Hard Country

by Michael McGarrity

  * * *

  Charlie Gambel sorely missed the company of his brother, Frank, laid dead by Cal Doran. Days back, he’d considered asking John Kerney to write his mother telling of Frank’s death, but he let the idea die unspoken for fear that the news might put the law onto him.

  Truth was, no matter how lonesome he felt without Frank around, Charlie wasn’t about to head home, not after all the stealing and robbing they’d done coming west. And even if he did avoid the passel of lawmen looking for him in Arkansas and East Texas, all that waited for him in Tennessee was backbreaking work on a farm that barely made a dime and a dollar in a good year and a drunken father with a mean streak who’d whipped his two sons one too many times.

  Even before he buried Frank, Charlie decided he’d stay with the outfit until it got to New Mexico Territory, draw his pay, and strike out for the gold camps around Silver City. He’d stake a claim and, if luck was with him, find a vein of silver or pan a stream filled with gold nuggets. If that didn’t work out, he could always return to thieving for a stake and ride down into Old Mexico to avoid the law, or push on farther west to California.

  But now Charlie wasn’t so sure about staying with the drive. He’d originally thought that working from the back side of a horse would be a lot easier than wrestling a plow behind a team of cantankerous mules. Fact was, it was worse, especially riding drag day in and day out, prodding a bunch of weak, hungry, and thirsty cattle that trailed behind the two main herds several miles ahead.

  He wanted to shoot the starving mother cows, their bony calves, and the scrawny half-dead yearlings that made up the herd and be done with it. Then if he had his druthers, just for fun he’d shoot the pack of gaunt coyotes that followed close behind.

  Today he rode left drag, and it was well nigh intolerable with the wind blowing dust from the herd straight at him. Even with his neckerchief over his face and his hat pulled low, it wasn’t enough to keep the sand out of his eyes. His mouth and throat felt like he’d been eating dirt and chewing cactus thorns for a week or more. Not only were the wind, sun, sand, and dust about all a body could bear, but he itched from top to bottom, to the point of painful distraction.

  Four thousand animals were strung out over ten miles of nothing but parched grass, dry water holes, and thick brush, and the pace was damnably slow. By noontime each day the cattle kicked up so much dirt that even with no wind to speak of, the haze was thick enough to weaken the glare of the blinding sun. Every night Charlie looked skyward, hoping for a sign that a rip-roaring gulley washer would come along and give everything a good soaking, but the sky held nary a cloud.

  Across the way, he could make out John Kerney working a reluctant mother cow and her calf back toward the slow-moving, lowing animals. Up ahead, Ed Pearl rode flank with a few other boys to keep some cattle from breaking for the brush, where they’d be lost for good.

  The stragglers that couldn’t keep up were left behind for the coyotes, wolves, and buzzards to pick over. When the coyotes made a kill, the wolves closed in and drove them away with enough yipping, barking, snarling, and howling to wake a man up from a sound sleep. Charlie figured Robertson had lost about twenty cows so far.

  Charlie was choking on some dust in his gullet when Ed Pearl rode up and told him there was water one day’s drive farther on.

  “You look a sight,” he added with a smile. “Push them critters along, now. Wilcox wants the herd bedded down by dusk. Cook is bringing water back from the river.”

  “Enough water so I can wash my face?” Charlie asked.

  “Doubtful,” Ed replied. “Besides, you look more agreeable when no one can see that ugly mug of yours.”

  “You’re a whole lot uglier than me, old man,” Charlie shot back with a snarl.

  “No need to get put out, Charlie,” Ed replied with a chuckle. “You’re as touchy as a riled rattlesnake. Now, move those cows before Buck comes back here and gives us both a tongue lashing.”

  When the herd was settled and the early night riders sent out, the cowboys that remained in camp talked over a meal of warmed-up beans, biscuits, beef, and coffee thick enough to eat with a spoon about the prospects of freshwater come one more sundown and what the cattle might do once they caught scent of it. Stories of past stampedes circulated among the men, most with dire warnings of deadly consequences suffered by careless cowboys.

  Not about to wait another day for water, Charlie left the waddies to their stories and pondered a plan. If he lit out before dawn on a fast horse he could make the river crossing with nobody missing him till he was long gone. And if he did take off, there would be no coming back, so he’d first need to steal a few things he could sell for ready cash.

  He’d been eyeing John Kerney’s long rifle, a Springfield Model 1873 that would fetch a good price, and he’d been hankering for Buck Moore’s Colt .45-caliber pistol ever since he’d laid eyes on it. Also, there were several sound horses in the remuda he could rustle that were worth twenty dollars each, Ed Pearl kept some folding money in his left boot, and another boy had a pouch that jingled with silver coins. Whatever he could steal quickly and easily would have to do, until he got to a place where the pickings were better.

  The idea of being done with the whole damn outfit lifted Charlie’s spirits considerably. He’d grab what he could in the dark of night and be gone. He could almost taste cool water in his mouth.

  * * *

  In the darkest hour before dawn, John Kerney woke with a start from a restless sleep. He’d been dreaming that Mary Alice was running away from him clutching their baby, and no matter how far or fast he chased after her, he couldn’t catch up.

  Off in the distance, the cattle were lowing softly but not stirring enough to worry about. He heard someone rummaging around at the chuck wagon and sat up to turn and look, but it was too inky black to see a thing. If it was Cook, he’d yet to light the fire and start the coffee boiling.

  The sounds stopped, and Kerney figured it was probably just a hungry cowboy looking for something to eat. Unable to go back to sleep, he put his head down anyway and closed his eyes. After some time, he heard soft footsteps coming his way and looked to see a figure reaching for the Springfield carbine that he always kept at his side.

  He clutched the arm, swung hard with a balled fist, hit Charlie Gambel square on his button nose, and rammed his shoulder into the boy’s chest as he sat up.

  “Jesus, I just came to wake you,” Charlie moaned as he rocked back on his haunches, a hand over his nose trying to stem the flow of blood.

  “And you needed my Springfield to do it,” Kerney said, standing over Charlie. He reached down and pulled Gambel to his feet. Stuck in the boy’s pistol belt was Buck Moore’s Colt .45.

  On the ground was a gunnysack from the chuck wagon. Kerney kicked it open to expose some hardtack, beef jerky, a coin purse belonging to a cowboy everybody called Brother Thomas because of all the endless preaching he did about hell and damnation, and some folding money that probably belonged to Ed Pearl.

  “What else have you got that doesn’t belong to you?” Kerney asked as he tossed the Colt and Charlie’s pistol on the ground.

  “Nothing, I swear,” Charlie said, his voice cracking.

  Kerney looked around. Dawn was fast approaching, and Cook had the fire going. Off a ways he spotted Charlie’s saddled horse. He dragged the boy to it by the scruff of the neck, took Charlie’s rifle from its scabbard, and told him to get mounted.

  “What are you going to do?” Charlie asked as he swung up on his horse, blood still dripping from his broken nose.

  “Give you a five-minute head start before I tell everybody that you’re a no-good thief and I ran you out of camp,” Kerney replied.

  “I need my pistol and rifle before I ride out,” Charlie said.

  Kerney shook his head. “So you can come back and shoot me? Leave unarmed now, Charlie, or I’ll pull you off that horse and let every man you stole from give you a good thrashing.”

  Charlie wiped t
he blood from his nose on a sleeve, gave Kerney a dirty look, spurred his horse, and galloped away.

  That evening at the river, after the cattle and horses had drunk their fill and a number of the men were still bathing and clowning around in the water, Cal Doran walked up to where Kerney was giving his pony a good brushing.

  “I just heard you’ve made an enemy for life out of Charlie Gambel,” he said.

  “Maybe so,” Kerney replied as he plucked a burr off the horse’s flank. “But you were right about that boy; I’ll give you that.”

  “Mark my words,” Cal said. “You should have shot him down.”

  * * *

  After a day of rest at the river, Wilcox pushed the men and cattle hard across the Staked Plains, a vast, featureless stretch of empty country broken only by a sea of yucca stalks. On the second day out, trailing the herd late in the afternoon, Kerney spotted Cal Doran’s riderless horse, Patches, off in the distance. Going to investigate, he found a fall had put a crease in the cowboy’s forehead and his pony had come up lame. Nearby was a dead rattlesnake, minus its head.

  “I’m obliged,” Cal said after Kerney doctored his noggin. “Patches got spooked.”

  “I can see that,” Kerney replied. “Your pony is lame.”

  “I know that, dammit,” Cal snapped back, his head spinning.

  Kerney got Doran to his feet. “No cause to get surly. Climb on my horse.”

  “I can walk.”

  “You’re wobbly. Get in the saddle.” He gave Doran a leg up and started out in the direction of the herd a couple miles distant, leading Cal’s lame pony.

  “You’re gonna be sore footed when we reach camp,” Cal said. He blinked his eyes to stop seeing double, but it didn’t work.

  “I’ve lived through worse,” Kerney answered.

  “That rattler was a good eight feet long.”

  “Six,” Kerney corrected.

  “Eight, dammit.”

  Kerney shrugged. “I ain’t gonna argue with a man who’s been knocked silly off his pony.”

  “How is my pony?” Cal asked.

  “He’ll mend.”

  “My head sure aches.”

  “Least you didn’t break anything important,” Kerney said.

  Cal laughed. “You do to ride with, old son.”

  “Maybe we’ll do that someday.”

  “That would be fine with me,” Cal replied, thinking John Kerney was a damn good man, better than most.

  6

  Ignacio Chávez had heard the story of his birth countless times, told over and over by his family and every adult in his village. Even little children who hadn’t been alive at the time knew the tale by heart.

  Each time Ignacio’s father, Cesario, recalled his son’s birth, he spoke of it with great dramatic flair, for it occurred on the very night a rampaging flood had wiped out farming settlements up and down the Rio Grande south of the villa of Socorro. As the despondent families huddled together on higher ground, surrounded by the few possessions they’d salvaged from the raging waters, with the angry currents still lapping at their feet, Ignacio entered the world with lusty cries.

  Whenever the subject came up, Ignacio’s mother, Señora María Candelaria Chávez, who was not given to storytelling as was her husband, simply liked to say that out of all her six children, his birth had been the most unusual since it had been witnessed by everyone in the village.

  In the harsh light of the following day, when it was clear to all that everything of value had been lost, their homes and livestock alike buried by a thick carpet of brown mud, the men of the village gathered in serious conversation. After much discussion, they decided to leave the fertile bottomlands of the Rio Grande—a river that sometimes slowed to a trickle, occasionally trapped man and beast in quicksand, often wandered, flooded unexpectedly, and seemed to change course at will regardless of the season—and start anew along the banks of the much smaller, less turbulent Tularosa River.

  Situated across a vast basin on the other side of the mountains, the Tularosa was so small and timid a stream—more a creek than a river—that it wandered out into the basin grasslands and disappeared underground. Except, of course, when the rains came and waters crested the banks and filled the floodplain.

  The decision to move was made with grave misgivings. Two years earlier several families had left the Rio Grande to settle along the Tularosa, only to be driven out by the Apaches who lived high in the mountains to the east, which loomed over the valley.

  The Indians had burned their crops, destroyed their homes, and killed two men during the battle. As the survivors fled in fear for their lives, the Apaches attacked once more and made off with a small child who had fallen out of his mother’s arms in an overturned wagon. So there was great risk in the move, and none took it lightly. Yet, with everything lost except life itself, the threat of nearby Apaches paled in comparison to the need for survival.

  Once again on the night of the annual fiesta celebrating the founding of Tularosa, Ignacio endured a shower of stories about his birth. Some, like the devout grandmothers of the village, who considered Ignacio’s arrival on earth a miracle, reminded him that they had prayed over his pregnant mother during the raging flood. Surely, their prayers and God’s hand had spared mother, son, and all the villagers on that dreadful night.

  Others, mostly friends his own age, teased him about the old ones treating him like he was the favored son of the don of a great ranchero, and taunted him about his mother’s often-stated prophesy that someday he would achieve high station, perhaps as mayor like his father, sheriff like his uncle José Candelaria, or even—could it be possible?—a priest to be feared and respected by all.

  A few of the grandfathers rubbed his head as if he were a good-luck charm as they wandered off to find friends to drink with, while others stopped to tell him their version of the great flood and the subsequent dangerous resettlement. As he listened, Ignacio never ceased to be amazed at the subtle changes each storyteller brought to the tale.

  After nightfall, when the roasted goat and the calf had been carved and served with tortillas and beans, when the feasting was over and the fandango had begun, Ignacio turned his attention to Teresa Armijo, dancing with her as often as possible. Although she was still not old enough to marry and Ignacio had said not a word to her of his intentions, in his mind she was already his betrothed. Barely five feet tall, she was the most beautiful girl in Tularosa, with round, inviting eyes, a long, thin neck that made her seem taller, a tiny waist, and full lips that were always ready with a smile. As children they’d played in the shade of the courtyard trees and chased each other through the cornfields when the men of the village were close by to watch over them. In more recent times, he read to her under the shade of the cottonwood trees from a book on the lives of saints left behind by a priest who’d passed though the village on his way to Santa Fe.

  Not once had she ever teased him about being the miracle baby born during the flood, or for being the favored village son, or for his studious nature. And she admired his seemingly amazing ability to learn English from the americanos who’d recently moved onto the basin, although she found the few words he taught her to be harsh upon her tongue.

  During a lull in the dancing, Ignacio’s father took him outside the granary, which had been cleaned and decorated for the dance, gave him a sip of whiskey from his cup, and told him in the morning he would be driving one of the wagons leaving for the army fort on the other side of the mountains.

  It was a moment Ignacio had been dreaming about for years. At sixteen he was now considered a man. The days when he had ached to ride out to skirmish with the raiding Apaches were behind him. Now, not only would he continue to work in the fields, tend to the sheep and the cattle, cut wood, and do all of his ordinary chores, but he would also get to make the dangerous wagon trips reserved only for men of fighting age. Finally, he would get to travel through the high peaks of the Apache lands and see the army fort on the east side of the mountains.
Soon he’d get to make the long, hard trek west across the basin to the villages of Las Cruces and Mesilla on the banks of the Rio Grande, where staples and supplies could be purchased, news of events in the world could be heard, and books could be found. He had hopes of having enough money someday to purchase one, perhaps even two books.

  Henceforth, he’d be armed with a rifle and one of his father’s pistols and required to help guard the crops, the livestock, and the village against attacks by marauding Apaches.

  With the arrival of the Texans a few years ago, danger from the Apaches had diminished, but there were still sporadic clashes. Now he’d be able to prove himself to be a man of courage.

  “Starting tomorrow you can no longer act as a willful, spirited child,” Cesario Chávez admonished, “or spend hours reading. You must be reliable in all ways. No idling over the stories of the saints when you are a sentry, no visits to the americanos when you should be working, no stealing away to speak to Teresa when you have chores to do. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Father,” Ignacio replied solemnly as he handed back the cup of whiskey. The harsh taste of it burned his throat.

  Cesario sipped from the cup and returned it to his son. “Let us have one more drink between us to celebrate the first night of your manhood. But when you kiss your mother good night, do not tell her it was I who gave you the whiskey.”

  “On my honor, I promise not to tell her,” Ignacio replied, trying hard not to make a face as he swallowed.

  Cesario looked into his son’s eyes. At sixteen he was already taller than Cesario by at least an inch and still growing. Someday Ignacio would be the tallest man in the village, almost as big as the americanos. Already he was the smartest, although Cesario had no plans to tell him so.