“Are you unhappy with me?”
“No. No. It is not you. It is me. I left that place where they killed him. I don’t want to go back.”
“That happened years ago. Why does it bother you now?”
“Hold me. Hold me. I will be alright.”
He squeezed her trembling body and kissed her. “It won’t be bad. That happened long ago. His killers are dead.”
“I know. But the memory of his murder has been haunting me ever since I agreed to go back.” Still sobbing, she clung to him. “I am not a baby, but it is all I can think about.”
“We can do this together.”
“Oh, Chet, I didn’t want to worry you.”
“You aren’t worrying me. I’ll be there and we can overcome it.”
“Thanks.”
They left early the next morning, headed for Mexico. At Nogales, the border guards looked under and around the coach, then decided they weren’t smuggling anything and let them go on. Cole rode shotgun on top with the driver and that made more room in the coach. Jesus and Anita sat in the back, with Liz and Chet facing them. The strange, flat, tall different cactus began to appear, a variation of the Arizona variety of saguaro that grew in the north. The coach swept along through the dusty rolling desert. They stopped in small towns and watered the two teams and the guards’ mounts, giving the passengers a chance to stretch and use the facilities, or brush, whichever was handy.
By Chet’s appraisal, Liz had her sadness and regret under control. The first night, they stayed with Don Montrose at his vast hacienda, where they had a fiesta and party. He and Liz danced under the starlight in the garden to the guitar, fiddle, and trumpet music.
“Are you doing better?” he asked.
“Yes, thanks. I did not do that to worry you. I guess I had to have a cry. I have tried to be brave. I seldom cry. You know me. I am using the strength you gave me. I love you, big hombre.” Then she buried her face in his chest and they danced away.
The next day, they reached her hacienda and she pointed out the neat vineyards already pruned and tied for the next year. The rows upon rows of grape stalks were on tight wire and stout posts. There were green fields of alfalfa and winter barley, and the headquarters bustled with activity.
He met her brother-in-law, Manuel Carmel, and they shook hands. In his twenties, the handsome man smiled.
“I finally get to see the man who stole her heart. She came home from meeting you throwing things around and clenching her fists in my face and telling me how she had lost her mind. When you helped her down from the stage moments ago, I saw the aura she spoke about. Yes, I see why Elizabeth had to have you. My heavens, man, you have taken her with you to the ends of the earth.”
“She and I go many places together.”
“She even sent me to go back to read Coronado’s adventures and told me where she was.”
“We never found the golden cities of Cibola, either.” Chet laughed.
“Oh, but you found the lost herd. That was as good. Come to the casa, I am such a poor host. My bride-to-be waits to meet all of you.”
Chet reached out and hugged Liz before going inside with her.
“I will be fine,” she said under her breath.
“I’m still here. Let’s meet this young lady.”
“Oh, it was not this nice when he brought me here. But Manuel has done well this past year of keeping it in excellent condition.”
Chet agreed. The entire place was extra luxurious.
“Elizabeth, where is your son?” Manuel asked.
“Our Adam is just learning to walk. This trip was too long for him.”
When Chet came in the tiled vestibule with her, he knew that was where they killed her husband. From there, he could see the spacious staircase across the great hall. Where she had shot the other killer in the chest when the murderer was coming after her.
“What a gorgeous place,” he said.
“I forgot. It is that,” she said under his arm. “I am glad you’ve got to see it.”
They met Manuel’s fiancée, Rickola, a tall, slender, dark-complected young woman who smiled at both of them. Nodding, she looked like he’d expected, a nice young woman from money. Dressed in a very fashionable blue dress, she was a picture of what he envisioned. But friendly.
A band played, so he took Liz’s hand and they danced around the tile floor. They circled and swung around the room like they were alone in some canyon with a perfect dance floor. They’d danced a lot before, but never as intense, never this suspended away from the rest of them. She looked up and smiled at him.
“I needed this, big hombre. I needed this more than anything in the world. Being away from this place had become a worrisome thing inside of me. You will never know how opposed I was to ever coming back here. Thanks.”
“It’s a very beautiful place. Like a palace to me, and you fit so well here.” He swung her around and around in circles. She had belonged here and he had stolen her away from this lovely setting to sleep in tents and on the ground in bedrolls. But he also knew how empty a house could be without a soul mate. How he had dreaded going upstairs at Preskitt without anyone. Being alone was not the same in every place, but he felt with her in his arms and the music that never quit—how blessed he was about everything in his life.
CHAPTER 25
At breakfast the next morning, Manuel and Chet were the early risers and sat at the end of the great table in the hollow-sounding, empty, great hall. Their voices echoed and he knew her brother-in-law wanted to talk.
“What do you raise on your ranches?”
“Mostly cattle. In the north, I’m crossbreeding Hereford and Longhorns.”
“You like them better than the Durhams?”
“I have shorthorn bulls at the Preskitt Valley place.”
“That’s what I call Durham cattle.”
Chet agreed. “They’re alright, but I’m unsure which one is better. I have two hundred pure Hereford cows now in the Verde Valley Ranch. We need so many bulls, I thought I’d sell a lot of them, but I need about all they can produce.”
Manuel laughed. “She told me you had so many ranches you could not count them.”
“I have several, but I know where they are.”
“You have a large ranch that goes nearly to the Mexican border.”
“That’s the largest one, and it costs money now to develop, but, in time, it will be a paying operation. I have a contract to supply beef to the Navajos. That takes six hundred head a month. We have to buy cattle from other ranchers to meet that contract.”
“My, that is a large business in itself.”
“Yes, but it makes enough money that we’ve bought several places from our cattle sales. And will buy more that fit our operations. We also have a log-hauling business for a sawmill company up on the rim. We first got into it when the Tombstone mining interest bought his log haulers and lumberjacks away from him. He got more lumberjacks, but pays us to haul his logs. Means we must provide a lot of draft horses, but it, too, pays our other bills.”
“And you had a war in Texas?”
“That sent me to Arizona. My brother was shot and killed in a feud up in Kansas, driving cattle to market. But they did me a favor, making us move. Arizona had not seen the rush other places had gone through. There were little markets, no railroads, and we still lack them, but they will come.”
“Liz may have told you. Our wine business is the best one we have to make money. So we grow grapes and a lot of them. We have cattle, but the Mexican market is not organized like yours. We even make goat cheese. We buy the milk locally and it is profitable. The same people who buy our wine, buy our cheese. We grow black beans. And I have some avocado groves, orange, lemon, and lime. These trees my brothers planted are now coming into production.
“We also grow corn. That is a staple in Mexico. And chili and other hot peppers.”
“You have lots of people-intensive crops.”
“The payroll looks like a country f
ull of workers.”
They both laughed.
“But I wanted to tell you while we are alone, my former sister-in-law is very happy being your wife. I read that on her face when she came off the stage yesterday. I knew from her letters that she really was happy going where you went. I could hardly believe that, but I love her. Not like that, I mean she and I were good for each other in building what he started. She made a businessman out of me.
“When he was killed, I was having fun, hunting, and letting my brother do all the details. You might have called me a playboy, huh?”
“I understand.”
“The day we buried him, she sat me down and said, ‘Manuel, you have to become a man and help me run this place. No more going off to fancy balls in Mexico City and chasing wild women. This hacienda needs a leader, not a socialite, at its head. We have to make money at what we do here.’”
“Boy, I bet that was a shock?”
“Oh, a big one. I had to start doing what my brother had done, overseeing every operation. I had to make a profit on everything we did, or this place would collapse. Our first year, we barely slipped by. Money to borrow is expensive. My brother had a good reputation and he had bankers convinced he could make money. They were skeptical of us, and suggested we sell it while we could get top money for it. We sat down and both said no, that we would make this place pay. Each year since then, we have made money, and if we need a loan, bankers will talk to us face to face.”
“I am impressed. You both were young to have such responsibilities.”
“She said you started running your family ranch at sixteen. I was still chasing young girls.”
They both laughed.
“My grandfather told me that my father was losing his mind. The Comanche had kidnapped two of my brothers and a sister. He was so obsessed with finding them, he stayed out too long in his search and some rangers brought him back home delirious. I took over the ranch operation. I wasn’t much older than that when I sold my first herd in Kansas. I sewed the money I made in my saddle blankets and came home with it. After that, I used Wells Fargo. But I brought home what I thought was a fortune, and, in Texas, at the time it was, but following that, I made a lot of money and our ranch began to grow.”
Manuel nodded. “All at once the quality of our barrels we put our wine in became very important to me. Each year, I knew we had some vinegar instead of wine. Vinegar is very cheap when you sell it. A lot of people have wine go bad, so the vinegar market is not good. Great care is needed in making good barrels. I learned that in twelve months. Last year, I had only one bad barrel.”
“You look at barrels like I look at cull cows.”
“Yes. Yes, I imagine that is so. I also became the man who got strict with my crop planters not to waste seed. I learned a weedy field robbed the crop. So much to learn, because I had never paid any attention before I was put in charge. I met with my segundos every week. I sent men off to other haciendas to learn their secrets. When I went to a social event, I asked questions how others handled things. Oh, this has been a real learning process, but when she told me she was going north to live with you and I must step in and become the patron—my heart stopped.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. I always had her to answer my questions, to find my mistakes, and when she left I would have no one.”
“She really told you she was going to live with me?” Chet had never really fathomed that remark.
“Yes. I asked her if you would marry her and she said it made her no mind, she was going to live with you.”
“You know her parents came to the wedding?”
“I am surprised. Her father was a big judge, and when my brother kidnapped and married her, the word was out he planned to charge him with crimes he never did and put him in prison for years. And, in Mexico, he could have done that.”
“They came and were very polite. I have a young son from my previous marriage. His name is Adam.”
“She said you did, and that she held him at your wedding.”
“Yes, she did. And her father made Adam their heir.”
“Wow, she never wrote me that. She never spoke well of them, either.”
“I was aware of her growing-up story.”
“No. I knew that. But I am so proud you came down here. I saw yesterday what she told me when she came back from your first meeting. ‘Manuel, he has an aura about him. ’I saw that when you got down from the coach.”
“I had no plans to find another wife. I wasn’t hardly over Marge’s death. But at first sight, Liz bowled me over.”
“Oh, and when you washed her feet, you were made an instant saint.”
“She said I became an apostle. Honest to God, I really only wanted to touch her.”
They both laughed.
“Well, Manuel. How is the patron role suiting you?”
“I sent her word we made a nice profit. We have no loans out, and don’t need any at this time.”
“She said she was pleased. When I first asked her who would run this place, she told me she had no concern about leaving it in your hands.”
“Barring a disaster, I can handle it. I even enjoy it now. At first on this job, I was not settled down and missed my carefree days. But I realized they were over and I must master this job.”
“I did the same thing, taking over our ranch in Texas as a teen, while other guys got to run off to see the bright lights. I was home saving orphan calves from the coyotes and worrying about oat and corn crops. It took me twelve to fourteen hours a day to oversee it.”
“Damn sure a shock.” Manuel laughed. “There was a lot to learn and no time to do it in.”
“We will come back, in June, is it, when you get married?”
“Yes, we will wed then. I have no idea why we must wait so long. But that is her wishes. I don’t mean to pry, but Elizabeth worried so about not having children—”
“Try as we do—no results. I told her not to worry, my last wife was married twice and worried, too, but she had Adam. So who knows? I told her if we do, fine, if we don’t, that was fine, too.”
“That worried her.”
“Yes, but nothing we can do. If it happens, we will be happy. If not, I love her, and that will be enough.”
“Tell me about your business as a U.S. Marshal?”
“Have you got all day?”
“No, I think your wife is coming down and so is mine-to-be.”
“Old men tales will have to wait.”
Manuel agreed. “I still want to hear about them.”
“I’ll fill you in later.”
He agreed.
“Good morning, ladies. How are you?”
“Oh, dreadful.” Rickola straightened her back. “I could have slept longer.”
“These old men have been talking behind our backs,” Liz said, and broke into laughter. “I bet the two of you have settled the world’s affairs this morning.”
Holding her chair, Chet said, “At the least, Mexico and the United States.”
Taking her seat, Liz said, “Have you told him about your jaguar hunt, Manuel?”
“Oh, Manuel, you shot a jaguar?” Rickola asked, like she’d never heard the yarn, either.
“I went with some vaqueros a few years ago on a cat hunt. A livestock killer had eaten many goats and sheep. The people in the village came and begged me to shoot this killer so they could get on with their lives. To make this story short, I brought the vaqueros and the dogs to where he made his last kill and the chase was on. We soon treed him and he was a big cat in a live oak tree. I took my 44/40, and took aim and shot him. He fell out of the tree like a shot goose from the sky.
“My horse was gun shy, and jaguar shy, too. So I dismounted and gave the reins to another man. The cat had never moved. I thought he was dead. I got maybe a dozen feet away from him when he woke up and stood on his hind feet, growling mad, claws out, teeth ready to eat me. Then the vaqueros shot him so full of holes he was worthless to mount, which I was glad
they did, but a few bullets would have been enough.”
Chet shook his head, imagining what a shock facing a mad, wounded, large cat would have been. “We had a killer grizzly on the Verde Ranch. Ended up smoking him out of a cave. He was huge and killed several grown cows. I finally shot him escaping the cave, but he stunk so bad it was tough skinning him.”
“I have never seen one of those bears. It must have been exciting.”
“I simply wanted the cow killer disposed of. Looking in caves for him was no fun.”
“We get in some tough situations operating our place. I can see you doing that.”
The four talked about his Force. His men and Anita joined them. They nodded to everyone, and the kitchen crew soon brought food to the table.
“Elizabeth, what did you do when they found that lost herd?” asked Rickola.
“I handed out clothes to the men. They didn’t have any clothes; they’d worn them out. You can’t believe how they were in rags.”
“Were you concerned they might hurt you?”
“Ricky, they all treated me like I was a queen. I never doubted that if I raised my voice, I would have had a dozen defenders. Our ranch foreman, Hampt, turned them into soldiers and they turned back a Comanche raid after our horses.”
“I am afraid I would have been too nervous to have remained there with all of them.”
Liz nodded. “I understand. But I am married to a man that never lets anything even brush me. That country is a grass empire and it goes on forever. I fell in love with Nebraska, but he said they’d soon plow it all under. In Nebraska, every day, trainloads of people and their children got off there, looking for homes and farms.”
“You saw so much. Will you write a book about it?”
“No, but someday, I may paint it.”
“Can you paint?” She passed the plate of scrambled eggs to Anita.
“No. But when I get time, I plan to learn how.”
“I want a painting when you do them.”
Liz acted like she’d been caught at something wrong and wanted out. “You may have to wait. I really have no idea what they will look like.”
Arizona Territory Page 24
