Hard Country (29 page)

He crossed into El Paso, stopped at a drugstore, and had the proprietor apply a poultice to his eyes, cut off the dangling bit of his earlobe, and put iodine on his cuts. He bought some patent medicine, stocked his saddlebags with grub at a general store, and headed west toward Arizona Territory, not north to Santa Fe.

He didn’t want to get anywhere near the Double K. He had enough money to drift for a spell, and there would be more coming soon. He jigged his horse into a trot and followed the afternoon sun across a wide stretch of land, with mirage-like mountains shimmering on the horizon. Come nightfall, he hadn’t seen a homestead or a ranch all day, so he staked his horse, drank some elixir, bedded down under the stars, and fell asleep to the sound of a faraway passing train.

An hour before dawn, he woke feeling much improved, and by first light he was drifting south and west along the Mexican border. He kept to that course for several days, stopping one night at an abandoned border-crossing station, where he stayed in an empty shack, and the next night in some hills that looked down on a wide, long valley that ran into southerly mountains.

He hadn’t seen anyone since leaving El Paso and didn’t mind the lack of company, although he thought about Cal now and again. The old man had quit him for hitting a whore as if he had no respect for women, which wasn’t true. Except for Teresa, the women in her family, and Ignacio’s dead mother, he just hadn’t met a decent one yet, leastways not a decent unmarried white woman.

As his scrapes and bruises healed, his spirits rose, and he took more careful notice of the land. He’d been passing through a chain of mountains separated by wide valleys, and from every crest he could see more mountains beyond. In the valleys there were shallow lakes the Mexicans called playas, live streams in the high country, and numerous springs in swales by the low hills and in seeps where cottonwoods thrived. There was deer, bear, coyote, and wolf sign around watering spots, and the cattle on the land carried the Diamond A brand. While the grass wasn’t stirrup high in the pastures of the vast valleys, it hadn’t been eaten to a nub and was plentiful around the hilly
ciénagas
where cattle gathered.

It reminded him of the Tularosa in a way: a whole string of Tularosa Valleys, each stretch of basin and hill country bounded by mountains. Except the mountains weren’t as grueling to cross and the flats were less hostile to man and beast. Patrick reckoned the country made tending cattle a whole lot easier.

A bare grub bag and an empty stomach tempted him to shoot and slaughter a yearling. He was about to cut a critter out of a nearby bunch when he spied a distant horseman leading a pack animal entering the valley from the westerly mountains.

On the Tularosa, outlaws sought remote places to hide or seek refuge from the law, and Patrick figured it was no different here. Some of them were lone wolves; others ran in small bands. Most all of them traveled well heeled and well supplied to outlast and outrun the law.

Patrick dismounted, staked his pony to keep it from running, pulled his long gun, and waited. The rider headed straight for him at a leisurely pace. When he got within rifle range, Patrick put a bead on him. The rider stopped and raised his hands.

“There’s no call for that rifle,” the man hollered.

“Maybe so,” Patrick replied.

The rider had scabbards strapped on either side of his saddle, one for a shotgun and the other for a repeating rifle. On his hip was a Colt .45, low and tied down, and he carried a sheathed knife on his belt. When Cal took to working as a deputy, he rode out of the Double K equipped the same way.

“Are you the law?” Patrick asked.

The cowboy grinned. “That line of work wouldn’t suit this old boy. I work for the Diamond A. I’m on my way to a cow camp. Can I light?”

“Go ahead.” Patrick lowered the rifle but kept it cradled in his arm. He’d never seen a working hand packing so much hardware, and it made him suspicious.

The cowboy slid out of the saddle.

“You’re toting a lot of iron,” Patrick said.

“Desperados have been raiding up from Mexico, renegade Apaches too. I’m not about to lose my hide or my scalp. Looks like you had a run in with a wildcat.”

“Where’s the cow camp?” Patrick asked.

“South a ways, right on the border at the old Lang ranch. You’re welcome to ride along.”

Patrick nodded toward the mountains. “I’m heading west.”

The cowboy shrugged and swung into his saddle. “Suit yourself.”

“Any ranches nearby?”

“Another day’s ride and you’ll reach the Fitzpatrick spread if you drift northwest from here.”

“Thanks.”

“Adios.”

“Adios.”

Patrick watched the horseman for a time before riding into the valley. On the off chance the waddie did work for the Diamond A, he decided not to shoot a yearling. Instead he stopped at a seep on the far side of the valley, shot a rabbit, and cooked it for his supper.

Night had fallen by the time he finished eating, and the moon wouldn’t rise for hours. His campfire was a beacon that could draw the attention of anyone bent on banditry, and he still carried misgivings about the horseman who had passed by.

Cal had taught him to be vigilant and cautious. He moved his saddle and bedroll out of the light, staked his pony in a grassy area where it could rest and graze, took his rifle, and moved to an old cottonwood tree at the edge of the seep. There he waited, listening to the night sounds and watching the fire burn down, his hands sweating as he clutched his rifle.

Many times, Ignacio had told him how John Kerney saved his life by bushwhacking Charlie Gambel in Hembrillo Canyon. Patrick wasn’t sure if he could do the same and was almost convinced he wouldn’t have to when he heard soft footsteps approaching. The fire had died down to embers, casting a pale glow. He raised his rifle, held his breath, watched, and waited. A shadowy figure came out of the darkness, and Patrick fired. He heard the man grunt and saw him drop, but he didn’t move. There was a rustling of grass and the sound of receding footsteps, followed by horses cantering away. He waited a little longer before approaching the man on the ground. It was the rider he’d met earlier in the day. He was still alive.

Patrick pointed his rifle barrel at the cowboy’s head and took the six-gun from his hand.

“You sure are a sly one,” the cowboy wheezed.

“Where did I hit you?” Patrick asked.

“In the lung. I’m sure to die.”

“What’s your name?”

The cowboy coughed. “Matt Donavan. Bury me.”

“I’ll leave that for your partner.”

By the time Patrick doused the embers, saddled his horse, and rode off, Matt Donavan was dead.

27

B
ack at the Double K, Cal shook off feeling lonesome by keeping busy. Looking forward to the day when he could restock, he rebuilt some traps in the high-country pastures. Around the ranch house, he replaced rotting corral posts, cleaned accumulated gear out of the casita Ignacio had built for Teresa, and mended bridles, saddles, and his favorite pair of chaps. He patched the barn roof, hauled in enough firewood to last for two years, and made a new gate for the horse corral. He had half a mind to clean out Patrick’s room but decided to let it be.

Half a dozen ponies and a few outlaw steers were the only livestock on the ranch. No cattle to tend gave Cal too much idle time. He turned his attention to the bits and pieces of the wagon John Kerney had been driving the day he died. For years, it had sat in a pile, untouched, weathering, rusting, and rotting. All along, Cal had wanted to fix it up into a hay wagon, but Patrick had resisted, although he never said why.

He spread out all the unbroken parts and decided it would take two new wheels, a tongue, a rear axle, ribs, slats, and a hell of a lot more skill than he had to rebuild it. He gave the whole caboodle to Ignacio, who hauled it away after spending the night at the ranch with Cal, drinking, reminiscing, and fretting about Patrick. Cal said nothing about Patrick quitting the partnership or what had happened in Juárez.

After Cal went back to the hacienda that night in Juárez, the whore had told him Patrick started hitting her when she coyly said she was a virgin, something many of her other customers liked to hear. Why it set him off made no sense to either Cal or the girl.

Each month he made a trip to Tularosa, expecting a letter from Patrick, but none came. A banker in Las Cruces had agreed to make a loan against the ranch, but Cal wouldn’t sign the mortgage papers until Patrick asked for the money.

He got back from a trip to town to find George Rose’s pony in the corral and George sitting on the veranda admiring the view, his bedroll spread out on the floor. Cal could smell beans cooking in the kitchen.

“How long have you been here?” Cal asked as he rested his bones in a chair next to George.

“Got here yesterday,” George replied.

“Are you fixing supper?” Cal asked.

“The bean pot is simmering and I’ve got a couple of beefsteaks ready to grill,” George said.

The cowhide draped over the corral fence carried the Bar Cross brand. George had dressed the carcass, wrapped the meat in burlap, and hung it up high to dry in the barn.

“Did that little dogie you butchered follow you all the way from the Bar Cross range?” Cal asked.

“Now, ain’t that something?” George said with a sly grin.

“It figures,” Cal said. “I don’t have a job for you, even if you did fix my supper.”

“There ain’t no jobs hereabouts, so I ain’t asking. But I’ll work for keep and browse for my pony if you don’t mind the company.”

Cal looked surprised. “I thought Oliver Lee was hiring guns.”

“I’m feeling too peaceable in my old age for that kind of work. Where’s young Patrick?”

“He struck out on his own some six months back.”

“A bright lad needs to do that every now and then,” George said. “When’s he coming back?”

“Can’t say.”

“What about my proposition?”

“I could use a hand building a water tank next to a spring that hasn’t dried up. I plan to run a pipe to it.”

“The one up by Big Sheep?”

“Yep.”

“I’m your man.”

“You can bunk in Patrick’s room,” Cal said, glad for George’s company. It had been too damn quiet at the ranch for too long.

28

T
he Yuma Territorial Prison sat on a bluff above the Colorado and Gila rivers in far western Arizona. Beyond the walls lay the town of Yuma and a thousand miles of bleak, sun-soaked desert and desolate mountains. The buildings were squat, surrounded by an adobe wall eight feet thick and eighteen feet high with guard towers on each corner. Inside, there were cell blocks, a mess hall, a recreation hall used for Sunday services, an exercise yard, a blacksmith shop, a tailor shop, stables, a library, a hospital ward, and a small ward to house women prisoners. Quarters for the superintendent and his assistant were outside the prison walls. So was the prisoners’ graveyard.

Patrick Kerney arrived in the early summer of 1893, convicted of grand larceny in Cochise County for stealing a saddle from a livery in Tombstone. He had been sentenced to two years under the go-by name of Pat Floyd he’d given the law to hide his true identity.

He’d packed a heavy load of bad luck into Tombstone from New Mexico, losing all his greenbacks at cards within a month. With the money gone, he had soured on the deal Cal had made with him to buy out his half of the Double K. The more he thought about it, the more he decided Cal had been too eager to see him gone from the ranch. Hadn’t Cal told him what to write down to make the sale legal, and now he had Patrick’s signed paper to prove it? Hadn’t Cal decided that four hundred dollars was enough money to give him? Had that been a fair shake? He sure would make it his business to find out from the bank how much he was owed come time to settle accounts.

Patrick fretted that he had been hornswoggled. The Double K wasn’t a big outfit like the Bar Cross and the Diamond A, but it wasn’t a small spread either. Even with the drought and the cattle market gone belly-up, the land with all the improvements had to be worth a pretty penny. He’d poured years of sweat into the Double K and damn sure wasn’t gonna lose it by being stupid.

Maybe it had been thickheaded to give up on the Double K to begin with. After all, John Kerney had started it for him. Maybe Cal had always wanted it for himself.

Patrick took to working odd jobs trying to win back a stake so he could return to the Tularosa and set things right. He figured to pay Cal his four hundred dollars and get back to doing what he knew best. Instead, he kept putting his
dinero
into circulation at the gambling tables and wound up losing his saddle in a faro game. It was a double-rigged, hand-tooled stock saddle with wool-lined fenders and a nickel-plated horn Cal had given him for his fifteenth birthday.

He couldn’t abide losing it, so he stole it back. When he tried to skedaddle from town on his pony, the town marshal caught him and locked him up. After the trial, the marshal sold Patrick’s pony to pay for his keep in jail and he went to Yuma Prison with absolutely nothing to his name but the clothes on his back.

Within a month of his arrival at Yuma, a new cell mate named John Flynn arrived and had to sleep on the floor because of overcrowding. A hard case in for manslaughter, Flynn wanted Patrick’s bunk. One evening after mealtime, he picked a fight with Patrick in the exercise yard. The guards broke it up quickly, but it cost Patrick his job in the kitchen. For the next two months, along with Flynn and other hard cases, he broke rock and made adobes on the Troublemaker Crew.

By the end of every day, six days a week, he was ready to drop. His body ached from his toes to his head. Hours after work ended he could still hear the sound of sledgehammers ringing in his ears.

He slept with seven other inmates in a stinky, dirty, eight-by-ten-foot cell, one of a double row of cells facing each other along a long corridor. The walls were granite, three feet thick, and an iron grate locked them in at night. Six narrow steel beds, eighteen inches wide, stacked three to a side were anchored to the walls. A bucket served as the crapper. Besides his cell mates, he lived with roaches, bedbugs, lice, fleas, and spiders. He had an upper berth, which made it easy for him to avoid conversation once the guards locked them in. Two men slept on the floor on straw-tick mattresses. Flynn wasn’t one of them; he’d been knifed by another prisoner and was in the hospital dying.