Hard Country (52 page)

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.

* * *

S
ince 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

E
mma 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 places, 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.

“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

A
fter 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.