High Lonesome

By Stan Cosby

When does a boy become a man? When does he cross that invisible line where marbles and tops and playlike don’t matter anymore? Is it when he begins to imagine what it would be like to wake up next to the girl that lives inside his soul? Is it when he buries his best friend wearin’ a coat still stained with that friend’s blood? Is it when he knows in his heart of hearts he could kill a man and not even think twice about it?
These are the questions that rage in young Crawford Cashion’s mind as he rides to his destiny in the turbulent years of the Range Wars in southwest Texas. Though the country has turned a page with a new century, the Old West still lingers on, and so does the prairie. People may change. Attitudes and philosophies come and go, but the prairie—the HIGH LONESOME—will always stay the same—unforgiving of weakness, immutable and severe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665573047

Stan Cosby

Stan Cosby is truly a son of the “High Lonesome.” Born in Canyon, Texas raised in Amarillo, Texas, the capital of the High Plains, he is a Pastor by vocation and thus, a writer and a story-teller by calling. Sermons, poems, essays, short stories, theological treatises, family histories – he has written them all. Pastor Cosby (or Pastor Papa as his grandkids call him) lives with his wife Susan on the “Old Home Place,” a Centennial Farm of his wife’s family near Hedley, Texas. HIGH LONESOME is his fourth book to be published.

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© 2022 Stan Cosby. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  10/19/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7302-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7303-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7304-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022918782

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Dedication

To my fearless Cosby and Johnson ancestors, who rode the

range and settled the country fighting for the little guy.

AUDACES FORTUNA JUVAT

Foreword

HIGH LONESOME is a fictional work based on historical events that actually took place during a forty-year period primarily between 1870 and 1910. Because these events were tragic and troublesome and involve the feuding of families whose descendants still live today, I have chosen to change the names of main characters while leaving the names of minor characters alone.

I have substituted the name Cashion for Cosby. Cashion was, in fact, the maiden name of Lemuel Pryor’s mother.

I have substituted the name Swank for Johnson. No story behind the use of this name—just seemed to fit the characters!

As for the villains . . . I have substituted Butcher for Slaughter. Not too subtle, but then I really don’t care who figures this one out. Rather than the Long S their brand becomes the Rafter B.

John Joyner, wagon boss for the Long S, becomes John Ralston, of the Rafter B. Ralston was the name of a bully that used to terrorize me when I was four or five years old until one sweet day of reckoning . . . but that’s another story.

By and large, first names stay intact with the exception of the main character, the narrator of the story, Crawford Nelson Cashion. Crawford or Craw is a combination of real persons in the family. He is my Granddad, Clarence Nelson Cosby, who did indeed have a grade school crush on Ethel Slaughter at Glen Creek School, only in this book she is Rosie Smith with brothers Jess and Tom. In the book, Rosie actually becomes Craw’s wife which, of course, never happened in real life. That’s the Hollywood part.

But Crawford is also Ira Bird who did indeed become Uncle Bob’s partner of sorts and was witness to Joyner’s back-shooting of Uncle Bob at round-up in 1902.

Some place names I have preserved—German Wells, Tobacco Creek, Glen Creek. Others I have changed. Howard County becomes Micklen County. Big Spring becomes Sweet Spring. Lamesa becomes Dawson City. Soash becomes Truscott.

All the horses’ names are real—Old Button, Old Blue, Scandalous, Redwing, Daddy Rat, George, and Blackie.

Minor historical characters whose names remained unchanged include J. A. Baggett, sheriff; Dr. Hunt, physician of the T & P; and Bob Kemper, foreman of the jury.

In the back of the book are two things that the reader will find helpful:

1) A CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS - according to the book and not according to the true genealogical record, and,

2) A GLOSSARY OF TERMS - turn-of-the-century expressions and the cowboy slang of the day

Boy, did I have fun writing this book! Took me a couple of years to do it and I loved every minute of it. Pretty sure I was born in the wrong century . . . Call me Craw, and watch me draw . . . but so glad that the universal principles still apply and I can be a cowboy in heart. And by the way, where I come from to be called a Cowboy is a real compliment!

I hope you enjoy the book.

                                                                                       Stan Cosby

                                                                                       October 2, 2022

Contents

Chapter 1     A Mighty Big Something

Chapter 2     A Thing Called Hope

Chapter 3     Homesteading on the Prairie

Chapter 4     Rustlers

Chapter 5     Uncle Bob Finds a Partner

Chapter 6     Segundo

Chapter 7     Cow Punchin’

Chapter 8     Doctor Bob

Chapter 9     Alone

Chapter 10   Red Ribbons and Blue

Chapter 11   School Days

Chapter 12   Roundup

Chapter 13   Adios to you all

Chapter 14   The Trial

Chapter 15   Uncle Miles Comes Ahuntin’

Chapter 16   Showdown at Devlin’s

Chapter 17   What Happened After

Chapter 18   Little Sister

Chapter 19   Rawhide and Runnin’ Boards

Chapter 20   Envoy

CHAPTER ONE

A Mighty Big Something

My God, muttered Julia as she stared out the kitchen door. It’s the end of the world. Better come look, Mama. All of us kids came running to see. There, in the north, a massive, black wall of smoke and cloud came boiling toward us. In front of the wall, smaller spirals of dust, pale against the charcoal backdrop, danced in frenzied circles. Lightning sparked fiercely throughout the billowing curtain, and as the dark bank spread both east and west, it seemed the whole world was on fire.

Children, listen to me, said Mama, trying to keep her voice calm. I believe that’s a cyclone and we don’t have a storm cellar. We’re going to have to make a run for the breaks. She grabbed up the baby, crying now. Julia grabbed the rest of us and off we raced for the canyons we hoped would save our lives.

Though the breaks were only a mile to the south, the darkness overhauled us before we could reach them. The sharp sand stung our arms and legs, lashing us onward. The wind became a buffeting fist. Tumbleweeds and even tree limbs clattered around us as the cyclone struck.

Quick now, Julia, down here! Mama screamed above the storm. In a tangled mass of arms and legs, we slid down the gravel and caliche into the dry gully that snaked lower into the canyon.

Huddling beneath the mesquite shrubs that grew from the sides of the gully, we shivered in terror. Fanny Kate was sobbing. Robert Charley looked as white as a wagon sheet. My heart was thumping like a baby rabbit’s.

Mama and Julia tried to shield us with their arms and hands, though one hand of Mama’s clung tenaciously to a mesquite root.

Finally, the fury of the storm began to subside and a steady rain began to fall. Mama said, Now, kids, we’ve got to get out. The rain will fill this gully and drown us all.

By helping one another, we managed to clamber up and out of the draw.

What we saw amazed us—nothing had changed. Back east, when a twister tore through the woods, it left a swath of snapped and uprooted trees. Here, the flat and barren landscape was absolutely the same. We only hoped our house was still standing.

Of course, we were all badly shaken. I honestly could not have told you which way to go to find our house, but with Mama’s instinct to guide us, we stumbled our way back over the prairie.

When we came to the pasture fence, Mama said she knew exactly where we were. By this time, we were soaked to the bone, and it was getting colder, though the day had started as warm as any April day.

At last, we reached the house—miraculously, still standing. The only damage seemed to be a hundred yards of pasture fence where posts were missing, and the wire was stretched and snarled.

Once inside, we found everything in the house covered with dust and whatever we touched, shot off electric sparks. But at least we were safe and still had a roof over our heads.

That cyclone was one of my earliest childhood memories, and my first introduction to the capricious nature of West Texas weather. To this day, a black cloud of any size at all will send an involuntary shiver down my spine.

Looking back on it now thirteen years later, I know the weather only personified the unpredictability and the peril of the times. I grew up when the West was still wild, when wealth made law and might made order. In those days, for a man to fight for his stake against the greedy cattle baron was to punch a one-way ticket to Boot Hill.

At the time of the twister, though, I knew none of that—only that we were safe, that the house still stood, and that I had the bravest mother in the world.

My father was often away when I was growing up. He was a carpenter and built many homes and barns and windmills across the South Plains, so Mother, more often than she would have liked, had to be our protector as well as our provider. She lived in constant fear for her family, but like most womenfolk of the High Lonesome, she hid her fear well behind a façade of iron will and raw nerve.

Father was away, in fact, the day I was born. It was in that same tornado-teased house, but five years earlier. I was child number eight (number seven to survive), and the first born in that house.

For six months, my folks had lived in a twelve by twenty rent shack in town—Ma, Pa, and the six kids. They had lived in the new house about nine months when I came along, so I must have been a part of the house-warming. The year was 1888.

Our place was located half-way between Sweet Springs and Dawson City, just off Sulphur Draw. As the first white settlers in the area, I’m sure we were the talk of the Draw. The prairie dogs must have gossiped about us for weeks. And the mourning doves daily keened our intrusion. And the coyotes yelped and howled and, of course, reveled over an improved feed bag—our chickens. But truth to tell, we didn’t care. We had a real home at last, even if it was the High Lonesome. And I’m sure I cared least of all, snuggled down in