Michael McGarrity - Hermit_s Peak

Dale ranched near the Tularosa, on land handed down through three generations. He'd been Kerney's closest neighbor and best boyhood friend.

They passed through the village of Qjitos Prios. An adobe church and a duster of homes-some of stone and others coated with cement or plastered with stucco-sat among irrigated fields mat rimmed the base of flat-topped Tecolote Peak. The small valley seemed frozen in the late nineteenth century.

"What is this place?" Dale asked as he drove through the settlement.

"What?" Kerney asked.

"What's the name of this place?"

"Qjitos Prios."

Dale glanced at Kerney with amused brown eyes.

"What's so funny?" Kerney asked.

"Cold Springs, huh? If we find one, maybe I'll give you a good dunking to wake you up."

"I'm here," Kerney replied.

"Not hardly," Dale said.

"You've been off in dreamland since I rolled up to your door early this morning."

Kerney laughed.

"I guess I have. I still can't believe Erma put me in her will."

"That lady loved you like a son," Dale said. Up ahead a fast moving stream ran across a dip in the road. He dropped the transmission into low gear and rattled the truck through the water, keeping an eye on the trailer hitched to the truck.

The trailer held two horses Dale had brought up from his ranch in the San Andres Mountains. One of the animals, Soldier, was a mustang Kerney had trained and later named in honor of his dead godson, Sammy Yazzi.

Sammy had been murdered while serving in the army at White Sands Missile Range, on land that once belonged to Kerney's family. Working with Sara Brannon, an army officer at the base, Kerney solved the crime, and the men responsible for Sammy's murder were dead.

Even though Kerney had given Soldier to him. Dale always planned to return the horse. Now, maybe soon he could.

Across the stream, the road curved and climbed the crest of a small hill that opened up on overgrazed grassland.

Along the streambed Dale could see deep erosion furrows, a sure sign of poor range management.

"Where exactly is this mesa you now own?" Dale inquired.

"A little farther down the road," Kerney answered, starting to feel a bit antsy.

Only three weeks had passed since he'd been informed of Erma's bequest of the land and the cabin, and due to the demands of his job as deputy state police chief, he'd been able to manage just one quick trip up from Santa Fe to look over his unexpected windfall.

What Kerney had seen looked promising. The foot of the low mesa held rich grassland, and a live stream wandered near a ramshackle cabin. But most of the land was on the mesa, and Kerney didn't have a due what to expect in the high country.

With Dale supplying the horses and coming along for the ride, Kerney planned to see it all before thie weekend ended.

The road turned east then north as the valley widened, and a long ridge line popped up, dense with trees that climbed steep slopes. Beyond, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains rolled back into the horizon, peaks still capped in deep snow.

"That's my mesa," Kerney said, when the cabin came into view.

"That's a pretty dinky mesa," Dale replied, tongue in cheek.

"Don't be a spoilsport," Kerney said. He directed Dale through the open gate and got out of the truck as soon as it came to a stop.

Dale eyed the cabin from the cab of his truck. Old stone walls sagged under a rusted, pitched tin roof. The front door and small windows were boarded up with scrap lumber. It looked completely useless.

He heard the sound of hoofs on metal and left the truck to find Kerney leading the horses out of the trailer and down the ramp.

"In a hurry?" Dale asked as he reached for Pancho's halter. Pancho was his best trail horse, surefooted and with endurance suited for long rides. Soldier stood nearby, pawing the ground and shaking off his confinement in the trailer.

"You bet I am," Kerney said, reaching for the riding tack in the trailer storage compartment.

Dale stretched his back to ease the tightness from the long drive and looked around. Off in the distance, he could see the outline of Hermit's Peak, two massive summits that stood like the hindquarters of a prehistoric animal. His gaze traveled to some smaller button-nose peaks that dipped off at the front end, and suddenly Hermit Peak looked like an upturned face with a gaping mouth staring into the sky.

He switched his gaze to Kerney and found him saddled and mounted.

"Let's get going," Kerney said.

"Slow down, cowboy."

"Slow down, shit," Kerney said with a grin.

"I want to cover it all before sundown. Saddle up."

Dale grinned back. It had been a long time since he'd seen Kerney look so damn happy.

An old ranch road petered out at the base of the mesa where a stock trail began, winding through a dense thicket of juniper and pinon pine trees. Halfway up the trail got rocky, and the horses picked their way carefully through loose stones and small boulders. They hit the top and encountered a stand of young ponderosas that gradually thickened into a dense climax forest. Kerney turned to look at the rolling valley below. His eyes followed the cuts defining the deep running streams that converged in the village of San Geronimo. Nestled in a shallow depression, the village was mostly in ruins, kept barely alive by the few ranching families who still lived there. The church stood, as did a vacant school and a few homes. But the remaining buildings were weathered empty shells surrounded by piles of hand-cut stone rubble.

The hills beyond the village cut off from view all but the uppermost third of Hermit's Peak, and the mountain looked like two giant loaves of homemade bread set out to cool on a windowsill.

"Every time I look at that mountain, it seems different," Kerney said.

"You're not wrong about that," Dale said, buttoning his jacket. A broad stream of clouds blocked the sun and chilled down the air.

"It will be the last nice view we have if these woodlands don't give way to some open country pretty soon."

"You don't like fighting your way through the brush?"

"Nope. Reminds me too much of work."

"Pray for open country," Kerney said.

They came out of the trees a thousand yards from the ridge line, where the ponderosas dwindled away and grassland took over. A barbed-wire fence barred their passage and they followed it, looking for an opening.

As he rode, Kerney eyed the wide mesa. There were small stands of pinon and juniper trees sprinkled over the land and folded rock outcroppings along the edges of shallow depressions. The land sloped westward, and several wandering arroyos had cut through the thin layer of soil down to the rock plate before draining into intermittent catchment basins.

Prom the map Erma's lawyer and executor, a man named Milton Lynch, had supplied, Kerney knew there was no live water on the mesa. But two windmills tapped groundwater, and Kerney was eager to find them. If they were in working order, it would ease the expense of putting cattle on the land.

They entered the grassland through an old cedar pole gate, and moved down an arroyo into a dry basin. The open range, Kerney guessed, took up four thousand acres of the ten section tract, and showed no sign of recent use. He figured the neighboring rancher who leased the grazing rights had decided to rest the land for a season or two.

As they came out of the basin, Kerney caught sight of a windmill and stock tank. A black dog with brown stockings limped away from a grove of trees, carrying something in its mouth. Even from a good distance away, the dog looked skinny under its thickly matted fur.

It heard the horses, stopped, turned, and retreated in the direction of the trees. Kerney couldn't quite make out the object in the dog's mouth. As he closed in for a closer look the dog froze, dropped the object, skirted around Soldier, and scampered for cover, yelping in pain as it ran.