The Last Ranch (31 page)

The year Kevin Kerney was about to turn thirteen, he and Dale skipped the eighth grade and started high school. That same year, Raymond Edward Cannon, owner of the Willow Creek Ranch located at the base of the Sierra Cuchillo Mountains in the northern part of Sierra County, inaugurated an annual working cowboy and kids' rodeo on his spread.

In a cottonwood draw on a wide rift valley at the foot of the elongated north-south range, the ranch was a rich-man's getaway built for Mr. Cannon after the war by the best craftsmen, using the finest materials.

The Sierra Cuchillo Mountains were named not for their knifelike shape but for the legendary Apache leader Black Knife of the Warm Springs Band. On their northern slopes, they had once contained a ponderosa forest that long ago had been harvested for mining operations. Pockets of piñon and juniper trees dominated the gentle, gravelly eastern gradient that rose up to a steep, barren, western escarpment.

The ranch house was the fanciest and biggest dwelling Kevin
had ever seen. More a sportsman's lodge than a home, it had been constructed with massive timbers that supported a soaring, vaulted ceiling. An eight-foot fireplace at one end was bracketed by large windows that gave a panoramic view of the mountains. Arranged throughout the room were conversation areas with handmade chairs, couches, tables, and ottomans upholstered or decorated in western and cowboy motifs. It boggled Kevin's mind that the house had a half dozen huge bedrooms, all with individual full bathrooms. The dining room adjoining an enormous kitchen contained a handcrafted table with matching chairs that could easily seat two dozen people.

The nearby guesthouse also had a huge cook's kitchen, along with two full bathrooms and four separate bedrooms. A few steps away, near a stone and adobe horse barn, stood the foreman's cottage, built of milled lumber covered by a sloping bright-red metal roof. It had a spacious porch that looked out on a set of corrals near a horse pasture and brand-new rodeo grounds complete with a judge's stand and a small covered grandstand in close proximity to the chutes. During the events, folks who weren't able to snare a seat in the grandstand backed their pickups against the fence and watched from lawn chairs in the truck beds.

From the very get-go, the two-day rodeo drew hundreds of folks from the surrounding area, including a contingent of city and county elected officials from T or C. At the conclusion of the first day's events, Mr. Cannon and his wife, Polly, threw a barbeque on the front lawn for the contestants and spectators that was more a rally for Cannon's preferred political party candidates than it was a neighborly get-together. Still, the food, spirits, and company were great and nobody minded the glad-hand politicking.

Kevin figured the foreman's cottage was almost as big as the
old 7-Bar-K ranch house. Behind it, no more than a hundred feet away, stood the bunkhouse, a long, low-slung adobe building with living space for six cowboys who worked cattle during the calving and shipping seasons and after fall works guided hunters into the mountains who anted up a pretty penny for the chance to bag a buck deer, a black bear, a wild turkey, or a mountain lion.

Cannon had made his fortune as a lawyer specializing in corporate acquisitions and was known for always turning a profit no matter what enterprise he undertook. Accordingly, the ranch operated in the black. While touring the ranch headquarters, Kevin and his parents were flabbergasted at the opulence of the place. When his dad half-jokingly advised him to go to law school first if he wanted to be a rancher, Kevin said he'd give it some thought.

That first year Kevin and Dale competed only in the team roping event and they came away with a second-place ribbon but no belt buckles. Kevin's dad, however, took the cowboy all-around title with a first in bronc riding, a second in steer wrestling, and another first in team roping with Al Jennings as his partner. He won a cash prize, a silver buckle, and a new saddle. Amid catcalls and cheers, he raised the saddle over his head and with a grin on his face and an ache in his side from getting stepped on by the steer, he promptly announced his retirement from competition. Bursting with pride for his dad and determined to match his success, Kevin decided to win the top prize in the kids' rodeo next year. Maybe he'd even get a peck on the cheek from Mr. Cannon's granddaughter, Melissa, a dark-haired thirteen-year-old charmer with bright-blue eyes who handed out the prizes.

During the school year, a number of cute girls in his classes helped Kevin quickly forget about Melissa Cannon. He trained with his dad every chance he got to improve his skills in calf wrestling and calf roping, and when he was at the Rocking J, he and
Dale worked tirelessly on their team roping—the only event Dale had any real interest in.

Keeping his grades up, practicing his rodeo skills, and pulling his share of chores at home and at the Rocking J took up most of his free time, so girls weren't a high priority, although he was starting to think they should be. Maybe next year he'd meet one he really liked.

***

A
lthough the Rocking J kept its original brand, the ranch was now officially the J&K Land and Cattle Company owned jointly by Al and Brenda Jennings and Matthew and Mary Kerney. Kevin's parents had taken the money from the sale of the 7-Bar-K and invested a chunk of it in the enterprise to improve the pastures, upgrade the breeding stock, drill two new deep wells, replace fencing, and expand the small cottage at the ranch headquarters. As before, Al managed the cattle operation and Kevin's dad continued to work for the college as a range and equine specialist, helping out during gatherings and on weekends. In addition, he bred and trained a small herd of cow ponies in his free time that he sold to area ranchers.

The summer after his freshman year, on a day when both sets of parents were in town on business, Kevin and Dale saddled up, left the Rocking J, and snuck onto the missile range to visit the old 7-Bar-K, traveling through the narrow slot canyon well hidden from any soldiers scanning the San Andres through binoculars. They reached the ranch undetected and found it unoccupied with the front door wide-open. Although the army had moved cots, gray metal dressers, chairs, tables, and a dented steel file cabinet into the ranch house, all the warmth of the place was
gone. There was evidence of rodent droppings in all the rooms and a slithering impression of a snake on the dusty wood-plank floor in the living room that gradually disappeared on the steps to the veranda. Paint was peeling off the wood window frames, and there was a large water stain on the kitchen ceiling from a roof leak around the stovepipe.

A heavy padlock secured the entry to the adobe casita off the courtyard. The boys debated busting in to see what was inside, but gave up the notion so as not to advertise their trespassing.

The barn, corrals, and sheds looked no better than the house, and the once-welcoming cottonwood windbreak below the veranda was dying of thirst from a lack of moisture. At the end of the windbreak, the long-dead Witch's Tree tilted precariously, and the rock-lined, hand-dug channel Kevin's great-grandfather had trenched to water the trees was bone-dry. Soon all the beautiful old trees with thick branches filled with lime-green leaves quaking in the soft breeze would be dead and cut up for firewood.

At the family cemetery on the hill, part of the fence was down. At first glance, Kevin thought it had been deliberately damaged until he discovered a critter hole next to one of the posts had caused the collapse. He got a shovel with a broken handle that had been left behind in the barn and with Dale's help reset the post and repaired the railing. He doubted anyone staying at the place would notice, and if they did he didn't care.

Before leaving, the boys pulled all the weeds inside the fence so that it looked cared for. If his gramps was watching, Kevin knew he'd be pleased. On the ride back to the Rocking J, he stewed over the notion that what mattered most to some people didn't count for spit to others. His family history lived in the hand-dug water channel, the thick-walled adobe house, the stoutly built corral, the slat-board barn, the large stone water tank, the stately,
silent windmill, and the land so carefully tended. It meant nothing to the army. What kind of men ran the army? Whoever they were, he didn't think much of them.

They started for home over the mountain, not caring a lick when the MPs on jeep patrol spotted them coming out of a grove of trees at the top of the steep eastern escarpment. They were too far away to get caught. They drew rein and waved their hats at the soldiers before dropping out of sight down an old game trail.

“We're gonna catch hell at home if our parents find out what we did,” Dale predicted.

Kevin shrugged. “Maybe not.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I bet my dad has been to the ranch at least once since we buried Gramps's ashes.”

“How do you figure that?”

Kevin smiled. “If we can't stay away, I doubt that he can either.”

Dale nodded soberly. “It's a hard place to forget. Let's go back again someday.”

“Yeah, lots of times,” Kevin added.

***

A
t the next Willow Creek Ranch Kids' Rodeo, a sixteen-year-old took the top prize. But Kevin and Dale came away with buckles for first place in team roping. They also got a photograph in the T or C newspaper showing Melissa Cannon presenting their awards. Dale's grin lit up the photograph and Melissa posed like a starlet, smiling prettily at the camera. Disappointed at his narrow second-place finish for the all-around title, Kevin glared glumly into the lens. He'd lost the championship with a disqualification in calf roping by breaking the barrier too soon. He started the first day
of his second year of high school determined to never make that mistake again.

The first day at school also brought Eunice Williston into his class. A transfer student from Socorro, she was a mixture of tomboy and tease. She was natural and uninhibited, with short-cut blond hair, a slightly crooked nose, and a devilish laugh.

Her father had retired as a captain from the Socorro Police Department and recently taken a job as a Sierra County deputy sheriff. He'd been on the police force before the war and had returned to his old job after getting discharged, where he'd met his wife and started a family. Eunice lived with her parents on a leased ten-acre horse property south of town along the river. She had an older, married sister who lived in San Diego with her navy husband, and a handsome pony named Lucky. She was a year older than Kevin, but that didn't seem to matter. They hit it off right away. They were the tallest and brightest students in their class, shared a mutual love of horses, and liked the same kind of music.

At the first teen hop of the season at a local church, they danced only with each other, which got them teased about going steady. Kevin secretly liked the idea of Eunice as a girlfriend, but she wanted nothing to do with it. He had hopes that time would change her mind.

They quickly fell into a routine of searching out each other's company during lunch hour and soon started visiting back and forth to do homework, talk, and listen to records. Kevin got to know her parents, Ben and Donna, who were likable but a little reserved around him. He chalked it up to a parental suspicion of his motives, which wasn't completely unfounded.

Eunice's dad was a slender man with the same slightly crooked nose as his daughter's. Unlike many of the town and county cops
Kevin had met he didn't strut his authority, and Kevin appreciated that.

On one occasion, he showed Kevin his collection of frontier law-enforcement memorabilia that he kept and displayed in a small spare bedroom he used as a study. It included a number of valuable old six-shooters, antique police and sheriff badges, and a large assortment of official police uniform patches from agencies throughout the southwest. Many of the badges and patches were in shadow boxes mounted on the walls. Also framed and hung were two rare Wanted posters for Black Jack Ketchum and Billy the Kid.

As Kevin admired the collection, he told Mr. Williston how Gene Rhodes had come to write a story about his grandmother. Kevin's family connection to Rhodes got Mr. Williston talking enthusiastically about Rhodes and his frequent alleged run-ins with the law. It turned into a conversation Kevin thoroughly enjoyed and got him thinking he might like police work.

Some time later, Mr. Williston told Eunice she'd made a good choice in Kevin as a friend, and while he was pleased to hear of it, it still didn't get him to first base with her. He soon gave up trying and in the end it didn't matter. She was great company, had a wicked sense of humor, a quick mind, and was fun to be around. Although he looked forward to seeing her every day, he still yearned to have a girl in his life who was more than just a real good buddy. He sometimes wondered if it would ever happen. He really, really hoped so.

Late in September, a letter arrived in the mail from Erma Fergurson, inviting them to a Halloween party on Saturday, October 31, at her home in Las Cruces. In it, she ordered the Kerney clan to arrive on Friday afternoon and stay as her guests over the weekend. Regrets would not be acceptable and costumes at the party were required, including masks. And no, Matt and Kevin couldn't come as cowboys; that would be cheating.

The invitation delighted Mary. Erma was her oldest and dearest friend, and now that she was back from the Art Institute of Chicago with an MFA in studio art and teaching at the college, they stayed in touch much more frequently.

When Matt came home she showed him the invitation and said that they were going, no quibbling and no questions asked. His only grumble about it was trying to think of a costume he could stand to wear.

“How about going as a pirate?” Mary suggested.

Matt laughed. “Why didn't I think of that?”

Matt made arrangements to take off work early the Friday
before the party, and on Thursday night Mary packed what they needed for the weekend so they could leave for Las Cruces as soon as school let out. Except for Kevin, who didn't appreciate being strong-armed into going and forced to miss the Halloween dance at the high school, they drove south in high spirits, the autumn sun glaring brightly on the western horizon. However, Kevin's mood improved as they drew closer to the city and the prospect of escaping T or C for the weekend became more appealing. He liked his friends and all, and school was okay, but sometimes the dusty desert town of five thousand was boring, with not much for kids to do. It catered to health seekers eager to be cured at the hot springs and mud baths, and to the customary trade of the townspeople and area ranchers, but it had no nightlife other than the movie theater and the bars. Strangers on the streets were either lodgers staying at one of the health spas, motorists stopping overnight at one of the car courts, or folks camping at Elephant Butte Lake. Illegal gambling had supposedly been cleaned up in the bars along Main Street, but along with drinking and watching TV, it was still the most popular adult entertainment in town.

Las Cruces, on the other hand, was eight times larger, more modern, and much livelier. The city teemed with college students and was home to hundreds of scientists and engineers who worked at White Sands Missile Range. Army boys on weekend passes chased after the local girls, and hotrods roared up and down dirt roads outside of town, occasionally pursued by the sheriff. There were nightspots with bands that played rock 'n' roll, not just country music, and at the bars along Main Street there was bound to be at least one Saturday-night fight between cowboys from the area ranches and soldiers from the missile range. The town even had a real public library and a fancy country club and golf course
that bordered the highway to Alamogordo. Kevin was seriously considering attending college there after high school.

Erma's house was in an old neighborhood of Victorian and pueblo-style homes near downtown. In fact, it was the same one she'd shared with Mary during their college years, except Erma moved out of the attached apartment into the main house when she bought the place after the death of her landlady. Renting out both the main house and the apartment had helped pay her living expenses during the time she was in Chicago attending the Art Institute.

Kevin always enjoyed visiting Erma and considered her his aunt. She was perhaps the most unconventional person he'd ever met, with a wisecracking sense of humor and a mile-a-minute mind. She was always on a tangent about something or other and willing to argue about it. And she was pretty as well, with short hair that made her look a lot younger than his mom, although they were almost the same age.

Her home was equally unusual. On the outside it was a stately two-story house with a steep roof, brick cladding, and a welcoming front porch on a large lot. Tall trees in a carefully tended front lawn towered above the roofline. The inside was filled with objects Erma had bought at flea markets, junk yards, and estate sales and turned into collages, mobiles, or abstract sculptures that decorated the walls, hung from the ceiling, or stood on floor pedestals. The front room served as a constantly changing solo exhibition of her shimmering, impressionistic paintings of New Mexico landscapes.

Upstairs, she'd turned the largest bedroom with the best light into a studio, choosing to sleep in a sparsely furnished small room that had originally been the nursery. The remaining two
bedrooms were kept ready for guests and an occasional drunk friend unwilling to crawl behind the wheel after attending one of Erma's parties.

The term “avant-garde” always came to mind when Kevin thought about Aunt Erma. Once he'd asked her why she wasn't married, and she'd said that after trying it once she found it didn't suit her, adding most men turned rather boring when they married, although she exempted his father from her generalization. She finished her lecture about matrimony with a pat on his cheek, a smooch, and the suggestion that he not be in a rush to get hitched.

“And watch out for the girls who are,” she counseled.

They arrived at Erma's to find a note pinned to the unlocked front door inviting them in and saying she'd be home soon from the market. Inside, cut-out paper Halloween skeletons, pumpkins, and witches danced on garlands strung along the walls. In the kitchen, a pot of delicious-smelling spaghetti sauce simmered on the stove. On the counter sat an open bottle of red wine and three wineglasses, along with another note ordering them to unpack and have a drink.

Kevin smiled. Since turning thirteen last year he was allowed a glass of wine at Erma's by way of—as she put it—her hostess prerogative. At home, maybe he could have a sip from his mom's glass at Thanksgiving and Christmas. There he was still a kid; at Erma's he was almost a grown-up.

Erma arrived with a bag of salad fixings, and they celebrated with a glass of wine in the kitchen, after which Matt and Kevin headed downtown on foot to stretch their legs and leave the ladies to visit without interruption.

Most of the stores were closed, but Kevin spotted a thirty-dollar wristwatch in a jewelry-store window that he really liked. It was
military-style with large numerals and a sweep second hand on a brown leather strap, but he only had ten dollars in his pocket. His father watched him eye it but didn't say a word. Kevin didn't either.

At a flower shop open late they bought a bouquet of chrysanthemums and daises for Erma, which, upon their return, she accepted with much delight and smooches. She placed them, snipped and arranged in a vase, as the dining-table centerpiece.

Before sitting down to eat, Howard Conway arrived to join them for dinner. During introductions, Erma mentioned Howard had been a soldier at the missile range, but pleaded not to hold that against him. She got a laugh and a ready agreement from Mary and Matt.

A tall guy with an easy smile, a square chin, and a wide forehead with thick eyebrows and light-brown hair, Howard was an engineering graduate student at the college. Originally from Tennessee, he was a good fifteen years younger than Erma, which wasn't surprising, as she liked her boyfriends young.

Howard had been drafted after college and because he had a degree in engineering, had been sent to the missile range immediately after basic training. Vague about what he'd done while on active duty, he admitted to having spent most of his time up-range at some of the test sites on the basin. He jokingly said he'd been a sad sack of a soldier with a bad attitude who almost didn't get promoted to PFC.

“At least you weren't an MP or a general,” Kevin said.

Conway laughed. “Not me. But I did fall in love with the area, so I stayed.”

Kevin asked him what costume he would be wearing to the Halloween party, but Erma called a time-out before he could answer.

“No fair,” she said, wagging a finger at Kevin. “You're supposed to keep costumes a surprise. That makes it more fun.”

She turned to Matt and Mary. “Gus and Consuelo are coming.”

Matt grinned happily and Mary lit up.

Erma refilled their wineglasses, sneaking a dribble more into Kevin's glass. “I thought that would please you.”

After dinner, Howard stayed and helped with the dishes, and Kevin retired to his bedroom, where Erma had thoughtfully left a small stack of new books for him. He picked up
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
and got caught up in the story right away.

Although he didn't know the exact time, it was late when he stopped reading. It made him wish he'd had the extra twenty bucks he needed to buy the watch he'd seen downtown. He sure did like it and it would look great on his wrist.

He undressed and slipped into bed, lulled to sleep by the voices of his mom, dad, and aunt Erma wafting up the stairs.

***

O
n Saturday morning, Mary and Erma got started on the party preparations while Matt took Kevin on a tour of the college, which was now known as New Mexico State University. Even on the weekend there were students everywhere; studying in small groups on the lawns, walking to and from the library, talking in the student union over coffee, and wandering through the shelves at the college bookstore. On the steps outside the college radio station, a young reporter was interviewing an antiwar activist surrounded by a small group of supporters holding
END THE WAR
signs. He was fervently proclaiming that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed by Congress earlier in the summer would only escalate American military involvement in South Vietnam.

Kevin had been on the campus before, but only during the summer, when classes weren't in session. Then it seemed like nothing more than a collection of interesting buildings on a pretty campus with a nice view of the Organ Mountains. Today, it felt vibrant and fascinating, making the idea of going away to college all the more intriguing.

“I think I'd like to go here,” he said to his dad.

Matt nodded approvingly. “It's a good school, and it would make your mother happy if you weren't too far from home.”

Kevin watched a foursome of students pile into a car and peel out of the parking lot. “If I had a car, I could come home once in a while on weekends.”

Matt laughed. “Don't get ahead of yourself, son.”

They spent the remainder of the morning away from the main campus at the Ag Complex, where Matt kept an office. Outside the big barn, Kevin watched grad students drawing blood from quarantined cattle suspected of having bovine tuberculosis. His dad explained that when the skin test results are inconclusive, a special blood test was necessary to make a final diagnosis. Fortunately, the infected cattle came from a small herd that had no contact with other livestock, so there was little possibility the disease had spread.

They wandered around the Ag Complex until Kevin got hungry, then had lunch at the student union before returning to Erma's, where they were recruited to do a final cleanup of the front room before the party, carve the pumpkins to be placed on the front porch, and string orange and black bunting on the porch railings. Late in the afternoon, they all walked downtown for an early meal at a popular Mexican restaurant on Main Street—Matt's treat.

After returning, Kevin dressed in his policeman costume.
Eunice's father had given him a Socorro Police Department sleeve patch and lent him one of his old badges and police hats to wear. His mom had sewed the patch on a black shirt and added epaulets to make it look more authentic. His dad had cut down an old baseball bat, painted it black, and put a strap on the end to make a nightstick. A long look in the dresser mirror convinced him it was a pretty cool costume.

He went downstairs to find Erma dressed as a flapper in a short, black sleeveless dress with a matching headband, a long strand of pearls, and glittery high heels. Mary was wearing a Clarabell the Clown outfit she'd made that consisted of a one-piece floppy suit with a high ruffled collar. She had painted an upturned grin around her mouth and penciled exaggerated eyebrows on her forehead. Matt was a pirate, wearing one of his best eye patches, ballooned pants stuffed into cowboy boots, a shirt with billowing sleeves Mary had found at a thrift store, and a purple sash around his waist. Except for the cowboy boots he looked okay. As required, everybody wore masks.

The first guests to arrive were Gus and Consuelo Merton, who came as Albert Einstein and Queen Isabella. Mary, Matt, and Erma spent ten minutes talking with Gus and Consuelo about old times before the party heated up.

Kevin was the only teenager there, but he didn't mind. Erma's friends, none of whom he knew, treated him like an adult, which made the party a lot of fun. And he got to sneak some wine when his parents weren't looking while talking to one of Erma's art students, a very pretty coed who came dressed as Peter Pan.

By eleven o'clock the party was still going strong, but Kevin was more than a little tipsy and bushed. He said good night to Erma, who gave him a kiss and teasingly asked if she should send the
pretty coed up to tuck him into bed. He said sure, told his mom he was turning in, and climbed the stairs.

As he unbuttoned his shirt, he heard his father's voice in the backyard through the slightly open bedroom window.

“Let me see your hat,” Matt demanded.

Kevin opened the window wide and peered out. His dad stood in the glow of the back porch light with a man wearing a Rough Rider uniform.

“Let me see the damn hat!” he repeated.

“What's the big deal?” Howard Conway replied. “I told you inside it was my grandfather's uniform.”

Matt snatched the campaign hat off Conway's head and turned it over. “Were your grandfather's initials PK?”

Conway didn't answer.

“You're a liar.”

“Okay, so it wasn't my grandfather's,” Conway admitted. “I just said that for the fun of it. I bought it in a secondhand store.”