Hard Country Page 25

  At the rail siding in town, Jake and Patrick loaded the ponies on stock cars and said adios.

  “Sure you don’t want to come with me and see the ocean?” Jake asked with a grin.

  “Wrong direction, amigo,” Patrick replied as he picked up the rope to his packhorse, a sturdy gray, and climbed on Cuidado.

  He waved good-bye and headed north out of town. Over the past few weeks, he’d studied hard about what to do when the job at the Flying W ran out. He had three hundred dollars tucked away, another thirty dollars in his pocket, and enough grub and supplies to get him back to New Mexico, but he was still shy of what he owed Cal. He decided to ride the chuck line north awhile before swinging east, in the hopes he might land a job along the way.

  The first night he camped at an empty cabin in the hills protected by an old hound dog that flopped down in front of him and rolled on his back when he arrived. In the morning, he fed the hound a piece of bacon from his breakfast, and the old dog kept him company for a few miles along the trail before turning for home.

  Over the next week, he had a few meals and a warm place to lay his head at several high-country ranches that bordered Apache lands, but nobody was hiring. He kept north, climbing steep, pine-covered plateaus, crossing mountain meadows thick with herds of elk, fording fast, clear-running streams shaded by willows, plunging down deep canyons only to raise distant mountains at the crest of an enormous rim. He rode under tall pines that dotted grassy pastures and stopped at small lakes tucked into tiny saucer valleys at the base of soaring peaks still dusted with snow above the timberline.

  The untamed land was about the best piece of outdoors Patrick had ever seen, and the solitude that came with it was a balm to his mind. He spotted a grizzly bear ambling through the forest, and a wolf serenaded him at night. At dusk as he snaked wood for a campfire, he saw the flash of a cougar in a mountain meadow, and next morning before first light an owl woke him with its gentle call. Eagles and hawks hunted above on wind currents, woodpeckers beat tattoos that echoed through the woods, and wild turkeys gobbled out of sight in the underbrush. It was one of the best trail rides he’d ever made.

  He crossed into New Mexico and passed through the mesa lands on the Zuni Pueblo without stopping. He pushed on to Ramah, a Mormon farm and ranching settlement in a pleasant, tree-shaded valley with thick bottom grass along a wide stream. He stabled his ponies at the livery and in a rickety bathhouse behind the general store he soaked in the tub until the water cooled. After a campfire dinner, he spread out his bedroll on soft hay in the livery and fell asleep before dusk turned to night.

  The next day, in a hurry to reach the Tularosa, he moved on without trying to find work, riding through red rimrock country, where tall, thin, wind-carved spires and odd-shaped pinnacles hovered over juniper woodlands. At Inscription Rock he watered his horses at the pool at the base of the mesa and studied the names carved into the stone. For hundreds of years, Spanish explorers, scouts, Civil War soldiers, Catholic priests, army officers, cowboys, and travelers had stopped to chisel their names into the soft stone near the water hole. He added his initials before continuing east.

  He followed a wagon road that skirted some northerly mountains and, with the sun low in the west, camped for the night at the edge of lava badlands that reminded him of the Tularosa malpais. To the southwest, a line of mountaintops peeked above the horizon as the setting sun lit them on fire. He went to sleep with the pull of home tugging at his memories.

  The next day at Grant, a fueling stop on the railroad, he bought fresh grub for himself and feed for his ponies and camped for the night. Eager to keep moving, he slept poorly and rose early, and by noon he was back in the badlands trailing southeast toward the Rio Grande. Four long days of travel across a rough country of sharp ridges, narrow divides, and staircase mesas brought him at last to a scarp overlooking the twisting green bosque of the Rio Grande. To the east the Fray Cristobal Mountains, dwarfed by sky and tier upon tier of desert tableland, tumbled across the horizon. On the other side of the cameo-clear mountains, a hundred miles or more from where Patrick sat on his weary pony, was the Tularosa and home. But he wouldn’t go there yet.

  Three days later he arrived in White Oaks, a mining town on the north end of the Tularosa. He made camp at an abandoned cabin on the outskirts of town, deposited three hundred dollars in the bank under the name of Pat Floyd, went looking for work at the Old Abe Mine, and got hired on as a laborer at two dollars and fifty cents a day.

  He worked six ten-hour shifts a week and lived like a hermit at the cabin on fifty cents a day. To the townsfolk he was just another one of the faceless men who disappeared down a thirteen-hundred-foot shaft every morning and every night. He never hated a job more.

  On Sundays, he took Cuidado out for a ride, good weather or bad. Leading the gray, he galloped them across the grasslands outside of town, scattering the few remaining antelope herds that hadn’t been wiped out for fun by the town folk. There were bones and carcasses all over the flats.

  When he got to feeling lonely, he walked to town and looked at the people. Although it was a fair size, with more than two thousand people, White Oaks wasn’t much of a hell-raising place. It had only a couple of saloons, the most popular the Little Casino, but no hurdy-gurdy girls worked there. The Ozanne Hotel had a fine dining room, but Patrick had never eaten there because of the cost. He did his shopping on Fridays after work at the Ziegler Store, which stayed open to serve the miners, who’d been paid and needed to buy grub and sundries.

  There was a fairly new stone schoolhouse and some fancy two-story homes with gables and latticework porches some mine owners and managers had built. Sometimes, the families were out on the porches when he passed by, but not once did anyone venture a howdy in his direction.

  He quit the day he had enough to pay Cal what he owed. He got a shave, a haircut, and a bath, changed into fresh duds, and took his money from the bank. At the cabin he packed his gear on the gray pony and rode out of town feeling like a new man.

  His pulse quickened as the Oscura Mountains came into view. There were mountains roundabout as the basin stretched out before him, flinty, dusty, encrusted with the black lava tubes that snaked over the gravelly, rolling land. There was nothing green or grassy about it, nothing comforting, yet it pleased Patrick to see it once again. Old, twisted alligator junipers poked out of deep lava holes, stands of mesquite meandered in shallow draws, sagebrush savannas waved on sacaton flats, and the rolling sugar white sand hills that brushed the shallow lake along the road to Las Cruces sparkled in the morning sun.

  There were cattle on the range, but far fewer than before the drought. The land had come back some, but where once tall grasses had flourished, sandy cactus benches now prevailed.

  He wanted to keep on riding through the night but pulled up at Malpais Spring instead. He fed the horses, made a cold camp, and slept fitfully, waking from a bad dream that had him seeing the Double K in ruins. Troubled in mind, he saddled up and rode under starlight, raising the Double K at midday. A windmill had been thrown up next to the saddle shed, but aside from that everything looked the same. There were cows and some horses in the pasture, and a saddled pony stood hitched to a corral post near the open barn door.

  He reined Cuidado to a stop just as Cal stepped outside. He tipped his hat back, glanced at Patrick, and studied Cuidado.

  “That’s a thrifty-looking pony,” he said, as if nothing bad had ever passed between them.

  “He’ll do,” Patrick replied. There was gray at Cal’s temples and a few more wrinkles around his eyes.

  “What happened to your saddle?” Cal asked.

  “It got stolen,” Patrick said, twisting the truth.

  “Too bad.”

  “Yep.”

  “You here for your money?” Cal asked.

  Patrick shook his head. “Nope. I want back in as partner.”

  Cal smiled. “This hardscrabble place ain’t worth the money I gave you.”

  “Maybe,
but its half mine, and I’m here to claim it.”

  Cal studied Patrick. This wasn’t the same man he’d last seen in Juárez. He looked harder and he talked tougher. “You got four hundred dollars?”

  Patrick nodded. “I do.” He pulled the greenbacks out of his pocket and handed the money to Cal.

  Cal counted it. “Four hundred exactly. Light. George is up at the house rustling supper. He’s been asking me regular when you’d be coming home. I guess now he’ll have to come up with something else to worry me about.”

  Patrick slid out of his saddle. “I want that paper you made me sign.”

  “I didn’t make you sign anything. But come up to the house and I’ll get it for you.”

  “I’ll be there after I take care of my ponies,” Patrick said as he led Cuidado and the gray to the barn.

  Cal watched Patrick walk away, wondering why he acted hard done by. He’d hoped for Patrick’s return for a long time, but it sure wasn’t the happy occasion he’d imagined. He decided it wasn’t worth trying to read Patrick’s mind. He was here, the ranch was half his, and that was that.

  At the ranch house, Cal told George that Patrick was back and went to find the bill of sale.

  32

  Months before Patrick returned to the Double K, Cal had signed a contract with the Indian agent at the Mescalero Apache Reservation to deliver one hundred and fifty head of beef to a place called Pine Tree Canyon after the fall works. With a bank loan, he’d restocked the ranch with whiteface Herefords, running three hundred head of cows, yearlings, and a few newborn calves in the high-country pastures. Proceeds from the sale would pay off the loan and leave enough profit to carry the outfit to next spring.

  In August, Cal rode out with Patrick and George to gather the cattle for the drive to the reservation.

  “There’s one loco longhorn bull up yonder we haven’t been able to corral,” Cal said as they entered the canyon above the west pasture, the ranch headquarters a far piece in the distance.

  “Last of a breed, soon not to be seen hereabouts again,” George added with a chuckle. “He’s a mean old brindle bull.”

  “We should shoot it and mount the horns,” Patrick said. The ponies and the pack animals slowed as they clambered over the rocky canyon bottom.

  George cleared his throat and spit. “Can’t say I agree with that. I’d miss the critter.”

  “He’s eating Double K grass,” Patrick replied. “I say shoot it.”

  “I like seeing that old-timer every now and then,” Cal said. “I vote to let the brindle live.”

  George chuckled. “Two to one, the vote goes in favor of the bull.”

  “When did you become a partner in the Double K?” Patrick snapped.

  “You know I ain’t,” George replied. He gave a yank on the rope to the packhorses trailing behind him and fell silent.

  “George has got a voice in how things get run around here,” Cal said quietly.

  “Is that a fact?” Patrick asked.

  “It is for me,” Cal answered.

  Patrick shrugged. “Have it your way.” He loped ahead to where the canyon widened near an arroyo and curled up another draw.

  “He ain’t the same since he came back,” George said grumpily once Patrick was out of earshot.

  “He’ll come around,” Cal replied for the umpteenth time, although he was starting to believe his prediction was wishful thinking.

  Patrick hadn’t set foot off the ranch since his return. He worked hard, day herding the cattle in the mountain pastures and looking after the outfit’s small remuda of cow ponies and pack animals, but he sure didn’t make good company. Unless they were talking about ranch business, he had little to say.

  Cal figured something bad had happened to Patrick but didn’t see a way to ask about it. All he knew was Patrick had drifted into Arizona Territory and worked as a top hand for a big outfit east of Tucson. There had to be more to it than that, but he’d never met a man with a secret to be kept who appreciated folks meddling in his business.

  They reached the first pasture by midmorning, a stretch of land that wandered through gaps, draws, arroyos, and slot canyons in the middle of the mountains. The gathering went off without a hitch. At dusk they built a brush fence to keep the cattle contained in a small canyon and hunkered down over a Dutch-oven meal of beef and potatoes fixed by George.

  “This has been about the easiest day gathering in these mountains I’ve known,” Patrick said.

  “Herefords are a mite more peaceful to manage,” Cal said. “They’re not half as cunning as longhorns.”

  “That’s the truth of it,” George said as he ladled more beef on Patrick’s plate. “But that pony of yours sure makes forking cattle look easy. I’ve never seen a cow pony cut as good as that one.”

  “I trained Cuidado myself.”

  “Well, watch out for Cuidado, I say,” George replied with a forced chuckle, “because he sure takes the cake.”

  “That’s quite a moniker you gave him,” Cal said as he reached for the coffeepot. “Is it a warning about the horse or the rider?”

  Patrick smiled thinly. “Maybe both. How come you stopped raising horses?”

  “When the army shut down, the market died.”

  “I’d like to start back up again,” Patrick said, “this time finishing cow ponies. As long as there are cattle outfits, there’s gonna be a need for top horses.”

  Cal refilled his coffee cup. Good cow ponies brought top dollar, and Patrick was right about ranchers always wanting to add some to their remudas. “How many ponies do you have in mind?” he asked.

  “I figure twenty-five or thirty could be ready by next fall, if I can round up some good-looking stock after we’re done trailing these cows to Mescalero.”

  “There are a couple of wild mustang herds on the south end of the basin nobody’s laid claim to. Fifteen hands mostly, with some Spanish blood from what I can tell.”

  “You’ve seen them?”

  “Last spring,” Cal replied, “when we trimmed the last of our longhorn strays during Oliver Lee’s works. I’d say those ponies would do.”

  Patrick’s smile widened a bit. “Then, let’s do it.”

  It took three more days to gather all the livestock and drive them to the west pasture near the ranch. There they cut out and corralled the cattle for the trail drive to Mescalero and spent the rest of the day preparing for an early start in the morning.

  After George cleaned up the dinner dishes and jingled his way to the casita, where he now bunked, Patrick unexpectedly appeared in the front room. He sat in a chair next to the desk where Cal was doing some figuring in a ledger book and didn’t say a word.

  “Do we need to talk business?” Cal asked as he closed the book.

  Patrick nodded. “Is my name on the ranch account at the bank?”

  “It is,” Cal replied.

  “I can get money out under my name?”

  “You can, if we have a balance and it’s under five hundred dollars. Otherwise, it takes both of us to sign for it.”

  “Do we have money?”

  “Some.”

  “How much?”

  “Three hundred thirty-seven dollars, but that’s loan money I’m hoping not to have to use.”

  “You’re keeping the four hundred I gave you?”

  “I am for now.”

  “Can I see all the papers the bank has about the spread?”

  “Yep. But your name isn’t on the loan I took to buy the Herefords.”

  Patrick shrugged. “That doesn’t matter to me.”

  Cal pushed the ledger across the desk. “This shows all our costs and earnings for the year so far. Take a gander if you’ve a mind to. The books for earlier years are in the bottom drawer.”

  Patrick took the ledger. “I’m thinking we should let George go after he helps us trail the cattle to Mescalero.”

  “With ponies to train and cattle to watch over, that would stretch the two of us real thin.”

&n
bsp; “I’ll pick up any part of the load you can’t.”

  Cal raised an eyebrow. Maybe he’d lost a step, but he didn’t cotton to the idea of Patrick calling him an old man. “I’ll do my fair share and we’ll keep George on.”

  Patrick opened the ledger, leaned forward, and paged through it under the lamplight. “What are we paying him?”

  “Thirty a month. He’s worth forty-five.”

  He looked up from the ledger. “We could use that money other ways.”

  Cal shook his head. “We can always use money other ways, but that old boy stays. For three months, he worked for his keep and didn’t draw wages at all.”

  “Well, that was right charitable of him, but I say he goes.”

  Cal shook his head. “Nope, he stays. We’ve got rustlers roaming the basin and have lost eight cows already this year. I’m not about to let go a good hand who knows how to handle a gun and cares about our brand.”

  Patrick chewed his lip. “If you’re that mule-headed about it, fine.”

  Cal patted the left side of the desk. “In this other bottom drawer you’ll find the ranch deeds, land titles, government paperwork, and the legal documents about our partnership. Now that you’re showing interest in the business end of things, it’s best that you acquaint yourself with the details.”

  “I’ll start right now if you’ll give up your seat,” Patrick said.

  Cal pushed back the chair and stood. “If you have any questions, we can talk about them on the trail.”

  “Bueno,” Patrick said as he came around the desk.

  Cal said good night and went to his room thinking Patrick’s newfound interest in the operation of the ranch was something he needed to get used to and pronto.