Susannah removed a small tape recorder from her satchel. “You mind if I tape this?” she asked. “Helps me get all the quotes right.”
“Sure. No problem.”
“Well, Mr. Marlin,” Susannah said with false formality-something she herself found rather charming-“tell me what you think about all this cedar-clearing.”
Marlin paused for a moment and took a sip of coffee. “Let me start by saying that it’s not necessarily a bad idea. But it might not be a good idea, either. We obviously have a water problem, as we’ve all known for some time. Seems like every year we hear about how it’s getting worse. Wells run dry, springs and creeks quit flowing, and Pedernales Reservoir is at a record low, even though we haven’t opened a floodgate since the dam was built. And just looking at the face of it, clearing cedar seems like a good way to attack the problem.”
“But…” Susannah prompted him.
Marlin shrugged. “I think we’re all kind of rushing things. We need to step back, take a look at the bigger picture, and think about how our actions could affect the wildlife. Animals have four basic biological requirements-food, water, space, and cover. Whenever man interferes with any one of those, it can have major consequences. For instance, white-tailed deer need brush cover to survive.”
“But the deer don’t eat cedar trees, do they?”
“No, but they usually bed down in thick brush. And they use it to move around without being seen. Without all the cedars, they’d be a lot more vulnerable to predators like coyotes, cougars, and bobcats. Especially the fawns.”
“I never thought about that.”
Marlin shook his head. “Most people don’t. But for all the ranch owners who are making good money with deer leases, it’s something they should consider. They should be wondering what the deer population will be like in five or ten years.
“It’s not just the deer,” Marlin continued, speaking with obvious heartfelt intensity. “Wild turkey, rabbits, raccoons-they all need a fair amount of brushy habitat. And people should keep in mind that if you fool around with one link in the food chain, it can cause a domino effect. Let’s say-just as an example-we remove all the brush, and rabbits become easy prey. Coyotes will have a field day for a while and their population will explode. Pretty soon, we’ve got coyotes all over the place, but they’ve eaten all the rabbits. So what do they go after next? Livestock. Goats, sheep, calves. I know the ranchers don’t want that.
“Or here’s another good example: the beaver. Five hundred years ago, before the Europeans came over, there were maybe three hundred million beavers in North America. Place was crawling with them, from Mexico all the way up to Alaska. But then one of the English kings ruled that only beaver fur could be used to make hats. So beaver fur became big business, and it almost wiped ’em out. Fewer beavers meant fewer beaver dams, and that had a horrible impact on the natural habitat. Suddenly, all the ponds and watering holes the beavers created were disappearing, which had an effect on waterfowl, songbirds, deer and elk, raccoons-the list goes on. Hell, those dams even helped keep the aquifers full back then by slowing down runoff. They limited soil erosion, even helped ease flooding.”
Marlin shook his head and smiled thinly. “I know I’m rambling on a little. We’re here to talk about cedar-clearing, right?”
“No, that’s all right,” Susannah said, leaning forward, trying to make eye contact. “Like you say, it all ties together. I can tell this issue means a lot to you. You’re a very passionate man, John. I can see that in you.”
The game warden held her gaze for a few seconds, smiling, playing the game with her. Then he glanced down at his cup. “I need a little more coffee. You want some?”
Susannah nodded, and Marlin gestured at the waitress.
“Okay, next question,” she said. “What about the red-necked sapsucker?”
“I was afraid you were going to ask me that.” He thought for a moment. “Yes, it’s an endangered species, and yes, it nests almost exclusively in cedar trees in Central Texas. So the official Parks and Wildlife Department position is that we are against most brush-clearing in sapsucker habitat.”
“And what’s your personal position, John?” Susannah asked.
He gave her an appreciative smile, acknowledging the double entendre. Just as he was about to respond, the waitress appeared to refill their coffee cups. After she left, Marlin’s face was serious again. Back to business.
“Can we talk off the record?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“I think, sometimes, when a species becomes endangered, that’s the way nature wants it. Think about it: More than ninety-nine percent of all species that ever existed are now extinct. And man has had little to do with the decline of the majority of them. Hell, with most of them, we couldn’t have kept them around if we wanted to. They just weren’t in Mother Nature’s plan anymore, and when that happens, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.”
“That’s an interesting point.” Susannah paused, stirring her coffee, unsure what to ask next. “You’re looking good, Susannah,” Marlin said, out of the blue. “Beautiful as ever.”
Susannah could feel her face getting warm. She was used to a little back-and-forth flirting, but nothing so direct and sincere. “Why, thank you, John. That’s…that’s very sweet.”
He nodded, drank the last of his coffee, then said, “So-we all done here?”
“One more question.” Susannah reached down and switched off the tape recorder. “Would you like to have coffee with me sometime?”
The game warden grinned and held up his cup. “We are having coffee.”
“No,” Susannah said. “I mean… well, you know what I mean.”
For the longest time, Susannah thought he wasn’t going to answer.
CHAPTER THREE
At seven o’clock Sunday morning, a dented red Ford truck with a primer-gray hood trundled down the isolated dirt roads of a quiet Blanco County ranch. Dust plumed behind the truck, hanging in the air like fog. The driver, a wiry man named Red O’Brien, was having another frustrating discussion with his passenger, poaching partner, and best friend, Billy Don Craddock.
“All I’m wonderin’,” Billy Don said while scratching his massive belly, the impressive centerpiece of his three-hundred-pound physique, “is why they call it the BrushBuster 3000. Last year’s model was the BrushBuster 2000, then all of a sudden they come out with the dang BrushBuster 3000. But shit if I can see the difference. Motor looks the same. Body’s the same. Even the same damn colors. So what the hell’s that ‘3000’ mean, anyhow?”
“Who the hell cares?” Red said, drumming the steering wheel, impatient.
“Don’t you ever think about stuff like that, Red? I mean, don’t it make you wonder?”
“Well, goddamn, Billy Don, it means it’s better by a thousand. What the hell you think it means?”
“But a thousand what?”
Red shook his head, hoping to draw the conversation to a close. He took a sip of coffee from a traveler’s mug and said, “All I know is, we got plenty of work to do. Mr. Slaton’s payin’ us by the acre to clear these damn cedars, and the faster we work, the more we rake in. Comprende?”
Billy Don plucked at his muttonchop sideburns and stared out the window as the truck progressed into the ranch.
“This is easy money, Billy Don,” Red continued. “I mean, people all over the county are practically shittin’ themselves tryin’ to get rid of all the cedar trees. All because of a few dry wells-which don’t make a lot of sense to me because wells do that on occasion. It’s just a matter of hydrological semantics.”