Lords of the Land

by Braun, Matt;

  They turned to look at him, and his mouth curled in a sardonic smile. After a moment Kruger grunted, shook his head. “You’re awfully intolerant, son. There’s room enough here for all kinds, farmers included.”

  “Not for my money. You clutter up the country with that many people and pretty soon there won’t be any room for cows.”

  “Unfortunately, cows won’t support a railroad or build a stable economy. Besides, we have more people than that on Santa Guerra, and it’s never created any problems.”

  “Los Lerdenos belong here! You’re talking about outsiders.”

  “We were all outsiders at one time.”

  Hank shrugged. “Thanks all the same, but I’ll stick to cows. They’re lots less headaches than most people, especially farmers.”

  “Well, it’s a moot point anyhow, isn’t it? The farmers will settle east of the railroad and that pretty effectively separates them from Santa Guerra. So there’ll be no conflict either way.”

  Hank began a reply, but Becky made a face and cut him off short. “That reminds me, Mr. Kruger. When will the railroad get here—do you have any idea?”

  “Oh yes,” Kruger said, relieved by the interruption. “We expect to be in operation by the end of the year, perhaps a bit sooner. They’re already twelve miles south of Corpus and laying track at the rate of a mile a day.”

  “That fast?” Becky asked, fascinated. “How on earth do they do it, Mr. Kruger? I mean, I’ve ridden on railroads, but it never occurred to me that one could be built so quickly.”

  Later, after explaining the dynamics of railroad-building, Kruger stood at the door watching them drive off. He had mixed feelings about the visit. Becky was a delight, intelligent and lighthearted, altogether captivating. But Hank had embarrassed him; the boy was irresponsible, perhaps incorrigible, always taking it upon himself to play the spoiler. A man invested so much of himself in his son, and every year the commitment grew stronger, more demanding. Still, there was a limit to all things, particularly when he saw nothing of himself in the boy. Instead of gratitude, his efforts were met with defiance and youthful cynicism. A sort of jocular arrogance.

  Pondering on it, Kruger recalled there was a time, not so long ago, when it might have worked out. If the boy had completed college and become a lawyer, their relationship would be entirely different. Yet he’d simply quit, chucking three years of study, and returned home to announce that higher education was a crock of applesauce. It was then, openly confronted with rebellion, that Kruger realized the boy’s mother had named him well. Young Hank was very much like his grandfather, rowdy and cocksure, squaring off against the world as though it were all an enormous prize ring constructed especially for his amusement. Then too, he was like his mother in many ways, thoughtless and un-dependable, with never a thought for tomorrow. It was an imperfect combination.

  Curiously, though, Kruger found a spark of hope in the girl, Becky Hazlett. Today had been a revelation, opening up possibilities he hadn’t even suspected. From the look on Hank’s face, the gingerly manner with which he treated her, it was obvious she had him under some sort of spell. Whether it was mere infatuation, or something of a permanent nature, remained to be seen. But she clearly had him bemused, and with time she might very well clip his wings.

  A wayward thought struck Kruger, forced a tight smile. Perhaps she was woman enough to keep him out of the compound at night, to stop his roaming the village like a drunken lord. That in itself would be a godsend for everyone on Santa Guerra.

  And the daughters of Los Lerdenos.

  Chapter 34

  They were naked. The night was warm, the moon veiled by tall live oaks, modesty unnecessary. Stretched out on the grassy bank, a tangle of arms and legs, their breath grew shorter, coming faster, and along the creek the katydids went silent.

  He clutched her buttocks and she moaned, exhaled a hoarse, whimpering cry. Then his strokes quickened and he thrust deeper. She bucked to meet him, hips moving in an urgent circle. He kissed her, their tongues met and dueled; she sucked his lips, licked his face,’ purring. Suddenly she drove at him in an agonized clash, legs spidered around his back, and he felt the heat building in her. The damp muff between her legs became an abundant swell of flesh, gathering and holding him within her until he rammed blindly, feverishly, to the molten core. She gasped, clamping him viselike, clinging wet with violent contractions, and then she screamed.

  “Aaaaah Dios! Dios!”

  She shuddered, fell back limply, and they lay panting for a long while. Then he withdrew, exhausted, and rolled away, one arm flung over her breasts. Slowly their breathing returned to normal, the night air cooled their moist bodies, and a sense of time and place came to them again. She shifted, levering herself up on one elbow, and nuzzled against him, lips pressed softly to his ear.

  “Madre mio! You drive me crazy with that thing of yours.”

  “De nada, chiquita. It is nothing.”

  “Now you boast. Nothing indeed!”

  “Yes, but it’s all an illusion, done with mirrors and moonlight.”

  “Eh? Mirrors?”

  “A small joke.”

  “Why do you jest, caro mio?”

  “Because I’m a jester, querida. Why else?”

  “Now you mock me.”

  “Would you have me gruff and long-faced instead?”

  “Oh no, never! I love you the way you are. But this thing we have together is very precious ... one should not make light of it. Verdad?”

  “We agreed not to speak of sentiment.”

  Hank pulled away, rose quickly to his feet, and began dressing. The girl watched while he stepped into his pants, buttoned his shirt, and silently tugged on his boots. Then her bottom lip trembled and her eyes smoldered with green fire. Suddenly she jumped off the ground, breasts jiggling in the moonlight, and thrust herself in front of him.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have work to do.”

  “Work! In the middle of the night?”

  “Si, chica. Very important work.”

  “You lie! You always lie. You use me and then you run off to that gringa bitch!”

  “Hold your tongue, or I may indeed do that ... and not return.”

  “Ha! And will she satisfy you the way I do? Will she?”

  Hank laughed, and patted her rump. “Keep it warm. Hasta la vista!”

  She stamped her foot, glowering at him, and he walked away. Several minutes later, hurrying through the village, he exchanged greetings with a group of ancianitos seated outside an adobe. The old men waited until he was past, then began chuckling among themselves, voices low and soft in the still night, vastly amused. The youngster looked like his grandfather, even had El Patron’s temperament, all that was true. But he had the hot blood and passion of his mother, as was apparent even to a blind man. Long ago she too once prowled the village and visited the creek at night. Of course she was more discreet, certainly more selective, but they recalled it well. Some of them, the quieter ones, recalled it vividly indeed, with great warmth and tenderness, and a yearning for things lost to time.

  * * *

  The dipper had rocked far down in the sky when they forded the river. Hank took the lead, alert and on edge, one hand gripping a Winchester carbine laid across the pommel of his saddle. Luis Morado and Julio Vega brought up the rear, their rifles out and ready, while the others herded the bull and almost a dozen oxen through the water. On shore, Hank waved the men forward, urging speed, then took a dead reckoning on the North Star and rode toward Santa Guerra.

  Behind him, the vaqueros pushed the oxen along at a steady pace, whistling softly to keep the herd bunched together and on course. Yet every eye was on the bull, an enormous humpbacked beast that nearly dwarfed the oxen. So far, he seemed content to stay in the middle of the herd, away from the men and horses; the oxen had been brought along for that very
purpose, to keep him calm and manageable during the drive. The vaqueros were nervous, however, and hadn’t relaxed their guard since collecting the bull at a ranch some miles south of the border. Before tonight, none of them had ever seen such an animal, though they had heard tales about the breed, frightening stories of its ferocity and hair-trigger temper. Their apprehension had mounted with each mile, waiting for something to spook the bull, and no less than the young patron, they wanted tonight’s work completed. It was a job best done, and done quickly.

  Hank left the vaqueros to worry about the bull. His task was to insure that they weren’t discovered smuggling a Brahman into Texas. The quarantine had gone into effect only last year, and while most ranchers thought it was absolute nonsense, there were some who would delight in siccing the authorities on Santa Guerra. Once the bull was on home ground it was an altogether different matter. His father already had papers—acquired from a domestic breeder—and no one could prove the bull had been imported. But the first step was to get him there undetected.

  For his part, barring the excitement, Hank cared very little one way or the other. There was a touch of irony about the whole affair. His father normally wouldn’t trust him with the supervision of anything more important than calf branding. Yet here he was leading a $5000 bull and charged with the responsibility of pulling it off in total secrecy. All because the old man knew he could outride and outfight anything on Santa Guerra. It was almost laughable, but in a queer sort of way it explained why the people called his father El Alacron.

  Hank shifted in the saddle, looking back at the vaqueros and the bull. He signaled with his carbine, indicating a change in direction, and reined his horse roughly northeast. The faint blush of false dawn lighted the horizon as his little column disappeared into a thicket of chaparral.

  Early that morning Trudy and Ernest Kruger walked down to the stock corral. Hank was leaning against the fence, rolling a cigarette. He struck a match on his thumbnail and lit up as they stopped beside him. Then he took a deep drag, exhaling little spurts of smoke, and nodded toward the corral.

  “There’s your bull, safe and sound.”

  Kruger merely grunted and Trudy made no response at all. They peered through the fence, silent for a long while, inspecting the bull with a mixture of curiosity and awe. The Brahman stood in the center of the corral, pawing dirt, slowly swinging his head back and forth. The first rays of sunlight caught a pinprick of fire in his eyes, and he snorted. Then the pawing ceased and he raised his head, suddenly immobile, watching them with a look of suspicion and hostility.

  The bull was a magnificent, dun-colored brute. Broad horns fanned out above his humped back; he was barrel-chested, thick through the withers. Almost five feet tall at the shoulder, long in conformation and heavily muscled, his weight easily topped a ton. A great fold of skin hung down from his neck, and in the sunlight his hide glistened like dusty pewter. His lines lacked grace, and viewed from any angle, it seemed that nature had fashioned a creature with mismatched parts. But he was a monster, supreme among all his kind, without fear of man or beast.

  After a time Kruger cleared his throat and glanced around. “Have any trouble?”

  “Nope.” Hank smiled, flicked the ash on his cigarette. “Went off slick as a whistle. Nobody saw us, and we didn’t see nobody.”

  “That’s fine. You did a good job, son. I’m pleased, very pleased.”

  “All in a day’s work. Or a night. Depending on how you look at it.”

  Kruger stared at him a moment, then turned to Trudy. “Well, what do you think, my dear? Quite an animal, isn’t he?”

  “You want the truth?”

  “Of course.”

  “He’s got to be the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Sangre de Cristo! He looks deformed.”

  “His looks,” Kruger told her, “aren’t important. What counts is that he’s full-blood Brahman, the only one in Texas.”

  “Maybe so,” Trudy said, wrinkling her nose. “But for five thousand you should have at least got a handsome one.”

  Hank laughed. “Tell you something, Mom. What he lost in handsome, he sure made up for in mean. You’re looking at El Diablo in the flesh.”

  “Excellent!” Kruger said firmly. “Just the quality we’re looking for. If he’s mean then he’s got the instinct for survival, and that’s what our cows need.”

  Trudy sighed, shook her head. “Ernest, no one could ever accuse you of being a pessimist. But it sure beats me ... why you think you’ll do any better than the others.”

  “I’ll do better because I’ve talked to every Brahman breeder in Texas. I know how they’ve gone about it, and I have a pretty good idea of where they went wrong. And needless to say, I have no intention of making the same mistakes.”

  Brahman cattle were hardly new to Texas. The breed had been imported from India as early as 1885. In an attempt to develop a hardier strain of cow, one better suited to the climate and range conditions, several ranchers had introduced Brahman blood into their herds. The only notable result was that the offspring seemed less susceptible to tick fever; the experiments eventually ended, and with time the few remaining full-blood bulls simply died off. Then, early in 1906, efforts were made to revive the program. A rancher imported five bulls, all of which immediately died from an outbreak of surra, a virulent disease causing high fever and internal bleeding. The United States quickly placed an embargo on all cattle from India, and the Brahman program appeared to be a thing of the past.

  By the spring of 1907, however, Ernest Kruger was at a dead end himself. His experiments with Herefords had failed, and in casting about for an alternative, he became intrigued with the Brahman strain. While past results were not spectacular, there was faint promise of producing a sturdier breed, and he really had nowhere else to turn. The arrangements were made in secret, negotiated through a Mexican importer, and Santa Guerra now had a Brahman bull. Ernest Kruger was immensely pleased, confident he was at last on the right track.

  Hank wasn’t all that convinced, and like his mother, saw no reason to keep it to himself. He took a long pull on his cigarette, dropped it in the dirt, and ground it out with his boot. Then he smiled, watching his father out of the corner of his eye, and gestured toward the bull.

  “Mom’s got a point. What can you do that hasn’t already been done?”

  “It’s a matter of how, not what. I’ll start the usual way, crossbreeding Brahman with Hereford. After that, I intend to try some experiments with inbreeding.”

  “Inbreeding! I thought that was the big taboo.”

  “Talk to a dozen experts and you’ll get a dozen different opinions. But it’s all theory, none of them has accomplished anything worthwhile. So I believe I’ll follow my own ideas for a change.”

  “Well, one thing’s for sure,” Hank noted dryly. “However you breed him, he’ll produce some damn funny-looking cows.”

  “You and your mother seem to have a fixation with looks.”

  “Come on, Ernest,” Trudy needled him. “That devil’s ugly as a baboon and you know it.” She cocked her head to one side, studying the bull a moment. “As a matter of fact, we ought to name him Baboon. He even looks like one!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. That’s no sort of name for a purebred bull.”

  “All right, then we’ll call him Babs.”

  “I like it!” Hank crowed. “Great idea, Mom.”

  Kruger reddened. “No one in his right mind would call that bull Babs. Look at him ... it’s an insult!”

  “For my money,” Hank countered, “it’s a stroke of genius.”

  “I think it’s perfect,” Trudy agreed. “Frankly, Ernest, anything that ugly needs all the help it can get.”

  “Perhaps, but you two certainly have a strange sense of humor. We’ll be laughed out of the Cattlemen’s Association.”

  “Not if he’s everything you make him out
to be.”

  Hank grinned. “That’s right, Dad. If he’s got it, he’s got it! And if he don’t ... then what’s in a name?”

  “Very well,” Kruger conceded wearily. “Babs it is.”

  The bull turned away, strolled to the opposite side of the corral, and stood gazing out across Santa Guerra. Then his tail twitched and, with imperial disdain, Babs broke wind.

  Chapter 35

  On a sweltering afternoon late in August, the people of Lairdsville gathered to celebrate Founders Day. It was the first community function to be held since the settlers arrived. The town’s main street was draped with bunting and flags, and by high noon nearly a thousand people jammed the boardwalks along the business district.

  The festivities were elaborate and well organized. There was to be a groundbreaking ceremony for the Henry Laird Memorial Hospital. A parade, sponsored by local merchants, would feature the volunteer fire department and a marching band imported for the occasion from Corpus Christi. The Southern Texas Railroad was offering excursion rides, free of charge, to Brownsville and back before dark. There were to be speeches and street dancing, and late that afternoon, a barbecue supper courtesy of the Kruger family. It promised to be a momentous day, honoring both the founders of Lairdsville and the settlers who had made it possible.

  All that morning, arriving from every direction, wagons had trundled into town bearing farmers and their families. Nearly half the farm tracts had been sold by midsummer, and the daily train between Corpus and Brownsville invariably brought more settlers. Ernest Kruger’s sales campaign, heavily financed and meticulously planned, had depicted the lower Rio Grande Valley as a modern-day Garden of Eden. Immigrants were lured straight off the boats in New York, and farmers who had failed elsewhere, principally on the high plains of the western states, were enticed by visions of a fresh start in a new land. A modest down payment, and an easily arranged mortgage with the Lairdsville Merchant’s Bank, put them in business. Building materials were available from the Kruger Lumber Company; sturdy horses and mules could be bought from Santa Guerra at reasonable prices; and the Kruger Cotton Gin was being erected to handle their first crop. Even the merchants found Ernest Kruger, who was president of the bank as well as the land company, to be an accommodating businessman. Some leased their stores, while others bought commercial property, and they all contracted with the lumber company to build their homes. Soon there was a hardware store and a mercantile emporium, then came a saloon and a grain dealer, followed by a cafe and a livery stable, and by early summer the town’s main street was lined with businesses of every description. And now, only months after they’d begun, the townspeople and farmers paused to celebrate their good fortune.