Hard Country (42 page)

42

E
mma found Molly dead in her crib the morning after Ignacio, Teresa, and the children arrived for a visit. It happened suddenly for no apparent reason. As the next few days passed, the loss turned Emma empty eyed, wooden, and silent.

She rebuffed all of Patrick’s attempts to console her. When he tried to talk to her, she turned away. When he touched her, she recoiled as though snakebit. She made it clear she wanted nothing to do with him, so he moved back into the ranch house, hoping time would ease her grief, but it got no better. She kept the house clean, washed the clothes, cooked the meals, ate alone, and retreated to her casita at night, where she stayed until morning. Each day, she emerged hollow eyed and listless. Each day, Patrick half expected to return to the ranch house to find she had run away, collapsed from exhaustion, or died by her own hand.

Her black mood was so disagreeable, the three men took to avoiding her and the ranch house as much as possible. After a solid two weeks of gathering cattle and branding calves for the spring works, they set about shoeing all the horses, greasing the windmills, training the cow ponies, rebuilding the dirt stock tanks, patching saddles, fixing the leaky barn roof, and repairing corral fences. Within a month, every major job had been done and the ranch was in tiptop shape, while Emma remained mired in bitter despair.

Late one afternoon as they finished the last of the barn chores and turned the ponies out in the pasture, Cal hooked a boot on the corral gate and looked at the house.

“It ain’t natural,” he said as he rolled a smoke, “her holed up like that all the time.”

“And she ain’t eating or sleeping right,” George added as he rolled one of his own. “There’s no meat on her bones at all, and she looks dead tired.”

“What are we gonna do?” Patrick asked. “Last time I tried talking to her, she told me I’d never see her again if I said another word about how she’s been acting.”

“We’re the gloomiest outfit in the whole damn valley,” Cal said, getting a light from George, “and I’m tired of tippy-toeing around while she wastes away to nothing.”

“You try talking to her.” Patrick picked up a stick and cleaned some manure from his boots.

“I have,” Cal said. “So has George. We need to figure something that’ll make her shake this off.”

“Like what?” George asked.

“We could put her in the wagon and take her to town,” Patrick answered. “Get her away from here for a spell.”

“Busting her out of the house for a spell ain’t a half-bad idea,” Cal said. “We’ve been letting her run roughshod over us with her sulky ways.”

“How about we go after that old brindle longhorn up-country and take her with us?” George suggested.

“I thought you wanted to leave that critter be,” Patrick said.

“Well, I do,” George replied. “But we need to corral him away from the cows. He’s just running them ragged. We could bring him back here and pen him. Besides, if we take her to town, she’ll just hide out with Teresa. That gal needs some clean mountain air and sunshine to get a fresh outlook.”

Cal smiled. “George, I swear you’re a bright old boy. A good jolt to get her out of her vapors is just what’s called for, and some time in the saddle away from here just might do the trick. I say it’s worth a try.”

Patrick nodded in agreement.

At mealtime, when Emma put the food on the table, Cal pushed out a chair and told her to sit.

With a wary glance at the men, she sat down slowly, her body as tight as a mainspring. From the looks on their faces, they were up to something, and she wanted none of it.

“You’re coming with us to the high country tomorrow. Pack a bedroll, some clothes, put together enough victuals for four days, and be ready to ride at first light. We’ll need an early breakfast.”

Emma shook her head forcefully and glared at Cal. “You can’t make me go.”

“We’ll tie you across the saddle if we have to,” Cal answered, staring her down. “You’re going.”

Emma glanced from Cal to Patrick to George. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because sometimes a young’un will die before their time,” Cal answered. “It’s just the way of the world. There’s no reason for it and it’s nobody fault. We’re all tired of waiting on you to start showing some gumption about life again.”

“You are mean, heartless men,” she said spitefully.

“Think what you will.” Cal spooned food on his empty plate and pushed it in front of Emma. “And starting right now, you eat with us.”

Patrick held out his fork, and she yanked it from his hand.

* * *

E
mma had often ridden the lower canyons near the Double K headquarters, and during the first morning of her forced march on horseback, the familiar landscape was dreary and uninteresting to her. Not even the tall, graceful sotol and agave plants that peppered the rocky soil or the glistening silvery white sands on the basin below held her attention. As they passed along the trail they startled flocks of Gambel’s quail, which scattered into the sky, and frightened black-tailed jackrabbits, which scampered for safety. Once, the sight of the animals would have pleased her. Today, she cared not a lick.

Cal led the expedition, with Patrick next, then Emma, and George in the rear trailing the pack animals. To avoid being lashed to the saddle, Emma had promised not to bolt or misbehave but had made no other concessions. Since they had threatened her with physical force to come along, she had no intention of talking to them or doing a smidgen of work during her abduction.

She fully expected them to try to pester her into talking, but so far they were ignoring her. That suited her just fine. She passed the morning hours silently, listening to the sounds of clattering hooves and creaking leather, her thoughts straying over and over again to the moment she found Molly’s lifeless body in the crib.

With the noon sun high above and the day warming, they entered a large pasture that stretched for several miles to the base of a mountain that looked like a gigantic fortress carved out of rock. Stone turrets, battlements, towers, and parapets rose and stretched in colossal proportions across the summit as the sun washed the mountain golden.

Emma caught her breath. She had never seen anything like it. For weeks since Molly’s death, she’d cried each night into her pillow. Sometimes tears of sadness, sometimes tears of anger, but always tears for the emptiness inside that cut into her heart like a two-edged sword. How she missed that sweet child.

She gazed at the mountain with the sun warm on her face. Knowing Molly would never see such a sight, she felt like crying again. Instead, she lowered her gaze, sniffled, and held back the tears.

They drew near a spring concealed at the base of the mountain by a small stand of wispy desert willow and feathery bushes. On the sheer cliffs above, a small herd of mountain sheep looked down on them suspiciously before scurrying away, bounding over boulders.

When they stopped for a meal, Emma found herself surprised once again by her captors. No orders were given for her to cook or do anything at all. Instead, George started a campfire, Patrick made coffee, and Cal put strips of beef and canned corn in a skillet.

“Dinner now, supper this evening,” he explained, without waiting for her to ask. “There’s rough country ahead and we’ll need to make tracks until nightfall.”

“How far?” Emma asked, astonished that the question had tumbled out of her mouth so easily.

“A tidy step,” Cal replied.

Emma winced. She’d been in the saddle a good six hours and didn’t look forward to spending the rest of the day on horseback. Her body already ached, especially her back.

By the time they ate and moved on, she felt somewhat better. Cal led them around the fortress mountain across another large pasture that ran against a mountain range cut by dozens of narrow slot canyons, which drained the east slopes. Some of them burrowed deep into the tumbled rocks at the base of the peaks; others ran like long fingers down impossibly steep inclines. Cal pointed them toward a canyon, and soon they were climbing single file up a rocky trail, sunlight blocked by the towering walls. The ponies moved slowly through twists and turns, and as they gained each ridge, another appeared above in an endless progression.

Throughout the day, Patrick had been in front of her, and with his broad back and square shoulders, she had to admit he cut a handsome figure in the saddle.

They came out of the dim light into gathering dusk and picked their way cautiously along a narrow ledge that looked over a hundred-foot crevice. By the time they got off the ledge into a high meadow of tall pine trees, night had fallen.

Sore, exhausted, and cold, Emma dismounted slowly. Her nerves were stretched thin from the final harrowing ride up the mountain. It was all she could do to pull the saddle off her pony and picket it with the others. George had a small fire going, with coffee heating up, and Patrick had set out some hardtack and jerked beef for supper. Cal was with the pack animals, removing their heavy loads. A half-moon hung in the sky, and through the trees a million stars filled the heavens like specks of diamond dust.

She warmed herself by the fire before spreading out her bedroll on a cushion of pine needles some distance from the men. She stretched out just for a minute to ease her weary bones and listened to George and Patrick’s chatter, the crackling fire, and the soft whinnying of the ponies.

She was almost asleep when she heard footsteps. She sat bolt upright.

“Easy, Emma,” Cal said gently, hunkering down to see her face. “There’s something I think it’s time for you to hear. Thomas Dunphy is dead, shot in the head some months back. Nobody knows who did it, but I think it was James Kaytennae.”

He paused for a second to let her take it in. “One more thing: Your sister is dead. She hung herself in the barn before Dunphy was murdered.”

Emma took a deep breath.

“It’s over and done, Emma, whenever you want it to be,” Cal said. “You savvy?”

Emma looked at Cal and nodded.

“Good.” Cal rose up. “You want supper?”

Emma shook her head.

“Good night.”

After Cal moved away, Emma stuck her fist in her mouth and sobbed into her blanket, letting all the pent-up rage she had about her sister and Tom Dunphy come out. She was glad Ruth had died by her own hand, happy Tom Dunphy had been shot down like the dog he was. For the first time since her escape from Dunphy’s cabin, she fell into a dreamless sleep.

43

O
n the afternoon of the second day, they spotted the longhorn in the clearing of a deep, rock-strewn, heavily treed canyon. They reined in upwind a good half mile from the brindle, and the old bull raised his head and shook it in their direction.

“Now, that’s a sight,” George said.

“He knows we’re here,” Patrick said.

“The spread of them horns is at least a good six feet,” George said admiringly, “and he looks sleek and well fed.”

Cal studied the trail down the canyon to where the longhorn stood. “There’s only one way in from here,” he said, “and he’ll probably bolt before we’re halfway down.”

Emma switched her attention away from the powerful beast to the three riders lined up in a row studying the animal. She wondered how in the blazes they planned to catch it.

Beyond the longhorn and the canyon, the boundless tablelands of the Jornada del Muerto, flat and desolate in the midday sun, sparkled clear in sharp relief. Miles away a dust devil rose from the desert floor and whirled into oblivion on the western horizon. Here the San Andres were a thick forest of piñon and juniper trees, the mountains sloping gently down to sandy, waterless, flats.

All morning they had ridden through rugged wilderness on faint game trails and climbed boulder-strewn ridges, sometimes cresting to breathtaking vistas embracing a hundred miles of broken mountain ranges stacked against the horizon. Even though she’d had her first good sleep since Molly’s passing, Emma was saddle sore and bone weary again. Yet she felt less fatigued in her mind than she had in days.

“I don’t cotton to wasting time trying to circle around that old brindle,” George said. “It would be a long, tiresome ride for nothing.”

“I reckon you’re right,” Cal said.

“Let’s just ride down the trail and see what he does,” Patrick said. “If he spooks we can track him.”

Cal raised an eyebrow. “That old mossy-horn can run twenty miles between now and sunset.”

“Or he’ll hunker down somewhere in the brush and we’ll never spot him,” George added.

“Don’t make me do this by myself,” Patrick replied with a laugh as he started down the trail. “Come on, old-timers, we’ve got him outgunned. If he charges, one of us will snare him.”

As the riders walked their ponies single file down the canyon, the brindle stood his ground, head raised, tail slowly swishing. A hundred yards away, they stopped on a wide, level shelf and the bull shook his horns at them.

George gave Emma the reins to the pack animals. “You stay here, missy,” he whispered. “All right?”

Emma nodded, stared at the bull, and glanced at Cal. “Can you really catch him?” she asked.

Cal, lariat in hand, shrugged. “We’ll see. That old brindle is wily and fleet.” He glanced at Patrick and George. “Ready?”

Both men nodded.

In unison, the three men spurred their ponies to a gallop. Cal and George fanned out in a flanking maneuver as Patrick rode straight at the old bull. At fifty yards the longhorn dropped his head, pawed the ground, bellowed, and with the coarse hair on his back standing straight up, charged straight for Patrick.

Cal and George closed in from both sides, hollering like banshees, ropes low. The longhorn stopped and whirled at the fast-approaching riders. Spooked, George’s pony reared back on hind legs as George grabbed leather. Cal closed but his rope missed, the lasso sliding off the brindle’s shoulder. The old bull spun back toward Patrick, who made a perfect throw, the loop settling over the head and one horn.

He looped the rope around his saddle horn and turned Cuidado away from the charging bull. Before the brindle could swing around, Cuidado dug in his hooves and squatted. The rope tightened and the saddle cinch broke, pulling the saddle and Patrick over Cuidado’s head. He landed still straddling his saddle and tumbled head over heels into the dirt. As he struggled to get on his feet, the brindle spun, thundered past him, and hooked a horn into Cuidado’s breast.