No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author. This book is a work of fiction by the author, except for some historical events which have been included. Some similarities to actual events, similar places, or real people, living or dead, are real, and some may be coincidental, but the rest are fictional.
If you like my stories, please feel free to tell me. If you don’t like them, please quietly keep it to yourself and stop reading them. The metaphorical language spoken by some of my characters may offend some people. I apologize, but those are the words or phrases some people used then, and some still do. A hundred years ago, flowery speech was fashionable. In the fifties and sixties, writers began to use more explicit and offensive metaphors. The Carpetbaggers comes to mind. My writing teachers suggested if I want my readers of today to savor my novel of any era, I should write in the metaphoric words of that time period. Please forgive me if I have offended anyone; it certainly wasn’t intended. My book was written to entertain you. Por favor, perdóname si te he fallado.
This book is dedicated to my wife, Carla L. Wood, who inspired me and encouraged me to write stories.
Book One
Riding for the JN Brand
Introduction
Born on his grandfather’s cotton farm in Virginia, seventeen-year-old Jeff Nelson and his father are compelled to fight for their civil rights. They join the Union Army at the onset of the Civil War to defend their beloved Virginia against an aggressive Confederate Army. His father soon falls in battle, but Jeff, by his wits, survives many battles. When the South surrenders at Appomattox, young Jeff Nelson, still young in years, and tempered as a war-weary veteran, returns to his farm in Virginia. He plans to continue his life as a farmer, but he discovers his land, that’s belonged to the Nelson’s for three generations, has been sold for past taxes. Now homeless and seeking a new life, Jeff leaves his beloved state of Virginia and heads west, out into the vast untamed land of Texas.
Chapter One
Grandfather Jeffery Adam Nelson arose from his breakfast table. “Mighty fine breakfast, Mother.”
“Thank you, JA. Compliments are always appreciated at my house.”
He reached for one loose suspender, flipped it over his shoulder, and buttoned it. JA, as he was called by most everyone, strode across the pine board floor and out the kitchen door of the farm house, built by his father, to their well they themselves dug under the old mulberry tree. He drew a galvanized tin bucket full of cool water, got down the dipper hanging on a post hook, and dipped it full. He rinsed out his mouth, spat on the ground, and took a long cooling drink. Everybody agreed JA’s well water was the best tasting water in all of Augusta County. Returning the dipper to its peg, the old man turned to go, when suddenly he had an excruciating headache and a blinding searing pain over his left eye. He felt dizzy. “Ain’t no place to sit dow…” Then the old man fell to his knees on the hard-packed red Virginia dirt and crumpled over on his left side.
“Papa!” yelled his only son, Thomas, who’d just come out of the smoke house door, as he ran to his father. The old man was already dead, something had busted loose in his head.
“A stroke,” Dr. Bass later said of the old man. “From too much sun and too much hard work, that’s what kills us Virginians,” added the good doctor. Jeffery Adam Nelson was an old man at fifty-five. He was buried on Saturday afternoon in the Buffalo Gap Cemetery. His forty-seven acres of prime Virginia farmland in Augusta County, the old man had willed to his only son, Thomas.
Young Thomas Abraham Nelson was a mighty good farmer, all who knew him said so. He and young Emma Anne Johnson were both born and raised Virginians, and they’d been married in the Methodist church in Buffalo Gap in ’43. They’d started their family when Thomas inherited and began farming the Nelson family home place. His daddy, Jeffery Adam Nelson, had passed on to that big fertile farm in the sky and left young Thomas and his mama still living on their farm.
When young Thomas married Emma, Grandma stayed and kept on making crackling cornbread for her son and helped his bride Emma keep the house. Little Jeffery was born in ’44, and Grandma eagerly began helping his mama raise him. Jeff, by ten years of age, had become a dang good farmer like his daddy, already able to plow arrow straight, cotton-planting rows from sunup to sundown behind either of their two gray mules.
Jeff Nelson wasn’t a tall boy for his age. His mama reckoned he was gonna be a slender man, clearing six feet in height like his papa. His mother, Emma, had birthed two children after Jeff was born. Emily, born in 1845, and Edith, born in 1846. Poor little baby Emily had been stillborn, and her sister Edith only lived to be age three. An epidemic of diphtheria swept through Augusta County in ’49 claiming the lives of a dozen children; Emma’s sweet little Edith was one of them.
After baby Edith, Dr. Bass told Emma she wouldn’t be able to have any more children. Something had broken deep down inside her, he said. Sure enough, even though she and Thomas tried again and again for years to have more children, Emma never became pregnant again. She and Thomas were heartbroken, for they’d both wanted lots of sons and daughters. Mama Nelson eventually joined Thomas’s father, JA, in death, and then there were just Thomas, Emma, and ten-year-old Jeffery on their farm. The farm kept them busy, and it provided the Nelsons a good livelihood year after year.
It’d been raining off and on since before daylight. Now it was raining harder. Jeff could hear it pounding on their roof’s cedar shingles. He was wondering when his papa would return. No outside work would be done by them today; their fields would be too muddy. Jeffery guessed he’d go out to the barn and find something to keep him busy until his papa got back. Some harnesses needed mending as he remembered.
Fourteen-year-old Jeff Nelson padded barefoot from across the kitchen’s cold pine board floors to his mama’s sleeping room. Emma was awakened by the creaking wood floor, and she smiled at Jeff when she saw him as he opened the door. Stepping over to her side, Jeff leaned over and kissed his mama on her cheek.
“Morning, Mama, how are you feeling today?” Emma had been feeling poorly for two weeks; now she felt bad sick this morning. The dull pain deep