The Last Ranch (11 page)

Over the next several weeks he expected to hear from Raine, but a letter never came. He soon put it out of his mind, figuring a good-looking woman in London wouldn't be missing a one-eyed
veteran on a dusty New Mexico ranch when there were legions of horny soldiers to occupy her attention. In April his reckoning proved right when a brief, formal note arrived announcing her marriage to Maj. Harry Stanford Barrett IV, MD, known to all as Bill. After the war, Dr. and Mrs. Barrett would live in New York City, where the good doctor would resume his private psychiatric practice.

Disappointed that another weekend rendezvous with Raine wasn't going to happen in either the near or distant future, Matt wrote a congratulatory note to the happy couple, wondering if he'd ever attract a woman who wanted to stick around. The day he mailed it, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in Hitler's Berlin bunker. A few days later, on May 6, 1945, the war in Europe ended.

Although it was only half a victory, with the war in the Pacific still to be won, Matt broke out a bottle of Kentucky sipping whiskey to celebrate, and for the first and, he expected, the only time in his life, he got stinking drunk with his father.

Just as the MP sergeant predicted, after their raid to liberate the cattle stranded on the land seized by the army, activity there soon increased. Dozens of watchtowers were built along the perimeter and quickly staffed by armed GIs. Along certain sections of the boundary where errant cattle had been known to illegally wander, fencing had been thrown up with No Trespassing signs nailed to posts every several hundred feet. On the new roads that cut straight across the raw, sun-blasted land, truck convoys brought troops, supplies, equipment, civilian workers, and tons of construction materials. Within weeks, swarms of workers reassembled Civilian Conservation Corps barracks that had stood vacant in the old forest camps and created a post laid out in a typical military configuration. Gasoline engines powered huge floodlights so work could proceed at night. Water wells were dug, latrines built, and electric generators installed. At night from mountaintop vantage points, it seemed that a new town had miraculously dropped down from the sky onto the desert floor, along with a host of colonists embarked upon mysterious undertakings.

Matt saw it all as he rode the Oscura Mountains high country in search of 7-Bar-K strays. Before the army kicked McDonald off his ranch early in the war to use it as a bombing range for the Alamogordo Airfield, there had been no need to ride so far north. But with no one left to gather the wandering critters, he periodically rode an upcountry circuit looking for livestock that had gone missing, invariably chasing home a few half-wild steers and an elderly dry cow or two—mostly 7-Bar-K cattle, but occasionally a critter carrying a neighboring brand.

Matt enjoyed the outings not only for the solitude it provided in a pretty slice of mountain country, but also for relief from Patrick's company, who'd become reasonably easy to tolerate but still prone to crankiness.

From horseback, he always paused on a protected shelf to scan the encampment below him in the distance. Even with binoculars it was hard to see the goings-on in detail, but he could clearly make out huge concrete bunkers under construction and two tall towers, one of steel and one of heavy timbers, being thrown up. It was all a puzzle.

One Sunday morning he watched in astonishment as soldiers on horseback played polo on a dusty field near the base camp. On another occasion, as he was chasing a belligerent steer out of a slot canyon, a huge explosion, louder than anything he'd ever heard before, brought him at a gallop to a western crest to find a thick plume of dense, black smoke swirling skyward and a large, smoldering crater in the desert floor where the wooden tower had once stood. At home, he told Patrick the army had blown up a wooden tower with enough high explosives to wipe out most of Alamogordo for no apparent reason.

“What was the tower for?” Patrick asked.

“As far as I could tell, it was just a tower,” Matt replied.

“Was it an accident?” Patrick asked, turning down the volume on the portable radio Matt had bought from a bomber pilot who had deployed with his outfit to somewhere in the South Pacific.

“I don't think so,” Matt replied.

“Maybe it was just a quick way to make a big hole in the ground,” Patrick ventured.

“But what for?” Matt asked.

Patrick shrugged indifferently. “Your guess is as good as mine, but since the army did it, I figure it has to do with finding new ways to kill the enemy. After all, that's what they do.” He turned up the volume on the radio and promptly lost interest in the conversation.

With the war in Europe won, rumors at the airfield whispered of massive preparations for the invasion of Japan. Earlier in the year, Tokyo had been firebombed, killing tens of thousands. The Philippines had been reclaimed, Okinawa captured with staggering losses on both sides, and in China, Burma, and Borneo the Japanese forces were in retreat. Folks were getting optimistic that maybe the war in the Pacific would be over in a year, and the gung-ho flyboys who'd yet to see combat were eager to kill their share of Japs before it ended.

Matt didn't doubt that soon a lot more Nips would be dead, and after hearing the reports of Japanese atrocities committed against Allied POWs, especially the New Mexico boys who had been captured on Corregidor, the notion didn't trouble him one bit.

The portable radio Matt had purchased, a Zenith Trans-Oceanic that received five shortwave bands as well as AM broadcasts, was a honey of a radio that quickly became Patrick's prime source of entertainment. After supper, he settled into his easy chair in the living room and listened to the news and his favorite
comedy and variety shows, including Abbott and Costello, Fred Allen, and Bing Crosby. Occasionally, he'd scan the shortwave bands, fiddling with the antenna until he got an overseas station, sometimes from Australia, sometimes an English-language broadcast from as far away as India. The mountains frequently blocked reception, which left only a Juárez music station to listen to after the college station in Las Cruces went off the air. By then, Patrick was usually asleep in his chair.

Matt frequently joined Patrick in the evening, sitting at his desk while going over the ranch books, lazing on the couch as he mended a piece of tack, or reading the latest bulletins from the National Livestock Producers Association. He always paused and paid particular attention when the war news came on. Roscoe Beal had written him while stateside on medical leave, saying scuttlebutt had the division rotating to the Pacific theater before the end of the year. He worried about his old army buddy. How much war could any one man hope to survive?

One evening the college station aired an interview with New Mexico US Senator Dennis Chávez, who discussed the GI Bill of 1944 that he'd helped get passed in Congress. Matt's interest peaked when the senator explained the educational benefits available to eligible veterans. Not only was tuition fully covered, but every veteran enrolled as a full-time student received a fifty-dollar-a-month subsistence allowance during the school year. Matt wrote the information down and told Patrick he was going to look into it next time he had business in Las Cruces.

Patrick guffawed and said anything other than land that the government gave away for free probably wasn't worth the bother. And even then, they could come and take it back like they did to McDonald. It made Matt wonder if the entire Tularosa would get permanently swallowed up by the army.

***

O
n the first Monday in July, Matt drove to the campus of the New Mexico College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts in Las Cruces. He hadn't been there in years and the changes were dramatic. During the Great Depression, the campus had been used by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and later on, in the early years of the war, it had served as an Army Special Training Center. The main core of the campus, with its array of stately classroom buildings, large gymnasium, dorms, and the grand administration building, remained the same. But the surrounding grounds were dominated by temporary military-style barracks and Quonset huts spread out over once-empty fields and pastures.

In an old single-story CCC administration building propped up on concrete pillars and converted into a veteran's service center, Matt met with James Kendell, a one-armed navy veteran with a ruptured duck button pin on the lapel of his suit jacket. After introductions, he sat at a small desk in a tiny office and quickly reviewed Matt's paperwork. When he finished, Kendell took out a lined tablet and started writing, pausing to look up information from a thick binder embossed with a Veterans Administration logo. Matt silently waited.

After a few minutes, Kendell put down his pencil and smiled. “You're gonna be in good shape. In addition to your service-connected disability pension you'll get a monthly fifty-dollar subsistence allowance during the school year. That goes up to sixty-five dollars next year.”

“Great,” Matt said, figuring he'd be able to hire a ranch hand who could also keep an eye on Patrick and have enough left over to cover his room and board expenses in town.

Kendell reached for a pack of cigarettes, lit up with a Zippo
lighter bearing the navy emblem, and blew a smoke ring. “You're going to have to provide a copy of your advanced army language training record to the provost's office so they can determine how much college credit to allow you. But from what I've seen so far, guys with foreign-language proficiency rack up the credits. With a year of college already under your belt before your enlistment, you just might be enrolled as an upperclassman. Are you planning to start back in the fall semester?”

“I have some things to work out first,” Matt said.

Kendell pushed blank forms across the desk. “Fill everything out and return it to me so I can get the process started.” He turned to a small file cabinet, pulled out some mimeographed sheets of paper, and handed them to Matt. “Here's some general information about the college. Who's who, where to go, and all that important stuff.”

“Thanks.” Matt barely glanced at the material before stuffing it in a back pocket. “Where did you lose the arm?”

“Leyte Gulf,” Kendell answered. “I got shot down.”

“Tough,” Matt said sympathetically.

Kendell chuckled and stood. “From what I understand, Sicily was no picnic. It could have been worse for both of us.”

“Roger that,” Matt said as he shook Kendell's hand.

“Sooner you get the provost's office started evaluating your service jacket, the better,” Kendell advised as he handed Matt his file.

“Aye-aye, swabbie,” Matt replied, breaking into a grin.

Kendell grinned in return. “Get lost, dogface.”

***

M
att made his way to the provost's office on the first floor of the administration building, where an older woman was sitting at a
desk in front of an inner door talking to a man wearing a suit and tie. Three students, one boy with thick glasses, another scrawny kid who might have been sixteen, and a rather homey, serious-looking girl in a cotton dress, waited patiently on chairs along one long wall. Matt joined them, feeling very much like an old man. His glass eye earned quick stares. He returned their interest with a friendly smile as each kid looked away. When the man in the suit knocked on the inner door and stepped inside, the woman called the next student to her desk. The boy with the thick glasses hurried over, clutching a notebook in his hand.

Figuring he had a long wait before his turn, Matt got out the mimeographed information about the college that James Kendell had given him. Most of it was stuff he already knew, such as the history of the institution, the various degree-granting departments, the location of faculty offices, and the social clubs on campus. Included was a faculty directory. His old professor and friend Augustus Merton was listed as the college provost.

Augustus Merton had been Matt's favorite professor during his freshman year and, just as important, the uncle of Matt's first love, Beth. Augustus and his wife, Consuelo, had welcomed Matt into the family much like a son. During the Great Depression, when Patrick was laid up with a broken leg and Matt was desperate to find work, Gus had hired him to help the Forest Service scout locations for CCC camps in New Mexico and Arizona. Soon after, Gus accepted a temporary appointment with the WPA in Washington and left the college on loan to the government. Matt hadn't seen him since.

As more students came into the office and filled up the chairs, Matt waited patiently as the woman spoke to each of the kids ahead of him. When his turn came, he asked her if he could first speak with Professor Merton.

The woman shook her head. “He's very busy. You'll have to make an appointment.”

“If he knew I was here, I think he might like to see me,” Matt said pleasantly as he handed her the telephone. “Just ask, please. Tell him Matt Kerney would like a minute of his time.”

For a very long minute, the woman glanced at his service records, his old college transcript, and his glass eye before replying. “Very well.”

The telephone was barely back in its cradle when Gus Merton flung open the inner door and grabbed Matt in a bear hug. “My boy,” he boomed, “come in, come in.”

In the office, the man in the suit was bent over a large desk poring over stacks of architectural drawings. He nodded a vague hello as Gus made the introductions.

“When the war is over, there will be much to do,” Gus said by way of explanation for his office clutter. He'd shrunk an inch from his five-foot-eight frame, his mop of curly brown hair had turned gray, and his round face was thicker in the jowls, but liveliness and curiosity still gleamed in his eyes.

“Come to dinner tonight at the hacienda,” he ordered. “Six sharp for drinks.”

“I don't want to impose.”

“Nonsense, Consuelo would horsewhip me if I failed to demand your company tonight. We have much to talk about.” Gus studied Matt's face. “And stories to tell, I would imagine.”

Matt nodded agreeably. “Six o'clock.”

Gus smiled happily and reached for the telephone on the credenza behind his desk. “I'll call her right now.” He was gleefully informing Consuelo of their unexpected dinner guest as Matt closed the office door.

***

F
or Matt, there had been no more enjoyable home to visit than the Merton hacienda in the village of Mesilla. At the same time, memories of the thick adobe walls; the serene, lovely courtyard; the colorful tiled walls of the inviting kitchen; Gus's comfortable library so perfect for conversation; and the rambling rooms with low-beamed passages, weighed heavily on his heart. For a moment he hesitated at the hand-carved hacienda door before tapping the forged iron door knocker. Here, at Consuelo's ancestral home a few steps off the lovely plaza, he'd fallen in love with Beth, won her heart in return, and made plans for a life together, only to have it vanish with her death.

He took a deep breath and knocked. Almost immediately the door opened to reveal Consuelo, her dark hair now lightly streaked with gray, her face still as lovely as ever, her figure still girlishly slender. She greeted him in Spanish with a hug and a kiss, ushered him by the hand into the kitchen, where Gus waited smiling, pouring wine into glasses. Together in silence they raised a toast of reunion before adjourning to the library for conversation that veered away from Matt's war experiences—he suspected Gus had read his service jacket at his office and shared its contents with Consuelo—or any mention of Beth. Instead, Gus—first and foremost a teacher at heart—asked Matt about his plans to return to college. Matt explained that he definitely wanted to finish his degree, but first needed to get everything in order at the ranch.