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beauties the both, dressing in identical gowns and flowered hats with veils when they appeared in public, and the pride of their father. Since they were raised in town, one would suspect they knew little firsthand of the vicissitudes faced by women living on the ranches and farms around them. The sisters were from a prosperous family who dealt in hardware. Their father had migrated from Mississippi, as their soft voices and dropped
r
’s attested. Surnamed O'Kelly, the family had retained the
O
commonly dropped by most of Irish descent.
    Anson's dilemma was resolved somewhat when the younger sister, Irena, began to date a clerk in her father's store. It was assumed that she had bowed in favor of her older sister, not willingly but at her father's request. Yet she did not marry the clerk or any other of the young men who paid her court for several years. And as much as Anson cherished his marriage to Melba, he did not forget Irena.
    The marriage was short-lived. Melba died of childbed fever almost to the day of their first wedding anniversary. The child's breathing problems, during which he sometimes stopped breathing altogether, could only be overcome by the manual pumping of his lungs and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, whichAnson would trust to no one else. The child, called Johnnes for his father's seldom-used first name, survived just beyond his sixth birthday.
    From the day of Little Johnnes's birth, Anson no longer rode the range with his brothers. A hand was hired in his stead, and from then on Big Jack's ranch was no longer wholly a family affair. The three sons, along with their father, had developed a cattle spread from an acreage the four of them could handle in its every aspect until the acquisition of more pasture, which spread until it bordered on free range. This became too much. The operation was so large that it required employing a crew of cowboys, who spelled each other on a regular basis. Bronson and Jack soon gave up their chaps and spurs and began to develop the farms that were to consume most of their attention. The brothers met at the Towerhouse most days, heard Big Jack out, had his pronouncements translated into more practical terms by their mother, and saw to the numerous chores. To Jack fell the job of looking after the family's other business interests, including an ice-making plant in one of the towns, a feed-and-grain store, and a partnership or a large share of stocks in a bank. They also had a seasonal fertilizer operation devoted to the grinding, sacking, and distributing of phosphate, which arrived unprocessed in open railroad cars. All else was given up during cattle-shipping season.
    All three brothers lived near the Towerhouse until Melba's death, upon which Anson returned to the farmstead of his birth, Chinaberry, and was undoubtedly assisted in caring for Little Johnnes by the Mexican families operating the cotton farm. Anson drove to the ranch weekdays with the baby propped on the seat beside him, and later, as he moved about mounted, the baby sat in his arms. During the first years his saddlebags were stuffed with diapers.
    The countryside saw much of him, at a distance, during the six years of Little Johnnes's life, and hardly saw him at all in the years following the child's death. It was said he was even taking a hand in the cultivation of the cotton, which went against the local wisdom: “Once a cowboy, never a plowboy.” But hard work is helpful in overcoming sorrow.
    Although the rural telephone system was subject to frequent breakdowns, country wives kept fairly good tabs over a large area of acquaintance. But in Anson's case, little was known or could be known. His brother Jack took over the chores that involved visits to towns or any public appearances and did not relinquish them until Anson married again. On the subject of Anson, the family was mute, and they probably assumed he had had a nervous breakdown.
    Lurie told me later what had happened, so far as she could