Nothing but Trouble_ A Kevin Kerney Novel - Michael Mcgarrity [55]
“I’d show you around myself,” Joe said, “if we weren’t going to town.”
“Perhaps some other time,” Kerney said. “It’s generous of you to give Shaw the day off with so much work to do.”
“Walt takes maybe a day a month to himself,” Joe replied. “I’m not about to say no when he needs to get away.”
“Will he stay on after Julia takes over the ranch from you?” Kerney asked.
Joe looked a little surprised by Kerney’s question. “She told you that? Well, I guess it’s no secret. She pretty much has taken over already, but I like to kid myself that I’m still in the ramrod of the outfit. Walt will stay on. Otherwise Julia would have to give up her place in Tucson, and she’s not about to do that. She likes her city life too much to let go of it completely.”
“Would you mind if I took a look around on my own?” Kerney asked.
“Not at all,” Joe said. He paused to watch as the men cut a section of the wire fencing and began attaching it with brads to the post-and-beam corral. “Make yourself at home. Just remember to close the pasture gates behind you.”
After Joe and Bessie left, the day hands took a break, hunkering down to smoke cigarettes and drink some water. The welcome coolness of the cloudy morning had given way to a blistering sun, which felt uncomfortable in the humid air left behind by the rain squall.
Kerney talked with the men for a time, and once they learned that he ranched on a small place up in Santa Fe County and had known the Jordan family all his life, they loosened up noticeably. Mike and Pruitt, the two cowboys who’d stopped on the highway after the border agent’s body had been dumped, wanted to talk about the incident. Kerney obliged but kept his narrative of the event short.
He learned that the two men bunked together in a rented house in the town of Animas, and worked as stock haulers and heavy equipment operators when they weren’t hired out on the area ranches.
He asked Mike, a muscular six-footer in his thirties, about the problem of illegal immigrants crossing the border.
“The government would have to post an army down here to stop them,” he said. “We see the crap they leave behind everywhere. Back-packs, clothing, water bottles—you name it.”
Pruitt, who had the upper body of a weight lifter and carried a few extra pounds around his waist, nodded in agreement. “Hell, if you had the time, you could track them cross country all the way to Deming.”
“I didn’t see much evidence of that when I was out here yesterday,” Kerney said.
“They make a beeline for the smelter smokestack,” Mike explained. “They call the warning beacon on it the Star of the North.”
“I heard about that,” Kerney said. “But you’d think with Antelope Wells close by, it would draw more people crossing the border through this ranch.”
Mike shrugged. “I don’t know why the coyotes don’t use it that much. But if they did, Walt Shaw would run them off in a hurry. He doesn’t let anybody on the ranch he doesn’t know personally.”
The men went back to work and Kerney left, heading south toward the barn where he’d seen Shaw and his unknown associate unload the van.
On the one hand Shaw’s protectiveness about the ranch made sense; trespassers were never welcome on private land. On the other hand Shaw’s desire to keep strangers off the ranch might serve the alternative purpose of keeping certain activities hidden.
At the barn Kerney took another look again for an entry point. But daylight made no difference and he found none. He studied the tire tracks left behind by the van and followed them south along the ranch road. Soon the valley widened and he came to a fenced pasture that held over three hundred well-fed Angus heifers and calves, along with a few bulls that had been separated from the herd into a smaller paddock. The herd was clustered around a water trough and a nearby solar panel on a metal stanchion that supplied electricity to a well pump.
Kerney passed through the gate, closed it behind