Joe Pepper and Many a River

by Elmer Kelton

Genres: Native American & Aboriginal; Westerns

Synopsis

Joe Pepper and Many a River are two complete novels of the American West at one low price, from legendary western writer Elmer Kelton.

Joe Pepper

Joe Pepper is a Texas badman with quite a past. In fact, there isn't much that Joe hasn't done in his forty years of living on both sides of the Texas law--except face the hangman.

Now, convicted of murder, Joe is about to get that privilege. But before he goes, Joe has a few things he wants to say--and a few stories that he wants to set straight.

Many a River

The Barfield family, Arkansas sharecroppers, are heading west with their sons Jeffrey and Todd. In far West Texas their camp is attacked by Comanche raiders and the elder Barfields are killed and scalped. The younger boy, Todd, is taken captive by the Indians. The older son, Jeffrey, manages to hide and is rescued by the militia men. Jeffrey is taken in by a home-steading family, while Todd is sold, for a rifle and gunpowder, to a Comanchero trader named January.

Both become caught up in the turbulence of the Civil War, which even in remote West Texas, the border country with New Mexico, pits Confederate sympathizers against Unionists. The brothers, separated by violence, are destined to be rejoined by violence. Will they meet as friends or deadly enemies?

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Release date: December 31, 2019

Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Print pages: 560

Sample

1


Well, preacher, if you’ve come to pray over me in my last hours, I’m afraid it’s too late. I’ve seen a few of them last-minute conversions, and I never put much stock in them. I doubt as the Lord does, either. But I’m grateful for your company anyway. Looks like they’re going to hammer on that scaffold out there all night, so I won’t be getting no sleep. Far as I’m concerned they could put it off a day or two and not work so hard.

Don’t be bashful. If you want to hear my story, all you got to do is ask for it. It can’t be used against me now. I’ve seen what they said was my story lots of times, written up in the newspapers and penny-dreadfuls. Lies, most of them. Some reporter listens to a few wild rumors, gets him a pencil, some paper and a jug, and he writes the whole true story of Joe Pepper, big bad gunfighter of the wild West. Damn liars, most of them newspaper people. Tell one of them the time of day and he’ll set his watch wrong.

I think I know what you’re after … you’d like to have the story straight so you can tell it to your congregation. Maybe it’ll scare some of them twisty boys and turn them aside from the paths of iniquity. It might at that, though I can’t say I’ve wasted much time regretting the things I’ve done. My main regret has been over some men I didn’t shoot when I had the chance.

Don’t expect me to give you the dates, and maybe I’ll disremember a name or two. I figure a man’s head can just hold so much information, and he’d better not fill it up with a lot of unnecessaries.

I’ve always liked to tell people I was born in Texas, but since you’re a preacher I won’t lie to you. I always wished I was born in Texas. The truth is that I was born just across the line in Louisiana. My daddy and mama, they could look across the river and see Texas; they was of that old-time Texian breed, and it was just an accident of war that I wasn’t born where I was supposed to be. You’ve heard of the great Runaway Scrape? That was after Santa Anna and them Mexicans wiped out the Alamo and massacred all of them soldiers at Goliad. The settlers, they lit out in a wild run for the Sabine River to get across into the United States before Santa Anna could overtake them.

Now, my daddy was in Sam Houston’s army for a while, leaving my mama with some neighbors on the land he had claimed in Austin’s colony. But when the Scrape started, he got to fretting about her, knowing she was nigh to term. Didn’t look then like Sam Houston intended to fight anyway; he just kept backing off, letting Santa Anna come on and on. So my daddy deserted and rushed my mama across into Louisiana where she would be safe. While he was there, Sam Houston and his bunch whipped the britches off of Santa Anna at San Jacinto. Daddy missed out on that. He also missed out on the league and labor of land that the Republic of Texas granted to all the San Jacinto soldiers. If he’d of been in on that, we’d of been a lot more prosperous than we ever was.

The rest of his life he always told people he had been a soldier under Sam Houston. He didn’t tell them about the deserting, and the Runaway Scrape.

When the war was over my folks went back to the farm, and of course I was with them by then. You’ll hear people who don’t know no better bragging about what a wonderful grand thing it was, the Republic of Texas. Either they don’t know or they’re so old and senile that they’ve forgot. It was a cruel, hard time. There wasn’t no money to be had, hardly, and most people had to grub deep just to hold body and soul together. Seems to me like the first thing I can remember is following my mama and daddy down the rows of a cottonfield. Time I was old enough to take hold of a hoehandle, they had one ready for me. Only time I ever laid it down in the daylight was to take hold of something heavier. I remember watching my folks grow old before their time, trying their best not to lose that little old place.

I was grown and hiring out for plowman’s wages when the War between the States come on. I was a good marksman like everybody else in that country then; most of the meat we ever had on the table was wild game that I went out and shot. There was people that used to run hogs loose along the rivers and creeks, living off of the acorns and such. Every once in a while I would shoot me one of those and tell the folks it was a wild one. They wouldn’t of eaten it no other way. Religious folks they was; they’d of taken a liking to you, preacher. But I always felt like the Lord helped them that helped theirselves, and I helped myself any time it come handy.

Well, like I say, the war started. Right off, I volunteered. My old daddy, he joined up too. It had always gnawed at him, I reckon, that he wasn’t there when Sam Houston won that other war. He wanted to be in on this one. So he left Mama and the kids to take care of the place, and him and me went off to war. He never did get there, though. We hadn’t been gone from home three weeks till he was taken down with the fever and died without ever seeing a Yankee. We gave him a Christian burial three hundred miles from home. I always wanted to go back someday and put up a stone, but I never could find the place, not within five miles. Probably fenced into somebody’s cow pasture now.

The war wasn’t nothing I like to talk about. My part in it wasn’t much different from most any other soldier’s. I taken three bullet wounds, one time and another. I killed a few men that had never done nothing against me except shoot at me. Maybe that sounds funny to you, but it’s true. There wasn’t nothing personal in it; they was shooting at everybody that wore a uniform the color of mine. They didn’t know me from Robert E. Lee. It was our job to kill more of them than they killed of us.

Everybody seemed to feel like it was all right for me to shoot strangers in the war, but in later years they got awful self-righteous. Some wanted to hang me when I’d shot a man that did have a personal fight with me, men that wanted to kill Joe Pepper, only Joe Pepper beat them to it. Folks would say I’d forgotten the war was over. Well, it never was over for me. Seems like I’ve been in one war or another most of my life. I never could get it straight, them changing the rules on me all the time.

I was way over in Pennsylvania when the war was over and they told us to go home. I had taken a good sorrel horse off of a dead Yankee, but that chicken-brained captain of ours led us into an ambush that a blind mule could’ve seen, and the horse got shot out from under me. The best officers we had got killed off in the first years of the war, seemed like, and mostly what we had left in the last part was the scrubs and the cutbacks. The night after they told us to go home, I slipped along the picket line and taken a good big gray horse of the captain’s. I figured he owed me that for getting my sorrel shot. I knowed he wouldn’t take the same view on it, though, so I was thirty miles toward Texas by daylight.

That horse was the making of my first fortune, in a manner of speaking. Big stout horse he was, about fifteen hands high, Tennessee stock. Once I had schooled him, I could rope a full-grown range bull on him and he’d bust that bull over backwards. But that was later on, of course. That was when I was still known as Joe Peeler. The Joe Pepper name came later.

When I got back to the old homeplace I found out Mama had died, and the kids was taking care of the farm themselves. Couple of the boys was grown and plenty able. They didn’t have no need of me, and one thing they didn’t need was an extra mouth to feed. So I taken off and headed south with an old army friend of mine, Arlee Thompson. He had come from below San Antonio in the Nueces Strip country. That was a rough territory them days, Mexican outlaws coming across the line to see what they could take and run with, American outlaws settling there so if they was pressed they could always run for Mexico. The honest people—what there was of them—had a hard time. Even the honest ones fought amongst theirselves a right smart, Americanos against Mexicans and vice versa. You’d of thought they had trouble enough without that, but they didn’t seem to think so.

The ranches had let a lot of their cattle go unbranded through the war because there just wasn’t enough men to do the job. There was grown cattle there—bulls three and four years old that had never felt knife or iron—cows with their second or third calf at side, their ears and hides as slick as the calves’ were. Cattle wasn’t worth much in them first times after the war, hardly worth anybody fighting over. People fought anyway, of course. Men’ll fight when they can’t even eat. Me and Arlee, we figured there’d be money in cattle again. We set out to claim as many as we could. Mavericking is what we called it them days, after a man named Maverick who said all the branded cattle belonged to the man who registered the brand, and all the unbranded cattle belonged to him.

Now, there was some people who didn’t take kindly to what we done. You ever hear of Jesse Ordway? He was a power in that lower country. He didn’t go to war himself, so he was sitting down there putting things together while most of the men was off fighting Yankees. He gobbled up a lot of that country, taking it away from the Mexicans, buying out war widows for a sack of cornmeal and such like. He didn’t object to people branding mavericks as long as they was working for him and burning his brand on them, but it sure did put the gravel under his skin to see other people doing it. He thought he had him a nice private little hunting preserve. The rest of us was poachers.

But damn good poachers we was. Inside of a year me and Arlee had us a pretty good-sized herd of cattle apiece. We didn’t own an acre of ground, either one of us, but half the people down there didn’t. Jesse Ordway didn’t actually own a fraction of what he claimed. Most of it he just squatted on and used because he was bigger and stronger than anybody else and had the gall to hold it.

I didn’t tell you yet about Arlee’s sister. Millie was her name. Arlee wasn’t much to look at, tall and thin and bent over a little, and had a short scar over one cheek where a Yankee bullet kind of winked at him as it went by. But Millie, she must’ve took after her mother’s side of the family. I’ve got a picture of her here in the back of my watch. See, wasn’t she the prettiest thing ever you laid your eyes on? Picture’s faded a little, but take my word for it. She wasn’t much bigger than a minute, and had light-colored hair that reminded me a little of corn silk. And eyes? The bluest eyes that ever melted a miser’s heart.

She was living with her old daddy on the place he had claimed as his share from the revolution. It was a league and a labor just like they’d of given my daddy if he had stayed with Sam Houston. But the old man Thompson had had his share of hard luck and had lost most of his country one way and another. He was down to just a little hard-scrabble outfit about big enough to chunk rocks at a dog on. Time me and Arlee got there, he was most blind, and it was up to Millie and a Mexican hand named Felipe Rios to take care of the work. Jesse Ordway had branded up a lot of the old man’s calves for himself, and there wasn’t much the old man or that Mexican boy could do about it. The old man prayed a good deal, asking the Lord to forgive Ordway because he knowed not what he done.

You’ll have to pardon me, preacher, but that’s one thing I never could accept about these religious people, always asking forgiveness for their enemies. Ordway knew what he was doing, and he didn’t need forgiveness; what he needed was a damn good killing.

First time I seen Millie I couldn’t believe she was Arlee’s sister. But there was a resemblance; they both had the same big blue innocent eyes. You could’ve told either one of them that the sun would come up out of the west tomorrow and they’d believe you. I told Millie a good many lies at first, till my conscience got to hurting. People will tell you I never had a conscience, but they don’t know me. It always plagued me when I done something I thought was wrong. So most of my life I’ve tried not to do them things. Other people might’ve thought I done wrong, but I don’t have to listen to their conscience, just mine.

The old man died a little while after I got there. I reckon he had been ready to go before but had waited till Arlee was at home to take care of Millie. Old folks are like that sometimes, you know; they just keep the door locked against death till they’re ready to go, then they seem to walk out and meet it of their own free will. I’ve seen some that greeted it like a friend.

The day came when we got news that the railroad had built west into Kansas, and people in South Texas began to round up a lot of them cattle and drive them north to turn into Yankee dollars. Me and Arlee had us close to two hundred steers apiece over and above the maverick heifers we had put our brands on. The heifers had to stay—they was seed stock for the future. But them steers was excess, a liquid asset like the bankers always say. During our mavericking time we would split them fifty-fifty. We worked together, me and Arlee. We would put his brand on one and mine on the next. Felipe Rios helped us, but he didn’t get no cattle. He was working for wages, when we had any money to pay him. Anyway, he was a Mexican. They let Mexicans maverick cattle for other people, but they was stealing if they mavericked for theirselves. They would get their necks lengthened. Sounds rough, but that’s the way it was, them days.

Four hundred steers wasn’t enough to make up a good trail herd, so we throwed in with some more smaller operators and put together something like thirteen hundred head of cattle.

Jesse Ordway tried to crowd us. He brought in a couple of Rangers and claimed we had stolen a lot of the cattle—me and Arlee and some of the others. He bluffed and blustered, and I reckon he thought he had them Rangers in his pocket, but he didn’t. They listened to him real polite, then started asking him to show the proof. That was one thing he couldn’t do. The Rangers cussed him out for wasting their time and rode off and left him.

Then he tried to bluff us. He brought a gunfighter he had used to run some of the Mexicans off of their country, a pistolero name of Threadgill. He was before your time; you probably never heard of him. He was just a cheap four-flusher anyway. He got by on bluff, not on guts. The only thing game about him was his smell.

Ordway brought Threadgill and some others up to stop us the morning we throwed our herd onto the trail. Threadgill was the man out front. The way they had it made up, he was supposed to kill one or two of us and the rest would turn tail and run.

I used to carry my pistol stuck into my belt them days. I never did fancy a holster much. I watched Threadgill’s face. Just before he reached for his gun, I could see it coming in his eyes. I didn’t try to draw my gun; that would’ve taken too long. I just left it in the belt and twisted the muzzle up at Threadgill and pulled the trigger. Bullet caught him at about the second button on his shirt. One of them other toughs tried to draw his gun, but a shot come from behind me, and he was already falling before I could get my pistol pointed in his direction.

It was over in about the time it takes a chewing man to spit. There was that big Texas gunfighter Threadgill laying on the ground at Ordway’s feet, dead enough to skin. The other one was laying there coughing, going the same way only taking a little longer. I looked around and seen smoke curling up from Felipe Rios’s pistol. He had one of them old-fashioned cap-and-ball relics that must of weighed forty pounds.

It would’ve shamed that hired tough considerable to have knowed he was killed by a Mexican.

I kept my pistol pointed at Ordway’s left eye, where he couldn’t hardly overlook it. I hoped he would do something foolish, so we could adjourn court right then and there. But he decided not to press the case. He taken the rest of his men and went home, looking like a scalded dog.

The story got noised around, and nobody else in that part of the country gave us any argument. If anything, them old boys came out to help us push our cattle along. A lot of them was glad to see anybody get the best of Jesse Ordway.

I could of shot him right then and there, and later on I wished I had. It would’ve saved me and lots of people a right smart of trouble. It taught me a lesson that I didn’t forget as the years went by: when in doubt, kill the son of a bitch.

We had a pretty easy drive, as cattle drives went; there wasn’t none of them real easy. We caught the Red River in flood and lost one of the cowboys there. The average cowboy couldn’t swim a lick.

We could’ve easy had some Indian trouble up in the Nations, but as it turned out we didn’t. We run onto a bunch of Indians that thought we ought to give them some of the beeves just for trailing cattle over their land. Arrogant bunch, they was. The only reason they had that land in the first place was that the government gave it to them; they didn’t have any business charging taxpaying citizens for traveling across it. Couple of the boys gave them a steer apiece, but they didn’t get any of mine.

Nearest we ever come to a real fight was amongst ourselves. There was a fat boy with us who owned something like four hundred head—more than any of the rest of us. Name was Lathrop Nettleton, and he figured that as the biggest owner he ought to ramrod the outfit. None of us paid him much mind. We each of us went about and did what we could see needed to be done, and we mostly just ignored him. He got to mouthing at me one time, and I had to knock him down. I invited him to pull his gun if he was a mind to, but he wasn’t. Time we got to Kansas we was all mighty sick of him. I’m proud to say he was just as sick of me.

We pulled into Abilene and got the cattle sold and split up the money according to the cattle count. You ever see one of them trail’s end celebrations, preacher? No? Well, that’s probably a good thing. I’m here to tell you it’s no place for a man of the Gospel. There was other cow outfits in there besides ours, so the whole place was overrun with Texas cowboys trying to wash three months of dust out of their throats with the most damnable whiskey you’ve ever drunk—begging your pardon again, preacher. And then there was the girls over there on the tracks. I didn’t go for none of that, you understand; by that time I had made up my mind I was going to marry Millie Thompson even if I had to carry her off like some Mexican bandit. Her brother Arlee was with me, and I sure didn’t want him telling her no tales out of school. So I stayed with the whiskey and played a little cards.

There was a small saloon over next to the railroad that seemed kind of comfortable. It was run by an old-time Union soldier who had lost an arm in the war. I kind of taken a liking to him; I reckon he was the first damnyankee I had ever seen that was cut up enough to suit me. There was one of them Eastern gamblers, too, the kind that always wore a swallowtail coat and a silk hat. I figured he had to be crooked; I never did trust a man that had slick hands and wore a coat in the summertime.

I ought to tell you that I wasn’t just the average run of-the-mill cowboy when it came to cards. In the army I’d spent some time amongst a bunch of Mississippi River boys who could make a deck of cards do just about anything but sing “Dixie.” I had learned a right smart from them, at no small expense to myself. Still, I didn’t think I wanted to try that Eastern gambler on for size. I never could understand them cowboys that knew they was outclassed but still would go up against one of them sharps. Playing for matches on a saddle blanket is a lot different from playing for blood on one of them slick tables.

Some of the boys from our drive wanted to play him. Normally I’d of tried to talk them out of it, but Lathrop Nettleton was amongst them, and I figured it would do me good to see him nailed to the wall. So I just sat there and watched them play. I knowed sooner or later that gambler was going to suck them boys under and drown them like a coon drowns a hunting dog.

He was smooth about it. He taken his time before he set the hook. He’d win a hand and then let one of the other boys win one. Seemed like for a while he was losing more chips than he was taking in, so pretty soon some extra hands from other outfits sat in on the game. Gradually he got to winning. Along about midnight he was taking all the chips. Some of the boys had sense enough to draw out before they lost it all, but Lathrop Nettleton just hung and rattled to the bitter end. Before that gambler got through with him Nettleton had lost everything those four hundred steers had brought him. He was lucky to have a saddlehorse to ride home on. The gambler gave him back twenty dollars’ worth of chips. “For seed,” he says. “I want to see you back here again next year.”

I might’ve felt sorry for Nettleton then if he hadn’t started to beg. That was one thing I never could stand to see a man do. The one-armed barkeep finally had to put him out of there; told him if he couldn’t afford to lose, he couldn’t afford to play.

I didn’t interfere. I could of told Nettleton if I’d wanted to that I had been watching the gambler palm cards all night.

The boys was pretty well whipped down. The gambler set them all up to a drink at the bar before they went back to their wagons. Nettleton was already gone. I just sat there at the table by myself, glad Arlee hadn’t been in the game. When the boys finished their drink and started for the door they asked me if I was coming with them, I told them no, I wasn’t quite ready for the bedroll yet.

That gambler knowed I had money on me. When there was just him and me and the barkeep left in the place, he says to me, “The night’s still in her youth. Like to play a few hands, just me and you?”

I slipped that pistol out of my belt and pointed it up in the general direction of his Adam’s apple. It got to working up and down. “So that’s it,” he says. “You’re going to rob me.”

I says to him, “No, the robbery has already taken place. If I’d of told them boys they’d of tore you to pieces and fed you to the dogs. I thought the best thing was to stay here till they was gone and give you a chance to square things up without throwing your life into forfeit.”

He blustered and bluffed about not being a cheater, but I had him cold, and he knowed it. He finally caved in. I told him the only fair thing was for him to give back all the money he had won from the boys. I said it might help their feelings if he throwed in a little extra for interest. He turned kind of clabber-colored, but he shoved all the chips across the table. I got the barkeep to cash them.

I told that gambler if I was him I wouldn’t wait around for daylight. “Getting their money back won’t be enough for the boys,” I says. “They’re liable to come hunting for you. Smart thing would be to get you a horse and leave now. You could be a long ways up the track before sunup, and I’d be a few days coming back if I was you.”

That one-armed saloonkeeper seen it pretty much the way I did and seconded all my advice. He said they was good people, them Texas cowboys, when they was on your side. But they was woolly boogers when they was against you. That gambler walked out of there with nothing much besides his silk hat and that swallowtail coat and whatever cards was still up his sleeve. I had all his money.

You couldn’t say I lied to him, exactly. I didn’t exactly tell him I was going to give the boys their money back. I just sort of let him believe that was the way it was going to be. But the way I seen it, it wouldn’t be fair to give the money back to the rest of the boys if I didn’t give it to Nettleton too. I didn’t want to be dishonest about the thing, so I just kept all the money for myself.

I never told Arlee Thompson the whole truth. I told him I’d had me a set-to with the gambler after the rest of the boys got through, and that I had better luck than they did. I didn’t let on to Arlee how much money I really had till we got back to South Texas. I had all my share of the cattle money, minus the little bit I had spent on whiskey and new clothes, and I had all the money off of that poker table. It was a pretty good road stake for them days.

I was a little afraid some of the boys would go back over there the next day and find out from that Yankee barkeep what had happened. Things could of got a little unpleasant. But none of them seemed like they wanted to ever see the place again. They didn’t have the money to be going back there anyway, most of them. They’d had their plow cleaned.

We passed Jesse Ordway’s trail herd heading north as we went south, going home. We had got out on the trail a long ways ahead of him and sold our cattle early in the season when the price was at about its peak. First ones there generally lapped the cream, and the late ones taken the skim milk. I know Ordway wasn’t none too pleased to see us. Them days it was custom to invite passing strangers to stop for a meal or two—even the night—at your wagon. But Ordway didn’t give us any invite. I didn’t let it worry me. I was already way ahead of him because some of the mavericks I had branded had been his once upon a time; he was so busy branding other people’s that he hadn’t got around to all of his own. It was the quick that won the marbles them days, and the slow just wasn’t in it at all.

Naturally we got home several weeks ahead of Ordway, and I didn’t let no grass grow under my feet. I had done a lot of thinking about Millie Thompson. I’d lay awake at night and imagine I could hear her talking to me, laughing with me. She had a voice that kind of lifted sometimes and broke and sounded like a hundred little silver bells tinkling. It doesn’t take much of that to set a young man to making all kinds of dreams and plans. I wanted to build her a home and live in it with her for a thousand years.

I had kept that money a secret. When we got back to South Texas I went to listening and looking, and pretty soon through Felipe Rios I found out there was three-four Mexican families wanting to sell out. Felipe was telling them they ought to stay and fight, but he was just a bachelor, and they was family men. Jesse Ordway had been pushing on them pretty hard, running off their cattle, burning their hay, scaring their womenfolk. Not himself, understand, but people he hired for that kind of thing. They knew when he got back off of his trail drive that they was fixing to catch hell. They couldn’t look to the law for help. Them lawmen wouldn’t take two steps out of their way to help a Mexican.

Without acting too interested I managed to find out what Ordway had been offering them. When I figured out the places I wanted and could afford, I went and bought them. Them Mexicans thought I was one crazy gringo, but they was tickled to take my money and run. One of them told me Jesse Ordway would be shoveling dirt in my face before the first cold norther of the winter. But I reckon he figured it was better mine than his, because he was sure glad to take what I offered him.

I oughtn’t to’ve been, but I was some surprised to find out that Millie Thompson wanted to marry me as much as I wanted to marry her. I had thought I might have to argue with her. You wouldn’t think so to see me like I am now, an old man, but there was some folks—women anyway—who used to say I was handsome them days. I never was one to argue much with a woman.

We had us a church wedding with all the trimmings. Surprise you, preacher? Bet from all the things you heard about me, you thought I was never in church in my life. But I was, once or twice before that and at least once since that I can remember. There was a time long years ago when I climbed up into a church loft to get away from a bunch of angry old boys that was after me, but there wasn’t no praying done that time, not that I recall.

We took us a short wedding trip to San Antonio … stayed in the best suite of rooms we could get in the Menger Hotel, just down the hall from where Captain Richard King himself was holding forth. The King Ranch King, you know. Looking at him, I even taken a notion that if I worked extra hard and played my cards right, I might get to be as big a man in the cattle business someday as he was.

You a married man? Then I suppose you know how sweet things was for me and Millie for a while. That picture I showed you in the back of my watch … she had that made in San Antonio. You can see the sparkle in her eyes if you look close. Oh, that was a happy time.

I never completely put Jesse Ordway out of my mind, though. I kind of kept track of where I thought he would be, one day to the next. I had us a crew of carpenters camping out and building us a house before Ordway ever got home. Naturally he taken the Lord’s name in vain when he found out what I had done. The places I picked was all on the river. The Mexicans had been doing a little irrigation, and there was a lot more good land that a man could have put into farms if he had the inclination and the strong back to do it. Ordway had figured on taking that land dirt cheap and gr