A Thousand Miles from Nowhere

Chapter 1 – Nowhere

My head hurt. I recognized the ache; I'd had it too many times before. Somebody was angry, and they'd taken it out on the back of my skull. Or I'd won their money at poker and they wanted it back, or they'd seen me win it and wanted it because, well, they wanted it. I reached around to the back of my head to see what the damage was and winced as my fingers came into contact with blood and other things that didn't belong there. It was pitch black outside and the pain was so excruciating that it took me a while to realize the ground was moving. As the roaring in my head began to subside I knew it wasn't the ground I was lying on. And I wasn't outside.

I made several attempts to sit before I could get upright, and as soon as I did that, I knew . . . it wasn't me or the ground that was moving, it was the boxcar I'd been lying in. Which meant I was on a train. There was no moon in the sky and a cold rain was pouring down, and it took a few minutes to determine I was headed northwest. That was not the direction I was supposed to be going. I checked for my wallet, then my thousand dollar bill (yes, I still carry that after all these years), then my watch. All three were gone. I inhaled deeply to try and clear my head and the smell of whiskey was so strong I could barely breathe. That's when I realized that the clothes I had on . . . weren't mine.

This wasn't supposed to be happening. I'd stopped trying to win other people's money a long, long time ago. I was a respected horse breeder, partners with my brother in the B Bar M Ranch outside of Little Bend, Texas, and one of the happiest married men you'll ever meet. So what was I doing on a northwestern bound train in the dead of night in somebody else's clothes?

It all started some months back, on that very same ranch in Texas when Jimmy from the Wells Fargo office rode all the way to our front door to deliver a wire. It was addressed to 'Mr. Bartley Maverick' and was from an organization I'd never heard of, The Independent Horse Breeders of America. I started to throw it away when Doralice, my beautiful bride of many, many years, snatched it from my hand.

"What is that?" she asked, even as she began to read it. She was quiet as could be while she read it several times over. "Gamblin' man, listen to this. 'The Independent Horse Breeders of America cordially extends an invitation to be an honored speaker at its annual meeting in Orell, Kentucky in September. Details to follow. Sincerely, Jackson L. Henry, President, IHA, Louisville, Kentucky.'"

I'd never heard of the IHA but they sure must have a lot of money to pay for a telegram that long. Doralice insisted that I wait to see what it was all about, so I put the telegram in my desk and promptly forgot about it. Almost ten days later a letter arrived. Now that was unusual in itself; we didn't get a lot of mail. I handed it, voluntarily this time, to Doralice while we sat in my office. That sounds prestigious doesn't it? That I have an office, I mean. It's in the house, of course, in an unused room about the size of a postage stamp, and it's never gotten any bigger no matter how much the ranch has grown. Blue-eyes read the letter then read it out loud to me.

It seems that someone had recommended me to the folks running the organization. "He's bright, personable and responsible for a whole new breed of cow-pony. Mr. Maverick would make an outstanding speaker," Doralice read. We both had a good laugh over that one. Then she read me the rest. "Please consider this the organization's invitation to attend the conference meeting on September sixteenth to the twenty-second, and to address the convention on September twenty-first."

"Can you write them back and say 'thank you' but I pass?" I asked her in my most loving husband tone of voice.

She shook her head. "No. I did some checking up on these folks. It's supposed to be a real honor to speak at these meetings, and you've worked long and hard for this. I want you to go."

Now we've said some crazy things to each other over the years, not countin' the words we said when we got married, but those sounded like some of the craziest to me. The last thing I could afford to do was take almost three full weeks to go to Orell, Kentucky to talk to a bunch of people I didn't know. If I'd known how it was gonna turn out, I definitely would have stayed home. But I didn't, and after a lengthy discussion, my loving wife made me promise I would go. Now I had to figure out what I was gonna say.

If you asked me how to bluff a table full of poker players or how to raise six kids while trying to make a living I wouldn't have a problem. Or even if you'd asked me how to cross-breed Mexican Criollo horses with Arabians, I could talk all night about that, if there were only two of us in the room. But it this was in front of a whole slew of people, and my days of being the center of attention were over.

So I wrote something and threw it away. Tried again and threw it away. Made my third attempt at it and finally had something that Doralice and the kids thought was decent. Threw that one away, too. Altogether it must have taken me two or three months to write the darn thing, and I'm still not sure what I ended up with was what I wanted to say. Doralice threatened to go sleep in the barn if I wrote it one more time, so I finally settled on what turned out to be my last effort.

I packed up and left for the convention on September fifth. Keep in mind I had a three-day stagecoach ride to get to Dallas, where I picked up the railroad. Then I proceeded northeast on the train until I got to Louisville. That was followed by another coach ride to Orell. I would have happily backed out of the whole thing if my wife had let me, but it was a no go. Only problem was I got off the train somewhere in Missouri to switch railroad lines and head east. The switch was made late at night and I had almost two hours in-between, so I stepped into the little café next door to the depot to get something to eat. After a small and unsatisfying meal, I went outside to smoke a cigar. Time dulls everyone's senses, mine among them. The eyes don't see quite as well, the sense of smell isn't as strong, and even if you still wear them when traveling, the gunhand isn't quite as fast. Mine was never speedy to begin with.

By the time I realized there was someone behind me, it was too late to avoid the gun butt, or whatever it was. The next thing I knew I was coming to in a boxcar headed northwest, in somebody else's clothes, with no money, no food, no water, a splitting headache and the oldest pair of boots I've ever seen. I was a thousand miles from nowhere and had no idea where I was bound.