Hard Country (35 page)

The Apache police officer stopped his wagon long before sunset at a stream bank thick with grass that widened into a beautiful open field fringed by stately evergreens.

“Tomorrow, Pine Tree Canyon, half day,” he said to Cal as he unhitched his mules.

“You speak American,” Cal said. There was something familiar about the Apache, but Cal couldn’t place him.

“All police must,” the Apache replied. “Bear and wolves come here. Be careful.”

He walked his mules to the stream to drink, and Cal loped his pony to tell Patrick and George, who were watching over the loitering animals, that they were bedding down for the night.

At camp, with time to fix a good meal, George got the Dutch oven going over hot coals, greased it, sliced beef off a quarter section he’d wrapped in canvas, put it in the pot, threw in some salt, and covered it with hot coals. While the beef cooked, he cut potatoes into a skillet greased with bacon fat and got the coffeepot going. When the beef was far enough along, he fried the potatoes up brown and added a can of corn when they were cooked.

Except for not having hot biscuits, Cal allowed that it was the best trail meal he’d had in a long time. He kept his eye on the Apache policeman, who sat across from Patrick, staring at him over the coffee cup he cradled in his hands. He hadn’t said a word since joining the crew for supper.

“Walks Alone,” he finally said, throwing a stone at Patrick. It hit him in the chest.

“What?” Patrick asked, startled.

“You threw rocks at me. You sat next to me under the window where my sister lay. I gave you the name Walks Alone because you always hid from your father.”

“That was you?”

The Apache nodded.

“You never spoke.”

“You are white eyes. Nothing to say.”

“What’s your name?” Patrick asked.

“James Kaytennae. They call my sister Crooked Running Woman because of her leg. Once, she ran like the wind, beating all the boys, now no more. Where is your father, Walks Alone?”

“Dead,” Patrick said flatly. “Don’t call me that.”

James Kaytennae turned to Cal. “You captured me in the mountains with his father.”

“I remember that,” Cal said.

“I have been told you are a policeman.”

“I have been sometimes,” Cal replied.

Kaytennae lifted his hat. “They make us cut our hair like you white eyes. If I grow it, Stottler puts me in guardhouse and takes my allotment of food. No longer policeman.”

“That’s no kind of law to pay any mind to,” Cal said.

“It’s Stottler who makes law here. Children run away from school to the camps, he puts parents in guardhouse, sometimes the children. School boss too nice to the children, he sends school boss away. To leave Mescalero, you must have paper from Stottler. Here, everybody is in his guardhouse, except no walls.”

“That’s not so hard to take,” Patrick said, remembering the walls at Yuma Prison.

“Better I should have died before I stole the chicken from your father’s ranchero.”

A wolf howled in the distance. Patrick dumped his plate in the wash bucket. “Well, you ain’t dead,” he said. “Leastways, not yet.”

“Dead inside is worse,” Kaytennae replied, looking him in the eye.

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Patrick said. He turned away and reached for Cuidado’s reins. “I’ll take first watch.”

Cal stretched out. “That’s fine with me. Tonight maybe we should call you Rides Alone.”

“That’s not funny,” Patrick snapped.

Across the campfire, James Kaytennae almost smiled.

* * *

T
he road to Pine Tree Canyon left the meadow and climbed the side of a mountain before dropping down to a long woodland funnel between two peaks. They emerged into a sun-drenched serpentine canyon that gradually became an expansive high-country valley. An adobe house sat at the foot of a parklike hill. A nearby rushing stream tumbled down from the mountains and fed a big pond next to a large log barn and a horse corral.

“Sure is a pretty slice of country,” George said.

“Good water, good grass,” Cal agreed, “but I’d miss the views across the Tularosa.”

“But not the dust, I reckon,” Patrick added.

“Not the dust,” Cal echoed.

They set the cattle to graze in the pasture unattended and dismounted at the house, where James Kaytennae was unloading the wagon, helped by two women. The youngest one caught Patrick’s eye. She had dark, curly hair, bright blue eyes, an oval face with high cheekbones, and a slender figure. The other woman wasn’t much older, Patrick reckoned, and looked to be the girl’s sister, although she wasn’t near as fetching.

He tipped his hat in the girl’s direction and got a startled look in response.

“You men might as well light,” the older woman said as she shouldered a bag of beans. “I’m Ruth Dunphy. I expect my husband to be here shortly. There’s coffee on the stove.”

She turned and hurried toward the open door.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Cal called after her, easing out of his saddle.

The pretty girl followed along behind with big tins of coffee wrapped in her arms.

“You coming?” Patrick asked Kaytennae as he slid to the ground.

Kaytennae shook his head. “Work to do, and Tom Dunphy doesn’t like Apaches unless they’re Christians.”

“I’ll lend a hand,” Patrick said as Cal and George jingled their way inside.

He pitched in, handing sacks, boxes, and tins to the two women, who came and went together, never out of each other’s sight, rushing as fast as they could to get the stores into the house. The younger woman was small boned, light-footed, and soft curved. Her hair was piled high in a messy way that charmed Patrick.

He tried conversation when she stumbled carrying a bag of flour. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head mutely in reply as Dunphy’s wife gave him a sharp look.

He tried again when he handed her a carton of canned peaches. “The juice at the bottom of the can is what I like the best,” he said awkwardly. “How about you?”

It won him an alarmed look from the girl and a glowering stare from Dunphy’s wife.

“What’s her name?” he asked Kaytennae after the wagon was emptied and the women had gone inside.

“Emma. Her family was rubbed out someplace far away in Texas. Her sister is Dunphy’s wife. She came here five moons ago.”

“She sure ain’t much of a talker,” Patrick said.

Kaytennae shrugged. “When I first bring her here in the wagon, she talked, talked, talked, all the time. Now, not so much.”

“She seemed scared,” Patrick said.

“Dunphy has a heavy hand,” Kaytennae said.

Inside the house, Emma had disappeared. Dunphy’s wife gave Patrick a weak smile and poured him a cup of coffee.

“Mr. Dunphy will be here soon,” she said nervously.

“Yes, ma’am,” Patrick replied. “Where’s your sister?”

“She’s not feeling well.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Patrick said, thinking the girl hadn’t looked sick at all.

Mrs. Dunphy turned her attention to the boxes, sacks, and tins of food and supplies stacked on the floor and began putting them on the shelves of a big cabinet near the cookstove or in large tin and wooden boxes that sat on the dirt floor. Everything in the room, including the round dining table, the chairs, even the stove, looked scrubbed spotless. There wasn’t a speck of dust or dirt around the firewood box, and under a small window a brightly polished lamp sat on a small table next to an open Bible. Patrick had never seen such a clean house.

“Can we help, ma’am?” Cal asked.

Ruth Dunphy turned and bushed hair from her face. “No. It all must be done exactly so. A place for everything, and everything in its place.”

“Well, then, we’ll wait for your husband on the porch,” Cal said.

“Yes, that would be best,” Ruth Dunphy replied as she carefully put the last can of peaches with all the others, label side out.

Patrick left his untouched coffee and followed Cal and George to the porch. “Did the girl look sick to you?” he asked.

“Didn’t have much of a chance to tell,” Cal replied. “Dunphy’s missus herded her into the other room as soon as the supplies were unloaded.”

“I never saw a woman in such a panic to get her victuals stowed,” George said.

“That girl isn’t sick; she’s scared,” Patrick said. “Kaytennae says Dunphy is hard on the women.”

“That may be,” Cal said, “but it’s Dunphy’s home and we’ve no cause to interfere because of it.”

Down by the pond, James Kaytennae had unhitched his team of mules and was washing them down.

“I’ll water the horses,” Patrick said as he grabbed the reins and started them toward the pond.

“You’ve only seen that girl Emma once before?” he asked Kaytennae at the pond after the ponies were watered.

“You not see her again inside?” Kaytennae asked.

“Nope, she disappeared.”

“It is same with me. Many times I come here and I don’t see her much. Today is different; Dunphy not here yet. Other times, he hides her.”

“Where?”

Kaytennae shrugged.

“Does he hide his wife?”

“Not the wife,” Kaytennae replied.

“That’s mighty peculiar.”

Kaytennae shrugged again, looked over Patrick’s shoulder, and raised his chin. “Dunphy coming now.”

In the distance a rider hazing a string of horses cantered toward them.

“Be careful around him, Walks Alone,” James said. “He has snake in him.”

“My name is Patrick, not Walks Alone.”

“It is good to have more than one name,” Kaytennae replied with a slight smile.

As Dunphy drew near, Patrick stepped over to the horse corral, opened the gate, and looked up at the man as he drove the ponies into the enclosure. He had close-set eyes under thick brows and a heavy jaw that gave him an ornery expression.

“Are you Cal Doran?” he demanded as Patrick swung the gate closed.

“Nope, he’s over at the house waiting on you,” Patrick answered.

Dunphy wheeled his horse. “Saddle up and bring those ponies along. I want to take a look at each and every one of them cows you brought.”

Patrick ambled back to the horses as Dunphy cantered toward the house. “That’s one thorny character,” he said to James Kaytennae as he climbed on Cuidado.

“He stirs many to anger,” Kaytennae replied. “Someday he gets killed, I think.”

* * *

A
t the end of the day, after the cattle had been inspected and tallied and the paper for payment signed, Tom Dunphy invited Cal, Patrick, and George to the house for supper and offered them the barn to bed down in overnight. Excluded from Dunphy’s hospitality, James Kaytennae spread his bedroll under the wagon, where he would dine on jerked beef and cold biscuits.

As they cleaned up at the well before supper, Patrick repeated to Cal and George what James Kaytennae had told him about Dunphy and the girl.

“Maybe it’s none of our business,” George said as he slicked down his hair.

“Something’s not right,” Patrick retorted hotly.

The notion that Patrick seemed genuinely concerned about the girl pleased Cal, and from what he’d heard, Patrick had cause to fret. “If she’s not at supper, we’ll ask about her,” he said, “but not right away.”

Patrick smiled, an honest, true smile. “Good.”

There was no sign of Emma as the men settled down at the table to eat. Ruth Dunphy served up a stew and silently picked at her meal while her husband jawboned about how hard it was to get the heathen Apaches to care for the five thousand sheep Lieutenant Stottler had purchased as part of his scheme to turn the Indians into responsible farmers.

“Out in the camps, all they do is slaughter a lamb and cook it when they get hungry,” Dunphy complained. “Nobody looks after the animals. It’s easy pickings for the wolves and coyotes.”

“Can’t say I’d like herding sheep either,” Cal said.

“They’re all just lazy beggars, getting everything for free,” Dunphy added.

“Once they were free,” Cal replied as he pushed his empty plate away. “That was mighty good stew, ma’am.”

“A bit more?” Ruth Dunphy asked.

“I’d be obliged if you would let me take some of your cooking to the Indian, ma’am. Doesn’t seem fair to cut him out of such good fixings.”

Her hand froze in midair.

“By thunder, no,” Dunphy said sharply.

Cal ignored Dunphy and smiled at his wife. “Sure would be mighty Christian of you, ma’am.”

“I said no,” Dunphy sputtered. “We break bread only with God-fearing folks in this house.”

“Where’s Emma?” Patrick asked softly.

Cal swung his gaze to Dunphy. “That’s been troubling my mind, also. Where is that pretty girl?”

Dunphy glared at his wife.

“Where is she?” Patrick prodded.

“Sickly tonight,” Dunphy replied slowly, his gaze locked on his wife. “Isn’t that right?”

Ruth Dunphy nodded and dropped her gaze.

“She seemed all right earlier,” Patrick said.

“I said she’s sick,” Dunphy said, his voice rising.

“You are not a plausible liar, sir,” Cal said, placing his six-gun on the table, his hand on the grip.

Dunphy’s face turned red. “No need for that.”

“Maybe not,” Cal said. “Take a look, Patrick.”

Dunphy’s wife started praying, head lowered, hands clasped, eyes squeezed shut. Color drained from Dunphy’s face.

In the bedroom Patrick found Emma gagged and bound to the bed. A straw mattress and a blanket were on the floor next to the bed. He wondered if that was where Dunphy’s wife slept. He freed Emma’s hands, removed the gag, and asked if she wanted to leave.

She whispered, “Yes, yes, yes.”

He led her out of the bedroom past where husband and wife sat like statues under the watchful eyes of Cal and George, who’d gathered up Dunphy’s six-gun and rifle.

“We’re leaving now,” Patrick said to Ruth Dunphy. “You’re welcome to come with us.”

Ruth Dunphy shook her head no.

Cal waited for Patrick and the girl to pass outside. “I sure hope there aren’t any more young womenfolk back home planning to come and stay with y’all,” he said. “If I hear different, it may prompt me to pay another visit.”

* * *

T
he party arrived at Mescalero and stopped at James Kaytennae’s cabin, a one-room affair not much bigger than a tepee, with a cookstove in the middle of the room vented by a pipe through the ceiling. The dirt floor was covered in blankets, animal skins, and boxes that held Kaytennae’s important possessions. Several long rifles rested against a wall, and a coat and several hats hung on pegs near the door. There were no chairs, so everyone sat on the floor while Kaytennae got a fire going to boil coffee.