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The Curse of Abigail Buckley
By Jerry Boyer iUniverse LLC
Copyright © 2014 Jerry Boyer
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4917-2903-8
CHAPTER 1
1892
Al looked at his mother's weatherworn face with love and respect as he prepared to leave for the trapping season one more time. He had been making the run to Canada for ten of his twenty-five years and was planning on doing it another ten.
"Remember what I told you, son. You'll thank me for this one day. I know you will."
"It's not as bad as you think it is, Ma. I'm used to it, and I'm good at it. Besides, Henry is gonna be with me this year. It could be our best year ever." Al hefted a sack of flour onto the back of an unhappy donkey.
Al and his mother, Josie, had organized his camping gear as efficiently and expertly as it could be done. They were now in the process of carrying it out onto the front lawn and packing it on three donkeys Al had been using for the last ten years. His donkeys had been his only companions on his seasonal trips from the time he had first embarked on this difficult but lucrative career. Occasionally he would run across another trapper he could share a meal and some conversation with, but the nature of the business defined everyone as a rival.
This year was going to be different. His young nephew, Henry, would be making the trip with him. Al was looking forward to it from the standpoint of having someone to talk to for the next five to six months. Henry was only fifteen years old, the same age Al was when he'd started trapping.
The two had known each other all of Henry's life. Even though they were not blood brothers, they had a special bond. The young Henry worshiped his Uncle Al and aspired to live the same life with the same goals as his hero relative. Al looked on Henry as an adored younger brother.
Al admired his mother for many reasons, the most obvious one being that Josie had raised him as a single parent. As the story had been passed down to him, Josie married young to a man who mistreated her in every possible way. Immediately after they married, her husband moved them from their respective homes in Del Rio, Texas, to Eagle Pass about fifty miles away because he was wanted in Del Rio for having stolen his neighbor's horse; a crime worthy of death by the hands of the owner and forgiven by the law.
In spite of Josie's situation, Al felt his mother had done all she could to keep her wedding vows. As she had told Al many times, "I made my bed, and I felt like I needed to lie in it." Josie was pregnant with Al when her husband was gunned down in a street fight with the local sheriff in 1867.
Al's mother was not just a beautiful woman. She was well aware and took pleasure in the fact that most of the women in Eagle Pass considered her to be a proud woman. She was also aware that some of the more jealous types thought she was a bit haughty. But Josie, who wasn't twenty years old when she married, couldn't have cared less what she looked like. After she was widowed, she stoically did what was needed to keep herself and her son afloat. She had offers of marriage but opted to go it alone. She took in laundry and did alterations for the local gentry to make enough money to eke out a living for the two of them.
When Al turned twelve, he and his mother started planning for his future. So far, they were about as poor as people could be. Together, they set out to change all that.
Meanwhile, the half brother of Josie's deceased husband had a son, Henry. Although the two men were not close, they were both about as ambitious as grasshoppers. Henry's old man had never aspired to anything, nor had he achieved anything in his life. His one claim to fame was that he had managed to marry the town whore in Del Rio who left him when Henry was a small child.
About the same time Josie was preparing Al, who was about thirteen, to begin his future as a trapper, she began to care for Henry even though he was no blood kin to her. He was only three years old and pathetically neglected to the point of being malnourished. It might have been Henry's looks, which at that age were angelic, or his situation. Whatever it was, he stole her heart and she took him in.
Henry always thought of Josie as his mother. He felt, and was correct in feeling, that she loved him as if he were her own.
Although the two boys were actually cousins, because of the difference in their ages and out of respect, Henry always referred to Al as his Uncle. Since the boys had the same last name, the townspeople started calling them Josie's boys. Nothing could have pleased Henry more. His love for Josie rivaled that of Al's.
Al was ten years older than Henry and willingly provided him with the male role model his young ward needed. When Henry started school, he was teased unmercifully because of his infamous father. Al wound up protecting him from more aggressive boys who wanted to boast a win against the burly youngster. Henry took a beating or two, but in short order, since nobody messed with Al nobody messed with him either.
On Al's twelfth birthday, Josie had surprised her son with his first donkey. Al couldn't have been happier if she had bought him a puppy. He named the critter Ears. The two became inseparable, to the delight of the town. If Al left the donkey alone for any reason, Ears would send up a wail you could hear all the way to Del Rio. When Al went camping, he used Ears as a pillow. Except for Henry, Ears was Al's best friend.
For the next three years, Josie gradually added to her son's stash of camping equipment, traps, temporary shelters, and anything else she thought he might need to help him along his way. They practiced camping together until she was satisfied that he could do it on his own. She got the local sheriff, a man by the name of Billy Jack Johnson, to teach young Al what he knew about caring for and using a gun.
Billy Jack had befriended the family after shooting Josie's husband in the middle of the street. He had explained to Josie, "It's the least I can do since I killed the boy's daddy."
In spite of what had happened, Josie liked Sheriff Johnson and never judged him for killing her husband. She knew he had done it as part of his job and not out of vengeance. She might have even secretly thanked him. She admired his sense of duty and the fact that he had the courage to carry out his job no matter the danger. She was also grateful for the attention he paid to her son. Had he not been so shy, she would have liked to get to know him better. At any rate, she thought of him as a good and decent man.
Billy Jack admired Al's spunk and went the extra mile to teach him how to make his own ammunition. He was pleased that Al had decided to sell the ammunition he didn't need and use the proceeds to buy additional equipment. Billy Jack wanted life in the wilderness to be as tolerable as possible for this hardworking young man.
Josie taught Al how to sew clothes made from animal skins she bought from nearby cattle ranchers. She also taught him to cook. Most folks thought of her as the best cook in the county. She was particularly proud of that talent and wasn't shy about accepting accolades from the locals when they praised her culinary skills.
By the time Al turned fifteen, he was a crack marksman, a seasoned camper, and a butcher who knew how to skin a carcass in such a way as to maximize the value of the pelt.
Josie had instructed Al, "You're going to have to make all of your money up front. When you turn fifteen, you can start off on a life of adventure. That's how I want you to look at it, Al, an adventure. When you've earned more money than God, you can find a woman to marry, settle down, and you won't never have to work again."
His first season in the trapping business was basically a learning experience. He broke even financially, but he had nothing in the bank to show for his effort other than the experience he'd taken away with him.
His mother, who was incapable of comforting herself the whole time he was away, was able to comfort her beloved son, explaining that experience was worth more than money. First of all, she carefully explained, he'd learned how to get where he was going. Then he'd had to learn how to stay alive in close proximity to Indians, bears, and anything else that was out there trying to get him.
Because of his age and his winning personality, he could expect a little help from some of the people he met, but usually, he was on his own.
The next year was a different story. When the season was over, he was hundreds of dollars in the black. He continued increasing his bank account every year until, ten years later, he was a fairly wealthy man.
Al and his mother enjoyed a certain amount of envy from the community. Everyone knew that Josie no longer needed to work. She had given up taking in laundry and doing alterations. To her neighbors' delight, she continued to sell baked goods to the locals simply because she loved to bake.
Al and his mother held their heads high and spent frugally, always keeping their original goal in mind, for even though Al had amassed a considerable amount of money, it was not enough to ensure the affluent lifestyle he and his mother were aiming for, especially since it had to last for the duration of their lives. They agreed that if they could hold on for another ten years, they could both retire and live handsomely, Al with his future wife and Josie with her future grandchildren.
For the last six months Al had been grooming Henry so that he'd be able to make the most of an extremely difficult undertaking. Henry was a quick learner. With Josie's guidance, he had been practicing for years on the local animals he caught and skinned. He always knew that when the time came, he would be by his uncle's side.
* * *
If you listened to the local women, both of these men were lookers. Al was over six feet tall and drop-dead handsome. Every woman in Eagle Pass had her eye on him. His body was beautifully toned because of the nature of his work. His blond hair was clean but tousled. He had a certain "little boy" quality about him, which the ladies found irresistible. His mother had taught him humble manners for dealing with his elders and respect in his dealings with women. But in spite of all the eligible women using every ploy they knew to turn his head, he refrained from spending any more time with them than was necessary. After all, it would be another ten years before he could choose one for his own.
Henry was slightly taller than Al. He was beefier and carried himself with a lot of attitude. He looked up to no one except his uncle. Henry's most notable features aside from his general good looks were his hair and his eyes. His hair, the color of corn silk, hung down to his shoulders. He always had a farmer's tan, much darker in the summer than in the winter. With his dark skin, his flaxen hair looked just like a halo, which he definitely did not deserve.
Most of the females in town found him to be plainly recognizable, even from a good distance, because his light blue eyes seemed to leap out, sparkling like sun on water before he was even close enough to say hello.
There was a world of difference between the two men's personalities. Al was much like his mother, while Henry had a definite wild streak in him. Luckily for him, Al was a forgiving, doting uncle. No matter the differences, when the two men were together, which they often were, they exhibited quite a presence. They once heard Josie remark to one of her lady friends that she could sell tickets to the local girls when the Buckley boys walked down the street.
On the eve of their journey, Henry had spent the night in Del Rio with his father auspiciously to tell him goodbye. In reality it was to more or less borrow his father's buckboard and his horse, which, for some reason, Henry believed was his due. He told his father he would leave the buckboard and the horse in San Antonio with some relatives and return it when their venture was complete. His father, who was dead drunk at the time, offered no objection. Henry was thinking they could use it to travel the distance from Eagle Pass to San Antonio loaded with all their gear saving them some time before they had to start out basically on foot. When Henry left Del Rio he had his three mules tethered to the back of the wagon.
Henry considered this trip a rite of passage. When he returned, he would no longer be a boy. He would be a man, having survived life-threatening experiences on Lake Winnipeg in Canada. He was looking forward to this more than anything in his young life, but he was also scared to death. He didn't even know how they were going to get there or how long it would take them to get there, much less what was awaiting them when they arrived.
He knew that Al hunted bears on occasion. The pelts were easy to sell as rugs. There would be some deerskin too, which they would sell to leatherworkers, who fashioned them into chaps, vests, and other specialty men's clothing. They would eat the meat or trade it to the Indians so nothing would be wasted when they caught and killed a deer. Mostly, however, they would be hunting small animals. Their hides would be made into the beautiful coats of rich women he would probably never meet.
Henry looked over the countryside and wondered how he could leave anything so beautiful as the Quemado Valley. It was deep in the summer. The crops were ready to be reaped. The cotton was high and white with bolls. Part of him felt as if he were condemning himself to hell. The other part couldn't wait to get started on this new adventure. In his reverie, Henry imagined what tomorrow would be like. After a good night's sleep, Josie would fix them a farmer's breakfast and wave them out of sight as he and Al left for San Antonio before the sun was fully up. They would make better time, and his buckboard and horse would be safe with a distant relative until they returned in the spring. Start to finish, they would be gone five to six months, depending on the weather.
CHAPTER 2
Arriving at Al's house late that afternoon, Henry jumped down off the wagon with more energy than a stallion. Al could see that he wasn't just ready to go; he was rearing to go.
"Where did you get hold of a buckboard?" Al put his hands on his hips and cocked his head.
"I borrowed it from my dad. I think we should tether these animals to the buckboard tomorrow, Unc. I don't want them mules wore out before we even get started." Henry smiled broadly. He knew Al would rather ride in relative comfort to San Antonio than start off walking.
"What do you mean, the mules? I don't want to be wore out before we get started neither. And I will be if I have to unpack these donkeys and repack them in San Antonio, but that's what we're gonna do."
They laughed and set to loading the buckboard with Al's gear. Al wouldn't trade his donkeys for any reason. Besides Ears, he now had Samson and Delilah. Henry preferred his no-name mules, One, Two, and Three. The two men laughed about that being the only difference they had with each other.
* * *
Even though Al knew the route to Lake Winnipeg like the back of his hand, he took the time to draw Henry a crude map of their trip. He had often done this for himself when he traveled alone.
"Look here, Henry. When we leave San Antonio, we head north to Kansas. When we get there, we get what you might call our first break. I got a place where we can board the animals for a day or two. We get to treat ourselves to a hotel room and hot bath. If you want to do what I done in the past, we can get haircuts and play us some poker at the local saloon. We can also have a pretty decent meal there. What do you think?"
"Man, that sounds like fun the way you put it. Only thing is, Al, I ain't never played poker. Do you think you could teach me on the way up there?"
"Yeah, I reckon I can do that. I done taught you everything else I know."
This would be their last experience with anything "urban." By the end of the week, they would be on their way to Nebraska, and then they would head up through the Dakotas, and finally, about a month after leaving their homes, they would arrive at Al's usual campsite on the banks of Lake Winnipeg. They would set their traps the night they arrived. They would spend the next four months mostly outdoors in the harsh winter of southern Canada. The work would be backbreaking, and the weather would be barely survivable at times.
* * *
There was already a chill in the air when they arrived unheralded at Lake Winnipeg late in the afternoon. They set straight to work setting their traps and arranging their gear at Al's usual campsite. It was almost fully dark by the time they finally stopped for the night. Al sent Henry out to gather firewood and lots of it. By the time Henry returned, Al had the campsite looking like a small trading post. The fire was going. Coffee, pancakes, and two freshly shot and grilled squirrels were ready to be their fare for the evening. Two tents were pitched. There was a temporary outhouse built just far enough away.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Curse of Abigail Buckley by Jerry Boyer. Copyright © 2014 Jerry Boyer. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse LLC.
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