Mexican Hat kk-2

  Mexican Hat

  ( Kevin Kerney - 2 )

  Michael Mcgarity

  Michael McGarity

  Mexican Hat

  A thick cloud broke and rolled toward the distant hogback. Sunlight pierced the narrow canyon, casting long shadows and soft morning colors into the ravine. Pale green cottonwoods, shimmering in a gentle breeze, bordered a dry, rocky streambed.

  Driving into the sun, Kevin Kerney dropped the visor to block the glare, slowed the truck, and grunted in frustration. He was lost. In front of him juniper and pinon trees climbed steep slopes to a ridgeline that slashed abruptly above the canyon and pointed directly at a serrated peak. From the lay of the land and the piss-poor condition of the forest road, it was unlikely the route would take him to the Slash Z summer pasture.

  He stopped and consulted the quadrangle map.

  Three private ranches straddled Dry Creek Canyon, deep in the foothills of the Gila Wilderness. He'd passed the first two at the wide mouth of the canyon where rangeland and cactus flats spread to the breaks and dipped down to the San Francisco River. Kerney was a good mile beyond where the third ranch should be.

  He glanced at the radio and rejected calling the Glenwood ranger station to ask for directions. He might be new to the job and a seasonal employee to boot, but he was capable of getting oriented without any help. He backed the truck down the road to the cutoff, got out, and found a Forest Service sign that had been ripped off a post and tossed in some underbrush. The spur he'd taken was closed to vehicles. That solved the problem. Kerney backed farther down to the fork and rattled over an equally primitive route that traveled away from the hogback.

  After a steep rocky climb, the road leveled as he entered a thick stand of old-growth ponderosa pines that peppered the north face of the mountain. Deep shade made it feel like dawn instead of full morning.

  He topped out at the crest and stopped the truck, letting the engine idle. A saucer-shaped park, sprinkled with oak and pine, stretched for several miles in three directions. Smack in the center a cabin sat in a small grove of pine trees. A windmill and stock tank were nearby. A barbed-wire fence encircled the cabin to keep away the grazing cattle that moved slowly through the tufts of long grass.

  Kerney took in the view, his thoughts turning over the ways he could restore the abandoned homestead and revive it into a year-round cattle operation.

  There was a perfect cove at the far end of the field where a house, horse barn, and feed shed could be sheltered. The old cabin could easily be converted into a repair shop, to be used when winter came and all the things that needed fixing could be attended to when the weather made outside work impossible.

  The road to the cabin was in sorry shape and needed to be graded and packed with base course so it could be used year-round. New fences would have to be thrown up to segregate the land into pastures to prevent overgrazing, and a new corral and loading chute were necessary, but all in all, one man could handle it, if he was willing to work sixteen-hour days and forgo time off for a couple of years. With federal grazing rights, he could run several hundred head of cattle and maybe make a small profit, once the operation was up and running.

  Kerney shook off the daydream. It was foolish to think that he could ever raise enough cash to buy such prime land, and the owner would be an idiot to sell. He would have to settle for a lot less when the time came to put his money down and get back to the business of ranching. He popped the clutch and drove over the rutted tracks that led to the cabin.

  From horseback on the ridge, Phil Cox watched the lime-green Forest Service pickup as it traveled across the field, bouncing in the deep furrows of the ranch road. The driver slowed several times to keep from spooking the cattle that wandered into his path. That was enough to tell Phil that Charlie Perry wasn't driving. Whenever possible, Charlie used his horn with perverse pleasure to run a few pounds off Phil's beef. Charlie believed cattle grazing was destroying the national forest. He wanted the Gila pristine and pure from boundary to boundary; no cattle, no private land, and no ranchers to mess up the wilderness.

  Phil didn't recognize the man who parked next to his horse trailer and limped to the cabin fence. After a dozen or so steps his gait smoothed out a bit. Phil hollered, got the ranger's attention, and nudged his horse down the trail, leading a saddled gelding. He wondered who in the hell the Glenwood station had sent to meet him. The ranger waved a greeting as Phil approached.

  Phil dismounted, hitched the horses to the back of the trailer, and walked to the ranger.

  "I don't believe we've met. I'm Phil Cox."

  "Kevin Kerney," the man replied, grasping Cox's hand.

  "You're a hell of a way off the beaten path."

  Phil nodded.

  "True enough. The Forest Service would love to buy me out and retire my grazing rights." He judged Kerney to be in his early forties.

  His features were strong and his skin was weathered, with fine lines at the corners of deep blue eyes.

  "I won't do it."

  "Neither would I," Kerney replied, as he looked around. With no evidence of a holding pen or a loading chute in the shallow valley, there was only one way to get the cattle in and out.

  "Do you move your stock on the hoof?" he asked.

  Phil smiled. Maybe the ranger wasn't a complete idiot.

  "That's right. I use the Triple H pens down on the flats for loading.

  It takes a couple of days to herd them out, but it's fenced most of the way, so we don't have to chase a lot of strays."

  "About two hundred head?" Kerney guessed. Phil Cox, a slender man with bushy eyebrows and light brown hair, matched Kerney's six-one frame, minus about ten pounds. His eyes were slate-gray and he had a dimple in his square chin. He was in his late thirties, but his voice sounded younger.

  "Give or take a few, with the new calves," Cox agreed.

  "I could run more on land higher up, if I had a mind to, but when the Forest Service raised the grazing fees, I cut back. I was expecting Charlie Perry to show up."

  "He's supervising a prescribed burn in the Blue Range, so you're stuck with me."

  "New to the district?" Cox asked.

  Kerney nodded.

  "They sent me down from the Luna station to fill in until Charlie gets back."

  "I thought I knew all the Luna rangers."

  "I'm temporary help."

  Phil nodded to encourage more of an explanation.

  With the cutbacks in funding, hiring seasonal help was now standard operating procedure for the Forest Service, but commissioned rangers were usually career employees.

  Kerney didn't volunteer any additional information.

  "What can I do for you, Mr. Cox?" he asked instead.

  "I'm not sure you can do anything at all," Phil replied.

  "I found a bear carcass I thought Charlie Perry would like to take a look at."

  "Poachers?" Kerney asked.

  "Maybe," Phil allowed.

  Kerney nodded. He limped to his truck, opened the door, took out a small day pack and a hand-held radio, and returned to where Phil waited.

  "Let's go take a look."

  Phil Cox gestured at the gelding as he swung into the saddle.

  "We have to ride in. Climb aboard."

  Kerney lengthened the stirrup straps, tied down the day pack, and eyed the size of the saddle before swinging himself onto the gelding.

  "Who's riding with you?" he asked with a slight smile.

  Cox smiled back.

  "PJ, my oldest son. He's thirteen.

  I've got him posted at the carcass to keep the coyotes away."

  Kerney adjusted his rump in the undersized saddle.

  Riding with a saddle that didn't fit jarred the back and jolted the tailbone.


  "How far do we have to go?" he asked.

  Phil looked a bit sheepish. If Charlie had been sitting on the gelding he never would have known why his tailbone was sore at the end of the ride.

  Charlie preferred helicopters to horses.

  "Not far," Phil replied.

  Kerney nodded.

  "That's good."

  Phil took the lead across the grasslands. There was something familiar about Kerney that he couldn't pin down. He was left with the feeling that he knew the man.

  PJ Cox had his father's eyes and the same dimple on his chin. He cradled a varmint rifle in his arm.

  Lean and deeply tanned, the boy wore a battered cowboy hat pulled down tight on his head. Phil introduced Kerney, and PJ stuck out his hand.

  "Glad to meet you, sir," he said politely.

  "Same here," Kerney replied, shaking PJ's hand.

  "Thanks for looking after things while your dad went to fetch me."

  PJ glanced up at Kerney, pleased with the expression of gratitude.

  "No problem," he said.

  The carcass was twenty feet away. Kerney took a long look at it.

  "When do you think the bear was killed?" he asked PJ.

  "Yesterday," PJ answered promptly.

  "It hasn't even started to smell bad yet."

  Kerney nodded in agreement.

  "Did you take a close look at it?"

  "No, sir." PJ glanced at his father.

  "My dad said to leave it just the way we found it."

  "That was good advice," Kerney replied with a smile.

  He gathered up some twigs and walked an ever tightening circle around the bear, staking each track and sign that he saw. He could feel Phil and PJ watching him as he worked. Ten feet from the carcass he found the discarded, eviscerated bowels of the animal. Close by were tracks of bear cub prints and the imprint of a boot heel in soft sand. He finished the circle, returned to the horses, got two cameras from the day pack, and started taking pictures. Phil Cox and PJ remained quiet as he shot Polaroid and thirty-five-millimeter photographs of everything he had staked as evidence. Finished with the perimeter search, he walked to the carcass.

  The black bear, a female, had been skinned and beheaded, and all four paws had been cut off.

  Coyotes had been at her, ripping into the soft underbelly, but the animal had not been fully gutted.

  The ground, swept clean with the branch of a cedar tree to remove footprints, was stained with the juices and blood from the coyote feeding. Kerney took more pictures, gathered some hair samples, and scraped dried blood out of the cavity into a plastic bag before returning to Phil and PJ, who were perched on a boulder. Both stood up when he walked over.

  "What do you think?" Phil asked.

  "Trophy hunter," Kerney speculated.

  "Knew what he was doing, from the looks of it. Took out the bladder and bowel before he started skinning. One clean entry hole through the chest from a highpowered rifle. Minimum damage to the pelt. Have you seen anything like this before?"

  "Heard about it," Phil replied.

  "It happens every now and then. A royal elk or a buck deer with a good set of antlers gets taken, or a cougar or a bear like this. Charlie can tell you more about it."

  "What would Charlie tell me?" Kerney prodded.

  "That some people pay big money to hang a bearskin on their wall," Phil answered.

  "Like who?"

  "Nobody I know," Phil replied shortly.

  "There isn't a rancher in the county who would kill a bear that's mothering cubs unless it was marauding."

  "You saw the cubs?"

  Phil shook his head.

  "Just the tracks. That's my boot print you took a picture of."

  "How long have you and PJ been up here?"

  "We camped down at the old cabin last night and came up before dawn looking for strays. When we found the bear I called for Charlie on my cellular phone."

  "Have you lost any stock?"

  "Not that I know of," Phil replied.

  "I wouldn't shoot the damn bear and call the Forest Service to come and fetch it, if that's what you're getting at.

  That would be pretty stupid."

  "That would be stupid," Kerney agreed.

  "Have you seen anyone in the area?"

  Phil answered with a tight shake of his head.

  "Did you hear any shooting?"

  "No."

  "Did you pass anyone on the road when you came in?"

  "No." Phil stiffened and his eyes narrowed.

  "I already told you I didn't shoot the bear."

  "I'm not accusing you, Mr. Cox," Kerney replied.

  "It sounds that way to me."

  "Maybe we should back up and start this conversation over again," Kerney proposed.

  Phil gave Kerney a slight shrug of his shoulders.

  "Hell, I'm sorry I sound so gruff. It's not you. I guess I've got a knee-jerk reaction to anything that smacks of criticism. Nowadays it seems like us ranchers get blamed for everything that goes wrong in the national forest. At least you're not giving me a Charlie Perry lecture about how my cattle are destroying the forest."

  "Is Charlie a hard-core environmentalist?" Kerney asked.

  "And then some. He's one of those back-east, urban conservationists. A big-city fellah who wants to save us from ourselves. I take it you haven't met him."

  "I haven't had the pleasure." "Well, you're in for a treat," Phil said sourly.

  Kerney nodded vaguely, his eyes studying the mesa. From what he could see, the tabletop mesa fell off sharply on all sides. It was a rock-strewn piece of ground, no more than half a mile long and a quarter mile wide, with wide beaches of shale broken by clearings of grass, wildflowers, and clumps of pinon and cedar trees.

  "Is the trail the only way in?" he asked.

  "Unless you're a mountain goat," Phil answered.

  Kerney smiled in agreement, took the hand-held radio from his pack, made contact with the Glenwood office, and gave a brief report. He was told to stand by until relieved.

  "Charlie's on his way," Phil predicted.

  "You think so?"

  "Bet on it."

  "While we're waiting for Charlie, would you and PJ like to lend a hand and help me look for the cubs?"

  Phil found himself liking the ranger's manner.

  "Might as well," he replied with a smile.

  They searched the mesa in sectors. Phil and PJ were good trackers. The boy found recent claw marks on a pinon tree near a cow path, and Phil found fresh bear scat by a rotten log. They fanned out, working between the trees, and Kerney discovered a shooter's nest behind a cedar tree.

  In the spongy, needle-covered soil a small blind had been constructed of branches and dirt, just large enough to conceal a prone rifleman. There were tracks of a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle in a sandy hollow off to one side.

  PJ called out in an excited voice just as Kerney finished photographing the tire tracks. Kerney jogged to catch up with the boy and his father, who stood looking down into a rock crevice. A bear cub, huddled behind the dead body of a sibling, whimpered as PJ bent over with his hands on his knees for a closer look.

  Phil turned to Kerney and said something that was lost in the sound of an arriving helicopter.

  "What did you say?" Kerney shouted.

  "I said it's a damn shame," Phil Cox shouted, as they walked to where the chopper landed.

  The pilot shut down the engine as a man disembarked and ran, head lowered, through the dust cloud kicked up by the rotor wash. He nodded at Phil Cox and turned his attention immediately to Kerney.

  "You're Kerney," he snapped. He was a man in his early thirties, with a serious face and sharp brown eyes. Sand-colored hair flapped over his forehead.

  He wore a yellow fire lighter jumpsuit and hiking boots.

  "That's right," Kerney replied.

  "Charlie Perry," he said, brushing his hair back into place. A strand fluttered back down his forehead.

 
"I sure hope you haven't fucked everything up."

  The helicopter blades slowed to a dull thudding sound.

  "That would be embarrassing," Kerney replied.

  Charlie's eyes narrowed at the sarcasm.

  "What have you done so far?" he demanded.

  "Staked evidence. Took photographs. Did a field search."

  "Show me the carcass," Charlie ordered, as he started walking away from Kerney.

  Kerney didn't move. After a few steps Perry turned to face him.

  "There are two cubs over where PJ is standing," Kerney said, motioning toward the boy.

  "One is dead. The other one looks sickly."

  Charlie walked back to Kerney and gave him a sour look.

  "Why didn't you call it in, for chrissake?" he demanded.

  "I would have brought my wildlife manager with me."

  "We just found those cubs," Phil interjected.

  "Get off your high horse, Charlie."

  Charlie gave Phil a tight smile and looked at Kerney. "Wait here," he ordered, as he turned on his heel and went to the chopper.

  As he talked to the pilot, Phil nodded his head in Charlie's direction.

  "Now, isn't he a piece of work?"

  "I like his warmth," Kerney replied.

  Phil chuckled.

  "He sure puts a man at ease, doesn't he?"

  Charlie returned carrying a canvas duffel bag.

  "I'm sending the chopper back for my wildlife manager after you've shown me what you've done," he said to Kerney.

  "The pilot will drop you off at your vehicle. I'll take it from here."

  Kerney gave Perry a tour, while Charlie fired questions at him, each one more terse than the last, his tone peevish. When Charlie finished grilling him, Kerney turned over the Polaroids, exposed film, and evidence and stepped back to take another look at the man. Perry had close-set eyes and a pinched nose. His fingers were long and nervous.

  Almost skinny. Perry stood just under six feet tall. His shoulders sloped a bit.

  Charlie flipped through the Polaroids without comment and stuck them in the breast pocket of his jumpsuit. He looked up at Kerney without any change in expression.

  "You can take off. Get back on patrol."