Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 86160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
2
Carter
Now how we come by all this money. The Paynes, that’s our last name, were land rich and dirt poor for as long as anyone could remember. Old Silas, my daddy, had inherited the land from his daddy and his daddy from his and so on and so forth going back a couple hundred years.
There wasn’t never much of nothing good coming from it, until that day I went to walking to get away from daddy’s misery. I’d just turned eighteen and my days were spent taking care of the animals and him. Scared that I was gonna lose him just like I’d lost mama and be all-alone.
I didn’t mind being alone so much it’s what I was used to. But if daddy died then I wouldn’t have nobody on this earth, nary a soul. I hadn’t given it much thought until now and that’s what got me to walking the land lost in my own head.
I could go into town and make me a few friends I guess. There was always somebody trying to talk to me wherever I went. But I wasn’t too fond of city ways and wasn’t much interested in them coming out here neither.
So there I was walking the land and thinking about what was to become of me. I was throwing a stick for that old dog to catch not really paying too much mind when it happened. The stick landed in the brush somewheres and that poor dog got to whining something awful until I went and got it out.
That’s when I found it. Texas gold. The darkest purest oil anyone had seen in these parts in some time. I knew what it was right then and there but it didn’t mean much to me. Like all the men of my family before me, I was very content with my life as it was.
Not that money wouldn’t be nice. But it wasn’t as good as having daddy back on his feet and healthy. Well, the money started coming in after that, and anyone who thought they could get over on me had another think coming. I was smarter than most folks gave me credit for.
I’d taken to that schooling well enough on my own and knew what was what. No accountants and lawyers for me. I figured the old timers didn’t need one and neither did I.
I took to reading anything I could get my hands on to help me wade through the muck and mire of the money grubbers who all came calling with their hands out. Thing is, I mostly read the stuff one of my great grandfathers had left behind. It worked then I don’t see why it can’t work now. Far as I know nobody changed them laws in over two hundred years.
Well after the oil made us rich as Croesus, daddy up and died from his swollen ball predicament leaving me a very rich but lonely man. That’s where the fiancée came in.
Now most folks thought I was simple minded on account of I never had more than my home schooling and stayed mostly to myself not really having any friends or anyone to talk to.
So some shyster with a little less money than me but what he considered better pedigree decided he could keep his family coffers full by marrying off his daughter to the redneck simpleton. People ought not to judge a book by its cover.
I hadn’t been in love with the trollop, not that she wasn’t pretty enough, she was. But I’d gone along with it even though I knew what the man was up to.
I figured it was about time at twenty-six to settle down and have me a kid or two to help run the place anyway. She was pretty enough to look at so it wouldn’t be a chore to bed her, and I’d have me a body to share the nights with at least.
But I don’t cotton to being betrayed. It’s one thing that she was after my money, but to bring her lover in my home, the home that has been in my family for generations, was a slight I cannot and will not forgive.
After I’d shot her and the adulterer and fed them to my hogs, I’d gone off and bought all the surrounding land because I was plum tired of people. I was mad as spit to tell the truth and anyone who’d come nosing around my place back then wouldn’t have made it off.
So to keep the peace and leave the population alive a little longer than they deserved, I’d bought out everyone around. I tore down homes, buildings and whatever else was in my way, until there was nothing left but the old log cabin that had been sitting on the land for well nigh two hundred years. My home.