Raiding With Morgan by Jim R. Woolard

be the next person you met, as every male bore arms.
    â€œWhen I returned home to Elizabethtown, I wasn’t the same man who’d left thirty months earlier. I realized a life in which each day is planned in detail had no appeal for me. I craved the danger and uncertainly of living amongst the horse-loving sheiks that inhabit deserts and fortresses as old as time itself. There I was the outsider who had to prove his worth every minute of every day. It was like drinking fine wine from a glass with no bottom.
    â€œTy, your grandfather is a hidebound but loving parent. I was restless and bored and stayed over once too often to bet on the races after a horse-selling trip to Louisville. Enoch Mattson breeds, trains, and sells horses, and follows the results at the racing tracks, but he is too Baptist to race or bet on them personally. He took exception to his son engaging regularly in what he deemed sinful behavior and threatened to disown me.
    â€œThat’s what started the serious trouble between us. I resented his having the gall to tell a grown son what he could or could not do. Your grandmother tried to smooth things over. Your grandfather refused to talk to her, and the three of us went weeks without speaking at the supper table.”
    Owen Mattson sipped water from a canteen, spat, and offered Ty a drink. Ty was immersed in his father’s story and nearly choked on a single swallow. He cleared his throat and nodded he was okay.
    â€œIt was my love for your mother that brought everything to a head,” Owen Mattson said. “Your mother was a red-haired, bewitching, high-strung girl. I fell in love with my first glimpse of Keena McVey at her father’s Louisville tavern and boardinghouse. Bran McVey’s Iron Gate was the favorite gathering place for horse owners, horse lovers, jockeys, and those anxious to learn the favorites for upcoming races. When she was six years old, Keena lost her mother to fever, and Bran McVey didn’t remarry. He saw that Keena never knew want. He enrolled her in the Louisville Female Academy and insisted that she graduate. Your mother always said the most enjoyable moments she spent with her well-to-do, snobby classmates in three years was her piano lessons in a private room.
    â€œAfter her graduation, Bran McVey tried his best to make a schoolteacher of his daughter. Your mother refused. After three years of boredom at a female academy, a schoolroom offered the same dull bill of fare to a tavern rat like Keena McVey. She ragged on her father until he agreed to take her aboard as a partner in the Iron Gate. It was a decision he never regretted. He was soon bragging that his daughter was the belle of the Louisville racing scene. Horsemen and their wealthy guests, knowing the Iron Gate respected proper decorum, came from far and wide to listen to Keena McVey play the piano and partake of the most famous menu in the city. Your mother and her servers were treated as ladies and nothing less, without exception, or you were shown the back alley—same as any customer who overimbibed. The Iron Gate was the place to be seen in Louisville.”
    Owen Mattson sipped more water. Ty was sorry for the brief delay. “I was searching for a table the last night of racing season and, by sheer chance, met your mother face-to-face. I’d observed her from a distance, and not being acquainted with anybody close to her, circumstances didn’t arise that would allow me to meet her properly. Our coming together by chance in the middle of the crowd that evening probably wasn’t what some called ‘proper,’ but I looked into Keena McVey’s violet eyes and sparks flew both ways, burning a hole in my soul.
    â€œShe treated me to a smile that melted my heart and curled my toes. I wasn’t going to miss my chance. I sucked up my courage, bowed at the waist, and proclaimed, ‘Miss Keena McVey, you’re the most beautiful lady in God’s realm.’