationship with the boss. He had already proved it as far as Jack was concerned.
When Jack returned to the veranda, the slim and wiry rider was starting to hitch a strawberry roan mare to the hitching post in the yard below the house. The horse did not seem to be suffering greatly but was breathing heavily and frothing some at the mouth, igniting the rancher’s anger. He started to say something when he saw Jordy walk up behind the rider.
The lean, sinewy cowhand, who easily passed the six-foot mark without his boots, towered over the visitor, “Can I see to your horse, ma’am? Appears to have had a hard ride. Let me get her to some water and wipe her down a bit. A little grain be okay?”
The rider lifted the front of a low-crowned hat and looked up at Jordy. “I would appreciate that. Her name is ‘Dancer.’”
Jordy took the reins from her hands and turned away, leading the tired mount toward the stable, but Jack saw him give the newcomer quick scrutiny.
A young woman. What in blazes?
She looked up at him from the bottom of the stone steps that led up the slope to the house. “I’m looking for Jack Wills,” she said.
“I’m Jack Wills,” he replied. “Why don’t you come on up? We’ve already set another plate for supper, and Consuelo’s fixing up the spare room for the night.”
She bound up the steps, ignoring the sturdy handrail that had been installed a few years back mostly for the benefit of Jack and Rudy. When she reached the landing in front of the porch, Jack stepped back so she could join them there. He saw Rudy searching his trouser pockets for his choppers and, finding them, slipping them into his mouth, something he only bothered to do for female company or at mealtimes. Jack tipped his hat when she stepped onto the porch, and she pushed her own higher on her forehead revealing lightly bronzed s kin and long sable hair tied back in a ponytail. He guessed her to be several inches over five feet tall, a head turner to any male but a blind man. He waited for her to speak.
“My name is Sierra Wills,” she said.
The natural response would have been to ask if she was a relative, but he had none that he knew of. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Wills. The geezer sitting on the rocker is Rudy Kilgore, and the fella snoozing on the floor is our watchdog, Thor.”
Rudy remained seated and lifted his hat just enough to give a hint of his bald pate. “Howdy, ma’am,” he said. “Welcome to Lucky Five.”
Thor slept on, but Jack figured if the animal had sensed a threat, he would have been up and poised by his owner’s boots. He was certain that Thor’s hearing wasn’t much better than Rudy’s, yet the dog seemed to hear when he wanted to or whenever he sensed danger. Jack had to admit his own hearing missed a thing or two these days, but he had convinced himself it was far better than Rudy’s. Of course, they argued some about that.
“Is that all you’ve got to say?” the lady who called herself Sierra Wills said, her tone a bit snippy, he thought.
He had always been slow with a reply, tending to choose words carefully, especially when speaking to strangers. “Ma’am. You are welcome here. You have been invited for supper and offered a room for the night. If you would care to state your business, I’d be glad to oblige with some more conversation.”
“You did notice that we share a last name?”
“Well, yes, it seems we do.”
“Did it occur to you we might be related?”
“No, ma’am. I have no blood kin.” None that would carry his name, anyway. His youthful exploits did not rule out the possibilities that a Kiowa or Comanche woman had nurtured his seed to bloom. And there had been other short-lived romances during his time with the Texas Rangers and, before that, his roaming years following the war for Texas Independence. He had been no saint and was still uncertain if he regretted that.
“You do have blood kin. I am your granddaughter.”
Chapter Two
“We will talk about this after supper,” her grandfather had said, after Sierra informed him that she was his granddaughter. He was a stone-faced man, and she had seen neither shock, rejection, nor acceptance in those searching hazel eyes that seemed to be sizing her up for veracity.
Jack Wills had escorted her into the house and introduced her to Consuelo Cortez, a pretty Mexican girl who appeared several years younger than her own twenty. Consuelo was obviously fluent in softly accented English, but she was thrilled when she found that Sierra spoke near flawless Spanish, and the two easily jumped into a conversation of language hopscotch.
Consuelo led Sierra into the large kitchen, where she met the young woman’s mother, Josephina, a short, buxom woman who embraced her with a welcoming hug. Josephina was also bilingual but struggled not to stray from English and tendered a big smile when Sierra shifted the conversation to the woman’s first tongue. The aroma in the cooking area reminded Sierra that she had not eaten since breakfast.
Consuelo led her through the house, the elegance of which contrasted to the drab exterior. It was decorated Texas style with obligatory mounted buck antlers and steer horns fastened to the walls of the large sitting room and above the wide fireplace built of dark gray stones that she guessed to be granite. A buffalo hide rug was stretched out in front of the fireplace. The furniture pieces, even several rockers, were upholstered in leather. The coffee and lamp tables were all crafted of rugged oak.
A large dining room off the kitchen would serve a dozen guests, she figured. She was awed by the paintings that adorned the walls, mostly landscapes with Southwestern settings but several portraits of Indian and Mexican faces, one an ancient Indian with deep wrinkles carved in brow and cheeks.
Consuelo showed her through a door off the sitting room into a room that took her breath away: a library that she estimated was easily twenty-five feet long and fifteen feet wide. One of the walls had bookshelves from floor to ceiling the length of the room. And there was nary an empty space. At one end of the room was a rolltop desk and chair and an oak filing cabinet, indicating that the room doubled as an office. A round table with four captains’ chairs was not far from the desk, suggesting it might be conference space. There was a stuffed leather chair and padded rocker sharing a lamp table at the opposite end of the office area, and a Navajo rug covered much of the oak flooring in the center of the room. Smaller rugs were scattered about the seating areas, and there was a woodstove near what she thought of as the reading chairs and, of course, more paintings decorating any unused wall space.
“I don’t believe this. The academy in San Antonio didn’t have a library this big. Why on earth does he have all these books? He’s just a rancher, an old Ranger from what I’ve been told. He spent all this money for decoration?” She almost resented it when she considered the hard times her family had endured.
Consuelo laughed. “Jack reads constantly. So does Jordy. And the library is available to anyone on the ranch. Some of the books—not many—on those shelves are mine, mostly novels, to be shared with any who are interested. In the fall, the four or five children of fulltime ranch hands will gather here for school. Jack will hire a tutor, who will live in one of the cottages for the school year to teach the children. My family has been with him since the beginning, over fifteen years now. I received my education here. We worship Jack Wills.”
“You mentioned Jordy. Who is he?”
“He is like Jack’s son. Jack found Jordy when he was ten and took him in. He came here at almost the same time we did. I think of him as an older brother. I have a younger brother, Juan, who can be a pest, but then I remind myself that I have two brothers and a sister who are buried in the ranch cemetery. That makes me glad to have that pest.” A shadow of gloom crossed Consuelo’s face for just a moment, but her smile returned quickly. “But I should take you upstairs and show you your room. Follow me.”
Returning to the sitting room, Consuelo nodded toward the open staircase that led to the second floor. They climbed the stairs where they entered a short hallway that provided access to four doors that Sierra assumed led to bedrooms.
Consuelo said, “The larger bedroom to the left is occupied by Jack . . . and Thor. That old dog won’t let Jack out of his sight. And it works both ways most of the time. The first bedroom to your right is Jordy’s, and the next one across the hall is the guest room, where you will be staying.”
Consuelo led Sierra into the guest room, which had a single window opening to the east and like the remainder of the house was furnished with oak pieces. The white, plastered walls were decorated with a few more original paintings.
Sierra said, “Very nice. Mister Wills has a beautiful home.”
Consuelo said, “You call him Mister Wills. But you have the same last name. If I am being too forward, say so, but are you related? He didn’t say.”
Sierra said, “You would naturally be curious. I am his granddaughter. But I don’t think he believes it. Not yet.”
