The Orphan’s Last Cattle Drive (Preview)

Chapter One

Junction City, New Mexico
1886

Bang.

John Jacob Jones turned over in bed and snuggled deeper into his pillow. He was comfortable. His body was loose and relaxed. But he was dreaming that he was still working, that he was still doing his morning chore: throwing sheets of tin down from the barn roof and watching them crash onto the ground.

Bang.

The wind was blowing, rolling in hot and strong from the plains. It sucked hay dust out of the barn and sent it swirling around him as he tore another strip of tin off the barn roof and onto the ground.

Bang.

Bang-bang-bang.

Jake frowned and turned over. The wind was kicking up, starting to whistle, and a new sound intruded on his dream—the sound of frantic knocking on his bedroom door.

“Jake!”

He mumbled and turned over, but the voice and the knocking didn’t go away. It got louder.

“Jake, wake up! Jake!”

He gasped and opened his eyes. It was mid-afternoon, plenty of light outside, but the wind outside was blowing a gale and the shutters were smashing against the window.

Bang.

His mother’s voice jumped to a near-scream. “Jake, do you hear me? It’s a storm! Wake up!”

Jake’s eyes flew open wide. He threw off the quilt and slapped his bare feet on the floor. He stared out the window as he pulled on a pair of jeans. The sky outside was clear, but things were blowing across the yard that shouldn’t be able to fly. He buttoned up and burst out of the bedroom.

His mother’s eyes were huge with terror, and she grabbed his arm. “Quick,” she panted, “we have to get the horses into the barn. The hands aren’t here. We’ll have to do it!”

Jake searched the hall as they hurried toward the stairs. “Where’s Cora?”

“Downstairs in the parlor,” his mother panted. “Don’t worry about her; she’s all right. We have to get the horses in the barn or they’ll be killed!”

Jake turned toward his fiancée as they rushed into the front room. He only got a glimpse of her beautiful eyes, wide with fear.

“You stay here, Cora,” he told her. “Stay inside until I get back!”

Her frightened voice grabbed at him like hands at his shoulder. “Jake, don’t go!”

“Stay here. It’ll be all right,” he called and rushed outside after his mother. The wind seized him as soon as he stepped out, almost lifted him off his feet. He snatched at the porch post, found his feet, and ran out into the yard toward their corral. He glanced up anxiously at the big windmill in the yard as he passed. It was flying like a whirligig, and its wooden frame trembled under the strain of the storm.

His mother was already ahead of him, her slight body bent almost double against the wind, her blonde hair and her apron strings flying around her. The sky was roaring like a bear, and when Jake looked up, he saw not clouds, but dust and dirt and fence posts and trash whirling above them in a monstrous circle.

“Jake!”

His pa was already out in the corral, leading horses out of the gate. He raised an arm and yelled, “Jake, come on!”

Jake sprinted across the yard and took one of the horses from his father’s hand. He pulled the terrified animal toward the barn through the whistling juggernaut of wind. The horse rolled its eyes, screamed and reared, and Jake yanked on its bridle and fought it back to the ground.

“Whoa, whoa! Come on!”

His mother held the flapping barnyard gate open and clung to a fence post as he pulled the horse past her and into the barn. He had just pushed the snorting mare into a stall and shut the door on her when his mother’s screams jerked his attention back to the door.

“Jacob!”

He ran to the door just in time to see her dash across the yard, fighting her way through flying debris to reach his father. Jake’s mouth fell open in horror as he saw what she was seeing.

His father was lying on the ground beside the open corral gate, their horses pouring out and scattering in every direction.

“Pa!”

Jake lunged out of the barn and was hit by a wall of wind that half-blinded him and made him throw an arm up against the grit swirling in the air. The wind snatched his feet up off the ground. He grabbed the fence post, clung to it for an instant, then threw himself back out into the maelstrom. He was running as fast as he could, straining to move forward, but the wind pushed him back like an invisible hand.

His mother threw herself down on the grass beside his pa. She raised her head to scream, “Jake, help me!”

The wind died back and Jake fought his way through to them and fell down beside his prostrate father. Jacob’s thick shock of gray hair was matted with blood, and to Jake’s horror, one of the tin strips he’d torn off the barn roof that morning was stuck, flapping in the fence beside him.

His mother raised an anguished face to his. “Help me get him back to the house!”

Jake bent down, threw his father’s arm over his shoulder, and lifted him up. His mother pressed herself under Jacob’s other arm and together they dragged him across the yard through the flying debris.

The sound of another voice wailed to them, reedy and shrill. Jake looked up, and to his horror, Cora had come out of the house and was standing on the porch with a hand clutching the post and her blonde hair flying around her head.

Jake raised an arm and waved her back. “Get back in the house!” he yelled. “Go back!”

The storm snatched his words and blew them away on the wind. Cora frowned and came down the porch steps and a few tentative steps out into the yard with her skirts floating around her ankles.

A screeching sound of tortured metal made Jake glance up sharply at the windmill. As he watched, it started to come apart in the gale. The blades unfurled and flew away, and the tall wooden frame began to lean out over the yard.

It was going to fall down on Cora.

Jake screamed, “Run, Cora! Go back!”

There was no time for more, and Jake’s face twisted in anguish as he knelt down to set his father on the ground. The tower tilted out and he dashed for Cora, jumping to cover her as it came down around them.

He fell to the ground with Cora beneath him, and he curled his body over hers as the frame smashed to the ground with a splintering bang.

Jake glanced down at Cora, then out at his parents. His mother was clinging to his stricken father, and he was just gathering himself to rise and help her when a roaring wall of wind hit them. To Jake’s horror, it lifted both his parents up on its wings and sent them spiraling into the sky.

He heard someone screaming, saw broken planks flying around them. One of them hit him, and the last thing he remembered was the sight of Cora’s red hair ribbons being sucked off her neck and into the air.

Chapter Two

The barest breeze ruffled Bud Whitaker’s thick gray hair as he leaned on his shovel and surveyed two fresh graves. He’d done his best work. The two plots were neat, perfect rectangles. He’d carved two crosses and the words JACOB JONES and BONNIE JONES across them in the prettiest letters he could.

Of all the work he’d done on the Jones Ranch in the last twenty years, this was a job he’d never thought he’d had to do—and the only job he’d hated.

He looked up toward the house, or what was left of it. That twister from hell had wiped the whole ranch clean as a dish. Jacob and Bonnie were gone, their cattle and horses scattered and most of their barns and bunkhouses destroyed. The house Jacob and Bonnie had built with their own hands stood open to the sky.

The only thing left of their 5,000-acre cattle ranch, the only thing left to show they’d lived at all, was the boy.

Bud watched as Jake came limping out of the house. The boy was the spit and image of Jacob. He was young and wiry yet, but he was pushing six feet tall. He was broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, blonde-haired, and brown-skinned. He was going to fill out like his pa, who’d been the tallest man in the room wherever he’d gone.

The boy was wearing his best suit, but he had a bandage pulled around his head and another around his left hand. His sandy hair spilled over the top of the bandage and down into his eyes, and a shadow passed across Bud’s heart. He comforted himself with the fact that Jake was eighteen and healthy and tough.

He was going to be all right. The kid might be a little cocky, but that figured. He was the son of the richest couple in northern New Mexico.

Or had been, until a few days ago.

Bud rubbed his moustache. They were all in for some rough times, and Jake especially. He was gonna have the cocky beat right out of him. Life would’ve done that to him anyway, eventually. Now it was gonna happen all at once.

But that was all right, too. Blood would tell. Jake was the son of the strongest, stubbornest, happiest, grittiest couple Bud had ever met. Jacob and Bonnie Jones had started from nothing and built a cattle empire.

He was willing to bet on their son.

He was willing to stack the deck a little, too, if he had to. But he didn’t think he was gonna have to.

Billy Blackstone came out of the house behind Jake in his best black hat and string tie and Sunday go-to-meeting clothes. He’d plaited his long black hair into a neat braid that fell halfway down his back. The two of them walked out to the meadow slowly and solemnly.

Bud called out to them, “Are we waiting on Cora?”

Jake shook his head. “She’s not coming. She’s not feeling well.”

Billy reached into his coat and pulled out a New Testament. He handed it to Jake.
Bud put the shovel down, stepped back, and clasped his hands in front of him as Jake opened the Bible and read.

“‘Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.’”

Jake closed up the Bible and stared down at the two plots of freshly-turned earth. He stood there for a long time without saying more, and the tiny sounds in the grass around them were loud in the stillness: a bee buzzing past, the solitary chirp of some prairie bird.

Bud shot Jake a sidelong glance out of the corner of his eye. The boy was glassy-eyed. He looked like a sleepwalker.

It hadn’t sunk in yet that his folks were gone, and maybe that was a good thing. The shock that numbed him was helping him get through the hard part.

Bud put a hand to his mouth and coughed. “You want we should sing a hymn?”

Jake raised bright blue eyes to his. He blinked and seemed to come back to the present.

Bud waited a minute more, then suggested, “How about, ‘It Is Well With My Soul’?”

Jake didn’t lift his eyes from the ground, but he nodded once, and Bud cleared his throat again and started to sing. Jake stood there, motionless as a statue, as Billy joined in:

When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll,
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
It is well
With my soul
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Chapter Three

“You oughta go into town. Check into the hotel, have the doc look at you. You’re pretty busted up.”

Jake glanced up. Bud had his hands stuck into his jeans and was looking at him like he was still a kid.

He shook his head. “I’m gonna look around and see if I can find anything. I want as much of my folks’ stuff as I can save. It’s all I have of them now.”

Bud looked down and kicked the ground with the toe of his boot. “We found a few of the horses running loose,” he grunted. “About twenty so far.”

Jake pulled a hand over his mouth. He hadn’t even thought about the livestock, but he was going to have to start thinking. It felt weird, but he was the boss of the Triple J Ranch now.

What was left of it.

He glanced at the big clapboard ranch house that he’d lived in all his life. The whole second story was open to the sky because the twister had peeled the roof off of it as neat as the top off a tin can. Shreds of it were scattered out behind the house for miles, along with their sheets and clothes and drapes and half the furniture from the upper floor.

He’d slept downstairs on the parlor couch for three days with a couch pillow under his head and one of his ma’s crocheted blankets pulled up around his ears. He put a hand to his eyes to dash away the tears that sprang to them. It still didn’t feel real that she was gone, that his pa was gone.

Both of them, in one day.

And not just them. Half the town had been hit. The twister had smashed into Junction City broadside. It had torn the town in two and demolished the city hall, the bank, the sheriff’s office, and about twenty houses. On a work day, too, when everybody had been stirring around.

There were funerals going on everywhere.

Jake pinched the throbbing spot between his eyes and mumbled, “Um… has anybody gone out looking for the others?”

Bud’s face twisted. He looked down at the ground again. There was a long pause before he replied, “The bunkhouses are gone. We didn’t want to tell you before the funeral, but… Big Jim and Hank and the Turner boys and about ten others are missing. It’s been three days, son.”

The older man raised pitying eyes to his, and Jake flinched as if he’d been hit in the gut. He stepped back and looked away.

Bud’s voice was rough as he added, “I don’t think we got anybody to go look for them horses, ‘cept you and Billy and me.”

Jake’s mouth twisted, but he nodded. “All… all right then. I need you to go into town and buy a wagon and some feed for us. Tell Elmer at the livery that I’ll be in to pay for it this week. We’ll go out looking for the rest of the horses when you get back.”
Bud nodded and Jake watched the old man trudge off to the barn. The roof was off it, too, but there was enough left standing to stable a few horses. Bud went inside and came out a few minutes later with a saddled horse that was well enough to ride.

Jake watched him go and thought, Thank God for Bud. He’d been part of the ranch for twenty years, and Jake didn’t like to imagine where he’d be at that moment if Bud hadn’t made it.

Jake frowned as the older man sent the horse trotting down what used to be the road to town. It was covered in trash, too, like most of the countryside, and Bud had to pick his way through it.

He turned back to the house and climbed up the porch steps. One of them was gone, and he grabbed the post to help himself over it. The front door was hanging by one hinge. He pushed it all the way open and walked in.

He had to go find some money to pay for the wagon he’d just ordered. He was gonna have to come up with money for a lot of things: food, clothes, new tack to replace the stuff that had been blown to the moon, wages, feed. They’d had twenty thousand dollars in the Junction City Bank, but the bank was gone, and all their money with it.

Jake walked through the parlor, past the stairs, and down the lower hall to the kitchen. He’d always laughed at his ma when she’d told him to sock something away for a rainy day. He’d never dreamed he’d have to.

But she’d smacked his cheek and told him: Never trust a bank, Jake. I hope you pay more attention to me than your father does.

Always have something laid by, son. Always!

Jake walked into the kitchen. It was so like his ma in there that he paused on the threshold to catch a painful breath. The storm had mostly spared that room, and even though there was a window that had a fence post smashed through it, the rest of the kitchen was intact.

The sun slanted through the windows to brighten the kitchen table. There was still a mason jar full of daisies on it, still four plates laid out for the lunch they’d never eaten. The clock on the wall read 11:05 and would forever.

Jake walked to the pantry door and opened it. It was hardly bigger than a closet, but it was stuffed to the rafters with jars full of food: tomatoes and beans and meat that his ma had put up.

But he wasn’t after that. He stepped to the back wall, reached up to the top shelf, and pulled a sugar jar out from between two canisters of flour.

When he opened it, he found five rolls of neat, crisp twenty-dollar bills. All together, it came to five hundred dollars. He stared down at it.

Five hundred dollars. That was all that stood between them and the world.
Somehow, it was going to have to be enough.

Chapter Four

Two days later, Jake rode into Junction City. It was as busy as an ant hive with people scurrying back and forth, with the sound of rebuilding: the sound of sawing and hammering and wagons rolling through town.

Word had finally reached the neighboring towns that theirs had been blown away, and relatives and friends and church folks and even strangers were pouring off the train at their little depot and bringing things in to help.

Lumber, nails, food, clothes, and plenty of hands to work.

Jake watched them with dull resignation. They were good people, and what they were doing was good. He was glad they were there.

But it was beginning to dawn on him that nothing was going to save the Triple J: no amount of church-lady food or new clothes or volunteers, even if he was willing to accept charity.

Which he wasn’t.

He’d been part of the richest family in that part of New Mexico, and now he’d be lucky to put food in his own mouth.

Never mind Cora’s.

Jake frowned as he pulled his horse up in front of Cora’s folks’ house. The twister had jumped right over it to hit the opposite side of the street, and he was thankful it had missed them.

But he wasn’t happy about what he had to do now. He had to go to his fiancée and tell her they would have to postpone their wedding indefinitely. He couldn’t afford to support a wife anymore, and until he could, they would just have to be patient.

He dismounted and tied up in front of the house. Cora’s pa was an officer for the railroad and sat on the town council and just about every business board in Junction City. His house was one of the prettiest in town, a two-story white gingerbread with a huge porch all around the house and rose marble steps going up to the front door.

The Clairmonts were probably the second richest family in the county, after his own. Jake bit his lip as he limped up the walkway.

First richest, now.

He grasped the rail and climbed the stairs, slowly and painfully. But it made him feel better to see his sweetheart’s home looking just the same as it always had—the porch swing where they’d sparked many-a-night was still as pretty a white wicker confection, the big planters on the porch still full of red begonias.

He hopped up to the door and rapped on the big glass-paned door. He waited a minute or two, and when nobody came, he rapped again.

Finally, he saw Mrs. Clairmont walking up, and he stepped back as she greeted him and pushed the door open.

“Jake, come in! We were all so sorry to hear about your folks.”

Jake took off his hat and stepped inside the house. “Thank you, Mrs. Clairmont.”

She turned distressed eyes to his. “If there’s anything we can do, just say the word.”
“I appreciate that, ma’am.”

She showed him into the front parlor. “Please, sit down. Cora hasn’t been feeling well, but I’m sure she’ll want to see you. I’ll go call her.”

Jake looked up. “Is she all right?”

Mrs. Clairmont paused with her hand on the door, and her eyes were troubled. “I’ll let her tell you herself.”

Jake’s frown deepened, but he sat on the sofa with his hat in his hand until the sound of soft footfalls told him Cora was coming. When he looked up, she was standing in the doorway, looking as pretty as ever.

He stood up slowly. “Hello, Cora. Are you all right?”

She tucked a tendril of blonde hair behind one ear and looked down. Her voice was small and soft as she replied, “I’m all right.”

Mrs. Clairmont leaned in to close the door. “I’ll let you two talk.”

Cora waited until her mother was gone, then sank gracefully into the chair by the door. She raised her lovely eyes to his.

“Thank you for saving my life,” she murmured. “You were so brave.”

Jake looked down at his hat. “You don’t have to thank me, Cora,” he murmured. “You know that.”

“I’m so sorry about your folks, Jake.”

Jake looked down again and nodded. An awkward silence fell, and Jake turned his hat in his hands a few times before looking up. “Cora, I came here because… we need to talk. I know we said we were getting married this summer, but the ways things are now, that’s… that’s just not going to work out.”

She looked down at her hands and didn’t reply, and he went on.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I’m going to have to get back on my feet again. I can’t ask you to marry me when I don’t have a house to bring you home to. The house is gone; the ranch is a shambles. I’m gonna have to figure out what to do.” He searched her face. “I hope you understand.”

Still she said nothing. Jake waited a few moments, then pressed, “It shouldn’t be more than a year or two. It’s not that long. Are you… are you willing to wait, Cora?”

At that, she finally raised her eyes. There was a pleading look in them as she replied, “Jake, I’ve been thinking, too. About us. Maybe… maybe the storm was a sign that it just wasn’t meant to be between us.”

He shook his head. “What do you mean, not meant to be?”

She dithered a little, as if she was uncomfortable. “I-I mean that two years is a long time. A lot can happen. Maybe we should just… break off the engagement and… see if we still feel the same. In two years.”

Jake stared at her, and she sputtered, “Well, you said yourself that we can’t get married now. We might not be able to then, either. Don’t you think it’s better to… be honest? To say we don’t know what might happen, and… wait to see?”

Jake stared at her in stunned silence, then dropped his gaze to the carpet. He pulled a hand over his mouth and nodded. “I guess.”

She exhaled in visible relief. “I’m so glad you understand, Jake. It’s not that I don’t love you; I’ll always love you. It’s just…” She gestured helplessly.

Jake glanced away and nodded. “Well, I guess we understand one another, Cora. I’m glad to see you’re doing all right. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a lot I have to tend to.”

He stood up, and she rose from her chair with her eyes on his face as he walked out of the room, down the hall, and through the front door. Pulling it shut behind him, he put his hat on his head and stood on the porch staring down at the street below. He was numb again; he couldn’t think.

He saw himself climb back on the horse, turn its head, and go riding back through town. He wasn’t seeing what was in front of him, and he would’ve ridden right past the livery if Elmer hadn’t shouted and waved him down.

“Jake!” The older man stuck a hand on his hip and exclaimed, “I thought you was going to ride right past me! I got a wagon for you. Brand new from Denver. Come and have a look.”

Jake blinked at him. That was right, he’d intended to swing by the livery and pick up the wagon while he was in town. “Oh… thanks Elmer.”

“You can drive it back to your place, if you want,” Elmer suggested. “I’ll harness your horse up to it and you can be on your way in ten minutes.”

“All right.”

Jake nudged his horse to follow Elmer into the livery, and he dismounted and watched with his hands in his pockets as Elmer worked to hook his mount up to a brand-new buckboard.

Elmer finished up and turned to grin at him. “There she goes!”

Jake came to himself and dug in his shirt pocket. “What do I owe you?”

Elmer threw the reins over the wagon seat and called back, “That’ll be $110.”

Jake inhaled sharply, but peeled six twenties off the wad in his pocket and slowly handed them to the smiling merchant.

“Thank you, Jake,” Elmer told him with a grateful look. “Your daddy taught you right. Lots of folks ‘round here are asking for all kinds of stuff on credit. It’s a pleasure to deal with a man who believes in cash on the barrel head.”

Jake stuffed the remaining cash back into his pocket and climbed up onto the wagon seat. “Thanks, Elmer.”

The other man nodded. “Come again!”

Jake shook the reins and took the wagon out into the street. But as he drove for home, he wasn’t seeing the town, wasn’t hearing the bustle and clamor of saws and hammers. He was seeing Cora’s embarrassed face, saw her looking down at her hands.

There was just one thought in his mind:

I loved you.

I put my pa down on the ground to come to you.

Chapter Five

Annie Rose Parker propped herself against her shovel and wiped her brow with her arm. Her red hair had worked loose from its bun and was drifting around her face in a dozen wispy ringlets.

She looked down at her husband’s grave and demanded, “Well, Linus, what do you think about the West now? I tried to tell you, but you were a stubborn blockhead to the very end. Tell God I hope He kicks you in the slats.”

She threw the shovel down, staggered over to a spreading oak tree, and tumbled to the ground to sit under it. She blew a wisp of hair away from her face, reaching for the half-empty bottle of gin propped against the tree. She uncorked it, tilted it up, and pursed her mouth to take a slug.

She turned to scan the demolished farmhouse in the distance. The twister had sent the roof, the furniture, and most of her husband to Timbuktu. She could see her bed from five hundred feet away, from where she was out in their meadow.

She lifted the bottle again and squeezed her eyes shut as she swallowed another mouthful of fire. “God help me,” she wailed, “I’m a redheaded widow! No man, no money, no manor! A stranger in this country and…”

She stopped dead, struck by her own lament. “I don’t know a soul here,” she gasped and reached for the bottle again. Her voice jumped to a shout.

“I should put a bullet through my head! But I won’t come to you, Linus, you hear me? I had to live with you for six months, and that’s enough!”

She turned the bottle up again, her eyes fastened on the sky. She wiped her mouth and pointed at the serene expanse overhead.

“How could you do this to me, God? Wasn’t I in church every week as a kid? Didn’t I pray every day and drop a quarter in the plate on Sunday?” She climbed clumsily to her feet and swung her hands out to the clouds in appeal.

Overbalancing, she fell into the tall grass with a thud.

As she lay there, a line of tiny riders appeared in the distance, growing larger and closer every moment. The cattle grazing on the hillside beyond the farmhouse looked up to stare at the riders as they steadily came closer, yipping and yelling.

Annie raised her head slowly from the grass. She watched blearily as the knot of riders resolved into two lines and poured around her cattle pen, one on one side, and one on another.

“Oi,” she cried, and struggled to her knees, “God’s curse on you, thieving vultures! Those are my cows, all I’ve got left in this world!”

She watched in outrage as the rustlers broke the fence and sent her cows running out across the prairie. She looked around for her revolver, grabbed it, and pointed it at the bandits.

She pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened, and she frowned at it and pulled the trigger again. There was a hollow click, and she swore and threw it down.

“Whoreson cowards!”

She bent down and scrabbled for rocks, sending them flying after the fleeing bandits. “The evil eye on all of you. I hope you die! The ground open up and swallow you!”

She stopped to watch as the riders closed ranks around her cattle and drove them off, across the prairie and out of sight.

The rock fell out of Annie’s hand and her shoulders slumped. She closed her eyes and sagged against the tree trunk.

“God help me,” she muttered, and fell to her knees, then down on the ground.”That was the last of them.”

She shook her head hopelessly. “I’m cursed,” she mumbled, “cursed from my mother’s womb.” She lay motionless on the grass for a few minutes, but then pressed her hands against the ground, struggled up, and stood there staring at the house.

It was no use hanging about the place now that the cattle were gone. She still had a horse, a few dollars, and rich neighbors.

It was time to go look them up.

She lurched to one side, then to the other, and finally off toward the house. She’d done as right by her lunkhead husband as he deserved, and there was nothing left to hold her there.

She was going east, and from there, back to Ireland. They might be a poor country, but they didn’t have to fear the wind coming down to smash their houses, or rustlers carrying off their stock.

And as soon she got back home, she was going to have a serious talk with her uncle—the man who’d told her she could better her lot by marrying a man twice her age, who was bound for the American frontier.