Before driving home I paid a call at the office of the Bureau of Land Management. I wanted to see for myself what their attitude was. The Supervisor, a pleasant little man with a birdlike fuzz on the top of his head, bowed as politely as if I’d come to tea.
“Hm-m-m,” he smiled when I told him my name. “You have a ranch in Storey County, do you not?”
“Yes,” I said politely.
Offering me a chair, he began to open up like an oyster to the sun. “I understand there are three hundred pesky mustangs just south of your ranch destroying the grazing land. Is that why you’ve come to see me?”
“Yes, in a way.”
“Well, we plan to do something about it.”
“Are there really three hundred?” I asked, trying not to show my doubt.
He nodded, and the fuzz on his head blew ever so slightly. “That’s what we figure,” he replied. “Our fliers spot a straggle of horses and we know full well that a herd is close by. It’s like mice,” he added, waggling his forefinger. “Where there’s one there’s bound to be more.”
“Oh?” I said, acting spellbound. And then I noticed a package on his desk labeled Roquefort Cheese, and I figured he’d had more experience with mice than mustangs. Even as he spoke, a tiny dull gray mouse ran up the wall and onto his desk, sniffing his way to the cheese. There he stood, up on his hind feet, wriggling his whiskers.
I never changed expression.
“Yes, indeed,” the man went on, completely unaware of his furry visitor. “But as I say, we plan to do something about it. We do have the power, you know, to order the complete destruction of all wild horses to save what little grass there is. And,” he added in obvious pride, “with these air roundups we can keep the ranges clear for the horses and cattle of ranchers like you, without . . . ” here he puffed himself up like a courting pigeon “ . . . without costing the taxpayer a cent!”
“How’s that, sir?” And I leaned forward so suddenly that the mouse ran down the wall and was gone.
“Why, the rendering plants buy up the horses. At six cents a pound, the fliers are well paid when they round up a whole herd. Yes, ma’am! The Bureau has a fine record for saving the taxpayers’ money.”
I listened in astonishment.
“At the least, seventy-five thousand mustangs have been captured since I’ve been here. But our work is far from done. Our manager reports hundreds of wild horses still left in the Virginia ranges.”
I thought to myself, How can this be? I have seen only one herd running free in all my lifetime. But I didn’t challenge him.
After a polite pause I asked, “When, sir, is the next roundup? And are people permitted to watch?”
“Well . . . ll,” he harrumphed, “there are certain matters to be considered as to time and place.” The eyes behind their dark-rimmed glasses studied me a moment before continuing. “The pilots must first get a permit from the County Board. Then, of course, it depends on the weather.”
“I see.”
“The next roundup will be in the range between Louse-town and Ramsey, but a delicate girl like you wouldn’t want to watch. No, ma’am! It’s not like a rodeo, you know.”
Not like a rodeo! No, I could imagine what it would be like. I stood up to leave; I had all the horrible information I needed.
The trim little man stood up, too. “Don’t you worry about your own horses, young lady,” he smiled reassuringly. “The Bureau does not allow the shooting of any wild horses for fear that branded ones might be killed.”
I thought, Is that the only reason?
Feeling dreadfully sick, I hurried home.
11. The Scales Tip Even
THE WONDERFUL thing about Charley was that he was never neutral. As we drove to Virginia City that early June evening, he gripped the wheel hard and I could see his lips moving. He was already blasting off at the meeting.
In the distance, white plumes of steam from Steamboat Springs were puffing out of the ground like train smoke snaking along the horizon.
“I’ve a head of steam on me, too,” Charley said. “I can’t wait to blow my top.”
I sat closer. In tune.
Virginia City always excited me, mountain-high and mountain-walled as it was. Going there was like reaching for the top of the world. But that night as we wound up and up the steep Geiger Grade, it was like reaching toward something dark and dangerous, and important.
When at last we stopped climbing, the ghost city spread out before us like a picture map. The dying sun had colored it pink and purple and burnt orange, and faint lights were blinking in the houses that clung to the mountainside.
A string of cars was hurrying with us up B Street, past Piper’s Opera House. The building was only a husk now, its shingles flapping in the breeze. Just beyond, in solid contrast, the Storey County Courthouse stood, in lawful dignity.
We parked close by and began stomping along the old board walk, our high-heeled boots noisy as horse hoofs. Even the sound of our boots spoke of the urgent purpose and business ahead.
I glanced up at the statue of Justice over the courthouse door. “Look, Charley! She isn’t blindfolded like other statues, and her scales tip even.” I made him look up. “It’s a good omen,” I whispered.
Charley wasn’t so sure.
Inside, the scene was like a courtroom in an old melodrama, brass spittoons and all. The only difference was the elegant marble fireplace, marble brought over from Italy in the days when the Comstock lode was rich in silver. Now it was a catchall for waste paper and chewed-down cigars.
The county commissioners and the district attorney were already taking their places behind the rail as we walked in. And at a little table by himself, up in the front of the room, sat Lucius Beebe, editor of the famous Territorial Enterprise.
I looked around and saw that the audience was split right down the middle, the “fors” on one side, the “agins” on the other. We took seats in the back row among our friends.
“Gads!” the man next to me said. “Looks like we got a hundred head here, all chomping at the bit.”
The wall clock pointed precisely to the hour of eight as the chairman rose to his feet. “I’m Bill Marks,” he introduced himself, “owner and operator of the Crystal Bar here in Virginia City.”
Some in the audience guffawed as if the explanation were unnecessary. They knew him well, even in his off-work clothes.
The man had a scrubbed pink face and a schoolboy grin which vanished the moment he began reading aloud the application for a permit. “To round up by plane,” it said, “all unbranded wild horses found on the land between Lousetown and Ramsey.”
He leaned over the table now, and spoke directly to two men in the front row. They were dressed differently from us ranchers. They wore shiny black jackets and one wore goggles perched on the back of his head.
“Are you the pilots from Idaho?” Mr. Marks asked.
Like twin mechanical toys, the two fliers hunched forward as one, nodded as one.
Lucius Beebe scratched a few notes on the back of an envelope. The scratching gave me the shivers.
The chairman proceeded. “The names of Gomez and Burger are also on this application. Would one of these gentlemen explain the need for this roundup?”
A chunky, dark-jowled man arose. “I’m Gomez. Own a thousand sheep. And them sneakin’ mustangs,” he whined, “is over-runnin’ my range lands. If somethin’ ain’t done soon, my sheep’ll starve.”
Charley and I looked at each other. We had never seen a wild mustang anywhere near our place. I wanted to cry out, “You lie!” But someone did it for me.
“He’s a liar!” a weather-beat rancher shouted. “My land abuts his and I ain’t seen a band o’ wild ones in five year.”
Gomez exploded. “I’m tellin’ you . . . them scroungy broomtails is eatin’ all my forage and spoilin’ my land.”
An old man on our side of the aisle struggled to his feet, knee joints cracking. “Mr. Chair,” he said in his high old-man’s
voice, “that feller is yawpin’ about land that ain’t even his’n. He leases it from the Bee-yuoro of Land Management.” He stumbled over the word “Bureau,” and the “fors” laughed the old man down.
Bill Marks rapped for quiet. “The gentleman is right. We all know that everybody leases his land. Let’s hear from the Bureau man.”
My acquaintance of the afternoon eagerly jumped to his feet. A wall light made a halo of the duck fuzz on his head as he waited for the question.
“How many wild horses,” the chairman asked, “do’you reckon there are here in Storey County?”
“At least three hundred,” was the quick reply. Then gulping a breath, the little man began spitting out statistics: “Eighty per cent of Nevada is federal land, and I don’t need to tell you ranchers that it takes sixty acres to feed a cow and her calf, and almost as much to feed a ewe and her lamb.”
Lucius Beebe belched, as if the remark made him slightly ill.
The man went on, ignoring the interruption. “My Bureau is responsible for keeping the number of wild animals reduced for the benefit of the men who raise cattle and sheep. And we are proud . . . Yes sir! We are proud . . . ” here he beamed on his audience, both sides of the aisle “ . . . that in conducting these roundups the only expense to the taxpayer is the building of temporary corrals for holding the horses.”
Before he could sit down, Jack Murry, the prison guard from Carson City, was on his feet. He turned directly to the Bureau man. “But in this case,” he said, quietly setting a trap, “the taxpayer will not even need to build a corral?”
The Bureau man nodded smugly, unaware of the snare. “You’re absolutely right, Mr. Murry. The mustangs won’t need to be held; they’ll be taken care of at once.”
Something in the prison guard’s manner electrified us all. I could almost smell the sparks of fire. By his very presence he still held the floor, still kept the Bureau man standing. His questions crackled. “Aha! Saving our money, are you?”
The Bureau man looked startled, and Lucius Beebe let out a “Harrrumph.”
Mr. Murray snapped his next question. “Don’t you know what Gomez and Burger are really after?”
The audience leaned forward to catch every syllable.
“Do you think these men give a hoot for the grazing lands? No! They want those mustangs just to grind their flesh and bones into pet food.”
I could hear the tense shuffling of boots all over the room. My heart skipped. What was coming next?
The biting voice went on, “This very day I learned that Gomez and Burger are the ones who own the rendering plant.”
The audience gasped, then began muttering neighbor-to-neighbor, louder and louder.
The chairman pounded for quiet. Then he too went at the Bureau man. “Let’s go back to your three hundred horses; how did you arrive at this figure?”
The man no longer had a halo; his hair was wilted dark with perspiration. He blotted it with a handkerchief. “Wh—why,” he stuttered, “our men flew over in a plane and made their count. Wherever they saw one, they counted it as three.”
“How’s that?”
“Well . . .ll, whenever there’s one, we figure two are hiding.”
“Where in God’s name,” an irate voice boomed out, “would they hide? Our mountains are bare! Our lakes are dry! Our flatlands are treeless!”
I warmed to the man’s words and to his looks. He was the postmaster of Virginia City and the spittin’ image of Abraham Lincoln, but a young Lincoln, lean and dark.
Now he arched his tall frame over the aisle until he was face to face with the perspiring Bureau man. “By the beard of Tex Gladding—for that’s my name—I’m here to fight this mustang slaughter.”
He began fumbling in his pockets. No one interrupted him. At last he pulled out a long piece of paper. “What’s more,” he said, unfolding it like a road map, “I have one hundred and forty-seven signatures right here protesting this permit. Every last one of them wonders how come those two sheepmen can fence in the hull dang world for their own selves?”
The “agins” cheered loudly.
The Bureau man had a coughing spasm. “All right, all right,” he agreed when the room quieted. “Suppose it is only a hundred this year. Next year it’ll be two hundred. The next, four hundred, and so on. You see, Mr. Chairman, it’s a matter of simple arithmetic.”
This was more than the horsemen in the crowd could stomach. Their laughter rocked the courtroom, Charley’s heartiest of all. He jumped up and waved to the whole room. “I’d bet my ranch against a silver dollar that every man here would go into the horse business if he could count on an increase like that.”
The Bureau man ignored the interruption. “As I was saying, my job is to save the grazing land by keeping the numbers down. Pursuit by air is the humane way, and . . . ”
All this while I had been waiting, waiting with my heart bursting in anger and the tears flowing inside me. Waiting for what? A vision? A picture of the long-dead mustang whose milk had given life back to my father when it was all draining away in the heat and the dust? And through my father to me? Except for her, I would not have had life. That was it! I seemed to hear that old mare whinnying for all of her kind, calling as a mare to her foal, calling, but helpless.
“Mr. Chairman!” I cried out. “If there really are too many mustangs, I agree something should be done—in a humane way. But if the pilot only wants to sell horseflesh, he doesn’t care how the animal suffers. We should never allow such cruelty against living, breathing creatures that hurt and pain just like you and me!”
The Bureau man gaped around at me in open-mouthed amazement.
I pretended not to notice and went right on. “One day I followed a truckload of wild horses to the rendering plant. You should have seen them. They were torn and bleeding and only half alive. I have pictures here to prove it.” And I passed my snapshots around.
“I know what the little lady means.” It was Attorney Richards, who had remained quiet until now. He glanced at the pictures and passed them on. “I’ve seen those planes as they flush the horses out of the hills. The pilots shoot at them to panic them out into the open. By the time the animals are caught, every last one is crippled; almost dead. It’s the cruelest thing imaginable.”
Now big Josh Tabor, with a gold watch chain spanning his barrel of a body, stood up. He was a wealthy cowman. He swiveled around in my direction and pointed his cigar at me. “That sentimental sister doesn’t understand what a mustang really is, and I propose to tell her. He’s a runty, moth-eaten, mangy scrub of no value anywhere—outside of a can of horsemeat! He’s a curse to the stockman, a nuisance to the hunter, and a pain in the neck to the Bureau of Land Management. Getting rid of him”—here he eyed me with a foxlike grin—“can be likened to a housewife’s war on cockroaches in the kitchen or moths in the closet.”
Gomez howled, “Yeah! Yeah! She oughta have a whole herd of the pests running in her backyard! Then see how she likes ’em!”
I started to erupt in fury, but suddenly Pa’s words came back to me. “Be a girl. But think reasonable like your Pa.”
Before I could answer, the man attacked me again. His tone was razor-edged. “And just what do you propose to do, young lady, when they become that numerous?”
“I propose . . . ” I tried to keep my voice steady “ . . . IF that day should come, that they be mercifully thinned out, not wiped out.”
A ripple of applause on our side of the room.
There was a stir at the doorway behind us and a cowhand strode right up to the railing. He took off his hat and slapped it against his thigh, raising a little cloud of dust. He didn’t wait for recognition; he just spoke out.
“I’m dog tired. Been de-horning and brandin’ since sunup, but I knew I couldn’t sleep if I didn’t come to put in a word for the mustangs. They’re important. They’re part of the West. If we kill ’em off like these men are figgerin’ to do, we kill the very critter that helped build America. The sa
me America that gives us the right to speak here—arguing whether they, them mustangs, should live or die. Don’t that take the cake! And we call ourselves human.”
He turned and stomped out of the room, a round of cheers trailing his proud and dusty dignity.
The meeting could have ended right then, but everyone sat hushed, waiting for the other fellow to finish it off.
I remembered Mr. Harris’ advice: “Let the men do it, Annie.” I sighed in relief when Charley stood up. “Mr. Chairman,” he said, “the supervisor of the Bureau has said that seventy-five thousand mustangs have been killed since he has been here. I propose that we save the few tough little fighters that are left. Let’s respect their right to live as symbols of the old West and the freedom it stood for.”
As Charley took his seat, the commissioners and the district attorney huddled together, conferring behind their hands while the audience carried on the fight in stage whispers. Up in front, Lucius Beebe sharpened his pencil with a slim gold pocketknife, waiting for the verdict.
At last the chairman rapped for quiet. His boylike face wore its customary grin as he scanned the audience, person to person. “The Board denies this permit,” he said. “The meeting is adjourned.”
Wide-brimmed hats soared to the ceiling. A tribe of Paiutes or Washoes couldn’t have made more noise. Boots stamped. Spurs jingled.
We had won!
12. The New Challenge
THAT NIGHT after the meeting I had a long talk with Hobo. I couldn’t help being a kid again and talking to him the way I used to. The night was soft and near, with one of those misty half-moons that throws a lot of yellow light.
I found him far out in the field. He was easy to spot with the yellow moon on his buckskin coat. His winter hair had shed off and his hide was shiny slick.
He let me come up on him easy and slow, and being long-legged I clambered aboard. He waited for a signal to go, but I didn’t give it. The June alfalfa was sweet and I let him go on eating. I liked to hear him rip off a bunch of it and chew it with his big grinder teeth. He could listen and chew at the same time, which is more than some two-legged folk can do. I could tell he was listening from the way he was waggling his ears like semaphores.
Mustang: Wild Spirit of the West Page 6