Frank was short, wiry, and had a long craggy face that made him look tall in photos. Cobalt-blue eyes winked out from tanned and wrinkled skin, and his hands were so leathery it appeared he was wearing gloves. He wasn’t a warm or glib man, and he’d burned through two wives, seven or eight kids, and two dozen ranch hands since Joe had been in the valley. Frank Zeller was known for being one of the few remaining scions of the original founding ranches in the area that were still intact, and for not exactly welcoming newcomers. It took three years for Frank to meet Joe’s eyes as they passed on the highway, five years before Frank would raise a traditional single-digit salute of greeting from his steering wheel, seven years before Frank nodded at Joe in town, and nine years before he said Joe’s name aloud. The last two years, though, they actually talked, mainly due to the water-guzzler project Joe had proposed and installed, which Frank approved of.
Like so many western characters Joe had come to know, and despite his demeanor and his constant scowl and rancher uniform of long-sleeved shirts, hat, jeans, and boots, Frank turned out to be a bundle of contradictions. He loved opera and had spent his college years in Italy attending performances at La Scala in Milan; he’d endowed the Zeller Chair of Economics at the University of Wyoming; and he kept a luxury Sikorsky helicopter in a hangar at the Twelve Sleep County Municipal Airport that he piloted himself.
Julio Batista couldn’t have known any of that, though, and certainly not by the way he was talking through the gate to Frank, Joe thought. He caught the end of Batista saying: “. . we could take this all the way if we have to, Mr. Zeller. What you’re doing here is stubbornly preventing authorized federal law enforcement from engaging in a hot-pursuit investigation of a man who murdered two government employees in cold blood.”
Frank Zeller snorted and rolled his eyes. “So you’ve already convicted him, huh? I thought you had to arrest him first.”
“We need passage, and we need it now.”
Zeller said, “Not through my land, you don’t. Not without a court order and compensation. This is private property, and you aren’t crossing it without my say-so.”
“This is insane,” Batista said to Frank. “I could have you arrested right now.”
“Try,” Frank said, still cradling the rifle but not raising or pointing it. “You bust down that gate and your monkeys will start dropping like flies.”
“Is that a threat?” Batista said, his voice rising. “Did you just threaten me? And was there a racial aspect to the threat?”
“No threat,” Zeller said. “I made a promise.”
“Hey, Frank,” Joe said, interrupting.
Zeller’s eyes shifted to Joe, but he didn’t move his head. “Joe,” he said, his voice flat.
“What seems to be the problem?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Batista said to Joe.
Joe ignored him.
“These fancy federal boys want to use my ranch to set up some kind of camp,” Zeller said. “They want to track up my meadows with their vehicles, and open up my place to all their friends to come in. They don’t want to talk terms, or deals. They just want me to unlock this gate and stand aside while they roll through like Patton’s army.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Batista whispered.
Zeller said, “When I want to lease forest for my cattle or cut wood to build a new corral, I’ve got to pay these boys a fee. But when they want to charge through my ranch and use it like it was a playground, they don’t want to pay me anything.”
“He’s got a point,” Joe said to Batista.
The administrator’s eyes flashed, and he whispered to Joe, “We don’t have time to negotiate an agreement. It takes months to get this kind of thing through-you know that.”
“You were quick enough with that reward last night,” Joe said.
“That has nothing to do with this,” Batista said, his voice rising again. “I thought you were here to help us.”
Joe shrugged.
Frank said to Batista, “This guy you’re after is on the National Forest, right? The forest is federal. So you can just turn your monkeys around and go into those mountains from the other side and I can’t stop you.”
“I told you,” Batista said sarcastically, “he was last seen on this side of the mountains. We’d waste more than a day going around to the other side and working our way back.”
“First time I ever heard of the government being worried about wasting time,” Frank said. “I could tell you some good stories.”
“We don’t have time for your stories.”
Joe watched the two as if viewing a tennis match, following each as they spoke.
Joe turned to Batista, and said, “You might try working with Frank here, instead of bullying him.”
“You’re useless,” Batista said, waving his hand at Joe and turning away, “just like the rest of these people up here.”
He strode back toward the SUV, but not without a go-ahead nod to Heinz Underwood. Joe saw Underwood acknowledge the signal, which had no doubt been prearranged.
Underwood stepped toward Joe, his expression hard but slightly bemused. “Walk with me,” he said.
Joe cautiously fell in beside him as Underwood walked down the length of the barbed-wire fence far enough that neither Frank Zeller not the occupants of the convoy could overhear.
“You’re friends with this rancher?”
“We’re acquainted.”
“I’d suggest you give him a little advice.”
“Depends on what the advice is,” Joe said.
Underwood said, “You might want to suggest to him that whatever payment he might want right now will be zilch compared to what could happen if the full attention of the EPA Region Eight office turned on him all of the sudden, is all.”
Joe didn’t respond.
“Just looking from here,” Underwood said, gazing out at the huge ranch spread out through the valley, “I think I see cows crapping in the streams, which might violate the Clean Water Act. I think I see clouds of methane rising from hundreds of flatulent cattle, which might violate the 199 °Clean Air Act. I think I see ranch buildings that might not be up to code, and old shingles on that big ranch house that are probably made of asbestos. An army of inspectors might just find all sorts of things that would shut down this operation or fine him boatloads of money for years to come.
“There’s a lot of wildlife habitat down there in that valley,” he said. “One kind of wonders if there are any protected or endangered species. It looks like good forage for the Preble’s jumping mouse, or sage grouse, or maybe even some aquatic species that might be threatened by all this agricultural activity.
“Not only that,” Underwood said softly. “Mr. Zeller seems to have way too many cows down there to run an environmentally sustainable operation. Look at them all.”
Joe saw small knots of registered Herefords grazing far below on natural meadows.
“That’s not so many,” he said.
“Boy, I’m just not as certain as you are,” Underwood said. “I think there might be more cows than there is grass. They might chew that grass down to nothing and leave a wasteland.”
“Frank’s been operating his place for forty years,” Joe said. “And before that it was his grandfather and his father. Look at it. It’s in great shape.”
“Maybe to your eyes,” Underwood said, “but when we count the cattle and measure the forage it might be a different story.”
Joe looked over with a pained expression on his face.
“It can be done very quickly,” Underwood said. “Using drones.”
“Drones? Like in the military?”
“We’ve got a few in service right now. In fact, there may even be one or two entering the airspace of these mountains as we speak.”
“Are you threatening Zeller?”
“That’s not a threat,” Underwood said softly. “That’s just offering him some good friendly advice.”
Joe said, “Why don’t you tell him?”