He chose his next words carefully, not being a big one for airing his slightly soiled laundry with his coworkers. “When she was alive . . . I mean, did you and your wife fight a lot?”
“Sometimes.” I glanced at him. “You and Maria?”
“Yeah.”
“About what?”
He blew his breath out between his teeth. “She got a dog.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror at the beast in the back. “I thought you liked dogs.”
“I do, but she went to the pound and got a border collie–blue heeler puppy, and you know how they are if you don’t have something for them to do.”
I grunted. “You got any furniture left?”
“A few sticks, but he’s turned his attention to the woodwork in the rented house and it’s taking a beating.” Sancho gazed out the window and dropped the Basque term for their expatriates. “Diaspora.”
“That’s it.” I watched him for a while longer. “You thinking about running away and becoming a shepherd?” He didn’t laugh, and I figured that maybe I better redirect the conversation. “You know the government effectively cut off immigration to Basques in 1921 with the National Origins Quota Act.”
“And why did they do that?”
I shrugged. “Too many Basques, I guess—and you know what that leads to.”
His eyes shifted toward me. “What?”
“Harmonized singing, synchronized dancing, drinking, and general joyous humanity.”
He bent his mouth in a tight-lipped smile. “Well, we don’t want that, do we?”
“Nope, but a senator over in Nevada, McCarran, opened it back up with the Immigration Act of 1952, allowing a quota of five hundred for Spanish sheepherders—I wonder what he had against the French.” I pulled the truck off the gravel road through an open gate onto the sparse two-track, then slid to a stop and reached back to scratch the fur behind Dog’s ears. “Of course now they enter the country under the H-2A temporary agricultural workers program that lets companies hire foreigners for jobs Americans won’t do. Much more pedantic sounding.”
“Do you really sit around and memorize that stuff?” He looked at me, unsure as to why I’d stopped the truck.
“Would you get out and shut that gate? Evidently Ranger Coon wasn’t brought up in a ranching family.”
He did as I asked, then hopped back in. I pulled out, lecturing him a little more on his culture. “You know those guys have one of the highest suicide rates of any occupation, right?”
“Senators?”
“Shepherds.”
He continued to stare at the lonely hills still wearing a dusting of early spring snow.
Thinking I could get him to feel better about his own situation, I continued. “The poor borregueros are out here in the middle of nowhere most of the year, getting paid $650 a month, living in a five-foot-by-ten-foot camper without running water, a toilet, or electricity . . .” I took a breath. “I’d imagine it gets tough.”
We drove along, and he still said nothing.
“It borders on total social isolation.”
Finally, he pulled the bill of his ball cap over his eyes and leaned back in his seat. “Sounds pretty good to me right now.”
* * *
We pulled to a stop near a stand of lodgepole pines beside Coon’s mint-green forest service Jeep. Looking through the windshield of my truck, I could see a battered sheep wagon, a sad-looking sorrel gelding, about a hundred sheep, and the gray-shirted ranger standing over a man with his face in his hands and a bolt-action .22 lying across his thighs.
Thinking it best not to tempt Dog with the hundred sheep, we cracked the window and left him in the truck and approached the two men. Coon waved and stepped aside, happy to hand over the sensitive situation. The sheepherder looked young, but the burnished skin of his hands and face bore testament to many an hour spent out in the elements.
Santiago stepped ahead of me and kneeled down to the man seated on the steps of the wagon, gently took the rifle away, and handed it to me; I pulled the bolt action and caught the diminutive round as it popped out.
“Kaixo.”
The man had been crying and wiped the remainder of his tears away with the sleeve of his shirt as Saizarbitoria bumped the suntanned man’s shoulder with the back of his hand in a comradely manner to get his attention. “Pozten nair zu ezagutzeaz. Zer moduz?” The man didn’t respond and sat there looking at him blankly. “Nola duzu izena?”
Finally, the man grunted a response. “Qué?”
Sancho stared at him. “Barkatu . . . Ba al dakizueuskaraz?”
He shook his head. “Qué?”
The Basquo’s face dropped into the palm of one hand, the next words mumbled through his fingers. “Hablas español?”
The man immediately straightened and smiled. “Sí!” Rattling off a monologue far faster than I could understand with my high school Spanish, he and Sancho talked for a while.
In a lull, my deputy glanced up. “His name is José Vargas, and he’s from Chile.”
We both looked at Coon, who folded his arms. “Well, I didn’t know what he was talking about—he’s in a sheep wagon and herding sheep, so I figured he was Basque.” At a loss for anything else to say, he changed tack. “When I pulled up here, he was sitting there crying, and I couldn’t get out of him what the problem was so I called you guys.”
I glanced at the man and then to Saizarbitoria. “Did he tell you what was the matter?”
There was another flurry of Spanish as the swarthy man gestured toward an older sheep with a unique fleece that we hadn’t noticed before tied to the wheel of the wagon, a lamb staying nearby.
The Basquo listened intently, hiding a grin and trying to repress the humor of the situation, finally standing and placing his hands on his hips and looking at us. “Evidently, we are in the presence of royalty.”
Coon looked down at the sad man. “What, he’s the prince of Chile?”
“If my translation is on the mark, it’s not him.” Saizarbitoria smiled and swept off his hat in mock respect, gesturing toward the sheep tied to the wagon who now bleated at us. “It’s her.” He laughed. “Gentlemen, may I introduce Petunia, Bandit Queen of the Bighorns.”
The ranger was the first to respond. “You’re shitting me. That’s the ewe that launched a thousand strays?”
I glanced past the men at the sheep with the florid fleece. “Well, I’ll be.”
Sancho looked at all three of us as if we were crazy. “If it’s not too much to ask, who the hell is Petunia, Bandit Queen of the Bighorns?”
The saga was an odd one in the storied past of Sheridan, Big Horn, Washakie, and Absaroka Counties, a detailed tale that I’d heard from Vic Garber, the original and present owner of Petunia, and I told it as best I knew.
“When you are running flocks as large as a couple thousand on rough range, you have to have what they call in the business ‘markers.’ So that the herders can get a rough count, you have one for each hundred head of stock. Well, about five years ago on the Garber ranch near Sheridan, a ewe foaled a lamb with a somewhat unique wool pattern that for all intents and purposes resembled a flowering petunia—hence, the legend was born.”
Saizarbitoria waited patiently and then looked at me dubiously. “She’s famous in four counties because she looks like a petunia?”
“Petunia and her mother went to summer pasture in the mountains and then returned to the Garber place, and since Petunia was a good-sized ewe and had a distinctive pattern, Garber kept her as a marker. Paul Miller was Vic’s top herder at that time, and he made sure that Petunia, being such a stunning sheep, was bred. She had a lamb, although not one as distinctive as she was. Well, as these things sometimes happen with cattle or sheep, Petunia hated her lamb, so she was given the usual treatment until she accepted the baby. She went up to the Bighorns that summer with
her lamb and things were fine.”
I paused to catch my breath. “Well, the second year Miller bred Petunia, she had her lamb and loved it, so was sent to the mountains again. Along toward the end of August, Garber was up checking on his camp when Paul told him that Petunia was gone a couple of nights that week, but was back now. Garber, a tough old hand and a shrewd businessman, knew that a rogue sheep could lead a lot of the others astray, so he told Miller that if she was a bunch-quitter, to shoot her.”
Saizarbitoria looked at me in horror. “Shoot the sheep?”
I nodded my head. “Miller pretty much had the same response and said, ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that, what about the lamb?’ Garber knew that Miller and the flock of sheep were up there at around nine or ten thousand feet, so he tells him to butcher the lamb and to stick what he can’t eat into a snowbank and says he’ll take the rest home the next time he comes up.”
Sancho glanced at Coon. “He killed the lamb?”
Chuck shook his head. “I haven’t ever heard the whole story.”
They both turned back to me, and I stuffed my hands into my jeans. “Well, the next time Garber goes up there, Paul tells him that before he could shoot her, Petunia lit out and that she had taken a bunch of sheep with her when she left. So Garber tells him that the next time he sees her, he’s to shoot the damn sheep on sight. Well, Miller doesn’t want to do it, but Garber tells him that they’ll lose the whole flock before she’s through, so shoot her.”
It was possible that the Chilean shepherd, Vargas, knew a little English, because he was now listening intently.
“Vic gets home that night and Tom Koltiska from down here in Absaroka County calls him up and tells him that he’s got a sheep with Garber’s brand on it, a marker with an unusual pattern in her wool and that he’s at a loss to describe it. Whereupon Garber mutters into the phone, ‘Petunia.’
“Tom yells, ‘That’s her!’”
Coon began laughing.
“Garber tells him, ‘Tom, do me a favor and shoot her.’ Well, Tom tells him that he doesn’t want to do that and says, ‘What about the lamb?’ Garber tells him to butcher the lamb and to have dinner on him, but Tom says that he hates the thought and, by the way, she came with more than a truckload of Garber’s outlaw strays. So, they make arrangements for him to go down there and pick them up, Garber thinking that he would take Petunia’s fate into his own hands. He is there the next morning bright and early, but the first thing Tom says is that Petunia’s gone again but not to worry because she and her lamb are on Chip Lawrence’s place near Ten Sleep and they’ll bring her over at noon.”
Saizarbitoria shook his head. “That’s over sixty miles.”
“The pickup shows at around twelve, and Garber says he can tell by the way the guys are behaving that they’re a little apprehensive. The foreman comes over and introduces himself and tells Vic that that damned marker of his must have a sixth sense and has gotten away again.”
Chuck was still laughing.
“Garber tells ’em that if they ever lay eyes on her that they are to shoot her on sight, but the head guy says that he doesn’t want to do that. Vic tells him that that damned sheep has already gotten three different ranchers in trouble, so shoot her. Well, the men ask about the lamb, and Garber tells ’em to eat it.”
“Later that year in December, Tommy Wayman and one of his men were rewiring some of their sheds over in Big Horn County up near Shell and guess who shows up?”
Sancho asked. “Did they call Garber?”
“They did.”
“And she got away again?”
“Yep.” I glanced past the men at the sheep, who was looking innocent enough tied to the wagon wheel with her lamb nearby. “Gentlemen, in six years that sheep has covered the entire Bighorn Mountain range who knows how many times.”
We all had a laugh, and then the Basquo glanced down at José and rattled off a few words of Spanish. The shepherd responded, and then his eyes welled up again. Sancho smiled and patted the man’s shoulder. “He says he radioed in to the rancher who contacted Garber and . . . Well, you can guess what the verdict is.”
I looked at the .22 in my hands, thinking about the plan that I had just formulated and how I was going to play this.
José spoke some more, and Sancho translated. “He says that all the shepherds on the mountain know her and love her, that she’s a legend and he doesn’t want to be the one to do it.”
I glanced at Coon, but he backed away. “Oh, no . . . Not me—not my responsibility.”
Carefully returning the small round into the bolt-action, I slid the mechanism home and stood there like Tom Horn, judge and executioner, aware that if I overdid it I was going to have to shoot a sheep and worse, her lamb.
“No, boss, really?”
I spoke with my most resolute voice. “It’s got to be done—she’s costing these ranchers money and time that they don’t have.”
Putting on my most reluctant performance, I started to walk around him, but he held up an arm. “What about the lamb?”
“It’ll have to go, too.” I gestured toward Vargas and walked the fine line of overkill. “Ask him if he’s got any more ammunition for the .22—I’d hate to use my .45 on a lamb.”
Saizarbitoria stood there, looking at me.
* * *
It didn’t take long for Chuck and me to safely tie both Petunia and her lamb to the hold-down eyelets in the bed of my truck as the Basquo carried on a conversation with the shepherd and then joined us at the Bullet. “He says he won’t take any money, but I’ll just run him up some groceries and a bottle of red wine next week.”
Chuck looked at him. “You’d better keep the Bandit Queen locked up tight, or every rancher in Wyoming is going to be after you—especially Garber.”
Santiago walked over to the truck and pulled the wool back away from the sheep’s eyes, and I could pretty well figure that there was some kind of connection going on between the aged ewe and the genetic coding in the Basquo. “Maybe her wandering days are over; we’ve got almost an acre behind the house that’s fenced.”
Saizarbitoria and I climbed into the Bullet and waved good-bye, turning back onto the dirt two-track, slowly descending out of the high pasture. Sancho threw an arm over the seat and looked past Dog into the bed. “At least that damned puppy of ours will have something to do now.”
I drove the entire forty miles without cracking a smile—a personal best.
Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories Page 16