Hard Country (8 page)

Ignacio knew the four
americanos
with Señor Coghlan only by their first names. The Irishman was building a store on the main road through the village, and Ignacio had seen the vaqueros come and go many times. Dick, an older man, perhaps in his forties but certainly not as old as Señor Coghlan, had a nasty scar that ran from below his eye to his jaw. He seemed to be the
jefe
of the crew. The two cousins, Bill and Walter Clossen, who were surly to Ignacio upon occasion, stood to one side watching Charlie, a slender cowboy not much older than Ignacio. Charlie was talking earnestly to Teresa, leaning close to her, smiling and laughing, while Antonio, Ignacio’s fourteen-year-old brother, stood nervously nearby. Alarmed at such a sight, Ignacio made a beeline for them.

“The señorita doesn’t speak English,” he said to Charlie as he approached.

Charlie laughed. “I got that figured out all right, but I can tell she likes me anyhow.” He glanced at Teresa with the look of a hawk about to swoop up its prey. “Now, you go on and talk Mexican to the little lady for me. You tell her I like her
mucho bueno,
and that I’m gonna borrow me a horse and buggy on Sunday and come calling to take her for a ride.”

“I cannot speak that to her,” Ignacio replied, glancing at Teresa. Although her eyes were lowered, she smiled sweetly at the cowboy.

Charlie’s grin disappeared. “Sure you can. Just be a good Mexican and do as I say.”

Ignacio shook his head. “Her father will not allow you his permission.”

Teresa pulled at Ignacio’s sleeve. “What is he saying?” she asked in Spanish, her eyes fixed on the
americano.

For an instant Ignacio wished he had Charlie’s straw-colored hair and blue eyes. He switched to Spanish. “Nothing of importance.”

Teresa’s mother was steps away, deep in conversation with some of the village women. He pulled Antonio along with him, walked over to Señora Armijo, and politely asked if he could dance with Teresa again once the music resumed.

“Of course,” Señora Armijo replied with a smile, a bit perplexed by Ignacio’s request. There was no need to ask her permission.

As she glanced around for her daughter, her smile froze when she caught sight of Teresa talking to the blond
americano.
She broke away from the chitchat, took Teresa by the arm, and led her away from the gringo.

Charlie shot Ignacio a hard look and edged over to him. “You shouldn’t have done that, boy. I wasn’t finished talking to the lady.”

“
Excusa, señor?
” Ignacio said innocently as he stood his ground and tried to keep his apprehension at bay. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck.

Charlie bared his teeth. “Ain’t you just a sight, acting slow-witted and such. Don’t get uppity on me, boy, unless you want to go home, borrow your daddy’s
pistola,
and meet me outside.”

Ignacio stiffened. “I have no
querella
with you.”

Charlie smirked. “I bet you fancy that little
chica
yourself, don’t you, boy?”

Ignacio could feel a blush spreading across his cheeks. He glanced at the
pistola
strapped to Charlie’s leg, swallowed hard, and said nothing.

“Next time I tell you to do something, you jump to it, hear me, boy?” Charlie patted his pistol for emphasis. “Now, get.”

Ignacio slowly turned away, angry at himself for not standing up to Charlie, certain that in his first test of manhood he’d failed dismally. Behind him he heard Charlie and the gringo Clossen cousins laughing at him. On the other side of the dance floor Teresa gazed at Charlie, that coy smile still on her lips. Never had she ever smiled at him that way. There and then Ignacio vowed that when he had money, instead of books he would buy a pistol and learn how to use it.

The music started up again. He walked over to Teresa and asked her to dance. She refused and would not talk to him for the rest of the night.

7

J
ohn Kerney had been on the Tularosa for nearly a year, and the land still amazed and awed him. Mountains rose east and west of the wide basin, making for endless brilliant sunrises and astonishing sunsets. Under crystal-clear, deep blue skies, he could see in sharp detail a hundred miles up and down the range, from the northerly lava badlands the Mexicans called the malpais, past the gleaming waves of blinding white sand dunes that stretched for miles over the basin, beyond to the southerly nameless mesa grasslands and the faint outline of the mountains near the El Paso border town.

The basin and the mountains that confined it were a land impossible to ignore. Kerney had seen beautiful places before; the endless Texas prairie that stretched a man’s vision to the distant horizon, the rich farmlands along the wide Missouri that seemed to be cast in every imaginable shade of green, the deep forests of the Kentucky blue mountains. But on the Tularosa—where sentinel mountain ranges hid fresh running streams coursing down narrow ravines, where bunchgrass grew as high as a horse’s belly, where massive creamy clouds gathered thousands of feet above vertical spires—here his spirits soared, and the sadness that had dogged him the last few years lessened.

The basin was vast, inspiring, daunting, filled with plants and animals that stung and bit, harsh and windswept, ravaged by floods and parched by drought, and mostly empty of people. It suited John Kerney just fine.

Trailing five horses he’d picked up for his employer from a rancher trading livestock at the army fort two days ago, he’d camped overnight on the Apache lands in the high country without incident and had just passed Dead Man’s Mountain when he spotted a convoy of four supply wagons winding up the rocky wagon road from the village far below. He continued on until he reached the slow-moving wagons and then halted his small remuda. The Mexicans from Tularosa likewise reined their horse teams to a stop. Kerney greeted them with his slowly expanding Spanish vocabulary.

“Señor Kerney, your Spanish is improving little bit,” Ignacio Chávez said with a smile. “Why we don’t see you in the village anymore?”

“I parted ways with Pat Coghlan,” Kerney replied as he opened his saddlebag and pulled out a small parcel. “I’ve been working for John Good over at La Luz. Haven’t been back this way since he took me on.”

He leaned out from his saddle and handed the parcel to Ignacio. “This is for you.”

“What is it?” Ignacio asked, surprised.

“I know you like to read. It’s a book of stories by a writer named Hawthorne. It’s pretty beat-up, but most of the pages are there, and some of the yarns aren’t half bad if you can stand all the fancy words he uses to get the job done.”

With Ignacio in mind, Kerney had bought the tattered book for a five-cent piece from a soldier’s wife at the fort.

“Is it written in
americano
?” Ignacio asked, almost unbelieving.

“Yep, so your English can get better,
poco a poco.
”

Ignacio laughed and grinned with pleasure as he unwrapped the parcel and slowly sounded out the words of the title. “
Twice-Told Tales.
What means that?”

Kerney shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Ignacio carefully tucked the book inside his shirt. “
Muchas gracias,
Señor Kerney.”

“
Por nada,
” Kerney replied. He touched the brim of his hat, waved good-bye to the men in the wagons ahead of Ignacio, and started down the road trailing his small remuda.

A good mile farther on, Ignacio suddenly remembered that the gringo Charlie had asked him several times if he knew of Señor Kerney’s whereabouts. And although he had no knowledge that Charlie wished Kerney harm, Ignacio had an urge to stop the horses, turn the wagon around, and warn the señor about the
pistolero.

Over his shoulder he could see only dust on the trail kicked up by Kerney’s remuda. Ignacio hoped there would be no trouble waiting for him in Tularosa.

* * *

A
s John Kerney drew near Tularosa, the village spread out before him. The low, flat-roof adobe houses with chickens running loose in yards behind low walls, the orderly irrigation ditches filled with clear running water that fed the carefully tended fields, and the cottonwoods along the riverbank spreading welcoming shade made for a pleasant view. Beyond the village, the hot sun on the still basin and the shimmering mountains to the west etched by a cloudless blue sky promised a dry, windless day.

He entered the peaceful village through the main road and passed by two old men unloading a cart of firewood near an outdoor kitchen, where several women were busy at a table near an
horno
preparing food for the midday meal. From the river he could hear the sounds of children playing under the cottonwood trees, and in the grassy rangeland farther on a small herd of sheep grazed under the watchful eyes of a man and dog.

The village of La Luz, where Kerney’s employer, John Good, had his ranch, was still a twelve-mile ride away. He stopped to rest and water the horses at the river before moving on past the unfinished store and saloon Pat Coghlan was building on the main road. Steady progress to the buildings had been made since Kerney had left Tularosa: Chimneys now poked through finished roofs, and a plank sidewalk joined the long porches that fronted both structures.

Once Coghlan opened for business, every cowboy and rancher within fifty miles would be coming to Tularosa for supplies, liquor, and whatever else they needed, including the favors of the soiled doves that were sure to be drawn to the town. Soldiers from Fort Stanton would gladly make the long ride to frequent the place, and in no time the villagers would stop making the arduous wagon trips to Las Cruces and Mesilla for supplies and start trading with Coghlan instead. The man was poised to get rich.

Tularosa’s days as a sleepy Mexican village were numbered. Some folks were already calling Patrick Coghlan the king of Tularosa, and there was talk he had bought up a large stretch of land upstream from the village in the sweetest valley on the basin. If that was true, Coghlan now controlled the water that supplied the village and could run cows on a half million acres. That made him a force to be reckoned with.

Up ahead in the open country, four horsemen rode hard in his direction, kicking up dust. Unsure of what their hurry might be, Kerney veered the string of ponies off the road, ran a quick picket line, pulled his rifle from its scabbard, saddled up, and waited. As the riders came close, Kerney recognized Charlie Gambel. His grip tightened on the rifle.

“Well, well,” Charlie said, almost sneering as he pulled his horse to a stop. “If it ain’t John Kerney.”

“Charlie,” Kerney said evenly, eyeing Gambel’s companions as they joined up with the young outlaw. Although he’d never met the other men before, he guessed Charlie’s pals were Dick Turknet and the Clossen cousins. The cousins were dull-eyed boys without much spark, and Turknet had a vicious look about him. He gazed at Kerney’s string of horses with great interest.

Aside from Charlie, this was the bunch that had sold Tom’s stolen horses. Kerney had wondered what he would do if he met up with them. From the hard looks he was getting, asking about Tom’s ponies didn’t seem like a good idea.

“Aren’t you glad to see me, old friend?” Charlie asked with bravado, eyeing Kerney’s rifle.

Kerney turned his horse slightly so that the rifle barrel pointed directly at Charlie’s belly, but he kept his eyes locked on Dick Turknet, who would obviously call the play.

“I heard you’d showed up hereabouts recently,” Kerney replied, “but I don’t have time to palaver, and you boys seemed to be in a big hurry when you rode up.”

He started silently counting, figuring if he got to ten he’d probably be a dead man lying at the side of the road.

“True enough,” Turknet said just as Kerney counted nine and was about to shoot Charlie Gambel.

He nodded at Kerney and wheeled his horse against Charlie’s mount. “If you got business with this cowboy, Charlie, it will have to wait. Let’s go.”

Turknet lit out for the village at a gallop.

“I ain’t forgetting what you did to me,” Charlie called out as he and the cousins chased after Turknet.

John Kerney watched until they were out of sight, let out a sigh of relief, and put the rifle away. As he gathered the small remuda and struck out for La Luz, he wondered if there was anything at all that might change Charlie’s mind about being an outlaw. He doubted it.

In the tense few moments during his encounter with Turknet and his gang, Kerney had managed a quick look at their horses. None had belonged to his dead brother which didn’t mean much one way or the other. What did matter was that Turknet was without a doubt a killer who’d once had Tom’s stolen horses in his possession. That made him three-fourths guilty of horse thieving and murder in Kerney’s mind. He looked forward to seeing Turknet again in a more peaceable setting.

* * *

J
ohn Good’s ranch was a few miles above the village of La Luz in a canyon that ran down the west slope of the mountains through a narrow gorge that opened onto broad meadows with tall, abundant grasses. In fact, the grass was fragile and easily overgrazed, a lesson John Good had learned the hard way by letting his cattle browse a higher pasture down to bare soil and dead roots.

A wide, perennial creek with headwaters in the mountains flowed through the canyon to the carefully tilled fields in the Mexican settlement below.

According to the story recounted by La Luz villagers, two Spanish missionaries stopped on their way to Santa Fe in 1719, baptized a group of Indians, and built a chapel, which they named Our Lady of Light before moving on. La Luz—“The Light”—remained a forgotten place for well over a century, until Mexican settlers moved in, followed a mere fifteen years later by Texas ranchers trailing cattle into the territory.

The ranch was a family operation. John Good had a passel of sons to help him, along with a son-in-law and a brother. He also had a wife and several daughters to care for domestic matters. As the only hired hand, Kerney pretty much got the chores none of the male family members aspired to, including cutting wood for the cookstove, drawing water from the well, and helping the ladies in the kitchen when called upon to do so.