Hard Country (34 page)

Cal had heard the king of Tularosa now wore a shaky crown. Talk was his Three River Ranch was about to go into foreclosure.

“Did you quit or get let go?” he asked.

“Let go,” Turknet answered as he poured. “Coghlan knows how to make money, but not how to keep it. He’s selling off cows to pay his debts. Me and a bunch of the boys are gonna have to start riding the chuck line soon.”

“That’s a damn shame,” Cal said as he raised his glass and downed his drink, thinking the idea of Turknet riding the chuck line was pretty far-fetched. “Have you seen my young pard?”

“He’s getting a poke,” Turknet said. “One of the new girls caught his eye.”

Cal nodded. What had happened to the whore in Juárez ran through his mind, and it vexed him that Patrick might make the same sort of trouble for himself again.

“I see you trailed a bunch of cattle into town,” Turknet said.

“You got an eagle eye, old hoss,” Cal said as he refilled his glass. “You fixin’ to steal them?”

Turknet laughed. “Why bother? Coghlan ain’t buying rustled beef right now.”

“That’s mighty comforting.” Cal raised his glass and slugged back the whiskey.

“You got a buyer for those cows?” Turknet asked.

“I surely do,” Cal answered.

“Good for you.” Turknet spun a coin on the bar to pay for the drinks. “Adios.”

“So long,” Cal said.

Turknet and his companions filed out of the saloon. Cal gave the ruffians a quick once-over. Their boots were dusty, their hats battered and sweat stained, but their tied-down six-shooters looked whistle clean. He doubted any of them had forked a horse as hired hands much.

Ten minutes later, Patrick sauntered into the saloon from the door to the wagon yard, where the hurdy-gurdy girls had their rooms. He spotted Cal at the bar and came over.

“You got nothing better to do than snoop on me?” Patrick asked.

“Whoa, haul in your neck,” Cal said. “I just stopped in to wet my whistle.” A young, slender soiled dove stepped into the saloon looking none the worse for wear, but she didn’t look sunny and chipper either as she moved toward a lone customer at a back table.

“You quit me over a whore,” Patrick snapped.

“No, I quit you over what you did to a whore,” Cal replied, “and I’ll do it again if need be.”

Patrick nodded at the girl. “Does she look beat-up?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“That’s right,” Patrick said, “because I’ll never give you cause to try to take the Double K away from me like you did last time.”

Cal looked at Patrick in amazement. “Have you got air between your ears? This idea you got stuck in your
cabeza
that I tried to swindle you is plumb loco. Didn’t you read the papers in my desk? You stand to own the whole shebang, just like your pappy wanted.”

“I read them. It doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind and have a lawyer draw new papers.”

“You’re talking crazy,” Cal said, “and we’ve got no time for it right now. Dick Turknet and his outfit are planning to steal our cattle and we’ll need help to stop them.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he’s chuckleheaded.”

“How many men does he have?”

“Counting Turknet, five that I know of.”

“Who can we get?”

“I’m hoping Ignacio and his brother Antonio will join up. They can close herd the cows while you, me, and George find a way to persuade Turknet and his lads to steal livestock elsewhere. They’ll shadow us by daylight and make their move at dusk when they think we’re about to make camp. And it won’t be peaceable.”

“How do we stop them?” Patrick asked.

“We’ll surround them.”

“Now who’s loco?”

“I’ll explain later,” Cal replied. “Let’s get going. Turknet will make his move before we get too far off the basin. You tell George, while I talk with Ignacio.”

* * *

A
n hour before the first stirring of dawn, George, Ignacio, and his father, Cesario—who refused to be left out of the scheme—started the herd east toward Round Mountain. Behind an abandoned nester’s shack within sight of the wagon road, Cal, Patrick, and Antonio waited. As the sun topped Sierra Blanca and splashed the day across the Tularosa, Dick Turknet and his four companions loped by, trailing one pack animal.

“I do believe old Dick lied to me more than once yesterday,” Cal said when the riders were beyond earshot.

“How so?” Patrick asked.

“Because one pack animal can’t carry enough victuals and such to get five riders very far. I’m guessing those lads are still working for Coghlan and he plans to sell our cattle to pay some debts.”

“Coghlan,” Antonio said, “is a
puta,
and his riders
ladrones.
” He spit to accentuate his point.

Cal smiled at Antonio, who looked a lot like Ignacio except his nose wasn’t crooked from getting broken in a fistfight. “I agree they’re whores and thieves, amigo. A low-down bunch, every mother’s son of them.”

They waited thirty minutes before following Turknet and his gang. About a mile up the road, the horse tracks veered out of the canyon and onto a game trail that climbed a rocky foothill where only the stumps of trees and scant underbrush remained after years of woodcutting by the villagers. The last scramble up the trail brought them to a rise, where they drew rein and could just make out miniature men on horseback beyond, cresting an equally barren hill.

“Best we stay back a bit more,” Cal said.

Topping the next hill, they found a stand of mesquite in a hollow and watched as Turknet and his lads paced slowly down toward the canyon to the thin ribbon of wagon road that made a slow curl toward Round Mountain.

When the horsemen passed out of sight, they trailed behind, careful not to show themselves. To be sure they hadn’t been spotted, Cal sent Patrick on a long loop to see if Turknet had dropped one of his men behind to cut sign. Patrick came back with an all clear and the trio moved cautiously on.

Cal had told George to bed down the cattle outside of Bent, a small ranching area about ten miles east of Tularosa with a wide-open pasture of good grass and water. He figured it would be a perfect spot for Turknet to make his move. He’d most likely want to attack the camp directly, gun down any opposition, and night drive the cattle to the Three Rivers Ranch.

With the sun about to touch the highest peaks of the San Andres to the west, Cal left Patrick and Antonio behind in a hollow and went on foot up a stiff trail above the canyon until the sound of horses and the smell of tobacco smoke brought him to a stop. He moved quietly through a stand of cedar and juniper trees and sidestepped a tangle of mountain mahogany. He worked his way down the canyon wall to a shelf that overlooked the pasture where the Herefords were grazing under George’s watchful eye. Ignacio and Cesario were busy setting up camp by the creek. Below him, Dick Turknet and his boys were in among some pine trees, likewise watching.

Cal silently backtracked to the hollow and scratched a map in the dirt for Patrick and Antonio.

“We go in slow and easy,” he said. “Once we’re in the trees behind Turknet and his boys, Patrick, you take the right flank and, you take the left, Antonio. I’ll come in from the rear.

“I’ll give Turknet a warning. When the gunplay starts, George knows to cut off any riders trying to escape in his direction. Ignacio and his father will mill the cattle to keep them from stampeding.”

“You got it all sorted out, do you?” Patrick said.

He looked at Patrick. “That’s right. Don’t stop shooting until they do. Picket the horses, get your rifles, and follow me. Not a sound.”

It took the good part of an hour to work their way to where Turknet and his men waited. As Patrick and Antonio veered off to their positions, the memory of the Hembrillo Canyon battle where Ignacio had been wounded passed through Cal’s mind. He was about to go to war again, with Ignacio and another Kerney on his side. Life sure threw strange twists of fate at a body.

Silently he counted off two minutes as he watched the outlaws. They were hunkered down, holding the reins to their ponies, ready to mount and ride.

“Turknet,” Cal called out from behind a tree, his rifle aimed at Dick’s broad back. “You and your boys throw down your guns and ride away before somebody gets killed.”

Turknet wheeled and drew his six-gun. Cal shot him in the side as he pulled the trigger. He twisted and fell to the ground. His men poured lead at Cal, bullets gouging the tree trunk and slashing through the branches.

Patrick and Antonio opened up, and the frightened screech of a wounded pony sliced over the gunfire. A rustler pitched backward as he tried to mount, and his riderless horse galloped into the pasture headed straight for George. Another outlaw crumpled to his knees. Suddenly the shooting stopped, followed by a long silence. Cal could make out one man huddled behind the dead pony and another pressed flat against a large log.

“We’re done,” one of the outlaws finally said. “Don’t kill us.”

“Get up, leave your guns on the ground, and step out into the clear,” Cal said.

Two men rose with their hands above their heads and walked into the open. Light was fading fast and the spooked cattle had stopped milling. Cal sent George back to help settle the critters down, told Patrick to guard the prisoners, and had Antonio ride back on one of the rustlers’ ponies to get their horses. He checked the two dead men and found Dick Turknet propped up against a tree trunk still breathing.

“I’m bucked out, old hoss,” Turknet said. “Was it you that killed me?”

“It was.”

Turknet coughed. “Good. I’d hate to have had some green hand shoot me dead.”

“Were you planning to trail the cattle to Three Rivers?” Cal asked.

Turknet shook his head. “No,” he wheezed. “Coghlan has a chuck wagon and some waddies waiting near the White Oaks road to San Antonio. The beef was to be trailed there pronto, sold, and shipped east.”

“Smart.”

“He wanted you dead.”

“Not yet,” Cal said.

Turknet coughed and stopped breathing. Cal closed his eyes, stretched him out on the ground, went to Patrick, and told him to have the two captives bury their dead partners. It was dark when the men finished and Patrick brought them into camp.

After feeding them some beans and tortillas, George tied them up for the night. “Who gets to take these boys to jail?” he asked.

Cesario grinned. “Me and my
hijos
will do it.”

“
Gracias,
Cesario,” Cal said.

“
Por nada,
amigo. It has been fun to help catch Coghlan’s
ladrones
in the act. I will enjoy telling the marshal. Maybe this time Coghlan will be arrested.”

“Don’t count on it,” Cal replied.

The gunplay had pretty much taken all the steam out of the men, so there wasn’t much more talk around the campfire that night.

34

I
n the morning, Cesario and his sons rode off with their captives to Tularosa while Cal, Patrick, and George started the cattle toward Mescalero. They raised the village by midday. Tucked into a narrow valley surrounded by a deep pine forest, the headquarters for the Indian agency was spit-and-polish tidy, just like the army officer who ran it. A large administration building dominated the village. Nearby stood an adobe school with separate dormitories for boys and girls, the agent’s residence, some smaller staff cottages, and an assortment of barns, outbuildings, and corrals. On a grassy plain in front of the government building, the Stars and Stripes flew on a flagpole. A small herd of sheep tended by an old Apache quickly scattered as the cattle clattered into the open field behind the buildings.

Some Apaches lived close by in shabby log cabins and a few wickiups and tepees scattered over a level meadow near a clear mountain spring that cascaded down a small mesa. The tepees faced east, with woodpiles stacked along the north side, and the log cabins were small, one-room buildings made from rough lumber milled on the reservation.

Cal had Patrick and George rest the critters while he met with the agent. First Lieutenant Victor Emanuel Stottler, a West Point graduate, had come to his post with the strong support of evangelists bent on saving the souls of the savage Apaches. An unfriendly man with thin lips and a double chin, Stottler greeted Cal with no more than a nod and quickly showed him on a map where the cattle were to be taken.

“It’s another day’s journey through mountain passes to Pine Tree Canyon,” Stottler said, tapping the map with a wooden pointer. “There is ample grass and water along the way. One of my Apache police officers will guide you. You’ll be paid after the cattle are inspected by my livestock superintendent.”

“Fair enough,” Cal said. “But why bed these critters down so far away?”

Stottler raised an eyebrow. “That is not your business, Mr. Doran. Just deliver the animals. My man will be at Pine Tree to conduct the inspection.”

“Whatever you say, Lieutenant,” Cal replied.

“Very good,” Stottler said with the hint of a frown as he looked out his window at the browsing cattle. “Please move your cows along at once. The children at the school are sometimes allowed to play in the meadow behind the cabins and they are by disposition lazy and filthy enough in spite of our best attempts to teach them otherwise. I’ll not have them tracking fresh cow manure into the dormitories or the classrooms.”

“Glad to oblige,” Cal replied.

Outside, a young Apache police officer waited next to a wagon loaded with supplies and pulled by two mules. His hair was short under his wide-brimmed hat and he had high cheekbones and a very narrow, long nose that gave him a serious look. He nodded at Cal without speaking, climbed onto the seat, and headed the team down a rutted road toward a gap in the thick mountain forest.

Cal signaled to Patrick and George to get the cattle moving, and by the time they joined up they were deep in a long canyon with tall evergreen trees so thick on the steep mountainsides that sunlight danced and dappled through the shadows. In the quiet forest, the cattle plodded along contentedly behind the wagon, hardly making a sound, never wandering into the scrub oak that lined the road. Cal figured it to be the most tranquil trail drive an old brushpopper could ever imagine.