The Last Ranch (26 page)

With the help of Fish and Wildlife personnel and the army MPs, who grudgingly joined in, they set about sinking posts, setting railings, and hanging the gates. After the corral was up, they used tarps, shelter half tents, and surplus cot-size mattresses the army had supplied at Matt's request to conceal the fencing and pad the posts and the double swinging gates to reduce the chance of injury to the animals. Finally, they cut branches and boughs from a grove of junipers on higher terrain, carted it all to the corral, and tacked it to the posts and gates as camouflage.

By late afternoon the corral was complete, but Matt wasn't quite finished. He knew from experience that horses had an excellent sense of smell; any good cow pony would frequently cast for a scent when following cattle no longer in sight, especially if
the tracks were hard to discern. The corral alone would be something new and disturbing on the route to water, and the lingering scent of man would unsettle them even more. He ordered the crew to move camp a quarter of a mile away and erase all traces of their presence.

There they waited.

Two days passed without a sign of the ponies. Each day Matt sent out riders to spot them and they returned with reports that the band was watering far to the north in a canyon at the edge of the refuge. Two days later, with the ponies drifting closer but still nowhere near the corral, Matt started to think the band had sensed the trap. Another no-show the next morning found him running out of options. With eight days left to remove the horses, there wasn't time to take down the corral and set it up at a new location. If the ponies didn't show soon, he'd be forced to attempt to drive the band into the corral, which had a decidedly dismal chance of succeeding.

Matt slept fitfully that night, imagining the footfalls of ponies, only to wake up in time to see a lone mare with her young foal enter the mouth of the capture corral. He had no idea if he'd missed the rest of the band, but a quick inspection of hoofprints told him a long line of ponies had slowly and cautiously traversed the length of the corral. Reassured that they were back, he decided to give the band one more safe passage before closing the trap.

From a distance, Matt and his boys trailed and kept a close watch on the mustangs during the day and throughout the night, shadowing in shifts of two. At daybreak from a nearby promontory they watched in great relief as the horses quietly appeared and meandered into the mouth of the open corral on their way to water.

The next morning, after another night of sentinel duty and a cold camp breakfast, saddled and ready, they nervously waited to spring the trap. When all but six stragglers were inside, Matt signaled the MPs to close the gates. He sent two of his men to chase down the stragglers, and they kicked up dust in pursuit of three mares, two colts, and a foal that tore out of the canyon. From inside the corral a deafening roar of spitting, snorting, stomping, angry, frightened ponies rose up.

Matt and his remaining cowboy, Les Leland, a top roper and savvy hand, took a quick look over the top railing at the distressed, agitated animals. The reigning stallion, a thick-chested black, was damn angry and snorting snot. With his nostrils flared and his ears pinned back, he pounded the ground with his powerful hooves and slammed his body against a younger stallion that had invaded a group of mares milling against the corral fence. Two of the mares snapped and bit at another youngster that also tried to intrude.

Matt hadn't counted on warfare between the males and told Les they needed to get the stallions out of the corral before they started killing one another. “Best we do it one at a time,” he suggested.

Les eyed Matt speculatively. “Are you sure you want to go in there?”

Matt tipped his hat back, scratched his forehead, and checked the rounds in his six-shooter. “Let's go after that big, mean, black son of a bitch first.”

Les grinned, checked his pistol, and nodded.

Matt felt Maverick quiver under him as he ordered the gate opened. He spurred his pony inside with Les hard on his heels, both with lassos twirling in long, flat loops.

The black wheeled to face them just as the loops settled
simultaneously over his head. Maverick dug in as the black reared in protest and charged straight at Matt, almost pulling Les out of his saddle.

Maverick tried but couldn't get out of the way fast enough. The black slammed into the pony and he went down hard on his side with Matt's arm pinned under his shoulder. He felt something snap, saw the black rise up above him with murderous eyes, and heard the sound of gunfire just before he lost consciousness.

Matt's wreck in the corral resulted in a badly fractured left humerus. Maverick, on the other hand, wasn't hurt at all. After coming out of surgery, Les Leland told Matt that two of the army MPs had braved the rampaging ponies to carry him out of the corral to safety. They administered first aid and rushed him to the hospital, where an orthopedic surgeon pinned the bone in his upper arm back together. For the next two months it was encased in a plaster cast from his shoulder to his wrist, and made normal living almost impossible, especially when dressing. When he got his sense of humor back he joked to Mary that he seemed prone to ruining only the left side of his body. She didn't find it very funny.

As far as the pony capture went, Les had taken charge after Matt's wreck and successfully removed the band from the refuge. Only the black stallion and one colt had been lost; the colt crushed to death against a gate by a raging mare trying to escape. Awaiting further relocation, the mustangs now idly grazed amidst hundreds of large ammunition bunkers at the Fort Wingate army post outside of Gallup. Matt couldn't help but wonder what kind of
hilarious cartoon Bill Mauldin would have dreamt up about such a sight.

A week after his cast came off, Matt and Mary received an invitation from Maj. Gen. Norbert Schroeder, commanding officer of White Sands Proving Ground, to attend an award ceremony and parade for the two army MPs who'd rescued him. PFC Fred Ely and Sgt. Tony Marshall were to receive the Soldier's Medal for heroism not involving conflict with an enemy.

They gladly accepted, not only to personally thank the two soldiers but to also get a firsthand look at the post headquarters that had blossomed from a few temporary, surplus buildings into a military complex spread out over several hundred acres of old ranch pastureland. The base now housed hundreds of enlisted soldiers in barracks and a large number of career military personnel and their families in residential housing. And it employed a growing number of scientists, technicians, civil servants, and office workers at various research facilities, laboratories, test sites, and office buildings in or near the headquarters complex.

For more than a decade, local motorists cresting the San Augustin Pass eastbound on the highway that ran from Las Cruces to Alamogordo could glimpse from a distance the rapid transformation of the proving ground into a small city. It was as close as most folks would ever get to actually stepping foot on the high-security base, which had turned nearby Las Cruces into a boomtown. The Cold War had brought continuing prosperity to southern New Mexico.

On the morning of the award ceremony and parade, Matt, Mary, and Kevin traveled the proving-ground access road from the highway, stopped at the security gate, and presented their letter of invitation to an MP at the guard station. He checked Matt's and Mary's driver's licenses, directed them to park in front of the
nearby provost marshal's building, and asked them to wait there for their escort, who would arrive shortly. Within a few minutes an army staff car drove up and a smiling young first lieutenant dressed in starched khakis jumped out.

“I'm Lieutenant Terry, your escort,” he said as he opened the passenger door to Matt's pickup truck and speculatively eyed the young boy who climbed out after Mary. “We didn't know you'd be bringing your son.”

“I doubt Kevin will be any trouble,” Mary replied. “He'd like to thank the soldiers who saved his father's life.”

“Yes, of course he would,” Lieutenant Terry replied, recovering quickly. “We should have included him on the invitation.”

“I'm gonna be a soldier when I grow up,” Kevin announced as he adjusted his cowboy hat. “But Mom thinks I'd like the navy better.”

“I'm sure the army would love to have you,” Lieutenant Terry said with a smile as he greeted the boy's father with a handshake. Father and son were dressed alike in pressed blue jeans, long-sleeved white cowboy shirts, go-to-town cowboy hats, and polished black cowboy boots. The boy was a smaller version of his father, with deep blue eyes, square shoulders, and a lean, lanky frame.

Lieutenant Terry motioned the Kerneys to the staff car, and once they were settled inside the olive-drab sedan he proposed a quick tour of the post headquarters, including some of the guided missiles that were on display. Kevin grinned with delighted anticipation.

***

M
aj. Gen. Norbert Schroeder sat alone in his office at headquarters studying the large, detailed map of the proving grounds on
the far wall. Schroeder had been on the job for slightly more than two years and very soon the base would officially become White Sands Missile Range—a more fitting designation for an installation that under his command had embarked on the development and testing of the Nike Zeus missile, a technological airborne marvel capable of seeking out and destroying enemy intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying nuclear warheads.

From the very first day behind his desk, General Schroeder had been bothered by the blotch of white on the map that signified the only remaining private inholding on the military reservation: the 7-Bar-K Ranch. A past commander had nibbled at the edges of the ranch, craftily finding a way to seize the public grazing lands the ranch had once leased, but all direct efforts since to entice the Kerneys to sell had failed dismally.

Schroeder saw the white blotch on his map as a potential major security risk. Because case law allowed the Kerneys access to their property, they had free egress to the ranch but were legally forbidden to trespass beyond the ranch boundaries without permission. However, given the hundreds of square miles of federal land surrounding the ranch, it was virtually impossible to enforce compliance, which meant they could easily roam throughout the mountains with very little chance of detection. That made the ranch a perfect jumping-off place for undetected espionage incursions onto the base.

He'd considered initiating condemnation proceedings against them, but had held off, not wanting a repeat of the public-relations disaster caused by the John Prather fiasco. The last thing he needed was a swarm of angry cowboys and their families staging another standoff.

Today, he'd meet Matthew Kerney and his wife, and use the
opportunity to take measure of the man. He already knew about his combat war service and that of the elder Kerney in the Spanish-American War. He'd also acquainted himself with Mary Kerney's exemplary stateside service in the navy. Also, he knew the couple was highly regarded both professionally and personally by influential community leaders throughout the state.

One more time, he paged through the dossiers on the family his staff had prepared before putting them aside and turning his attention to the award and parade ceremony. Most of the enlisted men who served under his command were college-educated draftees who disdained the discipline and orderliness of military service, so he'd cancelled all weekend passes and scheduled the parade on a Saturday morning to remind them that they were indeed still members of the United States Army.

Schroeder loved a good parade, and he'd had his detachment COs and NCOs drilling their troops for the last two weeks after evening mess call so that they'd at least look and act like soldiers when they formed up and marched.

They would fall in at thirteen hundred hours in fresh khaki uniforms for inspection and then march to the parade grounds across from headquarters, where they would pass in review after Private First Class Ely and Sergeant Marshall received their decorations, and Sgt. Maj. Jerome Zachary retired with the rank of full colonel after forty years of service with the Legion of Merit medal pinned to his chest.

The review stand would be filled with members of his senior staff, all the wives and children of the company and field grade officers, their senior NCOs, most of the high-ranking civil servants and their families who worked at the base, and members of the press from Albuquerque, El Paso, Las Cruces, and Alamogordo.
He would use the event to announce the official renaming of the base to White Sands Missile Range effective May 1, 1958, a mere three weeks hence.

But first, he'd lunch with Mr. and Mrs. Kerney in his headquarters conference room over a nice meal of brisket—favored, Schroeder understood, by ranchers and prepared by the chef at the officers' club.

***

A
n ROTC graduate from West Virginia, First Lieutenant Terry proved to be a well-informed tour guide. Recently promoted, Terry had eighteen months to serve on active duty before returning home to join his father's insurance business in Charleston. After a visit to the guided missiles that graced the entrance as statuary outside the headquarters building, Terry drove them by the service club, swimming pool, movie theater, library, post PX, the chapel, the health clinic, and around a compound of new brick barracks for unmarried enlisted men before taking them on a quick tour of the new housing development for senior NCOs and officers that consisted of neatly lined up, cookie-cutter homes on winding streets. As he drove, he talked about the many famous people and celebrities who'd visited the base, including a British field marshal, Hollywood starlets, and the comedian Jack Benny.

Back at headquarters, Terry guided them to an office, where they were greeted by a lieutenant colonel and quickly ushered into Maj. Gen. Norbert Schroeder's office, where he stood next to his desk smiling and ready for the introductions.

“I'm very pleased that you could come,” Schroeder said, slightly miffed that he hadn't been advised that the Kerneys had brought their young son, who could be a distraction. He gestured at the
several comfortable chairs and couch separated by a long coffee table in the middle of his office used for informal conversations and briefings, invited them to sit, and joined them.

“We have a few minutes to chat before lunch,” he added.

“It was kind of you to invite us to the ceremony,” Mary said.

Schroeder smiled broadly. “It means a lot to Sergeant Marshall and PFC Ely that you're here. We'd like to take some photographs of Mr. Kerney with the two soldiers for our base newspaper after the event, if that's okay with you.”

“Yes, of course,” Matt replied, deliberately terse, making Schroeder work at whatever agenda he had planned.

Schroeder smiled at Kevin, who sat between his parents on the couch. “Did you enjoy the tour?”

“Yes, sir,” Kevin answered. “The missiles were really neat. The officer let me sit on the little one called the Corporal.”

“We need to get a picture of you sitting on it as a souvenir.”

Kevin grinned.

“Have you ever seen a military parade before?” Schroeder asked.

“No, sir, but I bet it's super.”

“It is,” Schroeder agreed, glancing at Mary Kerney. “I'm sorry your father-in-law turned down my invitation.”

Mary laughed. “Patrick did you a favor, General. He would have shown up with blood in his eyes.”

Schroeder nodded sympathetically. “Unfortunately in the past we haven't been very good at diplomacy with our neighbors.”

“That's the truth of it,” Matt said flatly.

The door to the adjacent conference room opened, signaling that lunch was ready to be served.

Schroeder stood. “The cook has fixed a nice brisket. Let's eat and talk of more pleasant things. I understand, Mr. Kerney, that
you're quite an expert on restoring native grasslands in these parts. We need to do some of that here. Perhaps you could advise us.”

***

A
fter a pleasant lunch filled with good food and casual chatter, General Schroeder, accompanied by his deputy commander, his aide-de-camp, and Lieutenant Terry, escorted Matt, Mary, and Kevin across the road to the parade ground, where the troops and the spectators had assembled. Upon their arrival under a hot sun in a clear-blue April sky, the troops were called to attention, Sergeant Marshall and PFC Ely were brought forward, their citations were read, and Schroeder pinned medals on their chests. Then Jerome Zachary, the former sergeant major, now bird colonel, wearing his officer's uniform with five rows of ribbons, was called forward to receive the Legion of Merit. Before presenting the award, Schroeder summarized Zachary's combat service in both world wars, noting that he was one of a very few soldiers to have been awarded the Silver Star in each conflict. He then announced the upcoming name change to White Sands Missile Range, which was greeted with a murmur of approval from the audience.

After the troops passed in review and left the parade grounds, the reporters and photographers clustered around the Kerneys and the newly decorated soldiers, taking pictures and asking questions. Soon Lieutenant Terry called a halt to the interviews, and had an army photographer take pictures of Matt with Ely and Marshall, and another one of Kevin astride the Corporal missile, waving his cowboy hat in the air as though he was bronc riding. It made for a great snapshot.

Before Schroeder said goodbye on the front steps of the headquarters building, he took Matt and Mary to one side and said, “I want you to know the Pentagon has agreed to my recommendation that we pay you a fair price for your ranch as an alternative to seizing it through an eminent domain proceeding. You can use any appraiser you choose to do the valuation. I'd very much like to move forward on this.”

Matt shook his head. “Sorry, we're not interested, General. I made a promise to my father that the ranch stays in the family until he says otherwise, and he's not agreeable to moving. I'm afraid you're going to have to live with things the way they are. Try to kick us off the land, and we will fight you.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Schroeder said, his jaw tightening. He touched the brim of his hat and nodded to Mary. “Good day to you, ma'am.”

Mary smiled sweetly. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

Back in his office, Maj. Gen. Norbert Schroeder sat at his desk and wrote out an order to his provost marshal instructing him to have MPs immediately begin stop-and-search procedures every time the Kerneys or any of their visitors entered or left the missile range on their way to and from the 7-Bar-K Ranch. It would require manpower to manage it, but it was time to send a first-strike message to Matthew and Mary Kerney that the kid gloves had come off.