Sowing on the Mountain

≈ 11 ≈

She spent the rest of her hitch patrolling the areas with heavy traffic, like Big Sandy Lake and the tributary drainages, that topped out in cirques with walls of silvery granite (actually quartz monzonite) filled with big lakes of pyrex-clear water: Black Joe, Deep, Temple, and of course Clear. There were no ugly places to camp, but she encountered some ugly campers. A horseback party from her hometown left big firepits at Black Joe Lake heaped with fish bones and beercans, and then shat in them before leaving. Uck!

She shot a series of photos and jogged down the trail, catching them in the parking lot at the horse trailhead where she wrote tickets for the two leaders and lectured the rest, after the usual crap about "you can't prove we left that stuff, etc."

She blew her top and pointed out that she recognized several of them from Rock Springs, knew where they went to church, had photos of their tents and horses at the lake, and their license plates, and if you guys want to lie your ass off to a federal magistrate, be my guest.

Then she hiked back up, spent the night at her camp, and in the morning cleaned up their mess: two full trashbags. People dumped more stuff than two wilderness rangers could carry out, so they had a trash cache in a talus cave and a deal with the Lodge to do a garbage run with pack horses, every two weeks. The heap of bags was secured with a piece of wire netting, so the bears and marmots couldn't scatter it.

She camped two nights with Sooz, whose next hitch would be staggered so they'd overlap a day at each end. She heard a great deal about Sydney and surfing and the skiing in Jackson, while designedly saying very little about herself. Sooz, as she called herself, was a mad gossip who dished up stuff about her co-workers and the office people that made Mary feel like she'd wandered into a lunatic asylum. The Pinedale District had a reputation for weirdness, at least up in Jackson. Betsey, her boss up there, called it the Graveyard of Lost Careers.

Sooz also vented about their boss, Hoot Sexton, and his habit of showing up at dinnertime and expecting to be fed and share a tent, which he called "government housing," yeah bloody right. At the end of last season, he'd begun packing up a bottle of wine. . She'd bought her own tent this season. She called him a "right bludger." Big fun! Mary resolved to place her camps in spots other than the officially designated ones. She could always plead ignorance.

She spent a night at the line shack and Jet knocked at the door, early. After a mug of coffee, he asked if she could take a drive and look at some potential trouble. In the truck, he explained that the mess with the loose band of sheep in the Opening owed to loose dogs scattering the band that followed, with Echeverry marshalling his herders to round them up.

"A pack of dogs up here?" she said.

"There's a guy who has some huskies. Say's he's going to breed a team and win races. Some of 'em were loose. They got into the sheep. The herders took a couple shots and winged one. The guy— they call him Trapper— went nuts and threatened the herders with a pistol. Then Echeverry showed up and started waving a shotgun. World War Three.

She chuckled.

So did he. "Funny in the abstract," he said. "Then Trapper went raging down to Dutch Joe to get them to radio a deputy to arrest Echeverry, and he radioed his ranch to call another deputy to arrest Trapper. And the two deputies got in a yelling match. Hell on earth!"

She laughed. "You should make a movie," she said.

He looked stern. "I just want to show you where Trapper stays and that sort of thing, so if there's trouble you have some idea what's up."

"Thanks— that's good of you. I'll restrain my sense of humor."

He took a right onto a two-track and chugged in low gear for a mile or so, then parked the truck. They walked a couple hundred yards to a crest. She could hear barking, and then a glade of aspens with dogs tied to them came into sight. Each dog had worn a bare spot around its tree. There was a one-room cabin a bit farther on.

"It's private land, an old mining claim— that's a whole other story. No idea what the guy does for cash," Jet said. "Can't be cheap to feed that bunch." The dogs sighted them and swung like hairy compass needles, barking and wagging. The cabin was closed up, curtains drawn. A rusty box trailer was parked nearby. There was no sign of Trapper.

"Couldn't sneak up on that camp. Anyhow, the stock driveway is past that strip of lodgepoles, not far west. Four Echeverry bands trailing up, plus Carricaburra and Bertolli. This dog situation is a headache."

"I can see that. If you need help, call me."

When they got back to the main road, there was a white Ford stakebed parked there, with salt sacks piled in the back.

"It's El Viejo. That's what the herders call him," Jet said. "Echeverry."

He got out of his truck and they stopped. Jet got out. "What's up?" he said.

"Saw tire tracks going down there. Just wondering who it was." Echeverry had a mane of white hair and a high forehead, with a hawk's beak of a nose. He looked like an Old Testament prophet, she thought, except for his eyes: squinty and mean.

"This is Mary Browne, the new wilderness ranger for this end."

Mary smiled but stayed in the truck. "I went to school with your son."

"Paul? He's on some summer school thing in France."

"Ray. We went to junior high together."

"Oh. He's working for me now. Learning the ranch business."

He turned to Jet. "You know that guy wants to kill me?"

"I remember. You said you were going to shoot him, too."

"I didn't mean it. He got me mad is all. You keep an eye on him. No telling what a guy like that might be up to." He climbed into his truck and drove off toward the base camp.

Jet got back into the truck. "He's a snake," he said, and started the truck. "He thinks it's his sacred duty to lie to the government. Carricaburra— they're cousins— told me that he's sending Paul to a fancy private college, trips to Europe, skiing in Switzerland, you name it. But he treats Ray like dirt. Do this, do that. He called him a gutless so-and-so in front of the herders. Pablo said that the kid was in pretty rough shape and he felt sorry for him."

"Who's Pablo?"

"He's the oldest Duran brother. There are three working for Echeverry. They have a ranch in Mexico and come up here to earn cash so they can fix it up. Pablo's a top hand and a really fine man. Tranquilo just started this year— don't know him yet. Leandro, the youngest, is a rat. Likes to yell at the Peruanos. Mean to the horses and dogs."