Cattle Kate Read online

  Cattle Kate

  A Novel

  Jana Bommersbach

  www.JanaBommersbach.com

  Poisoned Pen Press

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2014 by Jana Bommersbach

  First E-book Edition 2014

  ISBN: 9781615954780 ebook

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.

  Poisoned Pen Press

  6962 E. First Ave., Ste. 103

  Scottsdale, AZ 85251

  www.poisonedpenpress.com

  [email protected]

  Contents

  Cattle Kate

  Copyright

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Part One: My Surprising Life

  Chapter One—I Can’t Believe This

  Chapter Two—They First Called Me Franny

  Chapter Three—I Agreed with Pa

  Chapter Four—We Found a New Life

  Chapter Five—My First Big Mistake

  Chapter Six—My Train to a New Life

  Chapter Seven—The Man I Love

  Chapter Eight—The Man I Hate

  Chapter Nine—My Claim, No. 2003

  Chapter Ten—I Wanted a Nice Christmas

  Chapter Eleven—I Love Being a Homesteader

  Chapter Twelve—I Became a Substitute Ma

  Chapter Thirteen—I’m Sorry I Haven’t Written Sooner

  Chapter Fourteen—The Last Day of My Life

  Part Two: What Happened Next

  Chapter Fifteen—“Cattle Kate” is Born

  Chapter Sixteen—How to Stage a Hanging

  Chapter Seventeen—The Man with the Pen

  Chapter Eighteen—Pa Wept at Her Grave

  Chapter Nineteen—A Man with Guts

  Chapter Twenty—And in the End

  Part Three: The Facts of the Matter

  Author’s Note

  Endnotes

  Bibliography

  More from this Author

  Contact Us

  Dedication

  I dedicate this book to Bob Boze Bell

  and True West magazine—

  I’m still dancin’ with the guy who brung me.

  Acknowledgments

  I don’t know where I most loved writing this book:

  On my mother’s garden patio in Hankinson, North Dakota; at Maxine Beckstrom-Atkin’s tropical apartment in Fargo, North Dakota; on Gail Adams and Jay Goodfarb’s high-rise balcony in Coronado Island, California; on Mary and Denis Perret’s veranda in Ocean Beach, California; on Mary Margaret and John Sather’s porch overlooking Sedona, Arizona; in the guest apartment at Mary Wills and Sally Dryer’s home in Jerome, Arizona; in the back seat of Marge Injasoulian and Barb Hanson’s Explorer to and from New Orleans, or in my messy home office in Phoenix. But I loved writing this book.

  My friend, Gail Adams, instantly recognized the importance of this book and gave me the boot now and then to keep me going. Barbara Peters of Poisoned Pen Press was a strong voice encouraging me to expand into fiction. Bob Boze Bell and Meghan Saar of True West magazine were unwavering in their support. My first cousins Jerry Tomayer and Debby Davidson were fabulous hosts as I researched in Rawlins, and their son’s family—Josh, Sara, and Allysa Tomayer—gave me shelter and encouragement during my research in Laramie.

  Kevin Anderson at the Western History Center at Casper College was terrific. Wyoming historian Tom Rea was invaluable help, as was Rans Baker from the Carbon County Museum. Carbon County Clerk Lindy Glode and Deputy Clerk Mary Oaks uncovered long-lost records that delighted us all. Gregory Kocken at the American Heritage Center in Laramie went out of his way to help me—and this center is a must for anyone researching the American West. At the Wyoming State Archives, Carl Hallberg and Jim Allison were great. I found insightful research material at the Fort Caspar Museum and help from Michelle Bahe, curator of collections. Kristi Baxley turned me on to the Rawlins Main Street Project and the public mural on the lynching. The staff members of the Kansas Historical Society were very helpful. And I’m forever indebted to all the historians and writers who spent years of their lives trying to correct history.

  Thanks for the excellent and thoughtful editing and constant encouragement of my longest Arizona friend, Athia Hardt. My thanks are boundless to Kristian “Magic” Nordhaugen for saving this book when my computer crashed. Thanks to the encouragement from my writing students at Phoenix College, the Board of Directors of The Friends of the Phoenix Public Library, my friends at Taliesin, the Southwest Authors Association and the 2013 senior class of Phoenix Country Day School.

  Thanks to my friends for always being there, especially Tommy Martinez; Nan, Dave, and Tina Robb; Estelle MacDonald; Cathy Eden; Jim and Linda Ballinger; Adrienne and Charles Schiffner; Stella Pope Duarte; Ide Flores; Marge Rice; Ann and Tim Cothron; Mary Lou Shreves; Mary Anne Grimes; Richard Stahl; Mel Reese; Bob Hegyi; Bill Sheppard; Range Shaw; Cousin Ann Claudio; Brady, Shaun, and Oliver Breese; Katie Moore; Rose Prince; Perri Krom; Carole Weitzel; Sharon Austerman; Gayle Gerard; Anne and Tony Sammons; the late Kenny Smith; and the guidance from fellow writers Pam Hait and Shelia Grinell.

  A most special thanks to my mother, Willetta “Willie” Bommersbach, who has always been my best critic and my best cheerleader; to my sister Judy; my brother Gary and his wife Susan; and my brother Duane and his wife Jeanette. Having a supportive family makes all the difference in the world.

  How do you thank the fabulous crew at Poisoned Pen Press who lovingly and diligently made this book better than I ever dreamed? Founders Robert Rosenwald and Barbara Peters have set a very high bar for the books they publish, and it was a dream come true when they chose Cattle Kate. Thanks to Jessica Tribble and Pete Zrioka, who cared for this book like it was their own. And to my editor, Annette Rogers—where have you been all my life? Every writer should be blessed with an editor this fine and this talented. She made this novel sing.

  Part One: My Surprising Life

  Chapter One—I Can’t Believe This

  I never thought I’d die like this.

  There’s a bucketful of ways I could go. Snake bite. Thrown by Goldie. Shot by a cowboy. Trampled by a steer. Freeze to death. Drown in the river. Come down sick. Maybe an Indian attack, but this is already 1889 and I think the fight has been beat out of them.

  I never thought I’d be hanging here at the end of a rope.

  Not strung up like a side of beef. Not twisting and bucking and bumping into my Jimmy as he hangs by his own rope. His sad eyes begging forgiveness, like this was his fault.

  Not lynched in a lonely canyon in Wyoming Territory on a pretty Saturday afternoon when I should be getting supper ready.

  I’m still not believing it. This can’t be happening. This can’t be the end already. I know they’ll come to their senses and cut us down. They have to!

  No, I am not going to die like this. Not after I just turned twenty-nine.

  I’m going to die proper. An old lady, tucked under a quilt in bed with my people all around me. Jimmy’s wrinkled hand holding mine. Years and years of happy memories. My feet tired from all the dancing I did.

  I intend to have a full life. I’ve worked hard for it. I’ve risked so much
for it. I have too many plans. All my dreams!

  I’m going to have children.

  I’m going to be a happy grandma.

  I’m going to reveal I’m Jimmy’s wife.

  I’m going to prove up my claim.

  I’m going to become a citizen.

  I’m going to celebrate when we’re finally a state.

  I’m going to see Gene grow up.

  I’m going to dance at the fandango.

  I haven’t even been to the Opera House yet. I saved the beautiful hair comb Jimmy gave me, and a woman can’t have something so dear and never get to wear it.

  I will die listening to my cattle bellowin’, like they had a complaint, which is the way a cow always sounds. I will die with the feel of their wirehair hides. I will die smelling their musty scent that town folks can’t stand. I will die satisfied, because to me that is the sound and feel and smell of freedom.

  When I die, our Homestead Certificates will be proudly framed on the living room wall, telling the world this land is ours and we worked five long, hard years to earn it.

  Ma and Pa will be buried back in Kansas by the time I die. I’ll fill in Ma’s Bible with their dates, just like I’ve done with all our losses over my lifetime. Oh God, I can’t die before my Ma. She already lost seven children. It would kill her to lose me, too.

  They say that when you die, your life flashes before you in an instant, but I had it going into the future instead. I thought about all those things the seconds after that man finally got a rope around my neck.

  And that’s when it got through my thick skull: Ella Watson, you might really die out here today.

  Oh, my God, I’m being strangled by a cowboy’s rope!

  If I had ever imagined this, the rope would come from some deranged bandito or dirty lowlife—someone who’d take my life like he was stealin’ eggs from the henhouse. Who could imagine it would be these men?

  That man sat at my roadhouse dinner table braggin’ about my pies. That one got his mail from Jimmy every week. That one had me sign a petition for a new county. That one praised my sturdy corral.

  Now here they are, these pillars of the community—liquored up, hootin’—pretending they’re going to let me and Jimmy die. They’re trying to scare us—alright, I’m scared. And mad. And more than done with this nonsense.

  Sure, they’re cattlemen and we’re homesteaders and that’s like oil and water. But somebody has to stand up to them. My Jimmy and me are standuppers.

  But now it’s getting us killed!

  If they think I’ll go peaceful-like, they’re getting the surprise of their lives. I’m kicking and swirling and jumping and screaming like the Texas Rangers will hear me and ride in any minute.

  I’m kicking so hard, I just kicked off the beautiful beaded moccasins I got this morning—they went flying, and now my feet are in their stockings and I’m kicking still.

  “This is what cattle rustlers get in Wyoming Territory.”

  Just heard those words, but this isn’t about rustling. We all know what’s really going on here. And any second now, somebody is going to get his head on straight and put an end to this.

  I’m certain we’ll be saved.

  By the end of this day, I’ll be back in my kitchen. I’m making an extra special supper tonight. You bet I am! I’ve got to make up for all the pain and suffering we’ve been through this afternoon.

  My Jimmy deserves a great big, juicy steak. I’ve got fresh peas from the garden and I’ll stew them in real cream. I’ll make his favorite pie. Rhubarb.

  I’m going to eat like a pig until I bust my skirt button. I deserve it.

  It’s not every day a woman has to fight off a lynch mob that doesn’t have the sense God gave a goose.

  No, I didn’t live this life to end up lynched by a vigilante mob.

  So STOP IT, RIGHT NOW!

  Chapter Two—They First Called Me Franny

  I took to the henhouse like I was a fox.

  Even when my legs were chubby little stumps that waddled more than walked, I headed for the henhouse whenever I had a chance.

  They called me Franny, just like my mother before me and my grandmother before that. If you went back to Ireland, you’d find people who’d tell you that great-great-great-Grandma had carried the family’s favorite nickname, too.

  “Franny, Franny, Franny, answer Mother, ELLEN LIDDY. Where. Are. You?” I loved the sound of my mother’s voice, even when she was yelling. But I was busy with the hens and the eggs and when you’re still in diapers, you can’t focus on more than one thing at a time. Ma found me in the chicken coop, and I was surprised she was crying. So I held up the speckled egg as a present, but my pudgy fingers held too tight and before I knew it, yellow yolk and slimy white squished through my fingers. That, of course made me cry, and Ma’s cry turned into a laugh.

  “Oh, wee one, you’ll be the death of me yet.” She kissed me all over my face.

  From then on, Ma said she knew to always check the henhouse first when she couldn’t find me. So of course, that’s where Uncle Andrew came looking the day my parents went off to get married.

  “Your Ma said I’d find you here.” He gathered me up in his lumberjack arms. My little arms couldn’t even reach around his thick neck, but I loved being held by my Uncle Andrew. He was my first special friend. I was the only baby in the house and I got all his attention. I just loved that he was mine. And it was that way the seventeen years I lived in Canada.

  Eventually, I’d piece it together—I had to figure it out myself because nobody wanted to tell me. I’d hear little things here and there. A snide comment or a sentence that was supposed to be secret. One day, I was about ten, it finally started to make sense.

  What telling there was came from Uncle Andrew. Usually with hesitation, usually with a positive spin on everything. But he never could deny me anything. So over the years, I coaxed the secrets out of him. He always made me promise not to tell my Ma, and he didn’t have to worry, because this wasn’t the kind of news you want to confront your Ma with.

  My birth was a family scandal. I can just imagine my Grandma wailing and my Grandpa swearing and my uncles threatening revenge when it turned out that my fifteen-year-old Ma was “in the family way” without a wedding band on her hand. It wasn’t even a good Irish boy, but the Scottish farmer down the way. Boy, that really made it awful. I don’t know why my Irish grandparents couldn’t stand Scottish people—or why my Scottish father’s people detested the Irish. Uncle Andrew said it went back to the Old Country.

  “I’ve never had much use for that kind of hatred,” Andrew told me one day when we were out in the field and nobody could hear him telling me family secrets. “Your Pa wanted to marry Frances right away, you got to know that. Yes, he did. But his Pa wouldn’t hear of it. He threatened to disown Thomas and ban him from the family. I thought your Pa would…well, it’s a terrible thing to lose your family, so they didn’t get married right away.” It was the only time I ever heard disappointment in my uncle’s voice when he talked about my father.

  “I was the logical one to take Frances in while she waited for you to be born.” He answered the first part of my question. “It wouldn’t look right for her to stay with Da and Ma, not being in the family way,” was the answer to part two. “I already had my small farm, the one you first remember. Frances and I have always been real close, and I wouldn’t let anything hurt her.”

  “So she was hiding at your place?” My uncle winced and said I shouldn’t think of it that way. It was just best. But I knew I was right.

  “Remember the day I found you in the henhouse and we spent the whole day, just us?” Of course, I remembered it. Because at the end of the day, my Ma and Pa came riding up in a carriage and they hugged me for a very long time. “That’s the day they went off and got married. And your Pa was real proud to take his family home to his
house that night.”

  I cried when I had to leave Uncle Andrew. But the new house had a nice crib Pa said he made for me, and a stone fireplace where I could play and always be warm, and that’s where we lived for the next few years.

  “I love Uncle Andrew,” I announced one day when Ma was sewing and I was playing with my doll.

  “So do I. He’s my special big brother.”

  I’d never have a big brother, and I felt cheated. When I got older and asked questions every day, I asked Ma why Uncle Andrew was so special.

  The stories she told me only made me yearn even more for a big brother of my own. I wondered if I’d ever find anyone who’d take care of me like Andrew took care of my Ma.

  “It was Andrew who took the blame when I set the barn on fire,” Mother confided. “He still carries the scars on his arms. Da whipped him good for the fire, and I cried all the time, knowing it should be me. But he told me to stay quiet, and he took all the blame on himself. I was about eleven then, and he was fifteen, and I knew right then that I could count on him for anything.”

  Almighty! To have somebody take blame for you. I had no idea how that felt.

  “But even the fire wasn’t as big as how he saved me when I was thirteen.” Ma lowered her voice and leaned toward me to share a secret that only women should know. “I got my first time of the month when I was in school. I didn’t know that I’d leaked through my dress, but Andrew saw it and he pulled me out of school, carefully walking behind me so no one could see. I would have died if anyone had seen my soiled dress. I was even embarrassed that Andrew knew, but he said to me ‘that’s what a big brother is for.’ I was so grateful to him.”

  I cringed at the shame of bleeding through your dress, but my Uncle Andrew grew even higher in my esteem for knowing how painful that would have been for Ma.

  “And he was the first one to know Pa, wasn’t he?” I could see my question bothered Ma.

  “Yes he was,” was all she wanted to say about it.