Tortoise Soup (21 page)

“What the hell is she doing here?” LuAnn spat, never taking her eyes off me.

“We’re gonna talk,” Harley sheepishly explained.

“Not in my house you’re not.” LuAnn squatted down, throwing the paring knife into the wooden step in front of her. Pulling it out, she threw it again, her eyes darting back and forth between Harley and me.

I made an attempt to be friendly. “I’m just here to understand your position, Mrs. Rehrer.”

But LuAnn wasn’t buying. “My position is that the federal government is nothing but an invading army, and as one of its soldiers, you deserve to be shot, hung, and quartered.”

Okay. Her position was pretty clear.

“The trouble is that unless things can be worked out, the fines you owe will go even higher—and no one wants you to lose your house,” I explained.

A grin slowly spread across LuAnn’s face that made my skin crawl. “Ain’t no way we’re losing this ranch, girlie. Before that happens, I guarantee you’ll be dead.”

“Are you threatening me?” I asked, knowing full well it went way beyond that. The woman was far more frightening than her notorious husband.

“Whatever it comes down to. Whatever it takes,” she answered in return, staring me square in the eye.

LuAnn continued to gaze at me long and hard as she grabbed her paring knife and stood up. Then she walked back inside, slamming the door behind her.

“Maybe we better go for a ride,” Harley suggested after a moment.

That sounded fine to me. I headed for the Blazer, but Harley’s voice stopped me.

“Not in that. We’ll go on horseback.”

Call me a city slicker. Call me a coward. But I’d never ridden a horse. It just wasn’t on my list of things I was burning to do.

I watched in silence as Harley brought one of his horses out from the barn. He saddled him up and handed me the reins. I began to panic as I looked at the animal that towered above me. I knew that if I refused to ride, I’d be knocked down about ten notches in Harley’s eyes. I was left with little choice.

“What’s his name?” I asked, stalling for time.

“Terminator,” Harley replied without the hint of a smile.

Just perfect. I hooked my foot in the stirrup and grabbed onto the horn of the saddle, trying to throw myself up onto the horse’s back.

“Done much riding before?” Harley drolly asked, as he watched me make a fool of myself.

“A little,” I grunted, before attempting the impossible once again.

Harley finally got tired of waiting. “I’ll give you a boost.”

He pushed me up onto the saddle, where I viewed the world from a whole new perspective. One that was high and unsteady.

“I’m gonna take you for a ride on my range,” Harley said.

He slapped Terminator on the rump and we took off.

“You mean the federal range, don’t you, Harley?” I managed to sputter as I felt myself slip from side to side in the saddle.

Harley pulled up beside me and leaned over until he loomed in front of my face. “I’m the public, which makes me the owner of this land. You think you’re gonna come out here and tell me what to do?”

I held onto the horn with both hands as I leaned forward to meet him. “Say what you will, but this is federal land, Harley. That means it’s owned by the entire public, not just you. Which means you have to obey the rules.”

Harley sat back and appraised me. “You’re either stubborn or stupid, Porter. Either way, you’re asking for trouble. I got my rights and I don’t like something being crammed down my throat.” He focused his baby-blue lasers on me. “You know, I could shoot you right now and no one would ever find you.”

“Yeah. But then you’d have to deal with my dog.” I bluffed.

Pilot was paying little attention to either of us, having already run ahead, delirious at the sight of a jackrabbit.

Harley pulled a pack of chewing tobacco out from his shirt pocket as he continued to ride. Extracting a wad, he shoved it into his mouth with fingers as rough and callused as a horned toad, adding onto the stash that was already there.

“You’re killing our way of life out here in the West,” he said in between chews of tobacco. “You’re slowly destroying our heritage.”

I wasn’t about to be pinned with the guilt of doing in every cowboy. “I don’t buy that, Harley. Things change everywhere.”

Harley seemed to be more sad than angry. But only for a moment; then the old flame flickered back up.

“There’s gonna be a war, Porter. It’s being played out right here in the West. And it ain’t got nothing to do with the public. It’s the government that’s building up for an attack, what with their ’copters flying around every night. The war is against us ranchers.” A stream of tobacco flew out of his mouth. “What it all comes down to is lock up and lock out.”

This thing about nightly government choppers was beginning to drive me crazy. It seemed as if everyone in southern Nevada had seen them except for me.

“The ’copters have to be from Nellis Air Force Base. They’re just out on practice maneuvers,” I said. Close to Yucca Mountain, Nellis had always considered Clark County its own private shooting range.

But Harley shook his head in disagreement. “Whatever’s going on, it ain’t no practice session. These are big mother Black Hawks. They’re never around during the day. Only at night. And they’re always headed in the same direction.”

“Where’s that?”

Harley turned in his saddle and pointed due south in the direction of the Golden Shaft mine. That made no sense. Either there was one more riddle to unravel or too much desert sun had caused paranoia to run rampant among the local conspiracy loonies.

We reached the top of a butte, where we stopped the horses to look out over hundreds of acres below. Dotted with creosote and the occasional cactus, there couldn’t have been any more desolate land.

“Ain’t it beautiful?” Harley asked, reveling in the harshness of the desert spread out before us. “This is what life is supposed to be. That’s the problem with you easterners and those gobbledygook bureaucrats back in D.C. You think you’re roughing it if you can’t walk out your front door and see a Circle K or a 7-Eleven. But this is enough for me.”

He was right about one thing. What we saw before us was well on its way to becoming a bloody battlefield where everyone—miners, ranchers, and realtors—was scrambling to stake their own claim without regard for the land or its critters.

Harley chewed on his tobacco in silence before turning to me. “Things got out of hand the other day.”

I felt that was putting it mildly.

“You don’t really believe that environmentalists are dumping tortoises on your land, do you?” I prodded, hoping Harley would admit to the absurdity of the notion.

“Damn right I do,” he responded. “Not that I blame you personally. Hell, Fish and Wildlife has been paying those wackos to dump the critters ever since they were placed on that damn pinko endangered list to begin with.”

It was nice to know there was something Harley didn’t blame me for. But this was the first time I’d heard that this had been going on for years.

“What makes you think this has happened before?” I asked.

Harley looked at me as though I’d just dropped in from the moon. “This ain’t the first time that damn Center’s been broken into, you know. How else do you think we got these damned four-legged cabooses all over the place?”

I felt sure he’d been fed this line by someone with an interest at stake. “Who’s been telling you all this?”

A smug look spread across Harley’s face as he realized the information was news to me. “Ed Garrett. And that’s at the risk of losing his job, you know. Garrett says Fish and Wildlife has been salting our land with lots of endangered things.

“That’s why we’ve finally drawn the line in this old desert sand. The Foundation told Garrett that something has to be done, and he agrees. He stands by us ranchers and by God, we’re gonna stand by him. We’re gonna make sure the county commission is the highest law in this land.”

I looked around, realizing that I had yet to see one tortoise so far on our ride across the range.

“So when do you usually spot all these tortoises?” I asked Harley.

“What are you talking about? They’re around here all the time,” Harley replied indignantly, boosting himself higher in his saddle.

“Then why haven’t I seen one the entire time we’ve been out here?”

Harley’s eyes narrowed and his lips compressed into a thin, straight line as he stared at me, his mind working overtime to come up with an answer.

“It’s because they’re smart,” he finally sputtered.

“You mean they know I’m here and they’re hiding?” I questioned.

“Could be,” Harley spat back, not looking in my direction. His face was a mass of red blotches as he worked hard to control his anger.

I leaned over to give Terminator a pat on the neck and nearly fell out of the saddle. I quickly pulled myself back up, hoping that Harley hadn’t noticed. “Maybe they’re afraid I’ve come to take them back to the Center. Do you think that could be it?”

Harley whirled his horse around to face me, one hand twitching above the .45 holstered on his hip.

“Goddammit, Porter,” he exploded. “You damn well know that they’re being dumped here so that you can swish your fanny onto my land and tell me I gotta stop grazing my cattle. But I got news for you, lady: we went and got ourselves a smart lawyer who’s gonna sue the pants off your goddamn agency. If I were you, I’d start looking for another job real fast.”

Harley didn’t wait for my retort as he nudged his horse and began to move down off the butte. But it wasn’t the same way we’d come up; as I watched in horror, Harley disappeared straight down over the vertical side.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I muttered, my heartbeat pounding into overdrive.

I could opt for the slow and easy way down, but I had the feeling that Harley wasn’t in the mood to wait for me—which meant that Pilot and I would be left to aimlessly wander the range. I held tightly onto the saddle horn, the reins clenched in my fists, took a deep breath, and followed Harley over the edge.

Pilot leapt ahead of me, nearly tumbling down the hill before regaining his balance. Mustering his dignity, he looked back at me and then bounded off to catch up with Harley. I now understood how Kim Novak must have felt in
Vertigo
. I shut my eyes tight and clutched Terminator’s neck for dear life, hoping he didn’t get fed up enough to toss me off. By the time we reached bottom, my clothes were soaked, more out of fear than the heat. When I opened my eyes, I found Harley waiting with Pilot, a maddening grin plastered across his face.

“Have a nice ride?”

I didn’t bother to answer. Harley would never have to resort to violence to keep his ranch. All he had to do was drag the big boys in Washington down off their thrones and onto a horse for the ride of their lives. They’d end up giving him whatever he wanted.

We rode together for a while, the quiet of the desert repairing my ragged nerves.

Harley finally broke the silence. “This visit was a one-time deal, Porter. My word still stands as far as federal agents coming onto my land,” he warned.

I studied him, wondering if a showdown was in my future.

“Would you really shoot a federal agent?” I quietly asked.

“Like LuAnn said, whatever it comes down to. Whatever it takes. The only way I’ll be taken off this land is in a pine box.”

I watched Pilot jump back from a whiptail lizard that was standing its ground.

Harley looked me in the eye. “I’m warning you, Porter. Try to seize our cattle or land, and there’ll be ranchers here with guns to blow you away. You don’t stand a chance. Give it up and head on home.”

I had no intention of packing and running. Not on someone else’s terms. Not to please Harley or Garrett or Monty Harris or Holmes. What I did have was a final question for Harley. I let go of the horn and finally began to relax in the saddle.

“By the way, Harley, who’s footing the legal bills for this lawyer of yours? He must be costing a bundle.” It had to be more money than Harley and the other ranchers could afford.

Harley was silent for a long moment. He chewed on his stash while watching the sun begin its descent for the day. “I don’t think that’s any of your business, Porter.”

Maybe not. But I had a gut feeling that whoever was shelling out the bucks had a big interest at stake.

“I don’t see why you can’t tell me, unless something underhanded is going on,” I prodded. “Could it be the reason I haven’t seen any tortoises on our ride out here is because you’ve been rounding them up to sell in Pahrump?”

Harley snorted at me in contempt.

“It would certainly be one way to pay off your legal bills,” I added.

I watched as Harley’s face turned a deep red.

“You’re crazy, Porter.”

“That might be,” I agreed. “But I could always start an investigation in order to find out what you’re up to. Of course, that would mean federal agents coming onto your land. You’d get to have your showdown, Harley—ready or not.”

Harley shrugged his shoulders, knocking off a fly that had attached itself to a drop of perspiration on his neck. “Lots of folks are helping us out. Mostly members of the Foundation.”

It made sense that the local county supremacy movement would be kicking in money. But I wanted specifics.

“Sorry, Harley. Not good enough,” I told him.

Harley stared at me as if pondering whether to kill me now or wait till later. “Alpha Development Corporation. Heard of them? They’ve been helping us out. Ain’t anything illegal about that, is there?”

Nothing illegal, but definitely intriguing. It was also becoming obvious that Garrett was cleverly pulling Harley’s strings. As a director on Alpha Development’s board, Garrett could only be interested in one thing—kicking the feds out in order to build on public land. If Harley wasn’t careful, he might have a 7-Eleven outside his door sooner than he could have ever imagined.

By the time I
left Harley’s, my stomach was rumbling and my stash of junk food was dangerously low. Pilot and I stopped at the Mosey On Inn, where Ruby took pity and fed us both meatloaf for dinner.