Hard Country

by Michael McGarrity

  “I’ll not have a fat, lazy man in my bed,” Emma said gaily as she poured him more coffee. “Best you get back to the ranch.”

  “Can’t wait to see me off, can you?”

  “I’ve got woman’s work to do here and you’d just get in the way.”

  “Fix it up all you like, so I can make a fair profit from it when the time comes to sell.”

  Emma’s smile faded. “It will take both of us to agree to that.”

  Patrick nodded. “I suppose so.” He drank his coffee and looked out the window. The sky had begun to lighten. It had been three days since Cal had left for the ranch, and he wanted to be on the road by sunrise. Out on the street, the team was hitched to the wagon and ready to go. “I’m gonna jingle my spurs out of here.”

  “When will you be back?” Emma asked.

  “I figure three weeks.” He finished his coffee and stood. “We should have the corrals up and the windmill working by then. If Cal has hired a hand, it’ll go even faster.”

  “Three weeks,” Emma said, barely containing a smile. She gave him a kiss and a swift hug.

  “You be careful with all that woman’s work,” Patrick cautioned. “Rest every day like the doctor said.”

  “Making curtains is restful enough,” Emma answered.

  She went outside with Patrick and stayed there until his wagon disappeared from sight. Back in the kitchen she whirled around in a happy little dance, quickly washed the breakfast dishes, and began working on the kitchen curtains so she could hang them before the morning passed.

  She was carefully hemming the final border to the last curtain when a knock came at the door. Wondering who it could possibly be, she opened it to find Henry Bowman on the front step.

  “Mr. Bowman.”

  “Ma’am.” Henry tipped his hat, smiled, and handed Emma an envelope.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “A letter from Cal Doran,” Henry replied.

  Emma’s eyes widened in surprise. “Why would Cal write me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She put the envelope in her apron pocket. “Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?”

  Henry shook his head. “I regret I must get back to the office. Good day.”

  “Good day, and thank you,” Emma called out as Bowman hurried away.

  At the kitchen table, she opened the envelope, took out a letter and some folding money, and read what Cal had written.

  Emma,

  Long before you came to the Double K, Patrick sold his half of the outfit to me and set out on his own. I don’t know if he ever told you about the time he was gone, but I figure he didn’t because he don’t talk about it much. Anyway, to shorten this tale up a mite, he came home after a long spell and bought back into the spread with this dinero I’ve held on to all this time. I’ve decided to give it to you. I’d appreciate it if you’d put it to the care of yourself and your unborn baby, but use it as you see fit. I’ll come visit when I can, and don’t you worry about the Double K. We’ll get it whipped back into shape all right.

  Cal

  She counted the money. Four hundred dollars; a year’s wages for a good hand. It was a fortune to her. She read the letter again and burst into tears.

  54

  By the start of his third day back at the ranch, Cal was kicking himself for not hiring help in Las Cruces. He wasn’t worn down by the work, just beleaguered by all that needed to get done. On top of that, with no water at the ranch headquarters and nobody left behind to watch the critters, the animals had drifted. Since there was no pen built to hold them yet, he hadn’t bothered trailing after them.

  Cutting and hauling timber for the corrals, pasture fence, and damaged windmill tower would take at least two hands, so he was stuck waiting on Patrick’s return before those jobs could get started. While he waited, he turned his attention to the stock tank, digging out two feet of dried mud and buried rocks. He figured to lay a rock-and-mortar foundation and build a shallow dirt tank above it as a stopgap measure until something more substantial could be put up.

  He was on his knees sorting rocks by size when he heard a horse snort at his back. He turned quickly to see James Kaytennae no more than five feet away, looking down at him from the back of a thrifty pinto.

  “Big storm come here too,” James said, looking around at the wreckage.

  “What are you doing sneaking up on me like that?” Cal asked, getting to his feet.

  “He Who Steals Horses said you asked me to come here,” James answered.

  “Who?”

  “The old man you spoke to in Las Cruces.”

  “I just asked after you and told him to say howdy.”

  James shrugged. “That’s not what he says.”

  “He Who Steals Horses,” Cal said. “That’s a name that tells you a lot about a fella.”

  James shrugged again.

  “So who is he?”

  James shrugged a third time.

  Cal tried a different tack. “What brings you here?”

  “You have plenty of work. I need work.”

  “You’re not a tribal policeman anymore?”

  James shook his head. “They want to make me a farmer, but I don’t like that. No Apache does. Someday, Mescaleros will kick the white eyes off our land, and I want to learn what you do with cattle so we can take over when they’re gone.”

  “Is that a fact?” Cal asked with a smile.

  “Sure. Maybe not soon, but someday whites eyes will go.”

  “I meant do you really want to learn to cowboy?”

  James nodded. “You give me a job?”

  “Okay. Room, board, browse for your pony, and thirty dollars a month.”

  “I start now?” James asked as he swung out of the saddle.

  “Right now,” Cal replied.

  * * *

  By the first hard freeze in early December, the pasture fence had been thrown up and the corrals rebuilt, and the restored windmill pumped water into the new stock tank. Cal decided with the ponies close by under James Kaytennae’s watchful eye and the cattle fenced in at the North Canyon with water and grass, it was a good time to visit Emma.

  Patrick had been riding into town twice a month and reporting back that all was going well and there were no problems with Emma’s pregnancy. He had left that morning for Las Cruces, and Cal planned to follow come sunup. He missed Emma’s company and wanted to see her at least once before the baby came.

  After supper, he packed a few things in his saddlebags, put together his bedroll, and went to the kitchen, where James sat at the table working on a flute he had started making several months ago. He had cut a bloom stalk off an agave plant, hollowed out three holes, notched an end, covered it in leather, and etched a geometric pattern on it. Now he was attaching blue and white beads hung on leather strips to the bottom of the flute.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask if you can play that thing,” Cal said as he joined James at the table.

  James shook his head and blew on it, and only a squeak came out. “It is to be a gift.”

  Cal sat and gave the flute in James’s hand a close look. “Well, that’s a right fine-looking gift. What’s the occasion?”

  James looked confused.

  “Is it for a birthday?” Cal asked.

  James smiled. “No, it’s a courting flute. A marriage present.”

  “Does it work?”

  James tied off the last strand of beads and handed it to Cal. “Finished now. Try it.”

  Cal blew through the notched end and only the sound of air came out.

  James smiled. “You play bad as me.”

  “Appears so. I hope who gets it can play it. Who’s getting married?”

  James patted his chest with a finger.

  “You?” Cal said with a grin. “Well, I’ll be. When?”

  “When the sun travels to warm us again.”

  “That’s real fine,” Cal said. “Will you stay on till spring?”

  James
nodded as he wrapped the flute in a cloth. “I have promised her father horses. I will buy some ponies from you before I leave.”

  Cal smiled. “That’s a damn fine gift for anyone. I’ll give you a good price. Pick out the ones you want.”

  “I have done that,” James replied.

  Cal laughed. “That figures. I’m turning in. See you mañana.”

  James nodded good night. After Cal left, James crossed the courtyard to the casita, tucked the flute away in the bedroom dresser, and prepared for bed, spreading his blankets and hides on the floor.

  Before he returned to Mescalero, he would buy four good saddle ponies to give to his bride’s father. At home, he had two others He Who Steals Horses was keeping for him. That made six. He’d promised eight. He might have to raid a ranch or go to Texas with He Who Steals Horses for the other two, but he would keep his word.

  Cal left before sunup next morning under a full moon in a clear sky. At first light, bundled in a blanket against the cold, James rode into the pasture and tracked the ponies several miles from the ranch house, where they had clustered near the fence line. The horses whinnied, snorted, and trotted away as he approached, their breath rising like smoke in the freezing air. He did a count. Six were missing, including a brown and a calico he’d picked out to buy.

  He backtracked in a widening circle until he found sign that two riders had cut the six horses from the herd and driven them to the eastern edge of the pasture bordering the basin flats. Fence wires dangled to the ground.

  He stopped, dismounted, and studied the riders’ horse tracks, fixing them in his mind. They were fresh and ran southeast across the basin toward the white sands, the stolen horses following strung together.

  Tse-yahnka, an old trail once used by his people, skirted the low edge of the vast dunes. As a young boy he’d traveled it with his family to gather salt in sack-shaped hides, late in the summer when the lake beds were dry. He doubted the rustlers knew of it.

  The horse tracks also showed they were moving at a slow trot toward the Jarilla Mountains, a distant, small range on the basin that was divided by a low pass that led directly to El Paso and Mexico.

  The horses would need water long before reaching the Jarillas. On the McNew ranch just southeast of the dunes, there was a well used by travelers on the road from Tularosa to Las Cruces. The rustlers would stop there.

  If he followed tse-yahnka, he might be able to cut them off before they reached the ranch. James spurred his pony.

  * * *

  Since leaving the Double K with the ponies, Doc Evans had been counting on Cal Doran to come after him. Yet with more than four hours on the trail, there was no sign of him. Every so often he fell back to take another look-see, while Lee Williams kept moving the ponies.

  A cold breeze out of the northwest made the day chilly in spite of a cloudless sky, and Doc stayed buttoned up against the wind.

  Cal Doran’s Double K Ranch was known far and wide for prime saddle stock. The ponies would bring top prices in Mexico, enough to pay for a month or more of whiskey and women in Juárez. Doc decided to be content with that prospect for now. He’d kill Cal Doran another day.

  As he scanned the horizon, Doc pondered the notion of getting some of the old gang together after he got back from Mexico, returning to the Double K, and stealing every pony on the spread. That would surely get Doran tracking him. Then he’d kill him.

  He glanced skyward and figured by the angle of the sun they’d raise Bill McNew’s spread by dusk. Bill was a friend, so nobody would ask any questions about the string of ponies.

  Doc gave another look northward, studying the low dunes and the shallow arroyos lined with mesquite, where a rider could easily hide. Beyond, running to the San Andres, the baked, empty alkali flats stretched out for miles. He saw no telltale dust signs of a horse and rider.

  Ahead, Lee and the ponies had disappeared over a small rise. Doc caught up with him just as a lone rider appeared out of the southeast, traveling at a slow walk.

  It was an Apache by his looks, wrapped in a blanket, wearing a Mexican sombrero and riding a sturdy pinto pony that would bring a good price in Juárez. Doc winked at Lee, who grinned back.

  The Apache reined in ten feet away.

  “You speak American?” Doc asked.

  The Apache shook his head. “No savvy.”

  Smiling friendly like, Doc closed in. “Shoot him when I grab the pony’s reins,” he said to Lee.

  James held his six-gun underneath his blanket. When the white eyes drew near, he flipped the blanket back, shot him in the head, and put two bullets in the other gringo’s chest. Both men slumped over and fell out of their saddles as their horses bolted.

  James waited to make sure they were dead before going after the stolen ponies. He put the stock in a temporary rope corral and returned to the bodies. He thought fleetingly about taking the white eyes’ ponies and decided against it. Saddled, riderless horses would bring out a posse and the hoofprints could get him hung as a murdering, renegade Apache. He made a careful job of erasing all the horse tracks and headed the Double K ponies back toward the ranch across the low dunes, where all traces of his passage were quickly swallowed, and on to the flats, where the wind hid his sign.

  55

  Emma hurried with her baby to the doctor’s office. To her embarrassment, he cried so loudly that people on the street turned to look as she rushed by with him in her arms.

  Until a week ago, he’d been an almost perfect baby, content and happy when awake, sleeping soundly at night, and cranky only when his diapers needed changing or he was hungry. But on the day he turned three months old, he began crying for hours at a time, especially after nursing. He flailed his arms and legs, wouldn’t sleep, and fussed often for no reason. His little tummy got bloated and hard, and he swallowed air when he cried, which gave him gas and made him even more uncomfortable.

  Emma was beside herself with worry. For two days she’d tried everything she could think of to calm him, rocking him for hours on end, rubbing his tummy, bathing him in warm water, burping him to relieve the gas. Nothing worked.

  Her doctor had left town and Emma had yet to meet the physician who’d bought the practice. She’d heard from a neighbor that he was an older man from St. Louis who had been an army surgeon. His wife served as his nurse. Emma hoped she wouldn’t have to wait long to see him.

  His office consisted of two front rooms of a house with a lovely covered porch and a nice front yard. The sign next to the door read: DR. HORACE DRUMMOND.

  There was no one in the small waiting room. She sighed in relief and sat nervously with her baby in her arms, silently trying to will him to stop crying, but he kept howling as though he was in awful pain. She felt like the worst possible mother.

  Across the room, a framed medical diploma and a membership certificate from a medical society were hung on a wall above a small table holding a colorful oriental vase decorated with dragons. She kept her gaze fixed on the vase, trying to maintain her composure, convinced the doctor would find fault and scold her for being unfit.

  In a few minutes a man with a neatly trimmed beard and gray hair came into the room. He took off his eyeglasses, peered closely at her wailing baby, and smiled.

  “I’m Dr. Drummond,” he said as he took the baby from her arms. “Colicky, I would say. Very unsettling for a new mother. Boy or girl?”

  “A boy,” Emma replied, forcing a smile.

  “What’s his name?” Drummond asked above the crying.

  “Clifford John Kerney. His daddy has taken to calling him CJ, and I’ve started falling into the habit myself.”

  “Then I take it you’re Mrs. Kerney.”

  “Yes, Emma.”

  “Come into my office.”

  “Is he very sick?” Emma asked as she followed along.

  Drummond held the howling CJ at arm’s length. “He looks healthy enough. And his lungs certainly sound strong.”

  He poked and felt CJ’s stomach in three plac
es, listened to his heart and lungs, inspected his buttocks and penis, felt his limbs, and peered into his mouth. CJ kept crying.

  “Does he cry for a long time?” he asked.

  “Yes, for hours.”

  “How often?”

  “At least three times a day, mostly after he nurses,” Emma answered.

  Drummond nodded again. “He has colic. Make some light fennel tea for yourself and drink it twice a day. It will take a day or two before it has an effect on your milk, but it will help his digestion. Also, put a mustard plaster on his stomach when he’s uncomfortable and keep him sitting upright as much as possible. Make sure the poultice doesn’t blister his tender skin. Many mothers have told me that rubbing the baby’s feet helps relieve the discomfort. He looks to be about three months old, so this should be over soon.”

  “I hope so,” Emma said with a sigh.

  Drummond smiled reassuringly. “It will be. Let me fetch my wife to hold CJ while I examine you.”

  “I’m fine,” Emma said.

  “I’m sure you are,” Dr. Drummond replied soothingly as he stepped to the door, “but I require it of all my new patients. It will take but a few minutes.”

  He returned with his wife, a portly woman with a round, sour face and a faint mustache on her upper lip, who introduced herself curtly as Mrs. Drummond. She picked CJ up and sat silently in a chair by the door as her husband listened to Emma’s lungs and heart through his stethoscope and examined her throat, ears, and eyes. He felt the pulse in her neck and listened to her heart a second time before putting his stethoscope away.

  “Did you have a severe fever as a child?” he asked over CJ’s crying.

  Emma nodded. “A real bad one, when I was ten. I broke out in a rash and had a high fever, and my bones ached something fierce. Why?”

  “Do you ever get dizzy?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have fainting spells?”

  “Like the fancy ladies in novels?” Emma replied, trying to sound lighthearted. “No.”

  Drummond smiled. “Have you had chest pains?”

  Emma shook her head. The doctor’s questions were becoming worrisome.