High Plains Tango
ROUGH. The professor had said it could get rough. It started to turn that way four days later when word got around that Daryl Moore and the Raptor Coalition were trying to block the new road because of some damn birds. And that Carlisle McMillan was spending a lot of time in the Falls City Library, studying all the documents related to the Avenue of the High Plains and intending to do what he could to prevent the highway from coming through.
Carlisle’s mailbox was run over on a Wednesday night. The following day, an anonymous letter arrived: “GO BACK TO CALIFORNIA, FAG! YOU’RE NOT WANTED HERE.” A gravelly, ominous voice on the phone that same night whispered, “Better keep that cat of yours inside.”
“BILL, what on earth is going on out there?” Cal Akers of the United States Chamber of Commerce was on the phone to Bill Flanigan, director of the High Plains Development Corporation in Falls City. “I got a call two hours ago from the senator, and he’s all worked up about birds in the highway route and some carpenter who’s causing trouble for us. What’s happening?”
“It’s hard to know where to start, Cal. A guy named Carlisle McMillan moved here from California a while back, heaven only knows why, and built a new house directly in the right-of-way. Actually, it was an old house he completely rebuilt. Of course, he didn’t know the highway would be coming right up through his toilet seat. Guess he did an incredible job on the place, that’s what the Observer, the Falls City paper, said. Called him a great craftsman in the article. Something on the order of two or three hundred people went to an open house at his place. Now half the doctors and lawyers in the state want him to do work for them. That’s one thing.”
“Screw the carpenter, this . . . what the hell’s his name again? Miller?”
“McMillan. Carlisle McMillan.”
“Okay, McMillan. We’ll bury his rear end under six feet of eminent domain mixed with asphalt, and he won’t know what hit him. Rest easy, Bill, that’s not a problem.”
“Well, the locals seem to think they can handle it in their own way. Feelings up there are running high against McMillan, and apparently there’ve been threats of violence against him.”
“Bill, why is it we’re always dealing with cretins? That kind of junk solves nothing and just brings a lot of bad publicity. See if you can convince ’em of that. Tell ’em to back off. McMillan can be dealt with. What else we got?”
“Seems while our man from California was building his house, he noticed some kind of unusual birds across the road from him in a little grove. Turns out it’s a hawk that everyone thought was extinct.”
“Aw, shit.” Cal Akers’s commitment to Christ and better living sometimes slipped in high-tension moments. “Is the hawk on the endangered species list?”
“I don’t know.”
“Eminent domain is one thing, an endangered species is something altogether different. The Tellico Dam project down in Tennessee got held up for four years because of the snail darter. How come we didn’t know about this before? Just a minute, I’ve got the environmental impact statement in my files. Hang on while I dig it out.” Silence, except for the soft crackle of pages turning twelve hundred miles away. “Okay, I’m scanning the document. There’s a mention of Indian mounds, but they’re on private land owned by this guy Ray Dargen. He’s in our camp, so that’s not a problem. I can’t see anything about birds. When did he discover them?”
“Not long ago, from what I understand. A few months, maybe.”
“The draft environmental impact statement was done quietly about a year ago, so that’s why these hawks aren’t mentioned. Besides, most of those statements are whitewash jobs anyway. Let me call the Fish and Wildlife Service and get back to you. Keep the faith. I’ll call you as soon as I can find out something.”
“Okay, thanks, Cal. Oh, I almost forgot to mention this radical environmental outfit called EWU. . . .”
While Akers and Flanigan were talking, Carlisle was driving past the High Plains Development Corporation on his way to Salamander. He was grim, dug in, and determined to go on with this war forever, if that’s what it took.
CARLISLE MCMILLAN may have been determined, but the following people were furious approaching apoplexy: Cal Akers of the United States Chamber of Commerce, Bill Flanigan of the High Plains Development Corporation, Jerry Gravatt and five other governors, twelve senators, members of the U.S. House of Representatives too numerous to mention, Canadian economic development officials, various oil and trucking company executives, cement contractors, various unions, nearly all of Yerkes County, and everyone else having a stake in the Avenue of the High Plains.
And they were all mad at Carlisle McMillan. He built a famous house in the path of their highway, didn’t he? He discovered the T-hawks, didn’t he? And he told that professor, Daryl Moore, at Twin Buttes Community College about the birds, didn’t he do that, too? And then Moore had contacted an outfit called the Raptor Coalition, which now was asking for an injunction to stop construction of the highway until the hawks could be considered immediately for endangered species protection. If the hawks were given such status, and they surely would if the lawsuit was successful, the highway might be stopped, period, or at least require a massive redesign requiring enough time that funding might disappear. Then there was talk that McMillan had been studying the entire highway report and intended to challenge the route on grounds nobody had even thought of so far. The highway supporters’ grievances were funneled into a giant vat, churning there and flowing downward and out a lower spout, where they emerged with the force of a combined virulence, all of it running directly toward Carlisle McMillan.
Ray Dargen, businessman-developer, was also mad, truculence incarnate with a diamond ring on its right pinky. Fifteen years earlier, an old man named Williston had found trace elements of gold in a creek near Wolf Butte. The county assayer owed Dargen a favor and had called him the same day Williston came to the assayer’s office. Dargen then bought the claim from Williston for $3,000. Eventually, under the Mining Law of 1872, Dargen had been able to purchase Wolf Butte plus 1,500 acres surrounding it for almost nothing. That had turned out to be a little tricky, since the Indians objected to the transfer of public land containing burial mounds into private hands, but Ray Dargen used his political connections and got it done.
Rocks falling from the butte crushed the first crew of mining engineers he sent out there. Ray Dargen had not been moved. As he said to his wife, “The idiots should’ve known better than to camp that close to the cliff.”
A second crew was more cautious, finished the work, and reported to Dargen that the gold had come from a small vein not worth the cost it would take to mine it. They had also told him there was evidence of ceremonial fires on the butte and strange symbols carved into the rock up there, not to mention what sounded like wings late at night when they were in their tents. But Ray Dargen was interested in gold, not what he had called “Indian charms and other whoopee.”
So he was stuck with 1,500 acres of rolling, rocky, dry land, and he rasped his teeth whenever he thought of all that worthless ground just lying out there with nobody else around dumb enough to buy it from him. The idea of being in business was to make money, not to spend money. That’s how he saw it, and he was still paying taxes on worthless property.
Two years after he bought the land, there had been quite a stir about the Indian mounds on the other side of the butte, on property he owned. The anthropologist had seemed harmless enough when he asked permission to survey and possibly excavate the site, and Ray Dargen was busy with other projects, so Dargen had given written permission for the work to proceed but said to keep him posted on what they were doing. Then it gradually occurred to him that somehow money could be made out of all this sacred Indian ground stuff. Too bad about the anthropologist falling from a butte and getting killed a while later, but that break in the action had given him time to withdraw his permission and boot the scientific types out of there.
He hadn’t known what to do about those Indian mound
s, but it occurred to him there was a way they could be used to make a buck, and the Avenue of the High Plains had given him an idea. He would get the ground rezoned for commercial activity and put up a theme park he would call Indian Mysteryland. Excavate some of the mounds, build a little museum to house the artifacts, and hire a curator to conduct tours and tell ghost stories. Hook the tourists off the new highway to stop and look at bones and pots and hear the ghost stories, and while they were doing that, they could eat at the restaurant he would build and put their kiddies on the rides Ray Dargen would have waiting for them.
A big outfit in the East was already designing the carnival rides and had sent him proposed names for them: Buffalo Hunt, War Party, Pow Wow, and Bad Medicine. He liked the names, along with two other suggestions the consultants made, namely Mysteryland Maze: Fun for All Ages, and the Pioneer Chapel, where quickie marriages might be arranged if certain state laws could be tweaked a bit. The possibilities stretched before him like the high plains themselves, including stagecoach rides with mock Indian attacks and the construction of a motel on the site. Call it the Wigwam Motel. The units would be made of poured concrete and shaped like tepees. He’d construct an underground restaurant and name it the Ceremonial Chamber. Motel logo: “Stay in a Tepee, Eat Underground.”
It was all coming together. A gift shop called Geronimo’s Hideout—Jewelry and Moccasins for the Entire Family. One of his associates reminded him that Geronimo was an Apache, not a Sioux, and operated in the Southwest.
Dargen looked at him, chafing with impatience at such details, and said, “Well, what the hell, we’ll call it something different, then. Doesn’t matter. Think the tourists’ll know any different or give a crap, anyway?”
There was more. Ray Dargen had discovered that a robust trade in Indian artifacts existed, illicitly gained or otherwise, and was in contact with certain museums and private collectors, all of whom were interested in discreetly purchasing artifacts from Dargen’s excavations. The artifacts plus the theme park plus the land he and his associates were secretly picking up along the route would turn the Avenue of the High Plains into his personal mother lode after all. As always, he would bend things to the will of his avarice. It was that kind of bold thinking that had made this country what it was and is. That’s how Ray Dargen saw it.
And then, then, just when it looked as if there were a different kind of gold in that property, some outside agitator named McMillan had come along and with a couple of others was fighting the highway. Dargen’s first stop was to see Ralph Geigle, president of Twin Buttes Community College.
“Ralph, this biology teacher of yours, or whatever he is—Moore, I think that’s his name—has got to get his mind right on this highway thing. Tell him there’re lots of birds in the world for him to look at. You can also tell him I’m on the board of directors at the bank where he’s trying to get a personal loan, something about getting his mother into a nursing home. Be sure and tell him that, Ralph. Hey, it’s about time for your fund drive for that new building, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is, Ray. In fact, I wanted to talk with you about the fund-raising drive. And don’t worry, I’ll have a friendly chat with Moore. Besides, the faculty here doesn’t have tenure like at the state universities.”
“Good. I knew I could count on you, Ralph. If our wives keep going down to the capital and buying those expensive dresses for bridge tournaments, we’ve got to have a little more economic development around here. A man’s got to cover his expenses, right?”
Ray Dargen stood up and shook Ralph Geigle’s hand. “Let me know what you need for your fund drive, and I’ll have my secretary put a check in the mail.”
WHEN SENATOR Harlan Sterk arrived in Falls City two days later for his monthly Listening Post Weekend with his constituents, most of it was spent with a constituent named Ray Dargen.
“Calm down, Ray. These things take time. There are such matters as law and procedure, you know.”
“Senator, I’m not interested in law, and I’m not interested in procedure. What I’m interested in is business. You have any idea how much money I got tied up in properties along this highway that’s supposed to be built? Enough to keep you in office for a long while. My contribution to your last campaign was somewhere over twenty thousand, and I don’t give that kind of money simply because I’m interested in making democracy work better. You know that, I know that. Now our pal Bill Flanigan over there at High Plains Development tells me that Senator Jack Wheems, who’s spearheading this thing, has engineers looking to see if the highway route can be changed to miss those tweety birds. Harlan, I want you to guarantee me that’s not going to happen. I expect to hear from you early next week on this.”
THE CHIEF engineer had studied Wheems’s request carefully for a possible rerouting of the highway. “Senator Wheems, we’ve taken another look at the route for the Avenue of the High Plains. As it turns out, we can miss the area where the birds are causing a problem. But a big road is a system, change one part and a lot of other things have to change. It’ll mean moving the highway about forty miles west of Livermore and Falls City, which, incidentally, our original calculations indicated would be a more efficient route anyhow, both in terms of construction costs and vehicle travel time, since the current route requires what amounts to a detour just to include Falls City and Livermore. Shall we go ahead and work up the alternative that misses the birds?”
“No. My good friend Senator Sterk has real problems with a route change. Let it go for now.” Jack Wheems put the phone back in its cradle and turned to an aide. “Get Harlan Sterk on the phone.”
“Senator Sterk is in Florida. He left a number, but he said he might be hard to reach. Want me to try?”
“No. I’ll talk with Cal Akers over at the Chamber.”
Akers came on the line. “Good afternoon, Senator. What’s up?”
“I can’t raise Harlan, so I’m talking to you. You can tell your pals out in High Plains Hickup that we’ve dropped the idea for a route change in the Avenue. But I also want you to tell them the funding for this highway was delicate to start with, and some members of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee are beginning to get shaky in their support of it, and if your pals aren’t careful, we’re not going to get any highway at all.”
“Okay. I just talked to Bill Flanigan at High Plains Development. Seems there’s been some violence or threats of violence involving this fellow Carlisle McMillan. Flanigan’s trying to find out what’s going on.”
“For the love of Christ, Cal, don’t those people know how to do anything right? No wonder they’re falling apart.”
“Tighten your seat belt, Senator. It gets even more interesting, if that’s the right word. Ever hear of an outfit named EWU? It’s pronounced ‘E-wuu,’ stands for Earth Warriors United or something like that. Well, neither did I until Flanigan called. It’s a radical environmental group from somewhere out west, and they’re itching to get into this. Three of them rolled into Salamander in an old van two days ago and started poking around. Rumor is they’re going to blow up the Salamander water tower if the highway goes through the T-hawk habitat, and that’s just for starters. I hear one of them said they might do it anyway, just to get people’s attention focused on what’s happening out there.
“The leader of this outfit supposedly is a guy named Riddick who’s suspected of wheeling barrels of used motor oil into a Texas oil company executive’s house last year while the executive was floating around in his swimming pool. When that little evening concluded, there was oil all over everything, including the executive and his wife. Riddick’s not here with the EWU people in Yerkes County, however, not right now, at least. From what I hear, he’s been involved in some other mischief as well. Word is he’s a real bad fellow.”
“Well, if that sort of thing starts happening along with the birds and Dargen’s shenanigans, I can just about guarantee the works committee’s going to think about sending this road money elsewhere, and there’ll b
e nothing I can do about it. I’ll get the G-men over at the Bureau on this EWU outfit. When does the public information meeting on the highway come up in Yerkes County?”
“Mid-February. It’s in Livermore. Flanigan expects McMillan to cause trouble at the Livermore meeting.”
“Who the hell are we dealing with, Cal? Who exactly is this McMillan, anyway?”
“Flanigan says he’s really tough, Senator. He’s quiet, smart, believes in what he’s doing, and does his homework.”
“Can’t we squeeze him somehow? Financially, maybe? How’s he earn his living? Who’s he got his loans with?”
“We’re thinking along the same lines, Senator. I asked Flanigan just that. Flanigan looked into it, says McMillan’s debt-free except for a little money he owes on his property, a thousand or two. He’s a builder—master carpenter, they say. It’s hard to boycott him because he’s too damn good at what he does, and he works for himself. The doctors and lawyers in Falls City want the work on their places done just so, and they think he’s the only one around who can do it. He’s out of the normal economic channels, in other words.
“Now listen to this, Senator. You know about this guy Ray Dargen. Well, Flanigan says the standard joke about him out there is that Dargen wasn’t born, he rode in on an oil slick, full-grown and waving contracts. Apparently that’s easy to believe. Not only has Dargen been buying up land along the highway route for more than a year, using inside information he has access to as a member of the State Highway Commission, but apparently he also used some heavy-handed tactics on a guy who has been helping McMillan, some community college teacher.
“You know what happened? McMillan drove over to Dargen’s office in Falls City a few days ago, walked in, leaned on his desk, and said real softly, so quietly that only Dargen’s secretary heard it, ‘Mr. Dargen, I know the fix is on, and before this is over, you’ll be looking at five to ten in the slammer. You’ve laid out the game rules, no questions asked, no quarter given. Fair enough, padre, we’ll play by your rules.’