The Curse
Chapter One
That morning when Matt Macklin awoke his life was much the same as always. Matt was a 79-year-old rancher. Although he no longer ranched, he was the epitome of most folk’s notion of a cowboy. He was six foot two slim and muscular for his age. He wore cowboy boots, jeans and a western hat that had seen better days. He favored long sleeved cowboy shirts year round, even during the hottest days of summer. Although his body had softened somewhat in his old age and had even developed a slight paunch, he still stood straight and walked with a purpose. Matt’s hair, although almost pure white now, was mostly still there. He kept it short on the sides and combed straight back. Most people couldn’t have said whether he had hair or not since he was rarely seen without his hat.
Matt’s wife, Jeanie, had died ten years ago and even though they had not seen eye to eye through most of their marriage, he still missed her. His ranch was thirty miles north of Roswell New Mexico, it being the nearest town. Since his wife’s death he had lived a solitary life save for an ancient lab mix by the name of Toby.
His ranch was adjacent to the fabled Foster ranch known for the UFO incident in 1947. Matt didn’t believe in UFO’s and felt that his hometown had turned into a cartoon caricature. He was old enough to remember when the incident happened and being a teenager, he was excited about it at the time. The whole thing died out quickly though and no one thought much about it after awhile, except for a few kooks. Then suddenly, he thought it was sometime in the sixties or maybe seventies, it all started up again and this time it just wouldn’t die out.
He had never cared for the crowds of tourists and the silly little shops strung up and down the main drag of Roswell peddling their ludicrous trinkets. What he disliked the most though was the UFO seeking tourists creating traffic on the state road that bisected his ranch. When he was a boy, you could have stood by the mailbox for two hours without ever seeing a car. He thanked his lucky stars that you could not see the highway from the house. His great grand father, Colin Macklin, had enough sense, or foresight, to build almost a mile from the highway even though it had been only a trail when he built the ranch house and a small one at that. When he was a child he could occasionally see the dust cloud from passing cars, however, since the road had been paved traffic passed unnoticed.
Matt knew his great grandfather only as a legend imparted to him by his father. To Matt he was larger than life ramrod straight and tougher than barbed wire. He had come to New Mexico from Scotland via Canada. He carved his ranch out of wilderness while fighting off Indians, banditos and cattle rustlers in addition to battling the elements.
Colin had a mail-order bride from Virginia named Maude that he had ordered sight unseen from an ad in a newspaper. She was twenty years his junior and thin to the point of frailty. When Colin saw her step off the stagecoach, his first thought was that she wouldn’t live out the year, as it turned out she out lived her husband by thirty years. Their only issue was Matt’s grandfather Jacob. Colin died from injuries that were the result of trying to break a mustang at the age of seventy-two. His son Jacob was fifteen years old when Colin died.
Jacob took over the running of the ranch and head of household immediately following the funeral. He ordered his mother much as his father had, and without any sign of resistance. He also showed the ranch hands that he would tolerate no slackening of output because of his youth. Soon after his father died, Jacob knocked one of the hands unconscious with an axe handle for his reference to working on a ranch ran by women and children. When the man came to Jacob gave him a months pay, thirty dollars, and sent him packing.
Jacob was as tough as his father and tried to temper his son, John, with the same hardness with less than perfect results. Although Matt’s father was stern and resolute, his hardness was softened somewhat with a kindness toward man and critter alike. A segment of his make up that had been severely limited in his ancestors. John was an only child, born late in his parents lives. By the time Matt came along his mother and father were his only living relatives. Although Jacob did his best to raise Matt to be as tough as the land he was to inherit, he also taught him kindness and humility.
On a shopping trip to Roswell, when Matt was ten years old, a drunken man in front of a saloon accosted his father. The man had once worked for his father and was angry over some long past opprobrium. The man ranted at John calling him an uppity rich bastard among other things. Without any acknowledgement John simply stepped aside, walked around him, got in his pickup and drove away. On the way home Matt was quiet for a long time. When he finally spoke, it was with the trepidation of a boy not in the habit of questioning his elders.
“What should I have done Son?”
“You should have said something to defend yourself Sir.”
“Mathew only a fool would attempt to argue with a drunk.”
“Then you should have hit him Father. He insulted you.”
Jacob spoke in a stern voice.
“Three things Mathew. First, he was considerably smaller than me, two he was too drunk to defend himself and three, there is no insult in being cussed by a drunk. If you beat another man just because of pride, or just because you can you, become less of a man.”
Jacob continued in a softer tone of voice.
“Sont, we are better off than many of the folk in these parts. There are those that are going to dislike you for no other reason than that. Others will respect you for the same reason. They are both wrong. It is how a man lives his life and how he treats his fellow man that deserves either respect or disdain.”
“Why does that man hate you so much Sir?”
“He used to work for us and I fired him.”
“Was he the one you fired for beating a horse?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know why did he beat the horse?”
“The horse was startled and threw him. The worse part for him was that another cowboy saw him get thrown and laughed at him. He was too much of a coward to fight the other man and too small to let it pass, so he took it out on the animal.”
Although the thought occurred to neither of them, Matt’s great grandfather Colin would have shot the drunkard on the spot and Jacob would have beaten him within an inch of his life. The third generation Macklin, however, just let it pass. Had Matt thought about that he may have thought that people were getting more civilized, where as Colin would have definitely thought they were going soft.
Matt had been thinking about his life growing up on the ranch a lot lately. It was as if he was trying to commit to memory the events of his life before it ended. He thought I sure am getting maudlin in my old age. I had better stop wool gathering and finish getting ready to go. The day is wasting away. It was Monday and Matt always went to Cholla on Monday morning. Cholla was a small town about sixty miles northwest of Roswell near Corona.
When Jeanie was alive, they drove to Roswell. Jeanie liked the bigger town with it’s abundance of shopping. Jeanie had lived in town as a girl and had never got over missing it. She didn’t like the solitary life of the ranch. When she and Matt married, she had thought the respect of being a rancher’s wife would make up for the solitude, but it hadn’t. Moreover, as the years passed even the pride and gratification of being married to a large landowner dwindled. She had come to think of the land as a pariah rather than an asset. Matt though, was oblivious to the depth of Jeanie’s despair. He was aware only of the fact that she wasn’t very happy and would rather live in town. Leaving the ranch was of course out of the question as far as Matt was concerned. He would be buried in this ground like his ancestors before him.
What Matt never knew was that Jeanie had seen him as a stepping-stone to wealth and respect more than as a love interest. Jeanie although not exactly poor was of very modest means and viewed the heir of the Macklin ranch as wealthy. In their small town, the ranch owners were considered the elite and beside Matt was a good-looking boy. She pursued him with success and they were married shortly after graduating from high school. As it turned out it was, as the adage says, “Be careful what you wish for.”
The Monday morning timeframe for shopping was Jeanie’s concession to Matt because of his dislike for the traffic and crowds. On Monday mornings before the tourists were out, if you ignored the billboards and shop windows you could almost believe that Roswell was a typical small town.
Now Matt went to Cholla, but he still went on Monday. Old habits are hard to break. Although Cholla was a bit, further this town with a population of under 200 suited his taste much better.
Matt fed his dog Toby Let him out in the yard, got in his old pickup truck and started for Cholla.
As He pulled off the dirt ranch road on to the blacktop highway he thought thank God for air conditioning, it must already be eighty-five out. He couldn’t help but think about the days when there were very few air-conditioned pickup trucks, even years after air conditioning became common in cars. Now even this old pickup had air, although it took awhile to get the cab cooled down after setting out in the sun. Matt had been considering getting a new truck for years, but somehow never got around to it. They had put air conditioning in the ranch house shortly after his dad died, at Jeanie’s insistence. However, now that she was gone Matt went back to opening the house up during the cool desert nights and keeping it closed during the day to keep the heat out as folks had done for generations.
As Matt drove along the desert highway, his musings turned to Etty. Since Jeanie died, he had made a habit of going to Etty’s Diner for bacon, eggs and coffee every Monday morning. After breakfast, he would shop for the few provisions he would need for the following week and drive back home. It took up the better part of Monday and got him off the ranch for a while. Matt thought that a weekly trip to town was a frivolous waste of time, but since he no longer ranched he had little enough to occupy his time. In the old days his father would go to town once a month if then. He always took Matt, his mother and the ranch foreman. They would buy provisions for at least a month. In the winter Jacob made sure there was adequate stores to last until the next thaw even if it didn’t come until spring.
Etty was around forty and a handsome woman with a very pleasant demeanor. She was five foot five, had blue green eyes and hair that had once been strawberry blond, but was now somewhat faded by the desert sun and starting to show a little gray. Although she had gained a little extra weight in the last few years, she still had a very nice figure and like most good-looking women was aware that men liked looking at her. Matt enjoyed talking to her on his weekly visits. Of course talking with just about anyone was a respite from his almost solitary existence. Not that Matt minded being alone. When you grew up on a ranch that was fifteen miles from its nearest neighbor you learned to entertain yourself.
Even after he married Jeanie, they had never visited or entertained much. Matt had sometimes wondered why she was so set on moving to town since she didn’t seem much interested in making friends. When his mother had been alive, women often stopped at the ranch to visit. This never was the case with Jeanie.
Of course, the fact that Etty was female and easy to look at didn’t hurt. She was a widow woman with a son to rear. Her husband had left her very little besides the diner and that heavily mortgaged. Matt was sure that her life wasn’t easy but he never heard her complain. He was fond of her and often thought that if he were thirty years younger he might make a stab at getting in her pants. He admitted to himself that at least a part of the reason for going to the diner on Monday was that it was a slow day and Etty had time to visit.
Etty’s son, John, although too young for a driver’s license, would occasionally drive to Matt’s and fish the pond behind his house. He never took more than enough for a meal and always dropped off one cleaned and ready to cook. John was a strapping six foot three and looked every bit the quarterback that he was. He took after his mother with curly red hair and a fair complexion. Matt liked the boy and would usually allow him a beer while they chatted on the front porch. He never felt that Etty needed to know about that.
The sudden tug on the steering wheel jolted him from his reverie and was answered with a muttered complaint. He steered off the road, parked on the hard packed desert clay, got out and walked around to the passenger side. He stood looking at the flat and thinking about what a chore it would be to change it. The sweat was already starting to form under his shirt and at seventy-nine, it was no small feat to heft a fifty-pound tire and align it with the wheel studs.
By the time he had the tire changed his shirt was soaked through. He stepped across the ditch and sat down on a rock to catch his breath before putting the flat in bed of the pickup. He sat looking at the ditch that was normally two feet deep and thinking that there must have been a hell of a gully washer recently. The ditch was nearly filled level with dirt and debris. Just as he was about ready to get up something caught his eye. In the space between his feet was something shiny half buried in the dirt.
He dug it out with his fingers and examined it in the palm of his hand. It was a ball about the size of a nickel. Although it appeared to be made of some sort of metal, it wasn’t the color of any metal he’d ever seen. Moreover, although not exactly translucent, it seemed that you could see into the surface. The odd thing was that holding it made him feel good, almost happy, no more like content. He also had the impression that just holding the ball had cooled him somewhat. He pondered this for a short while but decided he had an overactive imagination and it was getting past breakfast time.
He went back to the truck, rolled the flat around to the tailgate, he hoisted it into the bed and continued the drive to Cholla. Matt loved the desert and always enjoyed his Monday ride. Back when he had kept horses, he had gone riding in the desert at least once a week. He no longer had horses and most of his land was now leased to one of the large conglomerate ranches that were taking over the west. He no longer knew who his neighbors were and figured he’d probably be shot if he rode over their property. He was aware that many considered the desert dreary and unattractive. Matt thought there’s no accounting for taste. Even this year with it’s less than normal rainfall, Matt saw beauty in this vast dry expanse and on a wet year such as the el Niño in 99, the desert truly bloomed.
Just outside of Cholla, four pronghorn antelope crossed the highway about a thousand feet in front of his pickup, The flash of sun off of their snow white rumps brought a sudden flash of memory, of days hunting with his father. He missed those days, and he missed his father. Truth be told, he missed his father more than he did his wife and missed his mother most of all.
Matt pulled up in front of Cholla’s only diner, parked his battered pickup and stepped out into the hot desert air. It was already ninety degrees and small dust devils played across the desert behind the few clustered buildings.