Hard Country

by Michael McGarrity

  The military post had also expanded. New barracks had been built to house a detachment of recently arrived Negro soldiers, and permanent officers quarters were under construction.

  During the long trip to the post, John and Ida had talked over their situation and come to an agreement on how to deal with their predicament. They would sell both ranches, including the remaining livestock and improvements, and divide the proceeds. John would handle the transaction, and when the cash was in hand, Ida would take Patrick and her share of the money and go to Dodge City, where her brother owned a mercantile store. She had taught school before marrying and probably could do it again.

  John decided he would trail south to the Texas brush country, find ranch work, and look for a place to make a fresh start. If all went well, he’d fetch Patrick in a year or two. It was the best plan for all concerned. Patrick would give Ida a reason to keep going, and for Kerney she was the only person he knew and trusted enough to care for his son.

  The arrangement hadn’t improved Ida’s outlook much; she still had crying fits, then fell silent and wouldn’t talk at all. John worried he might be leaving Patrick with a madwoman but didn’t see a way around it. It was either Ida or strangers, or take the little button with him, which was impossible.

  He got rooms at the hotel, left Ida and Patrick, stabled the horses, and went to the fort to report to the military authorities the murder of Tom and Timmy by rustlers. He gave the officer detailed descriptions of the horses that had been stolen. The officer knew of no other recent depredations and didn’t hold out any hope the bandits would be caught. There was too much open range, too few pony soldiers, and too little law to make it likely. He promised John to send out a scouting party to search for signs.

  Finished with the army, John went looking for buyers for the ranches. With newcomers arriving daily and a small land rush going on, he figured the prospects for selling were good. But he soon found that most of the greenhorns were as strapped for cash as everyone else, and those who had some money weren’t willing to offer what the two ranches were worth. A land speculator who was buying out nesters who’d quit or gone broke when their farms blew away during the drought offered slightly less than half of what the land was worth and not a lick for the improvements or the remaining livestock.

  Disappointed, he returned to the hotel to find Ida sitting on the bed next to a sleeping Patrick, crying and talking to herself. John shook her hard to get her to stop.

  “You should be lying in a grave,” she hissed as she pushed his hands away, “not my Thomas and Timmy.”

  “Probably so,” John said, not willing to discuss the matter further. “Seems I’m not going to be able to bargain a fair price for the ranches.”

  “You just get me some money,” Ida snapped, her eyes flashing. “I don’t want to stay here one day longer than I have to. And I’m going to have to pay my brother in Dodge City for our keep until I can get settled there.”

  “I’ll make sure you have enough to do that.”

  “You’d better. Now that you’re here, I need broadcloth to make diapers for the baby.”

  John Kerney looked perplexed. “The trading post is across the way. I’ll walk you over there.”

  Ida shook her head. “I’m not setting a foot outside this hotel until it’s time for me and Patrick to leave for Dodge City. Not a foot.”

  John thought about forcing Ida to go to the store with him and decided against it, figuring it would only agitate her more and set off another crying fit.

  She started sobbing again anyway as John left. He tracked down the land speculator who’d made the cash offer on the ranches, talked to him again, and agreed to his terms. They shook hands and settled on a time to sign the papers in the morning. At the trading post, he arranged for Ida, Patrick, and their few possessions to travel on the next supply train to Dodge City, due to leave in two days.

  With three yards of cloth under his arm, he stopped at the livery stable and traded the wagon and team of horses to the proprietor for a good saddle horse and some cash, which would cover the cost of the hotel rooms and their meals, with a bit left over.

  He walked the milch cow to the military post and sold it at a fair price to the quartermaster, who was happy to get it. On his way back to the hotel, with money in his pocket, he stopped at a saloon for a drink. It wasn’t much of a place. Sharpened cottonwood poles stuck into the ground and covered with adobe plaster formed the walls. Larger logs fastened at the top, and long ceiling logs held everything together. The roof was packed sod, the floor earth, just like his cabin, and the bar was a long plank table, waist high. A few tables and chairs were scattered around, barely visible in the dark interior, heavy with cigar smoke. Some men were playing cards, drinking whiskey, and carrying on with a saloon girl who had seen her better years slip away some decades ago.

  He laid down a coin, ordered a whiskey, nursed it, and thought about the tight spot he faced. Maybe Ida was touched in the head, and maybe she wasn’t. Either way, if he gave her most all of the money from the sale of the ranches, perhaps she could make the best of a bad situation until he could come for Patrick.

  Deciding he could do no less, he finished his whiskey. He could scrape along, but a woman with a baby needed more than a few dollars to survive. He’d stay and see them safely off on the supply train to Dodge City, take what money remained in his pocket, drift south to find work, and keep an eye out for the stolen ponies. He knew every one of the stolen horses by sight. With a million square miles of open country, the odds were against finding the men who’d murdered Tom and Timmy. But if he ran across any of the horses, he might have a slim chance of doing that.

  Soon, ranchers would be gathering their herds for the fall works, so it was likely he could hire on somewhere, although the job probably wouldn’t turn into anything permanent.

  John and Tom had both used the Double K brand on their livestock, figuring their spreads were all part of the same family. On his way south, he’d stop by Tom’s ranch, put the Double K brand on his new pony as a reminder of what he’d lost, and say his final good-byes. It was almost too much to think about.

  He hoisted the bundle of cloth Ida needed for Patrick’s diapers and stepped outside into the blazing hot afternoon. In a matter of days, he’d lost almost everything and everyone dear to him. He couldn’t help wondering if in the end he might lose his son too.

  3

  The dusty settlement along the bone-dry riverbed had sprung up to supply outfits trailing cattle west, and from the looks of it John Kerney guessed it would melt back into the sunbaked earth long before anyone decided to give it a name. No more than a wide cow track at a bend in a hard-packed trail with a few hastily thrown-up buildings, it already appeared half-abandoned.

  During the past year, Kerney had drifted through half a dozen or more similar outposts already fading from sight and memory. This particular hamlet of civilization sat in the middle of the West Texas brush country, an expanse of land that was hell and gone from nowhere, a vast semiwilderness of caliche hills, sandy pastures with ragged grass carpets, cactus patches that rose up to worry a horse and rider, and wooded creeks with ancient live oaks that offered brief respite from the relentless sun. In some places rugged, twisted mountains touched the sky, but in all of what Kerney had seen it was a thorny scrubland with thickets mostly impenetrable by man and beast.

  It was also, as Kerney discovered on his last job, a land where working cattle was most times downright dangerous and otherwise hard, exhausting work at best.

  He had yet to see all of the brush country, for it stretched roughly between the San Antonio River and the Rio Grande, ran on to the Gulf Coast, and took up a considerable amount of land south toward Old Mexico. Some of the hands he’d ridden with said it was roughest between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. But even with their stories of old bulls with horns wider than the spread of a man’s arms and cactus savannas so thick cows and calves refused to be driven through them by men on foot, Kerney had a har
d time imagining how it could be any worse than what he’d already experienced. He looked forward to the day when he could get far away from it.

  Until then, he was still stuck square in the middle of a hardpan, drought-stricken swath of brush country, and he’d been eating its dust for two days. So he was glad enough to see the lopsided saloon that leaned southerly, the general store with its wind-whipped, ragged piece of canvas covering an unfinished roof, and the small stable with a corral that held a neglected broomtail pony. He wanted a drink, a meal, some grub to pack in his saddlebag, and a nickel’s worth of feed for his horse. With any luck, the store would have some green coffee beans to carry him through until he reached a real town.

  Kerney badly needed work, and a traveler he’d passed by sometime back had told him that a rancher fixing to move his herd out of the drought was hiring hands in the area. But from his perch on a small rise overlooking the settlement, he saw no activity that gave him any hope of a job.

  He guessed no more than a dozen folks made the place home, living in several wagons scattered near the buildings. The only people in view were some barefoot children sitting under the welcoming shade of a wagon in front of the saloon watching an older boy skin a pink coachwhip snake.

  Kerney tied his horse to the saloon hitching post next to a thrifty-looking bay with a flame of white hair in the center of its forehead. His brother’s brand on its shoulder had been altered, but not enough to hide the original back-to-back Double K marking.

  Seeing the animal made Kerney pause and take a cautious look around. It was the first time since he had sold the ranches, sent Ida away to Dodge City with Patrick, and started working at any job he could find that he’d come close to anyone or anything connected to the murders of his brother and young nephew.

  The horse sported a fine, hand-tooled rig that no saddle tramp or hired hand earning an honest wage could afford. He considered asking the boy skinning the snake who had ridden into town on the bay but thought better of it. Best not to show any interest too soon.

  He stepped through the open door to the saloon and waited for his eyes to adjust in the dim light. There were no women to be seen, most likely owing to a lack of sufficient paying customers to keep a saloon girl busy. The only liquor in sight was a row of brown bottles lining a single shelf on a wall. At the back of the room a moth-eaten blanket hanging from a rafter partially hid the kitchen cookstove. The lingering smell of fried beefsteak made Kerney’s stomach rumble.

  Two men made up the establishment’s congregation: a barkeep as bald as a man could get, with a belly to match his round head, and an older, wiry fellow with a neatly trimmed beard, high forehead, and broad nose.

  A long, waist-high table served as the bar. Kerney stepped up to it next to the bearded man and asked the barkeep for a bottle and a glass. The man didn’t move until Kerney laid his coins on the counter.

  “Passing through?” the barkeep asked with a thick southern accent as he poured a shot in a glass and placed it in front of Kerney.

  Kerney nodded. “Unless I can find a piece of work.”

  The man with the beard looked over at Kerney with interest but said nothing. Kerney smiled in return, thinking the fellow didn’t have the look of a cattle-rustling, murdering horse thief. But then a lot could change in any man’s life to make him seem respectable and law-abiding.

  “Who might you be?” the man asked.

  “John Kerney.”

  “Weren’t you busting longhorns out of the brush on the Lazy Z for a time?”

  “I was,” Kerney allowed. “But you have me at a disadvantage, sir.”

  “I’m Sam Wilcox,” the man said with a smile. “I run the Robertson outfit. The Rocking R.”

  Wilcox stuck out his hand and Kerney shook it.

  “I hear tell you didn’t want to stay on at the Lazy Z and help trail the cattle to Louisiana,” Wilcox continued.

  Kerney drained his glass, poured another shot, and looked Wilcox in the eye. “Truth be told, traveling farther south holds no appeal to me. That aside, it seems from what you know about me, I’ve misunderstood how interesting I am to folks hereabouts.”

  Wilcox laughed. “Hell, with so few people living hereabouts, everybody is interesting one way or another, John Kerney. Some say you wore a blue coat in the war.”

  Kerney gave Wilcox a measured look. “I don’t deny it, although it remains a curiosity and devilment to most Texans I meet.”

  Wilcox slapped his hand on the bar and laughed again. “I didn’t know you Union fellows had such a refined sense of humor. I like that in a man.”

  “I’ll allow that a light tongue has kept me out of a few arguments and fights, but it hasn’t helped me get work these last few weeks.”

  Wilcox shook his head sympathetically. “I guess most people in these parts are still smarting over the war. But I’ll criticize no man who fights for what he believes in. It seems downright unchristian to do so. Now, if you’ve an interest, I’ll soon be trailing cattle west, if you don’t mind moseying in that direction.”

  Kerney smiled at Wilcox’s friendly rag over his reluctance to travel any deeper into Johnny Reb country. “Are you offering me a job?” he asked.

  “I allow I could use another hand or two. I pay a dollar a day, plus grub and browse for your horse, if you’ve a mind to sign on. You can pick out a string of broomtails to use once we get to the ranch. We’ve got a real fine remuda.”

  Kerney nodded his agreement. “I’m obliged to you. How far west do you propose to go?”

  “New Mexico Territory,” Wilcox replied. “My boss wants free grass, open range, and ready buyers. Plans to sell to the army and Indian agents. Haven’t been there myself, but those who have say the grass is belly high to a horse and the land has never been grazed.”

  Wilcox laughed and pushed his glass aside. “Course, I don’t believe a word of it. Those stories about a cattleman’s paradise come from old-timers who pushed cows to California ten years before the war, fighting Comanches and Apaches along the way.”

  “It sounds a mite embellished,” Kerney allowed.

  “Embellished,” Wilcox echoed. “Now, that’s a word you don’t hear too often around a trail-drive campfire. But I’m told you’re a man good with words, although you don’t appear to waste them just to fill up empty air.”

  “Less said, the better,” Kerney replied.

  “Now, that’s an idea I can take a hankering to,” Wilcox said. “I’d like to ask you a personal question, if you’re agreeable.”

  “I’ve got nothing to hide,” Kerney answered, wondering if the same held for Wilcox.

  “No offense, but is it true that you lost your wife and had to leave your baby boy with a half-crazed woman up in Dodge City?”

  “I wouldn’t call her half-crazed, but the rest is true. The woman was my sister-in-law.”

  Wilcox nodded. “I’ve got a hand who works for me, name of Cal Doran. He trailed up to Dodge City a while back. Talked about meeting up with the brother of the woman caring for a little one, not even a scamp. Seems the man asked about you, wanted to get in touch. You might want to jawbone with Cal about it.”

  “I surely will, and I appreciate the information.”

  “Glad to pass it on,” Wilcox said as he adjusted his hat and glanced out the open door. “Best we get started. We’ve got a considerable ways to ride.”

  Kerney drained his drink and followed Wilcox out into the humid, hot Texas sun of a late April morning. His last meal had been in a cold camp the night before last, but he pushed down the cramps that gnawed at his empty stomach. He’d been hungry before, and with a new job and a new boss, food could wait. He watched Wilcox climb onto the back of the bay that had been Tom’s favorite pony and mounted up beside him.

  Wilcox seemed an open-minded, tolerant man, but during the course of their conversation Kerney had learned nothing at all about him. Was all his charitable talk about Kerney’s blue-coat past nothing more than blowing smoke? And why had Wilcox bee
n so quick to ask him about Ida and his son in Dodge City?

  In the brush country of southwest Texas, a man’s past was considered his own personal business, unless he was otherwise inclined to talk about it. Wilcox had prodded where most men would have sidestepped. Was that just his nature, or did he have another motive?

  Kerney didn’t try to swallow his doubts about Wilcox. His goodwill toward men had turned brittle and withered the day he’d buried his wife, brother, and young nephew. He’d need a hell of a lot more convincing before he would believe that the man sitting astride Tom’s bay was an honorable, trustworthy man.

  For now, he’d ride along with eyes wide open, hoping to learn something about his son from this waddie that Wilcox had mentioned. The letters he’d written to Ida had all gone unanswered, leastways as far as he knew. Maybe she’d written back and the letters had gone astray, been scattered to the four winds after a Comanche raid on a mail wagon, or just never caught up with him. Or maybe she’d fallen ill, or something bad had happened to the boy and she couldn’t bring herself to tell him. Knowing nothing, he hungered for any news, no matter how old, unreliable, or distressing.

  Wilcox didn’t talk much on the ride to the ranch, which suited Kerney just fine. He held his own tongue about Wilcox’s bay and tried to avoid dwelling on it. But the horse was a powerful reminder of that dreadful day. The memory had continually flooded through his mind, along with painful stabs of guilt he carried for not saving Mary Alice or being there to stand and fight side by side with Tom. There were times the memories were so godawful that he wished he could have died with them.

  Kerney hoped the pony Wilcox was riding would lead him to the murderers. He surely would like the chance to gun them down.

  4

  They arrived at the ranch at early dusk, just in time for a supper of beef, beans, biscuits, and hot coffee. Wilcox introduced Kerney to the rest of the hands as they drifted in and lined up by the cook pot next to the chuck wagon. While he waited for his first meal in two days, he learned that Cal Doran, the cowboy Wilcox had mentioned, and three other hands were camped ten miles distant, bedding down several hundred cattle that had been chased out of the brush over the past week. It deflated him a bit to know that he’d have to wait to hear what Doran knew about Ida and his son, if anything, but the smell of hot grub restored his spirits.