Chapter 8

To serve as the Mining Co-Op’s office In Waypoint, Andy had rented the building that had been Hannah’s bakery, before she relocated next to Baylor’s store. Thus the Co-op office was on West Railroad Avenue less than a block north of the depot. Whenever Andy looked out the front window of the Co-Op office, he was looking across West Railroad Avenue at the open expanse of the hundred foot-wide K&ASR right-of-way and its two parallel tracks: the main line and the depot siding.

This particular Thursday morning, four days after Gabriela’s memorial and his conversation with Chen, he looked out the window to watch the southbound creep past on the depot siding, prior to spotting the passenger coaches, which were on the end of the train, at the depot platform. Among the freight consist was a flatcar with a large tarpaulin-covered machine which caught his eye. He grabbed Chen’s envelope from his desk drawer, pulled his overcoat off the bentwood rack, donned the heavy coat, grabbed his top hat, then went out the door, securing the lock with a key.

At the depot, he found the train’s conductor, Jimmy McGillycuddy, standing on the platform, studying his pocket watch. Andy bounded up the steps.

“Good morning, Mister McGillycuddy.” Andy looked at his own watch and asked, “Did you fellas stop off for a leisurely breakfast this morning? Or were you waylaid by some renegade leprechauns?”

“Ah, Mister Malik. An’ a good morning to you, sir. Allow me to inquire, though, sir, why this bill of lading has been changed to require that steam engine, there on yon Southern Pacific flatcar, and intended for the Dry Valleys Mining Cooperative, is to be set out on the Southern Pacific’s car repair spur in El Paso?”

“What?” Andy exclaimed. “Let me see that.” He pulled the conductor’s clipboard to an angle that allowed him to read the delivery address.

“What are you talking about? It says no such thing.”

“Not yet, it doesn’t, boyo, but the renegade leprechauns left specific instructions when they knew that you’d be up her adding to me woes on an already miserable day.”

“Jimmy, me lad,” Andy mocked, before dropping the accent to say, “You’d do well to remember that my brother is in charge of the railroad’s Christmas emancipation lottery. I can have him remove your name from the list.”

“Ah, well, then, I suppose we could push that steam engine off as we pass the narrow gauge terminal at the Kylie yard. Might even slow down, so it don’t bounce so high, don’t you know.”

“That’s the spirit, Mister McGillycuddy,” Andy said, consulting his watch, again. Then he jibed, “So, are you going to hang around here jawing all day? No wonder you’re always late.”

After another glance at his watch, the conductor called, “All aboard,” and, seeing no more passengers on the platform, gave a wave to the engineer. As the train began to move, McGillycuddy stepped onto the back platform of the second passenger car, and he called, “I think you’ll like El Paso this time o’ year. They put up all those darlin’ luminarias, don’t you know.”

Andy allowed the conductor the last-word with a wave and a big grin. Then he walked off toward the freight dock and the steps that led down, behind the depot. There, Malik’s business car was spotted at the corner of Depot Way and West Railroad Avenue, the continuity of West Railroad being interrupted by the depot and its platform. He walked to the standard height steps that had been lowered over the business car’s coupling mechanism, climbed up to knock, and then opened the door.

“Emil!” he called. “It’s Andy. Are you busy?”

“Come on in, little brother. And close that door. I’ve finally got it warm in here.”

“Warm? I’ll say. I seem to remember reading that they have hot rooms like this in Sweden. Or was it Switzerland? But I do remember everyone strips naked and sits around beating one another with some sort of leafy branches. Men and women, naked in the same room. Can you imagine?”

“All too well. Perhaps we need to see more of the world.”

“I know what parts I’d like to see more of.”

“Enough!” Malik laughed. “Was that our steam engine on that flatcar?”

“It was, though Jimmy McGillycuddy was threatening to send it to El Paso.”

“Certainly not because of something you might have said to him, I’m sure.”

“I was just making suggestions about how he might better keep to the timetable, is all.”

“And that set him off? Hard to believe. So why are you here bothering me? As you can see, I’m in the middle of a paper blizzard,” Malik said, gesturing to his work table, which was half covered with documents of various types.

“What’s that all about?”

Malik looked down at the array of paper. “Ah, it’s been going on for years. It’s about a proposed drift fence that would cross the Utica Switch Road. Putting a gate at the road requires county approval. One of the judges on the Sonora County board -- oh, you know, Bart Hockney -- has been blocking the installation, hoping, I suppose, that he can buy the land cheap from the Sonora freehold rancher, Clement Bee Chaser. It’s Bee Chaser who wants the fence.

I think I’ve got Hockney this time, though.” He pulled one sheet from a corner of the pile. “Nathan Ulney found a misfiled letter in a case he was helping prepare for trial. In it, the county judge all but offers to sell another judge two-hundred yearling calves at an unbelievably low price, in return for his vote on the fence. Except he doesn’t say it outright, just hints at it, suggesting they might be able ‘to cooperate in other matters.’ I’m trying to find something else that might corroborate my conclusions. I’m sure he must have said something, sometime, at a meeting, and it was recorded in the minutes.”

“Are those the original Sonora County documents? How did you get ahold of them?”

“Chief Judge Llewellyn Bennet lent them to me. He’s fed up with Hockney’s corrupting influence and is hoping I can come up with something to unseat Bad Bart.”

Malik looked up at his brother and asked, “But why are you here?”

“Well, this is kind of a big deal, but it can wait, it’s not urgent. You can go back to your search.”

Malik looked at the papers spread across the table, shook his head, and began to pull them together into orderly stacks.

“Nah, sit down,” he said. “I’ve about had it with this for today.” He stood up. “I’ll make some coffee. So, what have you got?”

Andy pulled the envelope from his coat pocket, but held onto it as he settled into one of the chairs situated around the table. He said, “Chen Ming-teh gave me this when they were out here for Gabriela’s memorial. He wanted you to see it, but he asked me to make sure it wouldn’t, uh, delay your grieving. But I think it’s exactly what you need to be thinking about.”

Malik finished his coffee preparation and set the pot on the stove. Turning back toward his brother, he said, “Well, can I see it?”

“Yeah, in a minute. Let me tell you about it, first. It’ll be faster.”

Malik sat down, again. “It’s your show, then, Andy.”

Holding the envelope edge-on to the table, Andy began tapping his finger against its top edge. “Apparently, somebody in the railroad’s sales division has been doing some research. They discovered that there are some farmers who’ve been experimenting with cotton over in Independence County, down along Micah Creek and the Rio Penitente.” He waved the envelope toward the southeast, in the direction of Independence County. “Did you know they were planting cotton down there?”

“First I’ve heard of it.”

“Well, the cotton grows fine, all right, but their problem is transportation to market.”

Malik chuckled. “I reckon I can see where this is headed.”

“You might think so, and maybe you’d be partly right, but there’s a lot more to it.”

Andy set the envelope down on the table and leaned back in the chair. “So the sales people talked to the engineering people, and the construction engineers took it upon themselves to do some research of their own. They sent out a survey crew.

“As a result, what the construction engineers have proposed, and this is the same crew that surveyed the narrow gauge to Long Valley, what they propose is a narrow gauge line that goes from the Long Valley spur’s transfer yard, east to Kylie, down there in Independence County, then north, through the east end of the Leander Hills. From there, they’d run it across the Rio Isabella, where it starts to narrow upstream of Penitente Canyon, just downstream of the confluence with Shepherds Creek. That stretch would be on our land, so they can avoid the grade rise toward Penitente Mesa. After that, they’d follow along the northeast side of Shepherds Creek to a new transfer terminal at Texas Bend.”

“Whoa, that’s ambitious, and maybe too much so. But why narrow gauge?”

“That’s a story in itself. But, in a nutshell, the former owner of that New Mexico mine railroad that the K and ASR had bought? Well, that former owner had hidden dozens of cars and three locomotives in a blind canyon. It was marked as a wye, but it extended into a canyon that was not easily noticed unless you went all the way to the very end of the wye, or what looked like the end, that is, unless you walked out there with a shovel. Then if you shoveled away some sand, you’d find the tracks that curved into the canyon. Not only was there rolling stock, but there are twenty flat cars loaded with that lighter rail that narrow gauges use, and more stacked next to the tracks. There’s also a half dozen passenger coaches, besides two dozen hoppers and fifteen box cars. One of your railroad police, a copper named Dewitt, caught the former owner, late one night, as he was building steam to take some the cars down to the rail yard that he still owned, a yard that hadn’t been part of the sales deal with the K and ASR.”

“So the road’s got a passel of narrow gauge rolling stock and rail?”

“Just wait, there’s more.”

Andy leaned forward, again, resting his elbows on the table. “The sales department wants the Kanzona to buy several sections of land along the northeast side of Shepherds Creek, the side where the track would be, and they want the Kanzona to grow cotton there.”

“Seriously? Would it be competitive with eastern growers?” Malik asked.

Andy replied, “Turns out, the plantations in the southeastern part of the country have been having problems with the soil since before the war. Cotton is hard on the soil and they’ve just used it up. Back East, harvests are getting smaller every year, and many growers have simply abandoned those fields. About the only productive land is along river bottoms, where they get some flooding every year or so. For the most part, though, cotton-growing keeps spreading further west, especially in Texas, and they’re even growing some in southern New Mexico Territory.”

“Sure. New Mexico’s got the Rio Grande and Texas has the Rio Grande and a half dozen other good rivers. But southeast of Shepherds Creek? That’s dry as a -- Wait a minute. Are they after our water rights?”

Andy smiled. “They are, in fact, but hear me out.”

“I’m all ears. But this better be good.” Malik got up to fetch the coffee from the stove.

“Here’s what the engineers propose, and, with the help of the sales people, they’ve figured the costs and the expected sales, out to ten years. What they recommend is to put a dam on Shepherds Creek at Ten Mile Canyon. They’ll be able to catch more water than we can in Summer Lake because they’ll catch it higher up the Creek, before more is lost to the ground and evaporation. Plus, there’s more clay in the soil up there, so there wouldn’t be as much loss to ground absorption.

“In exchange for that water, they’ll build a diversion dam on the Rio Isabella and a canal to carry water across our eastern fields. We can use a portion of that, but most will be carried over Shepherd’s Creek in a flume to their cotton fields, with the excess going to Summer Lake year ‘round.”

“Ho-lee cow! That’ll transform this corner of the state.” Malik said, splashing some coffee onto the table as he filled two mugs.

Andy smiled knowingly and said, “There’s more.”

Malik was open-mouthed. He finally said, “You’re kidding?”

“Nope. The company geologists got into the deal, too. To make a long story short, there’s coal up on Penitente Mesa. It’s bituminous, but they think there’s a lot of it.”

“Un-be-liev-able. What else? Diamonds? Giants? Unicorns?”

“No, that’s about it. We’ll be able to ship cattle, wheat, and hay right from the ranch. And it will give us rail passenger access from about five miles south of Ranch Home, but they’ve yet to determine the frequency of through trains. And, of course, those trains don’t go to Waypoint, at least, not directly. It would probably be about the same amount of actual travel time to take a horse-drawn coach to Waypoint as to take the narrow gauge passenger coach and then transfer to the trunk line north or south. Depending on connection times, though, it’s likely to take much longer by train than by horseback or by the new coach service. But, if you want to go to Texas Bend or the Dry Valley line transfer yard, then you’re in business.”

Malik made no comment and appeared to be concerned about something.

After a minute of silence, Andy said, “What is it?”

“Well, this doesn’t help my plans for Waypoint.”

Andy said, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Ah, I’ll read this proposal and give it more thought. It’s just that, when you mentioned the coach it brought Waypoint to mind. But, speaking of the coach, do you think it will be able to pay for itself?”

Andy barely hesitated. “I can’t see how,” he admitted. “Not unless we double the fare or double the capacity of a coach. The first would make the coach useless, as few would afford the fare but for rare occasions. There might be some merit to increasing capacity, though. I mean, considering how many people were happy to get a ride on the supply wagon, which didn’t even have any seats for passengers.”

“Yeah,” Malik said, “to the point you had to put a stop to all riders because it was making it difficult to carry supplies. And even then, drivers would sneak people aboard once they left Ranch Home.”

“I suppose we could just put folks in an empty supply wagon, instead of a coach. It’d be more like a load of cattle than a coach, though. I’m just not sure what would work,” Andy sighed, blowing audibly through his lips.

Both were silent for a minute.

Malik said, “Maybe we’re looking at this wrong.”

“In what way?”

“Maybe it’s part of the cost of our business.” Malik leaned forward and rested his outstretched arms and open hands on the table. “Look, we expect to hire good people and so we pay a good wage. But they have to live out in the country, four or five hours from shops and services that we don’t have at Ranch Home. Of course, lots of folks live that way, but we’ve got an actual town-full, or at least a village’s worth. And they’re the best, so we want to keep them.

“What do we do, then? Raise all their wages just for the occasional use of the coach service? Or should we simply run a low-fare coach and have to subsidize it? The second solution is more economical. We just need to accept that, if we want to run our businesses with the best people and to put that business where we want it to be, then our costs are going to be higher.”

Andy did not look convinced.

Malik added, “Sure, it’ll take a nibble out of the profit, but we haven’t got the time to spend that profit as it is. Our children will end up with all of it. And if they’re to be the kind of men and women we want them to be, they shouldn’t have the time to spend it, either. But I’m not sure how that will work out. I mean, how do you raise a kid so she’ll want to work hard and make something of her life when there’s all this money making it so she doesn’t have to?”

“You’re talking about us, big brother. That’s how we were raised. How did Ma and Pa do it?”

Malik just shook his head. “Damned if I know.”

Late the next afternoon, Malik left his car, crossed the station platforms, then Jackson Street, and walked north along West Railroad Avenue to his brother’s office. He pushed through the front door and found Nathaniel Innis at the desk nearest the door.

Innis was a twenty-five year old man of middle height. He hailed from Baltimore and had come west after his fiance had broken off their engagement in favor of another suitor. He was a graduate of the Maryland State Normal School and was a teacher at the Waypoint High School, specializing in mathematics, history, and Latin. After the school day ended, he had a part-time job helping Andy with various tasks that involved numbers, such as the routine bookkeeping, but also assisting with planning and projections. Mathematics had never been Andy’s preferred occupation, so he gladly farmed it out to the clean-shaven, personable younger man.

“Afternoon, Nate,” Malik said, as he began to unbutton his overcoat, donned against a wintry breeze. “How are you enjoying the Jackson County winter?”

“Good afternoon, Emil. I’m not sure about the winter. The thermometer tells me the temperatures are fairly similar to back home, though it doesn’t feel all that cold to me.”

“Ah, yes. That’s because we have dryer air, especially compared to locations near large bodies of water. Humidity, I think it’s called, the amount of water vapor suspended in the air. More water vapor causes your skin to be moist, feeling chillier in the winter and clammier in the summer. Drier air may feel better, but it also dries out your skin, though that’s usually more of a ladies’ concern.”

“Wish I’d known that before buying a second thermometer. I though the first was somehow damaged.”

Malik chuckled. “You didn’t get into it with Jacob Baylor over the bad thermometer, did you?”

“No. I brought the one with me from home. I ordered the replacement from the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog.”

“Well, then it could have turned out worse,” Malik chuckled, hanging his coat on the rack.

Andy walked in from the back room, the former bakery kitchen, now his office. “I thought I heard you out here, disrupting the serenity of my workplace. Come on back here. There’s someone you’ll want to meet.”

Andy led him into his office. An attractive blonde-haired woman of about thirty rose from her chair as Malik came into the room. She was petite, shorter than average, with delicate features, including the hand she extended. Even so, Malik felt the strength in her grip. Her smile of greeting was genuine and graced an already comely face.

Andy said, “Emil, may I present Doctor Beverly Kagan. She’s a medical doctor who is looking for a place to set up her practice. Doctor Kagan, this is my big brother, Emil Malik. He’s an attorney, but we don’t usually mention it in polite company.”

“Not that my brother is often admitted into polite company, Doctor Kagan,” Malik quipped. Then he said, “I’m very glad to meet you.”

“How do you do, Mister Malik. I’ve usually found polite company to be much overrated, myself.”

Malik, chuckling, said, “Then you should find Waypoint to your liking, Doctor.”

Andy said, “Emil, why don’t you sit down and join our conversation.”

“Do you mind, Doctor?”

“Not at all. Please do.” She sat and the brothers followed suit.

Andy asked, “Was there something urgent you wanted to see me about, Emil?”

“No. I just had some ideas about that irrigation plan we were talking about yesterday. It will keep. I think convincing Doctor Kagan that Waypoint would be a good place for her practice should be the priority topic.”

“I agree. The Doctor was just telling me what brought her to Waypoint.”

“Well, I suppose I’m curious about that, too. While Waypoint is definitely on state maps, it’s not exactly marked with a star. Not yet, anyway.”

“My brother has ambitions for our little town, Doctor Kagan.”

Kagan looked at Malik. “But I’ve heard that a silver rush was not part of those plans.”

“Definitely not. Was Andy describing our efforts to restrain things?”

“No. It was Sara Lewin. I’d read of the supposed Indian tribe that struck it rich and the silver vein crossing miles of arid wasteland. I actually came out here expecting to see a genuine wide-open, don’t-spare-the-horses, boom town. I blush to say it, but I thought the excitement would be something to experience. Imagine my surprise to find a quiet town with a charming hotel like the Old Courthouse Inn. Is that really the former courthouse?”

Andy said, “It is, indeed. But let’s not get into that. My brother, here, also happens to be the majority partner in it, and if he gets started, we’ll never hear the end of it.”

“He’s right, unfortunately. I’m inordinately proud of it, but I’ll restrain myself, as the Inn speaks for itself. Nonetheless, it’s my two partners, Mitchel Anderson and Joe Collins, who most ably articulate that speech.”

“Mister Anderson, the manager?” she asked.

“Yes, he’s the general manager and supervises the lodging services. Joe Collins is the chef de cuisine and supervises the kitchen and dining room. They’re top notch men.”

“Well, all of you can be proud, then. I am quite comfortable there, and the service is impeccable.”

“I’m gratified to hear it. But did I hear you mention Sara Lewin?”