The Diary of Jerrod Bently - J.W. Osborn (mobi ebook reader TXT) 📗

I was praying and working for.


A few nights before we reached Abilene, Scrub Pot and I sat together by his fire. The evening meal was long over with and the night crew had ridden out and the rest of the crew had long since bedded down. It was just him and me.
“She has been my life,” he said “When I began to feel old, she made me feel young again. I held her hands when she took her first steps and even then I dreaded the day you would come.”
I was taken by surprise at his words.”I thought you were in favor of me courting Sam.,” I replied defensively.
“I am,” Scrub Pot answered, “and you misunderstand.. I dreaded your coming because you are the man who will take her away from me. I knew it would be you from the very beginning. All I ask, Jerrod Bently, is that you be good to my granddaughter and treat her well.”
“I would never hurt Sam, or let anyone else hurt her,” I assured him “I love her and I think I have felt that way since I first got to know her.”
The old man snickered “She fooled you in the beginning,” he said “She was so afraid you would find out her secret before she was ready to tell you who she really was.”
Now that I thought about it, Sam had made a pretty poor excuse for a boy. She was just too pretty, even with that hat pulled down over her eyes. “I suspected,” I replied. Scrub Pot laughed and somewhere in the distance, we heard the coyotes howl. “You know she has never had a mother to teach her how to be a woman,” Scrub Pot said “She has good manners, but there are things that she missed because her mother died when she was so young.”
“I love Sam just the way she is, Scrub Pot,” I replied “It does not matter. She is a wrangler, a great horsewoman and she’ll be a good rancher too.
“She will be all that and a good wife too,” Scrub Pot said “But always remember, she is “Siksika” and she clings to the ways of my people in more ways than you know.”
That word took me back to one of the nights I sat with Sam after the accident. In her sleep, she has uttered that word more than once. “She was delirious,” I said quietly “after she took that fall. She kept saying that over and over.”
“It is native tongue for “Blackfoot” ,” the old man said “The proud name of our people.” I heard the horses on the picket line behind us moving around nervously and I reached for my gun, so did the old man. “Listen for my dog to growl,” he whispered “And when she does, we will know if we have company. There was a tense few minutes as the horses continued to move around , nickering but the big brown and white dog that lay under the wagon, did not move. Then, as though Diamond were waiting for the right moment, she uttered a deep snarl and jumped to her feet. She flew passed us like a streak of white against the dark and the fire light. A few seconds later she was barking fiercely a short distance away. With gun in hand, I got up from my place by the fire and followed the sound. Scrub Pot was right beside me, his shot gun at the ready. “Please,” a man’s voice called out in the darkness, “Call off your dog. I mean no harm.”
We found Diamond, her paws scratching at the trunk of a tree. She was jumping up, growling and barking. “I will come down if you call off the dog,” the voice said from somewhere above us.
“All right,” I said “But one false move and I will burn you down. Understand?, Scrub Pot aimed that shot gun up into the tree. “That makes two of us,” he said. Then he spoke to Diamond in his native language and the big dog went to his side and sat down. It was pretty dark , but the quarter moon was out and I could see a figure climbing down from the high branches and then dropped to the ground. “My name is Tuttle,” he said “Broke a wheel and had to leave my wagon about a mile back.” He was a small man, kind of scrawny. He looked harmless enough, but I could tell that Scrub Pot didn’t seem convinced. “Where did you come from?,” the old man growled.
“Just left Abilene,” the man said “I am a traveling salesman. Was headed down to Texas.”
I guess the old man finally figured Tuttle was harmless as we went back to camp. Tuttle was not a young man, dressed in a rather worn suit and bolo tie. He wore a dusty old top hat and reminded me of the feral people who lived in the underworld of New York City. He offered me chewing tobacco, but I declined. Scrub Pot however seemed delighted. We learned that the man was a seller of house hold items, brooms, pots, pans, all those kinds of things. Once he learned that Scrub Pot was the cook , he had a long list of pots he offered up for sale. The old man grunted and went to rummage through his gear in the back of the wagon. He came back with a large blackened kettle. “It has a hole in the bottom,” he said “Can you fix it?”
Tuttle took the pot from his calloused hands and looked at it very carefully. “It is worn through,” the peddler said “I can sell you a new one.”
“How about I fix your wagon wheel, and you give me a new pot,” Scrub Pot suggested. I shook my head and grinned , I had come to know Scrub Pot very well. In a little while, he got ready to leave with the peddler. “Give me your letters, Jerrod Bently,” he said “This man will take them to Portersville.” The chance for Sam to get all that I had written to her was too good a one to pass up. I believed that this man, Tuttle, a lowly peddler was an answer to my prayers. I got my stack of letters and gave them to Scrub Pot. When the old man returned hours later, I was asleep by the fire.
“It is done,” he said in the darkness. I woke with a start, grabbing my gun.
“Calm, my son ,” he said “Your letters to Sam are on the way.” He grinned proudly and showed me a shining new pot. “And that peddler is on his way too. Fixed his wheel well enough to get him as far as Portersville. ”
“How do you know he will go to Portersville and not cross into Texas somewhere else?”, I asked, with a yawn.
“Have faith, Jerrod Bently,” the old man replied with a sly grin. I told him about Portersville, and all those rancher’s wives and ladies. He’ll go to Portersville all right and he will see that Sam gets your letters too.”
”I don’t care if I hear back from her or not,” I said “I just want Sam to know I was thinking about her.”
Scrub Pot got his bed roll out of the back of the wagon. “She knows,” he said “just as you do.”
As he spread the blanket on the ground next to the dying fire, he told me of a shorter route to Abilene that the peddler had told him about.
“Have you been over it before?”, I asked “We want to go straight in. Not have to cross a lot of water or mountains. “
”Long ago, I hunted buffalo out here with my people, I remember the way,” he said. “I will ride out there in the morning and be back by night fall. If the pass I remember is not blocked, we can cut our time by at least two days.”
The old man had not been wrong very often, and I trusted him.

++++++++++++++++++++


Jeb Vickers was a hot head. He was young and way too fast with a gun. At the age of twenty one, he had already killed seven men in quite a few gun fights and had won himself a reputation. He and his cousin, Tom Dalton, who was now deceased, had been staying two steps ahead of the law after Dalton strangled a woman in Tennessee and Jeb shot her husband. The man had lived long enough to give a description of Dalton and the name of Vickers to the sherrif , but the two outlaws had gotten away. They’d come to the Oklahoma Territory to lay low where there were few lawmen and fewer laws. A rope waited for men like Jeb Vickers or the one man who was faster on the draw then he was. I had been too busy to worry about his threats or him trailing me, and I figured Doc had been right when he told me that Vickers was like a snake, and he would wait to strike. I had a feeling that it would all happen once we got back to Portersville. Doc Stevens probably expected it too.

Victoria heard a knock on the door and went to answer it. There stood Hap Johansen III with a hand ful of wild flowers. “Good morning, Missus Stevens,” he said “Is Sam receiving company today?”
Victoria smiled ,”We are in the kitchen,” she said “Won’t you come in, Hap.” Hap could smell the delicious aroma of bread baking. “Don’t mind if I do,” the boy said. “Just wanted to pay my respects and give Sam this here package that some peddler dropped off at the livery yesterday.”
Sam was sitting at the kitchen table kneading bread dough with her good hand . It was not easy, but she seemed to be enjoying it. She had flour all over