by Don Winslow
“We are starved for company out there, and I have a teenage daughter who would just love to interrogate you about life in the big city.
He does have a point, Neal thought. I’m hungry and tired, and if I call Friends just now they might send the old van out to haul me back in. And I’m not ready for that just yet.
And after all, I am looking for a ranch near Austin.
“Well, thank you. It’s very kind of you,” Neal said, feeling like a lying hypocrite.
But that’s what undercover work is all about, he thought.
Three more beers met their maker before Steve and Neal got back in the truck and headed out of town. They drove west for a mile or so and then turned south down the dirt road Steve had pointed out earlier. The road ran roughly parallel between the Toiyabe Range to the east and the Shoshones to the west, through pretty flat sagebrush plain broken by deep gullies. It took an occasional dip down into one of the wider gullies but then rose right back up onto the plain.
The terrain was mostly the blue-gray of sagebrush above the yellow-gray of the alkaloid soil, punctuated here and there by a few deep green fields of alfalfa. The mountains in the background, rising as high as twelve thousand feet, were a blend of the darkest—almost black—green, and purple, with patches of gray stone and bright yellow spreads of wildflowers.
Cattle dotted the landscape. Most grazed in small herds far from the road, but a more adventurous few explored the grass along the roadside, stopping to stare indignantly at the truck as it passed by. Steve had to stop once or twice for cows and calves that were standing in the middle of the road.
“Most of what we’re on now is Hansen Cattle Company land,” Steve explained. “Hansen owns most of this part of the valley. In fact, my spread is about the only piece he hasn’t bought up the past few years.”
“Does he want to buy you out?” Neal asked.
“Oh, I suppose he would if I ever left, but he doesn’t seem to mind my puny presence. Bob Hansen’s a good guy, which is a good thing, seeing as how we’re each other’s only neighbors. His son Jory and my daughter Shelly are the hot item at the high school right now.”
The truck lurched down into a particularly bumpy old wash. A jackrabbit, its big ears twitching with anxiety, broke out of the sagebrush and sprang away with long jumps at amazing speed. A skinny coyote appeared at the edge of the road, gave the truck a thanks-a-heap glare, and trotted back into the brush.
They drove for another forty minutes or so before coming to the Mills place. It was a big, two-story log house that sat about two hundred yards east of the road, on the left side of the dirt driveway. An enormous hay bam just to the west almost dwarfed the house. On the side of the barn was an open shed, with two tractors and some other agricultural equipment that Neal didn’t recognize. About fifty yards north of the house was a corral made of metal piping. Three horses pricked up their ears at the sound of the truck, saw the vehicle, and trotted to the edge of the fence. There were two other, smaller livestock pens and then another barn beyond that.
“It’s beautiful,” Neal said as he got out of the truck.
He meant it. The Mills place seemed to stand alone in the sagebrush, the only building within sight in the beautiful valley, framed by the mountains. The stillness was at once soothing and alarming.
“Yeah, well, it has its moments,” Steve said. “Of course, it’s under about two feet of snow from October to April, then you’re knee-deep in mud until sometime in June, then you got your dust until September, and autumn lasts about an hour and a half until it snows again. But goddamn if I don’t love it. Speaking of which, here’s the missus.”
The “missus” was maybe five feet three on tiptoes. Her black hair, cut short just below her ears, framed her strong cheekbones, strong nose, strong jaw, and wide eyebrows. Her face wasn’t pretty. It was handsome, and its beauty wasn’t diminished by the laugh lines and worry lines etched by twenty years of crazy on an isolated ranch twenty miles from nowhere.
She was wearing a red shirt tucked into trim blue jeans over white sneakers. Her sleeves were rolled up and the whole effect was one of energy, efficiency, and strength.
She kissed her husband on the cheek and offered Neal her hand.
“I brought home a stray,” Steve said to her. “This is Neal Carey.
“I’m Peggy Mills. Welcome.”
If she was surprised or annoyed at having a strange guest sprung on her, she didn’t show it. Neal had the feeling that he wasn’t the first stray that Steve had ever brought home.
“Thank you.”
“Has Steve been showing you the sights?”
“Some of them.”
“I’ll bet. Come on in.”
She led them into the kitchen and sat Neal down at a wooden drop-leaf table. The kitchen was small but uncluttered. Pots, pans, and spoons hung from a metal ring above the sink. Checkered contact paper covered the counter.
“Where’s Shelly?” Steve asked her.
“Riding around with Jory Hansen. She should be back soon.”
Steve chuckled. “Jory’s old man won’t like him wasting a Saturday afternoon.” He poured himself a cup of coffee from a pot on the counter and sat down.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Peggy said. “I think Eleanor’s sick.”
“Oh?”
“She’s been bawling all afternoon.”
Steve sipped his coffee, set his cup down, and headed for the door.
“There is no rest for the weary,” he said. “See you in a bit, Neal.”
“I’ll be right back,” Peggy said. “Grab yourself a cup.” She followed her husband out onto the small enclosed mud porch where he was putting on a pair of rubber boots.
Neal figured that Steve was filling her in on their visitor. Neal took the moment to look around the house.
It was basically a square. The walls were made of big, dark logs with white mortar in between. The kitchen occupied a narrow rectangle on the north side of the house. The table was set by a big window that looked out to the mountains on the east. Three other windows gave a view to the north, to the horse corral and the barns. Closets and a stairwell made up the south wall of the kitchen. On the other side was a large living room that made up the rest of the first floor.
The living room was terrific. A stone fireplace took up most of its north wall. A big sofa stretched along the south wall, and two big easy chairs on either side, by the fireplace, created a conversation area. There was a big, dark blue Indian rug on the floor and a large glass coffee table in the center.
The east wall was a beauty, being mostly a huge picture window that afforded a wonderful view of the Mills ranch. Beyond the porch that wrapped around the east and south sides of the house was a small lawn that had been laboriously nurtured and carved out of the surrounding sagebrush. Beyond the lawn the land sloped gently for hundreds of yards down to what appeared to be a creek bed, judging by the thin scattering of pines along its side. The land rose again on the other side of the creek, particularly on a big spur that ran down from one of the bigger Toiyabe peaks.
The mountains were a revelation from this perspective. What had looked from a distance like a solid mass was actually a series of separate peaks joined by saddles along the top. Each peak had a spur that ran down onto the flat, forming a wedge where the mountain met the sagebrush plain. Parts of the mountain were thickly wooded, other sections looked barren and rocky, still others were abloom in enormous fields of wildflowers. Clouds were beginning to wrap around the mountain peaks, obscuring the summits and softening the sharp lines of cliffs and ravines carved in the western face of the mountain.
It was a view, Neal thought, that seemed to build in evocative layers—the homey porch, the struggling lawn, cattle grazing out on the plain, and the dramatic mountains in the background.
“Pretty, isn’t it,” Peggy said as she came back in.
“Pretty doesn’t begin to say it.”
She stood beside him and looked out the window. “
Sometimes,” she said, “I just pull up a chair and sit. How’s your head?”
Better than it’s been in a long time, lady, just looking out this window, being here. “It’s okay.”
“Sounds like you ran into some bad luck.”
“I feel like it ran into me.”
She gazed out the window for a few more seconds, as if she were thinking about saying something and wondering whether she should.
“What would you like to know, Mrs. Mills?” Neal asked.
“I’m not much for small talk, Neal. I’m the mother of an impressionable teenage girl and I need to know who’s in my house. So, is there anything about you I should know?”
Where to begin, where to begin … “I’ve had some troubles.”
“Drug troubles?”
“No.” Well, not my drug troubles, anyway.
“Troubles with the law?” Peggy asked.
“No.”
Neal felt her eyes like laser beams, looking right through him.
“So you’re just trying to find yourself?”
No. I’m just trying to find Cody McCall. “Something like that,” Neal answered.
She looked at him for another moment and said, “Well, there are worse places to find yourself.”
Steve came back in the door.
“How’s Eleanor?” Peggy asked.
“Even nastier than usual. She’s got too much milk for that calf and her udders are real swollen. You’d bawl, too.”
“So are you going to Hansen’s?”
“I guess so,” Steve sighed. “Actually, it’s okay. I wouldn’t mind getting another calf.”
“I’ll get some boots on,” Peggy said.
“No,” Steve said. He turned to Neal. “You want to play cowboy with me?”
The turnoff to Hansen’s place was about two miles farther south down the road. The big white clapboard house was set about a half mile east of the road. It had a two-story central section with two one-floor wings coming at forty-five-degree angles on either side.
The ranch had none of the casual, loose charm of the American West but an almost obsessive air of efficiency and order. White fences bordered the long driveway. The clapboard house gleamed with a recent coat of white paint and shiny red shutters. Two large barns were painted orthodox red, as were several equipment sheds, a garage, and a big bunkhouse that was set several hundred yards east of the house. A large lawn, green from fertilizers and neatly trimmed, was protected from the road by a perimeter of crushed limestone. A heard of holstein cattle, uniformly black and white, grazed in a rectangular pasture. A smaller herd of light brown Swiss Charolais patrolled the next enclosure.
“Bob Hansen is a model rancher,” Steve explained to Neal as the old pickup rumbled up Hansen’s drive, “and I mean that sincerely. He scratched this place out of the rabbit bush and he gets the most out of every inch. Now, Bob doesn’t have what you’d call a scintillating sense of humor, and he isn’t the kind of guy you’d sit and have a beer with, but he’s a hell of a cattle man and a fine neighbor. When I got my leg broke, Bob or Jory or one of the hands was over my place every day feeding the cattle and chopping the ice out of the creek.”
Steve gave the horn a beep before pulling into the crushed rock parking circle outside the garage where two green tractors were parked side by side, as shiny and bright as if they had just come out of the John Deere showroom. A minute later a short, middle-aged man dressed in a light khaki shirt over khaki slacks and a big gray Stetson hat came out of the barn. He had the gait of a bantam rooster. His short blond hair was carefully combed and his blue eyes highlighted a handsome face. He looked like the second lead in a forties movie, the guy who gets the money but loses the girl.
“Hello, Steve,” he said.
“Bob. This is Neal Carey.” Steve said.
Bob took off the canvas glove and offered his hand. “Nice to meet you. What can I do you for, Steve?”
“Got a calf you can sell me? I got a cow giving too much milk.”
“Well … I don’t have anything really good I can spare.”
“Don’t need anything really good.”
“Well … then I got a mixed-breed Angus and Charolais heifer I could let you have, might be good for some table beef down the road.
“She’ll do.”
“Come take a look at her.”
He led them to a corral behind the barn where a few cows and calves were lazily swatting at flies with their tails. Hansen pointed at a long-legged calf the color of mud.
“That’s the one,” said Hansen.
“How’d she happen?” Steve asked.
“Ohhh, back up in the mountains during spring pasture, I suppose,” Hansen said with an edge of irritation. “The two hands I had up there weren’t too careful about keeping the herds separated. You know cowboys these days, they know it’s a cow and that’s about all they know or want to know. Half of them move on after the first payday.”
Say, Mr. Hansen, Neal thought, you wouldn’t have a cowboy named Harley McCall working for you, would you?
“How much will you take for her?” Steve asked.
“Hardly worth me feeding her—she’ll never do much. A hundred?”
“Sounds fair.”
Steve opened his wallet and handed Hansen two fifties.
“Thank you,” Hansen said. “I do appreciate it.”
“How’s the bull business these days?”
“Terrible. Federal government’s going to put me out of business. They make all these regulations that mean I have to buy new equipment, but then the bank won’t give me the loan to buy it.”
Steve Mills took his cap off, shook his head, and then put the cap back on. “That’s ridiculous, Bob. Bill Bradshaw knows that you’re one of the best ranchers in Nevada.”
“Bill don’t own the bank anymore. It got bought by some California outfit.”
Steve shook his head again. “Things change, don’t they?”
“Too much. Had some government inspector from Reno out here snooping around my dairy, saying it’s a health hazard. Saying my milk’s ‘unsafe.’
Neal heard the indignation in the man’s voice.
“Shit,” said Steve.
“Of course,” Hansen continued, his voice starting to rise, “with the price you get for milk these days—and I mean the price I get, not the middlemen—I might as well go out of business, maybe just sit around and drink whiskey.”
“Hey,” Steve asked, “would you mind giving Neal here a tour of your place? He’s from New York City. It’d be an education for him. While you’re doing that, I’ll wrestle this calf here into my truck.”
“Oh, a man from New York wouldn’t be interested in my operation.”
Actually, Mr. Hansen, this man from New York would be very interested in looking around your operation. Neal said, “I’d like to see it if you feel like showing it to me.”
Hansen shook his head a little but looked pleased nevertheless. “Well, come on.”
When he stepped into the livestock barn Neal wished that Joe Graham were there with him. Graham would have loved it—the long narrow building was immaculate. The floors had been scrubbed and disinfected, the stanchions shone from metal polish, the equipment glistened.
“This is really something,” Neal said. And he meant it—anyone could see the dedication and hard work that went into Hansen’s operation.
“Thank you. Care to see the rest?”
“Yes, please.”
Hansen gave him the tour. He showed Neal the neatly laid out barns, the tool shop, the equipment shed. He took him along the different pastures that separated the breeds of cattle and explained how he rotated the grazing schedules to let the land refresh itself. He pointed out the wooded slopes above the pasture that he had left pristine so he could hunt deer for the meat locker and take firewood from the deadfall.
He took him around to the large garden—almost a farm in itself—behind the house where he grew all of the vegetables for their table.
“How many people work here?” Neal asked.
“Oh … that depends on the season and the economy. Right now only about twelve. That’s not including my boy Jory and the cook. My wife used to do the cooking, but since the cancer took her …” His voice trailed off. “We ought to get back to Steve.”
“Thanks for the tour.”
“My pleasure, young man,” Hansen answered. Then he added shyly, “Thank you for your interest.”
Steve was leaning against the truck. The calf stood trembling in the truck bed.
“Sorry you had to load her yourself,” Hansen said. “The hands are up bringing a herd in for inoculations and I think Jory’s out running around with your Shelly.”
He chuckled a little and Steve joined in, a shared joke between fathers of teenagers.
Steve said, “Youth will be served.”
“I suppose.”
“Aw, Bob, it’s just one of those homecoming king and queen things. They ain’t gonna run off and get married or nothing.”
“No, I guess not.”
“Well, you take care, Bob.”
“Yup. Nice to meet you, Neal.”
“Nice to meet you, sir.”
Bob’s head came up a little on the “sir” and he gave Neal an evaluating look before he turned around and headed back to the barn.
“Climb in the back and hold on to that calf, will you, Neal? Steve asked.
“Do you have a rope?”
“Yep. At home where I forgot it. Just get a headlock on the calf and keep it from jumping out or tumbling around.”
Neal found that the only way he could get a headlock on the calf was by kneeling on the metal bed of the truck. This wasn’t too bad until the truck got bumping down the road, bouncing Neal’s knees off the steel studs with every rut, rock, and jolt, of which there were about two thousand. Neal winced, groaned, whimpered, and finally cursed every time his kneecaps slammed into the steel, but he held on to the calf.
The calf wasn’t all that thrilled either. Bawling and trembling, she let loose a stream of urine all over both of Neal’s pant legs. Neal could feel it soaking through and sticking to his legs, but he held on to the calf until the truck took a particularly daredevil bounce and the calf squirmed out of Neal’s hold and attempted to jump over the back end. Neal sprawled on his stomach and managed to get a hold of her left rear leg.