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Book #7 of the Mogi Franklin Mysteries
Mogi is working as a cowboy over the summer vacation on one of the largest ranches in New Mexico when hundreds of cattle start mysteriously dying there. Trying to understand the cause, he finds himself embroiled in the life of a boy who was kidnapped by Comanche Indians in 1870. In this seventh book of the exciting Mogi Franklin Mysteries, Mogi comes face-to-face with the ghost of the boy's mother, and must face the reality of the past to save the ranch from the enemies of the present.
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Read two chapters
Library of Congress Control Number 2017963624 Distributed by SCB Distributors, (800) 729-642
Chapter 1
Northeastern New Mexico, August 10, 1870
"Tipton! You need to be up! It’s a special day!”
Tip Mulvaney hunkered deeper into the cool of his sheets and tried to imagine how a cow might be trained to milk itself. He finally yawned, stretched, and leaned back to watch a ray of sunlight slice across the flowers in the wallpaper across from the window.
He took a deep breath. The best time of the day was early morning, the moisture in the air making even better the smells of the kitchen downstairs. Another hour and the sun would be hot and harsh, drying the air to only a whisper of moisture, and the main smells would be of dust, sage, and juniper trees.
The springs squeaked as he rose from the bed, stretched, slipped on his long-sleeve shirt, and then pulled on his coveralls. The shirt was required: he was a pale-skinned redhead like his father, and the hot summer sun would toast whatever parts of him were showing. He also had to wear a hat to prevent his face from becoming a dense field of freckles. Struggling into boots that all ready seemed too small, he heard the clanking of pans downstairs.
Father had let the cook go at the beginning of summer. Mother had taken on the cooking for everyone though some of the ranch hands had been smart and followed the cook. Mother’s cooking was getting better, but her early meals had been a challenge some of the hands hadn’t survived.
As he did every morning, Tip stood next to the door frame, running his hand from the top of his head as evenly across as he could to the tick marks on the paint. Subtracting off the height of his boots, he was sure there was a little improvement. He moved from the door to the mirror. The image was of a tall, thin redhead, ten years old today. Maybe Mother ought to cut his hair before the party? He should at least wash it.
But first, the milking.
It was his first chore every morning. The cowhands would have already been up, roped their ponies out of the corral, saddled, breakfasted, and moved on with the ranch work for the day, leaving the barn empty except for the two milk cows. And they’d be making a racket if Tip were late. Between the two of them, Tip would get a whole bucket of milk, enough for breakfast and lunch, and for making a quart or so of butter. They’d be ready for another milking in late afternoon.
Every morning. Every afternoon. Every day. He’d rather be out riding with the hands but, he consoled himself, at least it was summer. Milking the cows in the winter was far worse.
“That’s a good boy,” his mother said as he poured the bucket of milk through a towel stretched across the opening of a large brown crock. “It’s a special day! You’re already ten years old! I expect that by next year, you’ll be up with the hands and herding cows like a grown-up. But for this morning, I’m making pancakes special for you and Lucy.”
Oh, no,Tip thought: Pancakes. Either the lumps would be the size of his thumbnail, or the batter so thin that they broke into pieces when flipped in the pan. He preferred eggs because you couldn’t ruin eggs. He’d make sure plenty of butter and honey was on the table.
Lucy, as usual, was chattering away. Four years younger than Tip, her daily chores were few and would be done with Mother.
“Your father’s working in his study this morning, so you two keep everything quiet,” his mother said, waving a spoon dripping with batter and shushing Lucy. “Tipton, move the milk cows up to new grass. They need to fatten up before fall comes. Let’s all get our chores done this morning. This afternoon I’ll make the best birthday cake you’ve ever tasted, and we’ll get the house ready for the party.”
Having slathered his pancakes in honey and drunk as much milk as possible, Tip was soon outdoors, flicking the end of a rope against the two rumps waddling ahead of him. The air was still and already getting hot. He breathed deeply as the path swung by the river. The scent of the tall grasses along the bank was always cool and fresh.
He caught a quick movement from the corner of his eye, but before he could turn, a rough hand stuffed a wad of something in his mouth and a bony arm looped a rope around him that held his arms tight against his body. In a flash, two men had him hog-tied and shoved into the grass beside the path. His hat had fluttered to the side of the path and now lay upside down in the grass.
He could see them clearly now—two deeply tanned men with painted stripes on their faces, chests, and arms. They wore no shirts, but had deerskin leggings and breechclouts fringed with tassels.
Comanches!
They ran up on the last milk cow and quickly cut its throat. Before the cow finished jerking, her bag was cut off. The two men held it up to their mouths and gulped whatever milk remained in the udders, the white juice mixing with blood as it ran over their faces.
Hacking deep into the hindquarter of the cow, one man ripped back the hide and cut several strips of meat, alternating putting them in his mouth and throwing them to his partner. No time for a fire meant they’d gobble up as much as they could now and tuck the rest under their belts. Satisfied, the two young men gave a string of shrill calls and whoops and shot their arrows into the cow and toward the house, grabbed Tip around the waist, and half-dragged him to two horses tied in hiding next to the canyon wall.
Sitting him upright behind his partner, the second man tied one of Tip’s feet with a leather strip, ran it under the horse, and tied it to his other foot. His hands were similarly bound around the waist of his captor. No jumping off to escape.
The horses leaped up the road, crossed to the riverbed, and a mad race was on.
Tip’s hands were soon hurting from the rawhide around his wrists, but his legs hurt worse. His thighs were rubbing hard up against the Indian saddle, fashioned more like a pack saddle than a western saddle, and it was only a couple of hours before the tough fabric of his overalls had torn and the skin was worn through to blood. But falling to the side or slipping back over the rump of the horse filled him with a fear that overwhelmed the pain in his body, and he held on tight.
Kidnapped! He had heard stories of people taken by Indians, and Comanches were said to be the worst. His fears gave way to panic, then to despair and anguish, his tears running down the back of the man to whom he was tied.
The Comanche men rode for hours, driving their horses relentlessly in and out of canyons, onto mesa tops, and out into the high country foothills. Tip could tell that they changed directions repeatedly. Once, they stopped and set fire to the tall grass around them, riding ahead of the flames as the smoke covered them. The ash and swirling winds wiped away their tracks.
By darkness, they reached a deep ravine far to the north of the ranch. Below, five or six other men squatted next to a string of stolen horses. A horse had been killed and butchered, a fire built, and hunks of meat had been wrapped around sticks. Men were roasting the meat over the flames.
Tip’s bonds were cut, and he was thrown to the ground. A few minutes later, the horse’s liver was tossed to him. He hungrily stuffed it into his mouth, hardly waiting to chew, and then vomited from the sickening taste of still-warm blood.
It was only minutes before Tip was shoved onto one of the stolen horses, his legs retied around the belly and his hands around the neck. Driving their stolen herd in front, the Comanches kicked their horses and sprinted out of the ravine. Tip’s horse was jerked along by a rope.
Day after day, night after night, stopping for only a few hours of sleep, the band of raiders raced across the land. Sometimes they headed toward the sun, sometimes away from it. The land changed from mountains to vast stretches of grassland—flat, with no mesas, no rivers, and no trees. Miles and miles of tall, dry, yellow grass as far as Tip could see made long, slow waves as the wind blew over it.
Once on the prairie, the hard-riding group took longer breaks to eat and sleep. Tip was viciously hot and hungry and thirsty and tired and sore. Being strapped to the horse had tortured his muscles so that they were almost useless. His shirt had torn enough under the constant rubbing of his overalls that his neck and shoulders were long burned from the sun. He could feel the heat on his forehead. Without his hat, he correctly guessed that freckles now covered his entire face.
Every so often, the raiding party stopped, dug a shallow hole in the ground, and filled it with small sticks to build a fire. They threw handfuls of grass into the flames to make a thick, black smoke. Using a blanket to cover and then uncover the column of smoke, individual puffs of smoke billowed high into the sky. Soon after, other Indians appeared on the horizon, usually driving small herds of horses and sometimes with other captives—white, brown, black—all children. Within a week, more than a hundred men had joined together and were pushing upward of three hundred horses and mules across the plains.
While they were stopped, Tip talked to the children around him. They were mostly from Texas, some from Oklahoma and New Mexico. As young as seven, as old as fourteen. Two or three spoke only Spanish; several spoke what he recognized as German, which he did not understand. When any of them talked to the others, it was in frightened whispers.
“Where are you from? How old are you? Anybody coming after you?”
“Don’t know, but pretty sure the army’s coming. . . . My family’s coming. . . . My father’s coming. . . . Won’t be long, they’re right behind us.”
But Tip believed they all knew that no one was coming. It had been too fast, too far, too hard. They had all heard the stories.
Nobody ever caught Comanches.
A week later or perhaps two, the sea of grass abruptly halted on the rim of a wide canyon, wider than Tip had ever seen and much deeper than the canyons around the ranch back home. Bound by tall cliffs of sandstone, the rugged canyon appeared suddenly out of the north and broadened like a wide gash through the flat land around it. A product of eons of erosion cutting through the layers of clay, sand, and rock, the canyon walls were striped with reds, whites, browns, and tans, the different layers of sediment witness to ages past. A stream ran through the bottom.
Tip couldn’t believe what he saw—more Indian teepees than he could count were scattered up and down the canyon floor, as far as he could see in both directions. Hundreds of men, women, and children, old and young, were bustling about. It was more people than he remembered ever seeing in town.
The horse herd was driven in a different direction, and as the remaining riders worked their way down a narrow, dusty trail, the canyon echoed with shouts and yells and whoops. The riders reached the center of the canyon and began a parade through the camp while everyone, the children especially, greeted them with yells and yodels. Tip’s legs were slapped and grabbed and pinched; he tried to kick the hands away, having no sympathy for their pleasure in his capture.
As his pony was pulled along at a fast clip, Tip stared at his surroundings. The teepees were painted with symbols in yellow, red, and black. Leather shields with feathers tied in their centers were hung around the entryways. Scattered among the teepees were long bows, hatchets, long guns, quivers of arrows, buffalo robes and blankets, and hides stretched across forms for drying. Everywhere were ropes strung between poles with strips of drying meat. Smoke from a hundred fires made the scene feel even more hot and dry than it felt already.
The captives were led off in different directions. Tip was roughly pulled from his horse, his coveralls and boots were taken, and he was thrown into the stream, where three women scoured the dirt of almost a month’s worth of travel from his skin and hair. The rough hands against his skin were painful, and Tip often howled. His yelps were ignored.
Taken naked from the stream, he was brought directly before the chief of all the Comanches in the canyon. The old man ran his hand through Tip’s thick red hair, already dry and frizzy.
That hair was an everlasting gift from his father, Mother used to say. Not a man in a hundred has hair like this, Father used to say.
The chief must have liked it because he took Tip in as a member of his family.
Two or three women now herded him away, throwing a set of breeches at him. Then they began swatting him with sticks and forced him to work. He was to gather wood and water, tend the fire, and beat the dust from buffalo blankets. He was slave labor, all his work done under a constant barrage of insults and strikes with a stick. When he was caught falling down, cringing from their sticks, or crying with sorrow or fear, they beat him worse.
The next afternoon, in a broad meadow, a ring was created by circling ropes around poles stuck in the ground. Tip had heard that Comanches ate white children, so he figured it was time for him to be tortured and eaten. Instead, as drums announced the beginning of a celebration, he was pushed into the middle of the ring to meet an Indian boy about his size. It was a fight, and the crowd cheered and laughed as Tip was twisted, thrown, punched, kicked, and wrestled while he cried, yelled, and blubbered. Bloodied and dirty, he was dragged from the ring and thrown into the stream to wash himself.
That night, the chief spoke to him. Tip certainly knew none of the Comanche’s language and the chief knew no English, but they each knew a little Spanish, so they were able to make themselves understood.
Fighting is not punishment, the chief said. It is training. Tip was no longer white—that was past. Tip was now Comanche, and he would serve the chief.
He was no longer a captive. He was a son.
"Tipton! You need to be up! It’s a special day!”
Tip Mulvaney hunkered deeper into the cool of his sheets and tried to imagine how a cow might be trained to milk itself. He finally yawned, stretched, and leaned back to watch a ray of sunlight slice across the flowers in the wallpaper across from the window.
He took a deep breath. The best time of the day was early morning, the moisture in the air making even better the smells of the kitchen downstairs. Another hour and the sun would be hot and harsh, drying the air to only a whisper of moisture, and the main smells would be of dust, sage, and juniper trees.
The springs squeaked as he rose from the bed, stretched, slipped on his long-sleeve shirt, and then pulled on his coveralls. The shirt was required: he was a pale-skinned redhead like his father, and the hot summer sun would toast whatever parts of him were showing. He also had to wear a hat to prevent his face from becoming a dense field of freckles. Struggling into boots that all ready seemed too small, he heard the clanking of pans downstairs.
Father had let the cook go at the beginning of summer. Mother had taken on the cooking for everyone though some of the ranch hands had been smart and followed the cook. Mother’s cooking was getting better, but her early meals had been a challenge some of the hands hadn’t survived.
As he did every morning, Tip stood next to the door frame, running his hand from the top of his head as evenly across as he could to the tick marks on the paint. Subtracting off the height of his boots, he was sure there was a little improvement. He moved from the door to the mirror. The image was of a tall, thin redhead, ten years old today. Maybe Mother ought to cut his hair before the party? He should at least wash it.
But first, the milking.
It was his first chore every morning. The cowhands would have already been up, roped their ponies out of the corral, saddled, breakfasted, and moved on with the ranch work for the day, leaving the barn empty except for the two milk cows. And they’d be making a racket if Tip were late. Between the two of them, Tip would get a whole bucket of milk, enough for breakfast and lunch, and for making a quart or so of butter. They’d be ready for another milking in late afternoon.
Every morning. Every afternoon. Every day. He’d rather be out riding with the hands but, he consoled himself, at least it was summer. Milking the cows in the winter was far worse.
“That’s a good boy,” his mother said as he poured the bucket of milk through a towel stretched across the opening of a large brown crock. “It’s a special day! You’re already ten years old! I expect that by next year, you’ll be up with the hands and herding cows like a grown-up. But for this morning, I’m making pancakes special for you and Lucy.”
Oh, no,Tip thought: Pancakes. Either the lumps would be the size of his thumbnail, or the batter so thin that they broke into pieces when flipped in the pan. He preferred eggs because you couldn’t ruin eggs. He’d make sure plenty of butter and honey was on the table.
Lucy, as usual, was chattering away. Four years younger than Tip, her daily chores were few and would be done with Mother.
“Your father’s working in his study this morning, so you two keep everything quiet,” his mother said, waving a spoon dripping with batter and shushing Lucy. “Tipton, move the milk cows up to new grass. They need to fatten up before fall comes. Let’s all get our chores done this morning. This afternoon I’ll make the best birthday cake you’ve ever tasted, and we’ll get the house ready for the party.”
Having slathered his pancakes in honey and drunk as much milk as possible, Tip was soon outdoors, flicking the end of a rope against the two rumps waddling ahead of him. The air was still and already getting hot. He breathed deeply as the path swung by the river. The scent of the tall grasses along the bank was always cool and fresh.
He caught a quick movement from the corner of his eye, but before he could turn, a rough hand stuffed a wad of something in his mouth and a bony arm looped a rope around him that held his arms tight against his body. In a flash, two men had him hog-tied and shoved into the grass beside the path. His hat had fluttered to the side of the path and now lay upside down in the grass.
He could see them clearly now—two deeply tanned men with painted stripes on their faces, chests, and arms. They wore no shirts, but had deerskin leggings and breechclouts fringed with tassels.
Comanches!
They ran up on the last milk cow and quickly cut its throat. Before the cow finished jerking, her bag was cut off. The two men held it up to their mouths and gulped whatever milk remained in the udders, the white juice mixing with blood as it ran over their faces.
Hacking deep into the hindquarter of the cow, one man ripped back the hide and cut several strips of meat, alternating putting them in his mouth and throwing them to his partner. No time for a fire meant they’d gobble up as much as they could now and tuck the rest under their belts. Satisfied, the two young men gave a string of shrill calls and whoops and shot their arrows into the cow and toward the house, grabbed Tip around the waist, and half-dragged him to two horses tied in hiding next to the canyon wall.
Sitting him upright behind his partner, the second man tied one of Tip’s feet with a leather strip, ran it under the horse, and tied it to his other foot. His hands were similarly bound around the waist of his captor. No jumping off to escape.
The horses leaped up the road, crossed to the riverbed, and a mad race was on.
Tip’s hands were soon hurting from the rawhide around his wrists, but his legs hurt worse. His thighs were rubbing hard up against the Indian saddle, fashioned more like a pack saddle than a western saddle, and it was only a couple of hours before the tough fabric of his overalls had torn and the skin was worn through to blood. But falling to the side or slipping back over the rump of the horse filled him with a fear that overwhelmed the pain in his body, and he held on tight.
Kidnapped! He had heard stories of people taken by Indians, and Comanches were said to be the worst. His fears gave way to panic, then to despair and anguish, his tears running down the back of the man to whom he was tied.
The Comanche men rode for hours, driving their horses relentlessly in and out of canyons, onto mesa tops, and out into the high country foothills. Tip could tell that they changed directions repeatedly. Once, they stopped and set fire to the tall grass around them, riding ahead of the flames as the smoke covered them. The ash and swirling winds wiped away their tracks.
By darkness, they reached a deep ravine far to the north of the ranch. Below, five or six other men squatted next to a string of stolen horses. A horse had been killed and butchered, a fire built, and hunks of meat had been wrapped around sticks. Men were roasting the meat over the flames.
Tip’s bonds were cut, and he was thrown to the ground. A few minutes later, the horse’s liver was tossed to him. He hungrily stuffed it into his mouth, hardly waiting to chew, and then vomited from the sickening taste of still-warm blood.
It was only minutes before Tip was shoved onto one of the stolen horses, his legs retied around the belly and his hands around the neck. Driving their stolen herd in front, the Comanches kicked their horses and sprinted out of the ravine. Tip’s horse was jerked along by a rope.
Day after day, night after night, stopping for only a few hours of sleep, the band of raiders raced across the land. Sometimes they headed toward the sun, sometimes away from it. The land changed from mountains to vast stretches of grassland—flat, with no mesas, no rivers, and no trees. Miles and miles of tall, dry, yellow grass as far as Tip could see made long, slow waves as the wind blew over it.
Once on the prairie, the hard-riding group took longer breaks to eat and sleep. Tip was viciously hot and hungry and thirsty and tired and sore. Being strapped to the horse had tortured his muscles so that they were almost useless. His shirt had torn enough under the constant rubbing of his overalls that his neck and shoulders were long burned from the sun. He could feel the heat on his forehead. Without his hat, he correctly guessed that freckles now covered his entire face.
Every so often, the raiding party stopped, dug a shallow hole in the ground, and filled it with small sticks to build a fire. They threw handfuls of grass into the flames to make a thick, black smoke. Using a blanket to cover and then uncover the column of smoke, individual puffs of smoke billowed high into the sky. Soon after, other Indians appeared on the horizon, usually driving small herds of horses and sometimes with other captives—white, brown, black—all children. Within a week, more than a hundred men had joined together and were pushing upward of three hundred horses and mules across the plains.
While they were stopped, Tip talked to the children around him. They were mostly from Texas, some from Oklahoma and New Mexico. As young as seven, as old as fourteen. Two or three spoke only Spanish; several spoke what he recognized as German, which he did not understand. When any of them talked to the others, it was in frightened whispers.
“Where are you from? How old are you? Anybody coming after you?”
“Don’t know, but pretty sure the army’s coming. . . . My family’s coming. . . . My father’s coming. . . . Won’t be long, they’re right behind us.”
But Tip believed they all knew that no one was coming. It had been too fast, too far, too hard. They had all heard the stories.
Nobody ever caught Comanches.
A week later or perhaps two, the sea of grass abruptly halted on the rim of a wide canyon, wider than Tip had ever seen and much deeper than the canyons around the ranch back home. Bound by tall cliffs of sandstone, the rugged canyon appeared suddenly out of the north and broadened like a wide gash through the flat land around it. A product of eons of erosion cutting through the layers of clay, sand, and rock, the canyon walls were striped with reds, whites, browns, and tans, the different layers of sediment witness to ages past. A stream ran through the bottom.
Tip couldn’t believe what he saw—more Indian teepees than he could count were scattered up and down the canyon floor, as far as he could see in both directions. Hundreds of men, women, and children, old and young, were bustling about. It was more people than he remembered ever seeing in town.
The horse herd was driven in a different direction, and as the remaining riders worked their way down a narrow, dusty trail, the canyon echoed with shouts and yells and whoops. The riders reached the center of the canyon and began a parade through the camp while everyone, the children especially, greeted them with yells and yodels. Tip’s legs were slapped and grabbed and pinched; he tried to kick the hands away, having no sympathy for their pleasure in his capture.
As his pony was pulled along at a fast clip, Tip stared at his surroundings. The teepees were painted with symbols in yellow, red, and black. Leather shields with feathers tied in their centers were hung around the entryways. Scattered among the teepees were long bows, hatchets, long guns, quivers of arrows, buffalo robes and blankets, and hides stretched across forms for drying. Everywhere were ropes strung between poles with strips of drying meat. Smoke from a hundred fires made the scene feel even more hot and dry than it felt already.
The captives were led off in different directions. Tip was roughly pulled from his horse, his coveralls and boots were taken, and he was thrown into the stream, where three women scoured the dirt of almost a month’s worth of travel from his skin and hair. The rough hands against his skin were painful, and Tip often howled. His yelps were ignored.
Taken naked from the stream, he was brought directly before the chief of all the Comanches in the canyon. The old man ran his hand through Tip’s thick red hair, already dry and frizzy.
That hair was an everlasting gift from his father, Mother used to say. Not a man in a hundred has hair like this, Father used to say.
The chief must have liked it because he took Tip in as a member of his family.
Two or three women now herded him away, throwing a set of breeches at him. Then they began swatting him with sticks and forced him to work. He was to gather wood and water, tend the fire, and beat the dust from buffalo blankets. He was slave labor, all his work done under a constant barrage of insults and strikes with a stick. When he was caught falling down, cringing from their sticks, or crying with sorrow or fear, they beat him worse.
The next afternoon, in a broad meadow, a ring was created by circling ropes around poles stuck in the ground. Tip had heard that Comanches ate white children, so he figured it was time for him to be tortured and eaten. Instead, as drums announced the beginning of a celebration, he was pushed into the middle of the ring to meet an Indian boy about his size. It was a fight, and the crowd cheered and laughed as Tip was twisted, thrown, punched, kicked, and wrestled while he cried, yelled, and blubbered. Bloodied and dirty, he was dragged from the ring and thrown into the stream to wash himself.
That night, the chief spoke to him. Tip certainly knew none of the Comanche’s language and the chief knew no English, but they each knew a little Spanish, so they were able to make themselves understood.
Fighting is not punishment, the chief said. It is training. Tip was no longer white—that was past. Tip was now Comanche, and he would serve the chief.
He was no longer a captive. He was a son.
Chapter 2
Present Day, Bluff, Utah
Mogi Franklin carefully shifted his new light-gray, 2X beaver cowboy hat so that it sat just barely above his ears, perfectly straight across his forehead, and just the right distance above his eyebrows to not interfere with a good squint.
Satisfied with his appearance in the mirror, he slowly lowered his hands toward an imaginary two-pistol gun belt around his waist and stood tall as he faced the image of what had now become a villainous outlaw. He pushed his toes into the fronts of his brand-new cowboy boots, spread his feet a couple of inches more, and went into a semi-crouch as he braced for whipping out his imaginary pistols to bring the wrath of justice down on the head of the evil man before him.
He spit an imaginary stream of tobacco-stained saliva into the imaginary dust of the imaginary street beneath his feet. “You want me, you rotten bag of dog vomit?” he said in a gravelly voice. “Then prepare to die!
He saw an imperceptibly small change in the outlaw’s eyes. Mogi’s hands moved like lightning, jerking the pistols from their holsters and cocking the hammers as he leveled the barrels at the outlaw’s chest. The guns roared as they belched hot lead across the room, ripping through the outlaw’s flesh and spraying blood all over the wall.
“What in the world are you doing?”
Jennifer Franklin stood in the doorway of Mogi’s bedroom with a quizzical look on her face. She was seventeen, three years older than her brother and a half-foot shorter. With thick, brown hair cut short, she was strong, athletic, and physically graceful.
Deftly blowing the smoke from each barrel, twirling the guns in unison as he slid them smoothly back into their holsters, Sheriff Mogi straightened from his crouch, took off his hat, and slid it over his heart as he turned to face his sister with his humblest expression.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, if I’ve insulted your tender sensibilities by killing this miserable piece of humanity, but justice has been served today, and now this brave, new country is ready for fine women like yourself to raise children in a land of peace and honor and God-fearing people.”
Jennifer rolled her eyes. Being a people person and a keen observer of human nature, it made being around her brother pretty interesting at times. “I think I’ll ask Mom if therapy would help, but until then, you might consider that most gunfighters would probably, at least, have put on pants before a gunfight.”
Mogi looked down and blushed as he realized that his cowboy hat and boots were set off only by his tighty-whities.
“Uh. . . .”
Jennifer continued down the hall, sat down at the dining table, and began to thumb through a magazine. It was the end of May, and only two more days of school meant the coming freedom from the daily grind of education.
Mogi reappeared in the boots and hat, but this time also in a T-shirt and jeans. He moved to Jennifer’s side and unfolded a large New Mexico state highway map across the table.
“Okay, so maybe I won’t exactly rid the country of outlaws, but have you seen where I’m going? I never knew Granddad had friends like this. Look!” He picked up a pencil and circled a small area on the map east of Las Vegas, New Mexico, north of Interstate 40 as it passed between the towns of Santa Rosa and Tucumcari.
“This is where the Buffalo Skull Ranch is. I looked it up on the web. There’s a half-million acres. It’s a big ranching operation with a lot of cattle, but part of it is a dude ranch, with an old hacienda that’s been converted to a hotel. They provide horseback rides, hikes, jeep tours, a swimming pool, tennis courts, cowboy cookouts, and all sorts of stuff. Lots of famous people and movie stars have stayed there. I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing, but I’ll be a ranch hand, helping out with the cattle. I hope they don’t expect me to wrestle steers or anything.”
“You realize, of course,” Jennifer replied, “that you’ll actually be expected to work?”
Mogi acted surprised. “Hey, I can work! I’m big for my age. I can keep up with anybody. It’s about time I started making myself into a real man.”
“Oh, good grief,” his sister moaned.
Mogi was fourteen and tall for his age, but his muscles had not yet caught up with his bones, so he was gangly and spindly and a little awkward, which is to say, normal for his position in life. He took after his mom’s side of the family in his looks and his shyness, but seemed to be the sum of both families on the brain side: He was way smarter than his friends, quick-minded, mentally disciplined and orderly, and had a natural talent for solving puzzles.
“And not only do I expect to get good at cowboyin’, but I’ll become part of the heritage of all cowboyhood.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been reading up on the greatest cowboy of all time—Colonel Charlie Goodnight. Look at the map.” He used his hand to smooth the map down to the southeastern New Mexico border.
“Charlie Goodnight became the most famous cattleman in Texas. He was a Texas Ranger during the Civil War and after that, he blazed a cattle trail from Texas to Wyoming by taking herds of cattle over to the Pecos River in New Mexico and then following it north.
“After becoming the biggest rancher in Colorado, Goodnight moved to Texas and started one of the largest cattle ranches in the world around Palo Duro Canyon. He became one of the most influential people in Texas history.
“But what’s important is this.” He drew a line on the map from Fort Sumner north through his circle around the Buffalo Skull Ranch and up to the New Mexican border by Raton.
“When he took his cattle up the Pecos, he turned at Santa Rosa and drove his herd right through the land that became the Buffalo Skull Ranch. I’ll be riding the range right on top of where thousands of Texas Longhorns grazed. Cowboys, Indians, Texas Longhorns, cattle drives, Indian battles, buffalo herds, the Santa Fe Trail, the Civil War, the war with Mexico—all that history happened right where I’m going to be.
“Granddad said I’ll be learning to rope and ride, and herd cattle, and shoot at coyotes, and sleep out under the stars, and be livin’ the cowboy life.”
Mogi began jumping around the living room, drawing his pistols and shooting bad guys, swinging his rope, spurring his horse, and attacking the sofa as he wrestled a steer to the ground.
Jennifer shook her head in disbelief.
“I hope Granddad doesn’t regret offering you up as summer help for this place,” she said. “He and the ranch manager went to college together, and you working there for the summer was meant as something that would benefit you both.
“Having a crazy fourteen-year-old may be more than they bargained for.”
* * *
Two months later
Jennifer and her grandfather had left Bluff, Utah—Jennifer and Mogi’s hometown—early that morning and driven across Northern New Mexico, down the Española Valley, through Santa Fe, and an hour east to Las Vegas.
“Are you worried?” Granddad asked.
“I’m not sure,” Jennifer replied. “Mogi’s never seemed this anxious before. He only calls when he goes to town because they don’t have cell service on the ranch. He called pretty often in June, but I stopped hearing from him until last week. He sounded scared, which is really not like him at all. He was avoiding telling me something, I’m sure, or maybe trying to not be overheard.”
“I can believe that there’s no cell phone service out there,” Granddad said. “The ranch is close to some of the last land in New Mexico to be settled, and is a good forty miles from any city. If he’d had to use the ranch phone or a phone on a trip to town, there would likely have been people around. That might be reason enough for him to be cautious, if he wanted to talk to you about a private matter or something.
“I hate to think that I put him into ranch work before he was ready for it. I figured fourteen was pretty young, but Bud had his kids on the ranch since they were born, and they all did fine. Bud said that he’d go gentle on the boy. He said there were always low level jobs to do, but you know how intense your brother can get.”
Jennifer looked directly at Granddad.
“Is it true that a lot of the cattle have died?” she asked. “I mean, they were murdered or something? Mogi talked about mysterious circumstances and the cowboys being scared out of their wits. He even mentioned rumors about aliens from another planet, but that’s kind of a New Mexico thing. He doesn’t know what’s happening, but some people are worried that the water has turned bad.”
“I talked with Bud last night,” Granddad replied, “and I’m afraid the news is not good. About the first of July, several steers were found stone cold dead in a side canyon of the Canadian River, which runs right through the ranch. There were no marks on them, no signs of accident or predators; they looked in good health and weren’t injured. Every few days after that, more dead cattle started turning up in various places along the river. The state sent doctors from their science labs to investigate, but everybody is baffled. They don’t know what’s wrong.
“This is a serious situation for a cattle ranch. You remember how bad the Mad Cow disease was in England, where they had to destroy thousands of animals to keep the disease from spreading? This is the same situation. If a definite cause can’t be determined, the drastic step is to assume that it’s the cows themselves that have the disease, and Bud would have to put down every one of several thousand cattle. He wouldn’t be able to sell the meat or anything, which means that the herd would be a total loss, and that’s a whole lot of money. I doubt the ranch could ever recover. The owners of the ranch would have to sell the ranch for pennies on the dollar, and Bud would be out on the street.”
The trip through the middle of New Mexico had taken them through mountain valleys where the deep greens of forests contrasted with the pale yellows of semi-desert foothills. East of Las Vegas, they left the mountains behind and crossed into a broad expanse of grass.
Suddenly, they dropped over a ridge and found themselves descending a long, sloping highway that cut across the face of a high cliff. As the pickup curved slowly down the narrow road, Jennifer watched the strong winds battering the trees as the heat of the cliff face channeled hot winds upward. Several ravens darted in and out of the wind currents as they played along the rocks.
“What else did your brother have to say?” Granddad asked.
“He didn’t say much about what he’s been doing, just that his back hurts and he’s hungry all the time. He must be growing again. At Christmas he had a growth spurt, and we did all we could to pull him out of the refrigerator every day. I think he grew an inch just in December. He’s been taller than me for a long time, but I’m not sure I’m ready for a brother who’s a giant.”
“You don’t mind working at the ranch for two weeks, do you?” Granddad asked. “It seemed like the best way to get someone inside the operations of the ranch to look for anything out of the ordinary. I’m usually not so secretive, but Bud is under a lot of pressure, and I’d like to help him out.”
“Oh, no, that’s fine. It’ll give me some spending money. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, though.”
“Just hang around and watch. You’re a pretty sharp kid, you and your brother both. You’ve got a gift for understanding people. I figure if there’s anything out of place, you’ll see it. Speaking of that, did your brother say anything about the people?”
“Nope. He said that he’d tell us more when we came. He said you’d especially be interested in what he’s found out.”
“That sounds mysterious enough. Did he explain?”
“As a matter of fact,” Jennifer said with a grin, “he said he’s been getting mixed up with a few good guys and a few bad guys of history, Spanish land grants, and children kidnapped by the Comanches.”
“That’s my boy!” Granddad said with a laugh. Anything connected to the history of the American Southwest was especially delightful to Mogi and Jennifer’s grandfather. “Anything else?”
“Well,” Jennifer said, “I’m not sure he was serious, but he said he saw a ghost.”
Mogi Franklin carefully shifted his new light-gray, 2X beaver cowboy hat so that it sat just barely above his ears, perfectly straight across his forehead, and just the right distance above his eyebrows to not interfere with a good squint.
Satisfied with his appearance in the mirror, he slowly lowered his hands toward an imaginary two-pistol gun belt around his waist and stood tall as he faced the image of what had now become a villainous outlaw. He pushed his toes into the fronts of his brand-new cowboy boots, spread his feet a couple of inches more, and went into a semi-crouch as he braced for whipping out his imaginary pistols to bring the wrath of justice down on the head of the evil man before him.
He spit an imaginary stream of tobacco-stained saliva into the imaginary dust of the imaginary street beneath his feet. “You want me, you rotten bag of dog vomit?” he said in a gravelly voice. “Then prepare to die!
He saw an imperceptibly small change in the outlaw’s eyes. Mogi’s hands moved like lightning, jerking the pistols from their holsters and cocking the hammers as he leveled the barrels at the outlaw’s chest. The guns roared as they belched hot lead across the room, ripping through the outlaw’s flesh and spraying blood all over the wall.
“What in the world are you doing?”
Jennifer Franklin stood in the doorway of Mogi’s bedroom with a quizzical look on her face. She was seventeen, three years older than her brother and a half-foot shorter. With thick, brown hair cut short, she was strong, athletic, and physically graceful.
Deftly blowing the smoke from each barrel, twirling the guns in unison as he slid them smoothly back into their holsters, Sheriff Mogi straightened from his crouch, took off his hat, and slid it over his heart as he turned to face his sister with his humblest expression.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, if I’ve insulted your tender sensibilities by killing this miserable piece of humanity, but justice has been served today, and now this brave, new country is ready for fine women like yourself to raise children in a land of peace and honor and God-fearing people.”
Jennifer rolled her eyes. Being a people person and a keen observer of human nature, it made being around her brother pretty interesting at times. “I think I’ll ask Mom if therapy would help, but until then, you might consider that most gunfighters would probably, at least, have put on pants before a gunfight.”
Mogi looked down and blushed as he realized that his cowboy hat and boots were set off only by his tighty-whities.
“Uh. . . .”
Jennifer continued down the hall, sat down at the dining table, and began to thumb through a magazine. It was the end of May, and only two more days of school meant the coming freedom from the daily grind of education.
Mogi reappeared in the boots and hat, but this time also in a T-shirt and jeans. He moved to Jennifer’s side and unfolded a large New Mexico state highway map across the table.
“Okay, so maybe I won’t exactly rid the country of outlaws, but have you seen where I’m going? I never knew Granddad had friends like this. Look!” He picked up a pencil and circled a small area on the map east of Las Vegas, New Mexico, north of Interstate 40 as it passed between the towns of Santa Rosa and Tucumcari.
“This is where the Buffalo Skull Ranch is. I looked it up on the web. There’s a half-million acres. It’s a big ranching operation with a lot of cattle, but part of it is a dude ranch, with an old hacienda that’s been converted to a hotel. They provide horseback rides, hikes, jeep tours, a swimming pool, tennis courts, cowboy cookouts, and all sorts of stuff. Lots of famous people and movie stars have stayed there. I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing, but I’ll be a ranch hand, helping out with the cattle. I hope they don’t expect me to wrestle steers or anything.”
“You realize, of course,” Jennifer replied, “that you’ll actually be expected to work?”
Mogi acted surprised. “Hey, I can work! I’m big for my age. I can keep up with anybody. It’s about time I started making myself into a real man.”
“Oh, good grief,” his sister moaned.
Mogi was fourteen and tall for his age, but his muscles had not yet caught up with his bones, so he was gangly and spindly and a little awkward, which is to say, normal for his position in life. He took after his mom’s side of the family in his looks and his shyness, but seemed to be the sum of both families on the brain side: He was way smarter than his friends, quick-minded, mentally disciplined and orderly, and had a natural talent for solving puzzles.
“And not only do I expect to get good at cowboyin’, but I’ll become part of the heritage of all cowboyhood.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been reading up on the greatest cowboy of all time—Colonel Charlie Goodnight. Look at the map.” He used his hand to smooth the map down to the southeastern New Mexico border.
“Charlie Goodnight became the most famous cattleman in Texas. He was a Texas Ranger during the Civil War and after that, he blazed a cattle trail from Texas to Wyoming by taking herds of cattle over to the Pecos River in New Mexico and then following it north.
“After becoming the biggest rancher in Colorado, Goodnight moved to Texas and started one of the largest cattle ranches in the world around Palo Duro Canyon. He became one of the most influential people in Texas history.
“But what’s important is this.” He drew a line on the map from Fort Sumner north through his circle around the Buffalo Skull Ranch and up to the New Mexican border by Raton.
“When he took his cattle up the Pecos, he turned at Santa Rosa and drove his herd right through the land that became the Buffalo Skull Ranch. I’ll be riding the range right on top of where thousands of Texas Longhorns grazed. Cowboys, Indians, Texas Longhorns, cattle drives, Indian battles, buffalo herds, the Santa Fe Trail, the Civil War, the war with Mexico—all that history happened right where I’m going to be.
“Granddad said I’ll be learning to rope and ride, and herd cattle, and shoot at coyotes, and sleep out under the stars, and be livin’ the cowboy life.”
Mogi began jumping around the living room, drawing his pistols and shooting bad guys, swinging his rope, spurring his horse, and attacking the sofa as he wrestled a steer to the ground.
Jennifer shook her head in disbelief.
“I hope Granddad doesn’t regret offering you up as summer help for this place,” she said. “He and the ranch manager went to college together, and you working there for the summer was meant as something that would benefit you both.
“Having a crazy fourteen-year-old may be more than they bargained for.”
* * *
Two months later
Jennifer and her grandfather had left Bluff, Utah—Jennifer and Mogi’s hometown—early that morning and driven across Northern New Mexico, down the Española Valley, through Santa Fe, and an hour east to Las Vegas.
“Are you worried?” Granddad asked.
“I’m not sure,” Jennifer replied. “Mogi’s never seemed this anxious before. He only calls when he goes to town because they don’t have cell service on the ranch. He called pretty often in June, but I stopped hearing from him until last week. He sounded scared, which is really not like him at all. He was avoiding telling me something, I’m sure, or maybe trying to not be overheard.”
“I can believe that there’s no cell phone service out there,” Granddad said. “The ranch is close to some of the last land in New Mexico to be settled, and is a good forty miles from any city. If he’d had to use the ranch phone or a phone on a trip to town, there would likely have been people around. That might be reason enough for him to be cautious, if he wanted to talk to you about a private matter or something.
“I hate to think that I put him into ranch work before he was ready for it. I figured fourteen was pretty young, but Bud had his kids on the ranch since they were born, and they all did fine. Bud said that he’d go gentle on the boy. He said there were always low level jobs to do, but you know how intense your brother can get.”
Jennifer looked directly at Granddad.
“Is it true that a lot of the cattle have died?” she asked. “I mean, they were murdered or something? Mogi talked about mysterious circumstances and the cowboys being scared out of their wits. He even mentioned rumors about aliens from another planet, but that’s kind of a New Mexico thing. He doesn’t know what’s happening, but some people are worried that the water has turned bad.”
“I talked with Bud last night,” Granddad replied, “and I’m afraid the news is not good. About the first of July, several steers were found stone cold dead in a side canyon of the Canadian River, which runs right through the ranch. There were no marks on them, no signs of accident or predators; they looked in good health and weren’t injured. Every few days after that, more dead cattle started turning up in various places along the river. The state sent doctors from their science labs to investigate, but everybody is baffled. They don’t know what’s wrong.
“This is a serious situation for a cattle ranch. You remember how bad the Mad Cow disease was in England, where they had to destroy thousands of animals to keep the disease from spreading? This is the same situation. If a definite cause can’t be determined, the drastic step is to assume that it’s the cows themselves that have the disease, and Bud would have to put down every one of several thousand cattle. He wouldn’t be able to sell the meat or anything, which means that the herd would be a total loss, and that’s a whole lot of money. I doubt the ranch could ever recover. The owners of the ranch would have to sell the ranch for pennies on the dollar, and Bud would be out on the street.”
The trip through the middle of New Mexico had taken them through mountain valleys where the deep greens of forests contrasted with the pale yellows of semi-desert foothills. East of Las Vegas, they left the mountains behind and crossed into a broad expanse of grass.
Suddenly, they dropped over a ridge and found themselves descending a long, sloping highway that cut across the face of a high cliff. As the pickup curved slowly down the narrow road, Jennifer watched the strong winds battering the trees as the heat of the cliff face channeled hot winds upward. Several ravens darted in and out of the wind currents as they played along the rocks.
“What else did your brother have to say?” Granddad asked.
“He didn’t say much about what he’s been doing, just that his back hurts and he’s hungry all the time. He must be growing again. At Christmas he had a growth spurt, and we did all we could to pull him out of the refrigerator every day. I think he grew an inch just in December. He’s been taller than me for a long time, but I’m not sure I’m ready for a brother who’s a giant.”
“You don’t mind working at the ranch for two weeks, do you?” Granddad asked. “It seemed like the best way to get someone inside the operations of the ranch to look for anything out of the ordinary. I’m usually not so secretive, but Bud is under a lot of pressure, and I’d like to help him out.”
“Oh, no, that’s fine. It’ll give me some spending money. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, though.”
“Just hang around and watch. You’re a pretty sharp kid, you and your brother both. You’ve got a gift for understanding people. I figure if there’s anything out of place, you’ll see it. Speaking of that, did your brother say anything about the people?”
“Nope. He said that he’d tell us more when we came. He said you’d especially be interested in what he’s found out.”
“That sounds mysterious enough. Did he explain?”
“As a matter of fact,” Jennifer said with a grin, “he said he’s been getting mixed up with a few good guys and a few bad guys of history, Spanish land grants, and children kidnapped by the Comanches.”
“That’s my boy!” Granddad said with a laugh. Anything connected to the history of the American Southwest was especially delightful to Mogi and Jennifer’s grandfather. “Anything else?”
“Well,” Jennifer said, “I’m not sure he was serious, but he said he saw a ghost.”