Rhino Ranch

by Larry McMurtry

  “Dal leaves at three-fifteen and gets home about eight,” he told her. “Wouldn’t leave much time for screwing, even if we were lovers, which we’re not.”

  “I may go to Africa tomorrow,” she said. “I miss Africa. You’ll have to make your own breakfast for a while.”

  “Back to batching, I guess,” Duane said. “I’ll miss your company.”

  “Why not go with me?”

  Duane shook his head.

  “Spoil sport,” she said.

  33

  “MY MOM’S FREAKING OUT, as you probably know, Grandpa,” Willy said, long-distance from Oxford. “She’s trying to use me to sway you—an old tactic.”

  “Right,” Duane said. “I cut them off until they can be polite to Dal, who is a nice woman, and one who’s had a much harder life than your mother and your aunt.”

  “I bet she’s not even your mistress,” Willy said.

  “Nope. So how are you?”

  “I wish I knew more math,” Willy said. “My German’s coming along but I sure don’t have enough math.”

  “What’s the big thing you need math for?”

  “I’m beginning to think you need math for everything,” Willy said. “In honor of Einstein I’ve been rowing lately. Being on the water is very relaxing. Einstein and his wife rowed on a lake called Lake Listerine—it was given to Princeton by the man who invented Listerine.”

  “They still got the benefit of some exercise, I guess,” Duane said. “Do you like it over in England?”

  “Love it,” Willy said. “I feel like I’m in a civilization at last.”

  “Any plans to come home?”

  “Not immediately. On my next break I’m going to France to see the cave paintings. When Picasso saw them he said the cave painters had done everything, which is quite a compliment.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Duane said.

  “Why did that old Texas Ranger hang himself from the tower?” Willy asked.

  “If I could answer questions like that I’d be rich enough to build some genius a lake like Einstein had.”

  “Come on, what would you call it?”

  “Why not Lake Willy?” Duane asked.

  “That would really freak my mom out,” Willy said. “I think you should call it something else.”

  “How about Lake Geritol, then?”

  “Why not Lake Moore? It would please my mom and Aunt Nellie.”

  “Nope, can’t—people would think I was putting on airs,” Duane said.

  34

  SOMETIMES DAL WOULD have to work late—Duane would begin to miss her before she got home. Sometimes he waited in his driveway, waiting to see her headlights swim onto his road.

  He had come to think of his house as their house but Dal didn’t think of it that way. She used the kitchen to make them tea or a simple meal, but she had scarcely been in the rest of the house—just her bedroom and bath. She had never been in Duane’s bedroom.

  On some nights, when Dal was late, Duane would drive out to the North Tower—it was still the only tower that had been built—and visit with Bobby Lee for an hour. Bobby Lee was being paid lavishly, and was the only person in Thalia, other than Duane, who seemed to enjoy K.K.’s confidence.

  Most of the activity Bobby and his deputies observed was meth cooking, as it had been from the beginning. Bobby Lee reported every fire, resulting in the arrests of many meth cookers, and yet the volume of infractions did not decline. There was an animus in the meth community against Bobby Lee, and yet he came to no harm.

  The possibility that he might worried Duane though.

  “I hope you keep that rifle loaded,” he said, referring to the weapon propped against a cot.

  “That rifle? That rifle was meant to stop a charging elephant or rhino,” Bobby Lee said. “The kick would probably kill me. I’ve got a pistol, and Boyd Cotton’s Winchester. Meth heads are crazy but not real smart. I could probably hold them off with my light weaponry.”

  The words were scarcely out of his mouth when a pickup with hugely oversized tires came bouncing across the cattle guard and headed for the tower.

  “I think they mean to ram us,” Duane said, picking up the big game rifle as a precaution.

  “Let ’em,” Bobby Lee said. “This tower is set in reinforced concrete. That rig there is just meant for car shows.”

  The big rig nudged the tower once or twice but did not attempt to push it over. Two men got out, one skinny and one a well-known local bodybuilder named Lewis. He wore a T-shirt that said KICK ASS.

  The other man was Donald Deek, the bad seed of a family from Dundee, population not many.

  Duane and Bobby had known both men for much of their lives—neither of them was likable. Lewis was a skilled bow hunter who was not careful about whose deer or turkeys he shot.

  “If you’re looking to buy a rhinoceros you’ve come to the wrong place,” Bobby Lee said. “All ours are spoken for.”

  “Fuck you, Bobby—we don’t want no rhino,” Lewis said. “We want you to stop calling the fuzz every time we decide to cook a little meth.”

  “Most of whose ingredients are legal anyway,” Donald Deek said.

  “Right, it’s just the combination that’s illegal,” Bobby reminded them. “Besides which, this is grass fire country. I don’t care if you bathe in meth, I just don’t want you setting fires in a tinderbox year like this.”

  “I’ll climb up there if I have to and throw your skinny ass half way to Olney, if you don’t stop it,” Lewis said.

  Duane had employed Lewis several times over the years—he was fairly good help on a rig floor. He walked over and looked down at the two men. Donald Deek was one of several dealers who had supplied Dickie during his addict years.

  “I think you men best go home,” he said.

  “Nobody asked your opinion, Mr. Moore,” Deek said.

  “However that may be, I’m standing with Bobby,” Duane said. Then he went over and picked up the big game rifle he had recommended earlier.

  “Just stop calling the fuzz, that’s all we want,” Lewis said.

  Duane chambered a shell into the big gun, set the gun firmly against his shoulder and blew out one of the pickup’s oversized tires.

  The two meth cookers were stunned. Their pickup sagged badly to one side.

  Duane ejected the shell and put the rifle back where it had been before. The kick had indeed rocked him back on his heels.

  “I hope I didn’t dislocate my shoulder,” he told Bobby. “I think you better stick to guns you aren’t afraid to fire.”

  Both Deek and Lewis were on their cell phones. Both turned out to be calling Triple A, which, soon enough, came to their rescue.

  That he had won the dispute did not reassure Duane, or Bobby Lee, either.

  “Other than ruining a big tire, and maybe dislocating my shoulder, that accomplished nothing,” Duane remarked. “They were just the leaders, not the troops.”

  By way of answer Bobby Lee pointed north, where a tiny but bright flame shone; a meth fire, obviously.

  It angered Duane.

  “We should have climbed down and stomped their asses,” he said.

  Bobby Lee smiled.

  “If I was you I’d take a good-sized club if I meant to subdue Lewis,” he said. “Nobody ever said Lewis was smart, but he is stout.”

  Duane was calming a little.

  “And you’re old,” Bobby Lee reminded him.

  “No getting around it,” Duane said.

  35

  FROM THAT NIGHT ON, the meth wars accelerated in Thalia County. A few days after the encounter at the tower fourteen fires were set, three of them on land Moore Drilling owned north of a little creek called Middlefork. And the other fires were not far away. It was trash casually thrown in Middlefork Creek that had caused Duane to launch his personal crusade against litter.

  A new sheriff had just been elected in Thalia County, a woman named Lena Loftis. She was the first woman sheriff in the neighborhood and
her election had only been made possible by the gross misbehavior on the part of the previous sheriff, who had taken forty-five minutes to answer a drive-by robbery at the Kwik-Sack, two blocks from his office.

  Lena Loftis was a big stout woman who had grown up on a hay farm and could toss one-hundred-pound bales of hay onto the hay wagon as well as any man.

  Duane liked Lena and voted for her. When her victory was confirmed many of the good old boys in town announced that they were moving away rather than accept the indignity of acknowledging the legitimacy of a woman sheriff.

  Despite much vociferous talk, in the end not a single good old boy moved away, except for old Tom Lawton, who only moved into his grave.

  Lena Loftis let Duane ride with her when they inspected the fires on his own or his company’s property. There were five fires and no meth heads at any of them.

  “They’re taunting you,” Lena concluded. “They set these fires and then cook the meth in their bathtubs, I’d guess.”

  “I don’t much like how things are looking, Sheriff,” Duane said. “We’re lucky it’s a calm day. If it was a little more windy we’d be calling in the fire trucks now.”

  Sheriff Lena got a fire extinguisher out of her trunk and killed what was left of the fire.

  Duane happened to look to the north—he had been looking south as he helped douse the fire. When he did happen to look to the north he noticed a bright flame he had not seen before. It was his cabin, and it was burning.

  “Uh-oh,” Lena said, when she saw what had caught his attention.

  “Those little fuckers!” she added.

  “One of them isn’t little,” Duane said.

  36

  A FIRE TRUCK SOON CAME from the nearby hamlet of Holliday. There was little they could do—mainly just wet down the smoldering embers. Duane’s cabin was gone.

  “We’ll get them on arson, now,” Sheriff Lena said. “Maybe put them in the Big House for a while.”

  “I don’t think it was Lewis and Deek,” Duane said. “They’re too lazy to produce something on this level.”

  “What level?” Lena asked. “It was just a plank cabin, right?”

  “Right, but it takes thinking about and I doubt those two can think that well,” he said.

  The more he walked around the smoking embers the more convinced he was that the two meth heads were not the arsonist. The little fires, yes; but the cabin, no.

  The moment his shift ended Bobby Lee came over, filled with outrage and ready to go after Lewis and Deek.

  “It wasn’t them,” Duane said. Sheriff Lena had gone back to town, but suggested to Bobby that he go give Duane a ride.

  “It wasn’t?” Bobby asked.

  “I don’t think so—I don’t think they’d have the balls,” Duane said. “Besides they both worked for us once. They might have at least a smidgin of loyalty—knowing they might need to work for us again.”

  “But they’re meth heads, Duane,” Bobby reminded him

  “When the coals cool down I’ll go through them with a rake and see what I find,” Duane said.

  “What would you be looking for? You never kept much but a change of shirts and some fishing gear in this cabin, as I recall.”

  “One thing I had was that book Annie gave me: Desert Solitaire,” Duane said. “It’s hard to burn a book up. If it’s there I’ll find some trace.”

  “What are you driving at, Duane?”

  “Annie gave me that book, and she’s not one to leave much behind,” Duane said. “I bet she came back and took her book.”

  “And set the fire?” Bobby had never liked Annie.

  “And set the fire. That would be my guess.”

  “You’re right up there with me when it comes to finding mean women,” Bobby remarked.

  “Dal isn’t mean,” Duane said.

  “Well, she’s Asian,” Bobby Lee said.

  37

  DUANE CAME BACK the next day with a rake. Some of the embers were still smoking. He found a burned-up frying pan and a few charred kitchen utensils, but no book.

  Now that he had had time to think he realized Annie had never meant to give him the book, anyway.

  “It’s a first edition and it’s signed by Ed,” she told him. “He gave it to me himself. Don’t set a coffee cup or anything down on it.”

  Duane was careful to keep the book protected. He put it on a high shelf by his bed. Apart from a few fishing magazines it was the only reading matter in the house. He would have been the first to admit that he was not a reader.

  He didn’t think the book would have been wholly consumed but he could not find a trace of it in the embers, not even a flake or two. He knew, when he thought about it, that Annie had come back, taken her book and burned down the cabin.

  “Why’d you burn me out?” he asked, but to himself.

  Then he put the rake back in his pickup and drove to his hometown.

  38

  “OF COURSE SHE DID it and the motive is not far to seek,” Honor said. “The motive is revenge.”

  “But she left me.”

  “Yes, but you let her go—you didn’t fight to get her back.”

  “Oh,” he said. “You think that’s what she wanted?”

  “Sure. Where’s the fun in adultery if the wronged partner doesn’t seem to care?”

  “She was halfway around the world,” he reminded her.

  “But there are airplanes that would have taken you there. Maybe you were a little relieved when she dumped you. She can’t have been easy to live with.”

  “Why would it have been a relief?”

  “Well, there was the sexual problem, for one thing,” Honor said. “Pressure to perform.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “The cabin was a part of you she couldn’t have. Women don’t like that. Can you blame them?”

  “Sometimes I can’t tell whose side you’re on,” he told her.

  “My side, of course,” Honor said.

  39

  THREE DAYS LATER, after Duane had already arranged to have a new cabin built on the old spot, Lena Loftis showed up at his house early one morning and handed Duane his missing book.

  “Found it in a crack house south of town,” she said. She had taken the precaution of putting the book in a Ziploc bag—it seemed to be unblemished. The whole scenario about Annie burning the cabin down and reclaiming the book was obviously wrong.

  “Thanks, Sheriff, I feel like a fool,” he said.

  “You may have been wrong about your former wife’s involvement, but the fact remains that your cabin got torched,” she said.

  “Maybe a rat chewed a wire,” he suggested.

  “And maybe a meth head torched it,” the sheriff said. “Do you ever see that old rhino you used to see?”

  “Not since the night he smashed up Hondo’s patrol car,” Duane said. “I don’t believe there’ve even been any sightings since that night.

  “Once in a while there will be a sighting but they never pan out. One I even heard on talk radio came from Greenland. Greenland!

  “I don’t think we’ll see Double Aught again,” Duane said. “But twelve more rhinos are coming this week, according to K.K.

  “I don’t think K.K. realizes it but there’s a lot of anti-rhino sentiment building up in this town—and a good deal of anti-K.K. sentiment too.

  “Frankly, it’s never been that welcoming a place,” Duane said. “I suspect there’s even some negative feelings about you. Being the first woman sheriff can’t be all gravy.”

  “I can handle it,” Lena said. “Guess what, though: the city now wants to put up a statue to Hondo Honda. They think it would bring in tourists.”

  “A statue to Hondo—he barely lived here ten days.”

  “They still think it would bring in tourists.”

  “I thought that was what the Rhino Ranch was supposed to do?”

  “Besides that they don’t like it that you’re living with a gook—their word, not mine. I’ve barely seen the
lady but she seems real mannerly.”

  “They like Asian cooking so much that they’ve made ranchers of Mike and Tommy, and they object to Dal?”

  “You know these folks better than I do, Mr. Moore,” Lena said. “They’re deeply prejudiced but not so prejudiced that they can’t tell good food from bad.”

  “It’s a case of food overcoming prejudice, then?”

  “That’s how I read it,” Sheriff Lena said.

  40

  TOWARD THE END of summer Dal went to Thailand for a month, to see her children and grandchildren. Her parents were dead.

  Her absence wore on Duane a good bit. They were not lovers, but he missed her more than he might have Karla, Honor, Annie. At night he slept little. He felt vulnerable to attack. He took to sleeping with a revolver on his bed, something he had never done in his life.

  There were so many meth addicts in the county that virtually anything they could lift and carry became prey. Theft of oilfield equipment was rife. Some of the big equipment—bulldozers and pulling machines—were taken south into Mexico.

  A few were recovered at the border, but most were never seen again.

  Without Dal, Duane became so jumpy and irritable that Bobby Lee, for one, could scarcely endure his company, and told him so.

  “If you need her that much, marry her, Duane,” he said. Often the two of them got drunk on the platform of the North Tower. Bobby was now allowed to ditch the uniform.

  Duane had often thought about marrying Dal, but it was an area that was not settled in his mind.

  “I might, but I doubt she’d have me,” he said.

  “It can’t hurt to ask.”

  “Well, it might,” Duane said.

  41

  DUANE HAD BEEN counting the days until Dal returned. Three days before she was due to arrive Dickie called and told his father she would be a few days late.

  “But why?” he asked.

  “Well, she routed herself through Munich, and if she’s in Munich she might as well go through Geneva and meet a few people there—it’s just business.”