Chapter 5
After Will and Isum had left, Virginia tried to stay busy to keep from worrying too much about things going on in Mexico. She was at the kitchen cupboard cutting up a chicken.
Annabelle was at the table snapping fresh green beans. That morning, she'd announced she wasn't going to school that day. Virginia had looked at her like she was a stranger who'd wandered into the house.
"Well, okay...mind telling me why?"
"I'm kinda tired of school," she said. "I need a day off."
Virginia laughed. "Okay, whatever you think." This was a first for Annabelle who was so conscientious about school, but she was growing up. And evidently, she had determined she was old enough to make the decision for herself and not ask anybody for permission, and Virginia was okay with that.
"I hope Pa's back in time for my birthday," Annabelle said.
"I do too, sweetheart," Virginia said as she continued cutting up the chicken.
"Mama?"
"Yes."
"Does Pa have any idea what's happened to the Coles?"
"No, he doesn't know. He and Isum are going down to find out."
Annabelle nodded once and kept snapping beans. She did not ask any more questions. She had Will's capacity for accepting a difficult piece of information without needing to work it over out loud, for which Virginia had always been grateful.
Virginia took the chicken pieces to the stove. She put them in the pan. She adjusted the damper on the range, and the frying chicken started popping as she dropped flour-covered pieces into the grease.
Later, she turned the chicken while thinking about calling Jacob to dinner.
She thought she'd wait till the last minute because Jacob had been working the roan filly belonging to Del, and she knew Jacob wanted to surprise Del with how well-behaved the filly was when he got back.
Jacob had said the filly was a good one and he was pleased to be working her.
When the meal was ready, she stepped to the back door and rang the dinner bell, and Jacob stopped working the filly, loosed her bridle and strode toward the house.
Seventeen, six feet tall and he had Will's determination and work ethic.
His father, who'd been killed when Jacob was three, was a happy soul but never motivated to improve his lot in life.
Jacob was exactly the opposite. He had Will's height, but he had not filled out through the shoulders, but she knew he would in another two or three years.
Jacob stopped at the back stoop and washed his hands before coming inside.
When they sat down to eat, there were four of them, including Josephine.
The twins were at school, and Virginia had set aside several pieces of fried chicken because she knew the twins would be hungry when they got home. They always were.
She nodded to Jacob, who said, "Lord, we thank thee for this food and ask thee to take care of Pa while he's away as well as Isum and Del, Elena and Carlos. Amen."
As they began passing the food, Virginia said, "We have to keep the ranch going. We need to get the crew paid, and we need the cattle shipped on Tuesday, whether your father is here or not, because the buyer in Kerrville is not going to wait on a family matter."
"I can take care of all that."
"I know you can, and I'd be pleased if you'd do that."
"Del's place too!" he said.
"Yes, I'm sure you're taking good care of things over there."
"I've been riding over there every other day," he said.
"I know you have."
"James goes over every other day too."
"Between the two of you, you'll keep his place right. When Del gets home it will be the way he left it."
Virginia could see the concentration on Jacob's face. She knew he was organizing his work in the most efficient way, and she had no doubt he'd get it all done.
After dinner while she was cleaning up, she thought about the Cole family. Elena had come to the Fain ranch on the Concho years ago as a housekeeper. Virginia had grown very close to her, almost like a sister. Later Elena had married Del, one of the ranch hands and later a deputy marshal.
Virginia was not a woman who gave way to fear. She had been the wife of a lawman too long. She had waited out too many long rides and too many nights when the door did not open at the expected hour. She had learned the trick of it, which was to give the fear its time and then send it on.
She gave it its time now. She sat at the kitchen table in New Braunfels and let herself think through all of what might be happening in Mexico, but her mind couldn't entertain all the possibilities, so she focused for a moment on Elena and Carlos.
Virginia knew that Elena always read to the boy, and he understood both English and Spanish very well.
She hoped they were in a safe place and she knew Elena would keep Carlos close.
Carlos would be all right. Elena would make sure of it.
And Will and Isum would do whatever it took to get them back. Virginia closed her eyes and said the only prayer she had ever really said, which was three words long and which she said now in the kitchen of her own house. Keep him safe. Keep them all safe. Then she went to washing the dishes.
In the morning while making breakfast, she looked out the window and saw Jacob talking with Alfa.
She knew they were talking horses, never anything else.
She leaned out the back door and called Jacob in for breakfast. The twins, Jesse and Joshua, had eaten their breakfasts, saddled their appaloosas, and headed off to school.
Virginia walked Annabelle through the schedule for the week and played with Josephine, her youngest at four, in the yard for a full hour, because a woman needed to maintain the routine while her husband was gone.
Jacob had saddled the bay at five thirty in the morning and rode the fence line of the Fain place before the sun cleared the ridge.
He did this every morning now. He had done it for six days.
His father had done it every morning for as long as Jacob had known him, and Jacob had not understood until his father was gone that riding the fence at first light was not the same thing as inspecting the fence.
Inspection was a task. Riding the fence at first light was a way to organize his day in his head, and so Jacob had decided he wanted to organize his day the same way, every day his father was away.
So Jacob rode the north line to the county road and back down the west line to the creek.
Three miles of cedar post and wire. He carried a sack of staples, a hammer, pliers and a coil of smooth wire for repairs.
Most mornings there was nothing to repair.
The fence was tight. His father kept it tight.
But once a week or so there was something, a post leaning after a storm, a wire sprung off a staple, the place where the cattle had been pushing for salt grass on the other side and had worked the bottom wire loose. He repaired it and rode on.
Before six-thirty he was back at the barn and the crew was starting the day.
Alfa, who was fifty and had worked for Will Fain from the very first, was always there tending, training, doctoring and exercising the horses.
Jacob had learned everything he knew about horses from Alfa, and in his eyes, the black Seminole was not only a hard worker but the best horse mind in the world.
Jacob admired and respected him, and he knew his father did too.
Years before, a white cowboy had hired on, and he was quite good, but he quit after a few weeks.
Didn't like taking orders from a black man.
Will paid him off and he left in disbelief that Will would choose a black man over him.
"He's my foreman," Will had told him. "If you don't like it...get on down the road."
Miguel and Tito were Tejano hands who ran Will's small cattle herd of 200 head, and Jacob let them do their jobs. Jacob had tended cattle, branded them and cut them. He knew all about the cattle, but he wasn't much interested, except that they belonged to his father and made the ranch money.
Old Henry Roswell was there as usual. He had a lame left hand from a horse kick twenty years back, and he didn't ride the range anymore but he cooked for himself, Miguel and Tito, and he was a pretty good cook, even though he only had one hand.
He kept the place tidy, fed the chickens and the pigs, kept the tack room and barns clean and did any little chore that Virginia asked of him.
Most of the time Jacob agreed with what Alfa had suggested, but occasionally Jacob decided something different, and on one of those days Alfa had looked at him and had nodded.
He had said, "That's better than my idea," and had gone out to the corral, and Jacob had stood in the doorway of the office and had felt, for the first time, that he might actually be able to manage the place with his father gone.
The cattle had shipped on Tuesday. Jacob, Miguel and Tito had driven the sixty head down to the corrals at the railhead.
Jacob had worried about the cattle for three days before.
The buyer in Kerrville was a man named Pritchard who had bought from Will for six years, and Pritchard was a fair man but he was also a man who did not waste time on sentiment.
He had arrived on the morning train with his man and a weighmaster, and he had walked the pens with Jacob at his elbow, and he had counted the steers and had walked each one through the way a man who knew cattle walked them through, and he had made his offer.
Jacob had stood at the rail with Miguel and Tito, and he had thought about what his father would do. He thought he knew, and then he thought he was wrong, and then he thought he was right after all, and so he had said, "I'll take it at a cent higher."
Pritchard had looked at him.
"Jacob," he had said, "your daddy and I negotiated the last three years at the rate I just offered."
Jacob nodded. "The last three years the market was down. The market's up this year. A cent higher per pound is still under St. Louis quotes."
Pritchard gave a small tight smile.
"How old are you, son?"
"Seventeen."
"You been reading the papers."
"The Galveston News and the San Antonio Express. My father saves them for me and I read them both."
"I read 'em too." Pritchard had looked at the steers in the pen a while longer. "Alright. A cent higher. And you tell your daddy when he gets back that Pritchard did not negotiate hard against a boy."
Jacob chuckled, "My age doesn't matter, Mister Pritchard. It's just business. That's all it is, and the fact that I'm only seventeen makes no difference. We negotiated a fair price."
"That's right, just business with a seventeen-year-old," Pritchard said, shaking his head.
They shook hands and the cattle were loaded, the bank draft had been written and Jacob had ridden with Miguel and Alfa without saying anything for most of the ride home. Nearing home, Miguel said, "Your pa does that same thing. Quiet for an hour after a deal. Takes it in. Then he's fine."
"I know."
"You did right, hijo."
"I did okay."
After that Jacob had thought once again, "Maybe I can do this."
He still thought about his father every day. He still thought about Del and Elena and Carlos too. He checked the telegraph office in New Braunfels on the way back from town, just in case, though his mother had told him not to expect anything for weeks yet.
On the evening of the sixth day Will's letter came. It had taken six days to reach New Braunfels. This is what it said.
"Jacob. Running late to write. We'll travel south into Mexico tomorrow.
You're the man of the house now. First priority, take care of your mother, your brothers and sisters.
After that, manage the place best you can.
I won't second-guess any decisions you make when I get back. Your father, W. Fain."
Jacob sat at the kitchen table with the letter in his hand and his mother across from him, and his mother had already read it and had handed it to him and was watching his face. "He trusts you," his mother said.
"I know."
"He trusts you with me. With the girls. With your brothers. With the whole place. That's why he wrote that letter."
"I know."
"I know you won't let him down," she said. "You never have."
Jacob stood and said, "And I won't this time either."
"I know you won't."
Virginia stood up and kissed his forehead before going off to bed.
Jacob read the letter one more time, then he folded it carefully and tucked it away in the sideboard drawer where his mother kept letters, and he went out to the porch and stood in the dark and listened to the night sounds of the ranch, the same ones every night.
His father would come back, he always did, and when he returned he'd find the ranch the way he had left it.
Jacob wouldn't brag about Pritchard or the extra cent he'd bargained or any of the other things.
He'd just let it be, something he'd done because it needed doing.
Jacob chuckled to himself and stood on the porch a while longer.
The chickens had gone quiet in the coop.
A barred owl called from the live oak at the corner of the yard, and its call seemed to say the same thing it always did, "Who cooks for you?
" He smiled at the thought. The moon was up behind a thin cloud and the light on the ranch buildings was soft and silver and old.
Jacob went to bed at ten. Up at five-thirty, he saddled the bay and rode the fence, organizing his mind for another day.