The Last Ranch (23 page)

Even in earlier times before the ranch was surrounded by federal land, such findings would have been worrisome and unexpected. Folks who knew of the cabin, mostly neighboring ranchers, cowboys, or an occasional hunter, were free to make use of it; however, common courtesy dictated leaving it the way it had been found. But now with travel on the proving ground prohibited, Matt figured only army types who lacked good manners had ready access to the cabin.

That bothered him. If it was the army, why were they trespassing on the 7-Bar-K? What were they up to?

Resolved not to let his discoveries spoil the day, Matt had said nothing to Mary, and after cleaning out the stove and laying a new fire, he took Kevin to the corral and let him ride Peanut bareback as he led the pony at a walk.

Approaching his third birthday, Kevin sat relaxed on the pony, his little hands gripping Peanut's mane, a smile plastered on his face. Soon he'd be riding all on his own under watchful eyes. Matt needed to fetch the old child's saddle from the tack room and get to work restoring it.

“We need to get you a pony,” Matt said.

Kevin nodded enthusiastically. “I know. Mom told me.”

“She did?”

“Yes, and I want a gray one.”

“It has to be gray?”

“Un-huh, and little enough for me because I'm still small.”

“Is that what your mother said?”

Kevin nodded again, his blue eyes fixed on Matt's face. “Uh-huh.”

“Well, I guess I've got my marching orders.”

“What's a marching order?” Kevin asked seriously.

“A marching order is doing what your ma says, such as getting you a pony,” Matt replied as he gently pulled Kevin off Peanut.

“When?” Kevin asked, his eyes bright with excitement.

“Maybe for Christmas,” Matt replied, hoping to have some extra money by then.

Kevin's face lit up. “I have to tell Mom.”

He dashed under the corral fence and raced to the cabin. When Matt arrived a jittery Kevin stood inside watching Mary chase an infuriated bull snake out the front door with a broom.

“Was that a bad snake?” Kevin worriedly asked Matt.

“Nope, a good snake,” Matt answered. “It just wasn't invited for dinner. Later I'll draw you a picture of a bad snake so you can tell the difference.”

“Okay.” Kevin turned to his mom. “Can I go outside?”

Mary nodded. “Stay close.”

Kevin scooted out the open door and Mary set aside her broom and gave Matt a kiss. “That's for promising Kevin a pony at Christmas.”

“We should have enough money by then.” Matt took out the holstered pistol he'd packed in his saddlebag and put it on the high shelf with the canned goods.

“What's that for?” Mary asked.

“You never know. Maybe some two-legged uninvited visitors will show up. Wave it at anyone suspicious who comes by while I'm gone. I'm going to take a quick look at the lower pasture. I'll be back in an hour.”

Mary called Kevin into the house and Matt rode out, following the tire tracks that led down the cattle trail to the old Tularosa state road. Originally, he'd intended to go upcountry first and be
gone for three or more hours, but the notion of unwanted visitors troubled him.

In ten minutes of easy riding he was at the pasture gate that had been deliberately knocked off its pins and moved aside. Littered around were a number of shot-up tin cans used for target practice, along with spent handgun and rifle shell casings. There were tire tracks from two different vehicles; one set stopped at the busted gate, the other set continued on to the cabin, maybe five or six times over a period of months from what Matt could see.

Who would want to be up here that often? If it was a stranger unfamiliar with the land, how would he know about the cabin in the first place?

He rode on a bit farther and found the bones of a deer scattered near the trail. A closer look proved it had been a young buck killed and field dressed for meat by someone who knew what he was doing, maybe a soldier but probably not.

He returned to the gate, flipped Maverick's reins over the top strand of barbwire fencing to keep him from straying, and got to work rehanging the gate using baling wire and nails to jerry-rig it.

He'd about finished when he heard the sound of a fast approaching vehicle. He turned to see an older, bearded man in a military surplus jeep brake to a stop and reach for a rifle resting on the passenger seat. The back of the jeep was filled with supplies.

“What are you doing there?” the man asked in a high-pitched voice, his rifle pointed directly at Matt's chest.

Maverick was twenty feet away with Matt's rifle in the saddle scabbard. “Fixing the gate.”

“You're trespassing,” the man said as he got out of the jeep, his gaze jumping from Matt to Maverick and back. “Don't try anything.”

Matt looked the man over. He was maybe fifty or a bit older, thin but fit-looking with a sweaty face, narrow piercing eyes, and an odd head twitch that with all things combined made Matt uneasy.

“Raise your hands,” the man said, waving his rifle. “Go on, get 'em up.”

Matt did as ordered, thinking it best to say nothing.

“Who are you?” the man demanded, taking a step closer. “Tell me and don't you lie.”

“My name is Matt. Who are you?”

“None of your business. How come you wear an eye patch? You a pirate or something?”

Matt shook his head.

“A thief?”

Matt shook his head again.

“You're a thief.” The man paused and spat. “Where did you put it?”

“Put what?”

The man sneered. “The gold.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

The man pulled the rifle to his cheek and pointed it at Matt's head. If he twitched too hard Matt was dead. “I'll kill you for lying. Is it safe?”

“I don't have any gold,” Matt said calmly, lowering his hands. “But I've got food on the stove at the cabin. Come on up, we can share a meal.”

The man's eyes widened. “Nobody supposed to be here but me. Did Doc show you the cave before Charley Boswell killed him? Or maybe some of those army boys poking around from the proving ground found the passage and you killed them. Are you working with Babe? Have you got Doc's maps Babe says she lost?”

“I don't know any of those people,” Matt answered. But it finally clicked that this was one of those treasure hunters who'd been snooping around Victorio Mountain and other places searching for Spanish gold.

The man glared at Matt as he brought the rifle away from his cheek. “Yes you do. You carried that gold out one bar at a time and then blocked the passage. Sixteen thousand of them. Where you got it hid? Tell me now or you die.”

Convinced he was facing a loco treasure hunter, Matt remained silent, trying to figure a way to get the man to drop his rifle.

“What did you say?” the man asked with a sneer.

Matt shook his head. “Nothing. I didn't say anything.”

The man shook his head in disbelief, his sneer turning into a crazy smirk. “Yes, you did, I heard you talking to yourself and all.”

Matt decided he'd better play along. “Okay, you're right, please don't shoot me. I don't have the gold but I have the maps.”

“I knew it,” the man crowed gleefully, showing broken teeth, stomping his foot. “Where are they?”

“I'll take you to them.”

The man waved the rifle at the jeep and took a step back. “Get in.”

“The jeep can't go there,” Matt replied, raising his chin in the direction of a nearby ridgeline with a switchback trail leading to the top. “I have the maps at my camp, just a short horseback ride away.”

“Stay away from that horse and long gun,” the man warned. “We'll walk. You go first.”

Matt started out with the man three paces behind. Halfway up the trail it turned rock-strewn, eroded, and difficult, making it necessary to concentrate on climbing. Matt heard rocks tumbling down the trail behind him and turned to see the man looking at
his footing, the rifle lowered. Quickly, Matt picked up a large rock, spun around, and hit him squarely in the temple. He dropped off the side of the trail and slammed headfirst into a boulder.

Matt stepped over and found him dead with a broken neck. The wallet in his pocket contained a driver's license in the name of Dalton Moore. He put it back and stood over the body for a moment, working out in his mind what to do before deciding to leave everything just as it was. He didn't want to tell Mary he'd just killed a man, or have his son see it, even though it had been done in self-defense.

And he sure wasn't going to admit anything to Patrick. Best to say he'd found the abandoned jeep at the gate and the body of the dead man on the switchback. It would be up to everybody to decide to take his word for it or not.

He was angry at Dalton Moore for putting him in the situation and not at all happy having to pad the truth, but it was the best and quickest way out of what otherwise could become a complicated predicament.

At the cabin, he called Mary outside away from Kevin, who was playing with some toy horses and a cast-iron wagon, and told her in low tones that he'd found a dead body, trying hard to believe it himself.

“That's terrible,” Mary said after hearing him out. “We have to report it to the sheriff immediately.”

“We can call him from Engle on our way to town tomorrow,” Matt suggested.

“We can't just leave him out here.”

“Of course you're right. I'll go back and cover the body with a tarp and rocks to protect it.”

“We should go home right away,” Mary said.

The aroma of dinner simmering on the cookstove did nothing for his appetite, which had been replaced by a tight knot in his stomach. “After I get back, we'll head home.”

“Good. I'll have everything ready.”

***

F
ive days later, the following article appeared in the Las Cruces newspaper:

TREASURE HUNTER FOUND DEAD

Dalton Moore, age 58, a local treasure hunter known to many in law enforcement for his repeated illegal attempts to find Spanish gold on White Sands Proving Ground, was discovered dead from an accidental fall on the remote 7-Bar-K Ranch by rancher Matthew Kerney.

Sierra County Sheriff Max Story said evidence showed Moore had been trespassing on the ranch and using a remote line cabin on the property for several months as a hideaway while searching for treasure around Victorio Mountain, a place rumored to contain a large hoard of precious metal and jewels.

At the time of his death, Moore, who had recently been hospitalized for mental problems, was wanted on an outstanding federal warrant for violating a court order prohibiting him from trespassing on White Sands Proving Ground. According to Sheriff Story, no foul play is suspected and the case has been closed. When contacted, Matthew Kerney referred all questions to Sheriff Story.

On the same day, the headline story on the front page reported accusations by high-ranking government officials that North Korea was still holding American POWs, violating the armistice agreement signed at Panmunjom a month earlier on July 27, 1953.

After the final bell on the last day of school, Mary Kerney and her young son, Kevin, now approaching seven, drove home to the T or C cottage she'd bought with her navy savings nearly four years earlier. Built before the start of the World War II, it sat on a double lot with a pleasant view of the nearby Rio Grande and the bleak yet striking Caballo Mountains that notched the sky to the east. Although close to downtown, the cottage was part of a quiet neighborhood away from the busy US highway that cut through the heart of town and the motels and bathhouses along the Rio Grande riverbank that catered to folks seeking medicinal relief at the numerous mineral hot springs that bubbled to the surface.

The cottage had a pitched roof, a covered front porch wide and deep enough for several chairs, two bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen with enough space for a small dining table. It had all the modern conveniences: electricity, indoor plumbing, hot and cold running water, an electric range, a refrigerator, and—wonder of wonders—a telephone, which still remained only a remote, very unlikely possibility back at the ranch.
Because it was frame-built and not adobe, even with the insulation Matt had added to the attic it still got hot as the blazes in the summer. By the end of the school year Mary eagerly looked forward to a return to the 7-Bar-K and the relative coolness of the double adobe ranch house with its shady veranda.

Matt was away until Sunday working on a mesquite eradication project at the vast Armendaris Ranch north of T or C. With the drought persisting into a seventh year, invasive shrubs were taking over the desert grasslands at an alarming rate. Three years earlier, the Ag Department at the college in Las Cruces had recruited Matt to work with area ranchers to help improve deteriorating range conditions. Gus Merton had recommended him for the job and on the strength of his influential support, along with Matt's degree from the college, his service in the war, and his excellent reputation as a rancher, he got the position. It was a plum job that he took to with enthusiasm and quickly came to love. Not only did it give him flexibility to set his own schedule, it paid well enough to keep the 7-Bar-K going without needing to rely on Mary's salary or Patrick's pension.

Luckily, Mary also had a job she loved. She taught third grade at the T or C elementary school and enjoyed helping her sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes lackadaisical students explore the world through books and reading. Most every day they were a delight to be around—even the rowdiest and the neediest ones.

What she didn't save from her salary went into paying the monthly bills and improving the cottage with new windows, a new roof, painting it inside and out, planting more shade trees, and building a corral and horse barn to stable Kevin's pony, a gray gelding he'd named Two-Bits because of a quarter-size black spot on its left haunch.

A good deal of the renovations had been funded by an unexpected check from her brother, Tom, who upon their father's death had returned from his California home to settle the estate. Her share minus Tom's expenses was probably about a tenth of what she was due, but after getting into an initial snit about it she decided she really didn't care and was happy to put the inheritance to good use.

Soon after buying the cottage, she'd made a number of weekend road trips to Las Cruces, haunting the secondhand furniture stores and spending time with Erma while Matt looked after Kevin at home. What she couldn't buy used she bought new in T or C, including the kitchen appliances and a nice bedroom set for Kevin's room.

Little by little over time, she made the cottage comfortable and pleasing to the eye. She painted furniture, built a bookcase for the living room, made curtains for the windows, refinished the wood floors, and planted flowerbeds in front of the porch. It was a perfectly agreeable home in a small town, which, despite the laughable notoriety of being named for a TV quiz show, and civic-minded attempts to transform it into something grander, remained an ordinary, provincial, often wind-blown, dusty cowboy town. Mary figured the name would forever remain a joke to most New Mexicans as well as the many curious tourists who thought it amusing that a town would do such a silly thing.

She was frequently alone with Kevin during the week while Matt was away at his job. She kept busy after school with house projects, grading papers, preparing her teaching lessons, helping Kevin with his school work, and enjoying her son's company. He was a bright child, easy to be with, and surprisingly mature as well as tall for his age. He towered over his classmates and was at least
a year ahead academically. Mary wasn't quite ready to have him skip a grade, although she feared he'd lose interest in school if he didn't do so in the next year or two.

Occasionally on the few weekends when the family didn't go to the ranch and Matt was home at the cottage, she entertained with small impromptu parties, inviting colleagues from her school, a neighboring couple she'd come to like, or the parents of Kevin's school friends. All in all, the people of T or C were mostly good, hardworking folks and Mary got along with them just fine.

Sometimes Patrick came for a visit and would bunk overnight on the living-room couch after keeping Kevin up late telling him stories and tall tales about the old days on the Tularosa. Erma came up from Las Cruces very rarely, and only after Mary was doggedly persistent with repeated invitations. They were still as close as sisters when they got together, but her career as an artist had begun to flourish and she'd taken on a part-time position at the college teaching two painting classes each semester.

Brenda Jennings occasionally stayed over during her trips to town and brought Dale along to play with Kevin, much to his delight. With Mary's help, Brenda was homeschooling Dale, but the two women had started seriously talking about the possibility of Dale living in town with Mary and Kevin starting in September so he could attend public school. The best of friends, the boys were hounding their mothers relentlessly in favor of the idea.

Mary was content with her life, but there were moments when she yearned for a new adventure, or at the very least a return visit to San Francisco. She longed to feel the moist, humid sea air against her face, see the grand, tall buildings and lovely Victorian houses, ride the cable cars, visit the museums, and enjoy the excitement of being in a cosmopolitan city once more. She fantasized about a day of shopping at the Emporium on Market Street,
capped by dinner and drinks with Matt at a restaurant in Chinatown, or dancing with him late into the night at one of the smoky jazz nightclubs.

Arriving home, she parked the car in the driveway. Kevin leaped out in a hurry to tend to Two-Bits, who waited patiently in the corral at the back of the property, his head draped over the gate, his tail happily flapping. Inside the open horse-barn door, Matt's pony, Maverick, lounged in the shade, rubbing his shoulder against the doorjamb.

Matt had left Maverick behind, choosing to rest his pony and ride Armendaris Ranch horses during his stay there. Next to the corral he'd also parked the two-axle, two-horse trailer he'd bought in an auto salvage yard and rebuilt.

That week, every night after dinner in the cool of the evening, Mary and Kevin had gone riding along the riverbank, loping the ponies north out of town toward Elephant Butte Reservoir, where folks came from all over the state to swim, fish, and boat on the water. It had been grand fun, topped off with a cold soda pop bought at the service station along the road to the reservoir.

She watched Kevin climb the corral gate. Two-Bits greeted him with a shake of his head as Kevin scratched his ear and gave him the apple he'd saved from his lunch box. Like his father, he found caring for ponies a pure pleasure and not a chore at all. And like his father, he had a connection with ponies that seemed far from ordinary.

In the house, Mary kicked off her shoes, changed into blue jeans and a short-sleeved top, went to the kitchen, and made Kevin a snack. She was impatient for Matt to come home on Sunday, not just because they'd leave soon for the ranch but because she was feeling especially fertile and the timing was right.

For two years, they'd been trying to get pregnant again,
without success. Supposedly nothing stood in their way; Kevin was clear proof of it. But all the examinations, consultations, and tests with specialists in Albuquerque had been fruitless. The doctors were mystified and stymied, but Mary was not quite ready to give up. A little girl had been floating through her dreams for some time.

She planned to start her summer at the ranch with a little seduction and had splurged on some sexy undergarments to set the mood.

***

T
he summer at the ranch started with Dale coming to spend the week with Kevin. When the boys weren't helping Matt with the ponies, a chore they both enjoyed, or out riding, they could be found at the camp they'd thrown up behind the barn, or dangling in the Witch's Tree with Matt's binoculars scanning the basin for signs of army activity. After supper, they sat with Patrick in the living room, listening to overseas shortwave radio broadcasts and making lists of the countries they could identify. At nightfall, Mary would order them off to bed and they'd scoot out the door to their camp with their flashlights to read under the stars in their bedrolls. Before turning in, she'd slip quietly to their camp to check on them and find them fast asleep.

Mary loved to watch the two young boys together. They were great friends, and seemed to have endless energy matched by prodigious appetites. She prepared three hearty meals a day and they packed the food away like starving stevedores. According to Dale, who was always first to clean his plate and hold it out for seconds, she was a really, really good cook.

On the third night of Dale's visit, a pelting rainstorm brought
Mary, Matt, and Patrick to the veranda in time to see Kevin and Dale running through a sheet of rain to the house as thunder boomed and lightning cracked across the sky. Dried off and in fresh clothes, Mary let them stay up until the last raindrop had fallen and the roar of floodwater in the pasture stream bed had eased to a trickle. They slept on the veranda on an old mattress covered in blankets.

In the morning, she found them mud-splattered, gleefully wading in the stream bed. She ordered them into the stock tank, clothes and all, and told them they'd get no breakfast until they presented themselves at the kitchen table washed and scrubbed for her inspection. She made them clean their fingernails twice before letting them take their seats.

It rained lightly on and off during the day. The boys moved their camp into the barn tack room, helped Matt and Patrick shovel mud out of the corral, and rode with Matt in the truck to inspect the ranch road. They returned an hour later, with muddy boots and dirty clothes, to report that it was washed out in spots but passable. She made them clean up and change again.

In between her cooking chores, she did the laundry with the veranda and kitchen doors wide-open to let a lovely, cool, moist breeze course through the house. Under a low cloud–covered sky, she hung out the wash just as the rain intensified. She hurried with her empty laundry basket to the veranda, where Matt, Patrick, and the boys were watching distant, horizontal lightning whip-crack above the silvery expanse of dunes at White Sands. Under the
rat-tat-tat
sound of rain on the veranda roof, everyone was smiling, but not a word was said about the drought lifting for fear of jinxing it.

The rain subsided until evening when a good, soaking shower settled over the ranch that lasted deep into the night. By morning
the sky had cleared and a golden sunrise made the wet land glisten. It stayed dry and sunny all that day and the next, quashing Mary's hopes for continued showers. She knew better than to wish for days and days of constant moisture on the Tularosa. The basin almost always got its precipitation in spurts—sometimes drizzles, sometimes downpours. It could be weeks or months before the next storm arrived.

On Dale's last evening on the ranch, the sky turned dark and angry, a harsh wind whistled through the cottonwood trees, and thunder rolled behind massive clouds that towered above the Sacramento Mountains. The spectacle brought everyone out to the veranda, the boys perched on the top step, Patrick settled in his chair, Mary and Matt at the railing.

When the first spray of wind-driven rain splashed against Mary's face, she turned to Matt and said, “I think the drought has broken.”

Matt grinned like a kid at Christmas as the storm unleashed a lashing downpour. “Now that the grass will start coming back, I'm going to buy us some cows.”