Hard Country

by Michael McGarrity

  He mostly worried how he and Emma would get on. Her letters hadn’t been filled with tender feelings, but then neither were his. He remembered the times when she’d stormed out of the house in a fury and wondered if he could put up with the dark moods that came over her. Maybe she was done with all of that and they could start fresh, start a family.

  He paged through newspaper clippings Emma had sent along in some of her letters. The war with Spain hadn’t kept the skirmish over the Fountain murders from heating up on the basin. There had been a gunfight at Wildy Well between Pat Garrett and his deputies against Oliver Lee and his partners. A deputy sheriff had been killed and Lee and Jim Gilliland had gone on the dodge. Cal had seen them riding with Gene Rhodes in the San Andres backcountry. This time the three men sported long beards that made them almost unrecognizable.

  In Cal’s last letter, he wrote that Lee and Gilliland had given themselves up and were about to go on trial for the Fountain murders in Hillsboro, the Sierra County seat north of Las Cruces. Newspapers from around the country had sent reporters to cover the event, and Patrick had been following the goings-on and the hullabaloo as best he could. He had no druthers as to how it might turn out but wouldn’t mind being in the courtroom to hear all the lies that were sure to be told by both sides.

  Other than the pending trial, the big excitement on the basin was the coming of the railroad. While Patrick was in Cuba, the tracks had reached the new town site of Alamogordo on the eastern side of the Tularosa and building lots were being laid out and sold. The territorial legislature had carved a new county out of parts of Doña Ana and Lincoln counties and named it for the sitting governor, Miguel Otero. The seat of county government was to be the new town, which just about guaranteed its future prosperity. Patrick wondered if newcomers had already started pouring in. He didn’t doubt it. Would he even recognize the place once he got home?

  He boarded the train and settled down in an empty seat, hoping folks would let him be, but his uniform attracted too much attention. Men came up to him and shook his hand, women were thrilled to meet a Rough Rider, and a young, wide-eyed button traveling with his mother asked if he’d been shot in Cuba. Patrick allowed that it was so, sent him back to his seat pronto, pulled his campaign hat down low, and pretended to sleep. It wasn’t long before he drifted off.

  * * *

  During the next few days, Patrick stayed to himself as much as possible, watching the countryside pass by through the railcar windows. The doctors had told him to avoid hard spirits, and he stuck to their advice when offered a drink now and then by fellow passengers who wanted to hear all about the Rough Riders.

  The Midwest was a big, fertile country and he was glad to see it, but he missed the mountains that screened the endless sun-blasted Tularosa, the huge skies that capped the heaving sand dunes and jumbled lava flows, and the purple sunsets that danced over the San Andres.

  There were moments when his mind returned to the war. He flinched at the thought of Jake Jacobi dying in his arms, blood pulsing from his throat. Or he remembered the Spanish artillery shell that took off the trooper’s leg at the battle for Kettle Hill, the limb tumbling end over end in the air. He had almost no memory of getting shot but recalled clearly the days he spent lying on the spongy, moist ground burning up with fever, his wound infected, his mind a confused jumble, watching the sand crabs crawling toward the bodies of the men who had died.

  He put thoughts of war aside when the Rocky Mountains rose in the distance, and during the remainder of the trip his spirits revived. From Socorro south into the Jornada del Muerto he drank in the sight of the raw desert and rugged mountains he knew and loved so well.

  As the train chugged into Engle, he spotted Emma, Cal, and George standing on the platform, waving gaily. George looked older; Emma, browned by the sun and still about as pretty as a girl could be, looked as though she’d grown an inch or two; and Cal sported a bushy white mustache that gave him a distinguished air.

  Seeing them brought feelings of delight and apprehension Patrick hadn’t expected. As the train ground to a stop, he grabbed his bag and headed for the exit. They had all changed some, he reckoned, and with the new century just months away he wondered what the future would bring and just how he might fit into it on the Double K.

  48

  Patrick stayed close to the ranch after his return home, happy to be back on the Tularosa. He grew stronger every day, and when the fevers and chills came, he recovered faster each time, thanks to Emma’s care. She had welcomed him back to her bed without hesitation, and although the sex was satisfying, Patrick seemed indifferent toward her, something she’d never experienced with him before. Many nights he fell asleep in a porch rocking chair and came to bed in the wee hours.

  When Patrick left to go to war, Emma had felt a twinge of jealousy. Had she been a man, she would have done the same. Not for the fighting, but to see faraway places, walk big-city streets, and watch ocean waves lap sandy shores. It had always been her dream to see the world.

  Their first night in bed together after he got home, she touched the bullet-hole scar in his side. “Does it hurt?”

  “Leave that be,” he said, pushing her hand away.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I didn’t get into this bed buck naked to tell you a story,” he said as his hand slid to her thigh.

  “Will you tell me sometime?”

  “Maybe so, but I doubt it.”

  At breakfast the next morning she asked him about the ocean. “I’ve always wanted to see it.”

  “Didn’t like it,” Patrick said. “It ain’t a friendly place. Empty and dangerous.”

  He went outside and she followed. “I don’t mean to rile you, but you’ve seen places I can only dream about.”

  “I didn’t go on a pleasure trip.”

  “I know that,” Emma said, touching his arm.

  Patrick pulled away. “Let it be.”

  That night he came into the bedroom just as she was putting away the letters he’d written to her.

  “You should burn those,” he said.

  “They’re mine to keep,” she said. “I’ve been reading them again. What happened to that Arizona friend of yours?”

  “Jake got shot in the neck and died,” he answered grimly, staring at her.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “There’s nothing about the war that you need to know, so stop pestering me about it.”

  He turned, stomped away, and was gone all night.

  In the morning, she sought Cal out and told him what had happened.

  Cal nodded sympathetically. He had served in the Eighth Texas Cavalry, known as Terry’s Texas Raiders, during the War of Secession, and fought at Shiloh, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga. Near the end of the fighting, he’d slipped through Union lines with a hundred and fifty fellow Confederate cavalrymen to avoid capture. Thirty-four years later, he had no desire to talk about the horrors he’d experienced, although they still haunted him at times.

  Emma looked at Cal. “Was I pestering?”

  “Nope,” he replied, “but war ain’t an easy subject to talk about. It’s the worst kind of killing. There ain’t nothing to compare. It changes a body forever.”

  “Have you been in a war?” Emma asked.

  Cal nodded. “And it still troubles my mind to think about it.” He patted Emma’s arm. “Just like it must vex you to recollect what happened at Pine Tree Canyon.”

  Emma shivered and her expression clouded. “Yes, of course.”

  “Don’t fret,” Cal said. “You ain’t been contrary about it.”

  “I’ll leave him be, promise,” Emma said.

  Cal smiled. “Don’t you do that. You’re his best medicine. Maybe he’ll tell you on his own someday.”

  “I hope so.”

  During his next trip to town, Cal found issues of Scribner’s Magazine that contained Colonel Roosevelt’s serialized accounts of his war exploits in Cuba and brought them home to Emma, who studied them eager
ly. Patrick also read them and allowed that the colonel had told the story true enough.

  “Except he makes it sound like it was heroic, which it weren’t,” he added.

  “Then what was it like?” Emma asked.

  “A bunch of blundering fools creeping up hills to their deaths,” he replied. “Cal was right; there ain’t no glory in war.”

  Emma bit her lip. “No one was brave?”

  “Lots of boys were,” Patrick replied. “But it was still nothing but a god-awful mess.”

  Live cattle prices had jumped during the war, and the trend had held into 1899. Before Patrick’s return, Cal had struck a deal with a cattle buyer that guaranteed another prosperous year for the outfit. With enough grass in the high pastures to winter over more than just the steers, cows, and calves, Cal had held back some of the yearlings to sell as two-year-olds. It meant greater profit, and if prices held steady he planned to do it again.

  There was always the risk another drought could upend his plans. But with the ranch almost in the black and the bank loan about to be paid off, Cal figured it to be a good time to take the gamble. After he explained his thinking on the matter, Patrick readily went along.

  The two men had worked as stray riders on the John Cross, 7TX, and Bar Cross roundups, so when the time came to get the Double K fall works under way, cowboys from all three spreads showed up, along with Gene Rhodes.

  “I thought you went off to get married,” Cal said as Gene slid off his saddle.

  Colonel Fountain’s and his son’s bodies had never been found, and after the acquittal of his friends Oliver Lee and Jim Gilliland in the murder trial, Gene Rhodes had gone back east to marry a lady he’d been romancing by mail.

  “I did and I am,” Gene replied as he nodded at Patrick. “Went all the way to New York State. Sure is different than this hot, dusty basin, but I can’t say I like it any better. Family will join me shortly, but until then I need work and a place to lie low.”

  “What did you go and do?” Patrick asked.

  Gene pulled an earlobe. “Seems the old boy I hired to look after my place while I was gone went and said the cow I’d slaughtered for him to eat was stolen. Of course, that was after he ate the beef. To clear matters up, I had to bend my pistol over his head and escort him to Texas.”

  “Are there warrants for your arrest?” Cal asked.

  “After what I done to him, there could be,” Gene replied. “So I’d just as soon not be too easy to find for a spell.”

  “You’re not gathering any cattle this fall?”

  Gene shook his head. “I sold them sometime back, and my pa is wintering over his stock. I’m looking to hire on as a hand somewhere for a time.”

  “We’ll take you on for fall works,” Patrick said, “and if you’ve a need, you can hunker down in our line cabin after we finish up.”

  Gene smiled. “That’s mighty neighborly, and I’m obliged. Besides the hands from the John Cross, the 7TX, and the Bar Cross, who else is joining up?”

  “That’s it,” Cal said.

  “Should be enough,” Gene said, glancing at Patrick. “I sure hope your missus is gonna be the trail cook. She fixes a mighty fine table, as I recall.”

  “Old George will be driving the chuck wagon and fixing the victuals,” Cal said. “He can’t fork a horse the way he used to, and Patrick’s wife, Emma, makes a hand.”

  “Sorry to hear that about George,” Gene said, giving Patrick a glance. “Your wife makes a hand, does she? Why, that’s worth seeing, I reckon.”

  “Maybe so,” Patrick said with a shrug.

  * * *

  Before the fall works, Cal and Patrick had moved most of the Double K cattle to a south pasture, a high-country valley with adequate water and good browse that stretched for ten miles through shallow canyons and around solitary peaks. There were some old, played-out mines tunneled into mountainsides, but it was all government land that had never been homesteaded or proved up, so the grasses hadn’t been overgrazed before the ruinous three-year drought.

  The crew left the ranch before sunup and reached the valley campsite at noon, pushing stray stock they picked up ahead of them along the way. It was a mixed bunch of thirty-six half-wild steers, ornery mother cows, and bawling calves, all looking to skedaddle into nearby side canyons.

  George had set up camp in a grassy field with browse nearby for the remuda, wood to fuel the cook fire, and a stream under a ridgeline that ran clear and cold. A fire was going when the waddies arrived, and George was busy cutting freshly butchered steaks from a side of beef he’d kept cool and covered in a washtub.

  He’d fed the crew a breakfast of eggs and bacon at four in the morning, and they’d eaten until they were stacked to the fill. But that was eight hours ago and he’d hear gripes real quick if supper was late. He wasted no time frying the steaks, heating up canned corn seared in beef drippings, boiling rice, and warming up biscuits and gravy.

  Patrick herded the remuda into a rope corral, and the riders picked out and saddled their fresh cutting horses for the afternoon’s work. When they finished, George called the crew to chow, and to a man they stood aside and let Emma go first. She didn’t hesitate to step to the head of the line.

  At the stream where he was watering the stray cattle, Gene Rhodes watched the courtly display with amusement. He knew a number of hardworking womenfolk who toiled from daybreak to nighttime, but never one who made a hand. Stock raising was men’s work, and most women were glad to have nothing to do with it. Cal Doran was not a man given to exaggeration, so he was keen to see exactly how well Emma Kerney could fork a horse. Watching her make tracks from the ranch to camp didn’t prove anything one way or the other, but he had hopes she’d show spunk and grit when they started cutting and branding after supper.

  With two years of college in California under his belt plus some audited courses he’d taken at the new agriculture and mechanical college in Las Cruces, Gene had an eye on becoming a writer. A story about a comely, slender, hard-riding cowgirl who put the boys to shame on a roundup just might sell to a magazine, even if it was a bit shy of the truth in the telling of it. The more he thought about it, the better he liked the idea.

  With a big beefsteak draped on his plate along with all the other fixings, he sat on a log across from Emma Kerney and gave her a close gander to sear her features in his mind’s eye.

  “You stare at me like I ought to be home scrubbing the floor,” Emma said.

  Gene blushed. “I don’t mean to be rude, ma’am, but I never worked a roundup with a woman before.”

  “Is that what your wife does?” Emma asked, ignoring Gene’s comment. “Scrub and darn and clean and such?”

  Gene blushed again, this time in irritation. “I reckon so. She sure doesn’t cowboy like I hear you do.”

  “Don’t get her riled,” George cautioned as he sat down next to Gene and cut a slice off his steak.

  “You don’t think I can do it?” Emma said, glaring at Rhodes.

  “I didn’t say that,” Gene replied, looking to Patrick for help.

  Patrick shook his head and cut another bite of steak.

  “She’s riled,” George muttered.

  “I’m not riled,” Emma snapped.

  “I sure hope you can cowboy, ma’am,” Gene replied softly. “I truly do.”

  Emma’s glare didn’t soften. “And why is that?”

  “Because it would be a heck of a story,” Gene answered, “and one I’d be happy to tell around a campfire to a bunch of old boys.”

  Emma studied Gene hard to judge if he was funning her.

  “I mean it,” Gene said sincerely.

  Emma stopped glaring and smiled. “I believe you.”

  “I am truly relieved that you do,” Gene replied.

  After dinner, the crew filled the wreck pan with dirty dishes and rode into the pasture to make the first cut. No one needed to be told what to do. They would gather all the stock, separate out the steers, brand the strays, and point the her
d along in the direction of the next day’s roundup.

  Emma had saddled up a cutting pony named Biscuit that looked thrifty enough for any good hand to fork. She didn’t hesitate going after a reluctant, bellowing steer that wanted to stay in the center of the shifting, nervous herd. She showed Biscuit the animal she wanted and the pony went right for it. The steer dodged, and Emma’s pony dodged with it. The steer twisted toward the center of the herd, and Biscuit cut it off, settling back on its heels, forcing the steer toward the perimeter. In the midst of the herd, Biscuit and the steer turned and dodged in lightning-fast, whirligig unison, until Emma cleared her quarry.

  Gene dropped his lariat over the steer and tipped his hat to Emma as he led the panting animal away.

  Emma smiled as she wheeled Biscuit back to cut out another critter.

  Gene parked the steer with the others that had already been cut out, plunged his pony into the riled herd, whirled a steer to the fringe, and quickly cleared it, thinking he might not need to color up a story about a top-hand cowgirl after all.

  By the time all the steers were separated and they began working the cows and calves, he was damn sure convinced that Emma made a hand.

  He watched her go after an irritated mother cow bent on protecting her baby. It was a ticklish business, but Emma didn’t hesitate to turn Biscuit loose. The cow wheeled and charged. Biscuit dodged, closed on the animal, and hounded it until it broke away from its calf. Not once did Emma grab leather, and she dropped her lariat on the frightened calf in her first try and pulled it to the branding fire.

  Gene followed along, dismounted, threw the quaking calf to the ground, twisted it until it was on its side, and held its head while a Bar Cross cowboy stomped his boot on a rear leg, pushed it forward, and pulled the other leg far to the rear to keep it from kicking.