snap a come-along on the chestnut's halter.
Kerney walked toward him with a stiff gait and nodded a greeting. Amador wiped the vexation off his face with a tight smile. What in the hell was Carol Cassidy doing sending him this busted-up seasonal who couldn't pull his own weight? He needed an able-bodied man on this job, not a reject from some police department.
He nodded curtly when Kerney drew near.
'Anybody else coming?' he asked hopefully.
'Not that I know of,' Kerney replied.
Amador grunted with displeasure.
'Too bad.
What did Carol tell you to do?'
'Whatever needs doing,' Kerney answered, looking over Amador's shoulder.
A crew of four Hispanic men stared back at him from a half-completed trench that ran from a wellhead to a water spigot. He didn't know any of them. Eight-inch plastic water pipe lay in a line next to the trench. A small backhoe idled nearby. Off to one side of the construction site a temporary chain-link enclosure protected construction supplies, bags of concrete, a stack of cedar fence posts, and some new picnic tables.
Amador looked down at Kerney's leg.
'What can you do?' he demanded.
'Whatever,' Kerney repeated.
'Get a pest hole digger from my truck,' Amador Ortiz said flatly.
'I need fence posts set in concrete every eight feet. It's all staked out where I want them.' He swung his arm in an arch.
'From the well to the trailhead. Can you handle that?'
Kerney smiled.
'I think so.'
Amador's expression remained skeptical. He scratched his armpit and grunted. A stocky man with arms that were too short for his body, Ortiz was broad in the chest and sported a beer drinker's belly.
'I need the posts in by lunchtime,' Amador said in an ill-tempered tone.
'That's three hours from now. Be finished by then.'
'Okay,' Kerney answered, walking away, counting the small red flags that marked the locations for the pest holes Twenty-four holes to dig, two feet deep, a like number of posts to set, and three hours to do it. He poked the ground with the toe of his boot. Not much topsoil to speak of. Mostly hard packed gravel and basalt. There was no way it could be done by one man in the allotted time.
When Amador and his crew quit for their noon meal, Kerney worked on.
There was no order to help and no suggestion that he break for lunch.
The men were grouped in the shade of a stand of trees, speaking softly in Spanish, but loud enough for Kerney to hear the insults and the jokes about how much fun it was to watch the crippled gringo sweat like a pig.
The day was hot and getting hotter. Kerney stripped to the waist and kept working. Grunting with every thrust of the digger, he kept a steady rhythm, finished a hole, and moved on while the ridicule behind him continued. The group was debating his sexual preferences as he started digging the last hole. Ortiz walked slowly toward him, checking the depth of each hole with a tape measure.
He made a rude comment over his shoulder about Kerney screwing sheep that got a laugh from the men, and approached with a smirk still on his face.
Thoroughly pissed off at the unnecessary ill-will from Amador and his boys, Kerney stopped digging and waited for the foreman. His back ached and his arms were sore.
'I needed those posts set by now,' Amador said, looking at the nasty scar on Kerney's gut. Kerney's stomach was flat. His chest and arms were muscular.
There was no fat on the man. Self-consciously, Amador sucked in his beer belly.
'I'll get it finished,' Kerney said flatly.
Amador smiled thinly.
'Take your meal break.
My crew will set the posts. You get that in Nam?' he asked conversationally, nodding at the ugly scar.
Carol had told him Kerney was a Nam veteran.
'No.'
'What happened?'
'It's a long story.'
'Don't like to talk about it?' 'Something like that,' Kerney said.
Amador shrugged.
'Go eat. The boss wants for you to get familiar with the area. I'll mark the new trails on a map.'
Kerney nodded in reply and dropped the posthole digger on the ground at Amador's feet.
'Do you need me back here today?'
Amador looked at the tool with half a thought to tell Kerney to pick it up, and decided against it. The gringo's smile was somehow challenging.
'Come back in the morning,' he said, retrieving the tool.
'We've got to pour footings for the picnic tables. If they aren't set in concrete and bolted down, they get ripped off.' 'I'll be here,'
Kerney said.
'Anything else?'
'That's it.'
'Another six inches and this last hole is done,' Kerney remarked, kicking some loose dirt back into the opening and covering Amador's boots with dust.
It was a childish thing to do, but it felt good anyway.
He grinned at Amador, barely containing a desire to bust the man in the chops, hoping Ortiz would give him an excuse. He didn't like bigots of any nationality. Amador looked at his boots, raised his glance to Kerney's face, and said nothing.
'Think you can handle it?' Kerney asked.
Amador didn't answer. Watching Kerney walk away he thought maybe the gringo wasn't somebody to fuck with.
It was midmorning when Hector returned with his grandfather to the Mangas Mountains turnoff.
Jose's insistence that they stop every so often so he could reminisce made the drive through the mountains slow but enjoyable. Hector relished listening to Grandfather's stories of his childhood and youth in the vast and beautiful land of western New Mexico.
And today there was no mention of murder.
The road was good, there was little traffic, and Hector had no trouble pulling the trailer up the grades and around the turns. They passed a campground construction site and paused at a beautiful lake to watch fishermen casting for trout on the shore and trolling from small boats on the water.
After leaving the lake, they traveled in a wandering circle that took them to a mountain village called Quemado, which was Spanish for 'burned,' then east through a hamlet named Pie Town. Hector found the names amusing.
It was afternoon when they arrived in what had once been the village of Mangas. To the east, a high, lone peak, at least ten thousand feet in elevation, rose in the distance. To the west, mountains filled the skyline. The narrow valley where Jose had been born was thick with grass. A small herd of cattle grazed along a fence line near an abandoned adobe church with a wooden spire. A single cross was nailed on the cornice below the steeple.
Hector parked well off the road and walked quickly to catch up with Jose, who had left the truck when Hector had paused at the church. Most of the mud plaster on the building was gone, exposing eroded adobe bricks. The roof drooped crookedly on the melting walls. Near the church a small cemetery, shielded by a row of cottonwood trees, sat enclosed by a rusted wrought-iron fence.
In the cemetery Jose stopped at a tombstone, obscured by weeds and tall tufts of grass. He stared silently at the grave before dropping to his knees to clear away the vegetation. Hector helped. Soon the name of Don Luis
