The Last Ranch

by Michael McGarrity

  Behind him, the village of Tularosa had long disappeared from view. Already running out of steam, Tyler decided to turn back if a vehicle didn’t come his way in the next ten minutes. If he did manage to thumb a ride west, he might just take it straight on to Engle, get a room, and strike out again in the morning to Kerney’s ranch.

  He started his retreat to Tularosa just as a black Buick coupe came into view. Tyler stuck out a thumb, faked a gimpy limp with his bad foot, and gratefully watched the Buick coast to a stop beside him. He looked inside the open window and a man with a sweaty, red face leaned across the car seat and opened the passenger door. “Climb aboard,” he said.

  Tyler cracked a smile. “Thanks. I was starting to think nobody used this highway.”

  “It’s desolate, that’s for sure. Where are you heading?”

  “To a ranch my buddy owns.” Tyler got in, closed the door, and laid his satchel on his lap. The backseat of the coupe was filled with boxes. “It’s off the highway up in the foothills. You moving?” he asked.

  The man chuckled and nodded. “California bound. Got a new job as a procurement agent for a company in San Diego that does business with the navy. I decided to take the scenic route. Name’s Mark Behr.”

  Behr extended his hand and Tyler shook it. “I’m Fred.”

  “Saw you limping a bit, Fred.”

  Tyler nodded. “Wounded in Italy,” he lied.

  Behr gave him a quick once-over. “Sorry to hear it. You look a little old to have served.”

  Tyler shrugged nonchalantly and kept lying. “I signed up right after Pearl Harbor. It was the right thing to do—fight for your country and all. I figured since I have no kin, my age didn’t matter.”

  Behr nodded his approval and gingerly touched his chest. “I would’ve done the same myself except for a bad ticker. I’m sorry I’ve missed out.”

  “Be glad you didn’t have to go,” Tyler replied, trying to sound as world-weary as possible, remembering his years in the shit-heap state prison in Santa Fe. “There’s nothing good about war.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” Behr peered through the windshield at a bank of dark clouds that had descended over the mountains, moving in his direction. “Looks like more bad weather is coming. Do you know what the road is like up ahead? I sure wouldn’t want to get stuck out here.”

  “Can’t say that I do.”

  Behr gave him a thin, worried smile, tightened his grip on the steering wheel, and slowed the Buick in the face of the oncoming storm. “If the road turns real nasty, do you think your buddy would let me lay over at his ranch until it clears up?”

  Tyler smiled broadly and nodded enthusiastically. Behr’s request had just made his fishing expedition a whole lot simpler. “Sure he will. He’s a good guy. Why, he’ll put you up overnight if need be.”

  Behr’s expression lightened. He was a beefy guy, maybe forty, with a soft gut and small hands that didn’t match the rest of his body. “That’s a relief. I’m glad I stopped to pick you up.”

  “Me too,” Tyler replied with genuine appreciation.

  Behr offered Tyler water from a jug on the front seat. He took several big swigs before returning it to the seat cushion just as thick raindrops splashed against the windshield. The rain turned to hail, pounding the roof of the Buick with the relentless rat-tat-tat sound of a machine gun.

  “Jesus,” Behr said, between clenched teeth.

  Tyler’s thoughts raced ahead. Maybe he should make this trip more than a simple fishing expedition. Kerney and his lady friend were in El Paso at Fort Bliss, which probably meant his old man was looking after the little girl at the ranch. Why not kill the old man and snatch the girl? That would surely cause Kerney enough harm and anguish.

  He glanced at Behr. If he eliminated him as well, he’d have a getaway car plus the bonus of whatever money the man was carrying. Tyler grunted with satisfaction. He’d kill both Behr and Kerney’s pa, and when he was finished with the girl, he’d dump her body in the desert. He’d abandon the car in Las Cruces and return to Fort Bliss as though nothing had happened. It was a perfect plan. He grinned at his sound thinking.

  Behr had tensed up, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as the torrent came down in sheets. He cast a nervous glance at Tyler. “What ya grinning about?”

  “I’m looking forward to seeing my old pal and his family, that’s all,” Tyler answered gleefully.

  ***

  Matt, Patrick, and Al kept the small herd of ponies moving through the first pulse of the storm, but the second one stopped them in their tracks with a driving rain and lightning that lit up the ominous charcoal dark clouds. They threw up a rope corral to pen the agitated animals and hunkered down in their rain slickers under the bellies of their mounts to wait it out. In between the thunderclaps, wind, and pummeling rain, they could hear the throaty roar of water rushing in a nearby arroyo.

  Although they were cold and wet, not a word of complaint passed among them. Monsoon season was still more than a month away and this unexpected, welcome, early storm was filling dry dirt tanks with water, soaking pastures of still-dormant native grasses, making sluggish mountain streams run fast, and replenishing the dry, cracked earth baked by the sun. There would be mud-soaked flatlands, washed-out trails, eroded ranch roads, leaky roofs, some flooding, and critters scattered everywhere, but for every rancher on the basin the storm was a boon rather than a burden.

  When the rain slackened and the western sky cleared, Patrick rose slowly, clutching his stomach, a sour look plastered on his face.

  “What’s wrong?” Matt asked.

  “Nothing.” Patrick grimaced and turned away to re-cinch his saddle.

  Matt stepped over to Patrick and looked him in the eye. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Gut ache, that’s all,” Patrick snapped. “Let’s get these mares and their babies home.” He started to mount, grabbed his stomach, and sank to his knees in pain. “Dammit,” he moaned.

  “I’m taking you to town to see the doctor,” Matt said.

  Patrick rose slowly and climbed on his pony. “No, you ain’t. It’s a gut ache, is all. I’ll be fine. Just give me a minute. If I start feeling worse, I’ll ride home on my own. You two can handle these mares and their babies.”

  “We can throw these ponies over into my pasture and you can ride on home with him,” Al proposed to Matt.

  Patrick shot Al a dirty look.

  Al flashed him a smile. He’d lived on and managed the 7-Bar-K while Matt was in the army. Patrick’s sourpuss didn’t faze him a bit. Besides, the old-timer looked downright ill. “It will save a bunch of time.”

  Matt gave Patrick another worried glance. At a steady pace, in two hours they’d have the ponies settled safely on the Rocking J pasture. From there, they could go straight home over the mountain. He nodded at Al. “Okay, and once again I’m obliged.”

  “No need for the thanks,” Al replied.

  Patrick undid one end of the rope corral and shooed the mares out, the foals following alongside their mamas. “Well, stop jawboning and let’s get going,” he snapped, fighting to control his expression. The pain in his gut felt like a hot poker.

  Matt had never seen his pa look so poorly. He wondered if Patrick was in a hurry to get home and die in his bed. He eased his pony behind the last mare and hurried her and her chestnut foal along. “You ride alongside, where I can see you,” he ordered Patrick, who did as he was told.

  ***

  In the storm, Tyler would have missed pointing out the ranch turnoff if it hadn’t been for the 7-Bar-K wrought-iron sign at the side of the road. Several miles in, Behr got the right front wheel of his Buick stuck in a deep muddy rut on the ranch road. Flustered and red in the face, he gunned the engine, spun the wheels, and sank the tire deeper. He gladly turned the driving over to Tyler, who freed the Buick by slowly backing it up in reverse.<
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  After ten more miles bouncing along the muddy, rutted road cut by fast-running rivulets, Tyler began to wonder exactly how far in the ranch house was from the state highway. The storm had cleared the basin and he could see nothing up ahead but uninhabited land with mountains to the west and desert to the east. He topped a small rise and the Buick nose-dived into a steep washout that had sliced across the road. Thrown forward, Behr cracked his head on the dashboard. Tyler left him whimpering in the car, holding a handkerchief to his forehead to stem the bleeding, and inspected the damage. Ankle-deep in muddy water, he bent down and checked the undercarriage. The Buick was high-centered on an exposed boulder half the size of the car. At the rear bumper he pushed the Buick to see if it would move. It didn’t budge. Several more tries convinced him it would take a tow truck to dislodge it.

  He reached through the open driver’s door, killed the engine, and grabbed his satchel from the floorboard. He glanced at Behr, who looked miserable as he held the blood-soaked handkerchief against his face. Plans change. The man and his car had suddenly become useless.

  “What do we do now?” Behr whined.

  “I’ll walk on ahead to the ranch house and get help.”

  Behr took the handkerchief away and shook his head. It was a nasty-looking gash. “I need medical attention. I’m not staying here to die by myself.”

  Tyler reached inside the satchel for the .45 semiautomatic. “You ain’t dead yet,” he said. He shot Behr twice in the chest, puncturing an artery that splattered blood across the dashboard. “Now you are,” he added with a smile.

  Tyler searched him, found a wallet containing a windfall hundred and eighty-four dollars, put it in his satchel, grabbed the half-full water jug from the car, and considered his next move. Being so far from anywhere, he figured Kerney had to have some sort of farm vehicle at his ranch. That would have to do for his getaway. He regretted that he wouldn’t have much special time to spend with the little girl.

  He glanced at the car. Nothing connected him to Behr or the Buick. Still, why take any chances the cops might find something? From the backseat of the coupe, he took one of Behr’s shirts from a suitcase, tore it into strips, tied the strips together, and snaked them into the gas tank. He lit the end of the jerry-rigged fuse, made sure it kept burning, and hurried away from the car, the inside of his muddy shoes sloshing wet.

  When he stopped and turned fifty yards from the Buick, wondering if the fuse had gone out, it exploded into a ball of fire.

  ***

  The distant sound of two gunshots brought Anna Lynn to the veranda with Matt’s binoculars. She’d been at the kitchen table schooling Ginny in her numbers, a subject she did not easily take to, when the shots rang out. With Ginny at her side, she scanned south, east, north, and west, wondering if joyriding soldiers in jeeps were once again shooting up the countryside, although she doubted anyone, no matter how idiotic, would have been outside by choice in the violent storm that had passed over the basin. She hoped Matt, Patrick, and Al had found shelter during the worst of it.

  It wasn’t hunting season and the ranch was posted, so gunfire made no sense unless someone was in trouble or up to mischief. She considered getting in her truck to see what had happened, but decided it best to stay put and remain alert.

  “What do you see, Mama?” Ginny asked, tugging at Anna Lynn’s jeans.

  “Just a lot of beautiful country, sweetie,” she answered. The ranch road was dotted with pools of muddy water and closer in she could see where the downpour had washed it out in places. The stream through the near pasture ran full, spilling its banks and fanning out across the coarse ground of the Alkali Flats. In the sunlight the basin sparkled with glistening wet mesquite, yucca, greasewood, and cactus, and the air felt moist and sweet, no longer dusty and dry. Off the veranda, the branches of the old cottonwood trees, soaked by the storm, bent lower to the ground.

  “I’m gonna go see Peaches,” Ginny said.

  “Peaches is fine,” Anna Lynn said. “We put her in her stall before the storm broke, remember?” They’d moved Peaches and Patrick’s two old ponies into the barn from the near pasture minutes before the first downpour.

  “She may be scared,” Ginny argued.

  “The ponies are fine. You stay right here with me. We’ll check on them later. Okay?”

  Ginny nodded. “Let me see,” she said, reaching for the binoculars.

  An explosion rang out before Anna Lynn could give Ginny the binoculars. It was followed by a cloud of smoke and flames that curled into the air. She focused on the smoke plume and guessed it to be three or four miles distant, out of sight behind a rise but somewhere near the ranch road. She swept the area looking for any movement. Other than grass waving in a gentle breeze, all was still. She couldn’t imagine what had caused the blast, but combined with the gunshots it made her apprehensive and a little worried. A sudden misgiving that something bad was coming washed over her.

  “What was that?” Ginny asked.

  “Just a really big bang, honey. Maybe the army planes from the airfield mistakenly dropped a bomb or something. Let’s go inside.”

  “A bomb?” Ginny said excitedly. “Let’s go see.”

  Anna Lynn took Ginny’s hand. “Not now. The ranch road is too muddy and we’d get stuck.”

  Ginny tried to tug free. “It scared Peaches, I just know it did.”

  “Peaches is just fine.” She guided Ginny into the kitchen. “When Matt and Patrick get home, they’ll be hungry. We should bake something special for them. What will it be? You decide.”

  Ginny’s eyes lit up. “Sugar cookies!”

  Her distraction worked. Sugar cookies were Ginny’s favorite. She loved to use the star-shaped cookie cutter on the rolled-out dough. “Perfect. Get the flour tin from the pantry and we’ll get started.”

  While Ginny got the flour, Anna Lynn put on her apron, went to the living room, and from the gun case got the horse pistol Patrick’s father had brought to New Mexico after the Civil War. She checked to make sure it was loaded before slipping it into her apron pocket. If trouble showed up, she’d scare it away.

  In the kitchen, she lit the firebox in the cookstove, sprinkled some flour on the table, and with Ginny’s help began to make the dough. Occasionally she glanced out the open door, still half-convinced trouble was coming. But by the time the dough was ready for Ginny to cut into star-shaped cookies, there had been no sign of any unexpected or unwanted visitors approaching on the ranch road. She felt silly for putting the old pistol in her apron pocket. She could always bean an intruder with a frying pan if need be.

  She usually did not cook in the kitchen during the heat of the day, but the passing storm had cooled the morning and a pleasant breeze wafted through the open doors and windows of the house. She checked the stove firebox and decided more wood was needed to keep the oven at the right temperature while they baked six batches of cookies.

  She left Ginny at the table busy with the cookie cutter, went to the walled courtyard, and startled a blue jay that was parading on top of the woodpile. It squawked in displeasure and flew away as she gathered an armful of logs. Back in the kitchen she found the room empty and Ginny gone from her chair.

  “Ginny!” Anna Lynn called loudly, letting the firewood tumble from her arms to the floor near the stove. She rushed onto the veranda. Ginny was nowhere in sight.

  “Young lady!” Anna Lynn shouted as she hurried down the veranda steps. Ginny’s small footprints in the wet ground led directly to the barn. Relieved, she slowed her pace. Although she admired her daughter’s concern for Peaches, she’d still earned a scolding for disobeying. “You come out here right this minute,” she ordered.

  A man stepped out of the shadows of the barn, holding Ginny in one arm, a gun in his free hand. His clothes were wet, his shoes were caked with mud, and his hair was plastered against his forehead.

  “Let me dow
n,” Ginny wailed, struggling in his arms.

  Tyler squeezed her tight against his chest and leered at Anna Lynn. “Well, well, this is better than I expected.”

  “I know you,” Anna Lynn said hotly. “You’re the orderly from the Fort Bliss hospital.”

  “That’s right. Name’s Fred Tyler. I want you to remember that.”

  “Put my daughter down,” she demanded.

  Tyler pointed the semiautomatic at Anna Lynn. “Or what?” he snarled. “Don’t give me orders.”

  “You’ve got no cause to hurt her.”

  Tyler laughed. “You don’t know the half of it. Where’s your lover boy and his pa?”

  “They’ll be here any minute.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did you shoot somebody and blow something up?”

  Tyler bared his teeth in a smile. “Aren’t you a nosy bitch? Just maybe I did have to kill me someone. Maybe you’re next. Or your little girl.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” Anna Lynn dropped her shaking hands in front of the apron pocket. Unless Tyler put Ginny down, the horse pistol was useless. “I’ll do anything you want if you promise not to hurt my daughter.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes.” Anna Lynn switched her gaze to Ginny. She was crying, her face contorted with fear. “It’s okay, sweetie,” she said, forcing a smile.

  “Look at me, not her!” Tyler thundered. “And do exactly what I say.”

  Anna Lynn stiffened. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

  “First, food,” Tyler replied, as his leer reappeared. “Then you and me are gonna have a little party.”

  “I’ll do whatever you want,” Anna Lynn said. “Anything. But please, please, let Ginny come to me. You’re scaring her.”

  The bitch was his now, he could sense it. He couldn’t remember when he’d had so much fun. He put the kid down. “Since you asked so nice.”

  Sobbing, Ginny ran straight to Anna Lynn, who scooped her up. “Thank you.”

  Tyler smirked, looked her up and down hungrily, and waved his gun at her. “Now, turn around and go to the house. I’m right behind you.”