Posted by AlOmega on July 30, 2004 at 18:32:07:
It happened the day after we arrived.
Now I’ve seen rivers and been in some floods but I hadn’t ever seen no fire-river that flooded and that‘s what I got to see. Never want to see anything like that no more either. The second night was chilly and cheerless with no relation to any night I‘d ever seen. However, rather than stay on board or outta the way, I and a few others decided to help those locals in trouble. Mostly it was staying outta the fire-river that was flowing from the volcano which seems to be the dominant feature on this island.
Anyway a few of us passengers had decided to visit a local village to see what we could see - and we saw more than we needed to. I was wakened by a loud explosion which ended up being the first of several. I think it was five in the morning when I roused those who weren’t already awake. I saw a girl named Kanuku who was wild with excitement and so breathless she could hardly spout the words she poured out. I gathered what she was saying quick enough though. Some kinda volcanic wave had swept in upon the shore, houses were going down, and people were hurrying mauka (inland) with whatever possessions they could carry. When we got to the beach, people on foot and horseback were hurrying in all directions - men with chests and trunks on their backs; women with bundles of bedding and clothing under which they staggered; grandmothers with three or four year old children o their shoulders; and mothers with little babies - all in quest for safety and a place to dump everything. When we got to the foot of the street where the hotel was, I couldn’t believe what else was happening. Houses had been lifted off their foundations and moved several feet or more. Some had even tumbled into rubble or fallen into little ponds that remained of the sea in various sunken places.
Riders at breakneck speed from Waiakea brought word of still more complete ruin there. The bridge, they said, was gone. We walked on toward the town until we hear a shout and looked back to see the waves rising and moving onto land. That‘s when we headed for even higher ground. .
People were wading in water where their homes had stood half an hour before, gathering up goods soaked by the salty sea and filled with mud. Some of the men had had to swim for their lives; and, women with terror in their faces were caught up in a wailing that reminded me of Indian women who had lost all their family. I heard someone say that Kaipo or someone was missing from his home and he weren’t the only one that day. She was a grandmother who had a baby asleep with her. We found the baby right enough to the relief of the mother but the old woman was swept out to sea. Later her body was found on the beach along with many others.
Later that day, the rain which had come in infrequent light flurries before, began to pour in buckets - so much so, that the rainwater soon added to the discomforts of the poor, homeless wanderers, and to the general gloom that hung over the town.
A large barque at anchor in the harbor was tossed about as a cork at the mercy of every twist of the waves. For hours she writhed under this restless tossing, one moment pointing her prow tone way and the next in t’other, running back and forth the full length of her cable, like a weaver’s shuttle. I was expecting to see her sink right enough. But she didn‘t and finally recovered her normal position.
The next day we woke to the birds singing and a brightly shining sun. It was a great blessing that the day was fair cause we needed the sunshine for warmth and for drying what of clothing and household effects had been collected from the mud and slime in which they were found. We went over the same ground on the nearest beaches we’d visited the day before and realized more fully the wild havoc that had been made.
We were wondering what had happened when we found out that a volcano was erupting and we weren’t outta the woods yet. Thinking on that didn’t take long so we quickly returned to Honolulu. Even there we found lotsa damage. I was especially moved by seeing an old may who lay groaning with the pain of fractured ribs and a broken leg. He told me that he’d been thrown on the rocks and they had bruised his skull.
Those that had em provided for those who didn’t. Lotsa food, clothing, and blankets were given to those that needed em. His Excellency, John Dominis, Governor of Oahu, and Her Royal Highness Lydia Dominis, the king’s sister, were also thrown outta their beds. But at least they had homes to return to and hadn’t lost anyone. I suppose their houses were better built but then I don’t rightly know cause I hadn’t lived in this type of location.
Now that everything was turning to the better, several of us decided to see what had caused it all. So that was why the next morning Juli and her ladies, Jade and Joy, along with her body guards, Li and Chan (cause I’d found out I’d got the name wrong) and Matt and a scarce few of the other passengers took a side trip on the steamer Kilauea to the erupting volcano on Hawaii. I don’t know much about these islands but they got different names for em. That makes em hard for me to keep count of. Most of these islands have volcanoes but they mostly are dead ones. We found that there were no hotels in Hilo so we camped out rather than incur the snobbery stuff that many of the locals had against anyone who they think of as colored. Bad idea to my thinking but then I didn’t grow up in Alabama or Georgia where such thinking is considered proper. But then maybe their way of thinking is not so proper - at least I think not.
Hilo fringes off with pretty native houses, kalo patches and mullet ponds, and in about four miles the road which was formed of rough, hard lava, and not more than 24 inches wide, entering a forest of the densest description sorta like a burst of true tropical jungle according to Jade. I couldn’t’a imagined anything so pretty sorta like nature seemed to have run riot.
Anyway we got some horses and headed on out. We had a guide with us so we got to see some sights like a local attraction outside of Hilo called Anuenue or Rainbow Falls on the on the Wailuku. Jade did pretty well but I could see her ladies hadn’t been horseback much. None of em road sidesaddle although a few of the white ladies did. The track was only a scramble among rocks and holes, concealed by grasses and ferns; and, we had to cross a stream, full of great holes, several times.
Then we traveled in single file over an immense expanse of lava of the kind called pahoehoe, or satin rock, to distinguish it from the a-a, or jagged, rugged, impassable rock....The pahoehoe extended in the Hilo direction about twenty-three miles. It’s the cooled result of lava flow which according to our guide had been heading toward Hilo from Kilauea. It lies in hummocks, in coils, in rippled waves, in rivers, in huge convolutions, in pools smooth and still, and in caverns which are really bubbles. Hundreds of square miles of the island are made up of this stuff and nothing more. I figured we went nearly thirty miles to get to the top of the local volcano called Kilauea. If I hadn’t taken notes and got help in writing stuff down, I’da never spelt these names correctly. To me it was an amazing sight. The smells and sounds of the active volcanic eruption occurring in the summit crater really got to me. I think this was called Halemaumau but don’t hold me to that. There was a place called The Crater House where we stayed for a bit before leaving. There we met with some other travelers including some native Hawaiians. Although they sorta look like Indians, they aint, There’s something different about em as if they’re from a distant land unrelated to America.
Anyway as we approached, I asked our guide if that was a pool of blood in the distance. He laughed and explained we was nearing the volcano. The ‘pool of blood’ I found out was only a rain puddle glowed red on the track. A glare brighter and redder that from any furnace suddenly lit up the whole sky. We started feeling the bitterness of sulphurous fumes in the still night air. A sound as of the sea broke on our ears, rising and falling as if breaking on the shore, but the ocean was thirty miles away. The heavens became redder and brighter, and when we reached the Crater House at eight, clouds of red vapor mixed with flame were curling ceaselessly out of a huge invisible pit of blackness, and Kilauea was in all its fiery glory. To my way of thinking, we had reached the largest active volcano in the world - a place of everlasting burnings.
Rarely was a light more welcome than that which twinkled from under the porch of the lonely Crater House into the rainy night. The hospitable landlord of this welling lifted Juli’s ladies from their horses, and carried them into a pleasant room thoroughly warmed by a large wood fire. We all headed to bed although I spent much of the bitterly cold night watching the fiery vapors rolling up out of the infinite darkness, and wondering what we’d find inside the crater.
The following morning was wet and murky when the mist rolled away and revealed the mighty crater whose vast wall was only a few yards from the house. I donno but when I think of a volcano I think of it being like a cone. This was a different thing. The place looked like a descent into hell abyss and looked like a great pit on a rolling plain. But such a pit! It had to be nine miles around. It had to be nearly 300 feet deep in places and covered probably six square miles. After more than an hour of very difficult climbing we reached the lowest level of the crater, pretty nearly a mile across, presented from above the appearance of a sea at rest, but on crossing it we found it to be an expanse of waves of ashy-colored lava with huge cracks filled up with black rolls of lava, only two weeks old. It took us near a full hour to cross this deep depression, and as long to master a steep, hot ascent of about 400 feet, formed by a recent lava-flow from Halemaumau into the basin.
Suddenly, just above, and in front of us, gory drops were tossed in air, and springing forwards we stood on the brink of Halemaumau. It were the most unutterable of wonderful things. You’d never think it but there were lotsa jets, fountains, waves, and sprays which ya might think of as orderly and regular but that weren‘t what it was. The inner lake, while we stood there, formed a sort of crater within itself, the whole lava sea rose about three feet, a blowing cone about eight feet high was formed, it was never the same two minutes together. What we saw hadn’t been there a month age, and probably wouldn’t be much like it in another month. What we did see was one irregularly-shaped lake, possible 500 feet wide at its narrowest part and nearly half a mile at its broadest, almost divided into two by a low bank of lava. Most of it was fire in motion. But the surface of the double lake was continually skinning over for a second or two with a cooled crust of lustrous gray-white lava. It was almost like frosted silver broken by jagged cracks of a bright rose color. As we got there, eleven fire fountains were playing joyously round the lake. It were all confusion, commotion, force, terror, glory, majesty, and even beauty. And the color! I remember an old passage that read “Eye hath not seen”, I know that molten metal hasn’t got that red gleam, nor blood that living light. Nope, it was unique.
The heat was excessive and we had to stand the whole time, and the soles of our boots were burned, and my ear and one side of my face were blistered. And that was all it was - something I’ll remember to the end of my days.
We left the next day at seven and after resting the evening, returned to where we waited for the MacGregor to get under way. Then we was heading south and west so far that we was gonna soon be heading east. Nothing much happened before we left and we soon settled into the routine of shipboard life.
But ya never should figure on anything remaining the same. And it didn’t happen this time neither.
Maybe I should talk about something that had started to develop but at the time I didn’t think much on it. It had to do with Juli and Kit Walker. After he caught her, he took some interest in her. But there couldn’t be anything more between them because of their different lives. I never understood it but sometimes a small woman will attract a much larger man. Walker was maybe an inch taller than me and was surprisingly strong. I asked once and he told me it had to do with his work. But he never told me what his work was. Weren’t ranching, I can tell ya, but he did know things about animals especially horse training. Another thing Although he’d received some education in America as well as England, he was from a place called Luntok which was off the coast of Sumatra or maybe it was offa Java neither of which I didn’t know much about either at the time. He was different from most people I’d already encountered. When I asked why he was traveling, he said it had something to do with what he did for a living. I didn’t know much about that at the time though. I mentioned this only to say that Juli had taken a slight interest in him. I don’t know whether it was the same with him though.
I suppose everything woulda stayed the same - a sorta dull trip except for the occasional sighting of a sea animal or sail.
Now the ship generally kept going almost in a straight line - although the Master said that he navigated using something called a buncha Great Circle routes. He tried to explain them once but I not only lacked the education, I didn’t know what he was talking about. But it weren’t so hard to figure out what a compass did and I even got to know what a sextant did. Mostly it had to do with me traveling on land while he mostly traveled on water. What I’m getting at is that I learned a lot of stuff but it wasn’t something I could use on a ranch so much. The navigation though could be used on shore as I found out later.
Everything changes though and suddenly sometimes. This was one of those ‘sometimes’.
I suppose it was nearly one in the morning when the first of the women snuck on board. I say ‘snuck’ cause they weren’t exactly passengers but rather something else. Because I’d seen them sneaking around, I decided someone had better know more about what was going on so I got my guns and woke Juli, her guards, and Mathew. That was smart cause there were now more women on board as well as a few men. One of em had managed to get to the pilot house where they steered the ship from cause we felt the ship slowing down. Juli informed me that these were people called ‘pirates’. Even though I come from Texas I’d heard about them. We call them bandits and robbers. But Juli said they were different and they were searching for her. It was lucky for us that we weren’t unprepared. Although it was night, there was a full moon and enough light so that we could see another smaller ship not so far away from us. Mathew took his specially made rifle and, looking through his scope, could make out someone steering the that ship as well. That meant he could shoot their steering person if it was necessary - and it proved to be not too much later. That was because as we were nearing the pilot house, we saw a woman slit the throat of our pilot. Mathew didn’t even think on it but made that almost impossible shot with hardly a blink of an eye. Bad thing was that made the rest aware that they were no longer a surprise. Or maybe it made em aware that our surprise of their surprise weren’t gonna happen either. I donno.
There were only a few of them pirates with guns. Most had knives and swords but that was more’n what the crew got. Matt and I were the only ones with guns and his was that long rifle which weren’t no good at close quarters. Lucky I was to have two pistols as I always did when alone or going to a fight – two more though were in my luggage. Bad move that but I didn’t think we’d need em on the ocean like we was. And Matt did have a pistol thrust in his belt. Said he preferred his rifle tho which was why he didn’t have no holster. Happens sometimes, I suppose. I remembered one guy who didn’t have no holster but wore his gun dangling from a cord around his neck.
But that was then and this was now. So we had a long rifle, three pistols, assorted knives and a couple of big swords. Juli pulled on my arm and pointed to the pirate ship where another boat was leaving. She told me to look a tad closer and I made out a strange symbol on it. She than told us it was the symbol for the Singh Brotherhood - a bad buncha pirates that came from ports in Southeast Asia and the islands leading south. Over a thousand islands were there I found out late.
We started moving to offset the pirates most of which seemed to be women. Li and Chan came in fast on a group of five of em - a trio of women and two men. Don’t think they were expecting swords. I shot at one but missed. Didn’t matter cause I had to move to another section of the ship where even more pirates were boarding. I did see Li parry one trust and spear one of the females rather low on her body. Knowing where she got it, I also knew she would take a while to die. But since she didn’t have a gun, she was already outta the fight.
I was thinking I’d recapture the pilot house when seven pirates barred my way. I quickly killed two but that weren’t fast enough to stop two others pulling pistols which woulda cut me down - woulda that is except for two quick blasts from a couple of pistols from the upper deck. That’s when I saw him - a man in a mask and purple suit with twin guns blazing. Both shots had disarmed the pirates holding guns. Another two were disarmed by this strange fellow. He gave me a quick wave as he leaped to the deck beside me. At the same time a giant dog which looked like a wolf bounced another pirate on her butt. The others - put off a bit by the two of us and the wolf - backed away. That is they did until a female pirate some six feet tall shouted something about Phantom and killing him. I didn’t know what ’Phantom’ meant but wasn’t about to find out what she meant.
The masked man holstered his pistols - a stupid thing I thought at the time - and replaced em with two swords. I was surprised to see he knew what he was doing.
“I’ll handle these You go to the pilot house and see if you can get back control of the ship.”
With that, I started up the stairs to see what I could do. There were two pirates outside the door. One pulled a pistol and her I shoot twice to make sure she weren’t gonna shoot me. One shot found her belly. The other blew her chest away tossing her body over the railing to the deck below. The male also drew a pistol but was lots slower so I just took out his gun hand. Then it came down to a fist fight. He was bigger but that didn’t matter. He fought like a boxer which weren’t so good for him cause I struck him twice below the waist which got his attention real quick and put him also outta the fight. Then it was my turn to enter the pilot house and that’s when things went sorta crazy.
Easy to see no one was there rightly enough but there was ever though there weren’t. It was like this woman came in a minute or two after I did and she had me covered. Now I’m quick but not THAT quick. She motioned for me to remove my gun belt.
“Do it and do it carefully,” she said. “I don’t know who you are but we only want the Chinese passengers. They have a price on their heads and we’re here to collect. You clearly were not a part of this, however, you are interfering now and I’m here to put a stop to that.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant but wasn’t in a position to try anything. “Who are you?”
She laughed - especially after my gun belt hit the floor.
“I’m Joy Luck and these are my Lady Luck Pirates.”
“I see thatcha got men pirates too. Does that mean that they’re ‘lady’ pirates?
“You talk funny. However that may be the result of your American teachings.” She glanced quickly out the window before regarding me again. It was so quick that I could only loosen something I needed.
“Careful, now. I saw something in your eyes that I don’t like. Right now you’re safe enough. However, if you do something rash…”
At that moment there was whining sound off to the side of the ship. Again the woman glanced out the window as did I. The calm sea seemed to erupt as something large headed straight for the pirate ship. She was really surprised when that ‘whatever’ smashed into the middle of the ship effectively blowing it up. Musta been lotsa explosives on it, I figured. Didn’t take that long to sink. And it didn’t take that long for me to move with my Bowie knife and stick her in the chest. About the same time, a rifle struck her in the lower back - the bullet barely missing me when it came out her stomach. The astonishment remained on her face as she twisted completely around facing me once more dropping her pistol. She clutched for her sword and looked aghast at the blade buried just between her breasts.
Even though it had to be, was the first time I’d ever kilt a woman before. She dropped to her knees and started to fall forward. As she did that, I removed my knife from her chest and, after wiping it on her clothes, returned it to its rightful place. Looking around I saw that we’d more or less regained control of the ship. I next looked toward the pirate ship and saw it sinking in a gurgle of frothy seawater. One boat load of pirates was still afloat and we got them up on deck later that morning and put em in a makeshift jail. The strange beast lingered only a while before disappearing beneath the water. I was thinking that it musta been either some sorta strange whale or another of them strange sea critters that got large in this ocean place. Later someone said it mighta been some sorta boat but I thought if it were, that it musta busted a gut cause it sank might quick.
About this time, the strange masked man appeared with his guns drawn. Seeing the woman on the floor, he holstered his weapons. Kneeling down, he took a ring from off her finger.
“She said she were Joy Luck and these were her Lady Luck Pirates.”
He looked up at me as he rose. “She was that indeed, my friend. However, from the looks of this ring, she was also a member of the Singh Brotherhood - a society that I and my fathers have fought for over three hundred years.”
“I heard someone call you Phantom”.
“I’ve heard that too,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ve been searching for these pirates for quite a while My sources told me they had received orders to capture and hold a Chinese person called Juli. They were much less concerned about anyone with her. Funny thing is I have a sister named Julie.”
He picked up my gun belt and pressed his left ring firmly on each holster. Funny looking thing it were so I was thinking maybe it was like that horse’s head on Paladin’s holster.
“Nice design,” I said taking the belt back and putting it on. “but won’t it come off?”
He looked funny at me, smiled, and almost disappeared as if he hadn’t been there at all leaving me wondering who he really was. Oh, I weren’t stupid. I’d seen that he wore two rings. One of em had a skull on it rather like the skull on his gun belt buckle. That was on his right hand. The left had another right. Both were on the middle fingers of his hands - rings similar to those worn by Kit Walker. Like I said, I aint no fool.
By the next day everything had returned to normal although the talk about the pirates remained for a long time on the lips of those who survived. Kit became a constant companion to Juli which I at first though funny until I had learned about his sister with the same name. And she in turn got that look in her eye that I’d only seen once before and hoped to see again. But I did see that he had those two rings even if ya didn’t get too good a look at his eyes. It were as if he was wearing a mask. So should I have been surprised when I was paid off as we got into Sydney?
I found out that that last shot was Matt’s catching that Joy pirate female which was lucky for me if not for her. Chan had gotten himself killed as had Jade. I found out about then that they were also in love. Only a three others in the crew got kilt tho and that was good. Strange though in my thinking was that most of the other passengers slept through the entire episode.
So that for the most part was how we got ported into Sydney and that country of Australia.
So what happened next was rather expected. Juli and Kit found a minister and got married. Kit asked me and Matt to be there with them when they got hitched but Matt had to travel to where he was going which was northeast I think. He rode with some men and women in a cart pulled by oxen - which I thought strange and peculiar. There was something about this that I didn’t like and I told Matt so. But then he’d been hired by someone to kill Australian dogs so that was that. So that was why I was at the wedding and was best man to Kit and Juli - and it turned out that Li and Joy had the same idea. They said they’d end up returning to China or maybe they’d go back to America. But Juli and Kit were gonna head to that place where he lived.
I thought that perhaps he would turn into your normal married mortal man who had sworn to fight evil, greed and piracy in all its forms but would find it harder to leave her side. I kinda thought that things don‘t always happen the way you think. Maybe he would continue to fight against the forces of evil and help good to triumph. But in my mind that was battling an impossible dream. But I remembered once again that this man and his fathers before him - some seventeen generations I think - had been doing this for three hundred years or more.
That day I took the train from Sydney to Melbourne. It was a new line I found out but much better built than the Union-Pacific. And it even the train even ran a bit faster. But I got there very quickly. It wasn’t all that hard to find the church where Barbara sometimes went. I was a new Anglican Church which was doing something different.
It was common for most churches in England to charge church goers for the use of their pews. They had moved this thinking to Australia and it had been going on for a long time. But there was a church called St. Saviour’s Mission Church on the corner of Oxford Street and Mason Street. This one weren’t like St. Philip’s which she really belonged to. And it was in this St. Saviour’s that Barbara Anna sometimes came to do charity work. So cause they said she’d gone there, I went also.
But she wasn’t there at the moment, I found out. She was at the Melbourne Bowling Club just a little way off. That was good because the lights were starting to be lit. Gas light is not so bad as going by moonlight - especially when the Moon was in it’s crescent. So I walked to this Bowling Club place but she wasn’t there either.
Now this was getting frustrating so I decided I better spend the night at the Melbourne Hotel and gather all my stuff which I’d had shipped to me. The next day was not as productive as the day before. Happens sometimes. I’ve said Texas is big. However a true city like Melbourne is even larger because people in it are packed like fish in a barrel - and I know about them stinky fish.
But just when I was about to give up, I walk outside and see dark hair with sparkly eyes surrounded by freckles. It was almost as if everything was right with the world once again. I don’t think she thought I’d go round the world for her but there I was and there she was also. So we were both there and a problem was on hand also.
Seems she had parents. And parents don’t always approve of marriages.
Now I’m not all that educated cause I’m more of a rancher than an educated man. Oh, I can sign my name and do sums but I don’t know all that an educated person would. And her parents wanted her to marry some idiot who’d gone to Melbourne University. So I’d only gone five years to school. It was enough to get me a ranch and some reputation in Texas. And I knew some people there and dad had hung out with Sam Houston and others at San Jacinto so it weren’t as if I didn’t have some knowledge of what was what. Oh they were grateful that I’d saved their daughter when she and Lady Petra was near the Red River. But that was then and this was now. Besides I didn’t care to impress anyone with what I knew or did or what I wanted for Barbara and myself.
So there it was. We loved each other but her parents weren’t wanting any part of it. They were looking on me like I was some dingo from the outback. Or maybe worse, I found out later. Problem as I saw it was that I’d killed men when I needed to. And I’d been a policeman which showed me they didn’t know anything about Rangers. But the final blow came when they accused me of hanging out with riffraff as they called em which only meant Juli and her people. That got me riled quick enough - so quick that I left for my hotel as quick as I could.
It weren’t that I wouldn’ta taken Barbara with the shift on her back and raise cattle some place. And it weren’t that I had some money. But it came down to Barbara not wanting to ’alienate’ her parents. Hey, it was what SHE said that got me riled. I woulda rode in, taken Barbara over my horse, and skedaddled for parts unknown - even smuggling us aboard a ship heading back to America. I was angry and that weren’t what shoulda been done at the time. But by the next day, I’d calmed down some. As I was thinking on it, I realized that things happen for a reason - although most times the ’reason’ wasn’t what ya thought it should be.
Time passes slowly when ya need it to be fast. It was like when I was trying to catch up by catching trains and ships and almost caught Barbara Anna before she got to Melbourne but didn’t. As I found out, I had been almost three weeks behind her which meant that I’d made up almost three weeks. But two days can be a lifetime as I’d just found out. Funny but when you’re herding cattle under a starry sky with a new moon overhead, you don’t think much on how long it’ll be before you finish or even return. Maybe it was cause I was getting older or maybe it had something to do with the traveling I’d done. Makes you think that that maybe this high speed travel that helps get ya there fast also makes you into a slave of the passage of time.
It was while I was waiting that I heard about someone called Ned Kelly. Don’t know why he’d gotten into the papers. Fact was, he seemed to be nothing more than a kid like one of them James or Younger boys. He was maybe sixteen and had just gotten outta jail - though the newspapers called it a gaol which I figured was a jail - after serving three years for receiving a stolen horse. I suppose they don’t hang kids for stealing horses. Well we don’t in Texas neither. Wouldn’t have made me no never mind except that a few years later he got into further trouble what with some sheriff or policeman or whatever called Fitzpatrick says Kelly’s mom and Kelly his self shot him. But that was later and this was now. My mind wonders nowadays.
So what’s that gotta do with Barbara and me? Nothing at that time. But it did cause me to think more on our sit-gee-ation. And that’s how I started getting involved in some local matters and found out about Kelly - something ya learns in passing that can help you later. What I started with was the transfer of my moneys from San Francisco to Melbourne. I thought even at the time that money can open doors that weren’t open before. Again it started with the bank. And the bank president. Good people he was and not like many others I’d known before. I woulda told him he was not unlike Quanah Parker but he wouldn’t have understood that comparison between himself and a savage from Texas. I suppose if I hadn’t been around Comanch all my life, maybe I’d have felt the same. But then I’ve got a different thinking than some I suppose. As I found out when I’d been there a while, there are good people and bad people. Lotsa good and a few bad mostly.
Possibly that was why I started learning as much as I could about this new place. And with the learning, I found out that with a little understanding, people aint much different wherever ya goes. So I had an accent. I thought about Shulemberger. Now he was as good a farmer as one could ask for. I’d helped him once when he’d had a problem with some cattlemen. So he was from some country in Europe and had strange ways. He could brew the best beer I‘d ever tasted. I think it was the beer that finally convinced the others to leave him alone and let him grow his crops of hops and barley. And that’s something to know. People that is. And that was why I got interested in local business people and people in the local government. I suppose they didn’t think I was so bad if I had money invested in their businesses. I wasn’t using it and was getting money back and that worked for me. And it worked for them.
That was why about three or four weeks later that I got this invite to a party at Barbara’s folk’s place. At the time I thought is was funny that they didn’t see me as I’d arrived fresh from the MacGreggor but as someone with wealth and a bit of power.
Or maybe it was because I dressed the same as they did. I donno. But Barbara saw through everything (like she always has) and saw me for what I was quick enough. And for some reason her parents weren’t opposed to our marriage (although I still was thinking that getting hitched woulda been better ifn we’d done it on the sly). In that I’m a bit of a devil, if ya knows what I means - and ya probably does.
About the time when we were to be wed though, I had a message from Matt. Seemed he’d gotten fed up with Australia and had sorta killed that guy Marston and a few of his cow men. We talked a bit and I found out that Marston’s real reason for getting Matt on his payroll was to shoot aborigines for no other reason than that they’d sometimes steal a cow or two. There mighta been more than that behind it but I never found out. He was taking a new wife called Cora Cobb and was heading back to America. He had taken some of that gold Marston was paying him. What I thought funny was that Marston had challenged him to a gun fight. So what was funny? We’d discussed it on the ship - my encounter with Bill Hickok, that is. We’d both seen Hickok shoot and draw even. So this Marston thought he was a gun fighter - some sorta quick draw guy. Real stupid I thought when I heard it. I suppose Marston thought that since Matt preferred his special rifle that he probably didn’t know how to use a pistol. Bad move that cause Mathew was quick enough although not as quick as Hickok; and, I’m not sure if I was quicker. Besides it aint always the quickness of the draw. It’s the killing that is most certain.
And as things stood, Matt was considered outlaw by killing Marston - a man that needed killing if what Matt said he did was true. And I never doubted Matt for a moment. He did leave me with something however. He did tell me who Marston was and where his ranch was located. So that is how we finally married and settled on an abandoned ranch - a place without any heirs. And as I worked the place - settling and breeding cattle and even a few sheep, everything was working as well as could be expected.
What with the passage of years, my love and I managed to find the time to raise seven sons and daughters. And with that, this is the end of my tale.
Now while this is the end of the tale, more actually happened. Mathew Quigley and Cora did get married and settled in Colorado. Kit Walker only had three full years with Juli before she died in childbirth. He later married another and continued his line. But he never loved another like he loved Juli. Li and Joy never returned to China but ended up in New York City where they had thirteen children.
As to the rest, I am writing down what was told me by an old Australian who was originally from Texas. Barbara Anna lived until 1919. The old Australian lived until 1953. He died at the age of 102 surrounded by three of his children, many grand and great-grandchildren and even seven great-great grandchildren. No more needs be said of this man other than he lived a full life.
And this is the end of the story…or is it….
AlOmega