Ridden harder, p.1
Ridden Harder, page 1
Table of Contents
Author's Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
More BWWM?
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Reader,
This book is the follow-up to another BWWM Western, Ridden Hard. If you haven’t got your hands on that one I reccommend you do so. While reading Cal and Ada’s story isn’t necessary to enjoy this book, you might find it worth the read. They remain two of my favorite characters, and part of their story is continued here.
Thanks to all who helped with this journey, especially you, dear reader.
Enjoy!
Kendra.
PROLOGUE
California, 1854.
Everyone in our town knew the McCoys were made for trouble. Years back Mr. McCoy had acquired his land from Papa, all of it being scraggly and stony and not much good for ranching or farming or anything but sitting on. McCoy had no wife but once a year returned from the whorehouse in San Julio with a new son. He boasted ten boys in all.
“The devil’s got all the luck,” said Papa, who only had me, a useless daughter.
The McCoy boys were terrors. They were not afraid of adults. Beatings had no effect, though beatings they got in plenty from anyone who could catch them. Sheriff Bailey (who got the job only because he’d rounded up Comanchero gangs out in Texas) took the first initiative to start throwing the McCoy brothers in jail. But that, said Papa, set a bad precedent. Meadows wasn’t the type of town to jail children.
Mr. McCoy eventually got throat sickness and died. He had left no will, though rumors that he’d had a wealthy family back East persisted. But no relations, rich or poor, presented themselves. He himself posessed no land or farm worth staying on. He had no assets to bequeath. How he’d fed his sons at all remained a mystery. It was even found that he had sold most of his land a year prior to the Henleys; likely to fund the tastes of his harlot mistresses.
Suffice it to say, when Mr. McCoy died the whole town was relieved. The evil was gone. The McCoy sons were efficiently split up. The oldest brothers got hired by a work team and went East to build the railroad. The youngest got put in Sister Agnes’s Home, about a ten miles from town; as well on the moon.
Divide and conquer, the townspeople thought. After all, a McCoy was a McCoy. It was the generally held belief that children could inherit their parents’ rottenness.
And so we thought the problem solved. Papa did not agree with splitting up the McCoy boys, but there was little he could do. Or so we thought. One day Mama and I were beating dough in the kitchen. It was a hot day, right after a good Spring rain, and the world looked half mud. Mama went to the window for a sip of water. Suddenly her head jerked up. She set the glass down.
Other black folks say Mama has an echo of the Sight. Maybe in that moment, watching Papa ride down the hill, she saw a vision of what Papa was bringing home: some dark portent that would bring doom on our heads.
“Minnie,” she said, “Come see for a minute.”
Her eyes were not what they had been. I stood tiptoe in the window.
“It’s Pa. That’s his horse, Big Girl.”
“I can see it’s your Papa. But who’s that with him?”
“Looks like a little boy,” I said. “Or a turnip sack.”
“A boy?”
We both squinted.
“A McCoy, Mama. That’s who it looks like.”
“Which one?”
“The little one.”
“Hell and shit,” said Mama.
Mama’s foul mouth drove Papa into fits. Glad he wasn’t here to hear it. She and I bustled outside together. And sure enough Papa came riding up with a little McCoy brat on the front of his horse. He dismounted in front of the house, helping his charge down carefully. The boy was a positive runt.
“Well, now, Ada,” said Papa. “Don’t give me that look just yet.”
“Well, Cal,” said Mama, her voice crackling. “I guess you’ll come inside and explain yourself.”
It turned out, while going to San Julio for business, Papa had ridden by Sister Agnes’s home.
He dragged the boy in front of Mama.
“Saw that old crow beating the hide off him. She had him down in the dirt, whipping him like a dog. Look at him, Ada. Look at that.”
He raised the boy’s tattered shirt. Bruises flowered up and down the kid’s chest. His ribs could be counted. The puckered scars on his back made lattice. Some were old and hardened into his skin. Mama recoiled. She, like Papa, believed in a beating now and then. But there were limits.
Papa put in quickly, “I can find work for him here.”
“Thought you wouldn’t be hirin’ for the rest of the year.”
“McCoy did me a good turn last year with the Mule Incident. You remember?”
“I remember his oldest son called Minnie a bad word.”
“Well, this one is the youngest.”
“Third youngest,” said the boy suddenly. “Frog and Popper is younger than me.”
Mama blinked at him, bewildered that so small a person could be so loud.
“And what’s your name?”
“Slim.”
He had a clear voice with an insolent drawl attached to it. I decided I did not like him.
“His name is Jake,” said Papa, giving the boy a cuff. “And you’ll address my wife as ‘Mrs. Sampson’, boy. She’s not your nanny.”
Mama rubbed her forehead. “How old is he?”
“Thirteen,” said Papa.
I choked a laugh. Mama’s mouth twisted. At eleven years old I was three inches taller than Jake McCoy, and twice as wide in the shoulders.
“I’m strong,” said Jake. “I can plant potaties and ride a horse and drive an ox and carry all the buckets you want.”
We got the sense that Papa had coached him on what to say. Mama put her hands on her hips.
“And where’d you learn all that? Farm school?”
Mr. McCoy had not planted, and owned neither ox nor horse.
“He ain’t have as much fight as the others,” Papa insisted. “Do you, son? And maybe Minnie can use the company.”
“Cal-” Mama began.
“You mind how you wanted a little brother, Minnie-”
You mean, I thought, how you want a son.
“I’ll tell you now,” said Mama matter-of-factly, turning to the boy, “you may think we’re just low-down black folks putting on airs. Think what you want. But Minnie’s a proper girl, and she’ll have respect. She ain’t your sister and she won’t be your maid. Get to thinking you can wipe your white-trash boots on my daughter and I’ll turn you inside out. Got that?”
“Ada. He’s just a boy,” said Papa.
“I know,” said Mama. “But boys grow up.”
Our town was called Meadows. We lived in the Northern part of the new state California. Papa had founded Meadows with his cattle driving friends, and he’d taken Mama there to be a ranch lady. Most new folks didn’t bond too well to us, on account of Mama being a Negro and Papa being white. Some got used to it, but most only pretended to.
Apart from us, Papa had a perfect reputation. He went to church. He gave fair prices for his animals and crops. Some well-timed investments brought us plenty of money, so we didn’t have to beg or borrow or cheat to live comfortably. And Pa was already a local hero, having, in those old cowboy years, rid West Texas of a pack of murdering outlaws.
But Mama and I still got him in trouble sometimes. Somebody would think they could talk slick about us, and like a stick of dynamite Papa would let fly. No white man we knew openly displayed a black wife. In some parts of the country they hung men for that. But Papa wasn’t going to be ashamed of his love, and neither were we.
The rub was that I’d taken after Mama. Very dark skin, thick and tightly coiled hair. Big sloe eyes and a broad, strong nose: my best feature. I heard it rumored that my real Pa was a red Indian. But I had Papa’s chin, his set of jaw, and his height; in a couple years I’d be taller than Mama.
In spite of local prejudice I had a good life. I was dressed, washed and fed, I went to school and had some learning. Never had to work too hard. And in California of course I was free by law.
A week after we took the McCoy boy on, Papa announced I would be bringing him with me to school.
“He’s never learned to read,” said Papa. “You’ll set the example for him, Minnie.”
“Mama said-”
“Nevermind what your Mama said,” said Papa. “You do what I say.”
The next morning we set off from home, me and Jake McCoy. The difference in our height was noticeable and embarassing. All of Mama’s feeding hadn’t solved his runtiness. He wore new trousers and darned socks and a crisp white shirt with a new kerchief tied around his neck. Mama had even scrubbed his face, which did not improve the pinched-ness of his features.
The flowers along the path to school were blooming. Jake wiped his nose a couple times, allergic to them. I declined to offer him my hanky.
“I never been to school,” said Jake, as usual his voice too loud.
“You couldn’t help it,” I said primly. “You were badly raised.”
“I bet school’s full of spoiled rotten bastards.” He eyed me, to see how I would take the swear. I ignored it.
“Why’d I need to learn to read
“Who is ‘just anybody’?” I said, stopping abruptly in the path.
He smiled irritatingly, his blue eyes malicious. McCoy eyes. “Any kind of person, I expect.”
“I guess you’re thinkin’ how you never walked side by side with a Negro girl,” I said. “I guess you’re thinkin’ you can run me into that creek like your brothers used to do.”
He mopped his nose with his sleeve.
“Well, guess again,” I said. “Pa would whup you into Jupiter if you ever put a hand on me.”
“Your Pa ain’t here,” he observed.
I faltered.
“I never needed my Pa to interfere with my business,” he added. “But then again, I ain’t a spoiled cuss.”
“I hate you,” I pronounced.
“Don’t care,” he said comfortably.
When I brought Jake to the schoolhouse, the teacher didn’t know what to do with himself. No McCoy brat had ever been to school. Jake didn’t know a two from a three. Letters and reading were light-years away. Resignedly Teacher showed him how to write his name and left him to practice on my slate. When he returned Jake had ground the chalk to dust beneath his shoe, and was sleeping on the desk.
We all thought- in my case hoped- he’d be turned out or maybe whipped. But Teacher only handed him another piece of chalk.
“Help him, Minnie,” said Teacher. “You’ll catch up on the lesson later.”
He turned back to the snickering class.
Jake held the chalk out of my reach. “Wanna see somethin’?” he said.
I thought he would show me his pecker, and I took a big lungful of air to holler if he did. But he only grabbed my slate and began to draw. He drew me. With big, fat lips and a big, ugly nose. He made my hair a whirled tangle. Like one of those pickaninny postcards.
“That’s you,” he said maliciously. “Ugly.”
Maybe he thought I’d cry. He clearly didn’t know me. I took the chalk from him and leaned real close.
“You ain’t no artist,” I said. “You can’t even read. You just a good-for-nothin’ piss-mouth with no Mama and no Daddy, and you smell like shit and mustard.”
I snatched the slate from him and bent back to Teacher’s lesson. He shut pan after that and didn’t bother me. Only went back to sleeping on the desk.
Recess came. I guess our new classmate had tired of school. Used to doing as he liked, he made to run off up the road. But a pack of boys lay in wait. When Jake got to the kissing bridge, they pounced.
“Where’s your brothers now?” they taunted.
The girls made a semicircle to watch. Jim Henley got hold of Jake McCoy’s arms. Paul Beanie got his legs. He was helpless between them, like a broken little doll. But he didn’t even cry. They swung him around and around and let him go over the little ledge, straight into the stream. Many times Jake’s older brothers had done just that to us. I looked quickly through the schoolroom window. Teacher was sitting at his desk, focusing hard on his books. If he heard any commotion outside, he was ignoring it.
We crowded to the riverbank to watch. Jake came up sputtering, covered in mud. His hands flailed wildly.
“Find any leeches, mick?” Jim Henley barked.
“Sakes,” said Maisie Derkins. “He can’t swim, can he?”
A cold fear stole through my heart. The boys were doubled in stitches. Jake sank again and didn’t come up. We waited a full minute. The girls began to scream.
I tumbled down the ledge and into the water, sinking in the thick mud.
“Minnie!” the girls shrieked. “Minnie, don’t!”
The little stream wasn’t that deep, but a man could drown in water to his waist. Papa always said so. And you never knew what kind of currents waited under the surface. I dove deep, got hold of Jake’s ears, and pulled.
He scrabbled at me; we came up sputtering. His arms flung around my neck and nearly dragged me down. Luckily I was tall enough to stand.
“Leave off!” I cried.
We struggled back to the riverbank, my hand in a death grip around the kerchief at his neck. By now Teacher had been called.
“Minnie Sampson!” he bawled, envisioning the wrath of my father descending on his head. “Get out of that river this instant!”
For my trouble I had to write a hundred lines on the board. I Will Be a Good Girl. I Will Be a Good Girl.
Jake stood in front of the class for the rest of the day. His little face was grim and pale. All his nice new clothes- the only new things he’d ever owned, I realized- were spoiled. Anyone else I knew would have cried. But he only looked furious, as if planning some ugly revenge.
After school I went to Teacher and told on the boys who’d done it.
“You want me to punish the boys?” said Teacher warily.
“They almost kilt him.”
“It seems to me,” said the Teacher, arranging his books and not looking at me, “It’s about time a McCoy got his due.”
I gaped at him. “But-”
“He didn’t die, did he?” said Teacher, narrowing his eyes. “Now run along home, Minnie Sampson, and mind who holds the authority in this schoolhouse.”
I walked home alone. Jake had escaped, running home without me. I gingerly entered the house. Somehow the story had already reached Mama’s ears, and she had developed her own theories.
“I don’t want you goin’ near that boy. He can go to school without you. He can learn without you.”
Papa too was furious. He returned home and went immediately to his and Mama’s room. I heard the argument through the thin walls, going on all night.
“Minnie’s got to learn on her own,” Mama shouted. “I won’t have her bein’ held back on account of that boy.”
“Have a heart, Ada,” Papa said. “The boy ain’t his father.”
“You care more about some brat you picked up off the road than your own daughter.”
“I care about what’s fair.”
“I guess you think he’s the one to replace Minnie, since I didn’t give you no sons.”
There was a terrible silence.
“That ain’t true and you know it,” said Papa angrily.
“Minnie’s got to fight the whole world as soon as she’s grown,” said Mama. “Now you want to give her someone else’s battle. I won’t have it, Cal.”
“You spoil her. She’s never had to look out for anyone but herself.”
“She’s got a right to be spoiled,” Mama hissed. “After all what we went through. What I went through! I’ll spoil her rotten if I want to. She’s a happy girl, and it’s gonna stay that way.”
