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“I’ve always been favored with the mixed blessing of

an excellent memory, for the good and the bad.”

- Jamey Galloway

 

February, 1852: Late on a cold Texas night, in a well-tended log cabin, Cara Landry sits still in a rocking chair by the glow of a lone lantern. Pale and pretty, she keeps her hands warm under a blanket across her lap. Her two boys, just shy of four and five years of age, sleep under quilts on a straw mattress in the corner. The steady rhythm of their breathing is the only sound in the room.

     Then, outside, footsteps scuff through sand and gravel.

Sketched by moonlight, a big man’s shadow crosses the

drafty window near the front door. After fumbling at the

latch, he stumbles in. Drunk. He shoulders the door shut

behind him.

     The woman’s quiet voice sounds as chilly as the night

air. “Reuben. I’ll be taking the boys and leaving you.”

     “You be what?”

     “What you made me do at the saloon—that’s the end

of this. I’m your wife. Not a whore.”  

     In two strides, swarthy Reuben Landry reaches the bed.

When his strong laborer’s hands yank both boys out from

under their quilts, they wake with a yelp. With one son

under each arm, he faces his wife. Drunk as he is, his words

are clear. “You ain’t takin’ nobody. You ain’t goin’ nowhere. I swear, Cara.”

     She stands. Her blanket slips to the plank floor, revealing the Colt Dragoon revolver she raises with both hands. Almost as long as her forearm, the black pistol weighs near four pounds. But she aims it steady, elbows braced against her ribs. Her thumb cocks the hammer.

     Reuben pouts, not at all taking her seriously. “Now, that’s a hell of a thing. I gave you that gun, girl.”

     “For protection, when you’d be gone. But you’re what we need protecting from.”

     “Is it loaded?”

     “Like you taught me.”

     His smirk softens into a charming, snaggle-toothed smile. “Now, sha, set that gun down so we can talk.”

     “Put the boys back in their bed.”

     The big Colt doesn’t waver. So he lets down the smaller kid, who scuttles to the far side with wide eyes. But Reuben doesn’t put the older boy down. Instead, he raises his long knife under the chin of the son thrashing in his grip.

     “Let him go,” Cara says. “And then get out. Don’t come back ’til you can see straight.”

     Reuben lowers the knife, as if surrendering. He tosses his son onto the bed. A heartbeat later, he lunges blade-first at his wife. Cara squeezes the trigger. Time seems to slow. Stinging smoke and fire explode from the gun.

     The shot hits Reuben in the chest. His eyelids flutter in surprise at the sudden flow of his own blood.            

     “Hnnh . . . ain’t that a hell of a thing.” He falls to his knees and pitches forward. Dead, two yards from Cara’s feet.

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That dead man was my father. The woman who killed him was my mother. The boy who struggled for his life was my brother, Jake, older by thirteen months. And I was the tot who cowered. That night is my first vivid memory. I still recall it, right down to the whiskey on his breath, the thunder from her gun, his blood spreading in a ruddy pool on the floor.

     But then I’ve always been favored with the mixed blessing of an excellent memory, for the good and the bad. And, with a new century turned not long ago, I reckoned if that old gunfighter and gambler Bat Masterson could end up a sportswriter in New York City, well, I should write a book myself, before the details blurred into tall tales.

     My brother and me rambled through an odyssey that included honor and treachery, tears and laughter, cruelty and kindness. Our journey took us from fighting in the Civil War to escaping from Indians, from the open range to high-stakes poker on grand Mississippi riverboats. Though we rarely looked for trouble, trouble had a way of finding us.

     We had no forewarning that we’d someday be forced into a titanic struggle against a formidable enemy, with the very existence of our hometown Serenity Falls hanging in the balance. We learned that Fate rarely nudges us in the right direction—and life, like cards, is a chancy proposition. If you want to win, you’ve got to be willing to lose.

     As William Shakespeare wrote, “Yield not thy neck to fortune's yoke, but let thy dauntless mind still ride in triumph over all mischance.”

     Everything you will read here I saw with my own eyes, or heard from trustworthy witnesses. It’s all pretty much as it happened.

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James B. Galloway

September 1905

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