Durango

by Gary Hart

  Almost exactly at this time, she said, studying him directly, we received a letter—Murray and I—at the paper. It alleged in considerable detail that Mr. Sheridan had accepted the payments, and distributed them, because he needed the money to pay blackmail.

  Blackmail! Patrick’s eyes widened.

  You are not going to write this, Patrick. At least you are not going to write it for my newspaper, she said.

  Blackmail for what? he stammered.

  The letter said that he was having an affair with the wife of a prominent man. A very prominent man. And that Mr. Sheridan needed the payoff money to keep the blackmailer from disclosing this.

  That’s crazy, Patrick said. Nobody cares about that kind of stuff anymore.

  They did then, Patrick. And that wasn’t too long ago in years. But it was a century ago in public attitudes. She paused and looked out into her garden, studying the bright moonlit flowers. Besides, now someone else’s reputation was at stake, not just his own. He’s old-fashioned in many ways, our Mr. Sheridan. He believed, I’m sure still does, that a man has a duty to protect the honor of a woman if her honor is brought into question. The letter said the alleged blackmailer was threatening to disclose her name.

  Did you show him the letter? Patrick asked.

  Didn’t have to, she said. By this time he had resigned from office and retreated into private life and whoever wrote the letter had achieved his purpose.

  “His purpose,” you said.

  Yes, his purpose. Mrs. Farnsworth studied his face. His purpose. Because Murray and I were convinced—though we couldn’t prove it—that the husband of the woman in question wrote the defaming letter to destroy Mr. Sheridan. And for all public purposes, Mr. Sheridan was destroyed.

  You know who it was, don’t you, Patrick stated.

  Yes, she said. The woman was Caroline Chandler.

  10.

  Twelve years earlier, shortly after poking his finger in the eye of the Nature’s Capital officials, Dan Sheridan had invited Leonard Cloud to have breakfast at the café that would shortly become the venue of the Monday and Friday coffee club.

  Leonard, he had said, I’d be very careful about how you handle these East Coast money types that are showing up. Sheridan related the story of his confrontational lunch with the Nature’s Capital men, leaving out much of the conclusion and departing confrontation.

  The tribal chairman said, Dan, I understand what’s going on now and what will continue to go on until we get ourselves established. Mr. Maynard may be a small-town Durango lawyer, but he’s very shrewd where these money men are concerned. Besides, word got around about your wrestling match with the big wallets.

  Leonard Cloud and Sam Maynard had played high school basketball against each other, and in one of his first moves after he was selected tribal chairman in the late 1960s, the young Cloud had selected Maynard as tribal attorney. They had now been attorney and client, and close friends, for twenty-five years or more. But in the presence of any third party, including friends of both, they referred to each other in professional terms. Sam Maynard was never known to refer to the Southern Ute chairman as anything other than Mr. Cloud.

  Well, I suspected you’d be covering your six, Sheridan said, knowing the Ute chairman would understand the combat pilot reference from his US Air Force days.

  Leonard Cloud chuckled. Haven’t heard that term in awhile.

  Tell me what you have in mind to do with the resource revenues, Sheridan asked, in case it’s any of my business.

  Of course it is, Dan, Cloud said. How we manage this situation will be important to La Plata County and Durango. Mr. Maynard and I have discussed creating a new tribal investment fund, a kind of trust for ourselves and future generations. The council has agreed that these minerals—these riches—don’t belong to just us. We have a responsibility to our kids, and their kids, and many generations to come.

  Some of your folks will want to have a party, a pretty big party I’d imagine, Sheridan said. And given your history, it’s pretty easy to understand why.

  Cloud said, My job—the council’s job—is to convince them that the party has to be one where we improve our houses and schools and hospital first. Once we get a decent roof over everyone’s head and pay our teachers and nurses better, there’ll be enough for singing and dancing. First things first.

  Sheridan nodded. He wasn’t surprised. Leonard Cloud was one of the most thoughtful individuals he’d ever met.

  Cloud continued, We’re not the only ones who are going to be romanced. Your story about that New York outfit is just the first. They’ll be all over the local officials. Yourself and the county commission and the city council. You’re going to get a lot of arguments about how you have to supervise us and look after us poor dumb Indians so we don’t all get drunk and tear the place up.

  I can handle that, Sheridan said. The rest of the commissioners can too.

  After breakfast they got in Cloud’s pickup, even dustier than Sheridan’s, and drove the twenty miles or so down to Ignacio. Whatever money was on its way, Sheridan noted, had yet to be spent on reservation improvements. Much of the territory was open, undeveloped, and possessed but little in the way of growing things. Ignacio, the tribal headquarters, was home to only a few shops and stores and not much affected by late-twentieth-century progress.

  Cloud drove up and down the dusty streets, pointing out where a new grade school would be built and where the modest hospital, not much more than a clinic, would be substantially expanded. Sheridan imagined his friend’s visions of up-to-date medical equipment, full-scale surgery capabilities, and treatment for the routine illnesses of a denied people. As they passed, Sheridan and Cloud recognized familiar faces and gave solemn waves.

  As Cloud drove him back to Durango, Sheridan said, Leonard, something tells me the politics of this revolution are not going down quietly. Too much at stake. I have a terrible feeling some people are going to get trampled by this stampede before it’s all over.

  Cloud nodded in agreement. I’m concerned about our people. But some of you people there in Durango better be careful as well. We have a saying that there’s no clear skies without a storm first.

  11.

  Water and energy finally came together for the Southern Utes in the 1980s and 1990s, with the help of Congress and the federal courts. The semidormant Animas–La Plata water project could not by now justify itself solely on traditional agricultural economic grounds. Theoretically, at least, the federal Bureau of Reclamation had to make the semblance of a case for any new dam on the grounds that it would repay its costs through stimulation of agricultural development. Despite Reclamation’s exploration of elaborate pump-storage methods, whereby water would be pumped from the Animas to a high storage reservoir and then released when needed for crops and consumers, the economics of the Animas–La Plata project were making increasingly less sense.

  Then federal energy policy began to change in response to OPEC oil embargoes of the late 1970s. And Indian tribes began to assert their rights to control their own energy resources and to demand fair treatment where water resources were concerned. In 1974 the Southern Utes, partly under the advice of their attorney, Sam Maynard, demanded a moratorium on the development of their vast natural gas deposits, and a year later they joined a consortium of two dozen Indian tribes in forming CERT, the Council of Energy Resource Tribes. Almost everything about Native American tribes involves a certain degree of irony, and CERT, modeled on the OPEC consortium that had brought the US economy to its knees, was no different. In contrast to its Persian Gulf model, however, it represented the original Americans who now laid claim to energy supplies under their largely forsaken reservations.

  In response, in 1982 Congress passed the Indian Mineral Development Act, acknowledging the authority of the various tribes to negotiate their own mineral leases without the oversight of the Department of the Interior
and its Bureau of Indian Affairs. Coincidentally, that same year the Supreme Court ruled that the Apache Tribe had the right to impose a severance tax on oil and gas produced from its land. For an energy-rich tribe like the Southern Utes, this judicial decision greatly expanded its potential revenue base.

  Almost simultaneously, Indian water rights were being addressed by the federal government as well. In 1988, Congress took up the Indian Water Rights Settlement Act, which sought to resolve age-old disputes about what water rights, if any, Indian tribes were entitled to. Colorado, like certain other Western states, had early on adopted the so-called appropriation doctrine—shorthanded as “first in time, first in right”—to determine water rights during the frontier days. This doctrine evolved over decades into a complex system for guaranteeing water rights based on who got there first and how much they used. It did not, however, resolve the rights of those who had been using water for centuries before the white man trekked west on his horse and in his covered wagon.

  After considerable deliberation, the Southern Utes agreed to forgo their senior water rights in exchange for water from the stalemated Animas–La Plata project. This had the sudden and unexpected effect of substantially altering the economics of the project and giving it a whole new lease on life. Virtually overnight, a lot of farmers, developers, and local boosters discovered the Southern Utes as their new best friends. One writer in a newspaper called Westword summed up this revolution with these words: “Conservative white farmers and ranchers, as well as ‘good ol’ boy’ developers in Durango, started championing Native American rights like born liberals.”

  So, with energy and water reaching a dynamic political mix, Southern Ute tribal chairman Leonard Cloud and his council created their own resource development company in 1992 using funds received from the federal government under the Colorado Ute Indian Water Rights Settlement Agreement. They called the company Red Willow. In 1995 the Southern Utes assumed ownership of fifty-four natural gas wells, and they increased production fourfold in less than a year. Unlike private production companies, which were required to pay property and severance taxes to the state and county and income taxes to the federal government, the tribe was exempt from these taxes and thus would reap substantially larger profits on these and future projects.

  After more than a century of virtual isolation, within a decade or so the Southern Utes found themselves in the modern commercial world and able to command much of their own destiny. If not overnight, then figuratively close to it, they had emerging wealth, social status, and political importance. Now, when all-party discussions about the Animas–La Plata project were held, tribal representatives were near the head of the table. When plans for future economic development in La Plata County and southwestern Colorado were being drawn up, Leonard Cloud or his representatives were invited as full partners.

  And throughout the 1970s and beyond, Leonard Cloud and other tribal officials, largely at the urging of Sam Maynard, were periodic visitors to Washington. They arranged visits with their Colorado congressional delegation to seek support in their late dependency days and even more so during and after the water and energy revolutions that greatly elevated their status.

  Eventually the Utes acquired principled and dedicated professional financial advice, and Maynard could call on other top-flight legal experts as required. During the heady transition days, however, the vultures did circle, as Dan Sheridan’s experience proved. It was by no means certain in the late 1970s and 1980s that the Utes would not be picked over and picked apart by the emerging army of the unscrupulous.

  Sheridan’s concern throughout that time was for his friend Leonard Cloud and the tribe his grandfather had befriended in the late nineteenth century. He felt it was somehow symbolic that the Florida River that arose above the ancestral Sheridan ranch as a small rivulet and flowed through it as a somewhat larger stream united with the Animas River below Ignacio on the Southern Ute reservation. The Animas was the major artery for not only Durango but also those early mining towns of Silverton and Ouray above it to the north. The Florida had been dammed to create the Lemon Reservoir just below the Sheridan ranch and was the somewhat smaller artery for ranchers to the northeast of Durango. Durango did not share in the waters stored in the Lemon Reservoir, but the Utes did.

  From his earliest days with his father, Sheridan had fly-fished the Florida from its banks on his own land and above and below and eventually in the Lemon Reservoir. You could not be a westerner without deep, almost profound appreciation for the importance of that water to virtually all life—to the deep-rooted ponderosa pines that could get their tentacles near its moisture, to the wildflowers it helped nourish, to the cattle and the farmers down below where the land leveled out, to his grandmother, who in her earlier pioneer days carried buckets from the stream for all the household needs.

  Occasionally Sheridan reflected that his family and the Utes shared the same water. He left his bedroom window open in all weather so that he could hear the waters surging and gurgling on their way south. He knew the Florida, like the Animas and all other creeks, streams, and rivers in western Colorado, indeed throughout the West, were derived from the snow in the high country—in his case, the 14,000-plus-foot mountains in the Weminuche Wilderness Area, part of the great San Juan National Forest in the San Juan Mountains to his north and east.

  Though some of the forest in the San Juans could be timbered under management by the US Forest Service, the Weminuche, named after one of the original Ute bands, was now permanently set aside from development or use other than for recreation. Its extraordinary wild natural beauty could be hiked and camped. But its resources were preserved, and no motor would violate its stillness. As a boy Sheridan had hiked it first with his father, then with high school friends, then in middle and later years more often by himself. The Weminuche was as close to a cathedral as he would need to get.

  On some occasions, he and Caroline had put panniers on a spare packhorse and camped out in the Weminuche. The wilderness had been his escape to safety in the bad days. He guessed others might call it a refuge. The wilderness had saved his life, he reflected on more than one occasion. Or at least his sanity.

  In recent years he had also reflected on more than one occasion that it might not be a bad place in which to die.

  12.

  All this local history was well known to the Monday and Friday coffee club, if for no other reason than that Sam Maynard kept the group filled in on developments in the far-off corridors of economic and judicial power. The politics of it all they could pretty well figure out for themselves.

  On the occasion that Leonard Cloud joined them, he would, in his laconic manner, keep them up to date on tribal developments. Given that most tribal council meetings were open to the public, the Durango Herald faithfully carried next-day stories of its deliberations. Less well known were the behind-the-scenes dealings with financiers, boosters, and fast-buck pitchmen. And, of course, that was where most of the drama occurred.

  On a Friday morning after the Utes’ fortunes changed, Mr. Murphy had said, I always had high regard for Mr. Cloud. But I have to say, the way he’s handling all this oil and gas and coal money they’re about to get is pretty shrewd.

  Shrewd isn’t the word for it, the professor said. He’s a regular financial wizard. Future generations of Utes will honor his name.

  Maybe we oughta send him to Washington…as president or something, Bill Van Ness said. That idea amused them.

  Could do a whole lot worse, Sheridan suggested.

  And we no doubt will, Mr. Murphy offered. Laughter all around.

  Sam Maynard said, They’re not home free yet, by any means. The Southern Ute Tribe now has investments in office buildings in Denver and even farther on and energy projects all over the place. They got to be careful. They’re still learning that markets can go down as well as up.

  Bill Van Ness said, We all had to learn that one, now didn’t we
? There were nods all around. What do they call their company?

  Sam said, Red Willow. But now there are Red Willow subsidiaries sprouting all over the place.

  Mr. Murphy winked when Sam’s head was turned. They’ll be hiring some big-shot Denver law firms, I suspect, he said. Maybe even New York ones. Big-time corporations like that need those fancy lawyers.

  Sam smiled and said, We’ll see. Mr. Cloud remembers who helped him when. They’ve always paid their legal bills. But back when, sometimes they had to wait awhile.

  What was that case where that big old oil company had to pay a fine, Sam? the professor asked.

  Sam said, It wasn’t exactly a fine. My law firm brought a suit against one of the big oil companies to give the tribe ownership of the methane gas locked up in their big coal deposits. The idea was that if they owned the coal, which by now it was clear they did, then they also had to own the gas trapped in it. And that methane gas was itself worth a fortune. Anyway, they ultimately lost the legal argument. But before they did, the oil company settled with them.

  How much did they get? Mr. Murphy asked

  Half a billion, Sam said.

  Half a what? Van Ness exclaimed.

  Billion, Sam said.

  Wow, the professor said. Which oil company was that?

  It was Amoco, Sam said. But it’s not Amoco anymore. It belongs to a giant outfit you may have heard of called British Petroleum—BP.

  Years later, the remaining members of the coffee club would have occasion to remember this conversation after BP tried to fill the Gulf of Mexico with oil.

  Sheridan pushed back his chair and bid them good-bye. He collected his aged straw Stetson hat off the tree and waved over his shoulder.

  The rest of them drank their coffee for a while. Presently Bill Van Ness said, He usually doesn’t like all this talk about money, does he?

  After a moment Mr. Murphy said, No, he doesn’t very much. But you can’t actually blame him. He never was a man for the money talk in any case. Now it’s like mentioning rope in the house of a man who’s been hanged.