AFTER THAT, HE DIDN’T HEAR from Linda much, except for an occasional letter that smelled of lavender and told him about this or that famous male star escorting her somewhere. She hoped to make him envious, but he was happy for her and glad he’d made the decision he had about staying on the ranch. Oh, he met rodeo buckle bunnies and widow women with big ranches looking for a man for their bed. He never paid them any mind.
The ranch looked perfect—its fame as a movie site, the large-bodied Hereford herd, the green eighty acres of alfalfa. The ranch house was equipped with the war surplus generator he seldom used and running water designed to run on gravity with lots of pressure at the house and corrals.
Sam came up in his new 1954 Lincoln four-door and they had a sit down. A rich man wanted their ranch and was willing to pay one-and-a-half million dollars for it.
Sam leaned back in the wooden chair at the table. “That’s six hundred thousand dollars to you. Plus, I’ve got a hundred and sixty acres down in Paradise Valley I’ll give you to have your own place down there. Are you interested? This offer is so wild I could not believe it, Mark. We’ve had fun building this place, but that’s three times its value.” He shook his head. “I won’t sell it unless you agree. But you can live like you want and do what you want when we sell it. I know, I know—you have sweet memories riding up here with pack horses and you’ve never really gotten over sweet Alma. I am sorry about that, but you have contacts in the movies, you rodeo, you stock contract, and you can do what you want the rest of your life on this much money.”
Close to speechless, he sat with his eyes closed. Who would pay that much for this land with nothing fancy on it? A fool, no doubt.
“I need to talk to Jones. He helped me the most. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.” It was enough to blow a fella’s mind, that much money, but they had worked damned hard and he liked the idea of the ranch Sam was offering in addition to the money. He needed to live and own a ranch, not live in one of those beehives in the city.
“Fine. I know. But we can’t hardly pass this offer up.”
“I’m sure he’ll go along. Let us talk. The ranch deal sells it for me.”
Sam agreed with him and they both went off to bed.
Mark hardly slept that night for imagining what he could do with that much money. It was more than he’d ever dreamed of. At breakfast, he told Jones they needed to check things on horseback.
Jones frowned. “Isn’t Sam here? You going to leave him alone here?”
“Yep. Come on. We need to talk.”
Jones shrugged off whatever and ate his cereal.
They rode up to Robber’s Roost, a false front city where the studio tried to make the actor Cliff Edwards a star like Roy and Gene. It didn’t work. Mark had earned three hundred dollars for an eight-second bronc ride as a stunt man dressed like Edwards. Convinced him he didn’t want to be a movie star. Not that anyone had asked him.
When he and Jones dismounted and sat on the boardwalk in front of the Red Dog Saloon, Jones threw small rocks out in the street. The wind stirred dust devils and smelled of pine wood.
“What do you want out of our partnership?” Mark wiped sweat away with his bandana.
He shrugged. “Nothing. I have had a good time up here. Is it over?”
“Is there a farm in Lehi you’d like to have?”
“As a matter of fact, I was down there a few weeks ago and there’s a farm at the foot of the hill. Forty acres of alfalfa, good water rights. They wanted twelve thousand dollars for it.”
“I’ll buy it for you.”
Jones blinked at him in disbelief. “How did you get so gawdamn rich? You can fire me. I won’t be mad.”
“You recall that stud horse you sold before you asked me?”
“That was a long time ago. We were broke.”
“Well, Sam’s selling the ranch. It is for lots of money and he wants us happy. He knows we built this place and made him a boatload of cash doing it. People said he was greedy. He never cheated me out of a nickel. But the price for this ranch would have bought Phoenix when I went in the service, and folks would have said he paid too much.” Mark stood, brushed off the seat of his pants. “Let’s go. He’s anxious to go back. I’m sure we’ll need to show this new man the ranch and how it works.”
Jones nodded, looking all confused—like he’d went cross-eyed or something.
“Tomorrow I’ll go buy your new place.” Mark patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t you go passing out on me or anything.”
Jones grinned like a possum. “You know there are things in my people’s lore about a horse leading a man to riches. I think Red did that for us.”
“Yes, he led you, Alma, and me here. You knew that day we buried her. I wanted to have her buried up here, but you said no. Sure pleased I didn’t. I can go and leave flowers anytime when I get to missing her.” And miss her he did. But it had been a long time, and plenty of water was under the bridge.
Jones nodded. Obviously, he knew the pain, but one thing was for sure. There would be more pain for both of them to leave this ranch. The memory of her still was inside his brain. She rode these hills and he couldn’t ever stop seeing her that way. Hard to figure if it would ever fade. Better though than the guns he no longer heard.
The day dawned sunny and soon turned hot and dusty. That didn’t matter much. It could’ve been raining lizards and cactus, wouldn’t have stopped the ranch inspection by the buyer from going through. A long black Cadillac arrived first thing while Mark and Jones were drinking their second cup of coffee on the verandah. Randy Yates, the buyer’s son-in-law, unfolded his lanky self from the driver’s seat. Two men looking a whole lot like bookends crawled from the back doors, come to look over Raines’s investment. It figured a man who’d spend that sort of money on a ranch wouldn’t set foot there hisself.
Mark peered over his coffee cup and hollered them up to the house. “Have some coffee and we’ll saddle up and you can take a look at the place.” As if they hadn’t already seen it. No one bought a pig in a poke if they had any sense.
“You surely have a pickup or vehicle. I don’t ride in anything that needs a saddle.” Yates shook out the wrinkles in his pants.
Jones looked like he’d been goosed but held back a laugh. He’d once referred to the buyer, Raines, as a six-foot-two prick. The only other man he’d ever listed in that special class was a movie director who made him drive a herd of ranch cattle down the same valley twenty times.
Mark eyed the sharp-creased britches and white shirts the three wore and wished like hell he could seat them on the backs of his horses, but maybe he ought not to do that. “We can take the Jimmy, but the seat won’t hold us all so them fellas can ride in the bed.”
In the end, they rode out in the Caddy, Yates cringing aloud every time it bottomed out on the ranch roads. He acted much like a kid checking out his latest new toy. Surely, he was older than he acted.
Under the circumstances, Mark figured he could forego calling Raines any sort of names. A few hours later, the Caddy, now covered in a thick layer of dust, departed. Mark and Jones waved goodbye from the yard. Both dissolved into near hysterical laughter, pounded each other on the back and went inside to pour up two glasses of lemonade. The generator meant drinks were cold and these were a welcome reprieve.
—
DIRTY SHIRT JONES’S NAME WAS soon on the deed to the farm down in Lehi.
Since he didn’t drink, the best way he could take his mind off leaving the ranch and his memories of the early days him and Alma and Jones spent developing the land was to get hisself busy on the new ranch down in Paradise Valley. He was setting a crew to fencing the place and installing a cattle guard. Before they sold the big ranch, he made Sam cut him out the best dozer of the two. For three hundred dollars, he had it hauled down to the valley for his use. Sam paid the bill and Mark promised to run it for him if he ever needed the use of one. Mark kept three horses he considered his own. They and some of Jones’s mounts went to the Lehi farm until fencing and water drilling were completed.
Yates told them he knew enough about the deal to run the ranch Raines had bought. He never offered to keep the three cowboys Mark had employed up there, so Mark found them jobs with another rancher who knew what good workers they’d been. Rosita moved to her daughter’s house in Buckeye and he paid her wages until he got a trailer set up for her. He’d bunk at the new place till he decided on building a house there, but he would bring in some trailers for the movie folks should that deal come about. To his mind, he’d settled all the loose ends of his old life and was ready to start a new one. The hardest thing to put behind him were memories of Alma, but he kept trying hard.
Jones came up to see how he was getting along and caught up with Mark supervising the delivery of the house trailer.
Scratching his head, Jones eyed the goings-on. “No telling what you’ll be up to next. Reckon you got something up your sleeve for that.” He gestured at the men leveling one of the trailers.
“Making plans for some movie companies. Going to shoot movies out here and those people need a place to be between takes.”
“Last I heard, you’d gone off to the rodeo. Nothing like staying busy. You make me look like a snake on a cold day, just barely wiggling along.”
Before Mark could reply, a drilling rig rolled noisily up the road, parked a few yards away, and the driver hopped out.
“Mister Shaw?”
“That’s me. Let me show you where to start.” He turned to Jones who tagged along behind, boots kicking up dust and mumbling about Mark’s goings-on. “Had that old man from down south of Tempe to witch for water.” He stopped at a stick with a flag tied on it. “Right here. He claims there’s water.”
The driller nodded and without a word hiked to his rig. A helper jumped down and directed the driver to back up to the spot.
“I don’t reckon you have anything much to do, so maybe you’d like to come down to my place and help me with that horse we broke to ride. He just plain won’t pull a plow.” Jones slapped his thigh and he-hawed.
“Naw, I thought in my spare time I’d get involved in rodeoing again. I’ve bought shares in a company.”
Jones stopped and stared goggle-eyed at him. “I swear if you don’t beat all.”
“Gotta stay busy. Life don’t wait around for a fellow to catch up. First thing you know, it’ll have come and gone. Let’s go on up to the bunk house and get a drink of something cold.”
Seated in the shade of a stand of junipers, he poured from a thermos and the two visited to the accompanying roar and thud of the drilling rig and the shouts of the men placing the trailers.
“I’m seriously thinking of getting back into rodeoing.”
“Well, yeah, you said.”
Mark stared out across the valley. No matter how far he looked, that was his land. It was a pleasant thought. But still not enough. Not the movie making or the ranching or the rodeoing could fill the hole in his life. A pretty woman rode out there in the heat waves rising from the pastures. A woman he couldn’t lay hold of, no matter how hard he tried. Damn, would he ever get over Alma? He shook himself back into the present.
“No, I mean bronc riding, bulldogging, and the like.”
Jones sucked at his teeth. “I should not say this, but aren’t you too old to go doing that sort of stuff? Hell, man, you could break a leg.”
“I could break a leg riding out across the ranch, but that don’t mean I’m not going to do it.”
Work on the well proceeded pretty dang good till the driver of the drilling rig chased him down when he was in the corral wiping down the sorrel he’d had out most of the day checking the progress of the fencing.
Charlie, who was in charge of the well drilling, frowned and gazed down at his dusty work boots. “You remember our first hole come up dry?”
Mark nodded, hooked his thumbs in the loops of his waist band. “Yep. What’s wrong?”
“Sorry boss, but we’ve gone deep enough we ought to’ve hit if it’s there. ’Fraid your witcher may not be too good.”
Mark raised his brows and stared past Charlie. “Let’s give it one more try, then maybe we’ll have to find us a better witcher. Heard this ’ole boy was tops.”
Charlie spit between his boots. “There’s a good growth of grass a ways lower than this last one. Still might have set the witcher’s stick to jumping. Something’s setting it off.”
“Okay. It’s getting late. Call it a day and come back in the morning. We have to get good water out here.”
Charlie nodded. “See you then.”
The next day, Mark was riding back in for supper when he heard a whoop and holler from down at the ranch.
Kicking the sorrel into a gallop, he arrived in time to see water spreading over the ground. Boots caked in mud, Charlie gave him a big grin. “Appears just in the edge. I’ll put down one more drilling yonder if you want. It’ll plumb blow I’d bet.” He pointed below where he stood.
Mark watched the steady stream from the pipe sticking up out of the ground and nodded in agreement. The next day, they hit a gusher of an artesian, sending water twenty feet or more into the air. Whooping and hollering brought all the hands already quitting for the day racing out to stand under the spray till their clothes were dripping. Laughing, Mark tossed his sweat-soaked hat into the air and joined them. Before full dark, Charlie and his men had a plug installed and the flow shut down. He handed Mark the wrench.
He stood there holding it while the drilling rig turned around and drove off, taillights disappearing into the night. One less thing to stew about.
The following Saturday, Sam drove out to see his progress and beat his leg with his hat when Mark wrenched opened the fireplug on the real good well. Water flew out twenty feet and he looked shocked.
“You are the luckiest guy I know, Mark Shaw.”
Mark eyed the water for a minute. “Sam, sell me the forty north of here. It’s downhill from here. I could sure use the water coming out of that underground aquifer. Gotta be a lake down there.”
“All right. Come by and I’ll go you one better and sell you that eighty. You know I paid two dollars an acre for this damn land in a tax auction in 1942.”
“Aw, Sam—” He put his hand on the man’s shoulder and headed him for the palm-covered squaw shade where Rosita stood in her white apron ready to serve them sun tea. “—we ain’t seen anything in this country yet.”
“You know Mark, you’re right.”
“I’m building a movie set. Folk are saying TV is going to be the place to be.”
The tea was cold, thanks to the generator making ice in the fridge. Comfortable in the shade, a gentle summer breeze fanned their hair.
Sam lowered his bare head and shook it. “No, son. TV is black and white. They can’t make it like Technicolor. TV don’t stand a chance. Any actor gets on it they won’t let him be in another movie again. It won’t be more than radio with pictures.”
“It damn sure ain’t hurting Hopalong Cassidy. He’s a bigger star now than when he made those movies he happened to own.”
“Boyd was broke when they found him and his library of films. Nice story. But I think that was like the ranch you found for us. What works once stops working soon as everything is bought up. We could’a had others, but when folks heard what we did they went and bought every last one, because they knew about them and we didn’t move fast enough.”
“That proves you’re wrong about TV. Works once, it’ll work again. I’m watching one right now. Some guy who used to be in Hoppie’s movies. He’s shooting those serials at Cudiah Studios in Scottsdale. 26 Men. It’s about the Arizona Rangers.”
Sam couldn’t be convinced. “He’s kidding himself. He can’t hope to compete with Hollywood.”
“Sam, I’d bet you that he makes it.”
“Fine, you pay me forty bucks an acre for that land. He makes it big, I’ll give you your money back.”
“That’s a deal.” Mark stuck out his hand and they shook on it.
Sam looked around for a TV antenna. “Them bed springs on that windmill get you TV out here?”
“That and the surplus generator I bought down at the Air Force base.”
“You are a dandy, Mark Shaw. We need to be in more deals together.”
“Don’t you have land out by Superstition Mountain?”
Sam looked out across the valley. “Sure. What do you need that for?”
“To rent it to a movie company. Glen Ford is going to make a movie about the Lost Dutchman mine.”
Sam laughed. “You got a deal. I want halvers.”
“Better than forty percent. All right, it’s a deal. We’ll make fifteen thousand and they’ll leave the set they build on it.”
Sam dropped his chin. “Man, are you on the ball. How did you get that?
“You remember Linda?”
“Oh, hell yes.”
“She sent me the whole deal and told me who to contact.”
Sam smiled. “You still got that picture I had framed from Life of you and her?”
“Damn right. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
“I never could believe you didn’t steal her.”
Mark shook the notion away. “I always appreciated how you set me up with her. But she lives in a different world than I do.”
“I was jealous as hell of you. I knew you hadn’t simply let her slip through your hands.”
Mark smiled. “You were lucky you didn’t score with her, pardner. Bet she’d have killed you.”
They both laughed. In the end, Sam had to repay him the money for the eighty acres. 26 Men made the producer a fortune in one year. Mark leveled the eighty acres and planted alfalfa, making a sixty-forty split with a farmer from near Tempe to irrigate and bale it on the shares. By the time he was involved in the rodeo, he had stacks of hay that Rosita sold for him by the bale or ton.
—
THAT NEXT YEAR, LONNIE GRAIG asked him to help supply stock for the big Phoenix Rodeo when he dropped by one of Mark’s shows. Lonnie wanted to rent his roping steers and a set of calves, plus have him to supply hay for all the stock at Phoenix.
“We can do that.” He went on down to the chute to put the bareback rigging on his horse.
Amazed, Lonnie watched him. “Damn, I heard you still rode at some of these shows. Didn’t believe it, but you really do. I want to watch. I loved that picture of you and that movie star hugging before the chutes in Life.”
“That was kinda pulled over on me.” He laughed, recalling it. “As long as getting on a horse is still fun, I’ll do it. Even without a pretty woman to hug.”
“Let me help you pull that riggin’.”
“Sure, but you ain’t half as good looking as she was.”
Lonnie smiled. “You ever see her again?”
“Yeah, we keep in touch.”
“I’ll be damned. You’ve had quite a life for starting out as a sharecropper’s son.”
“That got me ready for life.” He was set and nodded. The gate swung back hard. Snowball saw his break and went out flying. The big white gelding really gave him a ride, and after the pickup man let him down, he threw his hat across the arena and the crowd roared.
“Eighty-one,” Carl Franks announced.
He came back over the chutes and Lonnie shook his head.
“You may not be Jim Shoulders or Jack Bushbom, but they better be glad that you aren’t pulling the circuit.”
Mark dismissed it and they went to watch the show for a while before the dogging event. He missed the steer when he shied and ate some dirt but was no worse off. At the same rodeo, some tall girl from Sonata was all he heard about—a barrel racer, on a stout bay horse he liked, who came in third. That was all he knew about her.
It had been a dozen years since his discharge when he helped his buddies put on the Phoenix Grand Championship Rodeo. A girl he thought must be a teenager, who stood damn near six feet tall, was entered in the queen contest. A powerful horsewoman, she kept crossing his path all week long behind the scenes until he decided this business was not accidental.
It was midafternoon before the third performance and she’d already driven the bulldogging steers up the alleyway from the back pens before he had a chance to even saddle his horse.
“This what you were going after?” she asked him, reining her great horse back and forth to keep the Mexican cattle bunched at the gate to go on to where they’d be penned for the night’s event.
“That’s fine. But sister, I’ve been stumbling over you all week. Tell me why I’m the one you’re herding.”
With a big open grin, she rested her hands and reins on the saddle horn, “You really want to know?”
“Yeah, I’m a big boy. Tell me.”
“I think you’re an exciting guy. Not many guys your age ride broncs, and still bulldog. I love rodeoing. I like to be around rodeo and their people, but I’m not going to sleep in an old car’s backseat and eat baloney sandwiches with these younger guys to get to enjoy my favorite sport. I found out you don’t have a woman. Besides, you’re tall enough I won’t have to bend over to dance with you.”
He blinked in disbelief. “Wait—Old. Me? I’m just getting started.” But she was right. She might be twenty-one, and would soon tire of him. But by dang, she was a good-looking woman and he was about set on looking around.
She blushed some under her suntan, briefly looked away, then came back with her words for him. “I wouldn’t mind much. They tell me I look a lot younger than I am. What do you say?”
“Good God, sister, you don’t even know me. But maybe we could go dancing after the last show? I promise I’m not dangerous.”
She grinned, and the horse danced under her. The material of the tailored silk shirt she wore clung to her body.
He wanted to find out more about her. She was, after all, in this business and dang good at it. It was more than time he looked around for a good woman or grow old and grizzly.
She grinned, and dimples danced on her cheeks. “I think you’re just tall enough to suit me.”
“Tall enough? You judge men by their height?”
“When they ask me to go dancing. No danger I’d be looking down at the top of your head.”
“I’ll be danged if you aren’t something. I’d like a chance to prove that there’s more to me than being tall.”
“Guess we’d better pen these longhorns first.” She indicated the bulldogging cattle before her and her horse.
“Yes, take them up there to the pen marked number five. You know I won’t be able to get out of here until after the bull riding tonight. But we can talk then or go ahead and go dancing if you’ve made up your mind I’m safe.” He still had his doubts. Was she simply putting him on?
“Oh, so I get an opening in your schedule.” She rocked her head from side to side. “I accept.”
“Do you drink?” he asked as she rode by him.
She twisted in the saddle. “I’m over twenty-one.”
He really did not believe her about that, but it meant she could get in the Paradise Ball Room. They always had lots of Bob Wills music in that place to dance to. He shook his head. Why did this rodeo queen want him? That baloney sandwich business in the backseat of an old car deal wasn’t too far from the truth for cowboys starting out in rodeoing.
But if she really was serious, he’d have to make some changes. He’d been a bachelor way too long and had developed a few bad habits, living-wise. Was she serious? She’d be a great threat to his own sanity. He realized he didn’t even know her name.
She came back short-loping her great horse though the arena. He held the gate open for her. No way this deal between them would ever come off. She was too good looking to come around wanting him. Conscious of his own appearance, he shoved his shirttail in behind his back.
“What’d you like to be called the best?” Only way to find out her name without outright asking.
“Julie.”
“Julie… That’s what I’ll call you. We’ve got to cut those roping calves out next. I’ve got the list of the ones we need for tonight.” He tracked down the wide alleyway after her. They used the wide lane to feed the stock hay off his truck bed.
Ahead of him, she was dismounted at the right pen, pulling down her tight pants that must have rode up on her.
“Where did you get that good steeldust horse?” He admired the fine animal.
“How do you know he’s a steeldust?” Her clear blue eyes looked hard at him for an answer.
“Maybe just a guess.” He winked. Weren’t many of them left and he knew one from across the lot.
She broke up laughing. “They told me that you were tough, gruff, and honest, but I like the funny part the best.”
He settled tight in the saddle and studied her seriously. Maybe, just maybe. Only time and lots of consideration would tell. He wasn’t about to tie up with someone who might break his heart. He’d already had that once.