Hard Country (22 page)

“That’s mighty generous,” Kerney said, trying not to gulp. As soon as they got back to the ranch, he and Cal would have to hive off in a hurry down to Mexico and buy at least sixty or more horses, trail them home, and get busy breaking them. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

Dawson slid a paper across his desk, handed Kerney a pen, and indicated where to sign.

Kerney scrawled his name, stood, and shook Dawson’s hand.

“I’ll see you in six months, Mr. Kerney,” Dawson said, “with fifty horses ready for inspection.”

“You have my word on it, sir,” John Kerney replied.

He left the lieutenant and crossed the quadrangle with his mind racing ahead to all that needed doing. If the day wasn’t already more than half gone, he’d start for the sawmill immediately, load up the lumber for the barn, and set off for the ranch at first light.

At the wagon, he told Ignacio and Patrick the good news about the contract and what needed to get done pronto. Ignacio grinned from ear to ear, and Patrick asked if he could go along with him and Cal to Mexico.

“Please,” he begged.

“Why not?” Kerney said, feeling charitable to all that might be asked of him as he climbed on the wagon and started the team.

“You mean it?” Patrick asked as he climbed on his pony.

“I do,” Kerney replied.

They set up camp on a small hill behind the quadrangle, and Ignacio made a meal of beans, chili, and tortillas his mother-in-law had given him.

Over a cup of coffee after supper, Kerney pondered what Coghlan might do once he learned he’d lost the contract. He was the richest man on the Tularosa, but that didn’t stop him from wanting more. He hired no-accounts and outlaws, sold stolen livestock to the army whenever he could get away with it, and was known to use gunslingers to scare away any competition. Coghlan would try something—of that Kerney was certain—so he would need to be ready for whatever play the man made.

He slept poorly, his mind busy with plan making. If they could get to Mexico and trail the horses back within a month, they’d have to work mighty hard to get them well broke for the army in time. The small cattle herd could range free and putting the barn up would just have to wait. But there was no sense not hauling the lumber to the ranch so they could start building it as soon as time allowed.

Kerney roused Ignacio and Patrick out of their bedrolls an hour before first light, told them to have some hardtack and jerky for breakfast, get saddled up, and start moving. By evening they were at the sawmill, where Kerney decided to load the lumber and keep traveling under a full moon.

The heavy wagon moved slowly down the road to Tularosa. On several steep-side hills, Ignacio had to tie his rope to the top of the load and use his horse to pull back to prevent a slip to certain disaster down a descent.

They reached Tularosa exhausted and slept in the courtyard of the Chávez hacienda until they woke up hungry at dawn. Over breakfast, Ignacio’s father, Cesario, suggested they stay and rest up for a day, but John Kerney was having none of it.

“There’s too much work to be done,” he said.

Cesario had inspected the wagon earlier and found it to be overloaded. He turned to Ignacio and said in Spanish, “If we use two wagons to cart the lumber, it will be much safer. Tell him I will gladly take half of the lumber to his ranch in one of my wagons.”

Ignacio translated for Kerney, who nodded, smiled, and thanked Cesario for his willingness to help.

The small caravan left as soon as the load was divided between the two wagons, tied down, and provisions for the journey to the ranch had been laid in. Ignacio and Patrick on horseback led the way, followed by John Kerney in the front wagon and Cesario in the rear. Teresa rode with Cesario, and over the creak of the wheels Kerney could hear the two chatting in Spanish. They spoke rapidly, and his grasp of the lingo wasn’t good enough to make out much of what they were saying.

That night at camp, Ignacio, Teresa, and Cesario gathered around the fire, deep in conversation until it was time to turn in. Patrick sat quietly listening to them for a spell, which wasn’t his normal whirlwind behavior, so in the morning Kerney asked him if he’d like to learn Spanish.

Patrick nodded his head vigorously.

“I’ll ask Teresa to teach you,” he said.

“She already is,” Patrick replied matter-of-factly. “So is Ignacio.”

They made good time across the tableland and through the alkali flats on a partially cloudy day that kept the temperature from soaring, and with the San Andres looming ahead they were no more than five hours from raising the ranch when they entered the last stretch of steep hills. They moved the two wagons up the trail one by one, Ignacio’s lasso taut between the wagon and his saddle horn on the downslope, his pony pulling back with all its might to keep the wagons upright. On the upslope his pony scratched gravel with the teams, pulling to get the wagons to the crest. At each hill, Teresa followed on foot and Patrick on his pony at a safe distance behind the wagons.

Only a few more rock-strewn hills remained where the trail had been severely eroded by the drenching rains of spring and summer. Because of the steepness, Ignacio tied his rope to the rear axle, twined it around a huge boulder, and slowly played it out as Kerney’s team entered the downside of the last hill. The axle broke, the load shifted, and the wagon tumbled to the bottom of the decline, throwing Kerney from the seat. The last thing he saw was a shower of heavy, milled plank boards raining down on him as the panicked team dragged the overturned wagon away.

“Madre de Dios,” Ignacio cried as he jumped from his horse, ran to where Kerney was buried, and started feverishly pulling the lumber away from Kerney’s body with his one good hand. Cesario, Teresa, and Patrick quickly joined him. Patrick watched as Cesario and Ignacio heaved aside a shattered, heavy plank to reveal Kerney’s body. A long wooden splinter had penetrated his skull.

There was silence for a second until Cesario said, “
Muerto
.”

“That means dead,” Patrick said emotionlessly, staring at John Kerney’s bloody face.

“
Sí
,” Ignacio said softly.

Patrick turned on his heel, ran to his pony, and rode away in the direction of the ranch.

“Go after him and bring him back with Señor Cal,” Teresa said. “We will wait here for you.”

“
Sí,
” Ignacio said, his heart almost breaking.

19

T
hey buried John Kerney, aged thirty-seven years, at the ranch, high on a hilltop, and marked his grave with a cross made by Ignacio. It was the same summer Sheriff Pat Garrett gunned down Billy the Kid inside Pete Maxwell’s house in Fort Sumner and old Nana’s raids, the last true Apache uprising east of the Rio Grande, ended.

The task of raising six-year-old Patrick Kerney fell to Cal Doran, who took on the job with the help of Ignacio and Teresa Chávez. It didn’t amount to much of a chore, as the boy didn’t appear at all bothered by the death of his pa. In fact, he showed scant emotion about anything.

Cal figured the button had lost so many people in his short life that he was numb to it all. There seemed to be no softness to him, and he didn’t take kindly to sentimental feelings from others. Not even Teresa’s sweet disposition cracked his shell. No matter how agreeable and evenhanded Cal tried to be with the boy in those first days, he always felt Patrick stayed on the lookout for treachery and betrayal.

After the burial, the men salvaged what they could of the milled lumber and stacked it next to the saddle shed. They dragged the shattered wagon to the ranch and parked it next to the lumber. The barn would be built and the wagon repaired when time allowed.

Cal chased down the wagon team that had bolted after the accident, doctored some minor scrapes and cuts to the animals, turned them loose in the west pasture, and after a few days closed up the ranch and took everyone to Tularosa, where they stayed with the Chávez family while he set about hiring hands to hit the trail to Mexico in search of ponies to buy. He wasn’t about to let John Kerney’s quartermaster contract go unfulfilled.

At the saloon, Pat Coghlan tried to buy him out of the horse contract at a dime on the dollar, and Cal told him where he could shove the idea. His reputation with a gun made Coghlan back off, but not quickly enough to convince Cal the man would let matters end there.

He hired three Texas waddies, told Ignacio to look after the ranch and Patrick until he returned, and made tracks with his small outfit to Mexico. A month later he was back with sixty-five half-wild Mexican ponies, each handpicked to meet the quartermaster’s requirements. He let two of the cowboys go and kept George Rose on the payroll.

George had been part of the posse that battled Billy the Kid and the Regulators for five days in Lincoln during the summer of ’78 and had worked in the Seven Rivers area of the Staked Plains east of the Sacramentos before drifting to the Tularosa.

A short, stocky waddie with a broken nose and a toothy grin, George pulled his weight in the saddle, knew how to treat horseflesh, and was good with a gun, which was exactly what Cal needed if Pat Coghlan decided send his
pistoleros
to cause trouble.

Through a wet fall and a cold winter, Cal and George broke horses in driving rainstorms and heavy snow. In early February they trailed the ponies east to Fort Stanton, where it took the army boys three days to inspect the horses, put them through their paces, and make payment. Cal left the fort with another contract in his pocket for fifty more ponies due in six months.

On the way back to the spread, the two cowboys planned a stop in Tularosa to celebrate at Coghlan’s saloon and pick up Patrick, who’d been living with Teresa and the Chávez family since before Christmas. Teresa was about to have her first baby, and Cal figured she would soon hold Ignacio to his promise to quit the outfit and return to his village. He didn’t cotton at all to the idea of losing Ignacio.

They rode into Tularosa on a clear, mild winter’s day. The town had changed again. Land was cleared for crops farther away from the river, and some nester shacks and homesteads fronted the wagon road that climbed the hills to the high country, where the Apaches had more or less settled down since the troublemakers had been shipped by train to Florida.

Railroad tracks now ran the length of the territory from the Colorado border to the dusty streets of Las Cruces and down to El Paso. Easterners and flatlanders had been trickling into the fringes of the basin for the past year, and there was talk of building another railroad up the Tularosa from El Paso.

Dryland farmers were proving up land away from reliable water sources, syndicates of big-city bankers were buying and combining small spreads and putting large herds on their empires, and prospectors were searching the San Andres Mountains for signs of precious ore. It was getting downright crowded in places.

They pulled up in Cesario Chávez’s courtyard and Teresa stepped outside to greet them, smiling and holding a bundle in her arms.

“By golly,” Cal said with a laugh as he slid out of his saddle. “Have you gone and done it?”

“
Sí,
a boy.” She pulled back the blanket to reveal the baby’s face. “Juan Cesario Chávez. He is named for John Kerney and Ignacio’s father. He’s one week old.”

“That’s a mighty fine name.” Cal peered down at the rosy-cheeked baby. Juan Cesario had a full head of curly dark hair, Ignacio’s chin, and Teresa’s eyes. “Has his daddy come in from the ranch?”

Teresa laughed. “
Sí,
and I sent him away again. He left early this morning to go back. He took Patrick with him. They were both being pests.”

Cal laughed. “Come take a look at this little button,” he called to George.

George dismounted and gave the baby a quick look. “He’s cunning; that’s for certain.”

Teresa looked perplexed.

“It means cute,” Cal explained. “Good-looking.”

Teresa nodded. “Good-looking, yes.” She opened the door and gestured for the men to enter. “Come. I don’t want Juan to catch cold. Food is on the table, and you must eat.”

“We could use some home cooking,” Cal said.

The large room that served as the kitchen and the parlor was filled with family. Teresa’s parents, brothers, and sisters were there, as well as all of the Chávez family, minus Ignacio.

Several children made room at the long table for Cal and George, and they were soon spooning down mouthfuls of beef stew cooked with green chili and wiping their bowls clean with fresh, warm tortillas.

“Now that little Juan is here, I suppose you’ll be wanting Ignacio closer to home,” Cal said to Teresa.

“He loves the ranchero more than anything, but with a baby now and so far from our families…” Teresa shrugged.

Cal nodded sympathetically. “I’ll talk to him.”

Cesario clamped a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “He must come home. We plant soon, and we must build their casa on the land Perfecto gave him.
Más importante.
”

Across the table, Perfecto smiled and nodded in agreement while Cesario’s wife ladled more stew into Cal’s empty bowl.