by Gary Hart
He is the son of a well-known father, a real political leader, the older man said. And with your endorsement, Chairman Cloud and the others would have to treat him seriously.
Well, if that’s all you’re after, Sheridan said, you could have saved yourselves the price of the lunch. I’m always happy to make introductions in the interest of a peace treaty.
After the mayor and Patrick Carroll had left, Sheridan walked down the block with the professor. Duane, what was all that about? he asked.
Hurley couldn’t bring himself to ask you to bargain with the tribe, Smithson said. He was trying to find a way to use your goodwill with the Utes and leave you personally out of it.
Sheridan said, Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I gave up trying to figure people out a long time ago. Leonard and his people will be polite with that young man and hear him out. But he’s not going to change the course of history here.
I know, Dan, I know, the professor said. But there was another agenda at work here. Hurley has been carrying you around in his conscience all these years, he wanted to get rid of the burden. He’s an old man trying to settle accounts. You’re probably one of the biggest ones he’s got. So even for you to sit down to lunch with him is going a long way to getting that monkey off his back.
Doesn’t take much sometimes, does it? Sheridan said. If that’s all that he wanted, we could have had a hamburger years ago.
28.
Mr. Murphy said, I hear the mayor and Danny Sheridan finally patched it up.
Bill Van Ness said, Well, then, we must be nearing the End of Times.
Long overdue, Sam Maynard said. Everybody else is reaching for his holster around here or filling up his pickup gun rack and here these two aging warriors are have left the war path. Maybe it will spread.
The coffeepot made a second round.
What brought about all this unexpected goodwill? Mr. Murphy asked.
I had something to do with it, the professor said. Congressman Carroll’s boy, Patrick, my former student, has got himself into the middle of the Animas project history. And he’s trying to figure out a way to end the war. He had the idea of going to a pillar of the community, his dad’s friend the mayor, and together approach Dan about bringing the Utes around.
Sam Maynard snorted. What’s that about the road to hell being paved with good intentions? I’m not making any official pronouncements in this august assembly, he said, gesturing around the table, but the Utes will come “around,” as you put it, when they are treated fairly. Simple as that.
Anyway, the professor said, Sheridan and the mayor smoked the peace pipe, more or less, and the old man feels a lot better about things now. Dan offered to introduce Patrick to Leonard and the tribal council.
And? Sam asked.
And, the professor said, Patrick will at least offer to help any way he can. He’s not under any illusions that he has any magic. But although he hasn’t told me, I think this has a lot to do with trying to appease his father’s memory somehow. He hasn’t followed in the congressman’s political footsteps, at least for now, and I believe he’s just stumbling around looking for a helpful role to play.
Ah, the good intentions of youth, Bill Van Ness said. What would we do without their inherent idealism?
We’d all go straight to hell, Mr. Murphy said. We’re back to the road there being paved with good intentions.
Now, Mr. Murphy, the professor said, don’t underestimate idealism. When we see it in the young, we remember how much we all believed in creating a better world in our youth.
You may remember it, Mr. Murphy said, but I don’t.
They all laughed. Of course you don’t, Mr. Murphy, Sam said. You missed the idealism gene altogether. You went from kid to cynical old man overnight.
Well, you have to be realistic in this life, Mr. Murphy said. You go around with your head in the clouds, dreaming wonderful dreams about a “newer world” or a “great society” and that “hopey-dopey” stuff and all you’re really talking about is raising my taxes. I’m not fooled by any of that idealism stuff.
The professor said, Tom, do you really believe we’re stuck where we are, that things are never going to get any better?
Why not? Mr. Murphy said. Do you see things getting any better? We’ve been fighting over Animas River water for a century and we’ll be fighting over it a century from now.
Bill Van Ness poured more coffee all around. Yes, but there is progress. You live better than your parents did and so do I. So do all of us.
Mr. Murphy said, That’s because I got off my butt and worked for it. Nobody did that for me. There’re too many of these kids and lazy people just sitting around waiting for government handouts. He had started to include the Indians but checked himself.
The professor said, Now, Tom, the government is going to build the Animas dam, I’m afraid, and it brought the Interstate highway over to Glenwood Springs, and it cleaned up the uranium tailings outside of town—
And made me pay for all that stuff, Mr. Murphy interjected.
Sam said, I’d give my lesson in democracy right here, but you’ve all heard it. Anyway, so much for idealism. Young Carroll will fulfill his mission. He will probably fail. Not because my clients are against idealistic youth, but because they are, as Mr. Murphy says, “realistic.”
29.
Daniel Sheridan asked his friend Duane Smithson to drop by the ranch for a beer.
Duane, he said, as they sat by the Florida stream, help me understand the Utes’ position on the water issue.
They’re in a totally new situation, the professor said. You know they’ve had virtually nothing all these years, and they’ve tried to make the best of it. They’ve been a lot more patient with us then we’ve been with them. I’d say our attitude over most of those years has been casual neglect.
But then they got the rights to all those minerals, and energy prices shot through the roof, Sheridan said. Now they’re in the catbird seat. Right?
Not exactly. These are by and large thoughtful people. They’ve been watching us—the immigrants—all these years as much as anything to see what not to do as to learn what they should do. And they’ve seen our prosperity and our farming and our markets and our big houses and cars. And who wouldn’t like to have all that? But they’ve also watched the price we’re willing to pay for all that. Not just dollars. But the obvious costs to the air and the water and the land.
Sheridan said, Two Hawks is the best preacher I’ve ever heard on this.
He is, indeed, the professor said. It’s pretty commonplace by now to talk about the devil’s bargain we struck when we put science and technology ahead of nature beginning a couple of centuries ago. The native people didn’t do that for the simple reason they never had a chance to do it. So they’ve been stuck, you might say, in the old ways. Nature, the mother, is where life comes from, and if you screw up nature you’re screwing up life itself.
Little hard for us to reverse course now, isn’t it? Sheridan said.
The irony is that the Utes are poised on the cusp of the so-called Enlightenment three centuries after the rest of us, and they’re trying to figure out which way to go. The professor finished his beer, and Sheridan dug in the icy cooler for a replacement.
Leonard wants to see me, Sheridan said, and something tells me it’s about their choices now. What do you think I ought to tell them? Any history lessons that might help out?
Well, Smithson said, if I were offering such advice, I’d probably say something like this. You’ve got two…no, maybe three choices. One is, you can develop these natural resources full steam—like we, the so-called white people, have done—and all be rich for generations to come. Settle down for the rest of your lives in the lap of luxury. Turn the res into a resort and only let your friends visit. The other option is you can sit on the resources you have and wait for time, and human greed
, to bid up their price. Preserve your options and wait to decide which way to go. In the meantime you’re keeping your bargain with nature. You’re not rushing headlong into the commercial and material world.
Sheridan said, I suspect the tribal council has figured out those two options already. You said you thought there was a third one.
The third one, as you might expect, is a compromise between the two, the professor said. I’ve studied the history of these parts all my life and, as you know, I’ve written more books on the subject that anyone will ever read. What I’ve learned from all that research is a pretty basic human truth: people—maybe just Americans—don’t know how to reach a balance between the old world of nature and the new world of technology. It seems to me the Utes are kind of like flash-frozen dinosaurs, if you’ll pardon the expression. They are frozen examples of the prescientific world who suddenly find themselves waking up to vast undeveloped resources—riches—that offer them the chance to leap, overnight, into the world of commerce and consumption.
Right, Sheridan said, so what’s the trick? Leonard would be the first person to tell you he’s no smarter than the rest of us. If our tribe couldn’t figure out how to use resources without destroying their source, how can we expect their tribe to do it?
Well, I’ll give you one man’s opinion, for whatever it’s worth, the professor said. The key is that their beliefs about nature are different from ours. You know as well as I do that they think tearing up the earth, leaving scars all over the place, dumping pollution in the stream, and putting chemicals in the air is wounding a living thing, the most important living thing. If you do that, it is evil. That gives them an outlook the rest of us “enlightened” souls don’t possess.
If and when they decide to pursue what I’d call the balance option, he continued, they have to use the ancient wisdom combined with the best modern techniques to protect the earth. Now, your mining experts and energy development companies are going to resist this like crazy. They’ll tell the tribe all about “efficiency” and mass production methods that get the most bang for the buck—the most dollars for the least expenditure at the fastest pace. That’s called modern industry. It’s the culmination of enlightenment thinking transposed to the commercial world.
So, the Utes have to insist that the resources are extracted and processed with maximum protection of their land and water, Sheridan said. That will appeal to them. But something tells me they already know that. Seems like just common sense to me.
They know it, but they don’t know it, Smithson said. If I advised them, I’d say let’s find the best experts in the country, maybe even the world, to help us figure out if there’s a better way, better than the rip-and-plunder way, to develop resources with the least possible damage. And do it in a way that shows respect for the earth, for nature.
Sheridan nodded even as he pondered this. Well, the theory of what you’re talking about will appeal to them, anyway, he said. Whether it can really be done is something else.
30.
Sheridan patted the big red horse on the rump and said, Let’s go. He was traveling light. He didn’t take the packhorse and all the gear. He had a bedroll, his fishing tackle, some collapsible cooking gear, and a slender fish-filleting knife strapped to his ankle. He settled the Winchester in its scabbard, just in case. Toby the border collie leaped with joy when his master invited him to come along.
Both the horse and the dog could find the high lake in total darkness. But this morning was bright and sunny, a beautiful early August day.
They made their way to the lake by early afternoon and Sheridan staked the horse out on a long rope in the middle of a lush stand of tall wild grass. He tossed the bedding and cooking gear near the rock-lined fire pit he had dug out years before. He noted with satisfaction that it had not been used since his last visit. To his knowledge, Caroline was the only other person in the world who knew about this hiding place. Sheridan had discovered it in his teens and in those days had fantasized about robbing a bank in Silverton and holing up there as posses searched high and low for him.
But his interest in bank robbery disappeared quickly enough, even as his dependence on the solitude of the place increased. When he took a small tent for shelter, he rarely needed it. The moon and stars would be crystal clear. When he left the tent at the ranch, more often than not it rained or snowed, regardless of the promises of the highly skilled weather forecasters. You could pretty much depend on it.
Regardless, against great odds he took his chances and had left the tent in the barn. He took Red’s saddle off and put it near the fire pit and threw his poncho—his concession to the moody weather gods—over it. He completed the ritual of firewood collection and noted happily there was more than enough nearby for his two-night stay. The many cones falling from the pines would help get things going at dinnertime. As was his custom and practice, Toby followed a yard behind his right heel everywhere he went. Toby loved the place because, even at more than nine thousand feet, you never knew when a snowshoe rabbit might hop onto the scene.
Some time before, Sheridan had put a couple of short logs across two rock piles at the edge of the lake and, as before, he picked up the fly rod and shook out a dark fly for a bright day like this. Once he had the fly tied to the leader, he sat down on the makeshift log bench and began his leisurely cast. It delighted him to see the frisky young rainbow trout break the surface across the lake as insects of one kind or another, mayflies sometimes, came within their leaping distance above the water’s surface.
He was in no hurry whatsoever, but within half an hour he had three rainbow trout with a string through their gills thrashing in the shallow water. Toby, he said, say thanks to God for our dinner.
After putting the fishing equipment back in its containers, he stretched his lanky frame, working out the kinks and cramps from hours in the saddle. With Toby in attendance, he carried out his surveillance of the edges of the five or so acres of meadow surrounding the lake. As usual, he studied the soft soil at the lakeside and the edges of the tree line for tracks of creatures. It was always nice to know your neighbors, his grandfather had told him as a kid.
On the far side of the lake he paused and knelt down. Though eroded by rains, there were two distinct paw prints at the water’s edge. Toby sniffed where he was looking, but the weather had also rinsed off most scents. The paws were at least four and possibly closer to five inches across. It was a sizeable cat, surely a full-grown male, and it had been there since Sheridan’s and Caroline’s last visit.
Sheridan studied the area more thoroughly. He could find no more paw prints. But there was a small area where the meadow grass reached the tree line where the grass had been flattened, fairly recently, by a large creature using it for a bed. He watched the grass and tree limbs and noted them swaying in a northwesterly breeze. Neither horse nor dog picked up any scent from that direction.
Toby, stay close, he told the dog. He entered the tree line where a small deer trail started and wound its way into and around the nearby craggy outcroppings. He knew the trail well and had more than once followed it as far as he could go before confronting high, steep cliff faces. He studied the narrow trail as he went, moving slowly and as quietly as he could across a surface coated with dry pine needles and pine cones that crunched loudly if stepped on.
From his earliest days, Sheridan had learned from his father and grandfather the arts and crafts of the woods. He was a better-than-average tracker and he knew the habits of the wild creatures. He had learned great respect for them, especially the predators, and it had paid off more than once. But it also paid off in avoidance of the nuisances, the porcupines and skunks and such. And after too many misadventures as a pup, Toby had learned from bitter experience to stay well away from those two creatures particularly.
Sheridan heard a snuffle from Toby and looked down to see his hackles standing up. He peered ahead and saw something in the trail, twenty yard
s or so ahead. It appeared to be a leather jacket covering something misshapen. He held his hand down to steady and quiet the dog and moved forward as quietly as possible.
Within ten or twelve feet he could tell it was the carcass of a young deer, probably a yearling fawn or a doe, and it had provided more than one meal for someone, almost certainly a cougar. What remained was essentially the hide and scattered bones, the larger ones of which had been worked over with very sharp teeth. The kill was recent.
Sheridan put his hand down and silently waved Toby back. He began to step back slowly himself, keeping his eyes on the carcass, when he heard a rumble. It was a unique combination of growl and deep purr, and it was coming from above him, close by. Very slowly he raised his eyes and saw the cat on a strong tree limb only fifteen or twenty feet ahead and above. It was crouched.
His first thought was Toby, but within a second he knew the dog was smart enough to take care of himself. At the same instant he instinctively reached down for the knife on his ankle and then slowly raised his arms high above his head. The Winchester was back with Red, where it was not going to do him much good in a wrestling match with this lion.
He lowered his eyes to avoid direct eye contact with the powerful creature, there to protect its kill. Before doing so, however, he saw in those familiar wide yellow eyes the natural wisdom of the ages. Though he had encountered the magnificent creatures twice before, prowling around his cattle pens in the calving season, he was startled nonetheless by the clear, mesmerizing gaze of those eyes. They would surely hypnotize you if you let them, and they took a direct gaze from a human as a challenge.
Head lowered, with eyes glancing up through thick eyebrows, Sheridan continued his retreat a step at a time, arms still raised to exaggerate his size and presence, though with little trust in that trick’s effectiveness. He was simply doing what he had been taught to do under these circumstances by his predecessors and his Ute friends. He trusted also in Toby’s canny trail sense not to challenge the creature.