Fire on the Mountain

  DeSalius did the same.

  We were all thirsty, and the insane shrilling of the locusts in the brush out under the intolerable sun made us even thirstier. We drank ice water and listened to the locusts, listened to Cruzita singing quietly in the kitchen, preparing supper: beans, of course, with red chili sauce, and eggs—huevos rancheros—and the inevitable slabs of beef.

  A calf bawled off to the west, across the sandy bed of the Salado. I looked out that way but could see no cattle. They were all shaded up under the cottonwoods and in the tamarisk. The delicate leaves of the cottonwood trees glimmered in the sunlight, trembling under the touch of the invisible, inaudible breeze. Clanking painfully, the old windmill near the house rotated on its bearings to face and catch the slight wind: the vanes creaked as they turned. Tonight the frogs would be bellowing, mad with moonlight and summertime.

  DeSalius uncrossed his legs, shifting the chair. “Really no need for me to trouble you any longer, Mr. Vogelin. I’ve brought you what I wanted to bring you and told you what I had to tell you. But you must understand that in a case like this, involving what the Defense Department considers a military emergency, you have no chance to retain possession of your land. No chance, no chance whatsoever. The only issue yet to be decided is the exact amount of monetary compensation—if you want to make an issue of it.”

  He finished his glass of ice water and stood up. “I hope the whole procedure is clear to you and that you understand both the necessity and the justice of this action. If you have any questions I’d be glad to answer them, of course.” Standing, he looked down at Grandfather. “Any questions?”

  The old man, still sitting, looked up at him. “Yes, I have a question. Just one question. How do you think you can throw me outa here if I don’t want to go?”

  DeSalius laughed pleasantly. “Now, Mr. Vogelin, I’m sure it won’t come to anything like that. You’re too intelligent a man to make a fool of yourself. But if there is any difficulty the U.S. Marshal will attend to the details. That’s his line of work. But I’m sure his services won’t be necessary. After all, you’re a citizen like the rest of us, you’re capable of recognizing your obligations as well as your rights—in regard to the law of the land. I’ll go now. It’s been very nice talking to you. Thank you very much for this excellent cigar.”

  Getting no answer from Grandfather, the colonel looked at me. “And nice meeting you too, young man. By the way: what is your name? I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

  “Billy Vogelin Starr, sir.” I tried to be polite.

  “Well spoken. I like the way you speak out, young man—loud and clear. You’re proud of your name, aren’t you?”

  “Yes I am.”

  “Well that’s good, that’s the way it should be. Goodbye, Billy.” He turned back to the old man. “Goodbye to you, sir, it’s been a pleasure to meet you and I’ve enjoyed our conversation.” He nodded to each of us, turned smartly around and marched off the verandah through the dazzle of sunlight and under the spangled shade of the trees.

  We watched him go, staring at his broad back, watched him climb in his gray government sedan and drive off. Shambles of dust obscured his exit: the car rumbled up the rocky road past sheds and corral, up the slope and out of sight.

  Silence. I poured some more ice water. Wiped the sweat off my upper lip.

  The old man gazed at the lingering dust. “What’d you think of that fella, Billy?”

  “Sir?”

  “What’d you think of that fella?”

  “Seems like a nice guy,” I said. “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw a horse.”

  Grandfather smiled. “We think the same, Billy. We think the same.”

  4

  Well—the summer rolled on, hot and dry and beautiful, so beautiful it broke your heart to see it knowing you couldn’t see it forever: that brilliant light vibrating over the desert, the purple mountains drifting on the horizon, the pink tassels of the tamarisk, the wild lonely sky, the black buzzards soaring above the whirlwinds, the thunderheads that piled up almost every afternoon trailing a curtain of rain that seldom reached the earth, the stillness of noonday, the sight of the horses rolling in the dust to wash off the sweat and flies, the glamorous sunrises that flooded plain and range with a fantastic, incredible, holy light, the cereus cactus that bloomed and closed on one night only, the moonlight slanting through the open door of my bunkhouse room, the sight and sound of cool water trickling from a spring after a long day in the heat—I could list a thousand things I saw that I’ll never forget, a thousand marvels and miracles that pulled at something in my heart which I could not understand.

  We got through June all right and most of July without too much trouble from the weather or DeSalius or the United States Government. Some of the cows got sick from eating larkspur up in the hills and five of them bloated up and died. That’s natural. The rest pulled through and although you could hardly say they fattened at least they didn’t lose weight: they grew tough and rangy and vicious. In the fall we would ship them to the Midwest for a quick feeding on corn and real grass before slaughter. That’s life—for a beef cow. Lee Mackie came out to see us every week and he and I went for long rides together in the hills. He told me stories of the old days when he was a boy and how he’d taken part in the defense of the ranch against the last raids of the Mescalero Apaches. All lies, of course, but good healthy lies, full of vigor and romance and grandeur.

  Lee was at the ranch the day the United States Marshal made his entrance. The marshal came alone, dressed in a suit like an FBI agent, but bearing no arms or animosity. That was on the twentieth of July, the deadline specified in Judge Fagergren’s final removal order.

  The marshal got out of his car and looked over the scene, apparently not disturbed by what he saw: chickens strolling in the yard, dogs barking at his flanks, Peralta kids playing under the trees, laundry hanging on the line, Eloy Peralta patching the roof of the hayshed, Lee Mackie and I shoeing old Skilletfoot, Grandfather repairing the stirrup leathers of his saddle.

  Lee and I were planning an overnight ride, to start that afternoon. The old man, of course, would no longer leave the ranch except for quick trips to town. He was afraid that the armed forces of the United States might confiscate his home the minute he turned his back.

  “Well sir,” the marshal said. That was all he said, for the moment. Looking around with an expression of perfectly neutral nonchalance, he took off his hat, swabbed his perspiring brow with a handkerchief, and put the hat back on. The marshal did not look much like a police officer: he was short and plump and middle-aged and sort of bow-legged; his face was bland and innocent as a pie. But no doubt he carried a chopped-off .38 under the shoulder of his baggy summer suit, and a submachine gun in the car.

  “Well sir,” he said again, revealing a Texas accent, “how are things going, Mr. Vogelin?” He was speaking to Lee.

  Lee gave the man a hard appraisal before replying. “That’s Mr. Vogelin over there.” He pointed a thumb at Grandfather.

  The marshal turned to the old man, unmoved by Lee’s scrutiny. “Good evening, Mr. Vogelin.” He said “evening.” It was about four in the afternoon. “My name’s Burr. The Judge sent me out to see how you were getting along.”

  When we heard the word “judge” we all stopped working and stared at the visitor.

  “Are you the marshal?” Grandfather asked, putting down his iron needle and facing the man with a kind of weary resolution. Despite all the evidence offered by reason, the old man must have been hoping, somehow, that this meeting would never take place.

  The marshal nodded. He was the marshal. “Yes sir, I’m the marshal.” He reached inside his jacket and fumbled for something. I felt Lee’s hand tighten on my shoulder as the same ridiculous thought struck us simultaneously: he’s reaching for the handcuffs.

  But no, like most visitors to the ranch in those days, the marshal pulled out a document.

  “Well, Mr. Vogelin, I got this here piec
e of paper I’m supposed to give you.” He held it out to Grandfather. Grandfather made no move to take it. The marshal pushed it closer to the old man. The old man would not lift a hand to accept it. After an embarrassing pause, the marshal drew the paper back and opened it and studied it. He studied it for a long time, apparently finding it hard to understand.

  “Well, Mr. Vogelin, what this here paper is, this paper is an extension of the Order to Vacate.” He raised his eyes to look at Grandfather. “I guess you knowed you was supposed to be off these premises, you and all your movable property, by today.” He stopped and waited for an answer.

  “I’m still here,” the old man replied. “I’m not leaving. We’re not leaving.”

  “Yeah? Well—” The marshal shrugged. “I guess the Judge figured you’d still be around. This paper means you got two more weeks in which to vacate these premises. The Court gives you an extension even though you didn’t request an extension. Two more weeks,” the marshal mumbled. He seemed sleepy and bored. It was a hot afternoon. Around 102 degrees in the shade.

  Grandfather said nothing. The marshal waited, saying nothing. In the silence we could all hear the maniacal singing of the locusts.

  “I’m supposed to give you this paper, Mr. Vogelin.” Again the man offered his authentic-looking document to John Vogelin and again the old man did not bother to accept it. The paper hung in the air between them, suspended from the fat fingers of a United States Marshal.

  “You don’t want it,” the marshal stated.

  Grandfather made no answer. We all stared at the marshal. Apathy seemed to cover him like the shade of the trees. His eyes were half closed. It seemed to me then that we were dealing with some type of idiot.

  “Well, if you don’t want it I’ll leave it here.” The marshal looked around for a place to put the piece of paper. The handiest level surface was the top of one of the corral fence posts. He set the paper there and within a few seconds the invisible breeze carried it off the post and into the corral, where it landed in the mud and dung by the water trough, disturbing two yellow butterflies.

  The marshal put his hands in his pockets, shuffled his feet, and stared at the ground. “Something else I was supposed to tell you, Mr. Vogelin.” He blinked his eyes and sniffed. Perhaps he had a case of hay fever. “Yes. About your livestock, Mr. Vogelin.” The marshal stared at the ground, blinking. “If you don’t remove them … we’ll remove them for you. At your expense. That’s what I was supposed to tell you.”

  “Thanks,” the old man said.

  “What we’ll have to do, we’ll have to take them to El Paso, auction them off. Whatever they bring you’ll … you’ll get, minus the expenses.” The marshal started to yawn. “You have any questions before I go, Mr. Vogelin?”

  “How many men are you gonna bring with you next time?” Grandfather asked.

  The marshal scratched his neck and shuffled his feet, thinking the matter over. “Gosh, I don’t know, Mr. Vogelin. How many do you think I’ll need?” He glanced sideways at me and Lee for a moment, and winked. We were not amused. He stared at the ground. “I guess I’ll bring as many as I can round up,” he said.

  “You’ll need more,” Grandfather said.

  The marshal stopped another yawn. “Well, you might be right, Mr. Vogelin. Yes sir, you might be right. We’ll see. Anyway, I hope you won’t be here … two weeks from now.”

  “I’ll be here. Waiting for you.” Grandfather’s voice did not raise but filled with dark intensity. “And here’s something you better understand; I’m going to shoot the first man who lays a hand on my house. Remember that. Tell it to the reporters if you want to. I’m going to kill the first man who touches my house.”

  The marshal shook his head sadly. “Now, Mr. Vogelin, please don’t talk that way.” He talked to the ground, not looking at the old man. “Mr. Vogelin, that’s a serious offense, threatening an officer of the law. Please don’t talk that way.”

  Suddenly the old man lost his temper. “Get out of here! Get off my property! You’re trespassing on private property! Get out!”

  Lee’s fingers clutched hard at my shoulder. “John,” he said softly. “Easy now. …”

  “This is Government property now, Mr. Vogelin,” the marshal said. He paused, then completed his thought. “You are the one that’s trespassing, Mr. Vogelin.”

  “What’s that?” Grandfather roared. “What did you say?”

  Lee let go of my shoulder and stepped toward the marshal. “You’d better leave, Marshal. You better leave right away.” He stared at the man until the other lowered his head and looked at the ground.

  “I’m leaving,” the marshal said. He backed off a few steps and lifted one languid hand and made a vague motion in the air, a farewell salute. “See you fellas later, I suppose. I hope not, though. I mean, not here. Hope I see you somewhere else.” He turned his back to us and shambled toward his car, a short fat asymmetrical man with flies following the seat of his pants.

  We watched him get in the machine and drive away.

  “A clown,” Lee muttered.

  “I’ll kill that man if he comes bumbling and mumbling around here again,” Grandfather said.

  “That’s what I call insolence,” Lee said. “The way he acted. Clowning around with serious business. Bad manners and insolence, the worst kind of insolence.”

  Old Skilletfoot began to stamp and snort, still waiting for us to finish shoeing his hind feet. Lee turned his wrath upon the horse:

  “Stand still there, whoa! Whoa! you miserable, rump-sprung, Roman-nosed, dude - spoiled, broom-tailed, ewe-necked—! Whoa, I say!”

  And Skilletfoot obeyed.

  After supper, after Cruzita had washed the dishes and gone home to her primary family, Lee and I started playing chess with my portable chess set. He didn’t keep his mind on the game. Instead he argued with Grandfather on the same tedious and endless subject and I beat him easily in fourteen moves, after chopping him down to king, bishop, both knights, and a few scattered pawns.

  We played another game. I beat him again. And not only was he losing the game, he was losing the argument with the old man. At least he wasn’t winning the argument. We started the third game.

  “No!” Grandfather thundered, cigar in hand. “No!” he roared, as he did a thousand times that summer, “this here rancho is not for sale. Not for sale, by Jesus! I’m too old to move. They’ll have to carry me outa here in a box, by God! And say, you think maybe I won’t take a few of them Government men with me too.” This being a statement and not a question.

  “They’re only trying to do their duty, John.”

  “Me too. My duty.”

  “There’s a word for people like you,” Lee said, giving me a sly grin.

  “Words.”

  “The word is … anachronism.”

  “Anarchism?”

  “About the same.”

  “Check,” I said distinctly.

  “I’m not afraid of words,” the old man said. “You can call me anything you want to. So long as it’s polite.”

  “Well hell, John, you can count on that.”

  “Check,” I said again. “It’s your move, Lee.”

  “I’m counting on you all the way, Lee.”

  “What’d you say, Billy?”

  “Your king—is now—in check.”

  “Oh—yeah. So he is. What’ll I do with him now?”

  Patiently I pointed to his queen. “She can save you, Lee.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “the queen.” And he looked at his wristwatch. “Getting kind of late.”

  Yes, it is,” Grandfather said.

  “Your move, Lee.”

  5

  I believe it was about two weeks later that the Government drove off our stock.

  We were returning to the ranch near sundown, the light blinding our eyes as the sun glared straight through the windshield. In the back of the pickup we carried almost fifty dollars worth of edibles—nearly all of it canned goods and dried beans.
The old man was preparing for a long seige.

  We also had mail:

  For me, a letter from my mother. For Grandfather, a number of letters from the United States Government.

  The old man was a little drunk but steering a fairly true course as we bounced along at forty miles an hour toward the entrance gate.

  Grandfather pumped the brake pedal and the truck skidded over the rocks and humped to a stop. But before I got out to open the gate we realized that something was wrong—the gate was already wide open.

  “What are they up to now?” the old man muttered. He drove the truck through the gateway and stopped. I climbed out to close the gate. I saw new placards made of steel shining at me from the gateposts:

  PROPERTY OF U.S. GOVERNMENT KEEP OUT

  They were talking about our ranch. I tried to tear the things off with my bare hands and only broke a fingernail. The old man saw what I was doing and came out of the truck with a claw hammer in his grip. He ripped the signs off the posts and hurled them far out into the brush.

  We turned back to the truck. And stopped.

  A huge cloud of dust was rising above the salt flats where our main loading pens were. At the base of the dust cloud we could see the dim small figures of cattle, horses, men and machines. Through the quiet evening air came the low murmur, muted by the great distance, of animal activity.

  A jeep was coming up the road from the flats, a blue Air Force jeep gleaming with the white helmets of the Air Police.

  Out of habit Grandfather reached for the revolver in the dashboard compartment. Then he remembered me and lowered his hand. “We’ll not do battle yet,” he said, squinting into the sunlight and puffing on his cigar. “Not just yet.” He put his hands on his hips and waited.

  The jeep came closer, the engine whining with effort, the wheels gushing thick funnels of yellow dust, and stopped beside our truck. The driver remained at the wheel, but the captain sitting beside him got out and came toward us.