Backlands by Michael McGarrity Read Free Book Online Page A

after riding it half drunk, getting bucked off, and crashing headfirst into the stubbing post. They scuffled over it, and CJ left the ranch that very day, never to come back.
    That was the last Patrick saw of him. His sodden stupidity caused CJ to run off to the army and get himself killed in France. The memory of it pursued him daily, one of many dim-witted blunders he’d made over the years that had kept him drinking until Emma forced him to stop.
    In the pulpit, the preacher cleared his throat, shuffled a few pages in his big Bible, and looked out over the congregation. Not one for religion or speechifying, Patrick stopped listening before the preacher’s sermon began, his thoughts wandering to Matt. He’d heard tell that some folks held the boy responsible for the accident, saying he’d shamed and bullied Jimmy into climbing that old cottonwood tree to peek into the eagle’s nest. Patrick didn’t believe it and hoped Luke and Jeannie didn’t either. But if they did, he’d stand behind Matt come what may, no matter where the balance of truth fell. Emma would rightly expect no less from him. The boy had to be hurting miserably over seeing his friend die before his very eyes. Patrick knew that feeling all too well from his experiences with the Rough Riders in Cuba.
    Patrick couldn’t tell how Emma was faring through the tragedy. He knew she’d been mighty sick until recently, with the folks in town who knew her best worrying about her and fearing the worst. But last week, his lawyer had sent a copy of the registered deed for two sections of homesteaded land in the San Andres Mountains backlands Patrick had bought from a hardscrabble sheep rancher. In a note inside it, the lawyer wrote that Emma was much improved and back to her old self again.
    He didn’t doubt it, looking at her straight back and square shoulders. She’d always been slender, but now she looked frail. He wondered if her latest recovery would hold true for long. So many times during their marriage, he’d seen her recover from a bad spell only to decline again into poor health. So many times, he’d heard the doctors warn her to take better care of herself or accept the inevitable that someday she’d become a bedridden invalid. So many times he’d gone to sleep next to her wondering if he’d wake up in the morning to find her dead.
    He’d never stopped worrying about her. In spite of their breakup, all the harsh, bitter words that passed between them, and the times she’d driven him half
loco
with her ways, he’d never loved anybody more. He studied the line of her long neck, just visible above her collar, and yearned for their happier days together.
    As the pastor read a lengthy passage of scripture, Patrick shook off his glum thoughts and mulled over what he planned to do with his newly bought two sections. The twelve hundred eighty acres were some distance away from his ranch holdings and mostly surrounded by marginal government land that drew few pilgrims willing to stake a homestead claim. It had been overgrazed by the sheep rancher but not chewed down to the roots. If the wet weather held through spring, the grasses would start to come back.
    With the war over these last two years, the Brits no longer buying American beef to feed their army, and on-the-hoof prices falling, he had no intention of buying more cattle to pasture on his new acreage. After spring works, when his steers, the barren cows, and some of the culled yearlings sold, he’d pay his outstanding bills, fence the two sections, knock down the small shepherd’s shack, sink a well near the live water source, and hold it in reserve for the next drought, which would surely come; of that he was certain. And when it came, a rested, high-country pasture with live water and good browse might mean the difference between the survival and the failure of the Double K.
    The service ended and Patrick ducked outside to