Brothers of the Cross Timber

C H A P T E R 1 “Ya’ think he’s asleep?” I asked peering across the moonlit field. “Must be,” Arty Martin replied crouching next to me in the tall grass, while katydids and tree frogs sang from the thick woods behind us. “What do you think, Lance?” I whispered to my other friend Lance Carrington. A warm breeze whistled through the muggy air as Lance smiled reassuringly and said, “Patience, Gill.” “I don’t know what you got against old Haskell?” Arty muttered as we waited restlessly in the shadows. Lance did not respond, but we knew the reason. This farm once belonged to Lance’s mother and he resented Haskell Holiday owning it. Moonlight glimmered off ripened watermelons, as we watched the amber flicker of an oil lamp from the farmhouse across the darkened field. Another fifteen minutes in the quiet darkness seemed like an hour, when suddenly the distant light vanished. “Let’s go,” Arty whispered eagerly. “Wait a little longer,” Lance calmly replied. Five minutes passed before Lance commanded in a stern whisper, “Now!” The three of us crawled quickly to the edge of the melon patch. My heart pounded as I calculated the effort it would take to carry a twenty-pound watermelon to the trees. Arty Martin already had a smaller melon under his arm as Lance ventured close to the house. I let out a muffled grunt while lifting my watermelon and took a step toward the safety of the woods. A string of obscenities from Haskell Holiday, however, caused me to drop my melon as it smashed on the hard ground. Haskell Holiday, a man of nearly forty with a graying mustache, potbelly, and mean disposition, barged out of the house. The explosion of a shotgun ripped through the quiet night. “Run!” Arty screamed as we darted toward the wall of trees fifty yards away. Arty and I scampered away empty handed while Lance cradled a nice size melon under his arm as he passed us before diving into the thick woods. Lance moved as smoothly as a man might navigate a trail in the daylight. Arty and I followed his lead, while low-hanging branches scratched and scraped us. Another blast from the shotgun echoed in the leaves above, encouraging us to move quickly through the brush as we tried to keep close to Lance. The thick Cross Timber forest continued a quarter mile before we entered an open meadow a short distance from Salt Creek, a small docile stream surrounded by thirty yards of rusty-red sand. “Where’s your melons, boys?” Lance Carrington smirked as we gasped for air. Lance Carrington stood on a large, flat sandstone positioned above the riverbank while the evening wind caused his dark hair to dance in the moonlight under his always-present floppy hat. The shapeless, felt hat was crusty with dirt but Lance was rarely seen without it. His darkly tanned skin caused the whites of his eyes to glow mischievously in the night. “You nearly got us shot!” a puffing Arty Martin charged. Lance grinned, “Old Haskell couldn’t hit a barn if it was painted red.” “Sounded pretty close,” I observed. Lance produced a worn pocketknife and in one smooth movement sliced the large melon he had carried from the field. “It’ll make the melon taste that much sweeter,” Lance proclaimed. Arty smiled at his friend’s confident appraisal and took a piece of melon from the knife blade. “It does make it taste sweeter,” Arty agreed with a smile, as he slurped down a slice of the watermelon. “You think Haskell’s still after us?” I anxiously asked. “Naw,” Lance assured. “I doubt he could get through the Cross Timber in the daylight, much less the dark. Don’t worry about Haskell; it’s his cousin Leland I worry about. He’s mean as a rattlesnake and sneakier than one too.” “Haskell ain’t coming,” Arty confirmed as he looked at me. “Have a taste.” The warm melon was sweet and wet as it melted in my mouth like candy. “You need to be careful with Leland Holiday,” I stated seriously. “I’ve heard stories.” “They’re all true,” Lance replied factually. “He’s got his hands in a lot of things in this county. Worst of all, Leland’s as smart as he is mean.” “We don’t have to worry about Leland tonight,” Arty interrupted. As the adrenaline rush of dashing through the dark woods began to wane, we enjoyed a majestic summer sky relaxing at our boyhood sanctuary. It was always the three of us in those days. We were brothers of the Cross Timber, at least during the summer of 1915. Leland Holiday seemed only a character in our youthful adventures—a villain only in our minds. We did not realize at the time he would steer events so dramatically in each of our lives. “The sky’s alive tonight, ain’t it?” Arty Martin proclaimed looking up at the stars above. “Nothin’ like it,” Lance affirmed. “What’s you doin’ tomorrow, Gill?” Arty asked me. “Weedin’ the cotton fields,” I replied. “Pa will probably have me tendin’ to the mules,” Arty sighed, as if this chore would be an inconvenience to his day. “Must be nice havin’ a team of mules do most your work,” I mused. Arthur Martin’s father farmed a quarter section of the Salt Creek bottomland south of the small town of Romulus in Pottawatomie County. Arty, as we always called him, was a handsome boy with sandy hair, blue eyes, and an easy smile. “The mules help, but they take a lot of care and a lot of my time. Pa’s been looking at a tractor,” Arty explained. “A tractor!” Lance exclaimed. “What for? You already got the best team of mules money can buy and four brothers to boot.” “Pa’s always plannin’ for the future,” Arty shrugged. Lance shook his head, thinking the cost of a tractor would feed him for a year. “Where are you headed tonight?” Arty asked Lance. Lance took a moment to spit out a watermelon seed and said, “Don’t know…probably just head to the rail bridge over the Salt Creek and sleep there tonight. It’s too late to head home, and it’s warm enough to sleep under the stars.” Lance’s father had tried farming, but spent most of his life running liquor. His father lived in a place called Violet Springs, on the border of Seminole County. Towns like Keokuk Falls, Corner, Young’s Crossing, and Violet Springs lined the border between the former Indian and Oklahoma Territories. The distilling of liquor was legal in Oklahoma Territory before statehood and the marketplace across the border provided an adventuresome, lucrative, and often violent occupation for many men like Lance’s father, Eli Carrington. Cowboys visiting these wild saloons along the border would put flat bottles of whiskey in their boots and travel back through Indian Territory for extra cash. “Bootlegging” continued as a profession when the new state of Oklahoma prohibited all liquor. There was not much left in Violet Springs by 1915, but Eli Carrington lived in one of the abandoned buildings. Lance, nearly sixteen-years-old, rarely saw his father and lived mostly on his own, away from the old, notorious border towns his father frequented. “You can sleep at our place,” I offered. Lance smiled under his floppy hat and said, “Thanks Gill, but your brother Lloyd snores something awful. I’ll come stay when the weather turns cold.” I chuckled at Lance’s candor because Lloyd did snore like a bear. We finished our melon, and reclined on the banks of the trickling river. I was thinking about the next morning and heading home. The late August night was pleasant, but I would be up early working in the fields. “Guys!” Arty said, breaking the silence with a tone of urgency. “We need to make a pact.” Arty, the most outgoing of our group, instigated most of our boyhood adventures. We were on the brink of being men, but still held to the boyish life we were accustomed to that summer. “A what?” Lance asked. “A pact…an agreement that we’ll be friends forever,” Arty clarified. “We need to agree that every ten years we’ll meet back on this rock…meet back at Salt Creek no matter what.” “Sounds good to me,” I replied. Lance, taking a little more time and in a more serious tone, said, “Ya’ll are about all I count as family. I’ll be here.” Arty