The Dinosaur Hunter (4 page)

We had ourselves a quiet night. No serial killers came calling and, though I kept waking up, all I ever heard was the yip of a passing coyote answered quickly by Soupy's warning bark. The sun rose with some wispy clouds hanging around which gave our hills, meadows, and buttes a faded amber glow. I trooped on up to the turnaround. Jeanette came outside, regarded me gazing with pleasure at her property, then said, “Sleep OK?”

“Yep, considering.”

I didn't have to say the “considering” was our murdered bull and the cut fences. The Square C was in trouble but what kind, neither one of us yet knew.

“Let's get 'em fed,” she said and so we did while Ray slept in a bit. He was a teenager, after all.

We headed into the Mulhaden pasture where we'd brought in our cows during the winter to keep them nearby. This was the last of our hay but, because the winter had stretched on for so long, Jeanette thought we'd best use it and let the grass have a little more time to get going. The pasture was named for a family of Mormons who'd settled the land just after the Civil War. The name was all that was left of their legacy other than a grave of one of their children. It wasn't too far from my trailer and every so often, I tended to its little headstone which was inscribed
Nanette Mulhaden, 1867
. I'd looked her up at the library in Jericho, our county seat. She only had the one year on her stone because she'd only lived three months. Poor little pioneer tyke. We ought to honor those pioneers in this country more than we do. We owe a debt to them that we've mostly forgotten.

Jeanette hooked a bungee cord to the steering wheel and put the big truck in idle, then climbed in the back with me. Soupy trotted behind as the truck made its way and we threw out the hay as the cows and calves got up and crowded in. When I first started cowboying, Bill Coulter taught me to pay attention to what calves did when they got to their feet. Healthy calves usually took a moment to stretch, he said. If they didn't, best look to them. That morning, all the calves stretched, signs that both humans and cow mamas were doing our jobs. On the way back in, I said, “Is there anything prettier than a morning in Montana?”

“Next thing you know you'll be writing that cowboy poetry,” Jeanette said, aiming the big truck with one gloved hand on the steering wheel.

“Oh, I could write some,” I replied, then fell silent, pretending to be lost in my thoughts although I was really thinking about her and the poem she was all by herself.

“Mike, I forgot about a meeting with the Independence Day organizers this morning in town,” she said. “I want you to go with me and pick up some fencing supplies while I'm talking to the committee. I've got a list for you.”

“I'm supposed to go out with Ray to look for the fossil hunter,” I reminded her.

“Well, I need you more than he does. Ray knows how to take care of himself.”

I chose not to argue. When we reached the gate, she braked, I sat, and she looked over at me. I was reminded of the old joke about three cowboys in a truck all dressed the same. Which one is the real cowboy? The answer is the one in the middle so he didn't have to get out and open and close the gates. Well, I was a real cowboy but I was riding shotgun so I got out and opened the gate and Jeanette drove through while I doffed my hat to her. I closed the gate and took my time getting back into the truck. She looked over at me. “You were a little slow,” she said. “The big truck probably burned a quart of gasoline waiting for you.”

“Take it out of my pay,” I said.

“I just might,” she replied and I knew there was a fair chance she would. Bandying words with Jeanette was never a good idea, especially when it came to money.

When we got back to the turnaround, Ray was up and saddling Nick with an audience of one, that being Amelia Thomason. Her daddy's truck sat nearby. Wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, cowgirl boots, and a hat with furled edges, she was a teenage cowboy's dream. “Morning, Amelia,” I said and she looked over her shoulder and gave me a sweet smile.

“Morning, Mr. Wire. Ray won't let me ride with him.”

“Why not, Ray?” I asked.

“Because she'll talk my head off. That's all she's good for.”

I made an executive decision worthy of Dear Abby. “Take Dusty,” I said to Amelia, nodding toward a gray mare. Dusty was a gentle soul and I knew Amelia had ridden her before. Anyway, Dusty never minded a walk. She was one of those horses quietly curious about nearly everything. I'd seen her one time ponder a herd of antelope for nearly an hour without so much as dropping her head once to munch a blade of grass.

Ray frowned at me, a disappointment considering I'd just made a date between him and the prettiest girl in Fillmore County. “Well, get on in here,” he said, finally. “Dusty's not gonna saddle herself.”

Since Ray didn't seem prone to do so, I thought it best to fill Amelia in on what had happened the day before. “Whoever did it could still be out there,” I concluded.

She looked over at Ray who was fussing with Nick's tack and pretending to ignore her. “I trust Ray to take care of me,” she said.

Ray proved it by going into the house and coming back with a pistol. It was a .38 Police Special. He handed it to Amelia who expertly checked it, then tucked it away in a saddle bag. Ranch kids.

“What're you packing?” I asked Ray.

“Granddaddy's forty-four,” he answered,

“That ought to do it.”

Amelia finished saddling Dusty, then climbed aboard. Ray got on Nick and I opened the pen gate for them, then the gate that led out to Blackie Butte and the BLM. “Take it slow, look around, you see someone you don't know, don't approach him. Observe only,” I said.

“What if he's cutting our fence?”

“Pop off a round in the air. Try to chase him off. Then get out of there.”

Amelia said, “Daddy would shoot anybody cutting our fences.”

“Well, let's not shoot anybody today, OK? I mean not unless you have to.”

“I thought you were going with me,” Ray said.

“I'll be out a little later. Right now, your mom wants me to drive her into town.”

Jeanette came outside. “Mike, you ready?”

“Give me a second,” I said. I closed the gate behind Ray and Amelia, and watched as they made their way up the track, looking easy in the saddle, not surprising since both were practically born there.

“Mike,” Jeanette said.

“Yes ma'am, right away, ma'am,” I said, touching my hat to her.

A minute later, we were headed to town in Bob the pickup. “Road's all dried out,” I said as I drove us off the Square C onto Ranchers Road.

“Yep,” Jeanette answered, then made a show of opening a folder to study the papers within. We didn't share another word all the way to Jericho, which was nearly an hour away. Well, that's kind of a Fillmore County thing, too. Shut up and drive.

Fillmore County is 5,500 square miles of big, or about the same size as the state of Connecticut. That New England state, however, has a population of 3.5 million people while the last census of Fillmore County listed us at 770. I thought that probably included some double-counting of the confusing Brescoe clan. What we lacked in people, we more than made up with livestock, which included, rounding off, 50,000 cattle, 15,000 sheep, 900 horses, 300 buffalo, and 125 pigs.

The county is divided up more or less fifty-fifty into private and public lands, public meaning the state and the feds, mostly the feds. The federal government manages its property through two entities, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Charles M. Russell National Park (CMR). Of the two, the BLM is the more interesting outfit. It is, in its own opinion, mostly misunderstood. Some locals call it the Bureau of Land Mismanagement. Jeanette calls it the Big Lousy Monster. None of the ranchers like it because it controls the land leases they depend on.

Ranchers Road is around thirty-five miles long and runs south to north into a peninsula formed by Lake Fort Peck, a big depression-era man-made lake. The road is the north-south lifeline of the six ranches it connects to the east-west state highway that crosses Fillmore County, a highway otherwise unhindered by any town except the county seat of Jericho. Heading up Ranchers Road, the first ranch reached is the Haxby place, which is owned by Sam Haxby, otherwise known as Sam the Survivalist. Sam's ranch is essentially a fortress. Although I thought the Haxbys were plenty peculiar, Jeanette said she was happy to have them as neighbors. They kept their fences strong, their cattle contained, and their business to themselves. Sam and Ina Haxby had six children over the years, all boys, four of whom had moved away. Jack and Carl, both in their forties, stayed behind to ranch, raise their families, and I guess also to prepare for Armageddon.

The next ranch along the road was us. The Square C was the biggest ranch on the road, although I won't say how big. If you want to tick a Fillmore County rancher off, ask him how big his ranch is, how many cattle he has, and how many guns he owns. You'll not likely get an answer but you'll surely get a steely eyed stare.

The Feldmark ranch, known as the Spear F, lay north of us. Aaron Feldmark was in his early seventies, his wife Flora about fifty-five. They lived alone, not counting all their animals. They had raised a family of three boys and four girls, all of whom had moved away as soon as they graduated from high school. Mrs. Feldmark had arrived here as a school teacher in one of the one-room schools in the county and ended up marrying a rancher. This was not unusual. School marms come out from towns like Billings, single and scared, and before you knew it, some rancher had taken her to a dance, fixed her flat tire, tossed a couple of steaks in her little freezer, and she was here for life.

The Thomason ranch, the Lazy T, was next up the road. Buddy Thomason was a widower, his wife dead from pneumonia when his daughter Amelia was but three years old. It was one of those things. It was spring, the rains had come, Ranchers Road was one long strip of impassable gumbo, and Greta Thomason, a mail-order bride from Germany who Buddy had picked from a catalog, came down with a terrible cold that turned into pneumonia. Greta passed before anything could be done, leaving Buddy to raise Amelia. Far as I could tell, he'd done a pretty good job of it.

Next up the road was the Brescoe ranch, one of several Brescoe ranches in the county although all the others were south of Jericho. There were more Brescoes in Fillmore County than any other family. At the high school, there were sixty-three students and thirty-eight of them were Brescoes, nearly all of them boys, which I guess made prom night a bit awkward. Julius and Mathis were the Brescoes along our road. They were in their fifties and all their kids, six of them, had grown up and moved away.

Ranchers Road ended at the gate that led into the Corbel place, except the Corbels were long gone, sold out three years back to a Californian named Cade Morgan who some folks said had once been the director of a television show or something. I'd never heard of him even though I'd spent years in Hollywood troubleshooting for some of the big studios. But the television crowd and the big movie people didn't mix that much so maybe that explained why I didn't know him. Anyway, Cade had sold off the Corbel cows and, far as I could tell, wasn't farming, either. What he was doing out there on his ranch, nobody knew, but it was his business. Being able to tend to your own business is what generally attracts outsiders to this part of Montana, including me.

The Fillmore County 4th of July Independence Day organizing committee gathered in the back room of the Hell Creek Bar, Jericho's favorite watering hole and conference center. Although I had my grocery list, I loitered at the door and watched Jeanette sit down beside Sam Haxby and share a couple of words with the survivalist. Sam was one of those little guys built like a fireplug, and about as tough. A quick look around revealed representatives from the other ranches along Ranchers Road. There was Aaron Feldmark, looking like a gentleman cowboy with a big “Hoss Cartwright” hat, black vest, string bolo tie, and striped pants tucked into intricately carved cowboy boots. Sitting a couple chairs away was Buddy Thomason, Amelia's dad, dressed in dirty jeans and old boots spattered with dried mud. Julius Brescoe, his nose stuck in the latest issue of
Western Ag Reporter,
sat behind them in bib overalls. I'd noticed his truck outside with his dogs, a couple of border collies, sitting patiently in back waiting for his return.

I heard some commotion behind me and saw Cade Morgan as he came inside the bar, giving the patrons the high sign and the bartender a wink. Square-jawed, high cheek bones, and curly black hair, Cade Morgan, by any lights, was a handsome fellow. Coming in with Cade was someone I'd never seen before. Tall, bald, about a mile wide at the shoulders, a hawk bill for a nose, and a couple of ears that would have made Dumbo proud, this guy had not only been hit by the ugly stick, he'd been pounded.

Cade saw me, and flashed a grin that showed a full set of chemically whitened teeth. “Hey, Mike,” he said. “What do you hear from the City of Angels?”

I'd made the mistake (OK, I was drunk at the time) of telling Cade I'd once been a cop and then a gumshoe for the studios. “Not a thing,” I told him. “Which is exactly how much I want to hear.”

The big, ugly fellow who was with Cade gave me the once-over. I ignored him until Cade introduced us. “Mike, this is Toby. An old buddy.”

Toby and I shook hands. I have big hands but mine was swallowed in his. “This is my first trip to Montana,” Toby said and I picked up an accent but not one I could quite place. Eastern European, I thought, or maybe Russian. When I didn't reply to his comment, he added, “I think Montana is very nice.”

“It sure is,” I replied and left it at that.

Cade swaggered inside the room and Toby followed. When he went by me, I noticed a tattoo creeping up from under the back of his shirt onto his neck. I couldn't see enough to tell what it was but I would have bet money it covered his entire back. Not that I cared, one way or the other. If a man wanted to look like Queequeg, so what? These days, people get tattoos for lots of reasons—fashion, boredom, in search of a personality, or for no reason at all.

Edith Brescoe, aka Mayor Brescoe, aka the wife of the local BLM agent, aka my former paramour—I'll get to that—rapped her knuckles on the table in front to get everybody's attention. The gray suit she was wearing made her look crisp and efficient. She was kind of like that in bed, too. Not passionate. Not romantic. Crisp and efficient.

“OK, people,” Edith said. “Quiet down, please.” She waved toward the back of the room. At first, I thought she was waving at me but it turned out to be two young men who brushed by me from the bar area. They were dressed in casual slacks, sports coat, and open neck shirts, which meant, pretty much, they weren't from around these parts. Both were thin-faced, had the perfectly combed hair of Ivy Leaguers and, if I wasn't mistaken, manicured nails. I instantly ID'd them as either property developers or environmentalists, both bad news for ranchers. The developers want to subdivide the ranches, the enviros want to knock down the fences and bring back the buffalo. Either way, the ranchers get screwed.

The effete pair walked up front and stood smiling beside the mayor but before she could tell us who they were, Aaron Feldmark stood up and said, “I got something to tell everybody, Edith, and it's damn important.”

“Can it wait, Aaron?”

“No. I said it was important. I even put a ‘damn' in front of it so you'd know.”

Edith was unimpressed by Aaron's cussing. “If you'll indulge me for just a few minutes, I promise I'll get back to you. I want to introduce these two gentlemen who just want to say a few words and be on their way. OK?”

Aaron looked peeved but sat down and Edith went on. “Folks, this is Brian and Philip Marsh. They're brothers and they represent an organization that works to provide habitat for threatened species.”

There were groans from the audience because they now knew what they had—environmentalists. The pair shared glances, then Brian said, “Hello everybody. As I'm certain you all are aware, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed regulations that will strictly control the ecological impact of the raising of large domestic ungulates. My brother and I are here to help you determine the statistical data necessary to comply when these regulations take effect. What we will do is survey your ranches so as to determine the methodology required to bring them to a functioning level of biological diversity. We will do this by determining the biomass consumed and created, including the carbon and methane exhalations from the extant population. Once this is accomplished, we will have the necessary data to provide you with an assessment of pollutants and a methodology for regulatory compliance. Are there any questions?”

The ranchers reacted to this little speech with stunned silence until Sam said, “Yeah Let me make sure I understand. You make your little study and turn it over to the EPA, the government then swoops in, makes a declaration on how we're a menace to society, and we get kicked off our land.” He pointed his finger at the two boys. “I tell you before I let you within a mile of my ranch, it'll be over my dead body. I seen your black helicopters. Bring 'em on, buddy. I got some ordnance ready for ya!”

Brian and Phillip looked at each other again, then Phillip said, “We don't have any helicopters, sir.”

Sam crossed his arms. “So you say.”

“No, really. I mean we just want to—”

Aaron interrupted. “What's the name of your organization?”

“We're from Green Planet, a private non-profit,” Philip answered.

“Why you sons of bitches,” Aaron growled. “It was you two who killed my heifer, wasn't it?”

“Sir?”

Aaron stood. “They knocked her out yesterday with a sledgehammer, looked like, then cut her throat. And my fence was cut in two places. I found this note. It's how I know'd it was them.” He dug around in his pocket and then produced a folded up paper, unfolded it, and read its contents. It said:

A shocked silence ensued while the brothers took on an expression best known as “deer in the headlights.”
The Monkey Wrench Gang
was the title of a novel by Edward Abbey about a crew of rowdy, drunken guys raising havoc with private property throughout the west during the 1970s. I'd read it and I suspected most of the ranchers at least knew something about it. The novel had inspired ecoterrorists who specialized in things like spiking trees to cause chainsaws to whip around and kill lumberjacks. They also cut fences, burned homes being built in what they considered eco-sensitive areas, and occasionally killed livestock. In other words, menaces to decent society.

Philip found his voice although it was a bit squeaky. “Sir, we're from Green Planet. We don't know anything about the Green Monkey Wrench Gang.”

“And we just arrived this morning,” Brian pointed out.

Edith took up for the brothers, saying, “Senator Claggers said these boys would drive in from Bozeman this morning. I saw them pull in. They haven't been here long enough for any mischief.”

“Senator Claggers!” This eruption was from Tom Wattles, a rancher from down south. “That old hypocrite? You taking orders from him now, Mayor?”

“It never hurts to be polite to a member of the United States Senate, Tom.” Gently, Edith reminded everyone of the sad and sorry truth that made Claggers so important. “Senator Claggers is on the committee that oversees the BLM.”

“That don't give him the right to send these two girly-boys over here,” Sam said. “But, hell, they look to me like they'd be afraid of a cow. Naw, Aaron. I don't see them doing what you said.”

Jeanette stood up. When Jeanette Coulter stood, I don't care what else is going on, folks tended to pay attention. “I had a bull killed the same way,” she said. “And our fence was also cut.”

“Why didn't you tell us that before?” Sam demanded.

“It was Square C business, Sam,” she replied and Sam nodded, getting that.

“If these two didn't do it,” Frank Torgerson, the county mortician, said, “then who did?”

I had been watching the brothers. If they were guilty of these crimes, I wasn't getting a vibe in that direction. Sam was right. I doubted either one of them had ever seen a cow up close.

Jeanette nodded to the Green Planeteers. “You'd best leave,” she said, quietly.

“Get out of the county and stay out,” Sam added. “We catch you around here, I got a rope for a necktie party.”

“You'd hang us?” Philip gulped.