Hard Country

by Michael McGarrity

  At the wagon, he told Ignacio and Patrick the good news about the contract and what needed to get done pronto. Ignacio grinned from ear to ear, and Patrick asked if he could go along with him and Cal to Mexico.

  “Please,” he begged.

  “Why not?” Kerney said, feeling charitable to all that might be asked of him as he climbed on the wagon and started the team.

  “You mean it?” Patrick asked as he climbed on his pony.

  “I do,” Kerney replied.

  They set up camp on a small hill behind the quadrangle, and Ignacio made a meal of beans, chili, and tortillas his mother-in-law had given him.

  Over a cup of coffee after supper, Kerney pondered what Coghlan might do once he learned he’d lost the contract. He was the richest man on the Tularosa, but that didn’t stop him from wanting more. He hired no-accounts and outlaws, sold stolen livestock to the army whenever he could get away with it, and was known to use gunslingers to scare away any competition. Coghlan would try something—of that Kerney was certain—so he would need to be ready for whatever play the man made.

  He slept poorly, his mind busy with plan making. If they could get to Mexico and trail the horses back within a month, they’d have to work mighty hard to get them well broke for the army in time. The small cattle herd could range free and putting the barn up would just have to wait. But there was no sense not hauling the lumber to the ranch so they could start building it as soon as time allowed.

  Kerney roused Ignacio and Patrick out of their bedrolls an hour before first light, told them to have some hardtack and jerky for breakfast, get saddled up, and start moving. By evening they were at the sawmill, where Kerney decided to load the lumber and keep traveling under a full moon.

  The heavy wagon moved slowly down the road to Tularosa. On several steep-side hills, Ignacio had to tie his rope to the top of the load and use his horse to pull back to prevent a slip to certain disaster down a descent.

  They reached Tularosa exhausted and slept in the courtyard of the Chávez hacienda until they woke up hungry at dawn. Over breakfast, Ignacio’s father, Cesario, suggested they stay and rest up for a day, but John Kerney was having none of it.

  “There’s too much work to be done,” he said.

  Cesario had inspected the wagon earlier and found it to be overloaded. He turned to Ignacio and said in Spanish, “If we use two wagons to cart the lumber, it will be much safer. Tell him I will gladly take half of the lumber to his ranch in one of my wagons.”

  Ignacio translated for Kerney, who nodded, smiled, and thanked Cesario for his willingness to help.

  The small caravan left as soon as the load was divided between the two wagons, tied down, and provisions for the journey to the ranch had been laid in. Ignacio and Patrick on horseback led the way, followed by John Kerney in the front wagon and Cesario in the rear. Teresa rode with Cesario, and over the creak of the wheels Kerney could hear the two chatting in Spanish. They spoke rapidly, and his grasp of the lingo wasn’t good enough to make out much of what they were saying.

  That night at camp, Ignacio, Teresa, and Cesario gathered around the fire, deep in conversation until it was time to turn in. Patrick sat quietly listening to them for a spell, which wasn’t his normal whirlwind behavior, so in the morning Kerney asked him if he’d like to learn Spanish.

  Patrick nodded his head vigorously.

  “I’ll ask Teresa to teach you,” he said.

  “She already is,” Patrick replied matter-of-factly. “So is Ignacio.”

  They made good time across the tableland and through the alkali flats on a partially cloudy day that kept the temperature from soaring, and with the San Andres looming ahead they were no more than five hours from raising the ranch when they entered the last stretch of steep hills. They moved the two wagons up the trail one by one, Ignacio’s lasso taut between the wagon and his saddle horn on the downslope, his pony pulling back with all its might to keep the wagons upright. On the upslope his pony scratched gravel with the teams, pulling to get the wagons to the crest. At each hill, Teresa followed on foot and Patrick on his pony at a safe distance behind the wagons.

  Only a few more rock-strewn hills remained where the trail had been severely eroded by the drenching rains of spring and summer. Because of the steepness, Ignacio tied his rope to the rear axle, twined it around a huge boulder, and slowly played it out as Kerney’s team entered the downside of the last hill. The axle broke, the load shifted, and the wagon tumbled to the bottom of the decline, throwing Kerney from the seat. The last thing he saw was a shower of heavy, milled plank boards raining down on him as the panicked team dragged the overturned wagon away.

  “Madre de Dios,” Ignacio cried as he jumped from his horse, ran to where Kerney was buried, and started feverishly pulling the lumber away from Kerney’s body with his one good hand. Cesario, Teresa, and Patrick quickly joined him. Patrick watched as Cesario and Ignacio heaved aside a shattered, heavy plank to reveal Kerney’s body. A long wooden splinter had penetrated his skull.

  There was silence for a second until Cesario said, “Muerto.”

  “That means dead,” Patrick said emotionlessly, staring at John Kerney’s bloody face.

  “Sí,” Ignacio said softly.

  Patrick turned on his heel, ran to his pony, and rode away in the direction of the ranch.

  “Go after him and bring him back with Señor Cal,” Teresa said. “We will wait here for you.”

  “Sí,” Ignacio said, his heart almost breaking.

  19

  They buried John Kerney, aged thirty-seven years, at the ranch, high on a hilltop, and marked his grave with a cross made by Ignacio. It was the same summer Sheriff Pat Garrett gunned down Billy the Kid inside Pete Maxwell’s house in Fort Sumner and old Nana’s raids, the last true Apache uprising east of the Rio Grande, ended.

  The task of raising six-year-old Patrick Kerney fell to Cal Doran, who took on the job with the help of Ignacio and Teresa Chávez. It didn’t amount to much of a chore, as the boy didn’t appear at all bothered by the death of his pa. In fact, he showed scant emotion about anything.

  Cal figured the button had lost so many people in his short life that he was numb to it all. There seemed to be no softness to him, and he didn’t take kindly to sentimental feelings from others. Not even Teresa’s sweet disposition cracked his shell. No matter how agreeable and evenhanded Cal tried to be with the boy in those first days, he always felt Patrick stayed on the lookout for treachery and betrayal.

  After the burial, the men salvaged what they could of the milled lumber and stacked it next to the saddle shed. They dragged the shattered wagon to the ranch and parked it next to the lumber. The barn would be built and the wagon repaired when time allowed.

  Cal chased down the wagon team that had bolted after the accident, doctored some minor scrapes and cuts to the animals, turned them loose in the west pasture, and after a few days closed up the ranch and took everyone to Tularosa, where they stayed with the Chávez family while he set about hiring hands to hit the trail to Mexico in search of ponies to buy. He wasn’t about to let John Kerney’s quartermaster contract go unfulfilled.

  At the saloon, Pat Coghlan tried to buy him out of the horse contract at a dime on the dollar, and Cal told him where he could shove the idea. His reputation with a gun made Coghlan back off, but not quickly enough to convince Cal the man would let matters end there.

  He hired three Texas waddies, told Ignacio to look after the ranch and Patrick until he returned, and made tracks with his small outfit to Mexico. A month later he was back with sixty-five half-wild Mexican ponies, each handpicked to meet the quartermaster’s requirements. He let two of the cowboys go and kept George Rose on the payroll.

  George had been part of the posse that battled Billy the Kid and the Regulators for five days in Lincoln during the summer of ’78 and had worked in the Seven Rivers area of the Staked Plains east of the Sacramentos before drifting to the Tularosa.

  A short, stocky wad
die with a broken nose and a toothy grin, George pulled his weight in the saddle, knew how to treat horseflesh, and was good with a gun, which was exactly what Cal needed if Pat Coghlan decided send his pistoleros to cause trouble.

  Through a wet fall and a cold winter, Cal and George broke horses in driving rainstorms and heavy snow. In early February they trailed the ponies east to Fort Stanton, where it took the army boys three days to inspect the horses, put them through their paces, and make payment. Cal left the fort with another contract in his pocket for fifty more ponies due in six months.

  On the way back to the spread, the two cowboys planned a stop in Tularosa to celebrate at Coghlan’s saloon and pick up Patrick, who’d been living with Teresa and the Chávez family since before Christmas. Teresa was about to have her first baby, and Cal figured she would soon hold Ignacio to his promise to quit the outfit and return to his village. He didn’t cotton at all to the idea of losing Ignacio.

  They rode into Tularosa on a clear, mild winter’s day. The town had changed again. Land was cleared for crops farther away from the river, and some nester shacks and homesteads fronted the wagon road that climbed the hills to the high country, where the Apaches had more or less settled down since the troublemakers had been shipped by train to Florida.

  Railroad tracks now ran the length of the territory from the Colorado border to the dusty streets of Las Cruces and down to El Paso. Easterners and flatlanders had been trickling into the fringes of the basin for the past year, and there was talk of building another railroad up the Tularosa from El Paso.

  Dryland farmers were proving up land away from reliable water sources, syndicates of big-city bankers were buying and combining small spreads and putting large herds on their empires, and prospectors were searching the San Andres Mountains for signs of precious ore. It was getting downright crowded in places.

  They pulled up in Cesario Chávez’s courtyard and Teresa stepped outside to greet them, smiling and holding a bundle in her arms.

  “By golly,” Cal said with a laugh as he slid out of his saddle. “Have you gone and done it?”

  “Sí, a boy.” She pulled back the blanket to reveal the baby’s face. “Juan Cesario Chávez. He is named for John Kerney and Ignacio’s father. He’s one week old.”

  “That’s a mighty fine name.” Cal peered down at the rosy-cheeked baby. Juan Cesario had a full head of curly dark hair, Ignacio’s chin, and Teresa’s eyes. “Has his daddy come in from the ranch?”

  Teresa laughed. “Sí, and I sent him away again. He left early this morning to go back. He took Patrick with him. They were both being pests.”

  Cal laughed. “Come take a look at this little button,” he called to George.

  George dismounted and gave the baby a quick look. “He’s cunning; that’s for certain.”

  Teresa looked perplexed.

  “It means cute,” Cal explained. “Good-looking.”

  Teresa nodded. “Good-looking, yes.” She opened the door and gestured for the men to enter. “Come. I don’t want Juan to catch cold. Food is on the table, and you must eat.”

  “We could use some home cooking,” Cal said.

  The large room that served as the kitchen and the parlor was filled with family. Teresa’s parents, brothers, and sisters were there, as well as all of the Chávez family, minus Ignacio.

  Several children made room at the long table for Cal and George, and they were soon spooning down mouthfuls of beef stew cooked with green chili and wiping their bowls clean with fresh, warm tortillas.

  “Now that little Juan is here, I suppose you’ll be wanting Ignacio closer to home,” Cal said to Teresa.

  “He loves the ranchero more than anything, but with a baby now and so far from our families…” Teresa shrugged.

  Cal nodded sympathetically. “I’ll talk to him.”

  Cesario clamped a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “He must come home. We plant soon, and we must build their casa on the land Perfecto gave him. Más importante.”

  Across the table, Perfecto smiled and nodded in agreement while Cesario’s wife ladled more stew into Cal’s empty bowl.

  “I’ll send him home in two weeks,” Cal said.

  “Gracias,” Cesario said.

  After a second helping and another cup of coffee, Cal and George said adios and rode to Coghlan’s store, where Cal picked up a letter from a lawyer in Mesilla. At the saloon, Cal spun some silver on the bar and ordered a shot of rye, while George slipped away with a hurdy-gurdy girl and a bottle of whiskey under his arm in the direction of the rooms behind the wagon yard.

  He read the lawyer’s letter and was about to invite a pretty little redhead to join him for a drink at the bar when Dick Turknet sidled up and gave him a hard look.

  “Got something stuck in your craw, Turknet?” Cal asked.

  “Coghlan doesn’t want your business anymore,” Turknet said tersely, “here or at his store.”

  Cal downed his whiskey and called for another one. “Haul in your horns, hombre.” He ignored the gunslinger while the bartender filled his glass. “I’m guessing your boss heard I got another contract for army ponies.”

  “That’s the gist of it.”

  Cal sipped his whiskey slowly, put the glass gently on the bar, and turned to face Turknet. “Are you willing to get yourself killed trying to run me out of here?”

  Turknet responded with a toothy smile. “I ain’t that short of brains. I’m just the messenger boy.”

  Cal smiled back. “Fair enough.”

  Turknet nodded and left with two young pistoleros trailing behind him. Cal figured waiting on Coghlan’s next move would just be too aggravating. Why not counter his warning with a play of his own?

  He finished his drink and asked the bartender to have George wait on him once he was done with his poke. There was no sign of Dick Turknet and his sidekicks on the street. He rode Patches to Coghlan’s big house and knocked on the door. Alice, Coghlan’s wife, answered.

  Cal flashed a courtly smile. “Good day, Mrs. Coghlan. It’s a pleasure to see you again, ma’am, and I surely do hate to impose on you at home, but if Mr. Coghlan is available, I do need a minute of his time.”

  She was a tall woman who masked her plainness with fancy clothes and expensive jewelry. The Mexicans called her La Madama because she liked to lord it over them, acting like royalty and not some blackguard’s wife.

  She swung the door wide open. “Come in, Cal. He’s in the study.”

  Cal followed her through the front parlor, which was filled with furniture, paintings, and statuary Coghlan had bought on trips back east and voyages to the old country. The door to the study was open, and behind a huge desk, studying some papers, sat Patrick Coghlan, big in the chest, red faced, with thick eyebrows that ran together and hands twice the size of an average man’s. Across from him sat Morris Wohlgemuth, his manager.

  “Cal needs a word with you,” Alice said from the open door.

  Coghlan looked up, leaned back in his chair, and smiled broadly. “Certainly, my dear.”

  Cal stepped in and Alice closed the door behind him. Coghlan’s smiled faded. “Why are you here?”

  “Dick Turknet said you wanted to palaver.”

  “Is that what he said?” Coghlan replied.

  “That’s what I took him to mean. I don’t appreciate getting messages from your hired help. Thought I’d hear what you had to say direct.”

  “Maybe Turknet didn’t make my message clear,” Coghlan said, “so I’ll explain it. Stay out of my store and saloon. Come around again and I’ll take it you’re looking for trouble.”

  Wohlgemuth sat as still as a mouse, staring at the papers in his lap.

  “That’s clear enough,” Cal said, “although it strikes me peculiar that a big man like you can be so piddling about losing another army contract to a small outfit like mine. So I’ve got a caution for you. If anything unnaturally worrisome happens out at my ranch or trouble befalls any of my friends, you’ll see me again and I won’t be
cordial.”

  “’Tis a brave one you are,” Coghlan replied, his color deepening, his brogue thickening.

  “Keep your riders reined in, Coghlan.”

  Coghlan rolled his tongue over his lips. “I’ll give your proposition some thought.”

  Cal touched the brim of his hat. “Buenas noches.”

  Back at the saloon, George’s horse, a dapple gray named Alibi, was still hitched outside. Cal led the pony into the wagon yard, called out to George, and told him it was time to jingle his spurs. Soon a door flew open and George came out, hat jammed down over his ears, a half-empty bottle of whiskey showing in a coat pocket.

  “You sober enough to ride?” Cal asked.

  “Many a times old Alibi has carried me home after I’ve had a bottle or two,” George said as he threw a leg over his horse.

  “And a few times he got you lost,” Cal replied. “Are you too liquored up to listen to what I want to tell you?”

  “My ears ain’t drunk.”

  “I want you to get back to the ranch and keep an eye on things,” Cal said. “Look after Ignacio and Patrick. Don’t leave them alone.”

  “What’s got you spooked?”

  He gave George the lowdown on his visits with Dick Turknet and Pat Coghlan and told him he was heading to Mesilla on some legal business.

  “You ain’t been charged with a crime, have you?” George asked.

  “Not yet,” Cal answered as he turned Patches down the wagon road that led across White Sands to Las Cruces. “Hasta la vista.”

  * * *

  The railroad had bypassed Mesilla, the largest town in the valley and the Doña Ana County seat, in favor of Las Cruces, turning it into a boomtown. What had been a sleepy village of small homes, several hotels and saloons, a trading post, and a general store now sported streetlamps in front of the Montezuma Hotel, a drugstore, a photography studio, a row of trees planted on the town plaza, and a population that had almost doubled in a year. Merchants newly arrived in town were busy putting up brick-and-mortar buildings on Main and Church streets. One such structure had high windows covered with ornate iron grills. The sign in front proclaimed it to be a bank.