Hard Country

by Michael McGarrity

  Emma shook her head. “I wouldn’t want that.”

  Kaytennae grinned. “It’s okay. Time for somebody else to be police.”

  35

  On the eve of her seventeenth birthday, after a long, difficult labor, Emma Murray gave birth to a baby girl. She’d spent sixteen hours in constant pain, sweating and swearing with each contraction. When the baby came, it made no sound for what seemed the longest time, and in her exhausted state, Emma believed it to be dead. Teresa slapped it on the bottom and the baby uttered a feeble cry. She cut the umbilical cord, cleaned up the afterbirth, bathed the infant, and put her in Emma’s arms before sending Ignacio on his way across the Tularosa to the Double K with news of the event.

  “She is bella,” Teresa said. “Beautiful.”

  Emma looked down at her daughter. She was bright pink, with damp, dark hair on her tiny head. She wiggled her little legs, gave a tiny wail, and smacked her lips.

  “Yes,” Emma replied as she smiled at her daughter, “she is.”

  “Do you have a name for the little one?” Teresa asked.

  “Molly,” Emma answered, “after my mother. Only she loved me.”

  “And now you have Molly to love,” Teresa said.

  “What will happen next, little Molly?” Emma crooned as she studied her baby girl.

  “Your hija will sleep, and then she will want your milk.”

  Emma smiled. “No, I mean in the future.”

  “Patrick has come to visit you more times than I can count,” Teresa said. “He rides here from the ranch just to see you. A very long, hard journey. Has there been no talk of a future between you?”

  “I do most of the talking,” Emma replied. “He sits and looks at me. Sometimes he smiles.”

  “And says nothing?”

  “Almost. He’ll talk about the horses he’s training, or how the cattle are doing, but not much more than that. I know he’s not stupid.”

  Teresa laughed as she adjusted Emma’s blanket. “Patricio estúpido? He has faults, but that is not one of them.”

  “Cal told me about his early years before his father found him,” Emma said.

  “Muy dreadful. Yet he is not uncaring to you,” Teresa said with a smile. “He comes to see you over and over. Surely you must know that he finds you beautiful.”

  Emma nodded. Since she was twelve years old, men had looked at her with more than passing interest. Until Thomas Dunphy, she’d not minded their attention. “Yes, but I want more from a man than silent company.”

  “He will be here again before a day passes. Ask him of his intentions.”

  “I know what his intentions are,” Emma said, shaking her head. “He wants to either marry me or have me for his own. I wish I could live my life beholden to no man.”

  Teresa patted Emma’s hand. “To do that, you’d be forced to lay with many vaqueros at Coghlan’s saloon, and still you would not be free. Rest now. Soon Molly will be hungry.”

  “You have been so good to me,” Emma said sleepily.

  “Hush,” Teresa said as she slipped out of the room and closed the door.

  For the next several hours she sat in the chair she’d placed by the door, listening for any sounds, ready to jump up to help Emma and the baby if needed. As soon as the hija arrived and the danger passed, Teresa’s mother had hurried Juan, Sofia, Bernardo, and Miguel away. The house, normally filled with the sound of children’s laughter and voices, was unusually quiet.

  She thought about Patrick and Emma, wondering if they could make a life together, have some happiness.

  * * *

  Patrick arrived the following evening. Before he could enter the courtyard, Teresa intercepted him.

  “Come,” she said, blocking his entry through the gate, “you must help me catch a rooster that has flown into the pasture by the river.”

  “Can’t you get one of your children to help?” Patrick asked.

  “They are all at their abuela’s house. Come, all I ask is a small favor. You will see Emma soon enough.”

  “She’s all right?” he asked.

  “Sí,” Teresa said as she stepped out of the courtyard and closed the gate. “And so is the baby. Her name is Molly.”

  She hurried him down the lane to the pasture. A small bunch of sheep scattered as they approached.

  “I don’t see a rooster,” Patrick said.

  “It is not here. Before you see Emma, first we will talk.”

  “About what?”

  “I have come to think of Emma as a sister,” Teresa replied, “and I feel she is now one of our family. So I want no harm to come to her.”

  “From who?”

  “From you, Patricio. That is why we are talking.”

  Patrick turned away. “Loco talk, if you ask me.”

  Teresa touched his elbow and he turned back to her. “I know you’ve heard about your father many times, but never from me. He rescued Ignacio from a beating, gave him work, taught him to be a vaquero, and saved his life. He took care of Ignacio just as he took care of you after searching so long to find you. Since your father’s death, Cal has raised you as his own flesh and blood. Both men did more for you than anyone could have asked.”

  “What’s this got to do with me hurting Emma?”

  “Because I have watched you trample on every kindness, every fine thing that has been done for you, with apatía—how you say, indifference. You must not treat Emma that way.”

  Patrick looked at Teresa with impatience. “I don’t need to be told how to be or what to do.”

  “Verdad?”

  “Yes, that’s so.”

  Teresa glared at Patrick. “Still I tell you to treat her with respect. She deserves no less.”

  Patrick snorted. “Whatever happens between Emma and me is our business.” He turned and marched away.

  Teresa watched him go. Once again, he’d rebuffed her with his stubborn nature. For years, she’d tried to love him, only to be met by his suspicion. Her heart went out to Emma, who might soon be living with a man who seemed to have no kindness in him at all. She saw no joy in the future for either of them, alone or together.

  Teresa walked slowly home, grateful for all she had with her family that couldn’t be counted in coin.

  * * *

  Patrick sat on the floor across from Emma in the small bedroom. She was propped up in bed with pillows behind her head, her hair spread out like a fan, her baby asleep in her arms.

  He wanted her so intently, he was easily and often tongue-tied. Only the dim light in the room hid his blush.

  He gazed at her hair, the line of her neck, her small, delicate hands, her high cheekbones, her flashing blue eyes, which seemed to bore into him. He wanted to reach out and touch her warm skin, brown and freckled from the sun. When she smiled his heart raced, but today there were no smiles. She looked cold and stern, as though she wanted nothing to do with him. Her eyes fluttered closed and her breathing slowed. He sat quietly and listened and watched.

  Over the months, he’d come to realize she had a sharp mind. She was far more intelligent than any woman he’d known, except maybe Mrs. Ingalls at the Yuma Prison, and although he would never admit it to anyone, he figured she was a touch smarter than he was. So he kept his idle talk to what he knew best: horses and cattle, ranching and working.

  He loved listening to her talk, although she troubled him with some of her helter-skelter ideas. She dreamt of being alone with a room full of books for a year, being a beekeeper, learning to draw like the illustrators in the eastern magazines, becoming a doctor, traveling across China, meeting the queen of England, hiking the hills of Scotland. It was all pipe-dream stuff.

  Once he’d asked her what had happened to her family, and she started to say something about her father, shook her head, turned stone-faced, and stopped talking for a long while. He never mentioned it again, but it made him think she knew misery as well as he did and had secrets to keep as well.

  The baby was sleeping now. He looked at it and r
emembered that Teresa hadn’t paid much attention to Ignacio after her children were born because the little ones needed a lot of tending. He figured it would be the same with Emma, and he didn’t cotton to the notion. He wanted her all to himself.

  She was almost asleep, her eyes closed, her breath a whisper across the small room. He thought about how nice it would be to join her on that bed.

  “I’m not sleeping,” Emma said softly, opening her eyes. “What did you come here to say to me?”

  Patrick sat upright, his back against the adobe wall of the small room. “What do you mean?”

  Emma looked at him in silence.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Patrick finally blurted, forcing a smile.

  “What do you want?” Emma held his gaze as she stroked Molly’s head.

  “You,” Patrick answered slowly.

  “Not my baby?”

  “Both of you,” Patrick said.

  Emma had expected his lie. “I will not marry you yet,” she said.

  Patrick stood. “Then I might as well git.”

  “Wait.”

  “What for?” he blustered.

  “Hear me out. I will come to the ranch and live in the casita Ignacio built for Teresa. I will cook and tend house for you, Cal, and George, but you must pay me wages.”

  “Why should I do that?” Patrick demanded.

  Emma chose her words carefully. “Because it is the only way I will ever consider marrying you.”

  “You’re loco,” Patrick said.

  Emma smiled and looked down at her baby daughter. “Yes or no?”

  Patrick hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll come get you in a week.”

  “We’ll be ready,” Emma said.

  Emma watched him leave. She knew it was desire that drove Patrick to her, maybe even love, but she had no illusions about her own feelings for him. Although she felt no great passion, she might very well give herself to him anyway. But no man would ever again take her against her will the way Thomas Dunphy had done.

  36

  Time passed quickly for Emma at the Double K. From sunup to nightfall she kept busy housekeeping and cooking for Patrick, Cal, and George and caring for Molly, who at ten months was wobbling around on her tiny feet, frequently falling down, and letting out surprised wails each time her unsteady legs gave way beneath her.

  Once a month she accompanied George, Cal, or Patrick to town for supplies and food. Most often Patrick drove the wagon, and she sat quietly next to him with Molly on her lap as he tried valiantly to make conversation.

  Since her arrival at the Double K, she realized that she made him nervous. Alone in her company he was like an unsure little boy. His hands trembled, he stumbled over words, he blushed, and he looked at her with such longing that at times it almost made her giggle. When she was silent he became anxious, sometimes irritable. He had no soft words of affection for her, but she expected none from him. She was of a mind to believe that he had the good sense not to try to rape her, but she remained wary nonetheless.

  Based on his lack of interest in Molly, she wondered what kind of father he would be. Not once had she seen him reach out to touch or hold her delightful little girl, who bubbled with inquisitiveness, as both Cal and George often did. Rarely did he bother to speak to her. Emma imagined that perhaps he had no warmth in his heart for children. Had he given any genuine attention to her daughter, she might have already given herself to him, for she found him handsome.

  On an early morning in late January, with a thick carpet of low, gray skies covering the Tularosa, Emma and Molly rode in the wagon with Cal as they crossed the basin to town. With the pressure of Patrick’s constant attention left behind, the trip felt like a holiday to her. Alone with Cal she could relax, sometimes to the point of feeling girlish. He was like an uncle to her, and little Molly dearly loved him. She eagerly tottered to him whenever he came into sight.

  They had left before dawn, and a brisk wind had them bundled up against the biting cold. Frost on the ground crackled underneath the wagon wheels.

  “We’ll get some moisture out of those clouds,” Cal declared. “Maybe snow.”

  “I’d love that,” Emma replied with a hopeful sigh.

  “It’s a sight to see, all right,” Cal agreed, “as long as you don’t have to snake cattle out of snowdrifts.” He glanced at Emma. “I should tie Molly behind you and put you both on the back of a pony.” He’d once said about the same thing to John Kerney. “That would turn you into a hand.”

  Emma laughed and bounced Molly on her knee, who giggled and clapped her hands. “I’d like that. So would Molly, I bet.”

  “Are you gonna spend any of your wages on yourself in town this time?” Cal asked.

  Emma shook her head. “I just need a few things for Molly.”

  “I don’t fault you for putting money aside, but you shouldn’t be so stingy on yourself.”

  “Are you about to give me a talking-to?”

  Cal chuckled. “Wouldn’t do a bit of good. I will say you’ve got that lad back at the ranch about half civilized, but I doubt you can hold him off much longer.”

  “I know it,” Emma replied.

  In the time that Emma and Molly had been at the ranch, Patrick had been on his good behavior, hoping to win Emma over. It was amazing how a woman could gentle a man, but in Patrick’s case Cal wasn’t sure it would last forever. The lad had a lot of wild oats tugging at him and had lately become as restless as a wildcat.

  “Will you stay or skedaddle?” he asked.

  “Whatever do you mean?” she asked, faking innocence.

  “Either you’re going to share a blanket with Patrick or you’ll leave the Double K. I can’t see it any other way.”

  “There is no other way.”

  “In all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him so partial to anyone.”

  “I wonder if he loves me,” Emma said.

  “I reckon he does. Will you marry him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’d sure hate to see you go. George would too.”

  Emma smiled. “I didn’t say I would leave, just that I might not marry him.”

  Cal shot her a surprised look. “Well, I’ll be. You’re a bold one; I’ll give you that. But you’ve got cause to be cautious.”

  Emma placed her hand on Cal’s sleeve. “I knew you would understand. I wish Patrick was more like you.”

  “Give over that silly talk, missy,” Cal said gruffly.

  “I will not,” Emma replied with a laugh.

  They traveled the rest of the way to Tularosa through a growing snowstorm that turned the entire basin white under a bank of flat, dark clouds that hung above like a massive ceiling blocking the sky, hiding the mountains from view. In town, they went directly to Ignacio’s casa, where they were greeted with food and an invitation to spend the night.

  After eating, Cal and Ignacio went off to the cantina. Emma tucked Molly into bed with Sofia and rejoined Teresa, who had sent Juan, Bernardo, and Miguel to spend the night with their grandfather Cesario, who lived alone and enjoyed their company.

  “I think I’ll have at least three more children,” Emma said merrily.

  Teresa looked at her in the lamplight. “Have you decided to marry Patrick?”

  “Not yet. I may want different men to give me my babies.”

  “Emma,” Teresa cried, startled and shocked by the thought of it.

  Emma smiled mischievously.

  “Do you love Patrick at all?” Teresa asked.

  “I don’t know if I can,” Emma replied, a touch of sadness in her voice. “Perhaps we’re a perfect match.”

  Teresa reached for her hand and the two women sat silent in the lamplight for a time.

  “Are you happy?” she finally asked Emma.

  “I’m safe,” Emma answered. “That might be about the best I can do.”

  37

  Overnight the skies had cleared and the day was bitter cold. To the west above the San Andres
, dull clouds gathered, pushed eastward by a stiff breeze. Snow covered the mountains and the basin, creating a glistening landscape. Icicles danced on the bare branches of the trees that lined the village acequias, and chimney smoke filled the air with the aroma of pine and piñon logs.

  Cal and Emma had spent the morning buying and loading the wagon with supplies. Earlier, they decided to stay over another night before returning to the Double K in hopes the cold snap would end and the weather would clear. But Cal figured more snow was on the way as he stomped his boots clean on the front porch of the general store, where two horses hitched to a buckboard waited. Tied to the back of the wagon was a little pinto pony.

  He stepped into the warmth of the general store and spotted the lawyer Albert Fountain with his young son, Henry, warming their hands at the potbellied stove.

  Years ago, Fountain had drawn up the papers giving Cal guardianship of Patrick, making the boy his sole heir, and giving him half ownership of the Double K. During Cal’s times as a deputy sheriff, official business had brought him into contact with Fountain every now and then, and he’d watched the lawyer become a powerful and influential politician. He had held elected and appointed offices, had served in the militia, rising to the rank of colonel, and had become an enemy of Oliver Lee and his compadres, who some said were rustling on the Tularosa. Since Cal had no proof that Lee was a rustler and got along just fine with the man, he paid no attention to the rumors. Cal was one of the few Texans on the Tularosa who’d never found cause to dislike Albert Fountain in spite of not agreeing with his politics. Fountain fought for what he believed in, and Cal admired that quality. He also figured any man willing to take on the cattle rustlers was worthy of his respect, and Fountain was doing just that as counsel to a newly formed stock-growers association. He was relentlessly pursuing the stock thieves by legal means and had already scored convictions on one gang operating near Socorro along the Rio Grande. Word had it that he was now poised to go after Oliver Lee.