The Last Ranch (15 page)

They drove on a dusty state road through rolling, grassy hills to the dilapidated village of Tombstone and on to Bisbee, a mining town filled with historic old buildings and charming Victorian houses. They spent the night in Douglas at an inexpensive motor inn and walked the streets of the Mexican border town of
Agua Prieta the next morning before crossing through thickly forested mountains into the New Mexico Bootheel, a vast expanse of grassland valleys with distant, shimmering mountains caressing the sky.

The landscape fired Erma's imagination and for the first time in years she began thinking about the personal dreams she'd put on hold for the sake of Hank's career. She wondered aloud if the college in Las Cruces had an art department. Mary didn't know. Erma figured it didn't matter; she'd been drawing and sketching since childhood and could learn on her own if need be. Suddenly, the unhappiness that had tied her stomach in knots over the past few weeks loosened and she felt a giddy rush of optimism.

They veered north on a gravel road past sprawling ranches and through tiny settlements until they reached the railroad town of Lordsburg. From there it would be a straight shot on a paved, two-lane highway to their destination.

The long drive through the heat of the day had left them thirsty, dusty, and weary. They got a room with a double bed at a small motel that fronted the main street and the train tracks, showered, went to a diner that served up a decent chicken-fried-steak dinner, and fell asleep early, serenaded by the sound of the passing freight trains.

Morning found them driving into a rising sun at dawn, the desert golden in the early light of day, the air swirling through the open windows, tasting dry and gritty. They had their first flat tire outside Deming, and after emptying all of the boxes Erma had crammed into the trunk, they were jacking up the car when two young cowboys in a pickup truck stopped and offered to lend a hand. Once the tire was changed they stuffed everything back into the trunk, smiled, doffed their cowboy hats, and drove off with Erma throwing them kisses.

Back on the highway, she glanced at Mary, grinned, and said, “I'm thinking cowboys are much more interesting than the Nebraska farm boys of my youth. We should have asked those two if they had eligible, handsome older brothers.”

Mary shook her head in amusement. “You sound like you're well on the road to recovery.”

“Is that where we're going?” Erma asked, feigning ignorance. “I thought it was Las Cruces. Although Recovery, New Mexico, does have a nice ring to it.”

Mary's giggle soon had them both laughing and the joke kept their spirits high all the way to Las Cruces, where the spires of the Organ Mountains, the green ribbon of the Rio Grande bosque against the brown desert valley floor, and the towering white clouds in the turquoise sky took Erma's breath away. She started visualizing a palette of colors to capture the landscape; a vivid blue-green for the river, a bright-pink underbelly in the clouds, and deep charcoal for the cascading shadows across the nearby mountains that hugged the Rio Grande. The notion that she could paint the world in front of her eyes grabbed her like a vise.

“We're home,” Mary said as the highway turned into Main Street.

“Yes, I think so,” Erma replied softly.

They rented a room in the Park Hotel just off Main Street, which overlooked the cool oasis of a lush city park shaded by mature, stately trees. They freshened up, had a quick lunch at a Mexican café, drove to the college on the outskirts of town, and walked around the campus. The view was spectacular, with the Organ Mountains dominating the horizon to the east and the desert valley beyond the Rio Grande stretching as far as the eye could see to the west, promising mysterious peaks and promontories. A hodgepodge of old and new buildings dominated a
horseshoe-shaped drive inside the main entrance, and within a short walking distance down a gentle incline stood neat rows of surplus military buildings that served as married-student housing.

In the administration building they collected information about degree programs and learned to Erma's dismay that there was no organized fine-arts program as yet, just a smattering of classes such as mechanical drawing and art appreciation that might fit her needs. Mary had already decided to explore degree programs in animal science and teacher education, and picked up a copy of the fall-semester class schedules to study. Enrollment started in six weeks.

At the student housing office they learned that the crush of adult students made off-campus housing almost impossible to find, to the point that older students were getting on waiting lists for dormitory rooms.

Outside, Mary turned to Erma. “I am not living in a college dormitory.”

“Me neither.”

“You're staying?”

Erma nodded. “I like it here.”

Mary gave her an excited squeeze. “Oh, good. Let's start looking.”

***

F
or two days they searched, driving by dilapidated farmhouses on the bosque, peering in the windows of tiny apartments converted from woodsheds and stables by homeowners eager for rental income. Several nice, large houses were available near the country club on the east side of town, but college students weren't welcome and the rents were excessive. Ten miles farther east in
the tiny village of Organ, they toured a cabin several blocks in from the highway that came complete with a stinky outhouse and a kitchen with no running water.

On the third day at breakfast they looked through the daily edition of the local newspaper hoping for new listings in the classifieds. They found an advertisement for a new apartment building near the campus but when they got there all the units had been rented. Back at the hotel, they sat on the front steps debating whether to keep looking or simply give up and move on to another city, preferably one with a college or university.

A mailman on his rounds approached the hotel entrance, and Mary got the sudden idea that he was just the person who would know of any vacancies in the neighborhood. When he reached the porch steps, she stood and asked if he knew if there was anything for rent.

A pleasant-looking older man with curly gray sideburns showing under his regulation cap, he smiled and nodded. “Mrs. Lorenz's tenant is moving out. She rents a nice apartment that used to be her husband's medical offices. It's on the side of the house with a separate entrance and a nice covered porch. She's an elderly lady who won't put up with any college-student pranks, but you gals look like the responsible type. She lives two blocks on the other side of the park.”

He rattled off the address. “Let her know that Teddy the mailman sent you.”

Erma jumped up beaming. “Thanks, you're a real peach.”

“And a lifesaver too,” Mary added.

Teddy blushed. “No need for that. Good luck. If she takes a liking to you two, I'll see you around.” He watched them hurry across the park, thinking any man who had a choice would be hard put to pick one over the other.

***

T
he house was a two-story Tudor with a steep roof, brick cladding, and a side gable above the entrance to the attached apartment. Vera Lorenz, tall, thin, and in her eighties, had a soft voice, lively eyes, and a warm smile. They inquired about the apartment and mentioned Teddy's name, which resulted in an invitation to sit in the parlor, where Vera politely interrogated them about their bona fides. They won Vera over with the mention of their naval service—the departed Dr. Lorenz had served as a navy physician during the Great War—and their ladylike deportment.

The apartment was charming, with two stories, a large front room, a good-size kitchen with all the necessary appliances, and two bedrooms and a full bath upstairs.

The current tenant was almost completely moved out, and the place would be available on Saturday. After Mary paid the deposit and a month's rent on the spot, they went furniture shopping the rest of the day.

It took a busy week to get settled in with enough furnishings, linens, kitchenware, and bedding to get by. Mary rescued her luggage from the nearby train depot freight office, and both of them opened accounts at a local bank on Main Street, a few blocks away from the apartment. For frugality's sake, they decided they needed only one car and that Erma's Olds would do nicely for their transportation. She had it serviced at a nearby garage by a mechanic who pointedly admired both her and her automobile. Because of the dry, dusty climate, he recommended frequent oil changes.

On the one-week anniversary of their occupancy, Mrs. Lorenz appeared at their door with a housewarming gift of homemade apple pie. They invited her in, made tea, had a celebration, and
visited with her for an hour, after which they decided she would forever be their honorary great aunt.

On the following Monday, with the fall semester fast approaching, they hightailed it to the college and signed up for their GI Bill benefits, which they happily discovered when combined would be enough to easily cover their monthly expenses.

Erma went off on her own to explore the campus while Mary waited at the admissions office to have her college transcript evaluated for transfer credits. She came away with the good news that she'd enter as a second-semester junior, but she would probably need a full two years to finish a degree program. Still undecided, she tentatively selected elementary education as her major, although her heart knew that something to do with ranching would suit her better.

In front of the door to the provost's office, a good-looking cowboy, tall with square shoulders and a glass eye, stepped quickly into the hallway, bumped into her, apologized, smiled, and doffed his hat. Mary smiled back, thinking maybe she should wrangle herself a cowboy.

She laughed off the silly notion and went to find Erma.

Lt. Colonel Samuel R. Allen, commanding officer, White Sands Proving Ground, liked to tell the story of how two days after his arrival in Las Cruces with orders to establish a post on the Tularosa Basin for the purpose of testing captured German V-2 rockets, he was asleep in the Amador Hotel when the atom bomb went off at Trinity site.

“I slept through it like a baby,” he noted to US Fish and Wildlife Service supervisor Rockwell Stanley, ignoring the bored politeness of Capt. Earl Potter, his XO, who'd heard the tale at least a hundred times.

“I had to read about it in the morning paper,” Allen chuckled. “It was reported as a munitions explosion at the time, which of course none of the locals believed.”

Rockwell Stanley had shown up to protest Allen's decision that Fish and Wildlife Service employees would henceforth be escorted by military police to and from the 57,000-acre San Andres National Wildlife Refuge, which was now completely surrounded by the proving ground.

What the military was doing besides testing V-2 rockets at the high-security, off-limits army base was anybody's guess. But with the local economy booming because of the new installation, only the out-of-luck, dispossessed ranchers who'd been promised their land back at the end of the war and Rockwell Stanley were complaining.

“That's a humdinger of a story to tell your grandchildren,” Rockwell said, feigning geniality as he shifted his weight in his chair. A noisy, rotating fan on top of a file cabinet behind Allen's desk blew dusty hot air around the room. Midmorning, it had to be almost ninety degrees inside the post headquarters building, and Stanley's throat felt raw and dry.

Allen smiled, touched his neatly trimmed mustache, and looked down his long nose at Stanley. “Yes, I suppose it will be.” He turned his attention to Earl Potter. “Is it possible we could have our range riders simply check in with the Fish and Wildlife personnel at the refuge from time to time?” he asked. “Find out if the War Department would approve.”

Rockwell Stanley's smile of appreciation was thin-lipped. “How long would that take?” he asked Potter.

An accomplice in Colonel Allen's ruse to placate Rockwell, Potter smiled pleasantly at the bureaucrat. “No more than a week or two at the most, I'd guess.”

Stanley stood. “Good. I'll expect to hear from you by then, otherwise I'm afraid the Secretary of the Interior will be asked to intervene.”

Samuel Allen came around his desk and shook Stanley's hand. “No need to trouble the secretary. We'll try our best to work this out to everyone's satisfaction.”

A somewhat mollified Rockwell Stanley nodded curtly at Potter on his way out the door. As Allen returned to his desk, Potter
shifted his gaze out the window at the largest structure on the base, where German scientists and technicians—many of them former card-carrying Nazis who'd been secretly smuggled across the Mexican border by a covert intelligence operation—were busily preparing for the next launch.

Sadly, the colonel won't get to see it
, Potter thought sarcastically, stifling a chuckle. In a week, Allen would turn command over to his successor, a brigadier general no less, who would have the enviable task of leading the army's missile program into the future. It was the summer of 1947 and already V-2 rockets had been successfully fired. Now the challenging process of designing, building, launching, and controlling large guided missiles had begun. A new era of weaponry was under way and the prospects looked extremely promising.

Earl Potter knew there was no chance Rockwell Stanley's civil servants working at the wildlife refuge in the San Andres Mountains would be allowed to enter the proving ground unaccompanied. Either they'd accept military police escorts or be denied admittance. The development of new and more powerful weaponry made security of paramount importance, and if the wildlife refuge had to get along without the tender loving care of naturalists and biologists, so be it.

Potter switched his attention back to Allen, who was still smarting from the news that a brigadier general would replace him as post commander, and he'd be leaving with the same rank he held when he arrived. Privately, Earl Potter rejoiced at the news. As the executive officer, he was filling a position authorized for someone with the rank of major, and Allen had yet to recommend his promotion.

He waited patiently for Allen to question him about the 7-Bar-K
Ranch situation, wondering if his response would cost him both the promotion and his career.

In his thirties and older than most company-grade officers, Potter had earned a battlefield commission to second lieutenant early in the war and by the summer of 1944 had been promoted twice to his current rank of captain. He hoped to stay in the army as an officer, which meant he needed to be wearing the gold oak leaves of a major on his collar shortly or face returning to his enlisted rank of staff sergeant.

The mere idea of it depressed Potter. Doing his job proficiently had meant nothing to Allen, who had consistently threatened him with ruination whenever he failed to meet any of Allen's harebrained ultimatums. And the 7-Bar-K Ranch boondoggle was most certainly among one of Allen's most pigheaded demands.

The privately owned ranch on the edge of the proving ground had been a thorn in Allen's side since the day he assumed command and raised the American flag on an uninhabited, empty cow pasture at the eastern foot of the Organ Mountains in June of 1945.

That thorn in turn became a cattle prod Allen had used on Potter to goad him into finding a way to get the rancher in question, Matthew Kerney, off his land. To date, Potter's efforts had been woefully unsuccessful. Kerney had rejected all offers to either lease or sell his ranch to the army, going so far as to recently turn back his grazing rights to three thousand acres of public land near the Alkali Flats to forestall any government action against him. Last week, Allen had given Potter the insanely impossible task of resolving the problem before his departure.

Allen tapped his pen on the desktop. “What about the 7-Bar-K?”

“The judge advocate has tied my hands,” Potter replied, eyeing Allen carefully for a reaction. “As you know, all of the ranch is in mountainous terrain outside our boundaries and owned outright by Matthew Kerney. Presently, there is no legal way to move against him.”

“Yes, yes,” Allen said impatiently.

Deliberately, to irritate the old man who would soon no longer be his boss, Potter stretched out a recitation covering old ground: “Because of its location, the ranch was not included for lease or purchase consideration when the air corps established the Tularosa Basin Bombing Range during the war. Lacking a prior agreement, we must either negotiate with the owner, Matthew Kerney, to purchase or lease the ranch—which he refuses to consider—or take action to seize the land under eminent domain proceedings, which of course he can fight in the courts.”

Allen glared at Potter. “Get on with it, dammit.”

“He's a disabled war veteran with the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Commendation Medal, and Combat Infantry Badge earned during the Sicily campaign,” he reminded Allen pointedly. Potter proudly wore the same decorations on his uniform. Conversely, in Allen's thirty-some years of service, he'd never spent a day in a war zone.

“The publicity from any legal action against him on the part of the government would most likely be adverse,” Potter concluded, waiting patiently for Allen to hurl another threat in his direction.

Allen huffed, twirled his pencil with his fingers, and glared at Potter through narrowed eyes. “If you don't want an efficiency report that kills any chance you'll ever have for a promotion, find a way to get that ranch under our control.”

“There's possibly a way to overcome the problem without a drawn-out legal battle,” Potter replied calmly, consulting his notes. “Originally in 1941, exactly 1,249,904.36 acres of land were either withdrawn from public use or appropriated by lease or purchase agreements to establish the Alamogordo Bombing Range. With the establishment of White Sands Proving Ground, those boundaries were expanded in 1946 using aerial photography. What if a mistake was made in regards to the 7-Bar-K Ranch boundary line?”

Allen raised an eyebrow in interest.

Potter continued: “What if all or part of the ranch already falls under our jurisdiction and we just don't know it? With that in mind, I've asked for a new aerial survey as well as a ground survey of the 7-Bar-K Ranch property lines to establish the actual boundaries. Unfortunately, the situation can't possibly be fully resolved by the day of your departure, but a final resolution to the problem will be well under way, and I predict it will most likely result in government seizure of land for the proving ground.”

Potter fell silent and waited for Allen's reaction.

“How long would it take to get the results of the new survey?” Allen demanded.

“A month or two,” Potter lied, having already learned from the Corps of Engineers that an accurate mapping would take almost a full year.

“Do it,” Allen snapped.

“The Corps of Engineers will need a request in writing,” Potter advised.

“Draft the letter and I'll sign it.”

“Yes, sir,” Earl Potter replied, delighted Allen had so willingly agreed to the letter. If Matthew Kerney decided to raise a stink
about the land survey, he would have a copy of Allen's signed request to cover his ass.

“Good work, Potter,” Allen said, breaking into a reluctant smile. “See me in the morning for your efficiency report. It just might get you those oak leaves you're yearning for.”

Potter came to attention and snapped off a salute. “Thank you, sir.” He executed a perfect about-face and left feeling damn good about one-upping Allen. It made his day; hell, it made his week.

***

L
iving in town and attending classes at the college limited the time Matt Kerney had to spend at the ranch, although he tried to get out most every weekend during the school year. Having Jasper Daklugie there had been a godsend. He'd quickly matured into a top hand and had all the makings of a fine ranch manager, so of course after two years the Mescalero tribal elders decided to bring him home to help run their cattle operation on the reservation. No one was more dismayed about Jasper's pending departure than Patrick, who'd come to prize the young man's company and appreciate his hard work.

Matt feared Jasper would be irreplaceable. He possessed a unique talent of keeping the 7-Bar-K running smoothly and making sure Patrick was looked after in a way that didn't bruise his pride. The old boy had turned seventy-three earlier in the year and while he still managed to lend a hand, his age and bad leg had slowed him down considerably, and that worried Matt.

Jasper stayed through fall works. After the cattle had shipped, he left for Mescalero with his last month's wages in his pocket,
trailing a choice pony that Matt gave him as a bonus. From the veranda, Matt and Patrick watched him ride across Alkali Flats until he disappeared in the distance. With his foot planted on the railing, Patrick wistfully wondered aloud if he'd ever again chance to see a man on horseback crossing the Tularosa. With all the trucks and automobiles now clogging streets and highways, Matt doubted it.

After supper Matt looked through the mail he'd fetched earlier in the day to find a letter from White Sands Proving Ground advising him the army would be surveying for a high-voltage power line that would cross the basin near the 7-Bar-K boundary. Once the line was completed, under provisions of the Rural Electrification Act the government would provide electrical hookup service at no cost to all owners of private property adjacent to the transmission lines. Included was a form to be signed and returned granting permission for a land survey crew hired by the army to enter the ranch as needed to map the route.

“Don't trust them,” Patrick warned, after Matt read him the contents of the letter.

Matt laughed as he signed the form and put it in the return envelope. For years he'd dreamt about having electricity at the ranch. “I'm not gonna pass up a chance like this. I don't see anything suspicious about the army stringing power lines.”

“I thought you had more sense than that,” Patrick chided. “Every time the army puts up a new building, or fires one of those Nazi rockets, or closes the highways while they blow something up, it means they ain't ever gonna leave. And running electric wires here and there on the Tularosa is no different. Don't let them on our land. It's a mistake. They'll come after us again someday, wait and see.”

Matt put the letter away. “Maybe so, but they haven't been able to budge us so far, and I'll fight them again if need be.”

***

A
month into Brig. Gen. Lloyd N. Hulley's assumption of command at White Sands Proving Ground, Maj. John “Jack” Reynolds arrived at the post to serve as the general's XO. Expecting to be bumped from his job, Potter was reassigned as commanding officer of the Headquarters Detachment. Notified that he was on the promotion list for major and bearing the new XO no ill will, Earl assembled a comprehensive briefing document for Reynolds that included all the relevant information about the 7-Bar-K Ranch project he'd been ordered to initiate by Colonel Allen. Far too busy with a whirlwind visit from a four-star admiral and a British field marshal, Reynolds put the briefing document aside with a smile and a promise to revisit it with him soon. That was Potter's first and only private meeting with the man.

Two months later, Potter received a misdirected letter in his mailbox from the Corps of Engineers saying the aerial survey of the 7-Bar-K Ranch had been completed, the land survey was well under way, and there was preliminary evidence showing that part of the ranch was indeed within the boundary of the installation and therefore available for forced acquisition. The final mapping report would be completed by the summer of 1948. He had the detachment clerk forward it to Reynolds but heard nothing back in return.