It is 1867, and twenty-three-year-old Shade McDonald is ready for a change. After spending the last few years serving in the Civil War, Shade has his sights set on marrying a good woman, settling on the family farm in Kentucky, and raising a family. Un

BEYOND THE STORM

By RODNEY BARTLETT

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Rodney Bartlett
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4697-9496-9

Chapter One

There are times when a person has to depend not only on wisdom but on conscience as he sojourns through this earthly walk. What affects or forms that person's conscience makes all the difference. These thoughts were on Shade McDonald's mind as he tried to understand his present circumstances.

His long-range plans were to find and marry the right woman, settle down on the family farm in Kentucky, have three or four kids, raise some livestock, and grow corn and tobacco. So much for plans. Now here he was, twenty-three years old, and the only companions he had at the moment were a 51 Colt Navy revolver, a Spencer rifle, and a strawberry roan named Rex. They were all on a hot, dusty road in southeastern Texas. It was May 1867.

Bitterness was not part of Shade's makeup. This was not where he wanted to be, but this was where he needed to be. Raised by God-fearing parents, he was taught that things, both good and bad, happened for a reason, and many good and bad things had happened that had led him here.

This path to Texas had started in Kentucky in a three-room log cabin backed up to Panther Creek. Tom and Mary McDonald, Shade's parents, were good people. Both had come from Virginia with their families when they were young and settled in the same area of western Kentucky. Mary's mother had taught them both in a one-room schoolhouse until Tom turned thirteen, whereupon he'd quit to help his father on the farm. Five years later, Mary and he were husband and wife, moving into their diminutive creek-side cabin. Three years later came the first of two boys. That was Shade.

His dad named him Shade because he'd been born during a hot spell when there had been nothing to staunch the blistering July heat. As soon as Tom walked out of the cabin on the day of his son's birth, a cloud had covered the sun, bringing some relief. His dad always told him that that cloud cover was prophetic. "It will always be a relief to have you around," he would say.

Now Shade thought it would be nice to have some relief himself, as he pulled out his bandana and wiped the perspiration from his face and neck. A dry breeze had been blowing most of the day, but it wasn't cool or strong enough to offset the heat. Trying to gauge the time of day, Shade glanced up in the direction of the sun and noticed several buzzards circling over a stand of trees about a half mile away. The buzzards brought back memories that he would just as soon forget, but he knew that, as long as his mind kept a sane thought, the awful memories would be there. The sun was just past the center of the sky—close to 1:00 p.m. He should be in Pelham by 2:00. His dad and Rainn, his brother, lived five miles from there.

Shade was four years old when Rainn was born, and his father didn't have to venture outside in search of a name this time, for a driving rain pounded the roof of their little cabin that day. Shade always teased his younger brother that it was a good thing he wasn't born during a hailstorm.

Growing up, Shade wanted to be just like his dad. Tom McDonald was a good husband and father. Mary was the perfect partner for him and a great mother to her boys. In describing his parents, Shade would have to say that they always tried to treat everybody right, and that ethic affected his conscience and was the main reason he was on this southeastern Texas road today.

When he was twelve, Shade had accompanied his dad to Louisville to visit family. There he had witnessed something that would forever change his life—a slave sale. A black woman, about his mother's age, was separated from her daughter, about his age, and the injustice burned his young soul. When war broke out between the States, Shade felt he had to do his part to right this wrong of slavery. As soon as he became of age, in 1861, he was mustered in with the Third Kentucky Cavalry in Calhoun, Kentucky.

Another day had come in the spring of 1863 that would again impact his life—his beloved mother died. She contracted a fever in the winter of '62 from which she never recovered. Shade took leave to come home as his company was stationed in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, at the time. The funeral now seemed like ages ago, and he hadn't seen his father and brother since.

In the spring of 1864, Tom McDonald received a visit from his cousin, Frank Anderson, a Louisville lawyer, with news that Frank's father was near death. Jacob Anderson had moved to Texas in the early '50s and purchased some land to farm. He'd ended up raising and selling cattle, doing fairly well until his health and the war slowed him down. Frank Anderson knew about the loss that Tom had suffered, and needing someone to run the Texas farm, he'd thought of Tom and had made the offer.

Shade's father's decision to sell the Kentucky farm and move to Texas had been a hard one. In two agonizing letters to Shade, his dad had expressed his feelings about making such a move, about leaving all that had been dear to him behind. But the Kentucky cabin without Mary had become a lonely place, and after much deliberation, Tom had come to the conclusion that the change would do his youngest son and him some good.

It was a good deal. Tom McDonald, along with a fellow named Manny Venegas and his family, would oversee the 5,700-acre Texas farm with an option to buy half after ten years. Venegas and he would draw a set wage and then a bonus according to the year's profit. It was to be their operation. Pretty big responsibility to entrust to someone who'd never had more than twenty head of cattle, but Jacob and Frank Anderson knew Tom McDonald's character. Tom and Rainn moved from Kentucky in the fall of 1864.

When the war came to an end, Shade was in North Carolina with Sherman's army. In July 1865 he was mustered out of the service, at which point he left for the old homestead in Kentucky to pay his last respects to his mother and to help tie up some loose ends from the sale of the family farm. He also had another reason to be there—Janie Alexander. The two had become sweethearts before he'd joined up and Shade had thought it was forever; Janie, apparently, thought otherwise. Everything had seemed fine when he was home for his mother's funeral, and they had kept the relationship up with pen and paper. Writing wasn't one of Shade's favorite things to do, but he wrote her letters when he could. Putting his feelings on paper was a hard thing for him, and it put sweat beads on his forehead when he did, but he wrote. Letters from Janie, however, stopped arriving the following summer. Shade thought maybe their letters weren't getting through, but he continued to write, not finding out the reason why her pen didn't work until he got back to Kentucky. To his dismay, some young man from back east had come in and stolen her heart. Well, stolen was probably not the right word, since Janie had given it away.

When he saw her, she cried, showed him the opened letters that he had written, and said she didn't know what to do. Shade just told her that he did, and turned and walked away. It hurt, sure, but if she hadn't thought enough of him to wait, she wasn't worth marrying anyhow. And, he had reasoned, it was just as well, for he wasn't the same person who'd gone off to war. A gangly kid when he joined, Shade now stood over six feet and was thirty pounds heavier. His face, soft as a summer peach at the time, had been hardened by living outdoors and contoured by the stress of war. The thick, dark stubble on his face made him look older than his years. Shade's...