Antebellum BK 1 by Jeffry S.Hepple Page B

were to kill him or let him go. I decided that my conscience would bother me less if I let my brother live than it would if I killed him. If it’d been after he shot Charlie, I would have made a different choice.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got a few things to do before I can quit for the day. Why don’t you wait for me at the ranch? Jane, Paul and John will be delighted to see you.”
    Whipple stood up. “Sure would like to see them too. Where’s it at?”
    “ Do you remember the old Ranger Fort?”
    “ Fort Fischer? Sure do.”
    “ Just follow the river downstream for about a half mile from the fort. You can’t miss it. There’s a sign above the front gate.”
    “ Still called the Two Alone Ranch, is it?”
    “ Yes. It was too much trouble to register a new brand.”
    ~
    “ So is Marina still in Galveston?” Josiah asked Jane.
    “ She went to California with Jack, Clementine and Robert,” she replied.
    “ Did she now? California?”
    Jane nodded. “The army changed their orders again. They’re in San Francisco.”
    “ Guess what, Uncle Josiah,” Johnny said excitedly.
    “ I can’t guess. Tell me.”
    “ We’re going to New York next week.”
    Josiah looked at Jane for confirmation.
    “ Pea starts at West Point in the fall,” Jane supplied. “Johnny and I are going to travel with him. I want him to know that there’s a world beyond Texas.”
    “ Plannin’ to see Anna, were ya?”
    “ We’ll spend some time with Nancy in New York, with Anna in Washington and then we’ll visit the old Van Buskirk Home Place and my father’s home at Montauk Point.”
    “ Is your father goin’ with you?”
    “ He died last winter.”
    “ Oh. I’m right sorry to hear that. He was a fine old gentleman.”
    “ How long will you be here in Waco?” Jane asked, to change the still painful subject.
    “ Just long enough to shed the trail dust, then I’m gonna head up to Fort Worth. They say a boom-town’s sprung up with gamblin’ and such. That might attract a feller like Lucky Billy Van.”
    “ We don’t talk about Uncle William,” Johnny warned.
    “ Oh.” Whipple ducked his head. “Reckon you don’t. Sorry I brung it up.”
    “ I don’t know where Pea could be,” Jane said, with a warning look to Johnny that failed to register.
    “ I seen Pea sparkin’ a pretty girl as I come down,” Whipple said, cutting off Johnny’s question. “What’s Anna doin’ in Washington?”
    Jane rolled her eyes. “She’s back on her anti-slavery bandwagon. Officially she’s a research assistant on President Taylor’s staff but in reality she’s a pamphleteer for the Whig Party.”
    “ I can’t figure Zach Taylor on that,” Whipple mused. “You know he still owns slaves? Or did when last I talked to him.”
    “ It came as a shock to most southerners when he said he’d veto the Wilmot Proviso if he was elected,” Jane agreed.
    “ What’s a Wilmot Proviso?” Johnny asked.
    “ A law that Congressman David Wilmot introduced in the United States House of Representatives that would have banned slavery in the territory acquired from Mexico after the War,” Jane said.
    “ Includin’ all of what was once called the disputed land in south Texas and in New Mexico east of the Rio Grande,” Whipple added.
    “ Is that a bad idea?” Johnny asked. “Banning slavery?”
    “ If you’re planning to grow cotton, rice or sugar, it surely is,” Whipple replied. “You gotta have slaves to pick cotton, plant rice and chop sugarcane. Payin’ somebody to do that kinda work just ain’t profitable.”
    “ But there aren’t any cotton, rice or sugar plantations in the places that the Wilmot Proviso addresses,” Jane said. “That was President Taylor’s argument.”
    “ Are we for or against slavery?” Johnny asked.
    “ That’s a hard question to answer,” Whipple replied.
    Jane sighed. “We know that slavery’s wrong but ending it suddenly would ruin the entire economy of the South.”
    “ So