The Last Ranch (10 page)

She didn't look like she wanted to be kissed, but Matt did it anyway, right on her lips. She yielded and caressed his face with her hand before breaking away.

“Goodbye, Matthew.”

“Adios.”

She walked carefully around the spot where Fred Tyler had lain dead and got in the truck. Until that moment he'd wanted to know why she'd soured on him. Now he knew. If Tyler hadn't come looking for him, they might still be together. No one ever
forgets the people they've killed, nameless or otherwise, or the places where it happened, and for Anna Lynn, if she'd stayed, the constant reminder of what she'd done at the ranch would have haunted her forever.

They drove away with Peaches prancing in the bed of the truck, Ginny's face pressed against the back window watching her pony.

Patrick eased to his side. “It's a damn shame.”

“Yep.”

“I want you to hire me a housekeeper.”

“Nope, you'd just want to marry her and screw it all up.”

Patrick snorted. “Then find a way to get us some female companionship out here once in a while. Or maybe we could adopt a kid.”

Matt laughed. “There's a fat chance of that happening.”

The truck disappeared in the gathering darkness.

“It's a damn shame,” Patrick repeated remorsefully.

Matt sucked in a deep breath. “Yep.”

December brought rainsqualls to the Tularosa, not enough to give Matt an optimistic outlook for a wet winter, but enough to slightly raise his hopes. It also brought an unexpected letter from Raine Hartman, who was stationed at a field hospital somewhere on the Continent. She couldn't tell him where because the censors wouldn't allow it, but she assured him that she was absolutely safe.

She apologized for not writing sooner, but hadn't had a moment of free time since arriving at her duty station. Except for one three-day weekend pass to London, she'd been working long hours every day, eating her meals half-asleep, and collapsing into bed exhausted. She'd taken up smoking.

She spent her waking hours nursing gravely wounded soldiers who were more courageous than any men she'd ever met. It made her realize how brave Matt had been and how little she had known back in the States about how awful war really was. The movie newsreels or the army propaganda films didn't come close to the
truth. She'd begun to understand why the combat veterans she'd met at Fort Bliss rarely talked about their experiences.

She told him that Susie, her nurse pal, who was still stationed stateside, had gotten a “Dear Jane” letter from her married officer lover, who'd dumped her as soon as his promotion to lieutenant colonel came through along with command of a battalion. Supposedly he was fighting somewhere in France and probably bedding Parisian hussies in between battles. She pitied his poor wife, the general's daughter.

She also mentioned she was now a first lieutenant and that through the grapevine she'd learned Dr. Beckmann had been promoted to major and reassigned to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington. She asked him to write and closed with the hope she would see him again when the war was over, but didn't know where or when.

Raine's letter made Matt smile, and knowing how much mail had meant to him in Sicily, he immediately wrote her back, keeping it light and chatty, offering her another night out on the town if she so desired.

In the middle of December, Matt's already-diminished holiday spirits were battered by word of a German counterattack in Europe. Headlines in the newspapers called it the “Battle of the Bulge.” He wondered if his old outfit was in the thick of the fighting, but had no way of knowing. Reports mentioned the Allied and German army corps engaged in the battle and identified several besieged army regiments fighting for survival in blizzard conditions with dwindling supplies and no air support. Stories of Germans capturing and executing hundreds of American soldiers made Matt boil with anger. He felt miserable about not being with his unit, no matter where they were.

January 1945 brought better news. The Allies stopped the
counterattack in the Ardennes and routed the German forces; the Russians continued to advance eastward, rolling up Nazi divisions, and in the Pacific the US Army had returned to the Philippines and was pushing back the Japanese in fierce fighting.

On the Tularosa, due to paltry winter rains, spring works started early. Much of the land from the Rio Grande to the east side of the basin remained open range and cattle roamed freely in search of browse and water. In March, when ranchers began gathering, reports soon started circulating of run-ins with military police patrols denying them access to several hundred square miles of land west of the Oscuras. A group of stockmen made a request to the Alamogordo Air Field commander for permission to round up their stray cows. It was quickly rejected, in spite of the fact that cattle had been spotted in the restricted area.

New roads on the government-seized land were being built by construction crews from sunup to sundown, and miles of electrical wire had been strung on low poles from power lines adjacent to the Rio Grande. Jeep and truck tire tracks crisscrossed the scrubland, and dust thrown up by the dozens of trucks coming and going daily filled the sky, along with two tall steel towers poking up like beacons into the big empty near the old McDonald Ranch.

In the middle of the restricted land a small compound had been built to quarter twelve MPs, who patrolled the perimeter of the newly established federal reservation in jeeps. Because there were no fences, signs on posts placed every hundred yards or so warned that there was no trespassing on government property.

The lack of twenty-four-hour MP patrols and the absence of fencing was sufficient incentive for Matt, Patrick, and Al Jennings to mount an early March predawn raid to gather a sizable bunch of cattle that had congregated for water at the abandoned,
now-officially-off-limits Bar Cross horse camp. After camping overnight outside the perimeter, they gathered the critters without a hitch under the cover of darkness and were two miles from the boundary with the sun blazing down on them in a cloudless sky when four MPs in two jeeps converged on them. The soldiers ground their vehicles to a stop and two rifle-toting privates in combat fatigues jumped out, weapons at the ready. Startled by the commotion, the cattle began to break away and scatter. Paying no attention to the GIs, Matt and Al went after them at a gallop, Matt veering left, Al to the right, hoping to turn the lead steers back and get the bunch milling before the scattering became a stampede.

Astride Ribbon, Patrick watched while the two nervous army boys—kids, really—held him at bay with their M-1 rifles.

“Make those men stop,” the MP sergeant ordered him, waving his .45. A stubby little fella, no more than five-foot-five, the sergeant had a beak for a nose and almost no eyebrows.

Patrick slowly unholstered his horse pistol and placed it on his leg. “They can't do that until the cows decide to quit,” he answered peaceably.

The sergeant held out his hand. “Give me that pistol.”

“Nope. You give me yours.”

The sergeant pointed his .45 at Patrick's chest. “Don't be stupid, old man.”

“You gonna shoot me?” Patrick demanded. Matt and Al had turned the lead steers. In a dense dust cloud that hid the two riders from view, the cows began to wheel back toward Patrick, a good sign the scattering had been halted.

“I just might have to,” the sergeant growled.

“I'd wait, if I were you,” Patrick replied calmly. The cows slowed to a walk and the dust lifted, revealing Matt and Al flanking the
sergeant, their Winchesters pointed directly at him. “That is, unless you're hankering to be shot dead where you stand.”

The sergeant glanced left to right at the two riders and slowly holstered his sidearm. “Lower your weapons,” he ordered his troops. They did so in great relief.

Patrick eased the horse pistol into the holster. “Let us pass and we'll trouble you no more today.” Matt and Al took his cue and returned their rifles to their scabbards.

The sergeant shook his head and got a clipboard from his jeep. “First, I've got to make a report about this.”

Patrick looked down kindly at the sergeant and smiled. “I reckon you do. Tell your commanding officer or whoever is in charge that Patrick and Matthew Kerney from the 7-Bar-K and Al Jennings from the Rocking J came and rescued their privately owned property that was illegally impounded by the government. If he needs to know more, he's invited to come and visit. He can look up how to find us on a map. You got that?”

The sergeant hesitated then nodded.

“Good.” Patrick started to urge Ribbon forward and paused. “What are you people building out here?”

“I don't know,” the sergeant replied sincerely.

“An ammo dump?” Patrick proposed.

“I can't say,” the sergeant answered.

“Is it a big secret?” Patrick prodded in a mock whisper.

“I can't say because we don't know.” The sergeant punctuated his ignorance with a shrug. “None of us do. Technically, we're not even out here on this godforsaken desert. But if I were you, I wouldn't come back. There are gonna be a whole lot more of us real soon.”

Patrick nudged Ribbon forward. “I'll keep that in mind. Adios, Sergeant.”

***

S
even of the rescued cows belonged to the McDonald family. They threw them over onto a home pasture on their way to the Sweetwater Canyon Pass, where they parted company with Al Jennings, who continued with his bunch southwestward to the Rocking J.

With Salinas Peak towering to the north, they came out of the rock-strewn pass on to the Tularosa flats with the Malpais in full view, bedded the critters down for the night at an occasional spring that still ran clear at the foot of a rock outcropping, and made camp an easy ten miles from home.

“Those army boys ain't building an ammunition dump,” Patrick announced as he eased onto his bedroll and stared up at the black, star-filled sky. “If that was all they were up to, that MP sergeant would've told us. An ammo dump is no big secret.”

Matt opened a can of peaches, drank the juice, and forked the halves into his mouth. “Got any ideas what it is?”

“Nope, but it bodes no good for the likes of us,” Patrick ruminated. “Once the government gets its talons into something, chances are they won't let go.”

“Most of our land we own free and clear, unlike other folks who proved up a section for a homestead and were leasing the rest of their land from the government,” Matt countered. “Besides, our landholdings aren't part of the bombing range or this new hush-hush whatever-the-hell-it-is. Way I see it, we're okay.”

Patrick gave Matt's comments some thought before responding. “Let's hope it stays as simple as that. But the Tularosa has a way of serving up a passel of perilous surprises, and on this slice of country I count mankind as the most dangerous critter of them all.”

A squadron of B-17s on a night bombing-raid exercise roared overhead in formation, lights blinking fore and aft, punctuating Patrick's point. His aching bones kept him awake long after the last faint whisper of the aircraft engines had faded away.

***

I
n the morning they arrived home, settled the cattle in the fenced pasture, and were greeted by two men waiting next to an army jeep parked in front of the ranch house. The man in an army uniform, a stern-jawed fella, wore first lieutenant's bars and crossed-pistol insignias on his jacket, signifying military police. His companion, a tall man in a suit and tie with a sunburned face, had a deputy US Marshal badge pinned to the handkerchief pocket of his suit jacket. Neither man offered a handshake or attempted an introduction. Hoping Patrick had the good sense to sit on his pony and stay quiet, Matt dismounted and asked the men to state their business.

“You're one of the Kerneys?” the officer demanded.

“Yep.” Matt nodded in Patrick's direction. “And that old boy is the other one.”

The lieutenant glanced quickly at Patrick and returned his attention to Matt. “I'm here to give you both a warning: stay off government land. The next time you trespass, you'll be taken into custody, arrested, and jailed without bail until a hearing can be scheduled before a federal judge.”

Patrick snickered at the thought of it. “Trespassing is a petty misdemeanor. You get a fine, not jail time.”

“It isn't as simple as that,” the deputy marshal retorted briskly. “This is serious government business. You'd better heed the lieutenant.”

“Is that so?” Patrick moved Ribbon closer to the lieutenant, who stepped back. “What are you boys cooking up out there?” he asked.

The officer gave Patrick's pony a wary look, climbed behind the wheel of the jeep, and cranked the engine. “Take this warning seriously, gentlemen, or be prepared to suffer the consequences.”

Patrick dismounted as the men drove away. “They weren't very neighborly. Think they'll send a bomber to blow us to kingdom come if we don't do as we're told?”

“More likely it will be a platoon of heavily armed soldiers in half-tracks.”

Patrick uncinched his saddle. Ribbon snorted with pleasure. “Best we stock up on ammo next trip to town.”

Matt rolled his eyes and unsaddled his pony.

***

T
hat afternoon, a trip to the mailbox brought a typewritten letter from Matt's former first sergeant, now captain, Roscoe Beal, sent from a military hospital in England. It read:

Matt:

I'm sitting on a thick rubber cushion in the hospital day room at this typewriter writing to you this way because a German 88 shell blew a hole the size of a half dollar in my ass and took a chunk out of the upper arm of my writing hand, so it's hunt and peck one letter at a time. As you can tell by the envelope, I'm not a first sergeant anymore due to getting a battlefield commission in Italy. Be glad you weren't there with us. Only eleven of us who shipped out with the company survived Italy intact. Our regiment really got chewed up.

You're getting this letter because this morning I was reading the
Stars and Stripes
and saw the newest Bill Mauldin cartoon in the paper. When I told my pretty army nurse, Raine Hartman, about the hilarious cartoons Mauldin did about you in Sicily and mentioned your name she was flabbergasted. Apparently, she was your nurse at Ft. Bliss before she shipped out. Small world, isn't it? She transferred to England from a field hospital just a week before I got blown up by that Kraut 88. I got your address from her. She sends her best and promises to write.

I'm hoping to get fixed up enough to rejoin the regiment although rumor has it now that fighting in this theater is winding down, those fit enough to return to combat may be held in reserve to fight Tojo. Maybe we'll all get some leave at home before then. Sure would be nice.

There's already talk going around in the division about holding a reunion in Oklahoma once the war is over. Maybe we can get together then and lift a glass. I'd like that.

Sincerely,
Roscoe

To give Roscoe news of a normal life at home, which he knew would be a welcome distraction, Matt wrote back about cattle prices, making improvement to the ranch, and putting up with his often testy old man. He didn't mention the army, rationing, national politics, the war, or the hush-hush military doings on the Jornada.