Hard Country

by Michael McGarrity

  Cal seared the Double K brand into its hide, clipped an ear, and castrated it.

  “You weren’t blowing smoke about that gal,” Gene said as he released the bawling calf and threw the next one down. “Patrick has got himself one humdinger of a wife.”

  Cal chuckled, repeated the same procedure on the calf, and said, “That’s a fact, although he’s still getting used to her.”

  “I can see why,” Gene said. “She’s no ordinary filly.”

  The outfit worked until sundown. Most of the gathered cattle belonged to the Double K, so there was no need for the stray men to begin separating the animals by brand. After supper, the first two night guards, Patrick and Emma, rode out to bed down the restless herd.

  That slip of a gal purely amazed Gene. She had worked as hard as any hand during the day and seemed to take to the job like she was born to it. He started thinking on another story he could pen about a ranch-savvy gal who bamboozles a young cowboy into believing she is helpless in order to win his affection. He wanted to start in on it right away but was too darn weary. Instead he jotted the idea in a pocket notebook, along with the one about a girl who goes on a roundup and puts the boys to shame, rolled up in his blanket, put his head on his saddle, and went to sleep.

  49

  The camp stayed put the next two days as the riders popped stray cattle out of the nearby canyons and nudged them off surrounding mountainsides. The effort added eighty head of drifted steers, cows, calves, and a few yearlings to the growing herd, belonging mostly to the other outfits. There were even a few of Gene’s cows in the bunch, which pleased him greatly. He’d trail them to town with the Double K cut and sell them there.

  The drifted critters were a mite unruly, which kept the night guards alert during the cool, starlit dark hours. But by the time they were on the move to the new campground, they ambled along with the Double K herd without complaint. All together the tally reached over two hundred head.

  At the new camp, the crew settled the cows, saddled fresh ponies for the afternoon roundup, and lined up with their plates waiting for George to spoon out the hot stew that was simmering over the fire in Dutch ovens. Along with it came stewed prunes, hot biscuits, and Arbuckles’ coffee.

  “George, I swear you’re a better cook than you were a cowboy,” one of the Bar Cross boys joked as he walked away with a full plate.

  A 7TX hand slapped his knee and hooted in agreement.

  “Watch what you say or you’ll find grease in your boots come morning,” George growled.

  The campground was in a shallow depression hard against a ridgeline that made a good holding area. From here, once the gathering was complete and branding done, the stray men from the other outfits would cut out their critters and trail them west over the rough mountain pass to the big spreads on the Jornada. The Double K would trail its beef herd east to the new town of Alamogordo, where the cattle buyer had arranged for stock cars to take the animals south to El Paso and east from there. Although it would be a longer trail drive by half a day, it would be less stressful on the animals and easier on the outfit.

  “I’ll trail my cattle with yours, if you don’t mind,” Gene said to Patrick. He had eleven critters consisting of six cows, four calves, and a young steer.

  “I thought you needed to lay low,” Patrick replied. He put his plate aside and rolled a cigarette.

  “I got a hankering to see Alamogordo again.” Gene finished his Arbuckles’ coffee. “Last time I was there, it was the end of the tracks with a signboard on a bare patch of ground six miles from water. I hear it’s grown considerable.”

  George sat himself down next to Gene, wiped his hands on his pants, and looked around at the crew. They were covered in dust from head to foot, kicked up by hundreds of hooves. He shook his head. “I don’t see the need for another town. We already got La Luz and Tularosa. Makes the whole damn valley seem crowded.”

  “Now, hold on a minute, George,” Cal said. “A new town means more whiskey and women, and you’re partial to both, as I recall.”

  “Don’t you go make Emma think bad of me,” George snapped.

  “Why, I’d never,” Emma said in mock protest.

  “See there,” George said, shaking a finger at Cal. “You’ve already gone and done it.”

  “I hear whiskey and saloons have been outlawed,” Gene said.

  “Then the town ain’t needed at all,” George said.

  “Don’t you want to see it?” Emma asked.

  “Once, maybe,” George grumbled.

  The boys started teasing George about some of his more memorable drunks when he’d been a Bar Cross hand, and after they finished, Emma told them about George getting drunk at her wedding.

  Gene watched, thinking she seemed a hell of a lot more at ease with Cal, old George, and a bunch of dusty cowboys she hardly knew than she did with her own husband. On top of that, Patrick didn’t seem troubled by it at all. That was something worth pondering but likely wouldn’t suit the story he had in mind.

  He turned to Patrick. “This sure is broken country, with timber and rough canyons where cows can hide.”

  Patrick nodded. “I know it. Four hands will hold the steers and cows separate while the rest of us pop strays. We should get it done by nightfall tomorrow. One more day to work the herd and we’ll be trailing our way to Alamogordo the morning after.”

  “I’d be obliged if you don’t put me to minding those critters we’ve already gathered,” Gene said.

  “I had no such idea,” Patrick replied as he stubbed out his cigarette and stood. “Time to start chasing strays,” he announced to the hands.

  As the end of the roundup neared, the work got downright monotonous, but the boys didn’t tire of busting startled cattle from the thickets, breaks, and canyons out into the open. With a skill they knew few people had and without a grumble or complaint, the men rode out laughing and joking under a clear New Mexico sky.

  * * *

  The morning after the last of the cows were gathered, Cal and Patrick grazed the animals before starting them for Alamogordo. They’d turned most of the small remuda loose, knowing some would return to the ranch headquarters while others would need to be brought in before winter came.

  The boys from the other outfits were long gone, pushing their strays up the foothills of the San Andres Mountains. Telltale dust hanging over the hills put them a good five miles away.

  Storm clouds had moved in overnight, and the sun broke through in patches, blotted out by fast-moving, steel gray clouds with brilliant white thunderheads that gathered near the eastern Sacramentos.

  Cal gave the sky a wary eye. The storm could stall and rain buckets forty miles away or blow west and unleash a gully washer on them before day’s end. Under good weather conditions, four hands could easily handle driving a beef herd of three hundred cows forty miles over the flats. But a stampede would scatter the herd, cause cattle to be killed or lost, and reduce their profit for the year.

  “If the storm doesn’t wander this way before we get out on the flats, we should be okay,” Patrick said.

  Cal nodded. “Tell George to saddle his horse, hitch it behind the wagon, and be ready to pitch in if the cattle get a notion to run. I’ll get Gene and Emma to pick up the pace.”

  Patrick nodded, turned his pony, and cantered toward the wagon.

  As fast as they could without spooking them, they moved the nervous herd through a long canyon that fanned out to the flats. Across the basin the storm tarried a while. Lightning blots speared the Sacramento peaks, cracked over the desert, and jumped from cloud to cloud. Blustery winds above swirled and pulsed. A curtain of rain blocked the Sacramentos from view. Slowly the storm moved out over the basin, coming right at them. It stopped halfway, drenched the sugar white sand dunes as the thunder roared and rumbled, and then faded away to the north, masking Sierra Blanca.

  “Lordy, lordy,” George said as Cal drew near. “That there storm didn’t stop me from ever praying for rain again, but it
sure did come close.”

  “Don’t make a noon camp,” Cal said. “We’ll push on till dusk.”

  “Okay by me,” George replied as he slapped the reins against the team’s haunches. “I’m getting low on victuals anyway.”

  They made camp at sundown, with the sweep of the needle-sharp Organ Mountains to the west tinted red against a thin ribbon of yellow sky. The herd bedded down without complaint in the cool of the night. A full moon washed over the white sands that stretched for miles across the basin, creating a magical landscape of rolling, milky dunes cut by shadowy, wandering crevasses. It was a sight that had them talking in whispers.

  In the morning they gained the Tularosa road and drove the herd at a good pace, pausing at some of the shallow sinks filled with rainwater from the storm to let the critters drink. It was as peaceable a drive with a mixed herd as Cal could remember.

  They skirted the sand dunes before stopping for supper. Dusk found them a half mile off the road on a bedding ground with little browse that rose to the canyons at the base of the sheer Sacramentos.

  The sound of a train whistle coursing through the thin air told them civilization was close at hand. They would raise up Alamogordo in the morning.

  * * *

  At midmorning under another threatening sky, they reached the outskirts of Alamogordo. On the west side of the railroad tracks, the sandy soil of the basin sprinkled with bunchgrass and mesquite held sway, but on the east side a town had magically sprung up. As they drew closer, George pulled the wagon team to a stop and the four riders reined in, astonished by the sight before them, the beef herd momentarily forgotten.

  In addition to a two-story train station, a large domed water tower, machine shops, and rail sidings, there were houses, commercial buildings, mercantile shops, general stores, and a huge hotel clustered near the station. On streets laid out in grids, a dozen or more buildings were under construction. A wide road ran east toward Alamo Canyon in the Sacramento foothills, and along the boulevard several fancy houses had been thrown up. Close to the station a string of pretty little cottages with tile roofs lined lanes that paralleled the tracks. North of the train station an open ribbon of land was being transformed into a park. There were buggies and wagons on the streets, people on cement sidewalks, and crews of laborers trenching for water pipes. Evenly spaced electric light poles marched up the main street along with freshly planted cottonwood saplings.

  “I’ll be,” Gene Rhodes said. “There are at least a hundred buildings out there. It’s a marvel of modern ingenuity.”

  “Whatever that means, it don’t make it right,” George groused.

  Cal laughed. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”

  George started the wagon team. “We can avoid it,” he replied.

  At the stockyards, they cut out Gene’s critters, put them in a small corral, and penned the Double K herd next to waiting stock cars.

  “I’ll quit you here,” Gene said to Cal, “and go scare up a butcher or two to buy my cows.”

  Cal gave Gene his wages. “You’ll get more selling to a cattle buyer.”

  “I know it,” Gene replied, “but right now I don’t need anybody else accusing me of rustling. Some in that bunch of mine are mavericks that wandered onto my spread and picked up my brand by accident.”

  “No stockman on the Tularosa would find fault with that,” Cal said.

  “Maybe so,” Gene answered, “but look around; this place got started from nothing lickety-split. It’s a new town, a new county, and a new county seat all rolled into one. The old ways are on their way out, and I don’t hanker to get caught in the squeeze. Especially now that I’m a married man.”

  “Good luck to you and your gal,” Cal said. “Bring her by to visit once you fetch her and get settled.”

  “I surely will.”

  Gene tipped his hat to Emma and rode away, cogitating about the sentence he needed to write to start a story about the gal who made a hand.

  50

  While Cal, Patrick, and Emma stocked up on clothes and sundries at the big mercantile store capped by a domed tower a few steps from the hotel, George ambled down the sidewalk and discovered that Alamogordo wasn’t quite as dry as Gene Rhodes had made it out to be. There was one legal watering hole in town, owned and operated by the railroad company, and it was no hurdy-gurdy house. A long, polished bar with a brass foot rail ran the length of one wall. Behind it were large curved mirrors surrounded by carved, ornamental wooden pillars. A big nickel-plated cash register sat on a shelf in front of the mirrors along with bottles of whiskey and glasses. Along the opposite wall was a row of high-back upholstered booths crowned with wood molding. The tables and chairs in the center of the room showed no sign of wear or abuse at all. The place was brightly lit by chandeliers and big windows that looked out on the street.

  Although there were plenty of patrons, there wasn’t another cowboy in sight. In a bar full of pilgrims, with no girlies around for companionship, George lost all desire to stay and get drunk. He reckoned there had not been one fight in the place since the day it opened. He bought a double shot of rye whiskey, downed it, and walked out, leaving behind a trail of dusty boot prints on the wooden floor.

  He found Cal, Patrick, and Emma in front of the store next to the wagon with parcels under their arms.

  “We’re gonna stay over the night at the hotel,” Patrick said.

  George looked skyward. The threat of a storm had passed, and except for a few mare’s tails over the San Andres, it was sunny and clear. “If it’s all the same, I’ll draw my wages now and start back to the ranch,” he said.

  Cal counted out George’s pay. “Are you stopping in Tularosa?” he asked.

  George nodded as he took the bills. Cal had paid him twice what a hand made, which was the going rate for a cook on roundup. He felt real flush. “Ain’t that far, a dozen miles or so, and the saloons there are more congenial.” He cast a quick glance at Emma, who gave him an innocent smile.

  “Take the wagon,” Patrick said, handing George a piece of paper, “get the supplies we need at the store, and put it on our account. It’s all written down.”

  George nodded and put the paper in his shirt pocket.

  “And don’t forget to take a bath before you go looking for congenial company,” Emma said sweetly.

  Only George’s leathery skin, browned by nearly sixty years in the saddle, hid his blush. He turned to Patrick. “That little lady of yours gives me no peace of mind.”

  Patrick grinned. “Don’t go feeling picked on. She gets after all of us now and then.”

  “Humph,” George replied as he started the team on the road to Tularosa.

  With Alamogordo behind him, his pony hitched to the wagon, and the wide-open country and towering mountains sharp in the sparkling light, George settled the team into a slow trot. In all his years, never had he been so worn down. As a young man, he’d helped trail five thousand head along the Western Trail from San Antonio to Dodge City. He’d driven cattle from Abilene to Cheyenne, crossing flooded rivers and fighting off Comanche raiding parties along the way. In 1866, he’d been on the first drive that blazed the Goodnight-Loving Trail to Fort Sumner, where the army had kept thousands of Navajos and Apaches rounded up and under guard for a time.

  George had argued hard with Cal not to take him off the back of a horse during fall works, but secretly he’d been glad to shuck his pony for the chuck wagon. That wasn’t to say cooking for a crew was easy, for it weren’t. You got up first and went to bed late. He thought it would surely be a mite easier than forking a horse but found it just as wearisome.

  In Tularosa, he parked the wagon at the livery, unhitched the team, and paid for their keep before riding his pony over to Coghlan’s saloon. Once it had been as brand-spanking new as the watering hole in Alamogordo. Not as fancy, but a respectable place to get a stiff drink and a good poke and play a friendly hand of cards. As Pat Coghlan’s fortunes kept sinking, the place had gotten seedier. Still, Geo
rge preferred it simply out of habit.

  Inside, he found the same crowd of out-of-work cowboys, town drunks, gamblers, and a few drifters. He ordered whiskey at the bar and gave a nod at Leonia, his favorite soiled dove.

  She sashayed over and linked her arm around his. “Are you going to buy me a drink first?”

  George smiled down at her. She was older than the other girls—maybe forty—and built the way he liked his women: short, round, and full figured, with wide hips and a big bottom he could grab onto.

  “I’m gonna get a bottle, buy us a dinner, rent a room at the hotel, and spend the night with you, cash on the barrelhead,” he said with a grin. “But not until I have a bath and get a shave.”

  Leonia pinched George’s cheek. “Have you gone and robbed a bank?”

  “I ain’t done nothing desperate,” George said.

  Leonia rubbed her breast against George’s arm, ran her hand down to his crotch, and gave him a gentle squeeze. “Either way, I’m all yours tonight, handsome.”

  * * *

  George felt as fit as a fiddle, the aches and pains of yesterday forgotten. It was way past dawn when he pulled himself out of bed. Although he’d had a fine supper last night with Leonia, his stomach was grumbling for breakfast. After she’d tiptoed out of the room, he’d snoozed for a time before getting dressed and counting his remaining wages. His night with her had set him back some, but he still had enough money for breakfast, a new pair of pants, some tobacco and cigarette papers, a small sack of hard candy, and a blue silk neckerchief he’d taken a shine to last time he was in Adam Dieter’s store.

  After breakfast, he fed the animals, hitched the team, tied his saddle pony to the back of the wagon, and stopped at Dieter’s store to get the provisions on Patrick’s list. Dieter got busy right away filling the order while his missus gathered together George’s purchases. He signed for the ranch order, put on his new neckerchief, and admired himself in the countertop mirror.