The Cowboys’ Final Drive (Preview)

Chapter One

Riverton, Illinois 1871

“Henry, look!”

Henry Harrison turned just in time to see their calf slide down a muddy riverbank and fall into the river. He cursed under his breath as he plowed through the underbrush on a mad dash to the river’s edge. He stopped dead on the bank’s lip, teetered, balanced precariously, and saved himself from sliding feetfirst down the cliff. But a quick glance showed him that the calf was drifting toward the main current. A few more seconds and it’d be sucked downriver.

He gathered himself and dove headfirst into the river. The shock of the impact and of the cold water closing over his head stunned him for a second. But he clawed his way up to the surface, shook his head, and looked around. The calf was floating a few yards ahead of him, sliding toward the grip of the central current. He struck out swimming.

Joe was yelling something from the bank, but Henry was focused on the calf. He was a strong swimmer and plowed toward it, but before he could grab it a lasso sailed out in front of him, fell over the calf’s head, yanked closed, and slowly pulled it back toward the bank.

Henry turned to see Joe on the riverbank, reeling in the lasso. He was yelling, “Grab the rope!”

Henry blew river water out of his mouth and struck out again. He grabbed the rope and held on as Joe slowly hauled him and the calf back to the muddy riverbank.

Joe grinned and skidded down the bank to lean over the water’s edge. Henry grabbed the hand he held out and was hauled up onto the pebbly shore, chilled and sopping wet.

“You didn’t have to be a hero!” Joe laughed as he reached to pull the calf from the water. “I was tryin’ to tell you I could rope him.”

Henry shot him a wry glance as he stood up. “I would’ve got him. But it doesn’t matter.” He picked the calf up and carried it in his arms as the two of them climbed the bank and started for home.

Their home wasn’t far away. It glimmered just beyond the oak thicket lining the riverbank. It was a stately three-story building with ceiling-high windows, gingerbread trim, turrets on every corner, and a soaring cupola crowning its highest tower. It had belonged to a railroad magnate and had been painted forest green to match the color of his passenger cars. But when the man lost his fortune and had to sell his house and surrounding farm, the city bought the property and had converted it into an orphanage: The Rivertown Home for Unclaimed Children.

Henry blew a dripping tendril of dark hair away from his eyes as he trudged along. His eyes moved to the pasture fence ahead, and the break in it that had allowed the calf to wriggle through.

“I thought you were supposed to fix that yesterday,” he drawled and turned to question his blonde companion. Joe grinned and shrugged, and Henry sighed, “Don’t tell me you snuck out again. You ain’t setting a very good example for the younger kids.”

Joe put on an innocent look. “Bad example? I went to the library to improve my mind.”

Henry shot him a dry look. “Does the library smell of beer and cigar smoke, like you do when you come climbing back in the window at three in the morning?”

Joe struck an outraged expression. “The very idea! Climbing in through the window at night like a prowler! I’m surprised you’d think such a thing about me.” He walked up to open the pasture gate, and Henry set the trembling calf down and watched it totter off toward its mother.

He closed the gate and nodded toward the hole in the fence. “Go and mend the fence. I don’t want to have to get wet again.”

He dug water out of his ear and glanced back over his shoulder to make sure Joe was getting to it before he walked up the hill to the barn, and then past it to the big backyard of the house.

Children were chasing each other on the lawn, and they darted around his long legs as he walked up the porch steps and into the back hall. Martha Holloway’s commanding voice penetrated even to the back door as she cried, “Theodore Edward, let go of her hair this instant! This is the third time I’ve had to warn you. Go stand in the corner!”

A little smile curled Henry’s mouth at the sound of her voice. Martha was the headmistress, head teacher, disciplinarian, unofficial doctor, maid, and all-around mother figure to almost thirty children. She was a gray-haired, ramrod-straight martinet because if she ever relented, the place would go to Bedlam. But he’d figured out a long time ago that she was secretly an old softie.

He loved her. And he knew the feeling was mutual, even though she’d never told him so and never would.

She appeared suddenly at the end of the long hall, sweeping down the passage like a tornado. Henry shook his head. He’d never seen Martha in a state of repose. She looked as prim as a preacher’s wife, but she was as direct as a mule driver. Her hair was severe but immaculate, her black dress and white shirtwaist were innocent of the first wrinkle, and the little watch she always wore on her shirt dangled as sharply as ever as she moved.

Her bright eyes snagged on him. “Henry, thank heaven! We just got the delivery from the grocer’s. Go and help the boy carry the boxes in.” She paused long enough to add, “Why are you wet?”

He nodded to her. “Never mind that. We found the calf.”

“Good! I’d given it up for lost.”

She swept into the kitchen, a big doorway to the right. Her voice floated to him from its cavernous depths. “Sally’s sick today, I’ll have to make lunch. Just bring the bags right in here.”

Henry walked out into the huge front room, a massive, open area with a front wall made mostly of glass. The ceiling was two stories high, and the front windows soared high enough to touch it. Morning light was streaming through the beveled panes.

The hum of the teachers’ voices wafted from the hall on the other side of the house. The classrooms that lined it were filled with kids at their morning lessons, but soon it would be noon, and time for lunch.

He breezed out through the massive front door, down the stone steps and out the pebbled walkway to the road. There was a grocer’s wagon parked on the curb, and the delivery boy was struggling with the boxes. They always ordered enough food for a small army.

“Here Bud, let me help you with that.” Henry hurried out to take the big box out of his arms, and the boy staggered back against the wagon and gasped, “Thanks! That must be the canned goods. It weighs a ton!”

As Henry turned toward the house, a buggy came rolling up behind the wagon and a smartly dressed man hopped out. He was carrying a folder in his hands, and he walked past them and up the path to the house.

Henry followed more slowly, but watched curiously as the man rapped on the door, then walked in. The fellow looked like more than a businessman, and Henry knew enough of Martha’s schedule to know they weren’t expecting anyone else that day.

Henry walked into the house to see the man standing in the big front room alone. The man turned as he entered and asked, “Is Martha Holloway here?”

Henry nodded. “I’ll go tell her she has a guest. What name should I give her?”

“You can tell her the accountant is here.”

Henry moved past him and down the hall, all the way back to the kitchen. He found Martha assembling thirty sandwiches on the long kitchen table. He set the box of cans down on a chair and nodded toward the hall.

“There’s a man out there asking for you, Martha. Says he’s the accountant.” Martha looked up sharply from her task, and her eyes were startled. “Accountant?” She untied her apron and tossed it over the back of a chair. “Finish these for me, Henry. I may be a while.”

Henry turned to watch her hurry out of the room. She called out, “Why hello, Mr. Sanderson! I haven’t seen you in a bit.”

Mr. Sanderson’s voice replied, “I have an important matter to discuss with you, Mrs. Holloway. Is there somewhere private where we can talk?”

Martha’s voice sounded troubled to Henry, even though its tone was bright. “Certainly! Just come into my office.”

The sound of their footsteps faded away, and Henry turned to finishing lunch. But he was faintly worried about the unexpected arrival.

They had constant surprises around there, but not many purely good ones.

A few minutes later Joe stuck his blonde head in at the door. “Where’s Martha? I thought you were her.”

Henry shook his head as he sliced pickles. “You need glasses, then. She’s in her office with a visitor. Some swell from town. An accountant.”

“Huh.” Joe reached out and snitched a pickle. “Glad it ain’t me having to listen to him. I never was any good with numbers.”

Henry didn’t reply, but he was worried. The orphanage had to answer to the city every year when the accountant came around, and Martha always dreaded the visit. She never said so, but he could tell.

And now that he was grown himself, he dreaded it, too. An accountant’s sharp face at the orphanage door was never good news. Every year after his visit Martha announced some new cutbacks.

A couple of years ago, it’d been that they had to dress warm and use less coal. Last year it’d been the sale of five acres of horse pasture.

He wondered what it was going to be this time.

The noon bell went off, and Henry walked to the cabinet to pull down three pitchers. He set them out on the table, then opened the ice chest to pull out a gallon jar of tea. He hadn’t finished filling the pitchers when the sound of feet in the hallway told him that the children were coming.

Miss Tarrant’s voice called out, “Stay in line, Johnny! Single file, and everybody take their turn.”

She appeared in the doorway and stepped back a pace at his appearance. “Why Henry, you’re sopping wet! What on earth? And where’s Martha? I thought she was taking over for the cook today.”

“She had to talk to the accountant.”

The shadow of his own worry fell across the woman’s face. “The accountant’s here? He wasn’t supposed to come out until July.”

“Well, he’s here now.”

She seemed to come back to herself and turned to the doorway. “All right, children, come in and get your lunches! Single file, and no grabbing.”

The children filed in. They were varying ages, but most were ten and under, with the oldest being sixteen.

Henry frowned. All the children were young except him and Joe. They were pushing twenty. They should’ve left a couple of years before. But Martha had talked them into staying to help her around the place in exchange for room and board.

He didn’t know how to feel about that. On the one hand, the big house was the only home he’d ever known. He was glad to give back a little to the place that had taken him in when his folks died.

But on the other hand, Joe was slipping out at night like some guilty kid when he was a grown man. Henry didn’t mind so much himself. He wasn’t as restless as Joe. But it was starting to feel strange.

He was kind of torn.

Henry stayed in the kitchen for an hour, until the last child had filed out, plate in hand, and shuffled to the dining room. He was wiping the kitchen table down with a rag when Martha finally appeared in the doorway and croaked, “Henry.”

Henry looked up, then looked again. Martha had a hand to her head. She looked stunned, like somebody had clopped her. Henry frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

Martha collected herself with a visible effort. “Get Joe and come to my office. I…I need to talk to the two of you.” She turned like a sleepwalker and disappeared, and Henry dropped the rag and untied the apron.

It was plain from Martha’s face that something was bad wrong, and his heart sank as he went in search of Joe.

He found his friend on the back porch, leaning over the railing, and when he moved closer, he saw the pretty maid from the house next door standing just below. She went red at the sight of him and stammered, “I have to go now. Nice to talk to you, Joe.”

She scampered across the lawn, and Henry repressed a sigh. He elbowed his companion. “Martha wants to talk to us in her office.”

Joe stood up with a rueful look. “Uh-oh. What have I done now?”

“I don’t think it’s about you this time. Come on.”

Chapter Two

“Close the door.”

Henry pushed the office door closed behind him and took a seat next to Joe across from Martha’s battered wooden desk. When he looked at Martha, her eyes were red and cast down. Her weathered hands were clasped together on the desktop.

She was acting like somebody had died.

“I just had a talk with the city accountant,” she told them. “I’m used to him giving us bad news, but this time…this time it’s more than bad.”

Joe turned to give him a worried look, and Henry cleared his throat. “Go ahead and tell us, Martha. We can take it.”

She closed her eyes, inhaled, and replied, “We’re dangerously close to going bankrupt. If we don’t take drastic measures, that’s what’s going to happen. And of course that’s unthinkable. I won’t let that happen, and it isn’t going to happen. But I’m going to have to make some very…hard choices.” She lifted her shining eyes to theirs.

Henry’s brows twitched together. It was killing Martha to say it, so he decided to spare her the trouble.

“You want us to leave.”

“I do not,” Martha replied, with a flash of her usual briskness. “You boys are family. You belong here, and you’ve been a mighty help these last few years. But…you’re the oldest,” she added softly. “You’re the best able to make your way in the world. I’m going to have to cut back on…on the number of children here. By at least two, the man said.” Martha looked down at her hands. “I can’t send any of the others. They’re too young. It has to be you boys. I’m sorry.”

Henry looked down and nodded. “You don’t have to apologize, Martha,” he told her softly. “You raised us up. We aged out two years ago. It’s time.” He looked over at Joe. “Ain’t it?”

Joe looked concerned but nodded. “We’ll be all right, Martha.”

Martha sniffed mightily and opened the desk drawer. “I put a little money back for all my…all the children who leave here,” she announced. “It’s not much, but it’s enough to get you a boarding house for the first few months.” She pushed an envelope across the desk. “Take it. You boys have earned it.”

Henry rubbed his nose and was silent for a few heartbeats. He finally said, “Thank you, Martha. But you’re gonna need that money more than we will.” He stood up and mustered a smile, and tears pooled in her eyes.

“We’ll be gone by morning. Thanks for…everything.”

He rose, walked to the door, and let himself out. But he wasn’t prepared for the feeling he got as soon as it was shut behind them. Or for the sound of Martha’s muffled weeping, soft but audible on the other side.

* * * * *

They finished the rest of their chores for the day and ate dinner that evening, but were silent and subdued. Once dinner was over, they went upstairs.

The room that he and Joe had shared since they were boys was on the top floor of the house. From the dizzy attic window, the whole neighborhood spread out before them: the other mansions and their sprawling gardens, the street below with horses and carriages tooling past like children’s toys. Henry stood in front of it with his hands in his trouser pockets, and Joe crashed on his narrow bed and sighed, “Well, what now? I wish you hadn’t given all that money back. It was a nice thing to do, but even a fiver would’ve made things a lot easier on us. Where you do plan to sleep tomorrow night?”

Henry didn’t turn around. “I have a few dollars saved.”

Joe raised an eyebrow. “Oh. Well, I don’t.”

“I know.”

Joe fell silent, and Henry kept staring down at the world below. It was the only world he’d ever known. This place had given him and Joe everything: food, clothing, shelter, education. Even their names.

Martha had named him Henry Harrison after the president, William Henry Harrison. She’d had to name him, because the police had brought her a ragged toddler they’d found wandering the streets.

Martha had dubbed Joe “Joe Charleston” in a moment of whimsy, because he’d been found as a baby in an abandoned steamboat cabin. The only clue on him was a tag on the brand-new silk scarf he’d been swaddled in: Made in Charleston, South Carolina.

Joe’s voice broke in on his thoughts. “We’ll have to find work. What do you reckon pays the best?”

Henry shrugged. “It’s more a question of who’s gonna take us on,” he replied and turned to sit down on his own bed. “But Riverton’s a good place to look for work. We have the railroad, the steamboats, and plenty of livestock trading going on. We should be able to find something.”

Joe glanced at him. “You mind if I tag along?”

Henry smiled and shook his head. Joe and him were like brothers. “’Course not.”

Joe relaxed visibly, and Henry shot him a fond look. He was the older brother, and Joe was the kid brother. It had always been that way, and it always would be.

“We’ll split expenses once we get jobs. Anything over that, we can save.” He shot Joe a look. “If I was you, I’d start saving my extra money, instead of blowing it.”

Joe had the grace to look embarrassed, and Henry relented. “We’ll get up first thing and go out to the boarding houses on the edge of town. Those’ll be a longer walk to work, most likely, but they’ll be the ones we can afford.”

He shook his head. “We need to start saving up for a gun and ammunition. We need at least one. We’re gonna be living on the seamy side of town.”

Joe stared at him, then bent over the side of his bed and lifted something. Henry glanced at his hand.

“What’s that?”

Joe grinned. “It’s a gold watch I won in a poker game in town. You can sell it or trade it for a gun.”

Henry took it. “Thanks, Joe. That’ll help. If we have anything left over, we can save it for an emergency.”

Joe raised his brows. “Or for having a little fun.”

Henry shot him a dry look. “For an emergency.” He reached for the rusty alarm clock on the bedside table and set it for four in the morning. “Get some sleep. We’re getting up early.”

Chapter Three

Brrrrraaaannnggggggg.

Henry groaned, rolled over, and slapped the alarm clock into silence. A moment later he pulled his hands over his face, threw the quilt back, and leaned over to light the lantern. Its soft glow revealed Joe’s blonde head wrapped up to the ears in his blanket.

“Joe, wake up. It’s four o’clock.”

Henry reached for his housecoat and shouldered into it to go downstairs and make breakfast before they left. But when he opened the door, there was a big paper sack on the hall floor outside.

It blurred momentarily, and Henry closed the door to sink onto his bed again. When he opened the sack, he found it loaded to the top with food: apple popovers, block cheese, a couple of loaves of bread, butter wrapped up in paper, a chunk of smoked ham the size of his hand, cold coffee in mason jars, napkins.

Enough to last them for a couple of days, if they were careful.

Henry frowned and swallowed the lump that was forming in his throat. He set the sack aside and reached for his clothes. “Joe, wake up!”

Joe mumbled incoherently, and Henry walked over and rapped on his head with his knuckles. “Get up! It’s four.”

He stepped into his trousers and pulled his suspenders up over his shoulders as he walked to the window. It was dark as pitch outside, but the streetlamps below showed that the milk wagons were already starting their rounds.

Henry pulled on his shirt and buttoned it up as Joe groaned and sat up on his elbows. His hair was standing straight up, and his eyes were bleary.

“Why do we have to get up so early?” he mumbled.

“We’re gonna need to sell the watch and buy a gun. We’re gonna have to walk across town to find the cheapest boarding house. That takes time. Then when we find our boarding house, we’ll have to settle in. And if there’s still time left in the day after all that, we need to start asking around for a job.” He glanced down at Joe. “Are you all packed up?”

Joe threw the blanket off. “Packed is a fancy word for a sack. But yeah.” He looked up and caught sight of the paper bag. “What’s that?”

“Martha packed some food.” He opened the bag and passed over a few apple popovers and the jarred coffee. “Eat quick and let’s go. I don’t want the others to catch us. I hate sloppy goodbyes.”

Joe gave him a rueful look. “We’ll come back sometime.”

Henry busied himself stuffing his possessions into his pillowcase. “Maybe.”

Twenty minutes later they left the beds made up, the floor spotless, and the room empty except for the furniture. Henry closed the door behind him, and they both stared at it for a moment before they turned for the stairs.

They walked down the flights softly and slowly, a solitary wall lantern on each floor their only light. The stairs flowed out into the front room, and through the ceiling-high windows they saw the sky had lightened from pitch black to dull gray.

Henry stepped through the front entrance, picked up the box of milk bottles on the landing, and set it inside before locking the door behind him. He took a deep breath and marched down the pebbled pathway to the street. But when he glanced back over his shoulder to give the old place one long, last look, he saw a light in Martha’s window, and a silhouette behind the curtain.

* * * * *

By seven they’d walked through their own neighborhood to the main drag of town and across the tracks that divided the town into two different halves: respectable, and not so much. The landscape slowly devolved from soaring mansions to bright new buildings in the center of town, to somewhat older buildings, to ramshackle buildings, empty, overgrown lots, and whole blocks filled with shanties and shacks. Henry had never been so far from their own neighborhood and scanned the dismal rows of clapboard huts in dismay. He noticed that Joe didn’t seem especially shocked. Probably because his nightly rambles had taken him far afield. Henry pulled his mouth to one side.

There was a boarding house off to the right. It was the last clapboard house on the road before brick buildings appeared again, businesses servicing the southern docks and the dock workers: warehouses, pawn shops, gun shops, and a few down-at-heel grocers.

The boarding house needed paint, the stairs were sagging, and the screen door had holes the size of a fist. But Henry paused to glance at the sign outside. It read: Ten cents a night.

“This is the place.”

Joe shot it a doubtful look. “Well, that’s one big spur to work like a dray horse,” he quipped. “So we can get a better place to live than this fleabag.”

“We got to be careful with our money,” Henry muttered and walked up the porch steps. The smell of frying meat met them ten feet from the door, and when they opened it, they saw that breakfast was in progress in a big dining room to the right of the foyer. As they entered, ten sullen faces looked up from the table, and Henry nodded. But not one of the diners returned the courtesy. They just went back to eating.

The two of them had to stand there for a few minutes before a slatternly middle-aged woman blew past carrying a tray.

“Ma’am—”

“I’ll be with you in a minute.”

They watched as she hurried into the dining room, set the platter down on the table, and stuck a ladle off to the side. She wiped her hands on a smudged apron and announced, “Breakfast’s over at eight, lunch is at noon. First come, first served, no seconds.”

She bustled past them to the kitchen and back again with a pitcher, and when she’d set it down on the table she returned, wiping the hair out of her eyes.

“Looking to rent a room?”

Henry nodded. “That’s right. Can we double up?”

“Long as you pay twenty cents a day. I got a room upstairs with two beds. Your rent includes the room, breakfast and dinner if you’re there early, nothing if you’re not. We got an outhouse out back, and a room with a wash tub at the end of the hall. A bath costs fifty cents.”

Henry frowned. “Fifty cents?”

The woman hunched a shoulder. “That’s right. I got to heat the water and carry it up those stairs. If you want to do that, it’s twenty-five.”

Henry and Joe exchanged a look, but Henry finally muttered, “We’ll take it.”

“How long?”

“Let’s say a week for now.”

The woman stuck out her hand, and Henry counted a dollar and forty cents into it, slowly and painfully. He glanced at the dining room. “Are we too late for breakfast?”

The woman glanced at the ravaged platter she’d just set down. “Yep. You can come back at noon. Be early if you want to eat.” She reached into her apron pocket and pulled a key off a thick ring. “There’s your key. It’s room five at the end of the hall upstairs.”

“Thank you.”

Henry led the way up the narrow, creaking stairs. The upper hall was bare except for a couple of kerosene lanterns mounted on the wall. The ceiling above them was blackened with soot, and the wallpaper was yellowed and peeling.

He unlocked the door, and it swung out to reveal a room almost as barren as their own in the orphanage. There were two iron-railed beds, a small table between them, and a battered chest of drawers with a couple of handles missing.

They walked in and threw their load down on the beds. Henry opened the food bag and tossed Joe a piece of cheese and another of bread. They sat and munched for a few minutes, but when Joe flopped down on the bed Henry turned his head.

“Don’t get too comfortable. I won’t stay a night in this place without a decent gun. Did you see those men at the table?”

Joe crossed his arms behind his head. “Dainty, weren’t they? Jailbait, I’d put a twenty on it.”

“We’ll rest for a few minutes and then go looking. I saw a pawn shop on the way down. We’ll see what we can get there.”