By the end of the Civil War jobs were a thing of luxury if you had one which paid money. The men returning from the war found their lives disrupted, families starving or dead. Then someone decided to drive cattle north to Kansas City or Sedalia Missouri. There was where the markets were for a country which had a need for beef. This is the story of one man who took an old Osage Indian for his word of “All ways help others and they will help you.” He recovered the money, which him and his men had taken from the Union Army during the war, and was buried in Arkansas. He went west to Texas and met a man by the name of Tutewiller who had been on a cattle drive the previous year.
Teaming up they put together a herd of longhorns and headed north to market. Over the next years they had formed the WH ranch and in doing so had ended up with nineteen orphans from around the area. At times he did not know if he was in the cattle business or raising children. However along the way everyone on the ranch became a big family and the ranch grew through hardships and good times along the way.
Excerpt
January 1867
It had been almost two years to the day since that hellish ride and the killing of the Union escort carrying the thirty five thousand dollars in gold coins, according to the Union Sergeant before he died. That day had been like so many during the war. They had ate the last of their hard tack and chewed on some smoked ham. There had been no fire to warm by and no chickaree left to brew something warm to drink.
Sergeant Dunn had been out on point and had came ridding back to camp in the trees telling of a wagon and what looked like six men with the wagon. The nine men left in Henry's command had mounted and moved down close to the road to lie in wait for the wagon. They had shot all of the Blue Belly’s and as they went through the wagon scrounging for what it carried to find a locked chest. Inside the chest were the sacks of money. As him and his men loaded what food stuff and bags of money, which was in the wagon onto their horses, is when the Union Calvary had ridden in shooting.
It was a running gun fight with men dropping from the saddles of Henry's patrol and a flight for your life. They were able to out run the Union Patrol until dark came. Then as they let the horses have a breather they buried the money sacks. That is when they were hit by the Union Patrol and they must have gathered reinforcements from somewhere for it was a fight to the death.
Henry had always liked the moon to shine so that he and his men could see where they were going at night. However that night had been the dark and the moon did not come up until sometime after midnight. That is the only reason he had survived.
Will Henry and his men had hidden the gold in a rocky bank of a spring area near a cave and water falls of a creek. Before the night had been over all six men with him had died from gun-shot wounds and he had by a hair's breadth escaped with his life. He had lain up in a cave, recovering from his three gun-shot wounds, and had been taken care of his wounds by an old Osage Indian of the Arkansas hill country.
When he left the old Osage at the cave the Indian had given him a small leather pouch on a leather string for wearing around his neck. He had starved and worked for nickels to get by until one day he decided to look into the leather pouch. Behold there were twelve Arkansas diamonds the size of the last joint of his thumb. He took one of them to a jeweler in New Orleans and had received five hundred dollars for it. He hung onto the others and only cashed in one when he was devastated and nothing in sight to keep food in his belly. He still had seven of them to fall back on but he would have to go to a large town to get the true worth of them.
He cashed out three more of the diamonds to finance his trip and he left heading north from Shreveport Louisiana with the horse between his legs, nine hundred dollars in his pocket, a forty five cap an ball pistol in his waist band of his britches, and a bedroll with the blanket full of holes that amounted to all his worldly possessions. This made him a rich man in the eyes of most folks for he had given money several times to widow women that had children they were trying to feed. When he got near where the payroll was squirrel away he had decided to get a short spring wagon and the tools and lumber to make a false bed to hide the money. Then at some out of the way place in the woods he could ready the wagon and when he put the money in the bed it would only take a few minutes to cover with the extra lumber already cut to size.
In this collection of Western fiction, I’ve endeavored to bring the reader a little laughter at the expense of my characters, even though they are at times engaged in life threatening adventures. Learn to say something nice to all of your enemies l
Story inspired by life of the author's great grandfather, a Black Cowboy who kidnapped his Native American bride after a cattle drive from Waco, TX to Dodge City, KS. Their story, him a master horseman and her a trained to be a healer with herbs and
