Dead Man's Ranch

by Ralph Compton

  He looked down to where he had lain, and there was his hat, crushed flat once again. He must have rolled on it in the night. A half-empty whiskey bottle poked from under his wrinkled blanket. He resisted the urge to take a swallow or two. Hair-of-the-dog remedies only postponed the inevitable. He nudged the coffeepot and offered a pleased grunt when he found that it was full—and hot on his knuckles. A small mound of brittle sticks had been set by the fire ring. He jammed a handful of them onto the glowing coals of the little fire and in moments had it breathing enough to renew the heat in the coffeepot. The brew was strong and rank, but it served to wake him and offered a bracing edge to an otherwise bleak morning.

  I should have stayed in Providence, he thought to himself, staring at the smoking campfire. He looked around him and saw nothing but ridges and rises swelling and rolling far into the distance. He saw no other living creature. “I should have stayed in Providence,” he said out loud, repeating his thought to no one but the ornery mount he’d rented in town. The horse flicked an ear. He repeated his oath again, but this time as a shout. His bold bellow carried across the still morning air of the arid landscape before him. There was no reply.

  He finished the coffee in the pot, relieved himself, helping to put out the campfire, secretly pleased with himself for having thought of such a clever use of resources. Then he packed his bag, strapped on Junior’s clanking coffeepot and cup, and readied the horse. She was surprisingly calm. Until he tried to mount up. Shades of the previous day’s horse-chasing excursions recurred to him and he walked around to the front of the horse, holding the reins tight in one hand.

  “If you value your life in the least, you will allow me to climb aboard you and ride in relative comfort.”

  The horse stared at him. One ear flicked. Brian nodded and as he passed by the horse’s head it lashed out and bit at him, securing the sleeve of his rumpled brown suit coat. He spun on the horse and held up a long, meaty finger, and drove it like a spike against the long shaft of skull bone between the horse’s eyes. “No, horse! No!” he bellowed with such force that the horse stepped backward. He caught it up short and held it there. “We will not do this your way today! We will do this my way!”

  The horse’s eyes bloomed wide and stared at him. Brian shook his finger once more in the staring brown face and mounted with no hesitation. He nudged the chastened beast into a brisk trot and they were off.

  Brian was annoyed with the young man for having left him alone in the savage, dusty land, though he knew roughly which way to continue his journey to the ranch. But as he rode from the rough camp, he happened to look down and saw the unmistakable mark of a boot-heel dragged to form an arrow, man-length, that Junior Grindle must have left for him, its intention clear. It pointed south. Brian Middleton followed it and soon found his trail paralleling the worn wheel grooves in the dirt track that was the road he had lost the day before.

  Chapter 21

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t say.”

  “That’s right.” Esperanza squinted at the tall man outlined against the midday sun pinned and wavering in the western sky, the orange glow offering her nothing of the man’s identity but a vast outline, so familiar, but…impossible. She swallowed and stood taller in the doorway of the modest little home. “So, how should I know you?”

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am, but I think you know very well who I am.”

  The man even sounded big. But weary. And his odd way of speaking, the way he formed his words, was like none she had heard in these parts.

  “I have been told since I arrived in this dusty corner of the world that I bear more than a passing resemblance to one Rory MacMawe.”

  So there it was….“How do you know Rory?” Despite her usual slow, deliberate way of speaking, the words came out hot and sharp, sparks snapping and rising off burning logs.

  For a moment the little home was filled with silence. Then the big man sighed, long and low. “I don’t know him. And I’m not sure I ever did.”

  “Rory is dead.”

  “I know. I suppose that’s why I am here.”

  “Your father is dead.”

  He did not respond, only stood still.

  “Come in the house, then.” Esperanza went back inside and slid the large coffeepot over onto the center of the cook surface, then swung open the door of the firebox, shuffled the coals, and pushed in two pieces of wood. She heard his boots on the sill, saw his shadow darken the room. She straightened up from the stove and turned to face him, to see him, really see him, for the first time in a long, long while.

  There before her stood Rory. She took small pride in the fact that no matter what tricks life played on her, she always had the ability, even as a girl in Palo Cita, to keep herself calm in any situation. But this was too much, for she knew within seconds of seeing the tall, broad man that this was either the ghost of her Rory when he first came to this place as a young man, or it was her Rory’s long-lost son, Brian.

  He bore the same eyes, shining but dark too, like glistening river rock. And there was the thick, stiff red hair tufted at angles, the glow of it about his face, doing little yet to conceal that bootlike jaw, the edges barely softened by a day’s growth of bristly whiskers, hardly the full-face beard that Rory wore the entire time she knew him. In his hands, large but soft and pink, those of a man not accustomed to physical work, he held the brim of a battered brown hat, too small and silly for such a big, fine head.

  He nodded slightly and said, “I am Brian. Brian Middleton.”

  “We have met.”

  “I don’t think so, ma’am. I’m from Providence, Rhode Island. A long way from here.”

  “I have never been there.”

  “I hardly thought so.”

  “And yet we have met.”

  He made no response to this, but his eyes took in the small room and she felt a creeping shame such as she’d never known flush her face. She recognized for the first time how humble and plain her life was. Judging from the expensive, though soiled, brown suit, the dusted but well-made boots, the young man was used to much finer surroundings. She did not like the way he made her feel.

  “I don’t understand…” he finally said.

  “I mean that before you went away as a child, I cleaned you, taught you, cooked for you, took care of you.”

  He stared at her as if she were crazy, but said nothing.

  Esperanza nodded toward a chair with its back to the fire, but facing the door. A large wooden chair with arms, for resting weary limbs. Rory’s chair, the only place she ever saw him sit down, and then only for meals, and for an hour or so before turning in at night. The rest of the hours of his days were spent working to build up the ranch, clearing sluiceways for irrigation, milling lumber, tending stock, all with no thought to ever hiring help, other than seasonal hands. And all of it, all of those years of hard labor, for this boy, so that someday he would have something to leave him. This boy, not her boy. Not Brandon, never Brandon. Something of lasting value, as he had said so often, something on which his son, this long-lost son, could build a future.

  The big stranger sat down in his father’s chair and filled it much as Rory had. He set his hat on the floor by his feet. He held his hands out, palms down, as if testing the heat of a fire, before placing them on the tabletop.

  She placed a tin cup in front of him, and another at the other end of the table for herself, then returned with the coffeepot.

  “So, it is true what they say.”

  He looked at her with eyebrows raised.

  “That life is nothing more than a circle. No beginnings, no endings. Just a circle.”

  “I don’t understand….”

  “That’s the second time you said that. And I have the same answer for you both times.” She sat down, held the cup in both hands, then looked down the length of the table at her Rory’s first son. “You have returned to this place, your father’s house. To this room, the very room where you were b
orn.”

  He didn’t hide his surprise, and again she saw much of his father there as he looked about the room, appraising, assessing.

  She nodded. “Yes, it is true. And this was the entire cabin for the first few years of your parents’ married life together. He didn’t add the other two rooms until later.”

  “My mother…?”

  “Not me, no. But she died here, in this room. And so did your father. I moved his bed there where you see it now.” She nodded to the other side of the great hearth. “To keep him warm…at the end.”

  The silence hung over them like a limp cloth. Finally she said, “And now you are here.” She wanted to ask why, but she knew and she did not like the answer she felt sure she would hear.

  He sipped the coffee, rubbed a large hand roughly over his features, stopping to massage his thumb and fingers deep into his eyes. “I was told of his death through Grandfather’s attorney, who was contacted by MacMawe’s attorney. A man in Denver, Colorado. There was mention of an inheritance and I thought it was time that I attend to my affairs on my own and directly. Grandfather always says that a man must deal with all things in as direct and forthright a manner as he is capable of.”

  He smirked then, and the gesture warmed Esperanza lightly. Again, so like his father. Serious most of the time, then the surprise of a sudden smile. “Grandfather, however,” he continued, “was not at all pleased with my plans. He insisted I reconsider this trip. It was almost as if he were fearful of what I might find out here. I am inclined to think he was correct.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  He sighed, sipped his coffee, and regarded her over the rim of the cup. “Since arriving here I have experienced nothing but grief. Nothing but headaches and confusion. The train’s accommodations were hardly that. Then on arriving I was shunted to a vile little room with no plumbing and only the crudest of amenities. Then I managed to insult the one pretty thing I’d seen on the entire trip—a young lady—before I was attacked by a drunken young man. And it has not grown better since then. The horse alone…oh, that beast. If it could talk…”

  “Why did you really come, then?”

  “I never thought such a savage place still existed, let alone that I would ever visit it myself. When I travel again, it shall be to Europe. Now…” He stood, retrieved his hat, and stretched. “I’m unsure as to what arrangements my father had with you, as his housekeeper, but I can assure you that you will be compensated for your time spent in keeping up the place since he passed on. Though I must say”—he looked about the room again, as if in disbelief—“that for all of the effort I put into getting here—weeks of travel—I would have done better to heed Grandfather’s advice. He is rarely wrong. Chalk it up to the indiscretions of youth. Life, as he says, is a classroom of epic proportions.”

  Esperanza sat still and watched him.

  “Is there a place I might freshen up? A guest room perhaps? I won’t stay but the night. Then in the morning I’ll head back to that quaint little hamlet of Turnbull, wire ahead to the attorney to make the necessary paperwork available for whatever sale I might be able to drum up, and you can be on your way to your homeland. I’m sure your people are expecting you?”

  Esperanza looked down at the scarred, scrubbed surface of the kitchen table in front of her. At the chipped edges of the tin cup, at her own hands, thick and stiffened from the unending toil of ranch life. Sudden anger burned in her, tightened her throat, made her want to slap this boy’s face. She rose, jostling the cups, and the chair stuttered backward across the floor.

  She made her way outside to the chicken coop, and stood staring at nothing. The brown and black hens sounded like mocking old women as they stepped slowly around her skirts. Old women. Ha! Wasn’t that what she was now? When did that happen? She folded her arms and closed her eyes. So this attorney must have told him he owned the place, which was about what she expected to hear at some point. She and Rory never talked about the future, especially not the future where the ranch was concerned. He had made it plain enough to her years ago that it was of no concern to her or to Brandon.

  She did not doubt that Rory loved their own son, but there was never a question in Rory’s mind that the ranch was being built up for this, his first son. Each year he maintained the hope that the boy would return to him, and each year, when that dream failed, Rory’s disappointment grew greater and instead of growing dimmer, his urge to make it right, to leave something of lasting worth to the son he gave away, grew greater. And it kept on growing until he died.

  She didn’t have many complaints about Rory. Certainly he was better to her than some of the others, men from her small town across the border, had been. But that was a long time ago, and a long distance from here. She had left late one night when her father came home drunk and beat her mother. She knew it was just a short time before the same thing would happen to her, with her own husband, and in that very same village. So she left.

  She had been fifteen years old then. For a time she wore large misshapen clothes and passed herself off as a traveling boy. And all the time she headed north. She never knew toward what, but she felt sure that when she arrived there she would know that it was the right place. She spent a short while tending the kitchen of a wealthy widow outside El Paso, and it was there she refined her abilities to read and write. When the woman’s consumption finally killed her, Esperanza moved on, ever northward, in the same baggy clothes, but richer in her knowledge of the written word.

  By then she was nearly nineteen, could no longer hide herself, and was harassed by men, it seemed, at every turn in the road. She had been forced to make what seemed at the time to be an endless series of escapes from drunken vaqueros, tinkers, salesmen, and one drunken freighter who had almost taken her. At the last possible moment, she had managed to hit him on the side of the head with a rock.

  Sometimes at night she still heard that blunt smacking sound. She told herself that she did not care if he had lived, but for years after, he came to her mind, the shape of his still form in the grass, the bloodied side of his head glistening in the moonlight.

  One evening not long after that, in the late fall, when she was tired and very cold, Esperanza had made camp along a river, the name of which she did not know. In the morning, she was still huddled in her blanket, sleeping but sitting upright. Before she opened her eyes she sensed somehow that someone else was there, someone was watching her. She opened her eyes but did not move. And in the swelling morning light she saw the biggest, most frightening man she had ever seen staring down at her. He was a giant with hair the color of fiery chili peppers, and as much or more hair hung from his face—a beard the likes of which she’d never seen. He was tall, yes, but most of all, he was just plain big. The distance between his shoulders seemed impossible.

  And within a few seconds she knew she was in no danger, for his first question, in a voice much too soft and kind for such a large man, was, “Are you all right there, lassie?”

  She nodded once, drew her knees up tighter to her body.

  He turned to go. “You’re on my land.”

  He must have seen worry on her face, because he said, “No, it’s all right. Plenty of it to go around. I just mean that if you’re here, then it’s sort of my responsibility to see to it that you’re in no trouble.” He stared at her for a few moments, then said, “If you’re hungry, follow me. My boy should be awake. I’ll make breakfast for us. We don’t get too many visitors.”

  She had followed him, guarded but curious about him and his strange accent. Later, after watching him burn bread and eggs and beef, she quietly stepped between him and the stove and proceeded to make a fine, unburned breakfast. They had talked, learned a bit about each other, why they were each where they were, and, of all the things he could have asked her, he wanted to know if she could read and write—for he could not. By the end of the meal, they had come to an agreement. Later that day, he fixed up a cozy place for her to stay in an old chicken coop, not far from the house
.

  But the thing she recalled with most fondness from that first day had been meeting the big man’s son, the boy he called Brian. As big as he was, the man’s entire body seemed to soften and relax when he held the boy, who was barely two years old at the time, and was a small, thin version of his father—the same eyes and the same fire-colored hair. She had never seen such hair on a person before.

  Rory had eventually agreed to the demands in the unceasing river of letters from his dead wife’s family back East, and sent the boy to them to attend school and be raised in what their letters called “a proper manner.” Esperanza had grown so attached to little Brian that some hidden part of her heart broke forever that day. Both for the boy and his confusion, and for his quivering hulk of a father for making what he thought was the right decision. It only occurred to her later, much later, that she should have lied about what the letters said. But back then, lying wasn’t something that had occurred to her.

  Maybe then none of this would have happened. Maybe Brian would have grown up on the Dancing M, would have worked with his father in a way only a son can, would have prevented him from thinking he had to work himself into an early grave. Rory had joked with her, told her it wouldn’t be long before he was fitted for what he called a “wooden suit”—she hated the way he could make light of his own death.

  Never once had she asked him if he had accommodated for her and for Brandon, though he had mentioned many times how he hoped Brian would eventually see why he had sent him away, how he hoped his first son would come to appreciate the ranch for what it was—more than a potential fortune, more than a means to earn money. To Rory it was his entire life. That it might not be to others—even his own beloved son—was unthinkable.

  But what of her Brandon? Rory had never given the boy seemingly much thought. That he loved him, Esperanza didn’t doubt, but by the time she finally believed that Rory intended to leave the entire ranch to Brian, it was far too late to do anything but live, day to day, and see what might happen. Life could be a tricky game of chance sometimes; this much she knew.