Backlands

by Michael McGarrity

  Since I put a badge in your hand and am now your boss, I propose to go with you on your next visit to the Double K. Consider it a direct order. I close with my good wishes.

  Sincerely,

  Thomas Sullivan, Sheriff

  Lincoln County

  State of New Mexico

  Early in the morning three days later, Jake Owen and Tom Sullivan, well supplied and on sturdy ponies, rode out of the town of Carrizozo, drifting along a trail that would take them to Malpais Spring, where they would camp for the night on their way to the Double K Ranch.

  ***

  From his ma’s grave site on the hillside above the ranch, Matt watched two riders approach from the northeast. He’d walked up from the house when Pa had started yelling at Evangelina about Johnny getting into the henhouse and breaking the eggs. Matt felt particularly bad about it because he’d been the one to discover Johnny covered in egg yolk coming up the stairs to the veranda with a big grin on his face, holding the last egg in his hand. It didn’t seem to matter to Pa that Evangelina had been in the baño for only a few minutes while Johnny did his mischief in the henhouse. He yelled at her anyway. He always held her to blame for anything around the house that went wrong or upset him. It made Matt miserable to see it, and Evangelina was always glum and wretched for days afterward. Even little Johnny went around like a hang-tail puppy for a while after one of Pa’s temper fits.

  As the riders got closer, Matt recognized Mr. Owen. The other man was a stranger, but both of them wore badges on their shirts. He scrambled down the hill in time to reach them at the hitching post just as Pa stepped out on the veranda.

  “Howdy, Mr. Owen,” he said as the two riders stepped down.

  “Matt,” Jake replied.

  “I didn’t know you were the law.”

  “Just sometimes,” Jake said, looking up at Patrick on the veranda. “Best you let the sheriff and me have a few words in private with your pa.”

  “What’s going on?” Matt asked, hopeful Mr. Owen and the sheriff were chasing an outlaw loose on the basin.

  “Never you mind,” Pa boomed. “Bring in that gray gelding from the pasture and put it in a stall. It’s showing some lameness in the right forelimb. Git, now.”

  Disappointed, Matt threw a leg up on Patches. With Pa riled already, there was no chance he’d change his mind. He went through the gate and put Patches into a fast lope, hoping to be back with the gray in time to find out what had brought the law to the Double K.

  ***

  What brings you here with the law and a badge pinned to your chest?” Patrick asked Jake as he stepped off the veranda.

  “I guess you know Sheriff Sullivan,” Jake replied genially.

  “I know who he is,” Patrick replied, his gaze fixed on Jake. “I asked you a question.”

  “Vernon Clagett,” Jake replied.

  “I already told you what I know,” Patrick replied.

  Jake scratched his chin and shook his head. “I’ve been trying to figure the best way of saying you ain’t been telling the whole truth. I was gonna mention I know two horses were heard leaving late the night Clagett supposedly took off from here shank’s mare, and that somehow you knew Clagett’s prison nickname, and that there is no way in hell that Clagett could get off the Tularosa alive without somebody seeing him.”

  “Is that what you were gonna say?” Patrick replied sarcastically.

  “Yep, I was, until I got proof that you’re Pat Floyd, and Vernon Clagett was your cell mate at Yuma.”

  “You know that for sure?” Patrick hissed.

  Jake nodded. “I surely do. You gave yourself away when you threw yourself on the mercy of the court in Cochise County, Arizona Territory, and got a reduced sentence for stealing that nice saddle Cal Doran gave you that you lost gambling.”

  Patrick’s expression turned grim. “So I lied to you. A man has a right to his privacy and you weren’t the law.”

  “But if you lie now, it’s gonna be a lot harder on you,” Tom Sullivan warned.

  “You can’t arrest me for something I ain’t done yet,” Patrick retorted.

  “That’s true,” Jake answered. “But before I ask you again what happened to Vernon Clagett, you might want to know that if I can’t abide your answer and prove you wrong, I’ll make sure every citizen on the Tularosa knows you’re a liar, thief, and ex-convict.”

  “That’s big talk, old man, with a star on your chest and a pistol on your hip.”

  “But maybe I don’t have to tarnish your good name with those facts,” Jake said, unperturbed by Patrick’s snappishness. “We know Clagett liked to work for folks, find out what valuables they had, kill them, and steal what he could carry away. Last time it happened was in Arizona some years back. There’s a murder warrant out for his arrest.”

  “Did that happen to you?” Tom Sullivan interjected.

  Patrick bit his lip. “What if it did?”

  “Man has a right to protect himself and his property,” Tom answered.

  “Let’s say a man did that; what would the law do?” Patrick asked.

  “Swear to it that it was self-defense, and if the law believes you, no district attorney will prosecute,” Jake replied.

  “But in this particular situation, we have to be fussy,” Tom said, “and ask you to produce a body.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Jake’s put in too much hard work to let it go all for naught,” Tom answered. “He has Clagett’s sister to answer to, and she needs physical proof he’s dead.”

  Patrick fell silent. “What would I have to do exactly?” he finally asked.

  “Tell us exactly what happened, take us to where Clagett is buried, and make a sworn statement of fact to the district attorney,” Tom said. “If we back you up, it will end right there, guaranteed.”

  “No court, no judge, no trial?”

  “That’s right,” Jake said.

  Patrick sighed. “I’m not going back to prison.”

  “No need to worry about that,” Jake counseled.

  Patrick nodded. “Okay, I’ll talk.”

  In the heat of the day under a sun beating down on them, Tom Sullivan and Jake Owen listened as Patrick Kerney told them a story that began in 1893 in Tombstone, Arizona, with the theft of a saddle and ended in 1920 with the death of Vernon Clagett on the Double K.

  ***

  Matt spent considerable time trailing the slow, lame gray back to the ranch, and he was still a good mile from home when Pa rode up with Mr. Owen and Sheriff Sullivan.

  “I’ll be gone for several days,” Pa said gruffly. “You take care of that gray and look after things.”

  “Where you going, Pa?” Matt asked.

  “We’re looking for someone and your pa is scouting for us,” Jake replied.

  “An outlaw?” Matt asked, his eyes lighting up.

  “A real bad one,” Sheriff Sullivan replied.

  “Can I come?”

  Pa shook his head. “I need you here. Head on home, now.”

  Jealous and unhappy to be left behind, Matt watched them ride away. Sometimes it was not fair to be a kid. Not fair at all.

  12

  Drought parched the Tularosa in 1926, and by the end of the year Patrick was forced to sell all but his breeding stock and most of his cow ponies. Only his scheme to fence the pasture he’d bought adjacent to the Rocking J as a hedge against drought had saved him from having no grass at all. But he’d borrowed against the land, and unless he got the loan extended, he’d lose it and be forced to bring the animals back to the lower pasture near the ranch house and purchase expensive feed for them.

  With no money coming in from ranch operations, the monthly checks Wallace Claiborne Hale sent from Matthew’s trust account kept Patrick from going further into debt. For that he was grateful.

  A month ago at a s
tockman’s meeting in Alamogordo, the talk was about drought and how to deal with it. A professor from the agricultural college in Las Cruces who came and spoke to the group applauded Patrick’s strategy of resting grasslands as an example of good ranching practices. A rancher with a small outfit pointed out that Patrick’s scheme worked only if you had the land to spare. To pay the bills and keep creditors off his back, the man hired on as a logger in the Sacramento Mountains when work was to be had, while his wife and two young sons looked after the ranch in his absence. In many families it took everybody pitching in to keep kith and kin together, while out on the range their few remaining animals starved.

  Patrick hoped for early winter moisture and lots of it. But it stayed bone-dry and the Tularosa remained a hazy, choking patchwork of dull, dusty colors during the daylight hours. The land was mostly burned brown, with puffy, finely granulated dirt on top of hardpan. Bunchgrass had withered and died to the point that he could kick it out of the ground, roots and all, with the toe of his boot. Winds rose late in the morning and persisted deep into the night, buffeting both man and beast. Stands of desert-hearty four-wing saltbush drooped thirstily, scorched by an unrelenting sun. The once-abundant wildlife that had left countless critter tracks on sandy shelves, arroyo bottoms, and alkali flats virtually disappeared. Although winter had arrived on the calendar, only cooler days, colder nights, and long shadows signaled the change. Everything on the ground crackled dry underfoot.

  Drought and hard times in the Southwest weren’t big news back East. Fat cats were making fortunes in the stock market, city folks were buying fancy cars, radios, record players, and refrigerators for their modern, stick-built homes, and all the politicians were proclaiming far and wide that prosperity for everyone was just around the corner.

  Good fortune hadn’t completely bypassed New Mexico. Patrick saw it each time he went to town or during one of his rare visits to Albuquerque. More streets had been paved, curbs and sidewalks put in, street signs thrown up, and electric light and telephone poles erected. Wires ran every which way down streets and alleys. New houses filled once-vacant land fit only for rattlesnakes, lizards, jackrabbits, and scorpions. On Central Avenue in Albuquerque, every new office building, hotel, and merchandise store had electricity, indoor plumbing, radiator heat, and telephones. It all made for easier living, Patrick reckoned, and while he appreciated what towns and cities had to offer, he never liked them much.

  He remembered seeing a nameless spot on the road at the foot of the Sacramentos transformed into the blossoming railroad town of Alamogordo almost overnight, complete with a train station, hotel, stores, and blocks of homes on a neatly laid-out street. The first time he saw it, he’d been trailing a herd of cattle from the ranch down the Chalk Hills with Emma, Cal Doran, and Gene Rhodes, skirting the undulating, shifting white sand dunes, paralleling the wagon road. They stopped at the crest of a small rise to rest and water the critters, and there before them a town appeared, shimmering in the distance like a desert mirage. The somber beauty of the untouched tableland with the long, unbroken uplift to the easterly hills where wide-mouthed canyons spilled from high mountains capped in thick forests had been changed forever. It seemed at first unsightly to Patrick. But with the passage of time, he could barely remember how that spit of land had looked before the hand of man transformed it.

  Patrick loved the Tularosa and gladly survived in its harsh beauty far away from town life. What he made in a year rarely equaled half of a city worker’s salary. He lived without the modern conveniences and comforts many people took for granted, on a solitary frontier where even in a drought livestock outnumbered people. He kept a shaky hold on marginal land that provided meager subsistence and fought drought, floods, wildfires, and disasters without a thought of ever willingly giving it up. The basin held him in place like a powerful, unbreakable magnet.

  On Christmas morning, he sat alone at his desk in the empty and quiet ranch house, tallying his expenses and debts for the year. Evangelina and Johnny were in Tularosa with her parents and relatives for the holidays. They’d been gone for a week, and he wouldn’t fetch them home until after the first of the New Year. Matt was in Las Cruces staying with Wallace Claiborne Hale over Christmas. He hadn’t been at the ranch since fall works and wouldn’t return until spring break.

  Patrick didn’t miss any of them. In truth their absence relieved him of any need to put up with their ways for a time. Johnny was a whirling dervish, never still for a moment, constantly underfoot, impossible to find, hard to discipline. When he gave his mother fits and Patrick threatened to take a switch to him, she turned hard faced and angry with him. There were days they hardly spoke to each other. Even when they did, there was no joy between them.

  Matt was no easier to deal with. His schooling in town had turned him into a know-it-all. He paid attention to Patrick only when it came to something to do with horses. Otherwise, he kept his head buried in books. He did his chores without complaint and minded his manners, but his heart wasn’t in the ranch. Patrick figured the day would come when Matt would be gone from the Double K for good.

  A howling wind made the prospect of working outside unappealing. Chilled, he rose and put a log in the fireplace and poked the embers until they ignited into long, flickering tongues that burst into flames. Reminders of the ghosts from the graveyard on the hill were all around him. An old pair of Cal’s spurs was on the fireplace mantel with John Kerney’s hunting rifle mounted above. George Rose’s Navajo saddle blanket was draped over the back of the couch, and on the floor in front of it was the flowery hooked rug Emma had made years ago, now faded and worn. He felt no sadness, no lingering grief about their passing, just an empty weariness about life.

  He got another cup of coffee, laced it with a liberal shot of whiskey from a bottle he kept in a bottom desk drawer, shrugged off the chill, and returned to tallying his expenses in the ledger book. After he got all the figuring done, he’d hunker down for the day, fry up a beefsteak and warm some beans, and search some more for the governor’s pardon from Yuma Prison that Vernon Clagett had stolen out of his Rough Riders footlocker. Maybe he’d even get drunk after he finished the afternoon barn chores and put feed out in the chicken coop. It amounted to a day off.

  ***

  The day after Christmas, Evangelina sat with her tía Teresa at the big table in her hacienda. It was the first time since her visit that she’d had an opportunity to be alone with Teresa, and she was relieved to be away from her harping mother, who seemed intent on browbeating her into having more children. Evangelina had no desire to do so, nor did she wish to explain why. Knowing she would be chastised as ungrateful, she’d said nothing about her unhappy marriage to her parents or any of her relatives.

  Her son, Juan Ignacio, as Teresa insisted on calling him, was across the meadow at Miguel’s house, happily playing with his cousins. The rest of the family had scattered to their own homes after breakfast, and in the peaceful quiet, the women began sorting through a large pile of serviceable children’s clothing Teresa routinely collected from family members and stored in a large wardrobe.

  As her grandchildren, grandnieces, and grandnephews multiplied, so had Teresa’s assortment of dresses, pants, shirts, blouses, sweaters, socks, undergarments, coats, and hats in all possible sizes. She inspected, repaired, washed, ironed, and folded each item before carefully putting it away. Over the years, the wardrobe had come to be known as Grandmother’s Closet. There were children in the family who were the third or fourth beneficiaries of items from Grandmother’s Closet.

  When the sorting was done, Juan Ignacio Kerney would return to the ranch with enough clothing to more than replace the few decent pairs of pants and shirts he had left to wear.

  “Gracias,” Evangelina said. “These will last him all year.”

  “It is nothing,” Teresa replied. “The drought has made all of us even more frugal than before. With no cattle to sell and nobody buying his ponies,
I’m sure Patrick is having a hard time making ends meet.”

  “It has been difficult,” Evangelina agreed.

  Teresa took a brown paper parcel from the chair next to her and passed it Evangelina. “This is for you.”

  “What have you done? Christmas was yesterday.”

  Teresa smiled. “Open it.”

  Evangelina quickly untied the string and peeled back the paper to reveal two housedresses, one a light blue with a zigzag seamed bodice, and the other a pretty yellow frock with a rickrack trim.

  “These are brand-new,” she said, her eyes sparkling as she fondled the material. “How wonderful you are to be so generous.”

  Teresa reached across the table and patted her hand. “I don’t see enough of you. Can’t you come with Juan Ignacio to visit more often?”

  “He needs me at the ranch,” Evangelina said regrettably. “There is no help.”

  Teresa sighed at the inevitability of Evangelina’s response. “Then I must come to visit you. I will bring your parents with me, your brothers and their wives, and some of the younger children, who can entertain Juan Ignacio. It is time for another fiesta.”

  Evangelina brightened. “I’d love that.”

  “Bueno, it is settled. Let’s pick some dates.”

  Evangelina’s expression clouded. “I should ask him first.”

  “Nonsense,” Teresa countered. “We will all come to the ranch when the two of us decide it is best.”

  Evangelina put a hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh. “Sí, let us decide.”

  They talked of family matters and village gossip for an hour or more before Evangelina left to help her mother prepare a special dinner to honor Father Eduardo Morales, who had traveled from El Paso to conduct holiday services and hear confession. Both the Armijo and Chávez families would be in attendance, filling the hacienda with more than forty adults and children.

  Wrapped in a shawl against the chill, with the comforting scent of woodsmoke in the thin, cold air of winter, Teresa stood in the courtyard and watched Evangelina hurry across the meadow to fetch Juan Ignacio, bundles of clothing tucked under her arms.