Fire on the Mountain (12 page)

“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.”

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:

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.

“Mr. Vogelin?” he asked, offering his right hand to my grandfather.

The old man refused the handshake. He was getting a little tired of shaking the hands of enemies. “I’m Vogelin,” he said. “Get off my property.”

The captain, a handsome young man, paled a bit but did not lose his poise. “I’m very sorry, sir. This is Government property.”

“The hell it is,” Grandfather said. “This is my home. What are you doing out there?” He pointed to the dust billowing above the flats.

“We’ve been expecting you, Mr. Vogelin. That’s why I came to meet you. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you, sir, that we are under orders to round up your cattle and horses and take them off the land.”

Watching the old man closely, counting on him for courage and strength, I was unable to see any change in the stony expression of his face. Except, maybe, that it got stonier. Harder than stone, maybe. The old man looked as if he might turn into some kind of metal right before my eyes.

“Those cattle are not for sale,” Grandfather said slowly, looking not at the captain but at the action out on the flats. “You’re loading my stock,” he said.

I stared as hard as I could and saw through the dust the big trucks lining the road near the central loading chute. Six, seven, eight trucks—I couldn’t tell for sure.

“Yes sir,” the captain said. “All the trucks are loaded now but one.”

“You knew I was gone.”

“Yes sir. We were under orders to do it this way.”

Still not looking at the captain, Grandfather said: “Sort of a cowardly way to do it, wouldn’t you say?”

This time the captain did not flinch. “Yes sir,” he said, “I agree with you. But—” He stopped, hesitated.

“There seems to be so damned
many
of you people,” the old man said. “Every other day a new—face.” Abruptly he diverted the course of thought. “What happened to Eloy? You’d have to kill him to get away with this.”

“Eloy?” the captain said. “Eloy …? You mean Eloy Peralta?”

“Eloy Peralta,” Grandfather said. He stared at the loading operations through the dust and cruel glare of the sun.

“If you mean your hired hand, Peralta—” The captain paused to lick the sweat from his upper lip. “—If you mean Peralta, I’m afraid I have to tell you that he’s under arrest. In fact he’s already in jail. He gave us a little trouble this morning. …”

“I should’ve stayed home,” Grandfather said. “I should’ve let Lee bring the. …” Louder, he said, “Is he all right?”

“Is who all right, sir?”

“Is Eloy all right?”

“Yes, Mr. Vogelin, he didn’t get hurt. Nobody got hurt, actually. We’re trying to keep this a clean, decent courteous operation.”

The captain’s irony was wasted on my grandfather. The old man would not smile, would not even look at the man. Grandfather kept his eyes averted, as though something unclean stood before him. After a considerable and significant silence he turned to me. “Let’s go, Billy.”

The officer shifted nervously. “You’re not going to attempt to interfere, are you, Mr. Vogelin?”

The armed man at the wheel of the jeep kept his small pink eyes focused on us, a twitchy irritable grin on his mouth. A second Air Policeman sat in the back seat. He too watched us with shiny eyes and a face shiny with sweat.

The pair of them sitting there in the jeep, sweating, silent, motionless, holstered automatics on their wide hips, gave me a sensation of nausea.

“No,” Grandfather said. He climbed into the pickup truck and I got in beside him.

“I must request that you do not interfere,” the captain said quite seriously, stepping close to the truck and placing one restraining hand on the windowless window frame. “You understand, Mr. Vogelin, I am under orders to prevent any kind of interference with the property in this, ah, this transaction. The procedure is entirely legal.”

“Legal thievery,” the old man said. He started the engine. “Legal thievery. No,” he added, shifting into low gear, “I won’t interfere. Take the poor beasts. Take them all, they’re starving anyway. But don’t try to send me any money. I don’t take money from thieves.” He engaged the clutch and we moved off. Looking back through the window I saw the captain step briskly to the jeep and get into it. They were going to follow us.

The sun went down, suddenly, as we approached the flat. The first of the big cattle trucks came toward us,
headlights burning through the dust and twilight. Behind the first came others—one, two, three, four, five, siv. Grandfather turned off the road. We halted to watch the fleet go by. Each truck carried about twenty-five head of cattle, the last of the Box V herd.

One of the truckdrivers waved at us as he went by. “Hi, John,” he shouted.

Grandfather was looking elsewhere.

The trucks rumbled by, each loaded with living flesh—I had glimpses of the brown flanks and the rolling eyeballs through the grating of the vans, and heard the bawling of the calves.

After the trucks came a half-ton pickup with a pair of saddle horses—not ours—in the racked bed and two strange cowhands sitting up front. They gave us a sullen greeting; we ignored them. After that another Air Force jeep appeared, layered with dust, loaded with dusty airmen. They stared at us as we stared at them.

We were ready to go on home when the first jeep came alongside and the captain got out and came to see us again, though nobody was looking for him. His clean-cut well-intentioned face confronted us through the open window at Grandfather’s side.

We ignored him for a while.

He said, “Mr. Vogelin?”

Grandfather did not reply.

“Mr. Vogelin,” the captain said. “I’d like to apologize for my part in this sorry business. I’m really ashamed of the whole thing and didn’t want any part of it, but—but I couldn’t get out of it.” The captain smiled, a wistful smile. “I work for the Government. I have to do what I’m told.”

“No, you don’t,” Grandfather said.

“Will you accept my apology, sir?”

For the first time Grandfather looked at the man. “Don’t worry about it, son. But please get off my ranch and don’t ever come back.”

The captain’s face vanished as Grandfather stepped on the gas pedal and the truck leaped ahead. The old
man didn’t look back once, but I did. I looked back and watched the caravan of trucks and jeeps winding toward the east under planes of golden dust, taking away the heart of my grandfather’s life.

“Hope they remember to close the gate,” the old man said softly.

Why? I thought. We don’t need gates now. We don’t need fences. I wanted to cry. I found it difficult not to cry, but resolved to wait until I was alone. If Grandfather would not weep, neither would I.

There was a spectacular sunset over the mountains that evening—a bright, gay circus of scarlet clouds and radiant sky. The spectacle filled me with disgust.

We reached the ranch-house and parked close to the front door to unload our war supplies. Cruzita sat on the verandah with her five children, waiting for us. She began to sob as we walked heavily toward her.

“Meestair Vogelin!” she cried. “Meestair Vogelin!’” and she staggered toward the old man, wiping her lovely face on her apron.

Grandfather stroked her shoulders. “Don’t cry, Cruzita, it’s all right. We ain’t whipped yet.” She continued to bawl, leaning against him. “Please don’t cry,” he said gently. “Fix us something to eat. We’re hungry. The boy’s hungry.”

The liar. I had no appetite either. No appetite for anything but war and revenge.

The children, brown and dirty, solemn as a row of owls, sat quietly and watched us.

“It’s all ready,” Cruzita said. “I warm it up a little now.” She turned and led the way into the house and into the kitchen, the old man and I following with our boxes of battle rations. The house was dark and cool, full of somber shadows, filled with an air of regret, of disaster.

Grandfather lit a pair of kerosene lamps as Cruzita stirred up beans, potatoes, meat, tacos, enchiladas and coffee over the blue flames of the gas burner. “You sit down,” she said. “I feed you.”

We washed some of the dust off our hands and faces under the tap. The water felt lukewarm from being all day in the tank. We sat down at the table as Cruzita piled food on our plates.

“My Eloy,” she blubbered, standing over us with the pot, “he try to stop them, Meestair Vogelin. But they was so many. He could do nothing. They arrest him, take him to town, put him in the jail, I think.”

“I know, Cruzita,” Grandfather said. “We’ll go back to town tonight and bail him out.” He fiddled with his supper. “But you and Eloy can’t stay here any more. You’ll have to leave until this business is settled.”

I didn’t care for the sound of that remark. And I could guess easily enough what was in my mother’s letter:
School begins in three weeks. Come home at once
.

Cruzita objected, of course, to Grandfather’s command, and swore that she and Eloy would not leave him, would fight to the end. So Grandfather said he’d let Eloy rot in the county jail instead, if that’s the way she wanted it. And he ordered her to pack her things and be ready to go in an hour. Cruzita refused. The old man bellowed at her. Finally she backed down and left the kitchen, sobbing and protesting, and went off to her own house with the children trotting beside her.

“Where is Lee?” Grandfather said quietly to me.

I was wondering the same thing. We forced some grub down our reluctant gullets, got up, piled the dishes in the sink (but not for Cruzita this time) and brought in the remainder of our supplies from the truck.