Chapter 10 — Ethan Burdock
To the Northwest of Grantham was the Bar-D ranch, owned by Ethan Burdock. Burdock had carved a 28,000-acre ranch out of Indian territory long before anyone had thought to look for silver in this rough land. More than five thousand head of Longhorn cattle toughed it out across his range which stretched far north of the main house.
Ethan had done well enough for himself that his house was made of stout logs instead of mud, a luxury in this dry land. But after he had almost drowned in the mud of his own house in the freak rainstorm of ’58 he decided he had lived in adobe houses for long enough.
Ethan had outlasted or outfought everything that had tried to remove him from this place. He fought rustlers, Apaches, Comanche, flood, drought, and everything else Mother Nature had thrown at him. Along the way, he had buried his wife, son and a daughter, and a lot of good ranch hands.
In addition to the main house, there were three barns, four large corrals, and two bunkhouses; one large, one small. All of the buildings formed up in a circle around a kind of dirt plaza in the center of which was a deep and steady well. It was a solid, durable place. And when he sat on the porch at the end of a day, Ethan found beauty in it.
But the ranch he had sacrificed so much for didn’t hold much more comfort than that. It seemed like there was always something to do and always someone to fight. He was an angry man, rarely at ease. But tonight was different. Both his boys were away and Lupita had served supper just for him. After dinner, he threw another log on the fire and sipped a glass of mescal thinking of old feuds he had won the way some men thought of women that had once loved.
He was old and his bones hurt at night and he needed glasses for reading, but his ears were still good. He heard the rider making hard for the house when he was still a long way off.
Ethan took the hurricane lamp in hand and went to see what was the matter. He crossed the yard and went to the figure standing between the two bunkhouses. Most of the men were asleep, but a few had come out in long underwear in various states of undress. Ethan didn’t recognize the horse, but it sure was in a lather.
Joseph, his oldest son, detached himself from the group of hands and met him halfway to the house.
“What’s the commotion?” asked Ethan.
“Charlie. He’s been arrested for murder.”
Ethan gritted his teeth and stared off into the distance, thinking *damn that boy.*
Ethan looked back at Joe. Joe continued, “He shot a man in a saloon in Grantham about three hours ago.”
“You let him go to town?”
Joe, a serious young man, saddle-wise and hard as a coffin nail, said, “He’s a grown man.”
A grown man, thought Ethan. Grown maybe, Charlie was forever a boy, and forever getting in trouble. “Who brought the news?”
“Mayhew.”
“He one of ours?”
“Rode with us for a couple of seasons, now breaks horses for Dumont.”
“Hate to see a good hand go to town,” said Ethan, saying the word ‘town’ like a curse.
“He came to be a friend to Charlie and us.”
“I know.” Ethan nodded once, making up his mind. “Pay him something, feed him and we ride in the morning.”
“You and me?”
“Everyone.”
“Everyone?”
“What else are we gonna do? Hire a lawyer?” Ethan said in a loud voice and the hands noticed and stepped closer to hear what their boss would do.
“That’s a start. He’s gonna stand trial,’ said Joe.
“We don’t know what Charlie did. And maybe he did gun somebody down. I’ll tell you what I do know. Right now Dumont and the rest of those parasites from back east are trying to figure out how they can use Charlie’s scrape to cause us pain. And sure, they’ll call it justice. But they’ll use it for everything else. For profit, for revenge, for enjoyment. ‘Cause what they want is our land. They want to take these wide-open spaces and the sky at night. They want to fence it in and charge rent for it. Ruin it by digging holes in it looking for silver.
“I’m not arguing with you, sir,” said Joe, “but the town’s got laws.”
“They don’t get to come here on my land and speak the law to me. Just like they don’t get to come here and take our cattle.” Ethan turned and paced in front of all of the men, raising his voice to address the crowd.
“Tomorrow, I’m gonna ride into town, collect my boy just like I’d collect any other wayward steer. Now I’m not telling any man to come with me. Could be this turns to a disagreement of a more hostile nature. I mean, not if they’re smart, ‘cause there’s only the sheriff and that dipshit Deputy between us and our boy.
“And I’m not gonna lie to you, Charlie ain’t no angel. Hell, after his poor mother passed, I practical let these bunkhouses raise him until he could ride a horse. So you know what he is what is capable of. Hell, you boys taught him.”
A chuckle went through the crowd. It was a rough, unlikely bunch of Uncles, but they were Uncles all the same. Ethan had spoken the truth and it had kicked many of his men like a horse. That was one of the secrets of these wild, often broken men called cowboys. They had no families of their own. No place else to go. If you gave them a place to be, a tribe of their own, they could be the most loyal men on earth.
“He’s our son, boys, for better and for worse. And if he’s done wrong we will deal with him. A trial by of a jury of his peers, cause a ranchin’ man don’t have no equal anywhere but the ranch.
“So turn in if you want to come with me. I ride at dawn to bring Charlie home.”
A ragged cheer went up. And Ethan waved them down, turning away so they wouldn’t see the emotion that came to his eye.
Joe caught up with him on the porch. “Pa, you know I’m coming with you, goes without saying…”
“It goes without saying."
"then why do you have to say it?”
Joseph looked hard at this, but before he could speak to the wrong of his father’s words Ethan said, “It’s a bad idea. That what you say?”
“Going up against the law…” Joe shook his head, “Sheriff Dance is honest, but the Judge is reasonable for sure. We get Charlie out with lawyers and a bribe. This way seems like a lotta risk for…”
“For Charlie. It’s okay, boy you can say it. I love him, but I don’t like him any more than you do.”
Joseph hung his head in shame.
“He ain’t much good, and that’s the fact of it. A constant thorn in my side since he was born. And if I didn’t think your dead mother was watching over us from heaven…”
“You’d do what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe this whole thing is my fault. I was too soft on him after your mother died. Should’ve spent more time with him. But that doesn’t matter.”
“Pa, I can handle this without any trouble.”
“If you’re wrong, he hangs. And hell, maybe deserves it.” Ethan kicked at a loose board on the porch. “He gets a fair trial, maybe hangs for what he done. But that’s not the point. They stole from us. Same as if they came and rustled a calf.
“That’s nothing you negotiate about. Politicking is just another kind of rustling. It’s just another way to take what belongs to somebody else. And if you let somebody steal from you once...”
Joseph finished the thought “You teach them it’s okay to steal from you all the time.”
“They're after our land. Your birthright. They’re just using your brother to get it.”
True to his word Burdock was up before dawn. His old bones creaked and popped as he shuffled around the room collecting his things. By the time he came downstairs Lupita had lit the fire in the cookstove and had coffee on. He took a sip of coffee and sighed. Then he said, “Pretty soon it’s gonna be just you and me rattling around this old house, Lupita.”
She didn’t look him in the eye when she asked “¿Vas a volver con Charlie?”
He said, “Si, Senora,” in no kind of Mexican accent. Then he asked, “Where’s Joe?”
“Durmiendo,”
He said, “Well, wake him up,” but he said it gently. Then he took his coffee and his coat and stepped outside.
The lights in the bunkhouse on the left were clearly lit. That was a good sign, but when he looked over to the other bunkhouse, he saw nothing but darkness. Damn that Prescott and the rest of them. They must of overslept. He banged down off the porch and struck out towards the unlit bunkhouse. He stabbed his boot heels into the dirt of the yard gettin’ angry, muttering to himself and warming up for the chewing out he was going to give Prescott and that entire bunkhouse. His right foot crunched on something. He broke stride, but his left foot was carried forward by his momentum and where it landed it crunched again.
“What the hell?”
He looked down, but could see nothing in the darkness. He ran his hand over the ground. Grass, by God! Thick grass! There was no grass in the yard. He fetched a lantern from the house and set it down among the strange flora so he could give it a closer look.
It wasn’t grass, exactly, but a low, leafy, spreading plant the likes of which Ethan had never seen before. He stomped back to the dry, hard-packed dirt of the yard and found a line, running northwest to southeast, right to the middle of his yard. On one side was dirt on the other side a lush carpet of greenery, fat with water. The line cut through the well, and where it passed, that second of the stone well was missing, replaced with grass-covered ground. Perfectly filled in as if by magic.
Burdock bent and crushed a piece of the strange grass in his fingers and smelled it. It was sweet and green, not at all the bitter smell of the rare scrub grass of the high desert. He walked quickly to the large bunkhouse and kicked the door hard three times. When a bleary-eyed cowboy opened the door, Burdock was already looking at the grass again. Without looking back he snapped, “Lamps, all you got.”
Soon he had the men fanned out along the line of new grass. They started walking forward, carrying lamps into the darkness, towards the other bunkhouse. 10 steps, 20 steps, 30 steps, still no building.
Ethan came to a halt and the rest of the line did too. Joseph gave voice to the question, “Where the hell did the other bunkhouse go?” A few of the cowboys started to wander off when Ethan Burdock snapped, “pull back to the house, we wait till dawn to see what we are dealing with.”
Cookie brought out large pot of hot water with coffee grounds in the bottom. The men dipped their cups and drank and talked in small groups waiting for first light.
“Pa,” said Joe, “what you think happened to the bunkhouse?”
“I’ll wait until we got some light before I speculate on the matter,” said Ethan.
The gloaming was like a hallucination. It outlined a strange new world in speckled grays and whites. Then, as quickly as if a symphony conductor had dropped his baton, pinks and reds swelled and filled the glowing scene.
They saw strange groves of trees across a wide grassy plain. Speculation rose to a dull roar and Burdock could hear how uneasy the men were. Where had the bunkhouse gone? What had taken its place? While the men speculated, Burdock kept his eyes on the Mountains — at least where they should have been be.
The land they knew so well was gone. Even the mountains were gone. Before them stretched an endless plain. It was a vast horizon of green disappearing in the mist rising from the ground.
One of the cowboys nosed around the spot with the bunkhouse should have been. He kicked through strange grass to the dirt below. Then he looked up and said, “Where’d they go? Where is the little bunkhouse? Where’s the North herd?”
“They’re Gone,” growled Burdock.
“What we do now?” asked Joe.
“First, we go see if the town is still there and collect your brother. Then we go find who stole my land.”
Chapter 11 — Welcome to Town
By the time Dance and Pete got to the river an unlikely crowd of early–risers and the still-drunk-from-the-night-before had formed along the riverbank.
Even the most worn out and used up miners had rolled up their pants and staggered through the weeds to splash in the muddy water.
Speculation abounded with but neither the drunk nor the sober could offer what Dance thought was a reasonable explanation for a river springing up overnight.
The mood of the crowd was excited and festive, but none of this set well with Dance. He scanned the far bank of the river for any sign of the road to Bisbee and found none. Even under the grass the land itself was different where there had been a hill was now vast grassy plain dotted with groves of tall trees with pom-pom-like clusters of leaves atop spindly-looking trunks.
For a moment, Dance thought he spied a herd of animals in the distance, but then whatever it was was gone. He looked to the pole that had carried the telegraph line and saw the line had been cut and now dangled from the insulator. He didn’t like anything about any of this.
Pulaski had shown up at the Morning Star mine early as usual. He lived in a cabin adjacent to the main yard, and his house blocked any view of the river. He had thought little of the fog and plunged right into work. But when the men did not show up for the first shift, he became curious and walked to the miners' tents. Along the way, he saw the crowd and the brand new river and investigated.
Laura Miller had slept poorly as she always did when her husband was out of town. She started breakfast and when Mack went out for his chores, he took longer than usual. When he returned he had no firewood and was so excited he could barely speak. He blurted out incoherently about the wash at the end of town being like a river and filled with water. And he begged to go take a look. Of course, Penelope wasn't about to be left out of an adventure. She begged to go saying, “He says it's like a river, Ma. And I ain't never seen a river. Can I go?"
“You can go and come right back. I'm putting these biscuits in and I have too much to do today with your father gone to wait breakfast on either of you."
"Come on, let's go!" cried Mack and dashed for the door.
Laura Miller cried after Mac, "you mind your sister now, you hear?"
Then she turned back to breakfast, shaking her head. Thinking a thimble of water in that dry gulch was a river was just plain sad. They have to show that girl the world before too much more time passed. Maybe the Rio Grande, or the Brazos. But when would they find the time? They were always so busy with the store. This boomtown wouldn't boom forever and they needed to make money while the times were good.
After surviving the stagecoach ride into Grantham, Preacher James Noyes spent the evening getting to know his new flock and marveling at the town's general wickedness. He settled into the back room of the rough, frontier chapel to which he had been sent. The welcoming committee for the First Baptist Church of Grantham had brought him dinner, including a whole pie. Backwards and dangerous though this place may be, these were all God’s children, and the best of people could be found in even the most desperate places.
When his visitors had left, he had gotten down on his knees and gave thanks to the Lord that he had come safe through his trials to this town of Grantham. And he prayed that the seeds of God's love that he would now sow here would fall on fertile ground. Preacher Noyes so desperately wanted to save souls and win people over to Christ.
He knew that he could do it, the mistakes in Richmond non-withstanding, and asked for no special assistance from the Lord with this task. He just expressed gratitude for being brought to this place where he could redeem himself by saving men's souls from the adversary.
His prayers completed he read his Bible by candlelight and went to sleep.
When he woke in the morning he kneeled and gave thanks once again. Then he stepped outside to see what evil would be sufficient unto this new day. From the front steps of the simple church, he saw a most remarkable site, a river, from nothing. A crowd had gathered on its banks. He straightened himself and went to see if this was an ordinary occurrence, or if this was indeed some miracle sent by the Lord.
Sheriff Dance watched Laura Miller’s children, Mack and… what was that little girl’s name? She was giving her brother fits as she romped through the mud and river water on the bank. And all the while her brother pleaded with her not to get too muddy.
Too late, thought Dance, with a smile. He looked back towards town for their mother. Not from concern for the children, but because it was Dance’s studied opinion that she was the most beautiful woman in Grantham. Hell, most beautiful woman Tombstone and Bisbee included. Maybe all of the territory and even beating out those dark-haired Mexican girls from across the border. And his estimate of her beauty was made all the more acute by her fidelity to her husband.
Dance had seen Laura smile and laugh with her family, but with everyone else, she was all business. This did not trouble Sheriff Dance. He was not one of those men who needed to own a sunset to bask in its beauty.
Penelope — yes that was her name — was the first in the water, and her laughter and shrieks of joy granted permission to everyone else on the bank to follow suit.
Soon everyone but Sheriff Dance and Mack were at least knee-deep in the muddy water. Even Speedy Pete had taken off his boots and was slowly turning his toes through the thick mud. Mack looked to Sheriff Dance in exasperation, as if it was his job to do something about all of this frivolity.
Dance said, “Well, go on Son. There’s no harm in it.” And, granted permission, Mack sat down to pull off his boots.
As she watched breakfast cooling on the table, Laura had an unkind thought for her children and immediately regretted it. So what if they ate cold biscuits – it would teach them a lesson – or maybe they wouldn't care. Her fierce wild children. She wished they would listen to her as they listened to their father. And again she felt it. A pang for Virgil her too, too serious man. She didn't like it when he went away. And she worried about him when he was gone. Life hung heavy on that man and she knew he was sad when he was away.
He was always sad for one reason or another and would never speak of the time before he had known her, nor how he had come to save her and how she, in turn, had saved him. He never raised his voice, nor drank, nor gambled, nor gotten into fights. He was hard-working and patient with the children. Still, he would not forgive himself for something. And the weight of whatever that thing was served to press all his joy into the earth. Only with Mac and Penelope did he seem lighter and Laura treasured the flashes of joy she would catch in his eye when he was with the children.
Well, she thought, nothing for it but to see this trickle of water that her children thought to be a river. She stood, wrapped a bonnet around her head, and went to see.
The preacher heard the wonderment in the voices of the townspeople and came to understand that this had never happened before. He, like the others, was taken with the green vision across the banks. Compared with the rough desert landscape of the last few days of travel, it looked like paradise. Almost like a garden…
"Preacher," said a rough–looking man who took his hat off to address a man of the cloth. "What do you think is happened?"
The Preacher grabbed up a handful of reeds and held them up in the air exclaiming "fit to build a boat for a baby Moses by God! This soil is a blessing from the Almighty himself – a spring in a dry place! It's a miracle!”
Not too far away two monks from the nearby Catholic Mission looked at the Preacher disparagingly. One said to the other, in Latin, "that, or the work of the devil himself."
Nearby, Archie was hunkered down on the bank, pawing through the muck of the river bed. Hearing Latin spoken, he perked up and added a phrase of his own. The monks were shocked and scowled at Archie. One of them was so disturbed that he crossed himself and they both moved away from the man in the strange hat.
When Archie saw the Sheriff watching this minor ecclesiastical drama with bemusement he said, “Sheriff, would I be right in thinking that this river was not here yesterday when I pulled into town?"
Sheriff Dance looked down at Archie, trying to decide if he was joking or not. "Well sir, I must say I do not recall directing my gaze towards this end of town yesterday. But before God and a Federal Judge, I would attest that this river was not here the day before last. And further," Dance continued, “No report of a flood, deluge or even rainstorm has made itself known to the Sheriff's office. Now what, may I ask, did you say to those papists?"
"They claimed the river was a miracle of God’s doing. I quoted Darwin to them."
Dance gave no indication of understanding.
He's a naturalist who wrote a book about… Well, it's not important. The point is this is rich, alluvial soil,” he said, holding a handful of the muck up so the Sheriff could see. “It is not the rocky substrate of the Arizona desert. The soil these reeds are so happily growing in, is the product of tens if not hundreds of thousands of years of hydrological action. This is not merely water in the desert springing forth. This is an entirely different biome than was here yesterday. Isn't that just remarkable?"
"What's that mean, you know, in English?"
"This isn't a matter of water flooding in from the mountain."
"You mean the ones that don't appear to be there anymore?"
"Yes, the very same. These deposits –"
"mud."
"Yes mud, said Archie, "the entire riverbed is deep mud and has been here thousands of years – if not more."
"On top of which, this was all gravel and rock yesterday," said Dance.
"Yes, exactly.”
"Then where the hell did it go? And the rest of the territory? And those goddamn mountains!"
“Yes, exactly."
“That ain't no kind of answer."
Archie looked up at the Sheriff and said, “Yes I know it's not an answer, I was agreeing with your question."
"Then why are you so happy about it?"
"Because it's a mystery, a great enigma. A puzzle."
Dance shook his head and sighed in exasperation
Archie smiled and said, "I love puzzles."
"Then puzzle me this, who cut the cable?" asked Dance.
"What,” said Archie.
"I said, who cut the cable?"
"Yes, I'm not deaf my good man. What I'm saying is that some thing, not someone cut the telegraph line. This mud is fantastically old. All in all, I think this might just the most remarkable thing I've ever seen."
“Mister, your mud ain’t got nothing on that shit," said Speedy Pete, his eyes bugging out of his head as he pointed down the river.
Sheriff Dance followed Pete’s gaze. And there he saw a large wooden ship, glistening in golden hue in the early morning light. As it came around the bend, Dance could hear the beat of a drum pacing time for the craft’s three decks of oarsmen. In front of the ship an evil-looking ram sliced along just below the surface of the water as it raced towards them.
Nowhere Ch. 10 & 11 -- Ethan Burdock & Welcome to Town