Lords of the Land

by Braun, Matt;

  “Andale, muchachos! Andale!”

  The chase was quickly run. The coyote followed a twisted, convoluted path, winding through palmetto thickets and snaggy chaparral, gradually bearing toward a boggy resaca southwest of Santa Guerra Creek. But the wolfhounds steadily closed the gap, and as the coyote skirted a bosque of mesquite, one of the bitches sprinted ahead in a sudden burst of speed. Losing ground, the coyote cleared the mesquite only to find its way blocked by the horsemen, who were fanned out in a rough crescent. There was a split second of delay while the coyote, skidding furiously, attempted to alter course. Then the bitch struck from the rear, and in the next instant the pack joined the fight.

  Obscured by an explosion of dust, the coyote went down in a tangled thrash of fur and snarling wolfhounds. A moment later the pack leader emerged in a shower of grit and blood, holding the coyote aloft, his massive jaws clamped around its neck. There was a brutish growl, followed by an audible crunch, and the coyote’s spine snapped in half. The wolfhound lifted the limp body and shook it like a furry pelt, then tossed it disdainfully to the rest of the pack. The young male and the bitches savaged the body. Fangs bared, pulling and tugging, they quickly ripped it apart in a frenzied bloodlust.

  The vaqueros whooped and shouted, laughing wildly as the hated killer of calves was torn to pieces. Hank Kruger sat quietly, allowing the pack its reward, but after several moments he put his fingers to his lips and blasted a shrill whistle. Though not yet twenty-four, there was a certain magnetism about the young patron, an air of confidence and enormous strength of character that somehow set him apart from other men. Among themselves, the vaqueros called him El Onza, a mythical beast of great ferocity, thought to be sired by a jaguar and whelped by a wolf. It was a fitting name, one he had earned.

  At his whistle, the wolfhounds instantly separated, dropping the mangled coyote, and formed’ around the pack leader. The vaqueros fell silent, looking on with awe as the brutes assembled, standing quiet and watchful, alert to their master’s command. Several moments passed while he stared at the wolfhounds and the vaqueros stared at him. Then he laughed and wheeled his horse.

  “Vamonos, amigos! Our supper grows cold and our women grow warm. Let’s go! Let’s go!”

  Hank rode into the compound shortly after dusk. The house had undergone several renovations during his childhood, and it bore only scant resemblance to the modest dwelling his grandfather had built. A wing had been added, as well as a second story, and the front of the house was now ornamented with cornices and green shutters and tall pillars that had transformed the old porch into a sweeping veranda. Stretching south for almost a mile, flanked on either side by trees, was a white clamshell driveway. It glowed even on the darkest of nights.

  In Hank’s mind it was all a bit pretentious, the worst part of Santa Guerra. Each of the renovations had been at his father’s insistence, always strenuously opposed by his mother, and there were no good memories associated with the house itself. As a child, he could never understand why his parents fought so much, and later, when he was grown and realized they both thrived on an adversary relationship, it simply didn’t matter anymore. There were too many good things in life to let it be spoiled by the quarrels and their incessant bickering.

  Tonight they were at it again. Even as he entered the house he could hear their voices from behind the closed study door. His mother, as usual, sounded slightly undone, and his father rumbled on in that sardonic monotone, dispassionate as a block of ice. He paused, wondering if they would take a break for supper, then decided to skip it altogether. He had an-engagement tonight with a little chica in the village, and saw no reason to risk that by getting involved in the latest squabble. As he eased the door shut and quietly made his way toward the kitchen, it occurred to him that his parents were both slightly daft. Good folks, but queer as a three-dollar bill.

  There was a sudden outburst in the study, and as Hank disappeared down the hall the discussion became even more heated. Trudy was pacing around the room, her expression cloudy, darting quick defiant glances at her husband. Ernest Kruger watched her with a look that belied his own sense of anger and frustration. He was seated in a chair, legs crossed, solemn as an undertaker. In the face of her intemperate manner, he’d learned long ago to suppress his own emotions; the tactic never failed to unnerve her, and invariably it allowed him to win. After several seconds, his voice moderate and calm, Kruger broke the silence.

  “Perhaps if you explained your objection I might understand. Doesn’t that make sense?”

  “I don’t have to explain,” Trudy snapped. “There’ll be no railroad, and that’s that!”

  “Yes, but why? Surely you have a reason.”

  “Just because, Ernest. Because I say so and because I won’t hear of it.”

  “Come now, my dear,” Kruger admonished her. “Because is an excuse, not a reason.”

  “The reason,” Trudy said with an unflappable lack of logic, “is because my father swore that tracks would never cross Santa Guerra. They haven’t and they won’t and that’s final.”

  “Good lord, Trudy! It’s the twentieth century, and your father’s been dead thirty years.”

  “Thirty-one years, come October. And you don’t need to remind me.”

  “Well, someone certainly should. Times change, and what made sense yesterday only makes perfect nonsense today.”

  “Whatever his reasons were, they’re still plenty good enough for me,”

  “He only had one reason—Joe Starling—and even that was simple spite. Stop and think about it a minute—the reason no longer exists. Starling’s dead himself, or had you forgotten?”

  “That’s a closed subject, Ernest. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Kruger shook his head, staring at her in mild astonishment. “If it weren’t so absurd it would be ironic. Every spring we trail our cattle fifty miles to the nearest railhead. And who owns it, who’s making a fortune off a two-bit feeder line by shipping our cattle back East? Joe Starling’s heirs, that’s who owns it!”

  “I don’t give a damn who owns it. We’ve gotten along without a railroad so far, haven’t we?”

  “No, we haven’t, and that’s precisely my point. We pay through the nose every summer simply because we have no choice but to use their line. How do you think your father would feel about that, knowing we’ve made Starling’s heirs richer than Midas?”

  Trudy halted, glaring at him. “That’s dirty pool, and I don’t appreciate it one bit.”

  “Sorry, but it’s the truth.” Kruger sensed a weakening, and on impulse decided to play his trump. “Have you considered the fact that if we build a railroad, we’ll have to have a terminal, and around that terminal we’ll almost certainly build a town?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Suppose I told you I intend to name the town after your father.”

  “The town ... after my father?”

  “That’s right. Lairdsville, Texas. Has rather a good ring to it, don’t you think?”

  Trudy cocked her head and examined him with a kind of bemused objectivity. She hadn’t fully comprehended his motives, but she knew her husband had the influence to build a railroad and a town, and if he took a notion to call it Lairdsville, then Lairdsville it would be. Ernest Kruger was the most powerful man in southern Texas. His political connections extended to the statehouse, and beyond. By virtue of his wealth and prominence, he controlled legislators from several surrounding counties, and his wishes were rarely ignored in the state legislature. Through political clout, legal maneuvering, and shrewd timing, he had increased the Santa Guerra landholdings to more than one million acres ... and yet ... he still wasn’t satisfied. She wondered what it was that drove him, and where it would end. Sometimes she found herself likening him to her father, and then at other times, like tonight ...

  “Where would you get the money?” she inqui
red skeptically. “A railroad from Corpus to Brownsville would cost a fortune, maybe a couple of fortunes.”

  “In round figures, three million dollars. Of course that’s merely an estimate, but the money’s no problem. I’ve already lined up an investor’s syndicate, and I’m confident we could raise additional capital in Brownsville. All pending your approval, naturally.”

  “Why are you so concerned with my approval? Other than to keep peace in the family, what difference does it make?”

  “The deeds,” Kruger informed her. “We’re equal partners in Santa Guerra, and that requires your signature to deed over the right-of-way and certain land grants to the railroad.”

  “Land grants ... what sort of land grants?”

  “Oh, nothing much, merely a cushion to satisfy the investors. Probably fifty thousand acres, maybe less, all of it along the coast.”

  “That’s a pretty stiff price for a railroad, isn’t it?”

  Kruger shrugged. “It’s land we seldom use anyway. Besides, every rancher between Corpus and Brownsville will have to do likewise, so it’s only fair that we set the example.”

  “What would the land be used for?”

  “Collateral, perhaps security notes for the investors. That’s really up to the syndicate. Of course, I would insist that a large chunk be set aside for the town ... Lairdsville.”

  “Lairdsville.”

  Trudy took a chair across from him, suddenly thoughtful. Her lips moved, silently forming the word, and she repeated it to herself several times. Finally, a smile appeared at the corner of her mouth and she nodded.

  “Yes, you’re right. I think Pa would have liked that.”

  Chapter 31

  On a brilliant summer day Trudy rode out from the compound. Once a month she visited every division on the ranch, and in an otherwise humdrum existence, these were marked as the best of times. Though largely ceremonial, her inspection tours had become something of a tradition on Santa Guerra; to the vaqueros she was still La Madama, and wherever she rode they greeted her with genuine affection. Her spirits always soared once she gained the open plains and lost sight of the house.

  Yet there were constant reminders, even on the vast grasslands of Santa Guerra, that time altered all things. The ranch was no longer the majestic wilderness of her youth, nor was there anything but a dim memory of emerald prairies stretching endlessly to the horizon. Progress had settled slowly across the land, and her husband, like some demon god of change, had used it to remold Santa Guerra in his own image. At bottom, Trudy admired his innovative approach to ranching, and for the most part she could only agree that Santa Guerra had prospered under his management. But she’d never quite forgiven him for the barbed wire.

  Unlike her father, Ernest Kruger was no visionary. He was a methodical man, with a speculative mind and a passion for careful observation. For months after Hank Laird’s death, he had ridden Santa Guerra from daylight to dusk, probing and asking questions, recording everything he learned in a leather-bound journal. Gradually he became aware that Santa Guerra embraced three very distinct types of land, each of which complemented the other in terms no one had ever before imagined. The prairie lands toward the coast, with temperate climate and flat topography, were eminently suitable for breeding ranges. The blackland plains to the northwest contained rich, loamy soil and produced graze on which livestock could be fattened prior to shipping season. To the south grew a hardier vegetation, perhaps not as nourishing but capable of sustaining cattle even during a drought. It was apparent to Kruger that Santa Guerra had to be separated into three divisions—and fenced—before the ranch could be managed in an orderly fashion.

  Trudy resisted the idea at first, appalled by the thought of barbed wire. But in the end, when the older vaqueros endorsed the wisdom of her husband’s plan, she had finally relented. Afterward Kruger was often heard to remark that management of Santa Guerra was somewhat like a sophisticated game of checkers. It was played with cattle and land; the primary goal was to convert grass into marketable beef; and he had proved himself to be a master of the game. Santa Guerra annually shipped upward of thirty thousand head to the slaughterhouses in Chicago.

  The cattle themselves, however, had proved to be one of Kruger’s less notable experiments. Instead of Durhams, which Laird had crossbred with range stock, he imported Herefords and began a systematic breeding program. The results were marginal at best, and after thirty years Trudy still took perverse delight in the fact that he’d been no more successful than her father. But Kruger was a determined man, not easily discouraged, and while the problem continued to plague him, there was never any question of suspending the program. He kept on experimenting, confident that he would one day find the key to a superior breed of cattle.

  Curiously, though he was confounded by cows, Kruger experienced no difficulty whatever with horses and mules. Standardbred stallions were brought in to service range mares, producing animals that were highly sought after for both saddle horses and the carriage trade. Next he bred Kentucky jacks to Clydesdale mares, and the result was an outstanding mule much in demand by farmers and cotton planters all across the South. Within a decade, the operation became the largest of its kind in the entire nation, and by shrewd management Kruger enabled the ranch to net a greater profit on horses and mules than it realized on the beef market.

  Still, none of it would have been possible without the land, and Trudy was the first to admit that Ernest Kruger had fulfilled the promise to her father. She often thought he’d even exceeded Hank Laird’s dream, and on occasion pondered the similarities between the two men. Certainly he had become obsessed by the same dream, and at the opportune moment he had displayed all the pragmatism once attributed to her father. In light of his scrupulous manner, it had come as one of the greatest surprises of her life.

  The long drought of the early 1890s, combined with the widespread financial panic of 1893, had brought many cattlemen to the edge of ruin. With water holes baked dry, the graze scorched, and livestock slowly starving, several small ranchers were forced to sell out. Land could be bought for fifty cents an acre, and Ernest Kruger, always paying in cash, quickly capitalized on the misfortune of his neighbors. If honest, it was nonetheless hard business practice, scarcely to be expected from a man whose code of ethics was considered unimpeachable. Those ranchers with land bordering Santa Guerra were offered rock-bottom prices—cattle included— and Kruger’s proposal was on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. When the money market finally recovered, Santa Guerra had become the largest single landholding in Texas, encompassing 1,104,912 acres.

  But if money was again plentiful, water was still scarce. Without adequate rainfall, ranching remained a precarious business, and Kruger began the search for an alternative to natural creeks and dammed earthen tanks. Intrigued by the thought of deep artesian wells, he embarked on a program to tap the subterranean waterways. Heavy drilling rigs were imported, and during the summer of 1895, on a stretch of land some miles west of the compound, a column of pure artesian water burbled out of the earth. By the turn of the century, windmills became a commonplace sight; when the drilling program was completed there were nearly eighty wells scattered around the ranch. Kruger’s innovative concept, along with his methodical approach, had solved yet another hoary problem, and drought would never again touch Santa Guerra.

  All things considered, Trudy felt her husband had kept his end of the bargain. With the exception of Joe Starling, he had delivered on every promise made, and in that instance he’d simply had no chance to resolve the matter. A few weeks after her father’s funeral, Captain Sam Blalock had marched into Starling’s office and shot him dead. Afterward the old riverman turned the pistol on himself, which seemed to confirm later rumors that Hank Laird’s death had affected his sanity. Trudy would have preferred to see Joe Starling ruined financially, and Blalock’s suicide somehow weighed on her conscience, but none of that was the fault of her husband. He
’d faithfully kept his word, transforming her father’s dream into a reality, and their marriage, if not exactly a love match, had evolved into a mutually acceptable arrangement.

  Not that it had been easy. Their relationship was rocky from the very start, with a constant battle for dominance regarding Santa Guerra. While Ramon was alive it had been a fairly uneven contest. Through him, she ran the ranch pretty much to suit herself, and in the process suffered two miscarriages because she refused to stay off horseback. But with Ramon’s death, and her third pregnancy, the situation reversed itself. The doctor warned that another miscarriage might kill her, and even if she came to term, it would have to be her last baby. Suddenly, with only one chance to extend the Laird bloodline, Trudy wanted the child very much. She enforced upon herself a strict regimen of rest and proper diet, and in the latter months of her term, rarely left her bed. Henry Thomas Kruger, named after his grandfather, was born the fall of 1883.

  The proud father, meanwhile, had been busy consolidating his position as patron of Santa Guerra. During the months of her confinement, he had selected his own men from among the vaqueros and appointed them as caporals of the three ranch divisions. When Trudy finally emerged from the main house, it became apparent that she had lost control of Santa Guerra. The people revered her as much as ever, perhaps even more now that she had produced a son. But the caporals reported directly to her husband, and she quickly discovered he had instilled in them a fear of Ernest Kruger matched only by their fear of God.