Texas Blood Feud (28 page)

Her father’s health situation put their wedding plans on hold. She hired a cowboy to ride her father’s lines. An older man named Shuck Means, he’d spent many years living by himself in line shacks and liked the work. In fact, he got embarrassed talking to her, she told Chet.

His oat hay in the stacks looked good, and the corn would make a fair enough crop. Chet bragged on the hardworking men and their accomplishments. The quiet Mexican people gathered in the small village and listened in awe to hear him tell about the trail drive. It was no time until he had to take the cowboys to Fort Smith for the trial.

They arrived in the river city two days before the trial, and he put their horses up in a livery that they recommended at the federal courthouse. He found a clean rooming house, and they stayed there. Taking a bath the night before, and putting on their pressed clothing the next day, they were ushered in to sit in the second row behind the grim-looking Reynolds boys, seated with their lawyer from Kansas City.

The prosecutor, Dalton Morgan, told Chet and his men not to fear the big-town lawyer that the defendants had hired. They had a story, stick to it. Chet felt certain they’d make good witnesses. The trial lasted all day and into the night—the Kansas City lawyer tried everything. Tried to make the judge mad so he’d get a retrial. Nothing worked, and the dark eyes of Issac Parker could have melted steel when the attorney antagonized him.

Nine o’clock—the sun was setting across the Arkansas River. The courthouse was stuffy hot and the foreman of the jury, now back in their box, stood and said, “Your Honor, we find all three defendants guilty of murder in the first degree of Dale Allen Byrnes, Pinky Smith, and Roy Arnold.”

“Approach the bench,” Parker’s clerk said, and the three did so.

“You have been found guilty of murder in this most heinous crime. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“Yes, Your Honor. My son there, Kenny, was only along with us. He don’t deserve to die,” Earl said.

Judge Parker spoke to Kenny. “Kenny Reynolds, is it true that you were also on the scene of the murder and rape of a rancher’s wife in Texas?”

“I never—”

Parker waved him silent. “For this heinous crime and mass murder, I sentence you three to hang by the neck until dead on December second, the Year of Our Lord 1873. Court dismissed.”

Chet slumped in the chair.
They would hang. Dale Allen, I have done all I can do.

“Chet? Chet?”

He looked up, and a concerned Reg was talking to him. “It’s time for us to go home.”

“I’m not hungry. You boys go on. I’ll just go back to the room.”

“We did it, didn’t we?”

“Yes, we’ve done all we can here.” They’d already taken away the three condemned men. He dried his wet palms on his pants. The prosecutor was there to shake his hand and congratulate him for bringing the boys back to testify.
It clinched the case
.

Thunder rolled in, and some heavy showers came down. He was soaked to his skin in cold rain by the time he reached the boardinghouse. Why did he feel the worst was still ahead? He opened the front door and looked at the staircase in the dim lamplight.

The notion of the long ride home left him empty. Was he sliding off into what his father had? Losing his mind? Was he drunk and didn’t know it?

There had to be an answer to this curse they lived under. There had to be place for his tribe—a place without enemies where they could ranch. In Texas, there would always be cousins, their pals. The list would never stop growing of folks that wanted them dead.

For that cult, he’d made martyrs out of them three—Earl, Shelby, and Kenny. He undressed and dried himself with a towel. No, he’d find a place. Another Eden for the Byrnes, and they’d all escape this feud and its treachery. He climbed under the sheet and thin blanket and shivered until he fell asleep.

Then he dreamed of a great valley with a river running through it. That would be his land when he found it. He’d know it when he got there. There the feud for him and all his family would finally be over.