Hard Country

by Michael McGarrity

  Cal cut into his beefsteak, forked a bite, and chewed.

  “Head north were they get rain more than twice a year,” Patrick added. “Do something else for a change. Maybe get some schooling like Gene Rhodes did when he went off to college in California.”

  Patrick sounded more and more earnest as he gathered steam. It wasn’t unreasonable for a young man of eighteen to want to strike out on his own. Cal had left home even younger, leaving behind his parents, a kid brother, and a baby sister in East Texas, where his father preached the holy word and his mother taught school.

  He decided to take Patrick seriously. “I’d like a say in who you decide to sell your half of the Double K to,” he said.

  Patrick laughed. “I mean to sell it to you, if I do.”

  Cal put his fork down. “You know darn well how much money I’ve got.”

  “You can borrow. We own this outfit free and clear.”

  “What a bank would give me for half of this place right now isn’t enough to spit at. Besides, I’m not looking to lose you as a partner.”

  “I’m pretty much fixing to move on for a spell. I just need a stake to get started. I sure ain’t going back to driving a wagon for wages. Not this cowboy.”

  Patrick’s jaw was set, a sure sign he wasn’t joking.

  “Let me think on it for a while,” Cal replied.

  “Until when?”

  “Until we settle up for the cattle in Mexico.”

  Patrick stood. “Fair enough. We need to shoe some horses before we start for Engle with those critters.”

  “I know it. We’ll get it done tomorrow and hit the trail the day after. Think you’ll miss the old place once you’re gone?”

  Patrick looked pensive for a moment. “Don’t know. I guess I’ve sort of got settled here since John Kerney fetched me to it, but I’ve never figured to stay forever.” He picked up his plate and put it in the sink. “See you mañana.”

  “Mañana,” Cal replied.

  He watched Patrick leave the room. He had John Kerney’s same square shoulders and carried himself just like his pa, but there was no humor to the lad, and he showed no gratitude for the kindnesses of others. Never once had Patrick uttered a word of thanks to Cal for taking him under his wing, making him a full partner, raising him up, teaching him to cowboy—nothing. For that matter, he’d never seen him show a lick of appreciation to Ignacio and Teresa for all of their kindnesses. It just wasn’t in him to be grateful or easy in his manners.

  Once they left the ranch, Cal planned on being gone for no more than two weeks. He wondered if he’d really be trailing back to the Double K alone.

  24

  Pushing hungry, thirsty cattle to Engle wore down the men and critters alike. Cal and Patrick spent thirty nonstop hours in the saddle driving the sore-footed animals through rocky canyons, over steep hills, and around wagon-size boulders. They lost two along the way, a sickly yearling and a weak old cow. In Engle, they herded the bawling, thirsty animals into the huge Bar Cross stock pen at the railroad siding, watered them down, and went to the station to hire cattle cars to ship the stock to El Paso. The stationmaster scheduled them for a southbound train leaving in six hours. After Cal paid the freight charges, the two men walked across the street for a meal at the hotel.

  Over plates of eggs, bacon, and sourdough biscuits, they talked about what the cattle would bring upon delivery.

  “I allow they’re scrawny critters,” Cal said, “but eyeballing them I figure I can put three hundred dollars in your pocket once we get paid, if you still want to hit the trail and shake off some Tularosa dust for a while.”

  “By a long stretch, three hundred ain’t gonna buy my half of the outfit,” Patrick said.

  “Didn’t say it would. But it might do until we can settle up.”

  “Three hundred will suit until then,” Patrick said. “Once I settle, I’ll let you know where to send the rest of the money.”

  Cal nodded at a couple of Bar Cross hands who’d entered the dining room. “Where do you plan to head first?” he asked.

  “Maybe up to Santa Fe,” Patrick answered, ignoring the cowboys. “I’ve got a hankering to see that town. Then maybe into Colorado. Denver. Cheyenne. I’ll see how far the itch takes me.”

  Cal pushed back from the table. “We’ll shake on it in Mexico.”

  “In Mexico,” Patrick echoed as he rose to his feet. The last two times Cal had gone to buy ponies in Mexico, Patrick had stayed home. This time he’d get to go, and he was eager to see the country.

  At the Bar Cross corral, they loaded the animals in the livestock cars at the siding and stretched out on their bedrolls in the shade. When the clanking and puffing of an approaching engine woke them, they put their horses in an empty stock car and rode with them all the way to El Paso, the sound of the wheels on the rails lulling them back to sleep.

  In El Paso, Cal left Patrick with the cattle in a holding pen at the rail yards and went across the border to Juárez looking for their Mexican buyer, Emiliano Díaz, a Chihuahua cattleman. He found him in the bar of an old hacienda on a plaza across from a whitewashed church with a bell tower topped by a cross. Encircled by trees, the hacienda had three-foot-thick adobe walls and a dining room filled with men with long Spanish faces. The gaming rooms were alive with action at the tables, the gamblers surrounded by lovely señoritas who had private rooms along a long hallway that they used to entertain their guests.

  “Ah, my old amigo,” Díaz said with a smile as Cal joined him at his corner table. “This time I buy, you sell.”

  “That’s the way of it,” Cal said as he sat and shook Díaz’s hand. Twice he’d bought Mexican ponies from Emiliano to break to the saddle and sell as cavalry mounts to the army. He was a fair man to do business with.

  A big man with a full mustache under a narrow nose, Díaz had thick eyebrows and blue-green eyes. He was pure Spanish, a descendant of the conquistadors, and proud of it.

  “How many cows do you have for me?” Díaz asked.

  Emiliano’s ranch manager, Makiah Whetten, a Mormon with three wives and nine kids who also ran his own small outfit adjacent to Díaz’s ranchero, had taught him English. Díaz spoke it well.

  “Eighty-five,” Cal replied. “They’re mighty scrawny but should fatten up on the range.”

  “No matter. Finally we have the grass. You’ll bring them across tomorrow.”

  “I could use a hand,” Cal said. “There are only two of us.”

  Díaz nodded. “Whetten is here with me. He’ll help you and tell me how much I paid. Not too much, I hope.” Díaz grinned. “You and your partner will stay here as my guests, no?”

  Emiliano owned the hacienda. It had been in his family for two hundred years.

  “Gracias, but not tonight,” Cal said. Unguarded, the cows might easily disappear across the border before he could deliver them to Díaz’s manager. He couldn’t risk it. “We’ll stay with the stock.”

  “Mañana then. We will eat together and perhaps I will win some of my money back at the tables.”

  “Not from me,” Cal said.

  Díaz laughed. “From the señoritas, then.”

  Cal smiled. “Could be. Buenas noches.”

  * * *

  Makiah Whetten came at daybreak and sized up the stock. Rested, fed, and watered, the critters looked better than they had in days but were still pretty puny.

  A slender man originally out of Utah, Makiah had a calm and easy way about him. He tallied the animals, estimated the total weight, and told Cal and Patrick what he’d pay. It was about what Cal had expected, plus fifty dollars.

  “He needs these critters,” Makiah said. “He let about eighty percent of his stock die during the drought. I couldn’t get him to pay a penny for feed. Said he’d just as soon get some new bloodlines. He’s got Oliver Lee coming down next month with two hundred head.”

  “I wish I had more to sell him,” Cal said.

  Makiah smiled. “He still might be buying in a year or t
wo. The Díaz ranch covers over half a million acres.”

  They left the rail yard and pushed the cattle over some low hills with the stark Franklin Mountains at their backs and the town of El Paso nestled along the Rio Grande. Makiah took them along the riverbank to a spot where some cow tracks wound down to the water.

  “No quicksand here,” he said as he signaled Cal and Patrick to start the cows across.

  The mountain cows had never seen so much running water in their lives. They balked at the bank, mooing and backtracking at the frightening sound and sight of the river. Cal and Patrick roped a bull and a steer and drug them across, hoping the others would follow, but it was wasted effort. Let loose, the critters just splashed back across to the other side and rejoined the bunch.

  “What are we gonna do?” Patrick asked, looking at the snorting, bellowing cattle on the riverbank.

  “With the river running low and sluggish, we can mill them across,” Cal said. “I’ll prod the lead steer and start them turning. You and Makiah tighten the circle. Once they get their feet wet, it should be all right.”

  Patrick gave Cal a dubious look. “If they stampede in the water you’ll be stove up or worse.”

  “Then I reckon we’d better do it nice and slow,” Cal said as he pointed Bandit at the lead steer.

  He got the lead steer in the middle of the river with a few of the cows trailing behind and started moving them in a slow circle while Patrick and Makiah prodded the rest of them into the water. They milled around Cal and pressed tight against Bandit as he moved them through the brown stream into Mexico.

  Once the bunch was settled on the other side, Cal quickly turned them south, eager to avoid any customs agents wanting to see proof that duty had been paid on the critters. Makiah took the lead and they raised dust for five hours, pushing the slow-moving cows along, until they reached a fenced pasture in some low hills along a mountain range where three vaqueros waited. The grasslands looked better than the Tularosa flats, but not by much, and Cal wondered if Díaz was doing the right thing stocking so soon after the drought.

  After they had the cattle in the pasture under the care of Díaz’s vaqueros, Makiah paid Cal in greenbacks and the three riders turned their horses toward Juárez.

  As they loped along, Makiah urged Patrick to stay away from the sinful temptations at Díaz’s hacienda. All it did was whet his appetite. When they parted outside of town, Cal watched Makiah ride off and wondered what kept a scripture-quoting Mormon working for a sly old sinner like Díaz.

  “Was he serious about the hacienda?” Patrick asked.

  “Sure as shooting he was,” Cal replied. “You ain’t seen nothing like it. It’s one fancy place. So fancy, no leg irons are allowed. Best we stop for a bath, shave, and a fresh set of duds before we show up for supper.”

  Patrick grinned. “That’ll be all right with me.”

  On a side street in Juárez, not far from Díaz’s hacienda, they put their horses in a livery, bought some new duds at a dry-goods store and had a bath and a shave at a barbershop next to a small hotel. Over coffee in the hotel dining room, Patrick asked Cal to settle up.

  “Am I buying you out?” Cal asked.

  “Yep,” Patrick replied.

  “Then I need a paper from you saying so,” Cal said.

  “A handshake ain’t enough between us?”

  “Not when it comes to owning land. See if the hotel proprietor has paper and ink, and we’ll study on what to write.”

  When Patrick left, Cal calculated how much money he could give as a partial payment to buy out their partnership. He decided on four hundred, which would leave enough to get home and tide him over for a spell.

  Patrick came back with an inkwell, pen, and paper. “Who’s gonna write it?” he asked.

  “You’re selling, so you do it. Put down for the sum of four hundred dollars as part payment, you agree to sell your half of the Double K ranch to me, Calvin Doran.”

  Patrick began to write. When he finished, he looked up. “What else?”

  “The final payment will be half the money loaned by a bank on the Double K ranch less four hundred dollars, making me, Calvin Doran, sole owner. You give up all claims to the Double K.”

  “If I give up all claims, how will I know how much money is half?”

  “Put it down that you have the right to examine all the bank papers.”

  Patrick wrote it down. “Done.”

  “Sign your name and put in the date.”

  “Maybe I should look for someone who’ll pay more for my half,” Patrick said.

  “You can do that if you want,” Cal replied.

  Patrick shook his head. “Nope, this will do.” He signed with a flourish and gave the paper to Cal.

  Cal put it in his pocket and slid the greenbacks across the table to Patrick. “You can roam fancy-free now, amigo.”

  Patrick grinned. “Let’s head on over to the hacienda and celebrate.”

  Cal sipped his coffee and smiled at the eager young cowboy, all cleaned, wearing new duds, smelling like lavender, with money in his pocket and raring to go. He’d brought him up the best way he knew how, and now it was up to Patrick to pick the trail he wanted to follow.

  “Put some of that dinero in your boot before we leave,” Cal cautioned.

  “Good idea.” Patrick stuffed money down his boot and stood up. “Is the food any good? I could eat a bear.”

  “Best food in Juárez,” Cal replied, “and the women ain’t bad either. But old Makiah Whetten warned you off them.”

  Patrick laughed. “That won’t stop me.”

  “Didn’t think so,” Cal said as he adjusted his hat and headed for the door.

  25

  Martin Cardenas, the man who ran the hacienda for Díaz, greeted them when they entered the bar and said Don Emiliano would be with them shortly. Built low to the ground, Cardenas was a bull of a man with a thick neck and arms that bulged against the sleeves of his coat. Cal whispered something to Cardenas as he escorted them to Díaz’s table. After the bartender brought glasses and a bottle of tequila, Cardenas excused himself and left the room.

  “What did you say to him?” Patrick asked.

  “I asked about a certain girl,” Cal said.

  “Why, you old bull,” Patrick said with a laugh.

  Cal smiled. “Don’t you ‘old bull’ me, youngster.”

  Patrick chuckled. “That Cardenas is a tough-looking hombre.”

  “He keeps the peace,” Cal said as he poured shots of tequila and raised his glass. “Salud.”

  “Salud,” Patrick replied. He knocked back the shot, felt the fiery liquid sear his throat, and took a good look around the room. The adobe walls were whitewashed and the bar was made out of solid wood, with a brass foot rail. All the tables and chairs matched, and the place was as neat as a pin. The girls with the customers were all young and pretty, and none of the men looked rowdy.

  He poured a second round just as Díaz entered the room and joined them at the table. Cal introduced Patrick to Díaz and the men shook hands.

  “The señoritas will be fighting to oblige this young man once they meet him,” Díaz said with a laugh. “You may have to stay for a week to please them all, if you can afford it.”

  “He can’t,” Cal said.

  “How sad. Many hearts will be broken. Come, let us have a drink and then eat. Afterward, you are my guests for the night and Martin has a room ready for you.” Díaz poured a shot.

  “You are a generous man, Emiliano,” Cal said.

  “My enemies do not think so,” Díaz replied. “Salud.”

  Two drinks later they were seated in the dining room at Díaz’s private table. Bread and tortillas were brought to the table along with wine and a vegetable soup. Roasted chicken stuffed with onions came next, followed by chili peppers stuffed with minced meat smothered in sauce.

  The cups were silver, and according to Díaz the serving plates were blue-and-white Spanish porcelain. The wine, he said, was from
El Paso.

  Patrick ate until he could hold no more. Never had he had such a good meal in such a fine place. He leaned back in his chair, sipped wine, and took a good look around the room. The men, Mexican and American, all looked prosperous and old. Probably in their forties and fifties, Patrick guessed, which was about Cal’s age. There wasn’t a dirty, smelly waddie in the whole bunch. The only American he recognized was Pat Garrett, who had a redheaded señorita sitting on his lap. As sheriff, Garrett had visited the Double K several times looking for outlaws, and stayed overnight at the ranch more than once.

  Patrick reminded himself that the fancy ladies in the room were just a bunch of gussied-up, sweet-smelling soiled doves, no different from the saloon and dance-hall strumpets he’d known as a young boy. No different from Ida.

  The sight of Virgil Peters ushering a stumbling drunk to their tent in the mining camp and Ida shooing him outside came into his head. Many a night he’d sat out in the cold, waiting to be let back in, listening to the grunts and groans while Virgil stood guard in front of the closed tent flaps. He pushed the thought out of his mind.

  Díaz passed around cigars and a waiter lit them. Patrick didn’t like tobacco much, but he puffed on his as Cal and Díaz talked about improved ice-cooled railroad cars that could cart dressed beef for a thousand miles with no spoilage. They were in wide use back in Chicago, Boston, and New York City, but they wouldn’t work in the desert country, where there was little to no ice to be had.

  The señoritas in the room were much more interesting than talk about dressed beef, ice, and railroad cars. A small, dark-haired girl particularly drew Patrick’s eye, but he didn’t know how to go about arranging a poke. Back in Tularosa at Coghlan’s saloon, all a man had to do was look at one of the women and she was ready to take him to a room and lift her skirt.

  He’d done it only a couple of times with Coghlan’s hurdy-gurdy girls when Cal was away on sheriff business, and it hadn’t gone so good. He blew the plug and got bucked off sooner than he should have, and it mortified him greatly.