scurlock | oom: barlow estate (2)

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oom: barlow estate (2)

He sleeps well enough, curled on his side (after he manages to fall asleep, of course, nerves in his belly twisting at him for a while after the drink and conversation) and wakes with the first sounds of someone moving around the bunkhouse.

It's Jim.

Doc gives the older hand a few minutes of head start before he hauls himself out of bed and begins getting ready for the day. He notices that Jim, and the rest of the boys, all wear their guns, so once he's dressed himself, he settles his at his hip.

It's not dawn, yet, not by a longshot, when he makes his way over to the stables and barn in order to check on his horse - and see if Jim wants a hand in getting things taken care of. Might as well offer, after all.

"Hey, Jim...don't forget t'mind your hat," he mentions, quietly, as he enters the barn. His own is hanging around his neck by the cord, where he'll keep it out of reach of the horse as best he can. "You need a hand with anything?"

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He nods slightly as Samuel speaks, listening.

"I don't remember how long we'd had ours, 'fore I was born," he admits. He's a bit young to remember the war - he remembers being hungry, and both his pa and his brother being gone away, and his brother never coming back. "It wasn't that long before the war, though. Handful of years."

Samuel nods, turning to look at Jay, then glancing over his shoulder at John.

"War hit lots of places pretty hard," he says, gently. "I was lucky to get this place, as cheap as I got it. The land wasn't much back then. It'd gone to waste, years the boys were off fighting. This is likely the best harvest we've ever had, to be completely honest."

His eyes stay on the fence-line, as they come upon their first sign of repair.

"I'm sorry you lost yours."

"It was comin' back and tryin' to get things in order again that didn't help," he admits. "Cane's a hell of a crop, y'gotta burn the field out and then cut it all."

He gently pulls up on the reins to slow the horse to a stop as they near the section of fence that needs fixing. "War took a few of our hands, an' my older brother."

He swings himself out of the saddle and drops quietly to the ground, moving to tie the horse so he'll stay put while they repair the busted patch.

John cusses under his breath, and Samuel shakes his head, already moving towards Jay.

"And for that I'm especially sorry," he murmurs. "Losin' family isn't easy."

Jay gets a gentle hand on his shoulder, before the man crouches to examine the fence.

They all talk some, but for the most part they do the work in relative silence. When the fence is looking pretty good again, John picks his hat off his head to wipe the sweat from his brow, and squints down at Jay.

"You make it sound like you still got some family left yet. How come you to leave them an' come all the way out here on your lonesome?"

Jay nods slightly, looking down. "Thanks," he murmurs, before he goes about helping with the fence.

(This he knows how to do, given that they had to do it on Tunstall's ranch all the time.)

"My parents are both still livin'," he says. "Daddy works goin' for coal, and my mama takes care'a the house. They got a little place in town, south Alabama - land's cheaper, and there was work in the mines for him. I got another brother, older'n me, he works on the river. My sister's younger. Probably gonna go off t'school in a year or two."

He shakes his head.

"I just...went lookin' for work and...kept goin', I guess."

It's common enough. John just nods his head.

Samuel, however, glances up, arms resting on his knees as he hovers in that crouch a moment longer.

"Don't have no sweetheart waiting on you?"

He shakes his head a time or two.

"No sir, 'fraid not," he admits. "Ranch work an' movin' all over don't really lead to much perm'nance, if I'm bein' honest."

That, too, is common enough.

Samuel nods, rising to his feet. "Shame," he sighs, stretching his back, sore from being bent over for so long.

He urges them to gather their things and mount up again. It's still early, but the sun is already cutting across the trees, orange and warm. It's going to be a hot one, today.

"Yeah, it is," he agrees, before he gathers up his share of the tools and then climbs back up onto Cortez, before they set off along the fenceline again, looking for the next place to stop and get to mending what needs to be fixed.

(It's a never ending job, fences. You start at one end, head all the way around, and by the time you're back to the start you've got a dozen more bits and pieces along the route again that need your attention.)

Jay doesn't mind the heat, either, but he knows it'll kill the hell out of your energy come midday when the sun is blasting down at the back of your neck and there's sweat at your spine.

They go through the motions for the next several hours, talking idly as they ride from spot to spot. They cover quite a bit, from family and politics, to land and stock.

It's already noon by the time they reach that northeast field.

Subconsciously, he's keeping watch on the horizon, eyes on the treeline, or nonchalantly checking in any shadows - the few there are, this time of day - just in case.

(He knows the date - year, roughly, given the information Kate's told him - and he knows it's nowhere near but his instincts won't shut down. He doesn't want them to shut down, not now. Not when he's riding alongside her father. They will never shut down.)

He uses the sun and the rotation they've been trailing along to place himself.

"This where..."

His voice trails off as he sees the break in the fence-line up ahead, question answered by the state of the wire and wood.

"Looks like."

A flock of geese take off from the tall grass a few feet off, on their approach. The area is sparsely wooded, but it's mostly tickseed and tall grass, and cattails where the land turns a bit marshy.

A ways over the fence, beyond the brush, you can make out cotton fields.

"Neighbors."

(The rapid flutter of wings from the rising geese, the rustle of the grass, does nothing to help him try to forget about the day Murphy's men took John. He pushes the tight feeling out of his chest.)

"They got cotton."

It's a statement, more than a question. Jay leads Cortez up to the edge of the damaged fence and then stops, causing the horse to take a few side steps as he surveys the damage.

"Christ, and what else, elephants?"

"Yeah, they got cotton," Samuel says quietly, stonily, eyes on the field beyond as he dismounts.

"Ain't th'only thing they got," John mutters, inclining his chin to the bush, before pointing for Jay's benefit.

The men and women working the field are black, already looking tired, worn, and raggedy.

Samuel stops at the fence, brushing his nose with his thumb absently as he sniffs, staring out at the fields across the way. At some length, he drops his eyes to the fence and begins to assess the work they have in front of them.

He follows the indicated direction that John points out as he climbs off his mount, and his eyes narrow slightly.

"Now I know I'm young, but if I ain't mistaken...President Lincoln had somethin' to say 'bout that, quite a few years ago," he remarks, voice soft with a hint of edge to it, but it's not that rough.

Jay's careful to tie Cortez firm, since he's well aware that this is going to take some time to fix proper.

"He's not the only one," says Samuel, voice even and gaze firmly locked on the fence. You can see the edge on his face, but for all intents and purposes he seems--he sounds--calm.

"Oh, they're hired hands," John says as he dismounts, snorting softly and coming around to Jay's side. "It's all perfectly legal. Jus' forget the fact that they ain't got not one white on their staff, or the conditions they work 'em under, or them supposed wages they earn."

He rolls his eyes and sighs.

Samuel is already working on repairing the fence, quiet and focused.

"Sounds like bullshit if I ever heard it, an' I've heard a helluva lot of bullshit, trust me."

Jay chances one more glance at the cotton field across the way and then shakes his head, before he moves to join Samuel at repairing the fence, the broken wire bent and twisted.

It's obvious this wasn't a minor break, or accidental, but Jay holds his tongue in that regard, as he kneels in the dirt at her father's side.

John may go on for a bit, but that's all Samuel has to say on the matter. He keeps his focus on his work and his jaw shut, dark eyes the color of a sea storm.

Eventually, John gets the hint, and he falls into silence himself.

The fence needs a good deal of work, which isn't a surprise, given just how damaged it is. The three of them keep quiet, and the horses munch idly on the tall grass while standing around, flicking their tails a bit in the hot sun to bat at the occasional fly.

Eventually, the silence breaks, but it's not any of the three of them talking. John and Samuel are working on a tight piece of wire, and he's knelt a few paces off, working on a smaller section when he hears the voices. Faint, but his ears are tuned to it.

(His heart slams against his ribs, and he shifts slightly on his heel, one hand moving to flick that loop off the hammer of his gun in the holster before he even realizes he's done it.)

"Boss," he hisses, low and urgent, to get Samuel's attention.

The tone of his voice gets Samuel's attention, all right. His head snaps around, and he lifts a hand to shush John before the question has time to even halfway leave his lips.

"I hear it too," he whispers, edging closer to Jay without standing to his full height.

Another tense moment of listening.

"I think about thirty yards southwest, beyond the trees there," he tells them, gesturing up a ways beyond cattail and reed, to where there's a small clustering of trees.

John has the loop flicked off the piece at his hip as well, and without speaking another word, Samuel gestures to both men:

'Jay, circle around to the left. John, to the right. I'm going back for my gun.'

They'll pin them down, and then Samuel can see just what the hell is going on on his property.

He nods, once, then draws the Colt from his hip. He's almost grateful for the feel of worn wood against the leather of the glove against his palm, and pulls it back to a half-cock before he glances at John and tips his head.

Let's go.

Whoever it is, whatever they are doing, they are not going anywhere.

Jay keeps himself hidden among the tall grass, ignoring the way some of it sticks to his shirt and pants as he makes his way back around to the left. The ground's soft in spots, which helps hide his footsteps - though there is a bit of mud and water that he has to creep through when he hits the marshy bit of reed.

(He honestly doesn't care about if his boots get wet, at this point.)

The voices get louder as he gets closer to the trees.

Laughter.

"Aw, shit. You couldn't hit a barn door if you were sitting on the handle!"

"Shut yer yap, you peckerwood. I ain't seein' you doin' no better!"

"I bagged them two geese, just last mornin'!"

John is just as quiet on his feet, circling around opposite Jay. They stay soundless, out of sight, moving slow like the wind through the grass, and he doesn't stop until he's straight across from them, where he has them in his sights.

Two boys, no more than twenty. They're still arguing.

Until the click of a rifle cuts through their dialog, and with cussing and flailing they scrabble for their own rifles while Samuel ducks out of the brush dead in front of them.

John is up in an instant, pistol drawn and trained on the two.

And Jay is right there on the other side, gun drawn and a dull fire smoldering in his eyes.

(The urge to pull the trigger and blast both the little shits to hell right that very instant is so hard to fight back that his finger actually twitches against his own will, but he fights it off and sets his jaw.)

"Suggest you boys put those back on the ground 'fore someone gets hurt."

It's not a suggestion, despite the word used in the sentence.

He doesn't say another word. It's not his place.

If there's any question left in those boy's minds, Samuel nods his head from their guns to the earth. "And I suggest you listen to the man."

The guns are back in the dirt before the words have died from the balmy air.

"Don't shoot us, sir!"

"Andrew Crocker, what makes you think I'm gonna shoot you?" asks Samuel Barlow, tone bemused.

(His rifle is still trained on the boys.)

"We was just huntin' game, Sir! N-not so much, just a bit. Sir!"

"I don't see no signs sayin' this here is free huntin' ground!" John snipes. "In fact, I'd say that fence over yonder does a pretty damn good job of conveyin' just the opposite, shitheads."

"You boys do the number on my fence?" Samuel asks, voice still sweet and calm.

Jay says nothing, just watches the situation unfold. He's reading their body language and putting away the ticks and tells in his brain, saving them for later. There are a half dozen things a man does before he moves to draw his gun or go for a knife, and every man is different.

The more he knows, the less likely he is to run into trouble later.

So he stands there, with cold eyes and a gunfighter's stance - ready to hit the deck at any split second - and watches the two of them. Occasionally his eyes will move to John, or Samuel, but his focus is on those boys.

And possibly scaring the ever living hell out of them, but that's another matter entirely.

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