January 1945 brought better news. The Allies stopped the counterattack in the Ardennes and routed the German forces; the Russians continued to advance eastward, rolling up Nazi divisions, and in the Pacific the US Army had returned to the Philippines and was pushing back the Japanese in fierce fighting.
On the Tularosa, due to paltry winter rains, spring works started early. Much of the land from the Rio Grande to the east side of the basin remained open range and cattle roamed freely in search of browse and water. In March, when ranchers began gathering, reports soon started circulating of run-ins with military police patrols denying them access to several hundred square miles of land west of the Oscuras. A group of stockmen made a request to the Alamogordo Air Field commander for permission to round up their stray cows. It was quickly rejected, in spite of the fact that cattle had been spotted in the restricted area.
New roads on the government-seized land were being built by construction crews from sunup to sundown, and miles of electrical wire had been strung on low poles from power lines adjacent to the Rio Grande. Jeep and truck tire tracks crisscrossed the scrubland, and dust thrown up by the dozens of trucks coming and going daily filled the sky, along with two tall steel towers poking up like beacons into the big empty near the old McDonald Ranch.
In the middle of the restricted land a small compound had been built to quarter twelve MPs, who patrolled the perimeter of the newly established federal reservation in jeeps. Because there were no fences, signs on posts placed every hundred yards or so warned that there was no trespassing on government property.
The lack of twenty-four-hour MP patrols and the absence of fencing was sufficient incentive for Matt, Patrick, and Al Jennings to mount an early March predawn raid to gather a sizable bunch of cattle that had congregated for water at the abandoned, now-officially-off-limits Bar Cross horse camp. After camping overnight outside the perimeter, they gathered the critters without a hitch under the cover of darkness and were two miles from the boundary with the sun blazing down on them in a cloudless sky when four MPs in two jeeps converged on them. The soldiers ground their vehicles to a stop and two rifle-toting privates in combat fatigues jumped out, weapons at the ready. Startled by the commotion, the cattle began to break away and scatter. Paying no attention to the GIs, Matt and Al went after them at a gallop, Matt veering left, Al to the right, hoping to turn the lead steers back and get the bunch milling before the scattering became a stampede.
Astride Ribbon, Patrick watched while the two nervous army boys—kids, really—held him at bay with their M-1 rifles.
“Make those men stop,” the MP sergeant ordered him, waving his .45. A stubby little fella, no more than five-foot-five, the sergeant had a beak for a nose and almost no eyebrows.
Patrick slowly unholstered his horse pistol and placed it on his leg. “They can’t do that until the cows decide to quit,” he answered peaceably.
The sergeant held out his hand. “Give me that pistol.”
“Nope. You give me yours.”
The sergeant pointed his .45 at Patrick’s chest. “Don’t be stupid, old man.”
“You gonna shoot me?” Patrick demanded. Matt and Al had turned the lead steers. In a dense dust cloud that hid the two riders from view, the cows began to wheel back toward Patrick, a good sign the scattering had been halted.
“I just might have to,” the sergeant growled.
“I’d wait, if I were you,” Patrick replied calmly. The cows slowed to a walk and the dust lifted, revealing Matt and Al flanking the sergeant, their Winchesters pointed directly at him. “That is, unless you’re hankering to be shot dead where you stand.”
The sergeant glanced left to right at the two riders and slowly holstered his sidearm. “Lower your weapons,” he ordered his troops. They did so in great relief.
Patrick eased the horse pistol into the holster. “Let us pass and we’ll trouble you no more today.” Matt and Al took his cue and returned their rifles to their scabbards.
The sergeant shook his head and got a clipboard from his jeep. “First, I’ve got to make a report about this.”
Patrick looked down kindly at the sergeant and smiled. “I reckon you do. Tell your commanding officer or whoever is in charge that Patrick and Matthew Kerney from the 7-Bar-K and Al Jennings from the Rocking J came and rescued their privately owned property that was illegally impounded by the government. If he needs to know more, he’s invited to come and visit. He can look up how to find us on a map. You got that?”
The sergeant hesitated then nodded.
“Good.” Patrick started to urge Ribbon forward and paused. “What are you people building out here?”
“I don’t know,” the sergeant replied sincerely.
“An ammo dump?” Patrick proposed.
“I can’t say,” the sergeant answered.
“Is it a big secret?” Patrick prodded in a mock whisper.
“I can’t say because we don’t know.” The sergeant punctuated his ignorance with a shrug. “None of us do. Technically, we’re not even out here on this godforsaken desert. But if I were you, I wouldn’t come back. There are gonna be a whole lot more of us real soon.”
Patrick nudged Ribbon forward. “I’ll keep that in mind. Adios, Sergeant.”
***
Seven of the rescued cows belonged to the McDonald family. They threw them over onto a home pasture on their way to the Sweetwater Canyon Pass, where they parted company with Al Jennings, who continued with his bunch southwestward to the Rocking J.
With Salinas Peak towering to the north, they came out of the rock-strewn pass on to the Tularosa flats with the Malpais in full view, bedded the critters down for the night at an occasional spring that still ran clear at the foot of a rock outcropping, and made camp an easy ten miles from home.
“Those army boys ain’t building an ammunition dump,” Patrick announced as he eased onto his bedroll and stared up at the black, star-filled sky. “If that was all they were up to, that MP sergeant would’ve told us. An ammo dump is no big secret.”
Matt opened a can of peaches, drank the juice, and forked the halves into his mouth. “Got any ideas what it is?”
“Nope, but it bodes no good for the likes of us,” Patrick ruminated. “Once the government gets its talons into something, chances are they won’t let go.”
“Most of our land we own free and clear, unlike other folks who proved up a section for a homestead and were leasing the rest of their land from the government,” Matt countered. “Besides, our landholdings aren’t part of the bombing range or this new hush-hush whatever-the-hell-it-is. Way I see it, we’re okay.”
Patrick gave Matt’s comments some thought before responding. “Let’s hope it stays as simple as that. But the Tularosa has a way of serving up a passel of perilous surprises, and on this slice of country I count mankind as the most dangerous critter of them all.”
A squadron of B-17s on a night bombing-raid exercise roared overhead in formation, lights blinking fore and aft, punctuating Patrick’s point. His aching bones kept him awake long after the last faint whisper of the aircraft engines had faded away.
***
In the morning they arrived home, settled the cattle in the fenced pasture, and were greeted by two men waiting next to an army jeep parked in front of the ranch house. The man in an army uniform, a stern-jawed fella, wore first lieutenant’s bars and crossed-pistol insignias on his jacket, signifying military police. His companion, a tall man in a suit and tie with a sunburned face, had a deputy US Marshal badge pinned to the handkerchief pocket of his suit jacket. Neither man offered a handshake or attempted an introduction. Hoping Patrick had the good sense to sit on his pony and stay quiet, Matt dismounted and asked the men to state their business.
“You’re one of the Kerneys?” the officer demanded.
“Yep.” Matt nodded in Patrick’s direction. “And that old boy
is the other one.”
The lieutenant glanced quickly at Patrick and returned his attention to Matt. “I’m here to give you both a warning: stay off government land. The next time you trespass, you’ll be taken into custody, arrested, and jailed without bail until a hearing can be scheduled before a federal judge.”
Patrick snickered at the thought of it. “Trespassing is a petty misdemeanor. You get a fine, not jail time.”
“It isn’t as simple as that,” the deputy marshal retorted briskly. “This is serious government business. You’d better heed the lieutenant.”
“Is that so?” Patrick moved Ribbon closer to the lieutenant, who stepped back. “What are you boys cooking up out there?” he asked.
The officer gave Patrick’s pony a wary look, climbed behind the wheel of the jeep, and cranked the engine. “Take this warning seriously, gentlemen, or be prepared to suffer the consequences.”
Patrick dismounted as the men drove away. “They weren’t very neighborly. Think they’ll send a bomber to blow us to kingdom come if we don’t do as we’re told?”
“More likely it will be a platoon of heavily armed soldiers in half-tracks.”
Patrick uncinched his saddle. Ribbon snorted with pleasure. “Best we stock up on ammo next trip to town.”
Matt rolled his eyes and unsaddled his pony.
***
That afternoon, a trip to the mailbox brought a typewritten letter from Matt’s former first sergeant, now captain, Roscoe Beal, sent from a military hospital in England. It read:
Matt:
I’m sitting on a thick rubber cushion in the hospital day room at this typewriter writing to you this way because a German 88 shell blew a hole the size of a half dollar in my ass and took a chunk out of the upper arm of my writing hand, so it’s hunt and peck one letter at a time. As you can tell by the envelope, I’m not a first sergeant anymore due to getting a battlefield commission in Italy. Be glad you weren’t there with us. Only eleven of us who shipped out with the company survived Italy intact. Our regiment really got chewed up.
You’re getting this letter because this morning I was reading the Stars and Stripes and saw the newest Bill Mauldin cartoon in the paper. When I told my pretty army nurse, Raine Hartman, about the hilarious cartoons Mauldin did about you in Sicily and mentioned your name she was flabbergasted. Apparently, she was your nurse at Ft. Bliss before she shipped out. Small world, isn’t it? She transferred to England from a field hospital just a week before I got blown up by that Kraut 88. I got your address from her. She sends her best and promises to write.
I’m hoping to get fixed up enough to rejoin the regiment although rumor has it now that fighting in this theater is winding down, those fit enough to return to combat may be held in reserve to fight Tojo. Maybe we’ll all get some leave at home before then. Sure would be nice.
There’s already talk going around in the division about holding a reunion in Oklahoma once the war is over. Maybe we can get together then and lift a glass. I’d like that.
Sincerely,
Roscoe
To give Roscoe news of a normal life at home, which he knew would be a welcome distraction, Matt wrote back about cattle prices, making improvement to the ranch, and putting up with his often testy old man. He didn’t mention the army, rationing, national politics, the war, or the hush-hush military doings on the Jornada.
Over the next several weeks he expected to hear from Raine, but a letter never came. He soon put it out of his mind, figuring a good-looking woman in London wouldn’t be missing a one-eyed veteran on a dusty New Mexico ranch when there were legions of horny soldiers to occupy her attention. In April his reckoning proved right when a brief, formal note arrived announcing her marriage to Maj. Harry Stanford Barrett IV, MD, known to all as Bill. After the war, Dr. and Mrs. Barrett would live in New York City, where the good doctor would resume his private psychiatric practice.
Disappointed that another weekend rendezvous with Raine wasn’t going to happen in either the near or distant future, Matt wrote a congratulatory note to the happy couple, wondering if he’d ever attract a woman who wanted to stick around. The day he mailed it, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in Hitler’s Berlin bunker. A few days later, on May 6, 1945, the war in Europe ended.
Although it was only half a victory, with the war in the Pacific still to be won, Matt broke out a bottle of Kentucky sipping whiskey to celebrate, and for the first and, he expected, the only time in his life, he got stinking drunk with his father.
8
Just as the MP sergeant predicted, after their raid to liberate the cattle stranded on the land seized by the army, activity there soon increased. Dozens of watchtowers were built along the perimeter and quickly staffed by armed GIs. Along certain sections of the boundary where errant cattle had been known to illegally wander, fencing had been thrown up with No Trespassing signs nailed to posts every several hundred feet. On the new roads that cut straight across the raw, sun-blasted land, truck convoys brought troops, supplies, equipment, civilian workers, and tons of construction materials. Within weeks, swarms of workers reassembled Civilian Conservation Corps barracks that had stood vacant in the old forest camps and created a post laid out in a typical military configuration. Gasoline engines powered huge floodlights so work could proceed at night. Water wells were dug, latrines built, and electric generators installed. At night from mountaintop vantage points, it seemed that a new town had miraculously dropped down from the sky onto the desert floor, along with a host of colonists embarked upon mysterious undertakings.
Matt saw it all as he rode the Oscura Mountains high country in search of 7-Bar-K strays. Before the army kicked McDonald off his ranch early in the war to use it as a bombing range for the Alamogordo Airfield, there had been no need to ride so far north. But with no one left to gather the wandering critters, he periodically rode an upcountry circuit looking for livestock that had gone missing, invariably chasing home a few half-wild steers and an elderly dry cow or two—mostly 7-Bar-K cattle, but occasionally a critter carrying a neighboring brand.
Matt enjoyed the outings not only for the solitude it provided in a pretty slice of mountain country, but also for relief from Patrick’s company, who’d become reasonably easy to tolerate but still prone to crankiness.
From horseback, he always paused on a protected shelf to scan the encampment below him in the distance. Even with binoculars it was hard to see the goings-on in detail, but he could clearly make out huge concrete bunkers under construction and two tall towers, one of steel and one of heavy timbers, being thrown up. It was all a puzzle.
One Sunday morning he watched in astonishment as soldiers on horseback played polo on a dusty field near the base camp. On another occasion, as he was chasing a belligerent steer out of a slot canyon, a huge explosion, louder than anything he’d ever heard before, brought him at a gallop to a western crest to find a thick plume of dense, black smoke swirling skyward and a large, smoldering crater in the desert floor where the wooden tower had once stood. At home, he told Patrick the army had blown up a wooden tower with enough high explosives to wipe out most of Alamogordo for no apparent reason.
“What was the tower for?” Patrick asked.
“As far as I could tell, it was just a tower,” Matt replied.
“Was it an accident?” Patrick asked, turning down the volume on the portable radio Matt had bought from a bomber pilot who had deployed with his outfit to somewhere in the South Pacific.
“I don’t think so,” Matt replied.
“Maybe it was just a quick way to make a big hole in the ground,” Patrick ventured.
“But what for?” Matt asked.
Patrick shrugged indifferently. “Your guess is as good as mine, but since the army did it, I figure it has to do with finding new ways to kill the enemy. After all, that’s what they do.” He turned up the volume on the radio and promptly lost i
nterest in the conversation.
With the war in Europe won, rumors at the airfield whispered of massive preparations for the invasion of Japan. Earlier in the year, Tokyo had been firebombed, killing tens of thousands. The Philippines had been reclaimed, Okinawa captured with staggering losses on both sides, and in China, Burma, and Borneo the Japanese forces were in retreat. Folks were getting optimistic that maybe the war in the Pacific would be over in a year, and the gung-ho flyboys who’d yet to see combat were eager to kill their share of Japs before it ended.
Matt didn’t doubt that soon a lot more Nips would be dead, and after hearing the reports of Japanese atrocities committed against Allied POWs, especially the New Mexico boys who had been captured on Corregidor, the notion didn’t trouble him one bit.
The portable radio Matt had purchased, a Zenith Trans-Oceanic that received five shortwave bands as well as AM broadcasts, was a honey of a radio that quickly became Patrick’s prime source of entertainment. After supper, he settled into his easy chair in the living room and listened to the news and his favorite comedy and variety shows, including Abbott and Costello, Fred Allen, and Bing Crosby. Occasionally, he’d scan the shortwave bands, fiddling with the antenna until he got an overseas station, sometimes from Australia, sometimes an English-language broadcast from as far away as India. The mountains frequently blocked reception, which left only a Juárez music station to listen to after the college station in Las Cruces went off the air. By then, Patrick was usually asleep in his chair.
Matt frequently joined Patrick in the evening, sitting at his desk while going over the ranch books, lazing on the couch as he mended a piece of tack, or reading the latest bulletins from the National Livestock Producers Association. He always paused and paid particular attention when the war news came on. Roscoe Beal had written him while stateside on medical leave, saying scuttlebutt had the division rotating to the Pacific theater before the end of the year. He worried about his old army buddy. How much war could any one man hope to survive?
The Last Ranch Page 10