Michael McGarrity - Nothing But Trouble

“I’ll look to see you then,” Shaw said, extending his hand.

After a handshake and a good-bye Kerney left thinking Shaw continued to come across as a pleasant fellow with nothing to hide. But why had he come back to the ranch on a rare day off? Had one of the day hands called to let him know Kerney was poking around unescorted? If so, that meant it wasn’t a chance encounter.

Shaw had hauled ass down from Virden in time to intercept Kerney and find out where he’d been. As before, he’d acted cordial and not in the least uptight. But then Kerney had played the innocent, had carefully omitted mentioning all that he’d seen, and had deliberately reassured Shaw that he wasn’t into any kind of cop mode.

If Shaw was into something illicit, chances were good that he would backtrack on Kerney.

Where the ranch road curved out of sight of the horse corral, Kerney stopped the truck, got his binoculars out of the glove box, hustled up to a small rise, and stretched out in the tall bunch grass. Through the binoculars he could see the dust trail of Shaw’s pickup heading south toward Chinaman Hills on the Sentinel Butte Ranch.

Chances were that Shaw would lose Kerney’s tire tracks in a hard rock portion of the ranch road that curved around the base of Chinaman Hills. If not, so be it.

Eager to get to Virden, Kerney returned to his pickup and drove away. He’d never been to the settlement before and knew nothing about it. Although he was a native of the state and enjoyed exploring it, Kerney had yet to see it all and probably never would.

New Mexico was larger than the combined landmass of the United Kingdom and Ireland. Within its boundaries were the soaring southern Rocky Mountains, the bone-dry Chihuahuan Desert, the windswept high eastern plains that butted up against deep canyonland gorges, the stark, majestic northwestern Navajo Nation, and the tangled western Mogollon Plateau that rose to meet wild mountains of dense climax forests.

Over the years he’d ridden, hiked, backpacked, and camped from his boyhood haunts near the Tularosa to the high country above Taos, four-wheeled in the desert, and deliberately detoured to see isolated hamlets, ghost towns, and remote archeological sites. He looked forward to the time when he could show Sara and Patrick the wonders he already knew and discover new ones together. Johnny’s movie would be their first opportunity to do that as a family.

As he left the Bootheel, the mountains receded and gave way to mesquite flats, playas of sand, and stretches of irrigated cotton fields that were startlingly green against the dun-colored terrain. He passed through Lordsburg, a dusty ranching and railroad community that drew its lifeblood from the interstate traffic with little to offer other than fast food, cheap motels, and self-serve gas stations.

Beyond the town the desert continued to dominate. Flatlands were interrupted by an occasional mesa or the knobby spines of low hills. In the distance barrier mountains rolled skyward, promising relief from the heat of the day. It was raw country, where monsoon rains ran over the hard-baked soil and spilled into deep-cut arroyos, the sun cracked the earth into spiderlike fissures, and harsh volcanic mountains stood, weathered and desolate, above the expanse of sand and scrub.

Soon after the cutoff to Virden the road dipped into a valley and revealed the narrow ribbon of the Gila River, the last free-flowing river in the state, barely discernible through thick stands of cottonwoods that bordered its banks. On the far side of the river Kerney could see a swath of irrigated fields that stretched along the bottomland. Contained by low brown hills the valley was a green carpet of hay- and cornfields, some of which were punctuated by bright orange pumpkins that had been planted in among the long, straight rows.

Fat cattle grazed along fence lines in mowed fields, and in the sky above a black hawk, clearly identifiable by the broad white band on its tail, swooped down toward the wooded stream bottom. Mountains rose up behind the hills, one peak soft as a rounded shoulder, another shaped like a citadel carved out of solid rock.

Virden consisted of several dozen tidy farms and houses that lined the roadway paralleling the valley floor or fronted several side lanes flanked by orderly rows of mature shade trees. The only business in the settlement was a quilt shop in a single-wide trailer that stood near an old abandoned schoolhouse with a rusty, hipped metal roof, boarded-up windows, and an overgrown playground containing a broken swing set.

Kerney cruised the area, looking for Shaw’s van. He followed a farm road that led into the hills, where he found a derelict homestead and the hulk of an old tractor behind a locked gate posted with a No Trespassing sign. Back in the village he stopped on a lane where an older man was working on a truck parked under a shade tree in front of a house.

The man looked up from the engine compartment and nodded when Kerney approached. In his late sixties, he had a deeply seamed face and a semicircle of thin gray hair that crowned his bald, freckled head.

“Engine trouble?” Kerney asked with a smile.

“Busted thermostat,” the man said. “You lost, or just passing through?”

“Poking around is more like it.” Kerney extended his hand and told the man his name. “This is really an out-of-the-way, beautiful valley you live in.”

The man put a screwdriver in his back pocket and shook Kerney’s hand. “Name’s Nathan Gundersen. If you like the quiet life, it’s the right place to be. You looking to buy some property?”

“Is anything for sale?” Kerney asked.

Gundersen shook his head. “Not really. Folks here tend to hold on to what they’ve got.”

“Do you know Walt Shaw?”

Gundersen leaned against the truck fender. “He grew up in these parts. What’s your interest in him?”

“A friend of Shaw’s told me that he came here and went deer hunting with him,” Kerney said, “so I thought I’d check out the area before the season got started.”

“Maybe they were hunting up in the mountains,” Gundersen said, “but not down here. We don’t allow it. The whole valley to the Arizona state line is posted.”

Kerney shrugged. “I guess I must have misunderstood.”

“Not necessarily,” Gundersen said. “Walt owns a farm in the valley, about two miles down the highway toward Duncan. Little white house that sits just back from the road. He leases out the acreage and uses the place as a retreat of sorts. Don’t see much of him. Comes here occasionally to check on things and stay overnight. During deer season he sometimes brings a friend along to go hunting in the mountains.”

“He grew up in the valley?” Kerney asked.

“He came here as a foster child the state placed with an older couple. They adopted him and found out they got more than they bargained for.”

“How so?”

“Let’s just stay he had a hard time adjusting to our ways. He went straight from high school into the service and didn’t come back much after that. His adoptive parents died in their sleep from carbon monoxide poisoning about fifteen years ago. A leak in the bedroom wall heater is what killed them. Walt inherited the property.”

“I enjoyed passing the time with you,” Kerney said. “Good luck replacing that thermostat.”

“I’ll get it done,” Gundersen said as he pulled the screwdriver out of his pocket.

Kerney left Gundersen to his chore and went looking for Shaw’s house, which he spotted without difficulty from the highway. There was no sign of activity and no vehicles parked outside, although a nearby barn could easily house the van. He cruised by slowly and continued a mile down the road before turning around for another pass.