Hard Country (63 page)

“No,” Emma answered. “We’ll come home after our visit.”

“Promise?”

Emma pulled him close. “I promise.”

70

T
he early morning train left Las Cruces with coach cars filled with ranchers, wives, and their children traveling to Albuquerque for a long weekend at the state stockmen’s convention. Matthew sat quietly next to Emma in a window seat, gazing at the passing landscape. His silence gave her time to think.

Since leaving Patrick, Emma’s only source of reliable information about him came from Addie Hightower, the ranch neighbor who had taught CJ for a time. During Addie’s last trip to town, she reported that Patrick had started fixing up the ranch after years of neglecting it and had even asked after Emma. He wanted to know if she was doing all right and if she’d heard from CJ.

It surprised Emma to hear Patrick showed any interest in her at all, and while she didn’t take it to mean his hard feelings about her and CJ had softened, it might mean he’d be open to CJ’s last wish.

Long ago, when she blamed herself for Molly’s death, Cal, Patrick, and George had helped her through it. But this time George and Cal were gone and she was on her own. After CJ ran away, Patrick had accosted her and Matthew on the street, drunkenly accusing her of not doing enough to stop CJ from joining the army. That memory was seared into her mind along with the anger she felt at Patrick for his unjust reproachment. But in her heart she also felt she had failed that wonderful boy.

She gripped her purse tightly to hold back her tears. In it were all of CJ’s letters. Patrick should read them to know what a good and honorable man he’d become. And he should meet Matthew and at the very least acknowledge him as his son. If nothing more was accomplished, perhaps that would be enough to honor CJ’s wishes.

The engine whistle blew as the train slowed on the approach to the station. Engle was no longer a bustling town fueled by construction of the dam ten miles west on the Rio Grande; its heyday had come and gone. Only the railroad and the big cattle spreads on the Jornada kept it going.

Matthew pointed out the window at the distant San Andres. “Is his ranch in those mountains?”

“On the far side,” Emma replied.

“When will we get there?”

“It’s a long ride. We’ll rent a buggy.”

Matthew’s expression turned serious. “He won’t like me.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” Matthew replied sourly.

* * *

“B
uggy coming!” Curtis called out from the porch. “It’s a far piece yet.”

Patrick stepped out of the barn, looked across the pasture at the distant buggy, and glanced up at Curtis. “Who is it?”

“Can’t say,” Curtis replied, “but it sure ain’t any of the neighbors.”

“Get the field glasses and take a look.”

Curtis got the glasses, studied the approaching buggy, and handed the glasses to Patrick when he reached the porch. “A woman and a button,” he reported.

“I’ll be damned,” Patrick said after a good look.

“Who is it?”

He lowered the glasses. “My ex-wife and her boy.”

“Didn’t know you had another son. Should I set out two more plates for supper?”

It would be dark in an hour, with a quarter moon rising late. “You’d better,” Patrick replied grumpily, wondering what brought Emma and the boy to the Double K. “And fix up the casita. They’ll need to spend the night.”

Curtis limped back inside, and Patrick studied Emma and the boy through the glasses again. Emma looked a touch older but still about as pretty as a woman could be. She still stirred him like no other woman ever did.

He’d last seen her on the street in Las Cruces after having a few drinks to celebrate filing on six hundred and forty acres he’d bought from a homesteader who’d gone broke. Because the section was in Doña Ana County, he’d had to do the paperwork at the county seat. It had been his first trip to Las Cruces in years, and damn if Emma didn’t turn up with that boy right in front of him again. He gave her a chewing on about something but couldn’t remember what.

The boy was a pint-size version of CJ. He had the same hair, same square shoulders, and same lean, angular face particular to Kerney men. He’d never admitted any of that to Emma. Facing her cold heart always made him dig in his heels.

A preacher once told him that some men had to reach a certain age before they could accept their failings and follow Jesus to salvation. Patrick reckoned since he already knew what he’d done wrong to his marriage, he didn’t need churchgoing forgiveness.

He met the buggy at the corrals, grabbed the reins, and searched Emma’s face. She gave nothing away. “What brings you here?” he demanded.

“You remember Matthew,” Emma said firmly, her arm around the boy.

Patrick glanced at the boy. “I do. Why are you here?”

“I want to go home,” Matthew whispered, tugging Emma’s sleeve, eyes wide with apprehension. “I don’t like it here.”

“I ain’t gonna bite you, boy,” Patrick snapped, reacting to the sting of Matthew’s words.

“Let go of the reins.” Emma raised the buggy whip.

“Are you gonna give me a hiding?” Patrick asked, eyeing the whip.

“No, we’re going home. Let go of the reins.”

Patrick dropped the reins. “Do what suits you.”

“CJ is dead,” Emma said. “He was killed in France.”

Patrick turned ashen gray. “Jesus, no. Not that boy. Not CJ.” He stopped the horse before Emma flicked the whip. “Don’t leave,” he implored.

Emma stared at him hard. “Why not?”

“Please, tell me what you know. I only got two letters from him all the time he’s been gone.”

“I brought his letters to me for you to read.”

“Come inside,” Patrick said slowly. “You and the boy stay the night.”

Emma didn’t move. “His name is Matthew,” she said emphatically. “And he’s your son.”

Patrick nodded. “I know he is. I’ve known it all along. You and Matthew come inside. Supper’s on the stove.”

“I’m real hungry, Ma,” Matthew said.

“Very well,” Emma said as she stepped down from the buggy. Perhaps the trip hadn’t been for naught after all.

* * *

E
mma sat with Matthew on the living room couch watching Patrick read CJ’s letters. After each one, he took a sip of whiskey. When he drained the glass, he splashed a bit more whiskey into it and gave Emma a wary look.

“I don’t get drunk anymore,” he said as he picked up the last unread letter. “Stopped doing that a while back.”

Emma stayed silent.

Twice he read CJ’s last wish. Be a pa to Matthew was what CJ wanted. He stared at Matthew. The resemblance to CJ and himself was clear. He thought back to when he was a boy, and not a soul had been there for him. Yet he managed to get by. For so many years he had thought about himself this way. But it was a lie. John Kerney saved him from a life of sheer hell, Cal raised him up out of pure goodness, and Ignacio and Teresa remained his friends even when he repeatedly shunned them.

He put the letter on top of a neat pile and handed it to Emma. “I plumb drove CJ away when I shot that pony he was determined too gentle.”

“He told me,” Emma said, expecting Patrick to quickly put a share of the fault on her.

“Seems I’m good at that.”

“Yes, you are,” Emma replied, surprised that he didn’t start blaming her.

“If I’d known he wanted to join up, I would have told him what war was really like.”

“That didn’t work when Cal tried it on you.” Emma wondered what it was about men that made them think they’d love war.

“I know it. That’s some last wish CJ put on us,” Patrick said.

“It is, but if you want to know Matt as your son, you have to stop drinking.”

“You’d let me be a father to him?” Patrick wondered if maybe later on she would reconcile with him.

“CJ wanted us to try,” Emma replied.

“He was a better man than me, and I give you all the credit for that. You raised him right. I’m obliged that you came out and brought the letters to show me.”

“Is that all you have to say?”

“No.” Patrick looked at Matthew. “Did your mother read you CJ’s letters?”

Matthew nodded.

Patrick smiled. “I’m not always mean and surly like he said.”

Matthew stared silently back.

Patrick sighed and sadly shook his head. “I guess he doesn’t want a thing to do with me.”

Emma’s expression turned cold. “Is that going to be your excuse?”

“I wasn’t making an excuse.”

“Yes, you were,” she snapped. “You like to make out that everyone steps away from you, everyone lets you down. I’m sick of it. I’ve always wanted you to be a father to Matthew. A
good
father.”

Patrick bit his lip. “I was only halfway there for CJ, I reckon, so I need to be all the way there for Matthew. If you’ll give me a hand with it, I’d like to try.”

Emma had never once heard Patrick ask for help before. She picked up the packet of letters. “Come to town next Sunday sober and we’ll talk about it.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Victuals on the table,” Curtis called out from the kitchen.

Emma stood and took Matthew’s hand. “Let’s go wash up for supper.”

“I’ll join you shortly,” Patrick said.

After they left, Patrick poured himself another drink and went out on the veranda. The night was cold and the quarter moon had yet to rise. The vast Tularosa spread out before him, dark and quiet except for the slightest whisper of a breeze.

He remembered CJ gleefully chasing the roadrunner through the cottonwoods, grinning from ear to ear astride his first pony, sitting peacefully in Emma’s lap while she read him stories. The thought of those happy times made his heart sink. He damn sure was going to miss him.

The breeze picked up and he felt a wet sting at the corners of his eyes. No point looking back. He had a chance to do right with Matt, and truth be told, without the boy he had no family at all.

He twirled the glass of whiskey in his hands and wondered if Emma would really stick and help him with Matt, or shuck him off the first time he made a mistake. He poured out the whiskey, threw the glass away, heard it shatter, and decided it was time to be the father CJ always wanted him to be, no matter what else happened between him and Emma.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

A
great deal of research went into
Hard Country
to make it as historically accurate as possible. For matters pertaining to the world of the cowboy,
Log of a Twentieth Century Cowboy,
by Daniel G. Moore,
The Cowboy,
by Philip Ashton Rollins,
A Hundred Years of Horse Tracks: The Story of the Gray Ranch,
by George Hillard,
The Log of a Cowboy,
by Andy Adams, and
Cattle Horses & Men,
by John H. (Jack) Culley, were invaluable.

For information about important historical characters and events,
A Bar Cross Man: The Life and Personal Writings of Eugene Manlove Rhodes,
by W. H. Hutchinson,
The Two Alberts: Fountain and Fall,
by Gordon R. Owen,
The Hired Man on Horseback: My Story of Eugene Manlove Rhodes,
by May D. Rhodes,
The Life and Death of Colonel Albert Jennings Fountain,
by A. M. Gibson,
George Curry: 1861–1947, an Autobiography,
by George Curry,
Tularosa: Last of the Frontier West,
by C. L. Sonnichsen, and
Fort Stanton,
by F. Stanley, were especially helpful.

On matters pertaining to the Rough Riders, I turned to
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt,
by Edmund Morris,
An Oklahoma Rough Rider: Billy McGinty’s Own Story,
edited by Jim Fulbright and Albert Stehno, and
The Rough Riders,
by Theodore Roosevelt with additional text by Richard Bak.

Lonnie J. White’s excellent book,
Panthers to Arrowheads: The 36th (Texas-Oklahoma) Division in World War I,
was an important and valuable source of information about the role of the National Guard in the Great War.

Accurate cowboy lingo came to me by way of
The Dictionary of the American West,
by Win Blevins, and
The Cowboy,
by Rollins. I found Larry D. Ball’s
Desert Lawman
helpful in gaining an understanding of law enforcement on the frontier. Randy Steffen’s
The Horse Soldier, 1776–1943,
volume 2, and Robert M. Utley’s
The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846–1890
provided valuable insights into the workings of the cavalry in the Southwest.
Indeh: An Apache Odyssey,
by Eve Ball with Nora Henn and Lynda A. Sanchez, Sonnichsen’s
The Mescalero Apaches,
Eve Ball’s
In the Days of Victorio,
and
Living Life’s Circle: Mescalero Apache Cosmovision,
by Claire R. Farrer, provided great insight into the culture and history of a proud people who continue to preserve their traditions and beliefs while making their way in contemporary society. Stephen H. Lekson’s
Nana’s Raid: Apache Warfare in Southern New Mexico, 1881
added to my understanding of those troubled times for the Apaches in the New Mexico Territory.

The late, masterful writer and renowned storyteller J. Frank Dobie enriched my understanding of Texan pioneers, especially through his books
The Longhorns, Some Part of Myself,
and
Cow People.
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century places came to life for me through
Centennial: Alamogordo New Mexico: 1898–1998,
by David Townsend and Clif McDonald,
Las Cruces, New Mexico, 1849–1999: Multicultural Crossroads,
by Gordon Owen,
Las Cruces, New Mexico 1881,
by Patrick H. Beckett,
An Illustrated History of New Mexico,
by Thomas E. Chávez,
White Oaks,
by Morris B. Parker,
The Territorial History of Socorro, New Mexico,
by Bruce Ashcroft, and Sonnichsen’s
Tularosa: Last of the Frontier West.
Also of great help were White Sands Missile Range Archaeological Reports authored by Peter L. Eidenbach, Linda Hart, Beth Morgan, and Robert L. Hart, and several self-published family histories that put real faces on the people who settled the hard and beautiful country of New Mexico. Mrs. Tom Charles’s
Tales of the Tularosa
and
More Tales of the Tularosa
were especially informative.