Hard Country (48 page)

Storm clouds had moved in overnight, and the sun broke through in patches, blotted out by fast-moving, steel gray clouds with brilliant white thunderheads that gathered near the eastern Sacramentos.

Cal gave the sky a wary eye. The storm could stall and rain buckets forty miles away or blow west and unleash a gully washer on them before day’s end. Under good weather conditions, four hands could easily handle driving a beef herd of three hundred cows forty miles over the flats. But a stampede would scatter the herd, cause cattle to be killed or lost, and reduce their profit for the year.

“If the storm doesn’t wander this way before we get out on the flats, we should be okay,” Patrick said.

Cal nodded. “Tell George to saddle his horse, hitch it behind the wagon, and be ready to pitch in if the cattle get a notion to run. I’ll get Gene and Emma to pick up the pace.”

Patrick nodded, turned his pony, and cantered toward the wagon.

As fast as they could without spooking them, they moved the nervous herd through a long canyon that fanned out to the flats. Across the basin the storm tarried a while. Lightning blots speared the Sacramento peaks, cracked over the desert, and jumped from cloud to cloud. Blustery winds above swirled and pulsed. A curtain of rain blocked the Sacramentos from view. Slowly the storm moved out over the basin, coming right at them. It stopped halfway, drenched the sugar white sand dunes as the thunder roared and rumbled, and then faded away to the north, masking Sierra Blanca.

“Lordy, lordy,” George said as Cal drew near. “That there storm didn’t stop me from ever praying for rain again, but it sure did come close.”

“Don’t make a noon camp,” Cal said. “We’ll push on till dusk.”

“Okay by me,” George replied as he slapped the reins against the team’s haunches. “I’m getting low on victuals anyway.”

They made camp at sundown, with the sweep of the needle-sharp Organ Mountains to the west tinted red against a thin ribbon of yellow sky. The herd bedded down without complaint in the cool of the night. A full moon washed over the white sands that stretched for miles across the basin, creating a magical landscape of rolling, milky dunes cut by shadowy, wandering crevasses. It was a sight that had them talking in whispers.

In the morning they gained the Tularosa road and drove the herd at a good pace, pausing at some of the shallow sinks filled with rainwater from the storm to let the critters drink. It was as peaceable a drive with a mixed herd as Cal could remember.

They skirted the sand dunes before stopping for supper. Dusk found them a half mile off the road on a bedding ground with little browse that rose to the canyons at the base of the sheer Sacramentos.

The sound of a train whistle coursing through the thin air told them civilization was close at hand. They would raise up Alamogordo in the morning.

* * *

A
t midmorning under another threatening sky, they reached the outskirts of Alamogordo. On the west side of the railroad tracks, the sandy soil of the basin sprinkled with bunchgrass and mesquite held sway, but on the east side a town had magically sprung up. As they drew closer, George pulled the wagon team to a stop and the four riders reined in, astonished by the sight before them, the beef herd momentarily forgotten.

In addition to a two-story train station, a large domed water tower, machine shops, and rail sidings, there were houses, commercial buildings, mercantile shops, general stores, and a huge hotel clustered near the station. On streets laid out in grids, a dozen or more buildings were under construction. A wide road ran east toward Alamo Canyon in the Sacramento foothills, and along the boulevard several fancy houses had been thrown up. Close to the station a string of pretty little cottages with tile roofs lined lanes that paralleled the tracks. North of the train station an open ribbon of land was being transformed into a park. There were buggies and wagons on the streets, people on cement sidewalks, and crews of laborers trenching for water pipes. Evenly spaced electric light poles marched up the main street along with freshly planted cottonwood saplings.

“I’ll be,” Gene Rhodes said. “There are at least a hundred buildings out there. It’s a marvel of modern ingenuity.”

“Whatever that means, it don’t make it right,” George groused.

Cal laughed. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”

George started the wagon team. “We can avoid it,” he replied.

At the stockyards, they cut out Gene’s critters, put them in a small corral, and penned the Double K herd next to waiting stock cars.

“I’ll quit you here,” Gene said to Cal, “and go scare up a butcher or two to buy my cows.”

Cal gave Gene his wages. “You’ll get more selling to a cattle buyer.”

“I know it,” Gene replied, “but right now I don’t need anybody else accusing me of rustling. Some in that bunch of mine are mavericks that wandered onto my spread and picked up my brand by accident.”

“No stockman on the Tularosa would find fault with that,” Cal said.

“Maybe so,” Gene answered, “but look around; this place got started from nothing lickety-split. It’s a new town, a new county, and a new county seat all rolled into one. The old ways are on their way out, and I don’t hanker to get caught in the squeeze. Especially now that I’m a married man.”

“Good luck to you and your gal,” Cal said. “Bring her by to visit once you fetch her and get settled.”

“I surely will.”

Gene tipped his hat to Emma and rode away, cogitating about the sentence he needed to write to start a story about the gal who made a hand.

50

W
hile Cal, Patrick, and Emma stocked up on clothes and sundries at the big mercantile store capped by a domed tower a few steps from the hotel, George ambled down the sidewalk and discovered that Alamogordo wasn’t quite as dry as Gene Rhodes had made it out to be. There was one legal watering hole in town, owned and operated by the railroad company, and it was no hurdy-gurdy house. A long, polished bar with a brass foot rail ran the length of one wall. Behind it were large curved mirrors surrounded by carved, ornamental wooden pillars. A big nickel-plated cash register sat on a shelf in front of the mirrors along with bottles of whiskey and glasses. Along the opposite wall was a row of high-back upholstered booths crowned with wood molding. The tables and chairs in the center of the room showed no sign of wear or abuse at all. The place was brightly lit by chandeliers and big windows that looked out on the street.

Although there were plenty of patrons, there wasn’t another cowboy in sight. In a bar full of pilgrims, with no girlies around for companionship, George lost all desire to stay and get drunk. He reckoned there had not been one fight in the place since the day it opened. He bought a double shot of rye whiskey, downed it, and walked out, leaving behind a trail of dusty boot prints on the wooden floor.

He found Cal, Patrick, and Emma in front of the store next to the wagon with parcels under their arms.

“We’re gonna stay over the night at the hotel,” Patrick said.

George looked skyward. The threat of a storm had passed, and except for a few mare’s tails over the San Andres, it was sunny and clear. “If it’s all the same, I’ll draw my wages now and start back to the ranch,” he said.

Cal counted out George’s pay. “Are you stopping in Tularosa?” he asked.

George nodded as he took the bills. Cal had paid him twice what a hand made, which was the going rate for a cook on roundup. He felt real flush. “Ain’t that far, a dozen miles or so, and the saloons there are more congenial.” He cast a quick glance at Emma, who gave him an innocent smile.

“Take the wagon,” Patrick said, handing George a piece of paper, “get the supplies we need at the store, and put it on our account. It’s all written down.”

George nodded and put the paper in his shirt pocket.

“And don’t forget to take a bath before you go looking for congenial company,” Emma said sweetly.

Only George’s leathery skin, browned by nearly sixty years in the saddle, hid his blush. He turned to Patrick. “That little lady of yours gives me no peace of mind.”

Patrick grinned. “Don’t go feeling picked on. She gets after all of us now and then.”

“Humph,” George replied as he started the team on the road to Tularosa.

With Alamogordo behind him, his pony hitched to the wagon, and the wide-open country and towering mountains sharp in the sparkling light, George settled the team into a slow trot. In all his years, never had he been so worn down. As a young man, he’d helped trail five thousand head along the Western Trail from San Antonio to Dodge City. He’d driven cattle from Abilene to Cheyenne, crossing flooded rivers and fighting off Comanche raiding parties along the way. In 1866, he’d been on the first drive that blazed the Goodnight-Loving Trail to Fort Sumner, where the army had kept thousands of Navajos and Apaches rounded up and under guard for a time.

George had argued hard with Cal not to take him off the back of a horse during fall works, but secretly he’d been glad to shuck his pony for the chuck wagon. That wasn’t to say cooking for a crew was easy, for it weren’t. You got up first and went to bed late. He thought it would surely be a mite easier than forking a horse but found it just as wearisome.

In Tularosa, he parked the wagon at the livery, unhitched the team, and paid for their keep before riding his pony over to Coghlan’s saloon. Once it had been as brand-spanking new as the watering hole in Alamogordo. Not as fancy, but a respectable place to get a stiff drink and a good poke and play a friendly hand of cards. As Pat Coghlan’s fortunes kept sinking, the place had gotten seedier. Still, George preferred it simply out of habit.

Inside, he found the same crowd of out-of-work cowboys, town drunks, gamblers, and a few drifters. He ordered whiskey at the bar and gave a nod at Leonia, his favorite soiled dove.

She sashayed over and linked her arm around his. “Are you going to buy me a drink first?”

George smiled down at her. She was older than the other girls—maybe forty—and built the way he liked his women: short, round, and full figured, with wide hips and a big bottom he could grab onto.

“I’m gonna get a bottle, buy us a dinner, rent a room at the hotel, and spend the night with you, cash on the barrelhead,” he said with a grin. “But not until I have a bath and get a shave.”

Leonia pinched George’s cheek. “Have you gone and robbed a bank?”

“I ain’t done nothing desperate,” George said.

Leonia rubbed her breast against George’s arm, ran her hand down to his crotch, and gave him a gentle squeeze. “Either way, I’m all yours tonight, handsome.”

* * *

G
eorge felt as fit as a fiddle, the aches and pains of yesterday forgotten. It was way past dawn when he pulled himself out of bed. Although he’d had a fine supper last night with Leonia, his stomach was grumbling for breakfast. After she’d tiptoed out of the room, he’d snoozed for a time before getting dressed and counting his remaining wages. His night with her had set him back some, but he still had enough money for breakfast, a new pair of pants, some tobacco and cigarette papers, a small sack of hard candy, and a blue silk neckerchief he’d taken a shine to last time he was in Adam Dieter’s store.

After breakfast, he fed the animals, hitched the team, tied his saddle pony to the back of the wagon, and stopped at Dieter’s store to get the provisions on Patrick’s list. Dieter got busy right away filling the order while his missus gathered together George’s purchases. He signed for the ranch order, put on his new neckerchief, and admired himself in the countertop mirror.

“You look right smart, George,” Adam Dieter said.

George smiled in agreement. Last night with Leonia had taken ten years off him. “I sure ain’t dead yet.”

Dieter helped load the wagon, and in a jiffy George was on his way. The new train tracks ran along the western fringe of the village, skirting Tularosa entirely. He reckoned there had to be some reason why the railroad company decided to build a whole new town a short piece away in Alamogordo, but he couldn’t figure out why. A few years back, Pat Coghlan and the other merchants in town had been selling land to nesters on the promise that the railroad would turn Tularosa into a Garden of Eden in the desert. After seeing Alamogordo, George was surefire glad Coghlan’s plan had turned to dust.

He stopped in front of Ignacio’s hacienda and gave a holler. Teresa stepped outside and he tipped his hat. “Howdy, Señora.”

“
Buenos días,
George. Are you alone in town?”

“Cal and them should be along sometime today,” he answered. “They stayed the night in Alamogordo.”

“Come inside. I have fresh coffee.”

“Thank you kindly, but there’s a storm brewing and I need to make tracks.”

He tipped his hat again and started the team down the road to the basin. Over the years, he’d worked with Cal to improve the road, and now it was a lot less dangerous. Still, there were some passages over wide, sandy arroyos prone to flash floods, and cuts across rocky slopes given to slides and washouts. Either could thwart man and beast.

The sky was dark with thunderheads, and a stiff wind whipped out of the southwest, bending the mesquite and greasewood, whistling through the yucca groves, blowing stinging sand. George pulled his hat down around his ears and used his new neckerchief as a mask to protect his face from the sand.

Five miles outside Tularosa, the storm let loose a thick sheet of rain. Rolling thunder and lightning broke above George’s head, spooking the team. He stopped the wagon, tied the critters to a mesquite, and crawled under the wagon to wait it out. The wind turned cold and the rain kept coming until George couldn’t see three feet in front of him. When it finally stopped, he was sitting in a shallow stream of water running down the middle of the road.

On the flats George wasn’t worried much about getting stuck. The parched ground could take a good, heavy soaking without getting saturated. He crawled out from under the wagon and walked down the road apiece. It was soggy and there were puddles in spots, but it wasn’t muddy much at all. He led the team by the reins a ways, and the wagon wheels sank no more than a half inch. He climbed up on the seat and started the team slowly down the road. The black sky had turned gray, and thirty miles to the west a thick veil of clouds masked the San Andres. It was raining hard at the ranch and up north around the Carrizozo Flat. To the southwest there was no sign of clearing. George was certain more rain was coming. How much and when he could only guess.