Who doesn’t like stories? And if they are true, isn’t that even better?

One night at a gala Christmas party at the home of a prominent Maine legislator from Windham, surrounded by a host of his friends, he told me that he loved stories of the Old West the cowboy days. Oh, that struck a chord with me. I have lots of stories of cowboy days in Texas where I was born and grew up.

My great grandmother, Catherine, whose grandfather had fought for Texas independence in 1836, married young and had seven children in quick succession. She and her large family lived on the Barnard Ranch in central Texas about 50 miles east of Waco. Good farming black land with small creeks flowing even in the driest of years. Good land for raising cattle. Lawless land.

In 1893 my great grandfather, Upton, succumbed to pneumonia. Family lore tells me four black-as-night horses pulled the wagon bearing his casket through a sea of mud to the graveyard. Today that graveyard holds many more of my relatives, including my beloved grandparents.

Suddenly, this still-young woman had the full responsibility of seven youngsters. In addition, she had the sole responsibility of the ranch.

Cattle-rustling is an age-old tradition, and the Barnard Ranch had already lost several head of cattle to those cattle bandits. Catherine’s ranch foreman, a short and short-tempered man known as “Little Billy,” frequented the local saloons and was well-known in town and also well known by the local cattle rustlers.

What was she to do? She did the sensible thing. She married Billy, the ranch foreman. He not only excelled in his duties with management of the ranch, but he adored the Barnard boys. They accompanied him with cattle branding, with “herding ’em up” for a cattle drive, and he soon became a father image to them. In a short time, Catherine was pregnant with his child.

One dark and moonless night, Catherine and Billy had long since been asleep, when the sound of fast-approaching horses awoke them.

“Come on out, Billy,” the mounted men demanded as their horses danced around the front yard.

Billy hurriedly put on his pistol always handy in its holster and went out onto the front porch. Before he could cry out a name, or any other word of warning to his family inside, he fell dead from gunshots fired at point blank range. Catherine delivered Billy’s son two months later.

“Little Billy” had a reputation in town. Maybe he had the “little man” syndrome. Maybe he had talked too much. Maybe he knew the names of some of those cattle thieves. We will never know. The killers never came to justice, though members of my family spent decades trying to put a name to those who had killed “Little Billy.”

My great grandmother went on to marry again, making a home for her brood of children on the lawless lands of Texas.

P.S. In 2011, a man from Athens, Texas, was sentenced to 99 years in prison for cattle rustling.

Sally Breen lives in Windham.