Jed's Place

“What in the flamin’ hell has got the Cheyenne riled this time?” the lone rider wondered to his straining horse.

This was his second run-in with them in a month, after years of an uneasy peace, and it was getting downright hard on his digestion. Jed always shared a bit of whatever he had on hand when his Indian neighbors came rapping on his door, and they’d learned early in the game he was a generous man, but one who didn’t take kindly to anybody stealing from him. Given this understanding, they got along well and had lived in harmony. But lately.....

He had been hearing about a big fracas up north where the tribes had combined forces and wiped out a cavalry outfit, who believed this could never happen. And now all the tribes hereabouts were fighting running battles with the army, and at times making them look pretty bad. There had been a lot of killing, burning and scalping on both sides and right now it was hard to see where it might end.

Jed was at that good age where he still had youthful dreams and goals plus the experience and maturity to go get them. Taller than average, of a build his father once smilingly described as, “Kinda gowky. All feet, knees and elbows!”

It took a few years, but long before his folks died his dad had changed ‘Gowky’ to ‘Lanky’ and admitted the lad was now looking like he knew where he was going and how to get there. At an early age he was working long hours alongside his father, and his deceptively slender build soon packed a lot of power. His friendly, non-assuming personality generally kept him out of trouble but if it was forced upon him he took care of it in a business-like way, same as he approached any job which had to be done.

He was never handsome, even as a youth; and as he matured, constant exposure to the elements had left him with a skin texture little changed by excesses of sun or cold. The sun seldom burned him, and co-workers swore the rain, sleet and snow just ran off, leaving him bone dry.

As a boy Jed got along well with both parents, and was loved equally by them.  Only trouble was, they couldn’t get along with each other. All his life he remembered drifting off to sleep night after night to the sound of bitter exchanges the thin walls did little to muffle. He often thought of his youthful years as ‘Living between a rock and a hard place.’

He’d left home shortly after his eighteenth birthday and joined up with some cattle drovers on the long trail to Montana. They’d fought off rampaging Indians, stampedes, stinging winds and bitter cold, and after his second trip Jed had enough. He gradually worked his way back home and arrived to find his folks dying from a deadly fever.

After he’d buried them he took stock and discovered the only thing he’d inherited was a pile of debts. His dad had filed on the home place long before Jed was born and had loved it dearly. It tore Jed up inside to sell it but the bankers weren’t any more lenient than those of today. No matter how he wriggled and squirmed, somebody always had their hand out for more than Jed held in his.

Soon after he got things squared away he went to visit his aunt Carrie in Missouri, as requested by his dying father. He soon discovered she was really stuck between a rock and a hard place. Her two young, hot-blooded sons were firmly allied with the two opposing factions stirring up the winds of war-- and Jed was quickly trapped in that same web. Slavery was a bitter issue and if you sympathized with either side you were an enemy to the other.

Both sides had agents behind every tree handing out propaganda to make sure nobody stayed neutral.  Feeling ran extremely high in his new home and he became physically sick at the very mention of the issues. Wherever he went, the subject was always just under the table, ready to poke its ugly head out and get people all stirred up.

He could see some right on both sides but for the life of him couldn’t figure if either was right enough to warrant this war everyone kept harping on. His two cousins being on opposite sides of the fence confused him even more. Before his first year with them came to a close they had pulled up stakes and joined the opposing armies, which could eventually result in the two brothers sighting in on each other.

Before the end of his second year in this land of mixed emotions and scrambled convictions those terrible first shots were fired and within months his aunt got word her two sons had been killed in the same battle, on opposite sides of a tree-lined meadow in some place of which she’d never heard.

Heart-broken, she beseeched Jed to go wherever he had to before he was forced to choose a side. Although Missouri was now loosely allied with the slave states both armies had gangs of recruiters combing the area for anyone of fighting age, and Jed was kept busy scrambling out of their nets. He’d escaped being forced into the Confederate army only because his aunt screamed like a scalded wildcat every time they mentioned taking him.

“You got my two sons killed fightin’ your stinking war and now you want to take my nephew? Tell me who in hell’s going to get the crops in this fall so you can keep your bellies full?  Who’s going to get this cotton to the mills so you can have some more flags to wave?”

By the time his two cousins were killed Jed was ready to leave for a reason having nothing to do with the war.

It was a girl, of course; the only one who’d ever tamed him to the point where she could put her saddle on him. She came by the house one evening and asked him to walk her home, so she could talk to him. He could see she was nervous and upset about something. During their slow, meandering stroll through the town he wondered uneasily what she was leading up to. It was only after they finally arrived at her home that she told him. The words came tumbling out in a torrent, as if held back too long and the dam had suddenly burst.