“Yes, she’s a big deal. I’m just not ready yet—though I’ll admit I was tempted.”
With a wide grin, Sam leaned back in his swivel chair and tented his fingers over his chest. “Can’t blame you there, but I do understand.” He slapped a hand down on his desk. “So, back to business. How many more head of cattle do we have to sell?”
“Well, Jones and I think about two-fifty, plus the calf crop. I’ll keep about a hundred heifers, if you want to build a herd, grow them out this winter, and bring them back next spring. There were way too many cattle up there and the range needs some rest.”
“I can understand that. Now, Late Evans wants you to look at some bulls for next year. They’re Domino stock.”
“We need some fresh blood, and that should give us a start on a real herd. I want to clear the alfalfa field and re-sow it. There will be some ditch repair and seed plus fuel expenses, but eighty acres of alfalfa would be a great asset to that place.”
“That’s fine with me. Hire some carpenters and fix the house. If we ever want to sell it in the future, it will be the first thing they’ll look at. Plus, you’ll need to entertain some of my prospective associates. People like that cowboy atmosphere, with steaks cooking on the fire. Would you mind them making a movie out there? They’ll leave us with a set we can rent to other movie makers.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Good. You’ll need about a half dozen nice bedrooms added to the current residence. Plumb them, and in time we’ll have electricity out there.”
“Take a lot of poles and wire.”
“Tell Jones and the men thanks, I know they’ve worked hard. I’ll either drive up there or you can drive down in two weeks. We have sold close to sixty thousand dollars in cattle. Do those boys need some money?”
“They’d probably like some. We put on a new hand, Jim, the fella you sent to guide us up there last month.”
“Good. I know you can use him. I’ll have Hazel make you a checkbook. Be sure to legibly write on the stub where it went and who you paid. You’ve done well. When you come in, drop it off and she can get the details and you can take it back with you.”
“So, movie people are coming?”
“Get the house done. I’ll tell them to bring their own tent for now.”
With business over, he drove to Chandler to see his new half-brothers and sister. It was one of those rare, beautiful winter days, when the sun shines down out of a brilliant blue sky and no wind comes off the snowcapped mountains to chill the flesh. When he drove in, his dad was busy overhauling a John Deere tractor. He came over in his shirt sleeves, wiping greasy hands on a rag. Lenore came to the doorway in an apron and waved. Sam had given Mark two hundred dollars in cash and he bought some hard candy for the children when he filled up the coupe.
Dang, he should’a brought them more gifts or something. He passed the sweets around, so each got a handful and they went off screeching, chasing each other. The baby slept through it all in her crib in the living room. He stood, looking down at her for a long while, imagining another life.
Never mind that. Lenore gave him a hug and thanked him. He kissed her cheek. Family was a pretty good thing to have. They sat in the living room on the hand-me-down sofa and he told them about the ranch. Their house was clean as one got a shack. But it made him recall the days growing up, them living in sharecropper outfits and going up to Congress to his grandfather’s ranch.
She perked coffee on a butane stove, and they drank at a wooden table like the one they had back then while the kids played in the other room. She did have a noisy Kelvinator fridge that ran on gas. A light bulb hung down in each room. Country living.
The baby stirred in her crib. He rose. “Okay if I hold her?”
Lenore nodded, and he gathered her into his arms and rocked the warm wiggly baby while they talked about rounding up the cattle and the success he’d had on the ranch.
“I cleared a road into the place with a cable blade Cat. See, Dad? All those things you taught me came to good use.”
“May I ask you something?” Lenore asked cautiously.
“Sure, what’s that?”
“Do you still hear the war?”
“Sometimes.” He leaned down to kiss the child’s cheek. “More now that Alma’s gone. Especially at night.”
Her eyes darkened, but she nodded like that was all she wanted to know.
Before he left, he paid his dad for the saddle and put it in the trunk. “I need to go home.”
They shook hands and Dad patted his shoulder.
“Son, I was worried. You talking about horses and riding off to get lost. But my Lord, you’ve done well for yourself. Thanks for coming by.” Then he handed his wife the saddle money.
They must be living close. He’d have thought the old man would’ve spent that on himself or her—not put it in the bread fund. He’d have to help them in some way. He drove off, leaving a wake of dust and headed for a lonely night.
When he reached the Tucson highway, he stopped.
No one was going to take Alma’s place. He’d found that out the night before when offered a night in bed with a sensational movie star. Maybe he needed a trip to Nogales across the border, where he’d pay for what he got, with no holds barred. No ties or guilt trips.
He turned the steering wheel south. Since it was Sam’s car, he left it on the American side at dusk and took a wreck of a taxi to Canal Street. The cab man asked for fifty cents. He paid him.
The streets were noisy with life. Laughing, singing, women strutting. Mexican trumpet music came through the open doors of the cantinas. A drunk staggered onto the boardwalk, letting out clouds of smoke and the stench of beer and old spittoons. He bumped Mark’s shoulder, glanced at him with rheumy eyes.
“Sorry.” Mark pushed away and went on down the street, past blowsy women leaning against the fronts of one saloon after another.
Was this truly what he wanted? None would compare to his beautiful Alma. A man could do better than this, surely.
He turned a corner and walked on. Ahead was a fountain where a lovely young woman sat, dangling bare feet in the water. The sun was setting, sending a golden hue over the adobe haciendas. Her black hair rose around her in a puff of wind, then settled on her shoulders like a silken scarf. As he drew closer, she glanced up and smiled, looking for an instant so much like Alma his stomach clenched.
He nodded. “Buenos tardes.”
Her wide grin made him glad he remembered the correct greeting for early evening. She returned the salutation and added, “Sit if you like.”
Her English was better than his Spanish.
He sat, leaving a wide space between them. Spray from the fountain glistened in her hair.
“You came down from the United States?”
He studied her, tried to guess her age, then wondered why. “Yes.”
“Why did you come? For a puta?”
Heat crawled up his neck and flushed his face. “No. I—yes, I guess. But I’ve changed my mind.”
She kicked at the water, laughed. “Take me to the cantina where we will dance, and we can maybe change your mind back.”
“I will take you to dance because I’m lonely and you’re not a puta. Are you?”
Her own face reddening, she shook her head. “No. I am not but I am lonely, too.” She slid off the rock wall of the fountain, stuck her feet into a pair of leather huraches, and turned in a circle. “Am I not pretty enough to dance with an American?”
He held out his hand, took her small brown fingers in his grip. “Oh, yes. You are pretty enough. Only to dance, though.”
She steered him through backstreets away from the touristy area to a small cantina where a young man sat on a stool, playing music on a box guitar. He sang in a pure tenor voice about the love of his life leaving him for another. Couples danced slowly, the girls’ brightly colored skirts swirling with each turn. The place smelled of candles and herbs and beautiful women. Sombreros and fans of all colors decora
ted the walls. The floor was hard-stomped clay.
They found a table in a dark corner and ordered drinks. He stood.
“Dance with me?”
The singer went directly into another song, this one of a happier time when love did not betray lovers.
Mark held her loosely and they found the rhythm together. Here he was, dancing again. First with Linda and now this pretty girl. He hadn’t danced in ages, since the long-ago days at the USO, but he’d been fair to good at it once. Linda approved. This girl was better, and he went with her movements. Soon she snuggled closer, the top of her head under his chin so that her hair tickled.
The music stopped too soon, and the singer rose, laying his guitar on the stool. He spoke in Spanish, something about taking a break but coming back. Mark needed to learn better Spanish.
She led him back to their table. “He will be right back if you wish to stay and dance with me some more.” She tilted her head up and grinned with mischief. “I promise not to ask you to take me in the back. I just wish to dance the night away and forget my sadness.”
He held her chair, then sat down across from her so he could see her face when she smiled. “That is all I wish to do too. Forget sadness.”
So that’s what they did. She told him her sad story and he told her his. And they danced some more. He held her close with no fear of what might happen.
“You know, the night is almost over, and I don’t even know your name.”
“Nor I yours. Let it stay that way, for both of us.” She gazed up at him.
He thought about that for a while, then nodded in agreement.
Cocks were crowing down the street when the cantina closed, and he offered to walk her home. She took his hand, kissing the fingertips. “No need, gentil hombre. I am just a ways down the street. You will go home tonight?”
“Yes, lovely lady.” He watched her till she turned into a small gate with vines growing on it, then he walked into the tourist section where he found a ride back across the border to the Lincoln. In his mind, he would always think of her as Dolores.
—
THAT SPRING, THE MOVIE BUSINESS became a reality. They arrived wearing pith helmets and shorts. He cleared them a site down on the Verde and they moaned and groaned about the wilderness and no phones, claiming that the merchants nearby were robbing them on material prices. But it was just part of the post war days of building material shortages. There had not been any business during the war, so the recovering industry was strapped for suppliers. He’d learned that himself remodeling and expanding the ranch house. He finally found them a lumber company in Prescott that made them a good supplier.
Sam thought Mark could do miracles with what he did hiring local labor and ending up with things as nice as he had. Rosita became his housekeeper, cook, and general supervisor of the ranch when he was gone. She would read the crew the tasks he wanted done when he was in Phoenix or away. A short Mexican war widow in her forties, she ran things well, whether he was there or not.
He planted over forty acres of the large flat land and his new alfalfa drew every deer in Arizona to the field. Each morning and night, his men cleared them out with the noisy shotguns, and they hunted some for meat. The crop prospered and by midsummer they cut and stacked hay. It was a good plan and they made do with the small Ford. Over near Camp Verde, he bought an International with a cable frontend loader and a beaver board. The rest of the cuttings were stacked by the tractor. A team pulled the load delivered on the front end, and then they dragged it up to the top of the board with horses driven by Jones. The haystacks soon were piled high.
His crew beamed over their accomplishments, and so did Mark. In between cuttings, they overhauled the International tractor, got the truck running, and the car, too. But Mark still drove the Lincoln coupe.
Sometimes he thought of the pretty senorita in Nogales, and the evening they’d shared, but he never went back.
When Linda came to star in the movie, he took her on rides over the ranch and she fell in love with Red. Still, he made it clear that friendship was all he wanted. It wasn’t long before they actually enjoyed each other’s company without any complications.
He found the movie making bit boring. They shot every scene over and over again. Sam rented them ranch horses and furnished a power plant on a flatbed truck, all for a fee. Plus, they paid rent to use the ranch itself. Mark chuckled at Sam’s ability to make money, and the money was indeed great in the two months they were there. His three-man crew was paid a hundred dollars a day for working in the film. All of the boys bought new saddles made in Prescott and could not believe the money they earned.
Carlos told him they were going to have a rodeo at Camp Verde and asked him to come along. He let them drive the refurbished Buick, but told them not to drive it if they were drinking or he’d fire them. He agreed to meet them there and told Linda he’d pick her up.
How long had it been since he rode a bronc in competition? Six months before the war? Maybe that long ago, but he might try again.
Linda was excited as they drove down to Camp Verde. He got entered in the bronc riding. A friend offered to let him use his bareback rigging, and another guy loaned him his dogging horse and said he’d haze for twenty-five percent of what he won. Mark didn’t care. He’d not win anything anyway, and he’d pay the guy ten bucks for his troubles.
Jones was with him, telling him how this horse he’d drawn would buck. Linda was holding up a long-tailed dress and trying to keep up with them as they headed for the chute. Someone must’ve recognized her and told the rodeo announcer.
With borrowed spurs, gloves, and rigging, they helped him get ready to ride.
Wilcox, the announcer, told the crowd this next horse was a man killer. The best bucking horse in Arizona. Killer Bear. Mark looked up and frowned at the man, then turned back to the horse under him and tried to recall those days back when he rode.
Jones was talking in his ear more than that rascal ever talked in one day.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a lady on the gate looking worried about the next rider, Mark Shaw. He brought along the leading lady in the movie being shot on Shaw’s ranch, the HC. Let’s welcome Linda Lacosta!”
The applause from the crowd readied Mark for what was coming, and they turned Killer Bear out the gate. His spurs connected good with the horse’s shoulders, way down underneath him. Then, as if on springs, Bear soared high in the air and dropped down in a backbone-jarring landing. Bear kicked over his rear and went plunging away. Laid back on the horse, spurring him hard from down to up, the crowd went wild. He must’ve made the eight-second whistle, but he never heard it. The pickup men came charging in, telling him to get off.
His hand out of the rigging, he slipped over on the back of the pickup man’s saddle. Once on the ground, he took his hat off, waved at the crowd, and headed for the chutes. Linda appeared from behind a gate into the arena. He swept her up in his arms, held her high, baring her gorgeous legs, pretty as Marilyn Monroe’s. The flash photo by the publicity man made the cover of Life magazine the next week and Sam had one framed for each of them.
He scored an 82 and won the bronc riding. Thirty minutes later, he downed a steer in eleven flat and won the bulldogging. He always said Camp Verde Rodeo spoiled him so bad, he had to rodeo.
His only other date he ever had with Linda was when the studio paid his way to Hollywood for the premier showing of Under Arizona Skies. They suited him in a tux and a new 100X beaver he got to keep. He never felt more like a poodle dog on a leash than he did for all that.
CHAPTER NINE
AFTER THAT, HE DIDN’T HEAR from Linda much, except for an occasional letter that smelled of lavender and told him about this or that famous male star escorting her somewhere. She hoped to make him envious, but he was happy for her and glad he’d made the decision he had about staying on the ranch. Oh, he met rodeo buckle bunnies and widow women with big ranches looking for a man for their bed. He never paid them any mind.
&nbs
p; The ranch looked perfect—its fame as a movie site, the large-bodied Hereford herd, the green eighty acres of alfalfa. The ranch house was equipped with the war surplus generator he seldom used and running water designed to run on gravity with lots of pressure at the house and corrals.
Sam came up in his new 1954 Lincoln four-door and they had a sit down. A rich man wanted their ranch and was willing to pay one-and-a-half million dollars for it.
Sam leaned back in the wooden chair at the table. “That’s six hundred thousand dollars to you. Plus, I’ve got a hundred and sixty acres down in Paradise Valley I’ll give you to have your own place down there. Are you interested? This offer is so wild I could not believe it, Mark. We’ve had fun building this place, but that’s three times its value.” He shook his head. “I won’t sell it unless you agree. But you can live like you want and do what you want when we sell it. I know, I know—you have sweet memories riding up here with pack horses and you’ve never really gotten over sweet Alma. I am sorry about that, but you have contacts in the movies, you rodeo, you stock contract, and you can do what you want the rest of your life on this much money.”
Close to speechless, he sat with his eyes closed. Who would pay that much for this land with nothing fancy on it? A fool, no doubt.
“I need to talk to Jones. He helped me the most. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.” It was enough to blow a fella’s mind, that much money, but they had worked damned hard and he liked the idea of the ranch Sam was offering in addition to the money. He needed to live and own a ranch, not live in one of those beehives in the city.
“Fine. I know. But we can’t hardly pass this offer up.”
“I’m sure he’ll go along. Let us talk. The ranch deal sells it for me.”
Sam agreed with him and they both went off to bed.
Mark hardly slept that night for imagining what he could do with that much money. It was more than he’d ever dreamed of. At breakfast, he told Jones they needed to check things on horseback.
Jones frowned. “Isn’t Sam here? You going to leave him alone here?”
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