James tossed another stick into the fire. “What I’m getting at is this. It’s going to be a hard, lonely life starting a ranch up here. But I really feel like it could pay off in five or ten years. Now, those first few years would go down a heap easier if I had someone to share them with me. And, I expect there would be more reward in building a ranch, if I had a son to leave it to.”
“I suppose so,” Revelation said. She still wasn’t certain she understood where James was going with this line of conversation.
“So, how about it?” he concluded.
“How about what?” Revelation asked, confused by the question.
“What’s your answer? Yes or no?” James asked.
As Revelation realized what James was asking, she gasped.
“James Cason, are you proposing to me?”
“Proposing?”
“Are you asking me to marry you?”
“Well, yes,” James said, as if surprised that she was just now figuring it out. “What do you think I’ve been doing?”
“Damn you, James,” Revelation said.
“Damn me what?”
“Don’t you know that a girl spends her entire life fantasizing about how she is going to be proposed to? She wants the moment to be romantic, she wants to be made love to, she doesn’t want to think she’s being hired as a ranch foreman.”
“Oh,” James said. “Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any offense.”
“So ask me.”
“What?”
“If you want me to marry you, James Cason, ask me the way a woman is supposed to be asked.”
James was quiet for a long moment. Finally, he spoke.
“I’m not very good at this sort of thing, Revelation. I’m a plainspoken man, and I say what’s on my mind. I always tell the truth about things, no matter which way it falls, so sometimes I get myself into a heap of trouble because I’m honest, when a little dishonesty would be a less hurtful thing.
“This, I will tell you true. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to starting a ranch up here, and almost from the beginning, I have known that I don’t want to do this alone. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it’s not just that I don’t want to do it alone, I don’t want to do it without you.
“You want me to ask you to marry me, the way a woman is supposed to be asked? Well, Revelation, I truly don’t know how that is, so all I can do is tell you that I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. And most of all, I’m thinking that I would like for you to be around from now on. I would like for us to share the rest of our lives together. So I’m asking you now, Revelation Scattergood, would you marry me?”
James had been staring into the fire for the whole time he was talking. When he looked back at Revelation he was surprised to see tears streaming down her face.
“Revelation, what’s wrong? Have I upset you?”
“No, silly,” Revelation said. “Don’t you know that women also cry when they are happy?”
“You’re happy?”
“Yes.”
“Does that mean you’ll marry me?”
“Yes,” Revelation said, nodding her head vigorously. “I’ll marry you, James Cason.”
“Yahoo!” James shouted.
“What’s got into him?” Matthew asked.
“I imagine your sister just told him she would marry him,” Duke said.
“Well, it’s about time,” Matthew said. “She’s been pining over him ever since we left Texas.”
“Yeah, I figured it would’ve happened long before now,” Billy said.
“I told you he wouldn’t ask her until we were nearly through the drive,” Bob said.
James listened to the exchange with an expression of surprise on his face. “Damn,” he said. “Are you telling me everyone knew about this?”
Revelation laughed. “Everyone, it seems, but you,” she replied, her eyes glistening happily in the firelight.
Chapter Seventeen
Although they left Texas with 3,250 head of cattle, losses to Indians, accidents, weather, penalties, and normal attrition, had cut down the size of the herd. They wouldn’t have a final count until they drove the cows into the holding pens, but they knew they were going to have to have an equitable apportionment to share the losses. After a great deal of discussion, James, Bob, Billy, Duke, and the Scattergoods, came to a mutual agreement as to how the loss would be apportioned. James and Billy would take the biggest loss, as they had left Texas with the greatest number of cows. Bob and the Scat tergoods would take the second largest loss, while Duke, who had the fewest cows, would suffer the least loss.
That settled, they then authorized James to go into town to negotiate the best price he could get.
Leaving the herd in a grassy valley, James started into town to make arrangements to sell the cattle. He had ridden no more than two or three miles away from the cow camp when he saw them. Shielding his eyes against the bright blue sky, he looked at the circling birds about a mile away.
They were vultures, black messengers of death hanging on outstretched wings, waiting for their turn at some gruesome prize. James knew it would have to be something larger than a dead rabbit or a coyote to attract this much attention.
Curious as to what it might be, he continued riding toward the circling birds. It didn’t take long to satisfy his curiosity. Just ahead, hanging from the straight branch of a big cottonwood tree, a corpse twisted slowly from the end of the rope. Even from where he was, James could hear the terrible creaking sound the rope was making.
“I don’t know what you did, mister,” James said quietly. “But whatever it was, you deserved better than this. Even the condemned aren’t left hanging on the scaffold.”
The corpse had an elongated neck, and its head was twisted and cocked to one side. The eyes were open and bulging and a blue, swollen tongue was sticking out of the corpse’s mouth.
There was a sign on the tree, and James moved closer so he could read it.
ATTENTION: THIS MAN STOLE MONEY. WE HUNG HIM FOR IT. —THE BANNACK MINING DISTRICT VIGILANTES, SHERIFF HENRY PLUMMER IN CHARGE.
James stood up in the stirrups so he could reach the rope around the man’s neck. He opened his knife and began sawing at the rope, paying no attention to the two riders who were coming down the road from the direction of Bannack.
“Hold it there, mister!” one of the riders shouted. “Just what do you think you’re doin’?” The rider was holding a rifle.
“What’s it look like I’m doing?” James replied. He continued to saw at the rope. “I’m cutting this man down.”
“Leave him be. Plummer wants him to hang there until he rots.” The rider punctuated his statement by levering a cartridge into the chamber of his rifle. He raised the rifle to his shoulder, aiming it at James.
James sighed and sat back in the saddle. “Did you two do this?” he asked.
“We were part of it. We’re deputies for Sheriff Plummer.”
