by Robert Greer
“Don’t know. I’m thinking maybe he’s just tired.”
Spoon nudged the oil filters to the back of the shelf and nodded in agreement.
“Maybe he’ll have more fight in him tomorrow,” I said. My breath turned into a megaphone of mist as the double doors to the machine shop rolled open.
My mom stood in the doorway. A curtain of light snow drifted down behind her, and she looked confused. She was wearing a pair of old roping boots that she’d first worn years ago when she and Harriet Rankin, who’d been raised on a sheep ranch outside Bozeman, had won the women’s team roping event at the Big Horn County Fair. Looking past Spoon directly at me, she said, “Your dad told me the two of you were out here. He’s dragging real bad, TJ. Want to tell me what’s got him moping?”
Hesitant to discuss our earlier conversation, I said, “Afraid I don’t really know.”
“Well, I can tell you this. He’s shuffling around the house like a man who just lost his best horse.” Finally she looked at Spoon. “You got any idea what the problem is, Spoon?”
“I think he’s worried about the future, Mrs. D.”
“That’s an odd sort of worry.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the delicate flakes of falling snow. “What makes you think that?”
“Instincts,” Spoon said, wrapping the word around an insightful smile. “I’m thinkin’ he’s tired of shadow-boxin’ with the past and worried as heck about the future.”
“Could be,” Mom said. “I’ve always found it best to live in the present myself.”
Spoon responded after a lengthy silence. “I don’t want ya to take this the wrong way, Mrs. D., and I sure don’t wanna undercut your husband, but I got a real strong feelin’ we’ve got a problem brewin’ out at Four Corners right this minute. Had it all day.”
“Which would be?”
When Spoon glanced briefly in my direction, cleared his throat, and peered past my mom toward the falling snow, I knew he was concerned about revealing a confidence. “Them Acota folks are back, no question about it, and they’re movin’ their equipment across your property, forgin’ themselves a permanent access,” he said finally. “Let ’em keep at it, and trust me, they’ll break ya for sure.”
“What makes you so certain?” Mom asked.
“Just one of them feelin’s I get from time to time.”
“And you’ve told Bill?”
Spoon and I nodded in unison.
Mom stared into space, looking momentarily lost. “Well, at least now I’ve got myself an answer for Bill’s behavior. Bottom line is the man’s worried. Acota’s probably out there putting it to us this very second, and he’s got TJ trucking off to college in a few months with no blood kin around here to help him run the place but me. There’s a chance there won’t be a ranch left at all.”
“I can stay,” I blurted out. “And Spoon’s gonna be here.”
“You’re not staying anywhere.” My mom’s eyes narrowed, and the determined look on her face told me it was not a time to argue. “You’re going off to Missoula, TJ Darley. As for Spoon, there’s no requirement on his part to make this his fight. How serious is the situation at Four Corners, anyway?” she asked Spoon.
“Serious enough that I’m thinkin’ somebody needs to send Acota a message once and for all.” There wasn’t one hint of concern in Spoon’s voice that his premonition might be off the mark.
“How would you handle things?” Mom asked.
“I’d confront ’em straight up,” Spoon said without hesitation.
“Even in the face of Sheriff Woodson’s orders?”
“Yep.”
“And what if you’re wrong? What if there’s nothing out there at Four Corners waiting on us but a blizzard?”
“Then we’da had ourselves a nice wet ride in the snow,” said Spoon, who seemed to sense that my mom was primed right then and there to take some immediate course of action.
“What’s your take, TJ?” she asked.
“I say we go and check things out.”
“And face the sheriff’s wrath and maybe Acota’s lawyers?”
“Yes.”
Mom looked at Spoon, shook her head, and smiled. “Easy to tell that unlike his mom, my son’s never spent time in jail.” She forced back a snicker before offering an explanation. “Back in my New York days, we dancers had our share of artist guild problems. Union problems that caused a few nonunion hard-liners like me to spend a night or two in jail. That’s something the three of us can talk about later, after we come back from Four Corners. TJ, why don’t you fuel up one of the vehicles? We’re going for a ride.”
“Where’s Dad?” I asked, full of concern. “He’ll stop us for sure.”
“He saddled Smokey a little before the front moved in and took off. Told me he was headed out to make sure the west-side irrigation ditch headgate was drained so it wouldn’t freeze up with this snow and give us fits next spring.”
“He’ll be mad as heck that we took off for Four Corners without him,” I said.
“He’s been mad before,” Mom said with a wink. “And TJ, we might as well take the flatbed. No reason in the world we should head out to Four Corners unarmed.”
I’d never paid much attention to the fact that the heavy-duty shocks on the flatbed made the truck ride like what I suspected a World War II troop transport might have felt like, but as we jarred our way toward Four Corners in the snow and I glanced in the truck’s sideview mirror and watched our ranch house disappear behind a bank of fog, I wondered if we were doing the right thing. After a few minutes of bumping along, Spoon said, staring straight ahead through the windshield, “Looks like the snow’s lettin’ up.”
Squeezed uncomfortably between Spoon and me, Mom responded, “Good.”
When Spoon countered, “Maybe not,” I felt an immediate tightness in my throat. Pointing south, he said, “Why don’t we go around? Come at ’em straight up Burn’s Ditch and on ol’ Willard’s side of the fence.”
“We’ll be trespassing,” Mom protested, as I turned south onto a red-clay, single-track road that was barely wet with snow.
“And you’d be right,” said Spoon. “Except that you both been usin’ that old Burn’s Ditch trail by mutual agreement for over twenty years. It’s a common-use access, accordin’ to the law.” There was a mischievous twinkle in Spoon’s eyes. “Turnabout’s fair play.”
“So we’re gonna loop in behind them—that is, if they’re even there?” Mom asked.
“Oh, they’re there,” said Spoon.
The words had barely left his mouth when we all caught sight of several dark plumes of smoke rising in the distance. “Diesel exhaust,” said Spoon, pointing toward the smoke.
I nodded in agreement as Mom said, “The snow’s stopped.”
I eased off the accelerator and eyed the dry ground around us. “Looks like it never got started out here.”
“Let’s pull up for a bit before we head down Burn’s Ditch,” said Spoon, staring up at a blanket of low-hanging clouds and then straight ahead toward the ditch. He seemed to be getting his bearings, calculating just how pinched in the truck would be as it navigated the mile-and-a-half, eight-foot-deep gully that funneled open just before reaching Four Corners.
Aware of the ditch’s configuration, I said, “They’ll see us coming.”
“Probably,” said Spoon. “But I’m thinkin’ we’ll catch ’em with their pants down at least halfway.”
I eyed Spoon quizzically, wondering exactly what he thought the Acota people might be doing besides trespassing. When Mom asked, “What is it you think they’re doing out there, Spoon?” I found myself thinking that at least the two of us were on the same page.
Spoon shook his head and for once looked dumbfounded. “Can’t say for sure. It’s just an itch I got. One that tells me that whoever’s over at Four Corners has got a real bold streak runnin’ through ’em. Bold enough to have ’em actin’ out their ass.” Looking embarrassed, Spoon said, “Sorry about the language, Mr
s. D.”
My mom smiled. “No apology necessary. Why don’t we go see if we can’t catch them acting out and spank their narrow butts black and blue.”
A minute or so later we entered the mouth of the bumpy dry wash. A nearly cloudless sky lay ahead, and there wasn’t a hint of snow on the ground. The lay of the land with the walls of Burn’s Ditch still concealing us made it impossible at first for anyone down at Four Corners to know we were approaching.
When the ditch opened up minutes later, I could see several pieces of equipment that hadn’t been there during our previous confrontation with Acota: a mammoth idling earthmover spewing a mushroom of diesel exhaust skyward, two giant backhoes with ten-yard loader buckets, and one small and one large dozer. A van sat a few feet from the earthmover. All of the Acota equipment was on our land.
Spoon sized things up quickly as if he’d somehow magically seen everything in his head earlier. “Our fence is down,” he said matter-of-factly.
Staring past the earthmover, I realized that a four-
hundred-yard stretch of fence, which normally ran across the flat where the Acota equipment sat before angling directly down to our natural gas seep, was lying on the ground.
“Bold little weevils,” my mom said, eyeing the downed fence and biting back obvious anger as I nursed the truck forward.
“They’re sittin’ right on us,” Spoon said. “Think you better call the sheriff on the two-way, TJ.”
“Nope, wait,” my mom said as I slipped the truck’s two-way radio receiver from its cradle. “Before we call the sheriff, why don’t we see if a persuasive word or two might not get their attention?”
“You’re not thinkin’ of goin’ down there, are you, Mrs. D.?” Spoon asked, looking as if he’d somehow made a grievous miscalculation. “I won’t let you.”
“Sorry, Spoon,” Mom said. “But I’m the decision-making Darley here at the moment, and like it or not, we’re going down to talk to whoever’s operating that equipment and see if we can’t get them to move it all off our land.” With a determined face, she glanced at me. “Let’s go, TJ.”
I wanted to argue against the move but instead nosed the truck forward. As we headed directly toward the downed fence and out of the protective shadows of Burn’s Ditch, I spotted someone walking from the Acota van toward the earthmover—someone sporting a Johnny Reb cap and dressed from head to toe in gray.
“Rodue,” Spoon said softly.
I nodded without saying a word and glanced at my mom. There was obvious anger in her eyes as she gritted her teeth and said, “The nerve. The absolute nerve.”
Twenty-One
Rodue made his way past the two backhoes toward the idling earthmover before turning to stare directly at us from behind aviator sunglasses. We were less than twenty yards from the small dozer when Spoon looked at me and said, “I’m thinkin’ we should stop it right here, TJ.”
Staring skyward through the windshield, Mom said, “Looks like it’s going to clear up.”
Spoon swung his door open, slipped out of the truck and eased himself up onto the flatbed. Within seconds, the cigar-smoking, bearded man whom we’d previously run off hopped down from behind the wheel of the smoke-spewing earthmover. He appeared to be wearing the same clothes he’d worn the day of our earlier confrontation, and if I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn he was chomping on the same lit cigar.
“Stay in the truck, TJ,” my mom ordered. As the man approached us, she slipped out of the truck as nimbly as a Broadway dancer and landed on a dry bed of grass that ran down to the natural gas seep.
“You’re trespassing again, Mr. Rodue,” my mom said, walking toward Rodue and another man who stood just in front of the earthmover.
“I don’t think we are, ma’am,” Rodue said politely. “In case you’re unaware, your ranch and the Johnson place here share a common access.” He removed his sunglasses and glanced toward Burn’s Ditch. “Could be your husband never mentioned the fact to you. No surprise there. There’d be no need for you to fret over the operational side of things on a ranch.” Rodue smiled, looked past me, and locked eyes with Spoon.
“I never fret, Mr. Rodue,” my mom said authoritatively. “Fretting, I’m afraid, is for insecure men and little girls. But I do give advice, and the best advice I can offer you right now is to put my fence back up and move your equipment off my property.”
“I’m not going to do that, ma’am.” His gaze still locked on Spoon, Rodue pocketed his sunglasses. “And if your hired man up there on the flatbed pulls a weapon on Dwayne here like he did the other day, I’m afraid I’ll have no choice but to respond in kind.” He nodded at his cigar-chomping associate, who surprised all of us except Rodue by pulling a long-barreled revolver from the pocket of his coveralls. “My people have a right to feel safe while they’re working, wouldn’t you agree?” Rodue asked.
“Call the sheriff, TJ. Now!” Mom said to me with her eyes glued to the gun barrel.
As I reached for the two-way and dialed 911, I caught a glimpse of something moving our way out of the mouth of Burn’s Ditch. When I realized that the rider on the horse galloping toward us was my dad, I didn’t know whether to let out a sigh of relief or prepare for a shoot-out.
Seconds later the 911 operator asked over a background of static, “911, what’s your emergency?”
“We’ve got a problem out at Willow Creek Ranch down at the Four Corners area.”
“Please speak up, I can hardly hear you. Is anyone injured?”
“Nope, but we need the sheriff out here right away.”
The operator barely got the words out, “I’ll send…,” before my two-way, its signal blocked by the surrounding hills and canyonlike Four Corners terrain, went dead. Redialing four times in quick succession without any luck, I looked up to see Smokey close the gap between the mouth of Burn’s Ditch and us. Horse and rider had come upon us so rapidly that Dwayne, his gun now aimed in their direction, jabbed an index finger at them frantically. Rodue’s response, an unintimidated nod, pretty much said I see.
Moments later my dad was on top of us. “What the hell’s going on?” he yelled, pulling Smokey up short a few feet from the flatbed, dismounting, and looping the reins around one of the headache-rack uprights.
“Rodue and his friend there are trespassing,” my mom said, calmly pointing to the downed section of fence.
“Damnit!” When my dad glanced up at Spoon, I realized that all hell might break loose any second. “Get in the truck with TJ, Marva,” he said, his eyes fixed on Rodue, who stood some fifteen feet away. It was then that I saw the handle of a revolver, identical to Dwayne’s, jutting from beneath Rodue’s belt.
“Don’t either of you take another step this way,” my dad called out as Dwayne tossed his cigar into the wind.
When I heard the shuffle of Spoon’s boots on the flatbed just behind my head and the tote-all’s lid being opened, I pushed my mom down in the seat. The pump action of a shotgun being readied was the next sound I heard. Draped protectively over my mom, I took a long, deep breath—and then came the explosion. It was a ground-rocking blast so powerful that it threw my mom backward and then onto the floor and hurled me face-first into the dashboard. I felt an immediate wetness at one corner of my mouth that I knew could only be blood a split second before my lip went numb.
Smokey whinnied, and as I rose on an elbow to see him rear onto his hind legs, I realized that Spoon had been tossed to the ground.
“Marva! TJ, you okay?” my dad screamed.
Mom responded with a resolute, “Yes.”
As she and I moved to get out of the truck, I nearly stepped on Spoon, who, butt on the ground and legs extended, was rubbing his left shoulder. “Think the fat boy with the cigar tossed aside one too many butts,” said Spoon. “Damn fool might as wella lit a fuse straight to the gas seep.”
A plume of thick black smoke rose from just beyond where Rodue and Dwayne had been standing. The grass surrounding them was on fire and Rodue was
on the ground on his left side, moaning. Dwayne, who wasn’t moving, was lying face down on his belly a few feet from Rodue.
I stared at the wall of smoke behind them and realized that flames were knifing out of a fifty-foot-long gouge in the earth.
“Damnit!” my dad yelled. “The idiots have triggered a goddamn coal fire! That natural gas seep’s nothin’ but a superhighway straight down to a sea of underground coal. Better get 911 on the two-way, Marva. We’re gonna
need help!”
Mom said, “It’s not working!” Her eyes were as wide as I think I’d ever seen them as she choked out the words.
“Well, keep tryin’, and tell ’em we need Fire and Rescue out here this second.” Eyeing the fire, sizing up how he might tackle putting it out, he walked over to Spoon, helped him to his feet, and asked in a rush, “How you doin’, Spoon?”
“Think I may’ve separated my left shoulder. But everything else seems intact.” Spoon patted himself down with his right hand, looking pleased that he was all there.
“TJ, you sure you’re okay?” Dad asked, nervously eyeing the blaze.
“I’m fine,” I said, ignoring my numb lip, trying my best to erase any panic in my voice. More dazed than nervous or even scared, my mouth went bone dry.
Dad stared at the roaring blaze, then back at Rodue. “Guess we best check on Rodue and his buddy,” he said, motioning for Spoon and me to follow him downhill. Eyeing my mom, he said, “Marva, stay on that two-way.”
As we raced downhill, I could feel myself trembling. Just before we reached Rodue, I had the sudden urge to throw up.
Rodue, who’d been thrown fifteen feet from where he’d stood before the blast, was barely conscious. My dad and I propped him up as Spoon ran to check on Dwayne. When Spoon looked back at us and shook his head, I knew Dwayne was dead.
Spoon and my dad exchanged brief looks that said Been here before, and when Dad shouted, “Marva!” he might as well have been back on the battlegrounds of Korea shouting, “Medic!” As Spoon pulled Rodue out of the path of the encroaching grass fire, I had the sense that one of the most idyllic places I’d ever known had become a battlefield.