Hard Country Page 19

  The steep cliffs of the canyon looked like huge building blocks quarried by giants and stacked neatly on top of one another. The canyon walls were sheer enough to keep stock from straying in or out, the grass hadn’t been overgrazed and there were stands of four-wing saltbush cattle liked to munch on in early spring.

  He’d grease and adjust the windmill, a chore that needed doing on a regular basis, water any strays he rounded up along the way, and let them graze for a time in the pasture.

  The last time he’d been up there, he got stung several times by wasps from a nest beneath the platform at the top of the wooden tower, and it had made him as sick as a pup. He’d knocked the nest down and burned it, and sure hoped the wasps hadn’t come back.

  He rolled on his side and drifted to sleep listening to the far-off whistle of a female mountain lion calling her cubs.

  21

  At sunup, Patrick was tending to the horses when two riders appeared on the flats. He left the corral, mounted his pony, and loped in their direction, wondering who would be calling so early in the day. He didn’t recognize the riders or their horses, and the closest neighbors were thirty miles away and not prone to visiting at first light. If they were rustlers or outlaws, it would be certain trouble if they found out he was alone at the ranch. He had to stop them before they got too close.

  He reined in fifty yards shy of the men, yanked his rifle from the scabbard, and called for them to state their business.

  The riders pulled up.

  “No need for that rifle,” one of the riders replied. “I’m Oliver Lee from Dog Canyon, and I’m looking to speak to Cal Doran. This here with me is my brother, Perry Altman.”

  Patrick put his rifle away. He’d met Lee and Altman in town several times. They were Texans who’d arrived in ’84 and now ranched on the east side of the Tularosa. They each had their own spread, and both were considered excellent horsemen.

  Patrick jigged his horse forward to the men. “You can talk to me,” he said when he arrived.

  Oliver Lee smiled. “Best we speak to Cal.”

  Patrick held his tongue and stared at Lee. He had dark black eyes, a square jaw, and the reputation of being a wizard with both a rifle and a six-gun. According to those who knew him well, he neither drank nor smoked.

  “Is Cal up yonder?” Perry Altman asked with a nod toward the ranch house. Lanky and sandy haired, Altman was Lee’s older half brother.

  Patrick shook his head. “But you fellas are welcome to light, sit a spell, and have a cup of coffee.”

  Lee nudged his horse closer to Patrick. “Appreciate the invitation, but we’re short on time. We cut sign on some cattle a ways back that were stolen off my ranch, and we mean to catch up with the rustlers that took them.”

  “I brought some strays in from Cottonwood Canyon last night, but none were yours,” Patrick replied.

  “Figured as much,” Altman said, eyeing the cows up in the pasture. “Did anybody ride through while you were gone?”

  “Can’t say as they did,” Patrick replied. “I didn’t see any fresh sign.”

  “They probably skirted north to avoid the Double K,” Altman said to Lee.

  Lee nodded and touched the brim of his hat. “We won’t take any more of your time. Let Cal know we need to parley with him.”

  “I’ll do it,” Patrick said, wondering what was so all get-out important. Whatever it was, he darn sure wouldn’t be excluded from it.

  The men turned back toward the flats, their horses kicking up dust that glittered like flakes of gold in the early morning sunlight. Already hot, it would be a scorcher when the winds picked up. Patrick shoed two of the saddle horses he’d gentled for the army, packed a lunch of hardtack and jerked beef, put tools and a grease can in a saddlebag, and left a note for Cal telling him where he’d gone. Then he closed up the house and headed for the windmill.

  Setting a steady pace, he made good time into the mountains, where the piñon pine and juniper trees clung to the higher slopes and desert willows nestled in narrow draws. On a mound of tailings near an old mine shaft, a buck mule deer watched cautiously, its big ears twitching, before bolting away. The buck would be fun to hunt come fall if the drought or a mountain lion didn’t get it first.

  A couple of miles out from the canyon, Patrick expected to pick up some strays ranging close to the scent of water from the windmill, but this time there wasn’t a critter in sight, and no fresh sign.

  He turned his pony up a dogleg arroyo through a narrow cleft into an adjoining valley that paralleled the granite mountaintops and stopped short when he saw dozens of cow tracks heading smack-dab toward the canyon windmill. Horseshoe prints showed three riders pushing the cows along. His pulse quickened as he pulled his rifle and spurred his horse into a gallop. At the fence line, he reined to a stop. The wire had been cut, the cow tracks ran straight toward the water tank, and several acres of grass had been grazed to a nub. There wasn’t a man or beast within sight.

  Patrick put his rifle away, climbed off his horse, and walked to the north edge of the mouth of the canyon, where a partial roll of wire was stashed in case fence repairs were needed. He carried it back to the posts where the wire had been cut, rolled out two strands, and started splicing, cursing under his breath as he worked. There was no lock on the gate to the canyon, so cutting the wire had been done out of pure orneriness. Or maybe the rustlers knew any hand worth his salt would repair a fenced water source before taking up the chase.

  He tightened each wire, opened the gate, and rode to the windmill. A flock of crows flew up from behind the water tank as he approached, lighting on the windmill. They had been feeding on a scrawny dead cow carrying Oliver Lee’s brand. Still warm to the touch, it hadn’t been pecked at much by the crows. He tied a rope to its hind legs, wrapped the rope around his saddle horn, and dragged the carcass to the far end of the canyon, the crows circling above, cawing in complaint.

  Back at the windmill, he threw a saddlebag over his shoulder and started up the tower, looking for wasps as he went. He reached the platform without getting stung, let out a sigh of relief, set the brake, and started greasing the gears. He finished up by checking the bolts on the wind vane and then scanned the canyon for strays. Except for the crows hopping around and screeching at each other near the dead cow, the canyon was empty.

  Cal had told him to stay close to home, and he’d stretched it by riding out to the windmill. He climbed off the tower, threw a leg over his pony, and decided to track the rustlers for a while. It was what Cal would have done, so why not? Besides, the trail was too fresh not to.

  With the sun at noon, he closed the gate and started his pony in a slow trot, following the tracks heading eastward toward the basin. Again, there were the same three sets of horseshoe prints, one with a distinctive crack near the toe, on the right foreleg.

  From the tracks, he could tell the rustlers were driving about fifty cows. Were they looking to reach the high country of the Sacramento Mountains and sell the animals to the Mescaleros or the army at the fort? Or cross the mountains and trail them down to Mexico on the Staked Plains, rustling more stock along the way?

  The tracks passed through crooked draws, over bare, gravelly, shallow saucers, and up flinty hills, always bearing east. Patrick topped out on a nameless rise, and off in the distance about ten miles away he could see a sizable dust cloud on the trail to Malpais Spring. A few miles behind, a smaller dust cloud drifted off into the sky.

  Patrick paused. He figured Oliver Lee and Perry Altman were closing in on the rustlers, but his way home lay south, not east. He could turn back a half mile to a gap that would take him down to the flats and on to the ranch, or he could ride ahead and see what was going to happen at Malpais Spring.

  He grinned and spurred his pony forward.

  * * *

  Oliver Lee used his boot to turn over one of the dead rustlers. It wasn’t somebody he knew. He did the same with the second body and recognized a Mexican named Francisco Olivares. Lee had sh
ot both men out of their saddles. The third thief had turned tail before Oliver could get a bead on him and was halfway to Tularosa if his horse hadn’t dropped dead under him.

  Perry Altman rode up from the milling cows to point out a rider coming at a fast clip from the west.

  “Saw him,” Oliver replied.

  “I count fifty-six bovines,” Perry said. “Forty-two yours, six are mine, five from the Double K, and the rest mavericks.”

  Lee climbed into his saddle. “Start them for water at Malpais Spring. I’ll go and meet our company.”

  He pulled his rifle, trotted down the road, and put the long gun away when he recognized young Patrick Kerney.

  “I’ve got five of your cows up ahead,” Lee said when Patrick came close. “You can cut them out if you like, or you can help us trail them to Tularosa, where we can sell them along with mine to the Indian agent. I hear he’s looking to buy some replacement cattle for the Mescaleros.”

  “I reckon that would be best,” Patrick said, looking past Lee at two riderless saddle horses ahead. “Did you get all three?”

  Lee shook his head. “One skedaddled. I mean to write my lawyer, Albert Fall, in Mesilla about this little war I had today and ask him to send the sheriff so I can turn myself in. I’d be obliged if you’d vouch for what you know about it. I can take down your words if you don’t know how to write.”

  Patrick stuck his chin out. “I can write my own words.”

  “I meant no offense,” Lee said in a soft Texas drawl. “Still want to ride with us? If we push those cows along, we should raise Tularosa by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I’m in,” Patrick replied as he scanned the ground. The rustler who’d skedaddled was riding the horse with the cracked shoe on the right foreleg. He sure hoped for a chance to meet up with that hombre so he could prove himself a man to Cal and anyone else who might doubt it.

  22

  The railroad siding and watering stop at Engle had grown into a thriving town with a station, hotel, stores, saloons, post office, and houses that stretched along both sides of the tracks. A mining boom in the Black Hills and mountains west of the Rio Grande had spurred growth, and it was now a convenient trading and shipping center for the big cattle ranches on the Jornada and settlements along the river.

  Cal had arrived in town the previous evening and immediately telegraphed the sheriff in Doña Ana County, who sent Deputy Filipe Lucero up by train to verify the death of Bud McPherson and fill out the papers for the five-hundred-dollar reward, to be paid by the sheriff of Pima County, Arizona Territory.

  Lucero hired a carpenter to make a casket, and by early morning McPherson had been buried in the local cemetery and Cal was on his way home. He pushed Patches hard, raised the ranch by late night, and found Patrick’s note. The lad was way overdue from his chore at the windmill. It seemed like Patrick’s notion of sticking close to the ranch needed some correction.

  Cal fed and watered Patches, turned him out in the horse corral, saddled another pony, filled a canteen, packed hardtack and some canned fruit in a saddlebag, and struck out by moonlight to find the boy. He moved slow, looking for any sign the lad might have suffered a bad fall or some wrongdoing. When he came upon the cow tracks and the hoofprints, his pulse quickened and he spurred his horse into a fast trot.

  At the mouth of the canyon, Cal found the patched barbwire fence and the fresh tracks of Patrick’s pony heading east, trailing the cattle. He didn’t even bother to enter the canyon; the signs told him all he needed to know. Patrick was following the rustlers.

  Daybreak brought him to two bodies laid out facedown at the side of the road west of Malpais Spring. He dropped out of his saddle, half expecting to see Patrick dead on the ground. He turned the bodies over, happy to see that Patrick hadn’t gotten killed, leastways not here, not yet. He recognized Francisco Olivares and figured him and his partner to be two of the rustlers.

  Cal walked in an expanding circle and read sign. The gunplay had happened before Patrick arrived. Two riders had thrown lead at the three outlaws, and one had gotten away riding a pony with a cracked shoe. Patrick had joined up with the two riders heading east toward Malpais Spring.

  Cal ate a can of peaches, drank the sweet nectar from the bottom of the can, tossed it away, and got back in the saddle. With the sun full in his eyes above the Sacramentos, he started out at a trot. Although cattle and the men driving them moved slow, he doubted he could catch them before they reached Tularosa, but he wouldn’t be far behind.

  * * *

  Eating dust, Patrick rode at the rear of the small herd as it passed by the green fields of Tularosa. In spite of the drought, water from the river still flowed in the acequias that irrigated the fields, family wells continued to supply clean drinking water, grasses in the pastures near the river flourished, and the cottonwood trees the Mexican families had planted years ago towered over the casitas and the narrow lanes of the original settlement. Coming from the dry, cracked, glaring desert basin was like entering a peaceful, lush oasis.

  In one of the fields Patrick thought he spotted Ignacio in among some sheep, but he couldn’t be sure. The hacienda he’d built for Teresa and their three children hugged a bend in the river, steps away from the house where Ignacio’s father, Cesario, now a widower, lived. Patrick decided to visit the Chávezes once he finished up business with Oliver Lee.

  The Chávez family, with all its children, relatives, and friends, was a mystery to Patrick. He’d watched them over the years and never understood how they all got along so well. He kept waiting for some big fracas or disaster to rip apart the family, but even in hard times they seemed happy. He settled on figuring it had something to do with their being Mexicans.

  In the low foothills above the village, on the wagon road to Fort Stanton, they put the cows in a fenced dirt pasture at an abandoned farmhouse. A few years back, rumors of a railroad coming to town had doubled the population, and when the story went belly-up and the drought settled in, a good many of the newcomers moved on. The abandoned farm was just one of dozens that bordered the outskirts of Tularosa.

  In town at Coghlan’s store, Patrick wrote out what he knew about the rustled cattle and gave it to Oliver Lee, who read it through and nodded his thanks.

  “You make a hand,” Lee said, tucking Patrick’s note in the envelope he’d addressed to Albert Fall. “I appreciate your help trailing those cows.”

  “I’m more than a hand,” Patrick replied. “The Double K is half mine. If you’re figuring on palavering with Cal, you’re gonna be talking to me anyhow, so what’s on your mind?”

  Oliver Lee tipped back his hat and gave Patrick a long, serious look. “I suppose you’re right,” he finally said. “I heard tell that the Double K has had business dealings with Albert Fountain, and since I’m gonna be having a real set-to with the man, I wanted to know if that would put us on opposite sides of the fence.”

  “What kind of set-to?” Patrick asked.

  Lee sealed the envelope and handed it to the clerk. “I told you what’s on my mind. Now I’d be obliged if you’d tell Cal that if we ain’t at odds with each other to come visit. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough,” Patrick replied.

  He left Oliver Lee and walked his horse over to Ignacio’s house, where he found Teresa and her three children, Juan, Sofia, and Bernardo, at home. Juan, the oldest son, was leading Sofia, age five, and Bernardo, age four, around the courtyard on the back of an old burro. Teresa knelt at the horno with her back to him, cooking fresh tortillas over the embers. The smell made his stomach grumble.

  He called out “Buenas tardes” at the open gate, and the children stopped and looked at him without saying a word. That was all right with him. He never had much for young’uns anyway, not even when he was one himself.

  Teresa rose from the horno and turned to greet him, showing her swollen belly. “Patricio, entra.”

  Teresa had lost her last two babies at childbirth and once had been near death herself.

>   “Ain’t that baby about due?” Patrick asked.

  “Sí, very soon.” She turned to her oldest son. “Juan, go to your father and tell him Patricio is here.”

  Juan pulled brother and sister off the burro, jumped on its back, and trotted through the gate.

  “And tell him enchiladas will be waiting when he arrives,” Teresa called. She smiled at Patrick. “You will eat with us.”

  “Con mucho gusto,” Patrick replied.

  * * *

  Cal rode up just as Patrick sat down with Ignacio, Teresa, and the family to eat. He looked drug out and worn down and shot Patrick a long, stern look before digging into a plate of enchiladas Teresa quickly fixed for him. Patrick used the opportunity to avoid a tongue-lashing by explaining the events that had brought him to Tularosa, starting with Oliver Lee’s early morning visit to the ranch two days ago. He finished up by mentioning Lee’s plans to settle Albert Fountain’s hash.

  “The feud is turning into a war,” Cal said with a shake of his head.

  “About what, amigo?” Ignacio asked.

  “Who’s gonna rule the Tularosa and beyond,” Cal answered. “Right now it’s up for grabs. The big spreads are suing to get water rights from the small outfits. Fountain is representing them in court. It would put a lot of us under if he wins. Seems Oliver wants to fight back.”

  “Who are we siding with?” Patrick asked as he finished mopping up the last of the sauce on his plate with a tortilla. He favored Oliver Lee over any lawyer.

  Cal pushed his empty plate aside. “Depends on what Oliver plans to do. I’ll hear him out.”

  “I want in on that powwow,” Patrick said.

  Cal looked at his young ward, who met his gaze without flinching. Finally, he nodded. “I guess it’s time for you to have a full say in this partnership.”