Encounters in the Jemez

Encounters in the Jemez

  By

  Calvin Hecht

  ~~~

  Copyright © 2012, 2013 by Calvin Hecht

  ISBN

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ~~~

  ~~~

  (Note: This work has an underlying evangelical Christian theme.)

  ~~~

  Note: All Scripture contained herein is taken from the New King James Version.

  Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  ~~~

  v.5.0

  Calvin Hecht is also the author of:

  - Cat & Mouse, a fictional tale of marital infidelity.

  - Rapture: Fact or Fable? a non-fiction look at the Christian concept of the pre-tribulation rapture.

  - “…And Break Two Eggs Into a Bowel…” a non-fiction guide revealing the secret to effective proofreading for writers and self-publishers.

  - The Hostage, a fictional tale of terrorism emanating from the U.S.-Mexico border, a beautiful woman, and a handsome Border Patrol agent.

  Prologue

  Author's Comments

  Although New Mexico's Jemez [HAY-mez] Mountains are real, the trails, GPS coordinates, Native American sites, and various names and locations used in conjunction with the Jemez Mountains are either fictional or used in a fictional manner, being products of the author's imagination as are all the references to Albuquerque and the New Mexico Air National Guard and other places and events.

  In addition, although H Company of the First Dragoons was a real US Army unit in 1854, operating in and around the territory that is the present State of New Mexico, the personnel depicted and their journey through the Jemez to the Rio Chama is fictional; however, the battle depicted between the dragoons and the Apaches is based on historical fact, but the author has taken fictional license with regards to persons, time, location, and events connected to that battle.

  The Story Begins

  Teenagers Kevin and Curt leave their comfortable urban world during summer break for what they expect to be a week of camping adventure in a nearby mountain wilderness. However, the two have experiences in the wilderness that neither could have anticipated ahead of time.

  ~~~

  A Pivotal Encounter

  …Twenty-five yards down the trail a familiar massive twelve-foot high ancient igneous boulder they remembered when coming up the trail confirmed they were on the correct trail. The boulder marked where the trail ahead would jog sharply to the right for a more or less straight, downhill shot back to the stream they had forded two hours earlier.

  Kevin had taken the lead. He was about twenty feet ahead of Curt. Suddenly, Kevin heard shuffling and clinking sounds on the trail ahead. What in the world…?

  But the source of the sounds was hidden behind the massive boulder that he was approaching.

  Someone else is on the trail and close!

  No sooner had that thought struck Kevin when he rounded the boulder and a huge horse immediately in front of him reared up in surprise, but not any more surprised than was Kevin who jumped back quickly to avoid an errant hoof.

  The rider of the horse commanded, "Steady! Steady!" and his horse settled down, wild-eyed, quivering, and snorting.

  In the next instant, Curt rounded the boulder and came to an abrupt halt at the sight of Kevin not more than five feet away standing in front of a large horse with a rider clad in a dark blue uniform with a single narrow, red bar outlined in gold stitching on each shoulder of his gold-trimmed-high- collared waistcoat.

  In addition, the rider wore a black, cowboy-style, narrow brimmed felt hat set at a rakish angle on his head of shoulder-length black hair. The hat had a string band in gold braid with two gold tassels, and a theatrical long, white feather plume attached to the left side.

  In that same instant of steadying his horse, the uniformed rider drew a long-barreled pearl-handle revolver from his holster and leveled it first at Kevin and then at Curt and then back to Kevin.

  "Who in the blazes are y'all? What're y'all doin' on this here trail? Speak!" commanded the rider, his demeanor all the more intimidating because of his fiery dark eyes, black pointed goatee, and black handlebar mustache.

  Before Kevin or Curt could answer, the rider bellowed, "First Sergeant O'Malley! Get up here! Now!"

  As the command rippled down the column of blue-clad riders on the trail, Kevin noted that the eyes of the rider in front of him never broke contact with him or Curt.

  Neither did the rider's pistol…

  Chapter One

  The Backcountry Road

  "About another two hundred feet on the right," announced Curt, looking at the lighted Map screen of his GPS receiver.

  Ken took his foot off the old Ford pickup's accelerator and lightly tapped the brake pedal. As the pickup slowed and the pickup's old headlights cut a yellow beam through the early morning darkness, sure enough, there on the right was the turnoff, barely discernible, but there, partially blocked by brush undergrowth.

  Ken slowed the pickup even more, clutched and hand shifted the floor-mounted shifter to a lower gear and, nursing the clutch as he turned, crossed the sandy shoulder, and crunched through the brush and high grasses of the almost hidden turnoff.

  In growling low gear, Ken cautiously began to negotiate the rutted, overgrown, and primitive two-tire-track road, now not much more than a foot trail. Scant yards in from the turnoff, muddy water the color of cream-diluted coffee splashed out to the sides of the pickup from the previous afternoon's mountain thunderstorm having left puddles in their path, in turn, causing the pickup to slew and the drive wheels slip in the slick mud.

  Ken and the two teenage young men in the pickup's cab could hear the swish of the grasses underneath the truck — grasses that were not having much luck in scouring the undercarriage of mud.

  In the predawn, the yellow glare of the pickup's headlights revealed tall brush that had overgrown to the edge of the old road — brush that scraped and squeaked and scratched both sides of the pickup, not that the driver was concerned because a few more scratches and dings would make no difference on the already scarred and age-battered Ford.

  The tire-tracks gradually angled away from paralleling the highway. The sound of highway traffic, what little there was in the predawn, and what little that could be heard over the whine of the pickup's transmission, growl of the engine, and the swish of grasses and the slapping and screeching and scratching of brush against the sides of the truck, became ever fainter.

  A hundred yards in and the road suddenly veered left and the pickup broke through the last of the thick undergrowth into a long, narrow mountain meadow as wide as a football field is long and surrounded on three sides by thousand foot tall hills covered with mixed conifers.

  The weak headlights revealed knee-high golden grasses and a smattering of nodding blue bonnets, plumajillo, and yellow fleabane wild flowers on either side and in the middle of the tire tracks; tracks that disappeared into the darkness ahead. Two cottontail rabbits, one in each tire track, disturbed from their predawn cavorting and feeding, hopped thirty feet ahead of the pickup and then stopped motionless in their classic "now you don’t see me" freeze, and then darted off and disappeared into the grasses, one to the left and the other to the right, as the old pickup truck growled nearer.

  The old headlights also caught wisps of feathery ground fog lying low in the grasses and in the wild flowers on either side of the rutted tracks.


  Soon the sun would dissipate the low-lying fog and bathe the grasses and wild flowers with sparkling dew-diamonds.

  ~~~

  Behind the steering wheel of the pickup truck, Ken, hunched forward with his forearms resting on the steering wheel, his hands at the ten o'clock and two o'clock position.

  Ken had partially rolled down the driver's side window and had opened the wing vent in an effort to keep the windshield from fogging over because of the condensation caused by the occupants' breath on this, a chilly early fall morning in the mountains.

  Ken was driving his seventeen-year-old son Kevin, Kevin's best friend, seventeen-year-old Curt, as far the old Ford could make it, and conditions permitted, to a point where the young men intended to begin an eight day combination hiking and camping adventure farther into the mountains.

  The turnoff from the highway had not been that difficult for Ken to find despite the darkness and the fact that it was only a narrow, almost hidden break between the Russian Olive trees that lined the east side of New Mexico State Road 4 for miles, because Ken remembered the mile marker and area for the turnoff from his days of working with the U.S. Forest Service between his college years a couple decades ago.

  Back then, the undergrowth was less and the olive trees fewer, and the unfenced-ungated turnoff had been used by the USFS regularly, allowing a USFS crews that often included Ken to drive almost two miles into the backcountry that they would have otherwise had to hike on foot to do whatever flora or fauna survey that was on the USFS agenda for the day.

  In addition, Curt and Ken, using Curt's laptop computer and Internet connection two days before, had viewed Google Earth in a successful effort to find the turnoff on the Google Earth topographical map of the Jemez [pronounced hay-mez] Mountain area.

  Although Ken, after viewing the map, was fairly certain of the turnoff location, even after so many years, nevertheless, Curt entered the turnoff's latitude and longitude coordinates from the map as a Waypoint in his Global Positioning System receiver — commonly called a GPS receiver — the same GPS receiver that he used for his hobby of geocaching, and the one gadget he was sure to bring along on the camping adventure.

  It was the GPS receiver's Map feature, in turn, that allowed Curt to use the Waypoint coordinates to alert Ken as they neared the turnoff.

  ~~~

  The three occupants jostled by the frequent ruts hidden under the puddled water found themselves banging shoulder-to-shoulder and up and down inside the pickup cab.

  Ken, struggling with a steering wheel that frequently wanted to jerk out of his hands, grinned and hollered, "Hang on!"

  Curt laughed and exclaimed, "Ride 'em, cowboy!

  Kevin, one hand bracing himself against the pickup's dash and the other pressing on the pickup's torn and tattered headliner, laughed and echoed Curt, "Yee-ha! Ride 'em, cowboy!"

  During the heaviest of the jostling, both Kevin and Curt made it a point to glance often through the pickup's rear window to see in the early morning darkness what they could of their web-netted camping gear in the pickup's bed, hoping that none had jostled loose and lay in the mud somewhere in the darkness behind them. But, their camping gear remained safe.

  As the old Ford and its three occupants drove farther in, the meadow transitioned into scattered juniper and piñion trees, many near to the track and showing as ghostly images in the predawn as the old Ford's dim headlights bounced and bathed them in light and then semi-darkness.

  Although the sun remained hidden behind the near-by eastern peaks, bright, golden shafts of sunlight were beginning to streak the cloudless but still dark sky, heralding the beginning of a beautiful day.

  At close to two miles in from the highway the road abruptly ended in a large meadow bordered on the east by a stand of Gambel oaks backed by a wall of towering ponderosa pine trees.

  The pickup truck could go no farther.

  Dawn was breaking.

  ~~~

  None of the three could know at that moment just how important this meadow would become in their lives in a few days.

  ~~~

  The young men anxiously bailed out of the pickup, ready to get their gear and begin their adventure, but Ken remained in the truck with the engine running.

  Ken hollered at his son through the opened passenger-side door to inspect the ground where Ken would need to do a three-point turnaround in order to head the pickup back toward the highway. Ken wanted assurance he would not get stuck in a marshy meadow after Kevin and Curt had disappeared into the forest when it would then be too late to recruit their young muscles to help get the old truck unstuck.

  Kevin laughed and said, "You bet, Dad!" as he slammed the passenger door.

  Kevin and Curt stomped the ground in the area needed for a turnaround. Through the bug-splattered windshield, Ken observed the young men trample the grass ahead and to the right of the pickup. After a minute or so, Kevin signaled his dad with a thumb up gesture as assurance that the ground was firm. Ken then put the pickup in gear and did the three-point turnaround successfully, pointing the nose of the pickup back in the two-tire track path just negotiated and back in the direction of State Road 4.

  Ken turned off the engine, opened the door to the screech and grating groan of rusty door hinges, got out, and stood next to the old Ford. He watched the eager young men as they began gathering their camping gear from the bed of the pickup.

  The mountain air was crisp and still, heavy with the perfume of the dew-heavy grasses and wild flowers as the eastern sky lightened, showing a hint of the turquoise blue to come.

  A hidden songbird — Ken did not recognize the melodic trill — welcomed the morning from somewhere in the meadow off to the trio's left as a golden eagle flew silently and majestically overhead in a southeasterly direction, no doubt headed for the vast Valle Grande ancient caldera a few miles distant and a morning breakfast of prairie dog or mountain vole.

  Deep within Ken, the beauty and serenity of the mountain meadow morning caused the remembrance of a promise found in the Bible. The remembrance stirred a simple, silent prayer, Thank you, God.

  ~~~

  Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,

  Because His compassions fail not.

  They are new every morning;

  Great is Your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23 NKJV

  ~~~

  Kevin and Curt were in the same class in high school, both slated to begin their senior year in September. They had been best friends since the sixth grade. That was the school year when their teacher paired up the two to come up with a science project for submittal to the New Mexico State Fair that year.

  Kevin and Curt collaborated on designing and building a motion-sensing, hidden camera device, and, in the process, became fast friends.

  The camera setup and the subsequent colorful and stunning close-up photographs of hummingbirds at a feeder garnered a blue ribbon at the fair.

  ~~~

  Kevin, three inches shy of six feet tall, wore multi-pocket, mottled brown, jungle-camouflage cargo shorts and a khaki long-sleeved work shirt. Kevin's feet were shod in what when new were yellow-tan colored mid-calf leather lace-up work boots, now much darker in color from months of wear working at his uncle's construction site in Grants in the two summer months prior to the camping adventure.

  Kevin's wavy light brown hair with streaks of sun-bleached blonde was covered by a John Deere-green baseball cap emblazoned with the Deere logo; however, unkempt tufts of mostly sun-bleached hair stuck out wildly over each of Kevin's ears, giving the impression that he needed a haircut, which he did.

  Most of Kevin's female classmates considered Kevin to be good-looking. On the other hand his female classmates did not think of him as "hot" because he was socially labeled as a "preacher's kid" and therefore not accepted within any of the "popular" social cliques at school.

  Kevin was not overly concerned about the shunning he experienced as a preacher's son — it came with the label and was somet
hing he had experienced in school as far back as he could remember. One of the things Kevin did to compensate for his lack of acceptance was to excel in academics, to which his 4.0 grade point average and honor roll position attested.

  Kevin was also on the high-school debate team that placed second in the State finals last spring. Kevin's forte in debate was a unique ability to quickly analyze an opponent, adopt a counter-position, and argue successfully from logic and reason.

  Academics and debate were not Kevin's only interests, however. Kevin had his eye on an attractive but quiet, blue-eyed brunette — Megan was her name — a transfer from Wyoming in April into Kevin's World History class.

  Kevin was smitten that April morning when he first saw the profile of the new girl in class sitting directly across from him at a desk three rows away. The vision of loveliness that Kevin saw created a dance of butterflies in his stomach to such an extent that Kevin only half-listened to the day's lesson about Copernicus.

  When the class ended, Kevin fairly leapt from his desk and in a display of out-of-character temerity was at the new girl's side, introducing himself. When she smiled and gave her name, Kevin's butterflies reacted with a crescendo of excitement.

  The attraction Kevin felt for Megan that first day gained momentum and by week's end had become mutual with Kevin escorting a smiling Megan to her classes after which he would make a mad dash to his next class before the class bell rang.

  ~~~

  Megan and her parents also conveniently attended Kevin's father's church.

  ~~~

  In the eight weeks before the end of the school year, Kevin and Megan dated casually — the church picnic, several of their school's basketball games, and an exchange of Sunday dinners with the respective parents.

  It was obvious to their classmates, the high school faculty, and their respective families that Kevin and Megan had become a serious "item."

  Just before school let out for the summer, Kevin and Megan had a special day together during the class end-of-year outing to Bandelier National Monument where they walked hand-in-hand for hours over several trails and into Frijoles Canyon, talking often but also having long periods of silent communication.