Rustic Tales: A Collection of Novellas

Rustic Tales:

A Collection of Novellas

By

Tina Kunkle

Rustic Tales: A Collection of Novellas © 2015 Tina Kunkle

Triplicity Publishing, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without permission.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events of any kind, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition – 2015

Cover Design: Triplicity Publishing, LLC

Interior Design: Triplicity Publishing, LLC

Editing: Triplicity Publishing, LLC

The Half-breed & Soiled Dove

By

Tina Kunkle

Chapter One

At high noon, Johanna O’Riley threw the last shovel of Texas dirt on top of her pa. The spot she picked under the old, oak tree on the grassy hill was perfect. It overlooked their homestead, and she was sure her family would have liked their final resting place.

With the warmth of the sun beating down on her while she was digging, it wasn’t long till she grew hot; and reached down and pulled up the bottom of her long, now dry, blood-soaked tan dress and wiped the sweat dripping from her brow. She looked heartbroken unto the three freshly dug graves that were now raised up from the earth.

If you would have told her a day ago she would be burying her entire family, she would have thought your brain was scattered.

With tears once again flowing from her eyes, she pounded the last of the three white wooden crosses into the ground at the head of each grave. With every hit of the hammer the noise bounced back, echoing through the valley. She carved each of their names and the year, 1866, into the wood.

Kneeling on her knees at her pa’s grave, she looked out across the land. The homestead had five hundred acres with a small, sod house and a wooded barn to match. This was good land. Cattle thrived and got fat on the lush, green grasses of summer. They had twenty head of cattle and four horses. Her pa put a lot of sweat into this land, and now his blood ran deep into its soil.

At twenty two years of age, Johanna should have been married and had a child or two, but that wasn’t Johanna. She wanted nothing to do with men. She would rather have traveled or attended school out in California than have a husband. Not that she couldn’t get one if she wanted with her slender body and long, shimmering black hair she inherited from her ma, and her gorgeous green eyes she inherited from her pa. She was the complete package. Plus, she had smarts. She could read and write anything she could get her hands on, and was brighter than most for it. Before this all happened, life in Spindle Top didn’t tickle her fancy, but now all that had changed. This homestead she wanted to run from, now was the only thing she had left in the world; and she vowed to make good on her pa’s dying wishes.

***

A few hours before, the day had started like any other. Johanna and her ma were cleaning up after breakfast and her pa was in the field turning dirt, with her brother Charlie, sitting happily on the old, gray mule as it pulled the plow. Three men rode up on horseback, and just started shooting for no apparent reason. A bullet hit her pa in the right leg and another went deep into his chest. Charlie was struck in the neck with a stray. Johanna’s Ma heard the gunshots from within the house and came running out screaming, Shikaa, Husband!

One of the men heard her screams and whirled his chestnut horse around and pointed his six-shooter in her direction, and pulled the trigger. The bullet struck her in the heart. She fell to the ground, and her screams were forever silenced.

Johanna was inside peeking out the window in horror; her ma told her to stay put when the gunfire started. She was holding her hand over her mouth, trying hard not to scream out at what she just witnessed, the brutal slaying of her entire family. She wanted to run out to her ma who was lying dead just three feet in front of the door, but couldn’t move from fear and shock of it all.

She saw all the men’s faces that did the killing. They were now and forever burned into her memory, like a brand burned into a calf. One of the men was big with a strong, muscular body. He had a long, red scar down the left side of his face and haunting dark eyes. He was the one that shot her ma. The second one had an upright pointed nose and long, stringy hair coming from under his dirty brown cowboy hat. The last was smaller than the rest. His teeth were black, and two were missing from the front. Unlike the other two, he shot his gun from his left hand. All three had vicious smiles on their faces that showed they enjoyed the killing they just done. They were all different, but somehow still the same. The biggest one with the scar yelled to the other two, Check the house for anyone else!

The two men galloped up to the house and pulled their horses to a sliding stop, then dismounted. Johanna’s heart started pounding. She could hear their footsteps and spurs jingling as they walked closer and closer to the door. Her heart pounded faster with each and every step they took. She quickly got her wits back and quietly slipped out the back door and ran to the creek behind the house, and hid behind a boulder. She heard the men inside ransacking the house. Minutes later, she heard the sounds of laughter and hooves of galloping horses racing away.

She watched the three men in the distance, getting smaller and smaller the further they rode. When it was safe and they were out of view she ran to her ma, screaming, Shi maa, Shi maa!

Her ma was a full-blooded Apache Indian squaw with long, black hair that she kept neatly in two braids that fell over each shoulder. Her Apache name was, Walks with Stars. She wore deerskin dresses decorated with blue and red turquoise beads, which were now all covered with her own blood.

She taught her children the Apache way. Johanna could speak the language, skin a deer, and shoot a bow. She could throw a tomahawk and hit her spot from ten feet away. She loved listening to the stories of the Apaches her Shi maa would tell. Stories of the great spirits who lived with the stars. They would now all be sacred and cherished memories.

Johanna knelt down beside her Shi maa, crying. She shook her, but she didn’t move. Don’t leave me, Shi maa, she cried.

She laid her head on her mother’s chest and cried some more. Sounds in the distance made her jerk her head back up. It was sounds of moaning coming from the field. She raced over to her pa, who was barely breathing, and lying in the freshly turned soil with his blood soaking deep into it. She gently lifted his head and carefully laid it on her lap. Pa, don’t die, don’t die.

She covered his gunshot wound in his chest with her hand to try to stop the bleeding, but it seeped out between her fingers. He opened his green eyes and softly moaned, Shi add. Apache, for my wife.

His name was James O’Riley, and he came to Texas twenty years prior from Ireland. He was a strong, silent man with a gentle spirit. He was a good tracker, and could track dang near anything. The Calvary wanted the use of his particular skills to track down Indians, but he always refused them. He had no issues with any of the tribes. When he staked his claim on this land, he started trading with the Apache. It was during one of those trades he met Walks with Stars. When her eyes met his, he knew he never wanted to be without her. Her tribe accepted him, and called him Buffalo Tracker.

He moaned once more, Shi add.

Johanna still weeping, replied, It’s me pa, Johanna. They killed Shi maa and Charlie.

He grabbed her hand in his and squeezed with what little strength he had left, and in his Irish accent said his last words, Don’t...let ’em...take it. Promise me...me daughter.

She didn’t understand what her pa meant, but promised him she wouldn’t. She held him as he took his very last breath. She sat there with him for an hour, crying and rocking him back and forth. She could see her brother’s tiny body not far away, and her Shi maa lying by the house. She never felt more alone and scared in her entire life.

The silence, while sitting there, was broken by the squawking of three ravens flying high above her. The Apache believes that once you die, your spirit leaves your body and enters an animal’s. As she looked up and watched them fly into the distance together, it brought a calm to her.

The sky was blue and the sun was shining. Spring had arrived a little early this year, and the land was already green and beautiful, but Johanna didn’t see that anymore; the green was now replaced by red. The red of her family’s blood. Something deep down inside her started rising up. Something she never felt before. Something her Shi maa always said led to nothing good. It was hate. She looked down at her pa and in a deep, low voice growled,

I promise ya, pa, I will make ‘em pay for what they did.

Chapter Two

Darkness filled the sky, and put to rest the worst day in Johanna’s young life. She closed the door of the small, sod house and slid the wood plank across to lock it. She made a fire in the fireplace her pa made with his own bare hands, with sandstone from the creek. She sat at the kitchen table, looking around the now empty house.

She got on the floor and removed a wooden board and got a tin box out. She sat at the table and opened the box. Her Pa had showed her its hiding place a few years ago, in case anything happened and she needed its contents. Inside was a copy of the deed to the homestead, and a paper that had marks on it of a loan her pa took out from the bank in the amount of two thousand dollars. He had missed the last four payments, and she knew that wasn’t good. She put all of it neatly back in the box as he had it and tucked it back in its hiding place.

She got up and walked over to the dark oak rocking chair and sat down. This was her Shi maa’s rocking chair, and she had used it to rock both her and Charlie to sleep when they were babies. She threw her Shi maa’s turquoise-colored shawl around her shoulders, not because she was cold, but because she wanted to feel close to her. She brought it up to her nose and breathed in her scent. It was comforting. She looked around the quiet place and missed the constant and sometimes annoying chatter of her little brother Charlie. What she wouldn’t give now to have heard it.

As she was looking around the house, she noticed something shoved way under her folk’s bed. She walked over and got on her stomach and reached under, and pulled it out. It was a huge, brown box. Sitting on her knees she ran her hand over it and then took the lid off.

Inside were two pearl handled six-shooters with gold inlays, sticking in a brown leather-tooled holster. Johanna had never seen such beautiful pistols before. She traced her fingers around the smooth pearl handles. She wondered why her pa never showed them to her. There were also some old clothes, a white button up shirt, a black vest, trousers, and a long, brown duster coat. She pulled them all out and laid them neatly on the floor in front of her. When she looked back in the box, on the very bottom was a folded white piece of paper. She took it out and unfolded it. It was from Ireland and on top in big black letters it read, Wanted, Dead or Alive, under that the name James O’Riley, and under that a much younger looking sketch of her pa. Johanna was stunned. Her pa was an outlaw and a wanted man. Is this why he came to Texas? She wondered.

She sat back against the bed, having a hard time thinking her soft spoken and gentle father was an outlaw, but here it was, staring her right back in the face in black and white. She continued reading, and it said he killed six men and robbed three banks. There was a five hundred dollar bounty on him.

Stunned by her find and exhausted from the day’s events Johanna climbed in her folk’s bed and crawled under the covers, staring at the wanted poster, until she drifted off to sleep. She tossed and turned the whole night with the shootings playing over and over again in her dreams.

When the sun shined through the window the next morning and woke her, she sat up and yelled, Shi maa. When she didn’t answer, Johanna knew it all wasn’t just a nightmare.

***

She dressed and headed out to feed the animals. The burden of the land was now all hers and hers alone; and was scared she couldn’t do it all on her own.

While she was in the barn feeding the stock and milking the cow, she heard the rattling of a horse-drawn wagon pulling up to the house. She walked out and a fat man wearing a straw hat with a turned up mustache was yelling, Whoa. to his two gray horses as he pulled back on the lines.

She walked over to the stranger, cautiously. He never heard her coming. When he finally noticed her standing there watching him, he looked surprised to see her.

She asked, How can I help ya, mister?

He bent over and extended his chubby hand to shake Johanna’s, but she didn’t take it. Her Shi maa had warned her about trusting a strange, white man and his words.

He stared down at her with his bitty little brown eyes and cleared his throat before speaking, I’m Lynn T. Barrett of the Trans Continental Bank, is Mr. O’Riley around?

Johanna replied, I’m sorry, my pa is not here right now. May I help ya?

She didn’t want to let him know about the shootings until she knew what his presence on the farm meant.

It’s important bank business, no concern for a girl like you.

He left me to tend to things in his absence.

He climbed down off the wagon, almost falling to the ground, which made Johanna smile.

I think I’ll have a look around myself, if ya don’t mind?

Johanna said, If ya just tell me what ya need, maybe I can help.

How’s about that little squaw he keeps around here, where might she be?"

My Ma is with him.

He looked her up and down and crinkled his face in disapproval.

Ma? I see, ya one of them there half-breeds then.

He walked towards the house and Johanna ran in front of the door, blocking his entry.

Stands aside, Miss.

Johanna was getting irate at his presumptuousness and crossed her arms in front of her body.

I will do no such thing!

He was getting just as mad. He tried to push her to the side but she kept her feet well planted.

Ya is as stubborn as a dang mule. Have it your way then.

He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a paper and handed it to her.

I means to take possession of this here property, with or without ya pa present.

Johanna looked over the paper carefully. Her pa owed the bank two hundred dollars.

She looked him dead in the eyes, It says right here we have three more days to pay, don’t it.

Surprised she could read, unlike some of the other women on homesteads in the area he replied, Come on missy, if ya don’t have the money now, how’s ya gonna have it in three days.

I still git the three days by law, it says so right here, don’t it? She holds up the paper, shaking it in the air.

I know what it says, I wrote the god blang thing!

His face started turning red, Ya sure makin’ me madder than swallowing a horn toad backwards missy, but I’ll give ya three days and not one day more, and if ya don’t have the money, this place is mine. He pointed his finger in her direction. I’ll be back in three days. You can count on that!

He struggled to climb back on the wagon, and when he was seated he jerked the two horses’ heads around and cracked them with a whip and drove off faster than a rabbit running from a snake; madder then all get out that a woman got the best of him.

***

Johanna was pacing back and forth across the wood floor of the small house. She didn’t know how she was ever going to get the money to pay Mr. Barrett. She needed oats for the horses on top of that.

She took the tin can down from the shelf above the fireplace. Inside was five dollars and that was all. She sat in a chair at the table with her head down, thinking and tapping the tip of her right foot on the hardwood floor. She could sell a couple horses, but that would only give her twenty dollars, which wasn’t nearly enough. The only option she had was to sell the longhorns. That would be enough, she thought, to pay the bank and keep her afloat for a bit of time. They oughta bring five hundred easy.

She dressed in her finest white dress and put her floppy hat on with the yellow flower, and raced to the barn to hook the wagon and head into Spindle Top. She had only been to town a couple of times with her pa, but remembered the way. When she reached the edge of her land, she noticed the banker’s buckboard pulled off to the side by a small grove of ash trees. He wasn’t in it. She didn’t stop and kept right on going, saying out loud, What in Sam’s hill is he doing now?

She reached town in thirty minutes, and pulled the old bay horse and wagon in front of the stockyard. She walked in the door, and the owner was doing business with a wrangler at his counter. She waited and listened. The man was dust covered from head to toe. His chaps were stained, and Johanna could smell him from where she was standing. He smelled as bad as a dead buffalo’s carcass on a hot summer’s day.

He was trying to buy some cattle. After haggling back and forth for a spell, the owner and the man settled on twenty five dollars a head. They spit in their hands and shook to seal the deal. The man handed him the cash. When they were finished, the man walked past Johanna and tipped his dusty, black cowboy hat to her and said, Ma’am. as he walked past. He smelled so bad that the stink itself decided to leave him a spell and stayed inside, with Johanna. She pinched her nose and walked up to the counter.

The owner looked her up and down and said, How can I help ya, missy?

She let go of her nose. I have twenty head of longhorn I need to sell right away.

The man had a weeks’ worth of growth on his face and reached up and scratched his chin.

Where might ya husband be, missy?

I don’t have one. Nor do I want one.

I see, would these be your own cattle then?"

Yes sir, they are.

He looked out his window in the holding pens. Excuse me ma’am, but I don’t see ’em.

They are still on grass.

Ma’am, you usually sell cattle at the end of summer when their bellies are fat.

I’m not stupid I know that, but I need money now.

He thinks on it a bit.

I’ll give you ten a head.

Johanna grew angry and squinted her eyes. Ten? You just sold yours for twenty five a head!

Don’t get your knickers in an uproar missy, you’re lucky I offered ya that without even laying an eye on ’em. That’s my offer. Two hundred for the lot. Take or leave it.

Johanna thought about it, and had no other choice but to take the deal from the man that was looking her dead in the eyes and swindling her.

The man said, I’ll pay ya when you gits ‘em here.

I’ll bring ‘em first light then.

She knew if she was a man she would have gotten a better price. In these parts,