The Milagro Beanfield War (70 page)

At the edge of a small moss-lined streamlet he paused, listening. Other men on either side, mostly out of sight but within easy hearing, moved noisily through the trees, calling out to each other, mostly in Spanish. They were laughing, lighthearted, excited. Several had walkie-talkies, as did the agent. He also had a radio for communicating with the state team back in Milagro or down at Doña Luz, and with the helicopter once it was up and flying.

Kyril Montana did not like working with other men. He mistrusted most men and he believed (and had often had his beliefs confirmed) that very few were as dedicated as himself to whatever job was at hand. Most men, including (and maybe especially) policemen, were erratic, sometimes good at what they did, often bad, always unpredictable. When you were teamed up with them it meant you were in part responsible for, or at least affected by, their mistakes. And the agent could not stand to have something he was doing get derailed by someone with whom he'd been forced to work. There had been nobody, down through his years as a policeman, that the agent had ever trusted entirely. And today he felt especially uncomfortable in these woods with a bunch of northern Chicanos speaking a language he did not understand, hunting down a man who had a gun and just might use it, in a situation that could become extremely volatile if only one little thing went wrong.

And so as he climbed quietly up the steep, wooded hillsides expertly canvassing the forest in front of him and to all sides, Kyril Montana wished that he were somehow alone in this vast and peaceful wilderness, searching for Joe Mondragón. For alone, he felt—one on one the way all good hunting should be—his chances of coming upon the quarry would have been infinitely improved. These noisy, slaphappy, and, no doubt, trigger-happy people were probably either in cahoots with Joe Mondragón anyway, or else by their blundering, foolhardy attitude they'd telegraph all their movements to him well in advance, entirely blowing the search.

Dark indigo steller's jays flickered briefly out of black shadows, disappearing into the mist. There followed silence for a few yards, then shouts off to the left, laughter on his right. A man wearing a cowboy hat and a sheepskin jacket plunged into sight a short way ahead and waved, then veered out of sight again speaking rapid-fire Spanish into his walkie-talkie. The agent wondered if he was drunk.

It was slow, frustrating going. Proceeding cautiously, Kyril Montana advanced through underbrush and dead leaves, automatically avoiding twigs and small branches that cracked underfoot. But sometimes off to either side the dry limbs breaking sounded like gunshots, causing him to cringe and swear softly to himself. It occurred to him that the operation was hopeless, that Trucho had set it up all wrong, but there was nothing he could do about it. Barring a miracle, they'd be like this today, and maybe tomorrow, and then it would be called off. And
then
perhaps Kyril Montana could take over and do it his way, the quiet way, stalking Joe Mondragón one on one the way he should be stalked, or maybe just waiting for him like a man waits for a deer, on the crest of a hill, overlooking a trail, or else back in town, waiting patiently for him to blow his cover. That's the way Kyril Montana would have done it, and if he had needed help it would only have been to station a man on Mondragón's house, on the lawyer's perhaps—though he was beginning to feel the lawyer didn't know diddlysquat—and on that beanfield.

Which somebody, not Joe Mondragón, had irrigated last night, and which someone (or two or three—how many?) would be irrigating indefinitely unless this thing were quickly resolved.

Kyril Montana was uneasy. He had long since admitted to himself that although he understood the generalities of this case, and although he was more than passing familiar with the north and the northern people, there was much to this particular situation he did not understand, or at least that he did not really know how to deal with. It had seemed to him back in the beginning, back during that first conference with the governor and Bookman and Noyes, that probably the most logical way to handle the situation was the legal way: take Joe Mondragón to court, find against him, make him stop irrigating, or—if he refused to quit—throw him in jail and be prepared to take the consequences. It had been obvious, however, that none of the men present in that room, men intimately concerned with land and water squabbles these past fifteen or twenty years (and familiar, also, with Ladd Devine's Miracle Valley project), had favored that solution. If Joe Mondragón were to be prosecuted, it had to be for something not directly connected to the symbolic use of irrigation water in that particular field, and the agent had seen the logic in that, because the last thing you wanted to do in this type of situation was hand the people a martyr on a silver platter. The only problem being, of course, that whenever you ran an operation that was not aboveboard there was a certain risk of it backfiring into a worse situation than it had been before. But right now, theoretically, they had Joe Mondragón more or less where they wanted him. Of course, according to the two witnesses, Joe had fired at Pacheco in self-defense; hence there was no way to bring a serious charge against him unless the witnesses were coerced into changing their testimony, which probably wouldn't be a difficult thing to accomplish, if necessary. Essentially, though, Joe was in the clear. Legally, right now, there was no way to hang him, although prior to a trial or a hearing he could probably be kept under wraps. Whether this would be a wise move or not, especially if others in Milagro were willing to irrigate that beanfield, was another question. The fact of the matter was, if you thoroughly reviewed all the alternatives, there really was no solution to the problem, no way to play it safe or to take chances yet be assured of success.

Then Kyril Montana started thinking another way. If Joe Mondragón failed to walk out of the Midnight Mountains alive, the whole thing might be over. Say if Joe took a potshot at one of his own trigger-happy compatriots and they blew him ass-backward down the canyon into eternity, scream as the liberals and the Charley Blooms might, they wouldn't have a leg to stand on. Too, death was a lesson these poor people would understand: when the killing started, and maybe
only
if the killing started, the irrigation of that field would abruptly end.

Still, this question remained: Could they—could his side, the police side—weather the storm that might result if Joe Mondragón were killed? In what ways would the Milagro people, downstate militant Chicano groups, or even out-of-state political groups pick up on his death? Suppose that lawyer Bloom latched onto and publicized Kyril Montana's previous trip to Milagro; suppose a leak developed in the capital—

The helicopter was up and about, approaching from the west. The mist was dissipating quickly, allowing the sun—in streaks and dazzling, abrupt splashes—to shine through. The agent made contact with Mel Willard, told him where they were, and went over the bubble copter's suggested search area. Basically, the copter was useless over these deep woods. So Willard had orders to fly up Deerhair Canyon toward the wide open meadows and rocky, treeless slopes around the Little Baldy Bear Lakes. Hence, in a very short time they'd have a pretty complete aerial report on what amounted to about a three-square-mile area.

Kyril Montana, a patient, methodical, unemotional man, searched through the luminous morning for Joe Mondragón. Although occasionally aware of, and slightly disturbed by, the action around him, the boisterous excitement and stupid techniques (or lack of techniques) of inexperienced men on a hunt, the agent was for the most part tuned in to only his own well-trained and modulated senses. He made doubly sure that nothing receded behind him without his inspection; he kept his eyes weaving through upper branches, determined not to miss a trick. When tiny ground squirrels popped up in front and zipped through the brush, he didn't flinch, nor did he ever raise his gun as if to shoot the tiny animals. When Bernabé Montoya's doleful voice crackled over the walkie-talkie, the agent replied succinctly, thoroughly, and then absorbed the information, or rather, lack of information, from the sheriff with equal automatic aplomb. And although he did not for a minute believe this herd of thundering clowns was going to flush Joe Mondragón, he never let that belief disturb his concentration on the job at hand.

By eight o'clock they had completed the first of the five circles that would eventually take them up Deerhair Canyon to the lowest Little Baldy Bear. The mist had lifted, disappeared. They had risen some four hundred feet and were now into tighter aspen stands, well above all piñon trees. From small clearings, now, they could see in the distance the rocky peaks rising above the Little Baldy Bear Lakes; some saddles between peaks still carried slim patches of snow. The sky was an ultrabright blue, but everyone in the posse knew that around noon clouds would begin to gather, and by three o'clock it would probably begin to rain, hail, and perhaps (who could ever tell?) it might even snow.

Together for a moment, they rested. Kyril Montana spread out a map; some of the men gathered around. He pointed to where they were, to where they would be going this next circle. While he talked they could hear the helicopter a mile or so above, flying low, sidedrifting suddenly into open places, Meliton Naranjo beside the pilot quickly sweeping the tree lines with binoculars, hoping to catch sight of a sudden evasive movement.

Bernabé Montoya sat with his back against a tree, smoking a cigarette and trying to look stern and dedicated, although his wishy-washy mind was boggled by this useless amateur bush-beating.

“I think if we catch him in an operation like this,” the sheriff finally said guardedly, “it will only be because he wants to get caught.”

Kyril Montana asked, “How would you do it?”

Bernabé shrugged self-effacingly. “Oh, I dunno really. I guess I wouldn't be in no hurry, though. Probably I'd wait.”

“Where?”

“I'd go home and wait,” the sheriff said. “Sooner or later he's got to come home for a meal or a piece of ass, qué no? He'll get tired of the mountains. It's boring in the mountains. José isn't exactly a Boy Scout.”

“How long before he might come down out of here?” the agent asked.

“Oh two, maybe three days.”

“That's all?”

A young man who'd been listening chortled, “Shit, man, it gets
cold
in these mountains at night.”

“What's he gonna eat up here?” Bernabé asked. “Berries? Trout? He don't have no fishline.”

“Yeah. And you shoot these truchas with a .30–06, you got no fish,” the young man laughed.

“He isn't gonna kill a deer either,” Bernabé added. “Or roast a bird. Hell, he's probably got a freezer full of beef from that feedlot in Colorado. He's got a wife that makes tortillas, enchiladas. José is probably so fucking hungry right now—”

“He's probably back there with Nancy right now, stuffing himself with beans,” the young man griped good-naturedly, “while we're chasing his ass to hell and gone up in these hills.”

Kyril Montana looked around at the men taking five. They were dressed in a ragtag assortment of dungaree jackets and old army coats; some wore straw cowboy hats; most wore Levi's and boots; all carried their own personal deer rifles, .30–06s and .270s and .30–30s, and a few carried pistols in hip holsters. Half to three-quarters of them were smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. Mostly, too, these were middle-aged to old people, with grizzled faces, many teeth missing, and sly—occasionally almost giggling—smiles.

“If everybody is so sure we're not going to flush Joe Mondragón, what are we all doing up here?” Kyril Montana asked.

Bernabé shrugged. “It's what you people want, ain't it?”

“You're the sheriff,” Kyril Montana said. “What do you want?”

“I dunno. A man got shot, of course. A man should be brought to justice, I guess,” Bernabé said. “At best, we got to keep up some appearances, qué no?”

Whereupon Kyril Montana experienced a rare sensation. These men were all Chicanos, and he was a white man, the person theoretically in charge of this search. That's all, it was nothing more than that, but it gave him a start all the same, made him uncomfortable for a minute. Only rarely, in fact maybe never, had he really
felt
that these kinds of people, that these Chicanos, belonged to a race not his own. Most of his partners, his immediate superiors and inferiors down in the capital, were Chicanos, and this had never bothered him. But up here, high in the wilderness behind Milagro with this lax, motley crew, he experienced a momentary and an almost terrifying race-consciousness, and felt like a foreigner, a real stranger and intruder in their territory.

The agent stood up to show that the break was over. Obediently, the men all stood with him, flicking cigarette butts into the damp brush and they spread out to start beating the bushes again.

*   *   *

“I'm going over to see Nancy,” Bloom said to his wife. “Maybe you better come along.”

“I don't want to. But you go.”

“She's your friend.”

“They're
your
clients.”

“Well, God damn…”

Bloom stopped himself from slamming the door, closed it gently, crossed his front yard. He could smell fresh-cut hay and alfalfa; their immediate next door neighbor, Eusebio Lavadie, was on a tractor nearby starting his second cutting. Bloom waved at the man, whom he disliked intensely, and Lavadie waved back, grinning broadly. The pastoral valley calm, that bastard Lavadie serenely cutting hay while Joe Mondragón fled for his life, struck the lawyer like a brutally unfair blow.

He bent expertly between barbed wire strands and crossed a wide, soggy, overgrazed field, part of which was honeycombed with treacherous hummocks and leached-out grass clumps. Several massive, shaggy work horses stood up to their knees in muck among dense cattail stands in which hundreds of noisy redwing blackbirds cavorted. Killdeer, dragging false broken wings, ran screeching ahead of him on the shaved ground. In the next field grasshoppers burst up from under his feet like the shrapnel from land mines, and with a swipe of his hand Bloom caught one in midair.