“He seems docile enough,” Matt noted hopefully.
“Meaning?” Mary asked, wondering what prompted such a ridiculous observation.
“Meaning what the hell do we do with him if he isn’t?” Matt sputtered. “What if he wanders off again? Or tries to hurt you or Kevin? What if no place will take him in?”
Mary stayed silent, her expression guarded.
“I suppose we could leave him alone at the ranch in the hopes he’d wander off and die,” Matt added.
Mary looked at him with rank displeasure. “What a preposterous thing to say.”
Matt shook his head in frustration, ran a hand through his hair as if to brush away all of the conceivable unpleasant possibilities he’d thought of, and smiled apologetically. “I shouldn’t have said that. But I’ve been brooding about what the hell to do with him ever since I left Albuquerque with him sitting next to me like a stone statue.”
Mary’s expression softened. Of course Matt would make Patrick his personal dilemma to solve. “He’s family and he needs us—all of us,” she said. “One way or another we have to find a way to take care of him. You really wouldn’t want it any other way, would you?”
In the face of Mary’s reasoning, Matt’s anger with Patrick evaporated, replaced by the realization that he’d been feeling sorry for himself.
He grinned and kissed her. “That’s my girl. You keep me honest, and I love you for it. But you’ve got to admit the damn old coot is nothing but trouble and always has been.”
Mary laughed. “That may be so, but he’s our trouble,” she said.
***
It took months before they could get Patrick admitted to the Fort Bayard Veterans Hospital outside Silver City. During that time, they cared for him with the help of a retired practical nurse Doc Blaine had recommended, who looked after him during the weekdays. After school, Mary took over and if Matt wasn’t traveling for work, he’d spell her. Kevin, who was bunking on a cot in Matt and Mary’s bedroom, chipped in by taking Patrick on walks, reading him stories, and keeping an eye on him while Mary fixed meals, went to the store, or did her household chores.
Patrick seemed to enjoy Kevin’s company the best, although the television Matt bought proved to be his favorite diversion. He’d sit in front of it for hours watching anything and everything. The weekends they took him to the ranch was when he seemed his most settled and content, never straying. He could usually be found on the veranda in his favorite chair staring out at the basin. He rarely spoke or showed any sign that he knew where he was or who he was with. Gradually, they all got used to the peculiarity of living with a person who dwelled in an unfathomable, unreachable shadow world.
Even on Patrick’s best days it had been like prison for all of them, and when Fort Bayard called with news of an opening it brought a feeling of great relief for Matt and Mary. In almost a holiday mood, she packed a picnic lunch for the trip to the hospital, made sure Patrick was wearing his best clothes, and insisted that Kevin go along, although he’d expressed no desire to do so. On a rough, winding road outside the once-thriving mining town of Hillsboro, they drove through the Black Range into the Gila Wilderness and stopped to eat along a stream in the cool pines of the high country before continuing on to Fort Bayard. It was the first time Kevin had actually been in the mysterious westerly mountains he’d seen so frequently from the 7-Bar-K high country. He marveled at the thick stands of tall pines that climbed steep canyon walls to towering summits.
There were no tears or sullenness on Kevin’s part when he hugged his grandfather goodbye inside the stark, three-story hospital that dominated one end of the parade grounds of the old historical frontier army fort where the famous Buffalo Soldiers had once proudly served.
“Will we ever see him again?” he asked soberly as they drove away.
“Of course,” Mary said. “We’ll come as often as we can.”
“Do you think it matters if we do or don’t?” Kevin asked.
Mary studied her son’s face. “Does it matter to you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kevin replied.
“Are you saying that just to please me?”
“No, I’ll miss him.”
Mary took her son’s hand. “I bet he knows that.”
“I bet he does too,” Kevin said with a smile.
***
Patrick’s health continued to decline over the next year, to the point that the doctors at Fort Bayard believed only his willpower and a strong physical constitution forged by eight decades of hard work kept him alive. For Mary, it didn’t matter that he showed not the slightest hint of comprehension during their regular visits; she refused to let Matt stop going, although they’d reached the point of not staying long. Kevin always willingly went with them, and Mary was convinced it was his presence alone Patrick somehow sensed as they sat at his bedside.
In the spring of 1963, the army made an offer on the ranch. This time Matt went to see Charlie Hopkinson for legal advice. He thumbed through the paperwork and told Matt to take the deal, which was exactly half of what the Albuquerque lawyer Craig Gridley had hoped to get.
“You weren’t ever going to get what that place is worth,” Charlie mused. “But those army lease payments you’ve been getting these past several years have probably helped to soften the blow.”
Matt agreed and asked Charlie to handle the transaction. “Get us ninety days to vacate, if you can.”
“Can do,” Charlie replied, offering a hand to seal the deal.
Matt left with a sour feeling in his gut. When the original deal with the missile range fell through, he’d lost the opportunity to buy the ten sections adjacent to the Rocking J. Now for the first time since John Kerney staked his claim on a slice of mountain wilderness overlooking the Tularosa nearly ninety years before, the family was about to become landless. He had half a mind to get stinking drunk in the first bar he could find. Instead, he drove to the desert outside of town and sat in the truck until it was time to go home for supper.
Four months before Kevin’s thirteenth birthday, Patrick suffered a massive heart attack and was transferred to the VA Hospital in Albuquerque. He died there quietly in his sleep on the day White Sands Missile Range took possession of the 7-Bar-K Ranch. The army denied Matt’s request to bury Patrick in the family cemetery, so he had his remains cremated and hatched a plan to return him to the 7-Bar-K, the missile range be damned.
A week later under cover of darkness, accompanied by Mary, Kevin, Al, Brenda, and Dale, and with Patrick’s ashes in his saddlebag, Matt led his small company of riders onto the missile range through a narrow, almost invisible, boulder-strewn slot canyon and up the faint trace of an old Apache path to the Kerney family cemetery. There he bared his head and buried Patrick’s ashes next to Emma’s grave.
No one said a word. When he rose they all stood for a moment gazing out at the majestic sky brimming with stars above the great, lonesome Tularosa, now bereft of the last of the true, old-time cowboys, the last ranch sitting abandoned and silent below.
28
The year Kevin Kerney was about to turn thirteen, he and Dale skipped the eighth grade and started high school. That same year, Raymond Edward Cannon, owner of the Willow Creek Ranch located at the base of the Sierra Cuchillo Mountains in the northern part of Sierra County, inaugurated an annual working cowboy and kids’ rodeo on his spread.
In a cottonwood draw on a wide rift valley at the foot of the elongated north-south range, the ranch was a rich-man’s getaway built for Mr. Cannon after the war by the best craftsmen, using the finest materials.
The Sierra Cuchillo Mountains were named not for their knifelike shape but for the legendary Apache leader Black Knife of the Warm Springs Band. On their northern slopes, they had once contained a ponderosa forest that long ago had been harvested for mining operations. Pockets of piñon and juniper trees dominated the gentle, gravelly eastern gr
adient that rose up to a steep, barren, western escarpment.
The ranch house was the fanciest and biggest dwelling Kevin had ever seen. More a sportsman’s lodge than a home, it had been constructed with massive timbers that supported a soaring, vaulted ceiling. An eight-foot fireplace at one end was bracketed by large windows that gave a panoramic view of the mountains. Arranged throughout the room were conversation areas with handmade chairs, couches, tables, and ottomans upholstered or decorated in western and cowboy motifs. It boggled Kevin’s mind that the house had a half dozen huge bedrooms, all with individual full bathrooms. The dining room adjoining an enormous kitchen contained a handcrafted table with matching chairs that could easily seat two dozen people.
The nearby guesthouse also had a huge cook’s kitchen, along with two full bathrooms and four separate bedrooms. A few steps away, near a stone and adobe horse barn, stood the foreman’s cottage, built of milled lumber covered by a sloping bright-red metal roof. It had a spacious porch that looked out on a set of corrals near a horse pasture and brand-new rodeo grounds complete with a judge’s stand and a small covered grandstand in close proximity to the chutes. During the events, folks who weren’t able to snare a seat in the grandstand backed their pickups against the fence and watched from lawn chairs in the truck beds.
From the very get-go, the two-day rodeo drew hundreds of folks from the surrounding area, including a contingent of city and county elected officials from T or C. At the conclusion of the first day’s events, Mr. Cannon and his wife, Polly, threw a barbeque on the front lawn for the contestants and spectators that was more a rally for Cannon’s preferred political party candidates than it was a neighborly get-together. Still, the food, spirits, and company were great and nobody minded the glad-hand politicking.
Kevin figured the foreman’s cottage was almost as big as the old 7-Bar-K ranch house. Behind it, no more than a hundred feet away, stood the bunkhouse, a long, low-slung adobe building with living space for six cowboys who worked cattle during the calving and shipping seasons and after fall works guided hunters into the mountains who anted up a pretty penny for the chance to bag a buck deer, a black bear, a wild turkey, or a mountain lion.
Cannon had made his fortune as a lawyer specializing in corporate acquisitions and was known for always turning a profit no matter what enterprise he undertook. Accordingly, the ranch operated in the black. While touring the ranch headquarters, Kevin and his parents were flabbergasted at the opulence of the place. When his dad half-jokingly advised him to go to law school first if he wanted to be a rancher, Kevin said he’d give it some thought.
That first year Kevin and Dale competed only in the team roping event and they came away with a second-place ribbon but no belt buckles. Kevin’s dad, however, took the cowboy all-around title with a first in bronc riding, a second in steer wrestling, and another first in team roping with Al Jennings as his partner. He won a cash prize, a silver buckle, and a new saddle. Amid catcalls and cheers, he raised the saddle over his head and with a grin on his face and an ache in his side from getting stepped on by the steer, he promptly announced his retirement from competition. Bursting with pride for his dad and determined to match his success, Kevin decided to win the top prize in the kids’ rodeo next year. Maybe he’d even get a peck on the cheek from Mr. Cannon’s granddaughter, Melissa, a dark-haired thirteen-year-old charmer with bright-blue eyes who handed out the prizes.
During the school year, a number of cute girls in his classes helped Kevin quickly forget about Melissa Cannon. He trained with his dad every chance he got to improve his skills in calf wrestling and calf roping, and when he was at the Rocking J, he and Dale worked tirelessly on their team roping—the only event Dale had any real interest in.
Keeping his grades up, practicing his rodeo skills, and pulling his share of chores at home and at the Rocking J took up most of his free time, so girls weren’t a high priority, although he was starting to think they should be. Maybe next year he’d meet one he really liked.
***
Although the Rocking J kept its original brand, the ranch was now officially the J&K Land and Cattle Company owned jointly by Al and Brenda Jennings and Matthew and Mary Kerney. Kevin’s parents had taken the money from the sale of the 7-Bar-K and invested a chunk of it in the enterprise to improve the pastures, upgrade the breeding stock, drill two new deep wells, replace fencing, and expand the small cottage at the ranch headquarters. As before, Al managed the cattle operation and Kevin’s dad continued to work for the college as a range and equine specialist, helping out during gatherings and on weekends. In addition, he bred and trained a small herd of cow ponies in his free time that he sold to area ranchers.
The summer after his freshman year, on a day when both sets of parents were in town on business, Kevin and Dale saddled up, left the Rocking J, and snuck onto the missile range to visit the old 7-Bar-K, traveling through the narrow slot canyon well hidden from any soldiers scanning the San Andres through binoculars. They reached the ranch undetected and found it unoccupied with the front door wide-open. Although the army had moved cots, gray metal dressers, chairs, tables, and a dented steel file cabinet into the ranch house, all the warmth of the place was gone. There was evidence of rodent droppings in all the rooms and a slithering impression of a snake on the dusty wood-plank floor in the living room that gradually disappeared on the steps to the veranda. Paint was peeling off the wood window frames, and there was a large water stain on the kitchen ceiling from a roof leak around the stovepipe.
A heavy padlock secured the entry to the adobe casita off the courtyard. The boys debated busting in to see what was inside, but gave up the notion so as not to advertise their trespassing.
The barn, corrals, and sheds looked no better than the house, and the once-welcoming cottonwood windbreak below the veranda was dying of thirst from a lack of moisture. At the end of the windbreak, the long-dead Witch’s Tree tilted precariously, and the rock-lined, hand-dug channel Kevin’s great-grandfather had trenched to water the trees was bone-dry. Soon all the beautiful old trees with thick branches filled with lime-green leaves quaking in the soft breeze would be dead and cut up for firewood.
At the family cemetery on the hill, part of the fence was down. At first glance, Kevin thought it had been deliberately damaged until he discovered a critter hole next to one of the posts had caused the collapse. He got a shovel with a broken handle that had been left behind in the barn and with Dale’s help reset the post and repaired the railing. He doubted anyone staying at the place would notice, and if they did he didn’t care.
Before leaving, the boys pulled all the weeds inside the fence so that it looked cared for. If his gramps was watching, Kevin knew he’d be pleased. On the ride back to the Rocking J, he stewed over the notion that what mattered most to some people didn’t count for spit to others. His family history lived in the hand-dug water channel, the thick-walled adobe house, the stoutly built corral, the slat-board barn, the large stone water tank, the stately, silent windmill, and the land so carefully tended. It meant nothing to the army. What kind of men ran the army? Whoever they were, he didn’t think much of them.
They started for home over the mountain, not caring a lick when the MPs on jeep patrol spotted them coming out of a grove of trees at the top of the steep eastern escarpment. They were too far away to get caught. They drew rein and waved their hats at the soldiers before dropping out of sight down an old game trail.
“We’re gonna catch hell at home if our parents find out what we did,” Dale predicted.
Kevin shrugged. “Maybe not.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I bet my dad has been to the ranch at least once since we buried Gramps’s ashes.”
“How do you figure that?”
Kevin smiled. “If we can’t stay away, I doubt that he can either.”
Dale nodded soberly. “It’s a hard place to forget. Let’s go back again some
day.”
“Yeah, lots of times,” Kevin added.
***
At the next Willow Creek Ranch Kids’ Rodeo, a sixteen-year-old took the top prize. But Kevin and Dale came away with buckles for first place in team roping. They also got a photograph in the T or C newspaper showing Melissa Cannon presenting their awards. Dale’s grin lit up the photograph and Melissa posed like a starlet, smiling prettily at the camera. Disappointed at his narrow second-place finish for the all-around title, Kevin glared glumly into the lens. He’d lost the championship with a disqualification in calf roping by breaking the barrier too soon. He started the first day of his second year of high school determined to never make that mistake again.
The first day at school also brought Eunice Williston into his class. A transfer student from Socorro, she was a mixture of tomboy and tease. She was natural and uninhibited, with short-cut blond hair, a slightly crooked nose, and a devilish laugh.
Her father had retired as a captain from the Socorro Police Department and recently taken a job as a Sierra County deputy sheriff. He’d been on the police force before the war and had returned to his old job after getting discharged, where he’d met his wife and started a family. Eunice lived with her parents on a leased ten-acre horse property south of town along the river. She had an older, married sister who lived in San Diego with her navy husband, and a handsome pony named Lucky. She was a year older than Kevin, but that didn’t seem to matter. They hit it off right away. They were the tallest and brightest students in their class, shared a mutual love of horses, and liked the same kind of music.
At the first teen hop of the season at a local church, they danced only with each other, which got them teased about going steady. Kevin secretly liked the idea of Eunice as a girlfriend, but she wanted nothing to do with it. He had hopes that time would change her mind.
The Last Ranch Page 30