Chapter XXI

en walked up to the house, rang the bell and stepped away from the door.  He felt very alone without William or Melinda.  As he was looking around he noticed several similarities to the mansion on the hill not a quarter mile from where he now stood.  The door opened and an older woman, obviously the maid, asked "can I help you?"

Len produced his badge then stated: "I'd like to speak to Mr. Strickland please."

"Did you have an appointment sir?"

"No ma'am.  I'm here on official Police business.  Is Mr. Strickland home?"

"I'm sorry, but Mr. Strickland is a very busy man.  Please make an appointment to meet with him in the City Hall."  She stepped back inside and pushed the door to close it.  But Len already had his foot out.

"Excuse me sir.  Will you please remove your foot so I can close the door?"

"I apologize Miss.  But I'm not through yet.  And besides, I haven't spoken to Mr. Strickland yet.

A man's voice spoke up, and the door opened wide.  "Is there a problem here Connie?"

She replied, "I don't know Scott."  She turned and addressed Len.  "Is there a problem here Mr. Mathers?"

"Yes ma'am.  There is.  I drove all the way out here specifically to speak with Mr. Strickland, but for some reason or another, I've been unable to make you understand that.  Now, I'm asking you, What is the problem here?"

Scott stepped through the door and stood face to face with Len.  He towered above Len and outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds.  But Len hadn't backed up an inch, and he wasn't going to, at least, on his own accord.

"I suggest you scram before I break you in two pieces cop."  It was getting nasty but Scott wasn't about to back down either.

"Now is that any way to talk to a Peace Officer?  You are about to assault a Federal Officer.  I can either talk to Mr. Strickland here or down at the Police station from a jail cell.  If one goes, you'll all go Scott.  You make the choice."  Len didn't bat an eye, he didn't stammer, and there was a very clear warning to his voice.

Scott stood there deliberating the situation.  He didn't like being put in his place by this no account cop.

"That will be enough Scott.  Show Mr. Mathers to my office will you?  Connie, get some coffee for him."

It was plain to see that Scott was not happy with what just happened, and he tried every way he could to intimidate Len as he led the way to the office.  The problem with that was, this was not Lens first rodeo.  He had experienced many such situations, and he knew what power he had and how to wield it.  Still, Scot was not used to someone who wasn't afraid of him, so he was not bashful with his words.  The problem was, he looked like he was big enough to do what he was threatening to do.

Once inside, Len looked around.  The place was a mansion.  From the artistic carvings to the ornate and precious hardwoods, all was perfectly matched, constructed and finished.  The type of work shown on these walls was very expensive.  In comparison to the Mayors home, it was several grades higher.  But the basic design of the house was essentially a flip of the floor plan of the Mayors mansion.

It was much more lavishly decorated, but it had a similar characteristics found in the Mayors mansion.  The difference was, this one has the touch of a wife very obviously present.  It was immaculately clean, but that was mostly from the not-so-friendly maid he just had the privilege of meeting.  A wife puts more of herself into a home than does a maid.

A question was looming in his mind.  The Mayors mansion was owned by the city of Stillwell Creek.  But this house was a private home.  Why the similarities?  He didn't think it was simply because the same contractor had built them.  Was there . . . could there be any connection to Regal Properties Construction, the contracting business built and owned by Greg Wheaton prior to his death?

Roger Strickland was the first of two children of Wayne and Doris Strickland, next came a daughter by the name of Godetia Christianna (Strickland) Waterbury, named after the wildflowers indigenous to the area.  She was known as Anna.  Wayne was the third and final spouse of Doris, and was one of three founders of the city of Stillwell Creek.

Doris first husband was Elmer Wardlow.  Lane Wardlow and Edna Jane (Wardlow) Combs came from that Union.  Elmer was one of the three founders.

The second husband of Doris was Elijah Bension.  From that union came Victor and Walter.  Elijah was the third founder.

There was an intense rivalry between the children of these three unions, much like the famous old family feud, the Hatfield's and the McCoy's.  It was quite a strange story, and the reason for the feud was because of that story.  And the rivalry was evident in every transaction between the two factions; Bension and Wardlow on one side of the fence, with the Stricklands on the other side.

There would be murder because of the rivalry, but still romance would bloom.  No matter how fierce the rivalry, romance seems to find its way in.  How else can a family feud last for generations?

And the story varied greatly as to the teller.  The gist of it was, the three founders went north up the coast from Los Angeles looking for some property on which to begin a huge cattle business.  They each claimed a mountain on which to park their future family and homes, each mountain having abundant water and grass on which to raise their herds.

A valley in the shape of a triangle with a small river running through it by the name of Maddox Creek, was cornered by the three mountains  They named their settlement, Stillwell Creek, the name of a gold prospector who first claimed there was gold.

In their absence of going for their cattle, the little township began receiving prospectors and was soon bustling.  The prospectors needed all sorts of things from prospecting tools to supplies, gunpowder, ammunition, firearms, whiskey and female accompaniment.  All of which brought with it the negative factions of a bustling gold town.

Two of the founders purchased Hereford cattle while the other purchased Charolaise.  There was upward to six hundred of cattle between them.  The dissension started on the trip back to their proposed homes.  Bension and Wardlow sided together in opposition to Strickland.  They did not want the Charolaise breeding with their Herefords thereby diluting the pure bloodlines.

Also, the Charolaise were similar to the Brahma which were notoriously cantankerous.  The Herefords were a mild mannered animal, but did not grow as big as the Charolaise, and the meat the Herefords produced had a higher fat content but, the Charolois were a hardier breed.

And, animals being animals, when a cow goes into heat, the bulls go into rut, and they will fight to the death for the privilege of breeding the cow, thereby extending their own bloodline.  It's just simply nature at its finest, culling out the weaker lines.

Doris Rutherford had married Elmer Wardlow two years before moving north to settle.  She had a son named Lane, and was pregnant with Edna Jane who would be born soon after moving to the new digs.

On the way north with the cattle, dissension between Bension and Strickland came to blows, and while they were wrestling on the ground in bloody battle, Strickland pulled a gun.  Bension was able to slap the gun micro seconds before it discharged, striking and killing Elmer Wardlow.

That broke up the fight but increased the dissension.  Bension, not having a wife and feeling partly responsible to Doris, married her to support and raise her children, but with the idea to have children of his own.  Approximately six years later, the family consisted of three boys and a daughter.  Two of the boys, Walter and Victor being his own.  But he took care of the Lane and Edna Jane as if they were his own.

The animals were still doing their own thing, the Charolaise winning out on doing most of the breeding.  More than once Elijah found one of his bulls gored to death.  Then one day Wayne Strickland found one of his prized bulls shot.  A month earlier Elijah warned Wayne to keep his fences up, but how do you build a fence out of sticks and barbed wire strong enough to hold a eighteen hundred pound bull caught up in a breeding frenzy.

You don't.  And Elijah was blamed for the shoot.  Elijah claimed he was no where near where the bull was shot, but, the influence of the dissension made that story hard to believe to Wayne.  The truth of the matter was the bull was cantankerous enough to charge a man on horseback goring the horse.  The bull then charged the cowboy, and the cowboy protected himself with the only thing he could that would stop a charging bull; a 44 magnum.

The reason the truth of the story wasn't uncovered for several years, was because the shooter was in the midst of rustling some of those cattle, one of them being a cow in heat.  That was the reason the bull had charged the man and horse.  The cowboy seeing his horse mortally wounded led the horse up a draw, put it out of its misery, and caved the bank over the horse to hide it.

Had he told the truth about shooting the bull, he would have been held liable and probably hung besides.  He did go on to be hung later in Texas, but confessed to a US Marshall.  The Marshall knew the Rutherfords and the connections between the founders and their cattle problems.  The story didn't get back to California before Elijah was drygulched.  Suspicion was the only thing the law that was around at that time had to go on, and so the matter was eventually dropped.

Again, Doris was a widow with children to raise, only now, there were four of them.  Wayne Strickland, after losing his own wife to childbirth, and having no children of his own, took up with Doris.  He had by that time built the largest of the herds, and now Doris herd was merged with his, making him the wealthiest men in those parts.

There was talk that he had rustled some of Elijahs' cattle rebranding them with a running ring justifying it by the the shooting of his prized bull.  It was rumored that Elijah had found out about it, and went after him alone chasing and cornering him where a bullet from the right out of the brush eliminated Elijah from the feud.  And, it was a fact that Wayne gained quite a prize not only in the cattle and business he gained, but Doris was quite a catch all by herself.

But the marriage was troubled and Wayne discredited Doris and eventually ran the children of the prior two marriages out of the house completely cutting any ties with them.  The children, not knowing the truth of the matter, went on about their lives as if they had never known Doris.

Doris was the daughter of a wealthy ranch owner in Texas who'd given Elmer a start in Herefords with a pure bloodline.  Elmer acquired the love of the purebred from his father-in-law.  That's the main reason he was so adamant against the Charolaise.

Several years later, two of their grandchildren would wed, Mason Ludlow and Layan Wardlow.  They would have no children of their own and as the town grew and more people came in, the family would spread and grow but only through the Wardlow offspring of Edna Jane (Wardlow) Combs.  But the feud was not taken up beyond Sharon.  But before that, many lively and boisterous incidents happened on more than one celebratory occasions, the main one being the marriage of Mason and Layan.

Mason was a player, a swinger, a use them and leave them sort of guy, much the same of his father.  And because of that he had many enemies.  He was still enough of a talker to swing enough votes to get him placed into the mayor ship of the city.  And Mason had another huge problem; he simply could not manage money.  He was always in debt, always had someone chasing him for payment, and eventually wound up finding himself a puppet to the Kingpin.

The Kingpin had made it big in the area not only by his own hand, but by inheritance as well.  And as with all mafia style rings, there were levels of authority.  The Kingpin had a harsh hand on anyone in the city that was dishonest outside of his own organization, and he could reach out and touch them without ever bringing suspicion on himself.

He was death on any other group that tried to move into his territory.  His type of law keeping was a constant battle with the Police Department.  As long as he was able to keep someone in there that would look the other way, he was fine.  It was too easy to get rid of someone, and seeing how the main economy eventually turned to fishing for the community, he had two of the biggest fishing boats around.  But, they were owned by a front which kept the Kingpin out of the limelight.

Walter Bension, one of the Chiefs of Police had a confidant in Lane Wardlow, and the two men had evidence of this fact.  They had record by an inside informant on one of the boats on how someone was made to disappear.  And there were several.  Mostly of no-accounts who tried to horn in on one of the Kingpins myriad of businesses.  The first occasion of going contrary to the law of the Kingpin, one was thrashed violently and warned.

The second time one stepped awry of the law of Kingpin, he just simply disappeared.  The law according to the Kingpin was plain.  You had a choice of how you left town:  Either you left with eyes wide open under your own power, or, you left with eyes closed, toes up and eventually wound up as fish food.

Lane was pretty adamant when he spoke in the City Council and complained of several violations of the code of the sea.  Walter Bension had stood with him.  It wasn't long, before Lanes daughter went missing.  Then his wife went missing.  Lane had spent a lot of money on investigators, but it seemed the reach of the Kingpin could span more than Lane could ever attempt.  He didn't realize he was looking in the wrong direction for information.

So Lane wound up alone and Walter wound up shutting his mouth of personal volition.  Lane prospered in his Law business, and he kept notes, dates, suspicions and opinions to himself.  One day, he would have a chance to use them.

The Kingpin was everywhere.  You did not ever want to get crossways with the Kingpin.

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