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

like Sam in many ways. Hard working, trustworthy and decent. I should have hated him, but I was better than that. I wanted Sam to be happy, and if it was to be with Ely Jax, then so be it. I was walking down the court house steps , pulling my slicker on when Scrub Pot caught up with me.
“You look like you have lost your last friend, Jerrod Bently,” he said . “What has happened? This morning I thought I might be welcoming you as a member of my family.”
“Scrub Pot.,” I said “I have made up my mind to go back to New York.”
The old man was thunderstruck as he stood there in the pouring rain, water dripping of the edge of his hat. “Y-you can’t do that Jerrod,” he said “What about Sam?”
“I love her, “ I admitted “But maybe that just isn’t enough. I want her to be happy and if that means me walking away, than that is what I am going to do.”
Strange expression crossed the old man’s face. He followed me to the hitching rail where Mud waited, soaked with the afternoon rain. “Walking away?”, Scrub Pot questioned. “What are you talking about?”
I checked the girth on my saddle “I am talking about your grand daughter and Ely Jax,” I said as I untied the wet reins and prepared to climb into the saddle. “I’ll scalp him!”, Scrub Pot stated with a deadly hiss in his words.
“No.”, I stated , “He’s in love with her and has been all along,”
“But she is not in love with him!,” Scrub Pot defended. I could tell that he was getting angry and that it might not be a good idea for Ely to cross paths with him right now.
“I think Sam has made her choice, “ I said quietly “and I won’t stand in the way.”
“ This is all wrong, and you are wrong.” the old man stated, “Come back to the ranch and get things straightened out with Sam. There has been a misunderstanding, and if you walk away, you are a fool, Jerrod Bently.”
I had not misunderstood what I had seen on the porch swing at the ranch house. She was in Ely’s arms and he was kissing her as though he was never going to see her again. Wait? Never see her again? What was that all about? Could the old man be right?
I did not want to get my hopes up. “I’ll see you back at the ranch,” I said as I got readty to get on my horse there in the muddy street.
“You find Samantha Ann, and you talk to her.,” Scrub Pot ordered “I am going to find Ely Jax.”
“What do you want with me?” We both turned around, and there he was standing on the court house steps. Now I have always liked to think of myself as a stable and reasonable man, but all I saw standing there in the rain was a rival for the woman I loved. I think Scrub Pot knew what was going to happen and he warned me to back down. I remember handing him my gun belt and taking the first punch that landed Ely Jax in the mud. Now I had learned to fight on the docks back in Port of New York. It was the way to stay alive, but I had never thrown a punch at a Texas cowboy before and when Ely got up, I was the one eating mud in front of the court house. We fought hard, exchanging blow for blow. His nose was streaming blood, and the rain kept coming down harder. I could feel my right eye swelling closed. Then I said it. “You can’t have her!” Ely held back for a minute. “She doesn’t want me,” he hissed through clenched teeth. We were both bleeding and plastered with mud. I felt someone grab me from behind and jerk me up fast and hard. “Enough!” Scrub Pot barked in my ear. Doc had Ely and the crowd that had gathered around us despite the pouring rain slowly began to disperse. “I told Sam good bye, Jerrod !” Ely shouted “You are crazy.! She doesn’t want me. She wants you.”
The words rolled over me like the pelting rain. That was when the whole world went black and I did not even remember hitting the ground. Sam had just walked out onto the steps and saw what was happening. She shouted my name.
“Sam , get back inside,” Doc ordered . “No!”, she shouted as she ran into the muddy street. The lightening flashed and the thunder roared around us. “Jerrod !,” she cried as she went to her knees in that sucking mud . I was still seeing stars , but I could feel her trying to wipe the blood and the mud off my face. She was crying, saying my name over and over again. I reached up and touched her face. “Can you get up?”, she asked. Scrub pot was hauling me to my feet, and slowly I got hold of my senses. Her arm went around me and I leaned on her a little. “I love you Jerrod Bently,” she stated “And I will not have you two fighting over me like two drunken Irishman!”
We made it to the buckboard where Doc had left it parked beside the court house. It was a little drier under the overhang of the roof. “I have something to ask you,” I said. “This may not be the best place. I just blacked both Ely’s eyes and probably broke his nose, or maybe he broke mine, but Samantha Ann Dodge. Are you ever going to marry me?”
She brushed back my sodden hair, her own sticking to her face in the rain and wind. “No,” she said “It is not the right place, or the right anything, Jerrod. And you are going to have to make it up to Ely, but I will marry you as soon as we can find a preacher.”
Scrub Pot joined us, soaking wet as he climbed into the back of the wagon. “I can help with that,” he said with a wide grin on his face. “But can we at least go back to the ranch and get out of this rain?”
“Good idea,” Doc chimed in as he climbed up onto the driver’s seat. “Victoria has dinner ready by now and I am ready to..” Sam cut him off “To give me away at my wedding, Uncle Elliott?,” she asked. The rain dripped off the front of his soaked black hat. “You want me to do that honey girl?”, he said, moved by what she had asked him to do. “Yes,” she answered. Doc gathered up the reins of the team and released the break on the buckboard. “Well Bently,” he drawled “I guess you didn’t get all the sense knocked out of you just now. Congratulations.” The buck board lurched forward. I held Sam in my arms, our feet hanging off the back of the wagon. Both of us soaked to the skin and covered with mud, and all I wanted to do was kiss her until. Well, all that would have to wait till after the wedding.
Scrub Pot sat up front next to Doc on the wooden wagon seat . “It has happened, Elliot,” he said “She will leave us now.”
“We always knew she would, Zachariah,” Doc replied “We brought her this far, now it will be up to her and Jerrod.”
“Who is going to write to your sister Lillie and tell her that Samantha is to be married ?,” Scrub Pot asked.
“You,” Doc designated as the rain began to slack off.
“Why me?”, Scrub Pot inquired “I have met her once and she was a cold fish.”
“Well, I figure that since she hates Indians, if you write her, she won’t come to Texas,” Doc replied “and we won’t have to put up with her.” Two old friends laughed, as they made their way home and two young lovers fell more in love with one another.
Ely Jax rode hard to get back to Bear Claw where he asked Wolf Standing for his niece, Ellen’s hand in marriage. It was over, Ely and I would become friends again. Sam would officially own the Flying S once we said our vows and I was the happiest man in the state of Texas.
The judge gave Sam thirty days to get a husband, and work continued on the Flying S. Doc hemmed and hawed over writing his sister, but when he got to thinking it over and talked to Victoria, he decided he would. Sam had a brother I’d never met, and since we were going to be in-laws, I thought we ought to at least size each other up. “Philadelphia blue noses” was what Doc called his sister and nephew, and he sure did not seem real happy about the telegraph message that came a few weeks after he posted his letter to one Mrs. Lillian Stevens-Black.
Our wedding was to be a simple affair. Me and Sam, the ranch hands, Doc and his wife, and of course Scrub Pot, who would be officiating. Well, that was what I thought, but I was about to find out differently. I guess that during those days after the raid, after Hinkly went to jail and we’d moved onto the ranch, all I cared about was doing my job and spending time with Sam. I figured plans for a wedding were for the womenfolk to see too. We were happy and finally, Texas had begun to feel like home.