High Plains Tango (20 page)

“I just got wind of that, Cal. Whatever bad things you’ve heard about Ray Dargen are not only right, they’re probably not bad enough. Also, he’s a state highway commissioner. Frankly, I hate to be in the same car with him, always feel sort of like I’m cheating someone in some undefined way just by talking to him. You can see him licking his lips and rubbing his cologned hands every time the highway is mentioned. In general, he’s incorrigible, plus he’s a big supporter of Harlan Sterk. But I’ll talk to him, try to get him shut up.”

Akers continued. “Jack Wheems mentioned something about Dargen owning property near a place called Wolf Butte. Something to do with gold. Know anything about that?”

“No. I’ll see what I can find out, though.”

“Okay, I’m counting on you. Bill, I’ve got another call coming in. Just wanted to let you know how things are going here. Keep the faith and stay in contact. If everything continues the way it is now, we’ll announce the final highway plans in a couple of months.”

“That sounds great. We appreciate your help. I’d like to talk with you sometime about this Mexican trade agreement I’ve heard you mention and what impact it might have on us out here.”

“Sure thing. I did ask the senator about that, however, and he doesn’t foresee any real negative impact on your area. In fact, he thinks it might open the door for additional wheat exports. Gotta run, Bill.”

When the light on her phone console flashed off, indicating Bill Flanigan was finished with his call, Margaret Andrews was still thinking about her granddaughter and worrying about what kind of job her son-in-law could find to support a family over the long haul. Things just seemed to be falling apart out there, jobs disappearing and people leaving. Mr. Flanigan, though, had told her that better times were on the way and had winked when he’d said it. She trusted him and hoped it was true, feeling the sunlight of a high plains autumn on her hands from the window beside her, she sat with fingers clenched, knowing winter was not far off.

She wished that her son-in-law had gone to college instead of working at Guthridge Brothers Sand & Gravel over in Salamander and hanging around Sleepy’s Stagger Inn up in Livermore all night. She figured he would probably get laid off when cold weather arrived, then flop around the house drinking beer and watching game shows, yelling about what he could do on
Wheel of Fortune
if he just had the chance. When she had offered to pay his tuition so he could attend Three Buttes Community College right there in town, he’d laughed and gone out to change the oil in his car. She had made the same offer to her daughter, but Marilee had wanted to attend cosmetology school and fiddle with hair the way she’d always done with her own. The pregnancy changed all that. And once again, Margaret Andrews thought about winter approaching, even though the sun was coming through a window and lying warm upon her hands.

Chapter Fifteen

“Y
OUR GUESS IS RIGHT. THEY’LL GO AFTER YOU USING
eminent domain.” The professor of environmental economics at Stanford was talking by phone to a man named Carlisle McMillan somewhere out in the high plains.

“The Fifth Amendment allows for the taking of private property for public use as long as fair compensation is provided. When it comes to acquiring right-of-way for interstates, the law is quite specific. The secretary of transportation is authorized, and I’m quoting the law here, ‘in the name of the United States .  .  . to acquire, enter upon, and take possession of such land or interests in such lands by purchase, donation, condemnation, or otherwise in accordance with the laws of the United States.’ In this case, accordance means they have to compensate you, but they can take it.”

“There’s nothing I can do, then?”

“You’ll have to use other defenses. In fact, you have to go on the offense. From what you’ve said, I gather there’s been some doodling around with the route. I’ve seen that before, plenty of times. Carefully study the engineering data, make them justify the route they’ve chosen. At least fifty percent of the time they can’t do it. I’ll send you some materials that’ll give you a good idea of how to go about it.”

The professor watched students walking by his window in Palo Alto, red knapsacks, blue knapsacks, and glanced at his plane ticket for a conference in Melbourne. “Then there are the birds you mentioned, the T-hawks. Tell me a little more about them.”

Carlisle described how he and Moore had identified the hawks and what had transpired since then.

“Are they on the endangered species list?” the professor asked.

“No, because everyone thought they were already extinct, but they’ve been nominated as candidates. The Raptor Coalition is working on that.” Carlisle leaned against the door of a phone booth in Falls City. He was a third of the way through a garden room addition for a local attorney and trying to concentrate on his work, while anger over the road kept coming in waves, subsiding, then coming again.

“That’s too bad.” The professor sighed. “A species considered endangered or even threatened, which is the next lower level, is a powerful weapon in situations like these. That’s the general thrust of the Endangered Species Act, and this highway clearly will destroy habitat.

“But I’ll remind you, the first law of highway engineering is this: The shortest distance between any two points is always through a forest. The problem is that no legislative authority currently protects species that are candidates for the protected list but not yet on the list. And the process of getting a species listed is slow and uncertain. A recent report showed it will take the government ninety-four years merely to review all the plants and animals currently requiring attention, partly because the Office of Endangered Species is underfunded and understaffed.

“Along with that, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages these things, is subject to all kinds of political pressures. Even if you do eventually get the birds listed, that’s no guarantee they’ll make it. Of those currently listed, one-third continues to decline in numbers. Also, the FSW spends most of its money on species with high visibility, those that have a lot of sexy, public appeal, such as the bald eagle, and I suspect your birds are not in that category.”

All of it sounded pretty grim to Carlisle. “Well, what do you suggest?”

“There’s a pretty good chance you can get the highway stopped, at least for a while, on the technicality that the original environmental impact statement was inadequate. That’s been done in the past. If you have the resources, first get an injunction to halt construction temporarily on the basis of the statement, and, second, file a lawsuit to push the birds onto the endangered list. If the birds get on the list, you’re just about home free. Notice I said ‘just about.’ There are various legal and political shenanigans that can be pulled to circumvent the list, but as I said before, it’s a powerful weapon. Have you got, say, twenty or thirty thousand dollars for a lawsuit?”

“No.”

“Does the Raptor Coalition have that kind of money?”

“I don’t know, but Daryl Moore, a biologist at Three Buttes Community College, mentioned that the coalition is talking about an injunction, so maybe they do have the money.”

“Okay, that’s a start,” the professor said, checking his watch and fingering his plane ticket for Melbourne. “Let the coalition work on the environmental aspects of the problem, since that takes a high level of technical expertise in the natural sciences and the ability to move rapidly. Also, very few federal projects have ever been stopped purely on environmental considerations. You concentrate on the route, try to show why the proposed route is not the optimum one. That’s your best strategy. Listen, Mr. McMillan, I’m catching a plane for Australia in less than two hours, so I have to run now. Good luck. I’ll have my secretary send you the materials I talked about earlier, which is a detailed, rigorous approach to analyzing route selection, and call me again if you need to, anytime.”

“Thanks very much, Professor Weinstein. It looks a little bleak, but you’ve been very helpful.”

“Glad to be of some use. Hang in there. The bastards hate intelligence and commitment. They’re not prepared to deal with those qualities. Let me warn you, though, this kind of thing can get rough. There’s a lot of money at stake, and that’s all they care about. I generally wade into these battles figuring they’ll get at least an R rating. Gotta go. Good luck.”

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.