Hard Country (57 page)

Emma used some of the money she received from the divorce settlement to have electricity installed in her house. Workmen ran a wire from the poles in the alley, cut a hole through the adobe wall, put in switches, outlets, and ceiling lights, and attached the wires to everything. As soon as they were done, Emma bought table lamps and lightbulbs for each room. Every day at dusk, she and CJ turned all the lights on just because it was such a marvel. After supper, they sat together in the front room. Emma usually sewed while CJ did his studies, and when he finished they read aloud to each other until his bedtime.

For a nickel, she had bought a dog-eared, used copy of
A
Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains,
by an Englishwoman named Isabella Bird. The book totally enthralled her, and CJ enjoyed it as well.

It was a series of letters written in 1873 by Isabella to her sister back in England as she traveled alone in the Rocky Mountains, meeting up with a one-eyed desperado, surviving blizzards, climbing fourteen-thousand-foot mountains, weathering cold and hunger in a mountain cabin during an ice storm, staying in flea-infested houses, and traveling on foot through the forest after being thrown by her horse when a bear attacked. Not only were the tales exciting, but the author’s descriptions of all she’d seen were splendid.

The night she finished reading aloud the last chapter to CJ, Emma came to a decision. Isabella Bird had inspired her. She would not leave this world without first seeing something of it, no matter if it was only a small slice.

She closed the book and looked at CJ. “You and I are going to take a trip before you leave for the ranch.”

CJ’s eyes lit up. “Where to?”

“California. I want to see the Pacific Ocean and dip my toes in the water. We’ll stop at the Grand Canyon on the way back.”

CJ grinned. “I’d like that a whole bunch. Maybe we could visit Inscription Rock, where all the Spanish conquistadors and early explorers signed their names,” he added excitedly. “It’s over northwest from here.”

“I don’t see why not,” Emma said, almost giggling. “On our way home we can stay over a few days in Albuquerque, go to Santa Fe, and visit some of the Indian pueblos along the Rio Grande. I’ve never been to any of those places.”

“When are we going?” CJ asked.

“Soon. I’ll go to the train depot in the morning and get schedules and brochures. We’ll plan our adventure tomorrow after you’re home from school.”

“Do you really mean it?” CJ asked, barely able to contain himself.

“Yes, I do.”

“Whoopee!” CJ shouted with a grin.

“We’ll have such fun,” Emma said. She pulled him out of his chair and danced him gaily around the room.

* * *

I
n the predawn darkness of a cold, early January morning, CJ stepped out of his mother’s house, walked through the gate of the picket fence, put his heavy parcels and bags in the back of the wagon, tied Buddy to the tailgate, and climbed up on the seat next to his father. He could see Ma’s outline in the front-room window. She’d been crying a little when she kissed him good-bye, and CJ wasn’t feeling too good to be leaving her for so long a time himself.

On their trip to California, he’d seen more, done more, and had more fun than his two best friends, Austin Feather and Billy McFie, could imagine. He must have told them about his adventures more than a dozen times, describing the ocean, which went on forever, filling up the horizon more than the desert ever could, and recounting his first look into the Grand Canyon, spotting the thin ribbon of the river in the deep gorge thousands of feet below, and how scary it was to peer down into it. He told them about Inscription Rock, where for hundreds of years a pool of clear water had drawn travelers, who chiseled their names and initials in stone on the towering, sheer cliff. He talked about the people he saw on the trains, the land he saw from the railcar windows, the fancy two-story buildings that lined the Santa Fe Plaza, and the Indians at the pueblos.

Envious of all CJ had seen, Billy and Austin declared Mrs. Kerney to be the swellest mother in town to take him on such an adventure. CJ felt the same.

“I see she’s got electricity now,” Pa said as he started the team down the street.

“Sure makes it easier on the eyes come nightfall,” CJ allowed with a nod of his head.

“I suppose so. Waste of money, as I see it.” Patrick reached for a blanket on the floorboard. “Here, in case you get cold.”

“I’m fine, Pa,” CJ replied, stuffing the blanket between them on the seat.

“What have you got in those parcels?” Patrick asked.

“Schoolbooks,” CJ replied. “Ma doesn’t want me falling behind in my studies. I’m to give the books to Mrs. Hightower, so she can make assignments for me from them.”

“Sam Miller told me your ma stopped working for him and took you on a trip to California.”

“Yep,” CJ said enthusiastically, “and it was some humdinger too. We saw the ocean, the Grand Canyon…”

“Damn wasteful foolishness,” Patrick scolded. “I’ll hear nothing about it.”

CJ dropped his head. “But you saw the ocean, even rode on a ship to Cuba and back.”

“That was different; that was war. The government paid for it.”

“How come you don’t talk about the war?”

“Because the only friend I had got shot down in front of my eyes and I wanted no more to do with losing people I took a liking to. Came close to dying myself. I don’t like those memories.” The vision of Jake Jacobi dead and bloody at Colonel Roosevelt’s feet passed through Patrick’s mind.

“Are we gonna come back to town when Ma has the baby?” CJ asked.

“I’ll hear no talk of that,” Patrick snapped. “Not now or ever again. And you won’t be coming back here until you start school in the fall. I’ve moved all my business dealings to Alamogordo, so that’s where we’ll go when we need victuals, supplies, and such. I’d like it fine if this is the last I ever see of Las Cruces.”

“Why can’t you and Ma get along?”

“Ask your ma. It wasn’t me who did any of this. You’ll be starting school in a week, but your chores come first, understand? I don’t want you lollygagging at the ranch.”

“Yes, Pa.”

“No school unless the chores get done.”

“Yes, Pa.”

Patrick gave him a tight smile. “You and me are gonna run the best outfit on the Tularosa. Ain’t that right?”

“Yes, sir,” CJ replied.

A weak sun broke over the top of the snow-tipped Organ Mountains, and a chill wind coursed down San Augustin Pass. Suddenly, CJ felt cold. He turned his collar up, wrapped the blanket around his legs, and felt a quick stab of regret about leaving Las Cruces, his school pals, and his ma.

* * *

C
J soon discovered the ranch wasn’t the same without Ma there. Pa had turned the house into a messy workshop of sorts, with tools, ropes, buckets, saddles, and other gear spread out all over the front room and the kitchen table. He’d taken up drinking, although not when CJ was around, and the whiskey bottles were in plain sight.

Pa had given CJ Cal’s old room, and he’d fixed it up with a table made out of scrap wood, which he used for studying in the evening after supper. Most nights he was dog tired from his chores. First off, he had to clean out the barn stalls and rake the horse apples out of the corrals every morning. Then he had to feed the critters and turn them out for water on the pasture. Pa usually had breakfast ready by then, and after cleaning the dishes and washing up, CJ hurried off on the trail to the Hightowers’ for school. Some mornings he about froze before he got there.

With daily ranch chores to be done by the three Hightower girls and the two young Carter boys needing to travel a long way home, school didn’t last more than four hours a day. Mrs. Hightower was a real nice lady, and CJ liked her a lot, but she sure wasn’t much of a teacher when it came to answering his questions, especially about science and mathematics. Still, the schoolbooks he’d brought along kept him learning, and he was able to figure a lot of stuff out by himself.

The oldest Hightower girl, Amy, was a year younger than CJ and a real pest. A redhead with a temper, she always chased him during recess when they played tag.

However, she was smart, and CJ liked her for that.

Because he was the oldest student at school, CJ had to tend the woodstove, chop wood and kindling, haul water, and watch the younger children when Mrs. Hightower got called away by her husband for one reason or another. Sometimes she was gone for a half hour or more.

For lunch he mostly brought canned fruit, crackers, and beef jerky. Once in a while, Mrs. Hightower fixed him a sandwich or gave him a hard-boiled egg.

Back home after school, CJ chopped kindling, cleaned out the cookstove, set a new fire in the fireplace, and helped out with the ponies. He also had to keep the kitchen clean. When Pa wasn’t back in time from day herding, he fixed supper, getting scolded when he burned the meat or didn’t have the food ready and waiting.

In early March, Mrs. Hightower let school out for spring works, and CJ stayed busy helping with the gathering, his studies pleasantly forgotten. Pa let him work the calves during branding, and he felt real grown-up, hazing the critters to catch hands, who roped the animals and brought them to the bulldoggers to earmark, castrate, and brand with a hot iron. More than once CJ had to shoo away an upset mother cow riled by her calf’s blatting. One of the boys from another outfit gave him a nod of thanks and a wink for keeping a charging cow from wrecking into him. CJ felt real good about that.

Spring works turned out to be the best time he had since returning to the Double K. Pa wasn’t so gloomy and bossy, which made the days more pleasant, and the lighthearted company of the waddies from the other outfits lifted CJ’s spirits.

By the time it ended, every stockman on the northwestern quarter of the basin had thrown over their cattle or was trailing them home. After returning to the Double K, Pa paid off Joe, the temporary hand he’d hired for the works. The next morning CJ and Pa set out for Alamogordo.

The town had grown some since CJ had seen it last. There were new buildings with fancy brickwork and marble along Pennsylvania and New York avenues, and a three-story state asylum for the blind filled up several large lots near the north edge of town. The cottonwood trees in the long park that bordered the railroad tracks were now tall enough to shade the big green lawns, and at the south end of the park a man-made lake was home to a small flock of beautiful white swans.

CJ had never seen such pretty birds, and he slowed his pony to take a closer look, only to be hurried along by Pa in the wagon, who wanted a drink, a bath, a meal, and a room. They stopped at the Hotel Southwestern, which looked out over the lake. Pa got them a room for the night and walked across the street for a drink at the only saloon in town, while CJ put the wagon and ponies up at the stables near the hotel. Waiting for Pa to return, he walked over to the lake and watched the swans cruise silently back and forth across the water. An hour passed before Pa found CJ at the lake.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said gruffly. “Half reckoned you’d run away.”

“Sorry,” CJ said. “Didn’t mean to worry you.”

“I would have tracked you down,” Pa said, handing him a soda pop. “I got this at the grocery store to wet your whistle.”

The cold, sweet liquid tasted delicious. CJ gulped it down.

“Don’t get drunk on that stuff,” Pa cautioned.

CJ grinned. It wasn’t like Pa to make a joke. He felt a surge of warmth run through him. Maybe Pa liked him after all.

At the barber’s, CJ took a turn in the bathwater after Pa finished in the tub and watched as the barber gave him a shave. Pa had grown a mustache, which made him look older.

“Are you gonna have him shave the mustache off?” he asked, as the barber ran his straightedge razor up Pa’s neck.

“Nope,” Pa replied. “Don’t you like it?”

CJ shrugged.

“Wouldn’t matter a lick to me if you did or didn’t,” Pa said. “I’m keeping it.”

The barber chuckled like it was some kind of joke, but CJ didn’t think it very funny.

At supper in the hotel restaurant, Pa ordered a whole chicken, a slew of vegetables, and a big cherry pie for desert. It was the best meal CJ had eaten since leaving Las Cruces and his mother’s good cooking. He’d learned not to say a word about her to Pa, but there were times he wanted to, especially when he missed her badly.

After they cleaned their plates, Pa gave CJ the key to their room and told him he would be back later.

“You’re on your own, but don’t wait up for me,” he said, handing CJ a dime. “The druggist one block over sells soda pop. Go get you one.”

“Thanks.”

“In the morning we’ll get supplies and head home.”

“Okay.”

He got his soda pop from the druggist and went back to the lake. One swan, motionless near the far shore, had his head tucked under his wing. The others floated effortlessly in the center of the lake. Three children ran ahead of their parents along the park walkway, screeching and chasing each other down the path. A couple strolled by whispering to each other. On the main street, wagons rolled by, draft horses whinnied, and motorcars chugged along.

CJ sat by the lakeshore in the gathering dusk feeling totally alone. The lights from inside the hotel spread out across the water, making the ripples glisten. He got up, went to the room, undressed, and got into bed. Hours later Pa came in smelling like whiskey and perfume.

* * *

I
n the morning, Patrick walked CJ to Wolfinger’s Dry Goods and told him to pick out two shirts, two pairs of pants, a pair of boots, a new hat, a vest, and some underclothes. He told the clerk to put CJ’s purchases on the ranch account and left CJ there to go to the bank. At the First National, he talked to Sam Gilbert about renewing his loan for another year. Gilbert agreed, Patrick signed the paperwork, and Sam gave him an envelope addressed to CJ in Emma’s handwriting.

“This came for CJ included in some documents Henry Bowman sent over from your old bank in Las Cruces,” Sam explained. “I’ve been holding it for him.”