Pecos Valley Revival

Pecos Valley Revival

Alice Duncan

This is Mimi Riser's book, for sure! If it weren't for Mimi, I'd never have written it.

Chapter One

"Herd's comin' through!"

Jack, my obnoxious twelve-year-old brother, didn't have to make that announcement twice.

"Oh, Lord."

As I hurried to close the front door of our parents' dry-goods store, leaving my best friend Myrtle Howell gaping after me, Jack raced to the windows and started slamming them closed and latching them against what we knew was sure to follow the herd of which Jack spoke. In those days Second Street wasn't paved and during October, when the fall cattle drive was going on and all the ranches within hundreds of miles drove their herds through Rosedale, New Mexico, the dust the animals kicked up on their jaunt down Second would have been unbelievable if we hadn't seen it ourselves for so many years.

Fortunately the weather was cool that fall day, or we'd have suffocated. Suffocation was what generally happened during the spring cattle drives, although the May drives had become somewhat less stifling since the advent of electricity to town. Now the big rotating electrical fan we'd ordered from Missouri kept us from dying during the two weeks of the spring drives. Anyhow, around here you could never depend on the weather. It's been known to snow in southeastern New Mexico in April, and we've had heat waves in October (although we've also had snow in October and heat waves in April). Even though the Twentieth Century had rolled in some two-dozen years earlier, and we'd been a state since 1912, life was still a little on the edgy side in our neck of the woods back then.

As soon as we'd secured the store against the storm of dust to come, Jack, Myrtle and I, along with the few customers lingering in the store at the time, gathered around the windows to observe the action. Uncomfortable as the drives could be, they were also a whole lot of fun to watch. It was easy to get lost in the adventure of the action and to romanticize those men, the cowboys, who whooped and hollered through town, riding like centaurs and keeping the cattle confined to the street when the occasional cow or steer seemed inclined to stray onto the boardwalks in front of the stores and offices. Once or twice over the years a stray had lumbered through a window or a door, much to the dismay of it, the owner of the property, and the cowboys who had to get the animal out again.

I know for a fact that my idiot brother (I have another brother who isn't an idiot) had a glorified notion of what cowboys did on a daily basis, probably because he read a lot of Zane Grey novels. He'd even told me once that when he grew up, he aimed to move "west." I asked him where he thought we lived if it wasn't in the west, where the dad-gummed legend of the so-called western cowboy originated, but he only sneered at me.

For the most part, I had no sympathy for my brother. Watching the drive from behind the glass panes of the store window, though, I could understand how he'd formed his opinion of cowboys as noble—if somewhat rugged and dusty—heroes, however unrealistic the image might be.

As you observed the cowboys working, it was easy to let your mind wander to open plains and campfires and fabulous adventures featuring bad guys, red Indians, cattle rustlers, and fainting maidens. The unfortunate truth was that a cowboy's life was hard work, blazing heat (or frigid cold), danger and boredom for the most part—but that was no fun to think about, and it was definitely not romantic.

Suddenly Myrtle cried, "Oh, Annabelle! Isn't that Kenny Sawyer?"

"Where?"

She pointed. "There. Oh, my, doesn't he look handsome!"