Chapter 16

I left Tomas alone for a few days. He went to the village and rode along the river with Jesus and others he’d picked from the files. He was getting a feel for the land where he was going to be responsible for growing crops.

The day before the election, Tomas asked to see me after breakfast. I asked Clara to send a coffee service up to the terrace and Tomas followed me upstairs. We sat down at a table enjoying the early morning sunshine.

As I poured our coffees, I asked Tomas what was on his mind. He stammered for a minute, before finally asking what he was supposed to do with the Finca Operations building. I looked at him for a moment, and realized I needed Hector and Tom in this conversation and perhaps even Giuseppe. I asked Tomas to wait just a minute and got up to go find the other three.

I got lucky and found them coming out of the dining room getting ready to ride out on their various tasks for the day. I asked them all if I could have about an hour of their time before they left. When they said ‘yes’, I asked them to meet me on the terrace. I went to the kitchen and asked Clara to send up another coffee service in the dumb waiter, with three cups and I’d get it from there.

I walked upstairs, retrieved the coffee service and cups from the dumb waiter and took it outside. Setting it down, I invited everyone to get comfortable. After we were all settled, I looked at each of them in turn.

“Gentlemen, we’ve talked about a lot of things in the time I’ve known each of you. With each of you, individually, and in groups, I’ve shared my vision, my hopes, my concerns, and the general overall plan for each area of the Estancia.

“I haven’t done as good a job of talking about a lot of specifics. The reason I’ve stayed away from specifics is that I’m not an engineer, I’m not a farmer, and I’m not a rancher. That is why all of you were hired.

“Additionally, I will not be here on the Estancia for a large portion of the year for the next few years. Even when I am here, I will not have the time to devote to running such a large complex operation as the Estancia, full time.

“That’s why I hired Tom. Yes, he is a relative now, but at the time I hired him he wasn’t married to Yolanda yet. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t even proposed to her yet. He was hired because he was the best man for the job. He knows ranching, he is familiar, on a small scale, with farming, and he thinks like an engineer, with enough knowledge of engineering to follow Giuseppe’s technical talks.

“That’s a long way of me saying: ‘I’m a planner’. That’s what I do, and that’s the way I think. I have interest in all of the operational areas of the Estancia plus a lot of others we haven’t even talked about yet.

“The Finca and Ranch both have an operations area. Giuseppe, you will have a Facilities Operations area in the future. Yolanda, Miguel, and Raul will have operations areas. Yolanda and Miguel’s will be here in the Hacienda. Giuseppe, you can pretty much decide where yours will be but I’m leaning towards either one of the storerooms next to the school in the village or here in the Hacienda.

“Tomas asked me a question this morning that prompted this meeting. He asked me what he was supposed to use the Operations area for. You have the same question I’m sure. The answer is simple. You will plan, organize, coordinate, evaluate, and control all the activities in your area of responsibility from the Operations area.”

I took a drink of coffee and waited for what I’d said to sink in before starting again.

Looking directly at Tomas I asked, “Tomas, the major piece of land you have to farm is along both sides of the river. The land is anywhere from 300 yards wide to 1000 yards wide from east to west and is 8 miles long on both sides of the river running north to south. How are you going to break up all that land into fields? How big is each field going to be?

“I gave you a list of the crops I want planted on the Estancia. Which crops are you going to grow in which field? How many years will you plant the same crop in each field, before rotating a new type of crop in? How many fields are going to be fallow in any given year? What teams will be assigned to which fields? What types of fertilizer are you going to use in each field? What’s the expected planting date and what’s the actual planting date?

“When is the crop in a field expected to be harvested? How many mules will you need to plow each field and when will you need them? How many wagons will you need to harvest a field and when will you need them? Which fields have crops planted in them that need bees to pollinate them, and where are the hives located?

“How are you going to break up the fields to differentiate them, and help limit wind erosion when a spring sandstorm comes sweeping up or down the valley? Will you use trees, hedges, fences, or some combination of all three? What kind of trees, hedges, or fences?

“These are all questions I’m sure you’ve been mulling over in your mind. Anna or I will rarely ever second guess you on a decision you make. We are not farmers. You are. However, we will not be shy about asking questions, so you had better be prepared to answer them.

“If I was the Finca Segundo, with a nice large space, like the Operations Area you have, I’d take one whole wall and have a mural painted on it or on butcher paper and then placed on the wall.

“The picture would be the whole Estancia, with all the areas under cultivation clearly marked and numbered or lettered or uniquely identified in some other way so that when I told a team they were responsible for getting Field Number 3 ready for planting corn they could see with a glance where Field Number 3 is located.

“I’d have some kind of movable marker I could stick to the wall to show where the bee hives were located. I’d have a file on each field that showed what was planted in a given year, what fertilizers were applied and when, when the field was prepared, planted and harvested, what the yield was, what factors I thought affected the yield, whether positive or negative.

“The file would also explain what the plan for the coming year is going to be; and, if it’s changed from the current year, why it changed, and the potential impacts of making changes to it next year. Most crucially, it would state what I was going to do to limit the effect of those impacts.

“Now, I’m not a farmer and neither are Tom or Anna. If one of us walks into the Finca Operations area to find out how things are going, and you aren’t there we should be able to get a general impression from the mural on the wall.

“Some method of temporarily marking each field that shows at a quick glance which fields are being plowed, planted, fertilized, harvested, or fallow at that moment in time, as well as in the next thirty days. What crop is currently planted in a given field should also be easily conveyed.

“The system used to annotate all these things could be pencil on a small piece of butcher paper, written in chalk on a small chalk board in the middle of each field or perhaps you’ll come up with some other way. You will probably have to try different things, to see what works best.

“Finally, I will remind you I’m a planner. That means that at the beginning of each year I expect a written report from you describing, in some detail, the results you achieved the previous year compared to what you had planned. What were the major issues experienced that impacted the results? What did you do during the year to mitigate the impacts? What worked and what didn’t? What are you planning on doing in the future to limit even further those issues, if they should arise again? Finally, what is your plan for the new year, and the expected results?

“By the time you have your first harvest I will have hired a bookkeeper who will assist you in managing the books for the Finca Operations. Your report will have a section detailing the economic activities and the results of the Finca for the year. This section will also contain a discussion of where we sold the different crops, the major customers for each type of crop, who we should target as customers during the coming year, who our competition is. What are they doing better than we are, what are we doing better, how do we overcome their advantages and maintain our advantages? There will also be a basic profit and loss statement, with recommendations for changes based purely on economics and the expected impacts of each change, both positive and negative.”

I quit talking, and took another drink of coffee, watching his face to see his reactions. His face was a contrast of multiple reactions. He had a smile on his face while his eyes were glazed over, and I could clearly tell he was still processing everything I had said. I sat, drank coffee, and waited.

Finally, his eyes cleared while the smile remained. He nodded, “This is exactly what I was hoping for when I agreed to move here. An owner that runs things as a business. I’ll start working on all these things immediately.”

I gently reminded him that he couldn’t do it alone. He had the various abilities of everyone here. That included: Anna, Yolanda, Sofia, Lorena, and Esperanza, as well as almost three hundred farmers and their families to draw from.

He gave me a puzzled look.

“Can you draw?” I asked.

“I can, but not very well,” he replied with a shrug.

“So, who is going to draw and paint the mural?”

Again, he shrugged. “I plan on holding meetings with the men I think are the key farming leaders in the village and get ideas from them.”

“That’s a good start,” I said. “But, if you’re limiting it to just men, you’re losing out on a far greater resource pool, which you should be tapping as well. The women of the village have an even more varied skill set than the men. The men, after all, are almost completely focused on farming, with little time for their hobbies. The women have far more time to pursue their hobbies, and among them are quite a few painters. How good they are is anybody’s guess at this point, but it’s a starting point. You have that kind of information available to you, just by reading all the entries in the files on each family, and not just the entries on the men.”

He sat back to think for a while, so I moved on.

I turned to Hector and gave him the same type of talk as I had Tomas but using cattle and sheep instead of land and crops. I explained that while the whole range was open for now, that was quickly going to change in the coming years. He currently had somewhere in the vicinity of forty square miles of open desert. Eventually the entire Estancia would be walled and the cattle grazing areas would be subdivided into smaller more manageable sizes. What that size would be, was largely going to be up to him and his vaqueros. A square mile, two square miles? Whatever it came out to be, it would be fenced in some manner. His report would talk about how many head of cattle we had; broken out by calves, yearlings, and bulls. How many calves were added? How many head of each type did we lose and why? How many were sold, to whom, and for what price? He quickly got the idea based on what I’d told Tomas so, while I didn’t go into as much detail, I knew he was mentally headed in the right direction.

When Giuseppe’s turn came, we talked about his Operations area and what both it and his annual report should contain. Since he’d been with me the longest, he had a much better idea of the types of questions I wanted answered, both in a visit to his area and from the report. I did surprise him a little though when I told him I wanted a monthly status report covering what was done the previous month and what was expected to be done during the coming month. I told him Tom would need the report to start coordinating all the wagons and mule team requirements with Raul, now that we had so many more of both.

Tom was a little stunned, and I reminded him that I paid for all the wagons and mules the families who came with Hector used to get here. They were property of the Estancia and were to be used for whatever purpose we needed them.

We ended up talking through the morning about the operations areas, the murals, the types of coordination we’d need and a host of other things. Before we went down to lunch, I reminded everyone that I would be starting a month of Apache training the next day and that would be followed by the holidays and then five weeks of scout/sniper training. I wouldn’t be available most of that time, and Tom was in charge.

I dropped one last bomb before we broke up, telling Tom and Giuseppe I wanted them to build a papier-mache model of the entire Estancia and the surrounding area. I wanted the model to show all the major geographical features and current buildings, dams, and roads. They should make it so they could easily add other buildings, walls, bridges, and roads as they were completed. The model was to be in the room across the hall from the armory. They could use planks laid across sawhorses as the base.

As we were walking downstairs, I told Tom we needed to have the same talk with Yolanda, Raul, and Miguel after lunch; although, since, Miguel could be hard to find, we may have to wait to talk to him until later.

Yolanda didn’t have anything scheduled for after lunch, and neither did Anna; so the four of us mounted up, and rode to the village. After some searching, we found Raul walking around the partly built stable complex looking at a copy of the drawings. He looked up as we were dismounting and gave us all a smile as we walked up. Anna asked him if the drawings were matching up with what was being built, and he smiled saying it was perfect.

We told him why we were there and asked him if he had time for us today. He said he had all the time in the world until the buildings were built. Tom rode up a few minutes later and shook his head at the unspoken question, telling us he hadn’t been able to find Miguel. We all went over to Raul’s’ house where we sat around the kitchen table drinking coffee Marisol made for us.

Neither Yolanda nor Raul were surprised by the discussions we had. The idea of a weekly coordination meeting starting next Monday morning after breakfast went over extremely well with both of them. Raul had already started working on numbering each wagon and planning preventative maintenance on a monthly schedule.

He was a little surprised at my request to come up with a paint scheme to clearly identify our wagons as belonging to the Estancia. I suggested using rose as the primary color, with a secondary color striped across it. I also wanted the stick figure brand, as a logo, on both sides of the wagon, along with the words ‘Estancia Dos Santos.’

I told him it had been my experience that the ladies usually had a better eye for colors and suggested he talk to some of them, starting with Marisol, to get their ideas. I asked him to bring any ideas he had to the meeting next Monday morning, so everyone could review them and select the one they liked best.

Yolanda agreed to work with Miguel on his reports, since he couldn’t write well. I suspected that she would do most of the work, anyway. We ended up spending a little over two hours with Raul before leaving for the Hacienda.

I met with Esteban and Ed shortly before supper, telling them they’d learned all we had to offer them. I gave them both the oath of office, and handed them their badges, telling them that they were now being paid by the US government. I handed Esteban the package the Judge had given me and told him he was now responsible for leading the day to day activities of the US Marshals office in Mesilla. We talked for thirty minutes before I wished them well telling them to stop in Las Cruces and pick up the office keys from Juan and that Anna and I would be in to see them sometime before Christmas.

Dinner was an amazing feast of the best Mexican food I’d had since my last visit to Mrs. Mendoza. While we were eating, I made the announcement that Anna and I would be leaving in February to make a circuit of the southern territory as the US Marshal and would probably be gone five or six months.

That caused a lively discussion; but, in the end, they all agreed that it was necessary and understood it would be a rare event in the future. Anna and I left for bed early as did Yolanda and Tom. Both Yolanda and I were to start Apache training the next morning and we wanted to be well rested for what was coming.

To say that the training was grueling would be an understatement! I’m not sure if the cousins were trying to prove something to Yolanda and me, but I’m almost positive the farmer’s version of the training was a lot easier. I fell asleep every night completely exhausted.

Regardless, we both held up well, and learned more about the Estancia’s land in those thirty days than I’d learned in the last four years. I also found the training on tracking and survival to be much more than the refresher I’d expected. We spent most nights out in the desert or mountains completely immersed in the Apache warrior lifestyle.

Neither Yolanda nor I had time to keep up with what was happening on the Estancia, nor with the extended family. About the only thing we kept track of was the Alcalde election, which Jesus won overwhelmingly on the first ballot. Anna, bless her, took it all in stride telling me I needed to get this completed so we could move on with the plan.

On the last day of training we were met by all the cousins near the corral and congratulated on finishing. Miguel, with a grin on his face, told Yolanda that the cousins had awarded her an Apache name. From this point forward she would be known as Runs Forever.

Yolanda and I both started laughing uncontrollably. Yolanda absolutely hated running and wasn’t much good at it. She could run for three or four miles at the same pace as everyone else but then would slow down and walk for a mile or two. I kept telling her she could go much further if she quit complaining the whole time she was running. Her response was always the same: going long distances quickly was what horses are for.

During breakfast, I mentioned that with Apache training over, we had a little over two weeks off, and I suggested that it would be a good time for us to visit Anna and Yolanda’s grandparents in Las Cruces. While we were there, Anna and I could pay a social call on both cousin George at Fort Fillmore, as well as Esteban and Ed in Mesilla. Anna, Tom, and Yolanda agreed, telling me they would be ready when I was. I suggested leaving for a week after breakfast in two days. Anna beamed me one of her special Anna smiles telling me that was perfect.

The wound in Izabella’s arm had healed, and the bone seemed to be knitting well, so Anna and I cleared her to live with one of her Aunts, in the village with Alejandro as well as to start school, which had her excited to no end. I encouraged her to use the sling as little as possible, but to make sure she had it with her in case she got tired or it started hurting. Sofia and the Padre agreed to watch out for her and make her use the sling if she got tired.

It felt good to be on horseback again after four weeks of running all over the Estancia on foot. Our morning ride lasted a little longer than usual, as we rode to the village, the dams, the quarry, and the ranch for me to see firsthand how things were going.

As we rode, Tom and Giuseppe filled me in on each area, and I was happy to see that everything was progressing as planned. The stable and wagon complexes were just about completed, and the two forges Raphael had brought were being set up in the blacksmith area, while the wheel wright was busy setting up his equipment and tools in the wagon maintenance building.

Tom told me that once the wagon maintenance building and yard were completed and fully operational, Raul had a schedule to paint and number the wagons as he pulled each one in for inspection and maintenance. The colors they’d selected were a light rose for the body, with a light green stripe around the top. The Dos Santos Brand and the words ‘Estancia Dos Santos’ would be in black on both sides of the wagon with the wagon number, also in black, would be on the back.

We stopped in the Finca Operations building and discovered that Tomas was out at the base of the Doña Ana Mountains with Jesus’ team marking the fields so that Giuseppe could survey the area after the beginning of the year. Three ladies were busy sketching the Estancia on the back wall. Anna said they had used Jorge’s painting as the basis for the general sketch and, once they completed the sketch, they would start painting the mural.

The dams were holding without any problems, and Tom said that Tomas had found five grass areas within a half mile of the fourth dam that he estimated would provide about 100 acres for alfalfa and timothy grass if we irrigated. I asked why they were concentrating on the fourth dam, and he reminded me that the upper four dams only got water during the rainy period and the upper three dams would provide reserve to the fourth dam during dry years. That made good sense to me and we moved on to a quick pass by the quarry, which had grown slightly bigger, as expected. Giuseppe told us that he had one team shoveling the crushed stone from the explosions, into a pile near the entrance to be used for road building.

We crossed the river near the quarry and entered a cattleman’s dream. Everywhere we looked on this side of the river, we could see cattle. Tom was a little concerned that we were overgrazing the land, but Hector had told him the land would support the numbers for at least two years, and we all expected to be able to provide hay and feed corn by then. Like Tom, I was worried for the long term, and told him to keep a watch on it, but we should be okay for at least the next year.

The Ranch Operations area was just as busy as the Finca Operations building had been with a team of vaqueros applying smooth white stucco to the entire back wall. Tom told us that the same ladies who were painting the mural for Tomas, would paint the mural here when they were done there. Hector was out exploring the ranch area with one of his vaquero teams.

We got back to the Hacienda just before lunch. Tom and Giuseppe disappeared after lunch, going off to do their planned afternoon activities while Anna and I retired up to the terrace. I walked to the railing and looked out over the Estancia. I could see cattle across the river and the lower edge of the levees about a mile away, which was inching closer, as the teams continued a never-ending stream of rock deliveries.

Anna joined me at the railing, put her arm around my waist and her head on my shoulder telling me it was all coming together. I kissed the top of her head and told her it was moving much faster than I’d ever dreamed. By the time we got back from our trip to the Colorado River and Santa Fe we would hardly recognize it. We stood there gazing out over the river for a few more minutes, before Anna left and I sat down to review the first monthly report.

Giuseppe had gone into extreme detail about both the accomplishments and plans for the coming month. There was a lot there, and when I was done, I was thankful for the detail. By the time Anna and I got back from our long trip, I was fairly certain Tom would have a good understanding of the engineering functions on the Estancia.

At supper that night I raised the subject of a Ranch Alcalde. Hector was of the opinion that the village Alcalde should handle the ranch as well. The rest of the group was split on the subject, while leaning towards Hector’s point of view. There was no real hurry at this point, so I told Tom to get with Jesus, about the idea and see what his thoughts were.

After supper we all went into the living room for coffee and Anna asked me to play the piano. I softly played some of Anna’s favorite music while everyone chatted before finishing the evening with “Anna’s Song”.

We left for Las Cruces as planned, arriving just after lunch. We were only a half day away, but you’d have thought we lived much farther away from the way everyone was acting. The ladies disappeared shortly after lunch and didn’t reappear until supper. Tom and I spent the afternoon with Mr. Mendoza and Mr. Garcia at the table back behind the stable, as usual. Dinner was ‘Christmas’ enchiladas with all the sides, and I was in heaven. The supper conversation was dominated by the women, with the men quietly suffering through topics ranging from fashion to who was marrying whom.

The four of us rode out the next morning for our morning ride, just like old times. Anna and I spent the first hour after lunch visiting Dolores, where we picked up the leather containers for our emergency medical kits. We were both impressed with her work and promptly ordered the other one thousand I’d warned her about, with delivery scheduled for fifteen a month.

We took the medical packs back to the restaurant dining room and filled them up with the material Anna had prepared while I was in Apache training. Everything fit perfectly in the small compact space of what I had already started calling a med-kit. We had already decided the first med-kits would go to Esteban and Ed as they were the most likely to use them. The afternoon was spent in glorious relaxation at the table behind the stables.

Anna and I rode to Mesilla the next day, spending the morning with Esteban and Ed. The office turned out better than even I expected, and both were quite happy with the living conditions. True to his word, Esteban had brought in the wife of a friend who lived nearby to do the cooking and cleaning for them.

Anna gave them the med-kits and we spent a few minutes discussing the contents before turning to other matters. Ed handed me a package from the Judge in Santa Fe, telling me that they’d all received the same package full of the latest set of material on fugitives believed to be in New Mexico Territory.

Esteban told us that things had been really quiet since they moved in, although there were reports of small ranches and farms being raided. They’d investigated two of the farms, but the reports were so old that all the tracks had been wiped out.

The shootout with the Stevens gang, combined with the presence of the two US Deputy Marshals seemed to have driven any fugitives out of town and the surrounding area. They also hadn’t found anything in the short fifty-mile circuit they’d developed around Mesilla.

I told them about my upcoming trip, explained what I hoped to accomplish, and the need for annual follow up trips by both of them. We worked out a revolving plan that both said they could live with where one of them was always out riding a circuit of the western territory while the other was in Mesilla riding the smaller fifty-mile circuit. We all agreed they’d start the big circuit in September. We had lunch together at our favorite cantina before Anna and I left for Fort Fillmore.

We expected our visit to Fort Fillmore to be rather short and were surprised to end up spending almost three hours. Cousin George was in, and met us with a happy smile, telling us he’d just returned from a two-week patrol in the Tularosa Basin late the previous day. His smile got even bigger when I gave him a bottle of the good scotch, I’d brought with me. He accepted our invitation to spend the holidays with us at the Hacienda and said he would meet us at Mrs. Mendoza’s Restaurant this evening for supper.

He was showing us around the fort when we ran into Colonel Miles coming out of his Headquarters. Colonel Miles not only remembered us but had been planning a trip to the Hacienda to see us on business. He was completely surprised that George and I were cousins, but said that fact, combined with our visit today, made the business discussions he wanted to have with us even easier.

He invited us into his office where we discussed the recent arrival of the herd at the Estancia, and numerous opportunities he saw for us to provide beef to Fort Fillmore and the new Fort Thorn, just north of the Estancia, along with the potential of supplying Dr. Steck, the Apache Agent, at Fort Thorn. According to Colonel Miles there were plenty of cattle in the area to supply the military’s needs, but we were the only ones with enough cattle to provide a steady supply over the life of a single contract.

The military didn’t like having to issue new contracts every month or two, which is how things had been handled at all the area forts up until now. After some haggling between the Colonel and Anna, we signed a six-year contract to provide Fort Fillmore with thirty head per month at seven dollars a head.

Colonel Miles told us he was being reassigned to Fort Thorn after the beginning of the year, and he would contact us to work out a similar contract to supply Fort Thorn. He also promised to lay the groundwork with Dr. Steck, who he knew was looking for 2,000 head to start a sustainable herd for use by the Apache around the Fort.

I let him know we would be at Fort Thorn near the end of February as part of my US Marshal circuit. He agreed to my suggestion that we meet then to work out the details of that contract. As we were leaving, Colonel Miles mentioned that Fort Bliss near El Paso was in the same predicament that Fort Fillmore and Fort Thorn were in, regarding regular beef supplies. He would mention the Estancia’s ability to supply them beef on contract when he was there over the holidays picking up his new troops. I thanked him for thinking of us, and he laughed, telling us that anyone who met us couldn’t help but think about us. We told George we were looking forward to seeing him this evening and rode out of the fort.