Hard Country

by Michael McGarrity

  “Do you get short of breath?” Drummond asked.

  “I don’t think I ever have been.”

  “Does your nose bleed frequently?”

  “No,” Emma replied with growing alarm. “Why are you asking me these things?”

  “You have a heart murmur.”

  Emma stiffened. “What does that mean?”

  “It means your heart is working harder than it should. I can hear it through my stethoscope.”

  “What can be done about it?”

  “You must be careful not to overwork yourself, and if you should feel dizzy, faint, have trouble breathing, or have chest pains, rest immediately and come see me right away.”

  Emma nodded and took CJ from Mrs. Drummond. His crying had eased to a whimper. The thought of not living long enough to raise him shook her to the core. “Is my heart going to give out on me?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” Drummond replied gently. “You’re young and in excellent health otherwise. Just don’t overwork. Give yourself time to rest. A slow pace would be best.”

  “I can do normal things?”

  Dr. Drummond nodded. “Don’t overdo. I know that won’t be easy caring for a baby and such, but you must try. I want you to come back in two months. Sooner, of course, if CJ doesn’t get better.”

  “I will,” Emma said. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  She paid her bill and left, with CJ making a ruckus as she hurried down the street. Her time in Las Cruces was coming to an end. Within the week Patrick would arrive to take her back to the ranch. She had to start putting things away and closing up the house. During his last visit to town he’d proposed renting the place for the extra income, but Emma talked him out of it. Although she looked forward to returning to the ranch, her months in town mostly on her own had been pure bliss. She’d come to appreciate time to herself away from the demands of men and had come to believe that she could live completely on her own if necessary. Much more than a house in town, the casita on Griggs Avenue was now her sanctuary, a place she could go and just be herself.

  Back home, she sat in the rocking chair with CJ on her lap and put her hand over her heart. She could feel it beating. She felt the pulse at her neck. As far as she could tell, everything was fine. She had seen only three doctors in her entire life, and the other two had never said anything about a heart murmur. Maybe Dr. Drummond was mistaken.

  Still, she worried. She should have asked him more questions. What exactly was a heart murmur? How did it make her heart work harder? Did she get it from the fever she had as a child years ago?

  CJ continued crying. Emma propped him on her hip and made a mustard plaster: four tablespoons flour, two tablespoons dry mustard, and a pinch of some baking soda to prevent burning. She mixed it into a paste with lukewarm water, spread it along the top of a flour-sack towel, folded it, and put it on CJ’s tummy. As soon as he calmed down she would carry him to the store, buy fennel, and make some tea.

  She thought more about what the doctor had told her and decided he must be wrong. She worked as hard as any man at the ranch, and on the range few matched her stamina. She decided not to say a word about the heart murmur to Patrick or Cal. There was no cause to worry them over nothing.

  56

  After her return to the ranch, Emma’s fear that Patrick wouldn’t take to his son at first seemed to come true. Although her spirits sank initially, she soon decided there was no reason to scold him about it. He could help a mother cow through a difficult birth but was completely awkward, unsure, and helpless around CJ. To overcome Patrick’s uneasiness, Emma used every excuse she could to thrust CJ into his arms. He would hold CJ for a minute or two, looking completely befuddled, before returning him. To a certain extent her strategy worked. By the time CJ was six months old, Patrick was less uncomfortable and occasionally even playful with him, scooping him up and holding him high above his head as he squealed with delight.

  When CJ started toddling around on his long, unsteady legs, Emma constantly chased him down as he tried to follow Patrick and Cal everywhere. She found him climbing down the porch steps or scooting out the courtyard gate, or halfway to the corrals and barn. As she herded him home, he fussed all the way back.

  After dinner, he was constantly underfoot as the men braided rope, made brindle reins, sharpened knives, and cleaned their gear. When they played cards, he sat on their laps to watch or fiddled at their feet with the wooden toy animals Cal had carved for him.

  The world and all its critters fascinated CJ. He loved the ponies and the cows, chased the hens in the chicken coop, had to be rescued from a baby rattlesnake he tried to capture in the courtyard, and ran after the spotted lizards that whipped across the porch. He stalked the solitary roadrunner that lived in a stand of nearby mesquite and clattered in the low branches of the big cottonwoods John Kerney had planted years ago, and caught frogs that lived in the reeds and cattails near the spring that fed the well.

  At the age of two, CJ was on the back of a pony with Patrick, and by three he was in the saddle alone, being led around the horse corral or the fenced pasture. At four, CJ had his own little pony named Buddy, and once he finished practicing his numbers and letters on the slate chalkboard Emma bought for him, he busted out the door, ready to ride. Cal swore he had the makings of a stockman from his boots on up.

  When Patrick and Cal were out day herding, busy working the ponies, moving stock to fresh pasture, or checking the fence lines, Emma took CJ riding on the flats. Away from the menfolk and housework for a time, and alone with her son, it was the best part of her day.

  Inquisitive by nature, CJ was always asking questions. He wanted to know what kind of animals lived in the holes that dotted the desert floor, why ponies needed to wear horseshoes, and what made the wind blow. Emma was determined to have CJ get a proper education beyond what she could teach him. She had every intention to move to town with him when he was old enough for school.

  In the evening, after CJ was tucked into bed, Emma sometimes read aloud as Patrick and Cal worked at their chores. Patrick had lost all interest in books—hadn’t picked up one in years—and while Cal wouldn’t admit it, his eyesight had failed some and he frequently squinted when reading.

  Newspaper and magazine stories about the Boxer Rebellion in China and the Boer War in South Africa had captured Emma’s interest, so she’d ordered two books by men who had lived through those exciting events. She’d just finished a story about a British medical missionary in China who had barely escaped being killed on the streets of Peking, and had begun reading London to Ladysmith via Pretoria, a book of field dispatches about the Boer War written by a British correspondent named Winston Churchill. Both books had her dreaming of seeing more of the world, which she knew would probably never happen. But it no longer made her sad. She was happy with her life far more than ever before.

  Some evenings Cal, Patrick, and Emma talked over ranch matters. Changes in the cattle business had happened like lightning after a stock market panic in 1901, caused when railroad tycoons trying to outsmart each other started a recession. Live cattle prices plummeted, newfangled refrigerated railcars began shipping dressed beef to big-city markets across the country, and regional slaughterhouses had sprung up in St. Louis, Omaha, and most recently Fort Worth.

  The time had passed when just about any cow a stockman delivered under contract got shipped. And packers weren’t just selling whole beef carcasses to butchers and grocers anymore. Now they were marketing high-quality quarters and halves direct to big-city restaurants and wholesalers. Cattle buyers were looking for cows that would meet the changing tastes of customers, who wanted better cuts of meat. They culled out unwanted animals prior to shipping, leaving the stockman to either unload the critters at a loss or throw them back on the range for another season.

  For three years, the Double K sold all the Herefords they trailed to market but made no profit at all. And with lots of outfits struggling to get by, they made only a little money sellin
g cow ponies to other spreads. To pay the bills, restock, and keep operating, they carried a five-thousand-dollar bank loan at ten percent interest paid semiannually. Fortunately, they’d been able to rent the house in town for enough to cover the interest on the bank loan.

  Emma missed having her sanctuary in town where she could escape the menfolk, enjoy the occasional company of other women, and have the niceties of civilization close at hand. The western side of the Tularosa remained mostly unsettled, and the few ranches thereabouts were a long ride away, which made visiting difficult. Except for a rare overnight trip to see Ignacio and Teresa in Tularosa and the infrequent trips to Alamogordo and Las Cruces to buy supplies, her life was CJ and the ranch.

  In another year, CJ would be ready for school. Emma had squirreled away the four hundred dollars Cal had given her when she was pregnant and planned to use it to move the renters out of her house and pay the interest on the bank loan. If that wasn’t enough to cover the interest, she’d find work in one of the stores on Main Street. She was determined CJ would be schooled.

  She had said nothing about her supposedly weak heart. Soon after her second visit to see Dr. Drummond, he suddenly closed his practice and left the territory to return to St. Louis. The rumor was his wife hadn’t liked New Mexico one bit.

  Feeling fit and healthy, Emma had no desire to find another doctor, and all the niggling concerns Dr. Drummond had planted in her mind about fainting or getting nosebleeds or having trouble breathing faded away.

  During spring and fall works she went out on the trail with CJ at her side, driving the chuck wagon and cooking for the boys. The rest of the year, she worked hard from sunup past sundown and slept like a baby except when CJ woke her up with a cold, an ear infection, or a toothache.

  Patrick had learned to use a gentle hand with her in bed, and she couldn’t imagine their lovemaking getting any better, but it did. She would have liked him to be more affectionate with CJ, but it wasn’t his temperament. He did, however, take pleasure in CJ’s company and didn’t mind him trailing around as he worked.

  On a spring day when Patrick and Cal left early for a trip to the cabin in the high country to grease the windmills and clean out the dirt tanks, Emma yearned for some company. The men had taken CJ with them, Patrick and CJ on horseback—CJ with his cowboy hat pulled down over his ears and a big grin on his face—and Cal driving a wagon full of supplies for the cabin, with a pony named Cactus trailing behind. She’d never seen her son look so happy.

  It was the first time CJ had ever been away from her for a day and a night, and it made her a little anxious and lonely.

  All spring, angry winds had kicked up dirt and turned the sky smoky gray for days on end. Today the winds were calm enough to be outside without the dust and sand whipping in her face. She worked in the courtyard making soap from wood ash and bacon fat, churning butter, and mending shirts until the warm sun was noontime high. She finished stitching a tear at the elbow of one of Patrick’s shirts and looked up to see a rider approaching from the mountain trail that led south to Gene Rhodes’s cabin and horse camp, which had been washed away sometime back in a bad flood. She fetched the rifle kept by the kitchen door, leaned it against the courtyard wall, and waited for the rider to draw closer, wondering who it might be.

  * * *

  The sight of the Double K ranch house raised Gene Rhodes’s spirits. Two days ago he’d left the gold camp at Orogrande in the Jarillas Mountains in a hurry, after an argument over a crap game led to a fight with a colored man. Gene busted a half dozen beer bottles over the man’s head in order to lay him out cold and got banged up a bit in return. The man’s brother, who didn’t take too kindly to the outcome of the disagreement, came looking for Gene the next morning. He’d skedaddled before the brother found him or the law got on him.

  Four years ago, his wife, May, had taken their young son, Alan, back east to her family’s home in New York State. Since then, Gene had faced hard times and some bad luck. He’d mortgaged his spread to Oliver Lee for two hundred and fifty dollars to pay May’s fare home, and lost the cabin and improvements in a flood after settling accounts with Oliver. His attempt to get the ranch going again and make a profit had fallen short during the recession, so the money he’d sunk into building a new tank had been for naught. He broke some horses that sold for not much money and finally had to take a job working for Oliver laying pipe in an irrigation ditch to carry water out of the Sacramento Mountains to the Orogrande gold camp. It was hard, grueling labor, but he worked with a number of old boys he’d ridden with in earlier times, so at least the companionship was enjoyable.

  The only good to come out of his predicament since May left was that some of his stories and poems had been published. It wasn’t enough to pay for victuals, smoking tobacco, or feed for his pony for a month, but it kept him writing, twelve, fourteen hours a day when he had some time to himself or wasn’t working as a hand. It blunted the unhappiness he felt being so long separated from his family and the mortification he suffered for his shameful failure to provide for them.

  Up ahead he saw a woman standing in the ranch house courtyard watching him approach. He reckoned it was Pat Kerney’s wife, Emma. He’d finally written that story about her making a hand on a roundup and sent it off to the editor at Out West magazine, thinking it the best yarn he’d set down yet. The editor rejected it as too unbelievable, saying his readers wouldn’t abide a female character who took on the attire and manners of rough-hewn cowmen. Gene had written back that he had a particular inability to write anything that didn’t ring true and hoped his pathetic failing wouldn’t keep the magazine from considering other stories he planned to submit.

  He reined in at the corral and gave a howdy to Emma.

  “Step down from that pony, Gene,” Emma said, “and I’ll feed you supper.”

  “I’m obliged,” Gene replied. “But there’s no need for you to go to any trouble on my account. Are Pat and Cal around?”

  “No, they’re not. I’m about to fix myself a meal and would appreciate your company. So light and come have some supper with me.”

  “Since I know firsthand what a good cook you are, I can’t say no to you twice,” Gene said with a grin as he slid out of the saddle.

  When he drew close, Emma saw that his left eye was swollen shut, he had a gash on his cheek, and his lips were bruised and puffy.

  “I think I’d better patch you up before we eat,” she said. “Who did you tangle with?”

  Gene shrugged. “Just some old boy who didn’t know better when to quit fighting.”

  Emma sat him down at the kitchen table, cleaned his wounds, put some iodine on the gash, and covered it with a plaster.

  “You’ll heal up in a day or two,” she said.

  “I appreciate your kindness,” Gene said. “Where’s that youngster of yours?”

  “He’s with his daddy and Cal up at the cabin.”

  “I was hoping to stay there myself for a few days until I hear whether I’m in trouble with the law over the row I got into.”

  “You can stay there as long as you like,” Emma replied as she stirred the simmering pot of stew. “Patrick and Cal will be glad for your company. Now, for supper, I’ve got stew, fresh-baked bread, and coffee. Will that suit you?”

  “It will be the best meal I’ve had in weeks,” Gene said with a grin.

  Emma served up a plate of stew and they ate and talked for a time about doings on the basin and along the Rio Grande. There was talk the Reclamation Service of the federal government might start building a dam on the river due west of Engle, where it swerved against a long, high bluff and veered toward the fertile farmlands of the Mesilla Valley. If the dam got built, it would create the largest manmade lake in the world and would tame a river that could be as dry as a wagon road one year and flood out every village along its banks the next. A new spur line from Engle would carry supplies and materials to the site by train, and a thousand men would work years to build it.

  Gene
talked about the ride he’d taken on the railroad that ran from Alamogordo to Cloudcroft. He described how the tracks climbed twenty-six miles, twisting and turning high into the Sacramento Mountains across deep, wide canyons spanned by long, curving timber trestles, and the spectacular views of the basin and western mountains on the switchbacks.

  “It’s a genuine engineering marvel,” he added.

  “I’d love to see it,” Emma sighed, thinking that while she was dreaming about China and South Africa there were things right in her own backyard she was missing out on.

  “You’ll never forget it, guaranteed.” Gene sopped up the last of the stew gravy on his plate with a piece of bread. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, I wrote a story about how you made a hand on that roundup I hired on for, and sent it off to a magazine.”

  Emma’s eyes widened in surprise. “It’s about me? I didn’t know you were a writer.”

  Gene blushed slightly. “I’m trying hard to become one. I’ve had some luck with a few yarns getting published, but I’ve a far piece to go still. Not many folks know about my scribblings.”

  “What happened to the story?”

  Gene shrugged. “It didn’t come to anything. The editor turned it down. I’m gonna rework it some and try again.”

  Emma’s eyes sparkled. “You’ll be famous someday; I just know it. I’d love to read it.”

  “If I get it published, I’ll send you a copy.”

  “Promise?”

  “I swear to it.” Gene finished his coffee and stood. “I best be on my way. Thank you kindly for the tasty meal.”

  “You’re welcome. Come by anytime.”

  They said good-bye on the porch and Emma watched Gene ride off. She wanted to ask about his wife and young son back east but thought better about it. Rumor had it that May Rhodes had disliked the immensity of the Tularosa Basin, yearned for the orderly boundaries and tranquil fields of her home state, couldn’t abide the constant loneliness and unrelenting winds, and desperately missed her parents.