After the Baton Rouge Mavericks returned home from their month in Texas, Beau kept me apprised of the happenings at his house. Things seemed to improve for a while, but eventually they came to a head and we all knew that there was change comin' in the household. Uncle Ben had decided that he wanted what Pappy had finally gotten . . . a good, loving woman that would stand by his side and keep him company. And by gosh if he didn't go out and find him one. Or rather, Dani found him one, right under his very nose. In just a few short months we would come to know and love Ellie Harris in the flesh, but for now she was just a name on a piece of paper. That's when the trouble began.
The biggest problem, one that had remained quietly hidden for years, was the fact that Uncle Ben, like Pappy, had been a professional poker player for most of his life. This seemed to be perfectly fine until Ben began to be known at church and in the community at large, and some of the old women objected. Not to Ellie. Goodness knows, Ellis was perfectly respectable. She was a widow from Houston who'd been hired to be the new schoolteacher, a job she loved. No, the problem was Ben. As long as he kept his nose down and didn't want to have a life, things were just fine. Once he began seeing the new schoolmarm, however, he was no longer acceptable in Baton Rouge 'society.' He was, after all, a gambler. He'd been retired for almost ten years, but that didn't matter. The school board passed a new rule, something regarding 'unsavory characters,' and Ellie was told it was either Ben or the job.
This is where the Mavericks stepped in and complained. Ben and Ellie had gotten to be more than just acquaintances, and neither of them cared for being told how to live their lives. So they retained counsel (Beau's next-door-neighbor, Russ Meyers) and sued the board. Ellie had a written contract, and the bottom line is the case was decided in their favor.
This wasn't all that was happening in Baton Rouge, however. Beau had spent some time talking with me while they were in Little Bend and subsequently decided that he'd been unhappy being a land broker for too long and he bought and remodeled a saloon. And, after almost sixteen years of marriage, Dani discovered she was going to have a baby.
Somewhere in there was the straw that broke the camel's back, and Ben determined the best thing for him to do was move out. He got a hotel room close to the boarding house Ellie lived in and began making plans. He wrote to me and asked if there was enough land on the B Bar M to build him and the soon-to-be-Mrs. Maverick a small house. And asked me to see if the Little Bend school board was going to have an opening for a teacher anytime soon.
The idea of Ben moving back to Texas sent Pappy into fits of ecstasy. He'd been missin' his brother, just like I would, and was thrilled at the idea that Ben was coming back to the family. Of course, I turned the matter of another house over to Pauly and told him to start building. To Ben, I said, "Come home."
And that was just the goings on in Baton Rouge.
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