Centennial (158 page)

“Was it?” Garrett asked.

“The facts speak for themselves.”

“I wonder if they do? Colorado borrowed European money and on it paid a handsome interest, but in the end Earl Venneford had his dollars and we had a state. It’s my opinion that Colorado could have afforded to pay Venneford ten times as much for the use of his money, and still come out way ahead. The men in London who built the irrigation ditch did get their interest, year after year, but a thousand farmers got land that paid them infinitely more. I’d say the best investment America ever made was to allow Englishmen to develop our plains for us. No price would have been too great to pay for railroads and mines and irrigation. In the Venneford deal, which I know pretty well, it was the state of Colorado that made the killing.”

“But the economic control? The imperialism?”

“Venneford tried to keep out sheepmen and lost. They tried to keep out farmers and lost absolutely. They tried to hold their five million acres and every damned year they lost more and more. No English battleship ever sailed up the Platte to blast hell out of the Russians and the Japanese who were cutting the English throats.”

“Russians? Japanese?”

Paul Garrett rarely cursed, but now he could not refrain. “Goddamnit, Professor. Don’t waste my time if you haven’t done your homework. Who in hell do you suppose stole the land from Venneford—the Methodist Church?”

This was such a
non sequitur
that the professor fumbled for a moment. “What ... I mean, there were no big Russian or Japanese investments.”

“Potato Brumbaugh? Goro Takemoto? They, were the most insidious imperialists ever to hit this neck of the woods. Almost as bad as Triunfador Marquez, that damned Chicano. The professor looked shocked. “Don’t worry, Doctor. I married his granddaughter.”

The interview was ending in confusion, and Garrett thought he ought to give the man some solid data. “Seems to me, Professor, that two salient facts saved us in Colorado. Europe was a long way off, and America was a strong, self-confident nation. We never permitted warship diplomacy. We never wavered before European military threats. Small countries today don’t have that security, and sometimes they’re badly abused. There is such a thing as imperialism, but in Colorado it didn’t operate.

“The other advantage we had, we were a people with a free system of education. The clever British could come here and run ranches and build ditches and do everything else, but they couldn’t keep our bright young men from learning the tricks of the trade. European investment bought us time to learn what we had to learn. They were great teachers, men like Oliver Seccombe ...”

“Who was he?”

Garrett stopped in disgust. This scholar knew all the figures, all the profit-and-loss statements, but he knew none of the men. What could Garrett say about Seccombe, that brilliant, uneven man? That he put together a great ranch? That he introduced Herefords to the west? “He shot himself, at the age of sixty-nine, in that field over there.”

The interview left a bad taste in his mouth, and when the scholar was gone he poured himself a heavy drink, even though he was opposed to daytime alcohol. He was gulping it down when Flor came in to announce that her brother had shown up unexpectedly and insisted upon interrogating him. Before Garrett could ask on what, into the room burst a fiery young man of twenty-three.

“What are you going to do?” he shouted at his new brother-in-law.

“About what?” Paul asked quietly. He did not like Flor’s brother, and was disgusted with the way he had dropped out of college after one week with the complaint “None of the professors are relevant.”

“I’m speaking about La Raza,” the young firebrand shouted.

“Keep your voice down, Ricardo,” Paul snapped, and immediately he was sorry that he had lost his temper.

“Aren’t you offering me a drink?”

“It’s over there.”

This interview was going even worse than the one with the professor, and Garrett could think of no way to save it. For some time young Ricardo had been seeking a fight, so let it come.

“I’ve been sent to warn you that this state will not be allowed to hold any kind of centennial celebration unless La Raza has a dominant say in what’s done. After all, this state belongs to us ... historically.”

“Your request makes a great deal of sense,” Garrett conceded. “Have you been told that the first thing I did upon being appointed was to visit Cortez? And invite two Chicanos onto the committee?”

Young Marquez ignored this attempt at conciliation. “We demand that your reactionary committee issue a press re lease admitting that the principles of Aztlán will govern the entire celebration.”

“What are the principles of Aztlán?”

“I have them here.” Paul reached for the paper, but the young revolutionary pulled it back, for he wanted to read it aloud: “ ‘Those who have stolen from La Raza the land of Aztlán—the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Colorado—confess their crime and admit that the brown people of the continent own these states and by rights must govern them.

“ ‘False owners who came from nations like Russia, England, Italy and Japan to, steal these lands from La Raza confess their crime and submit to just demands for indemnity. If La Raza decides that these thieves may continue in Aztlán, they must surrender all political control to La Raza and live here as immigrants, bound by the laws of Aztlán.’ ”

The young man read on and on, inflamed by the beauty of his words and the simplicity of the solutions they outlined. When he was finished, Garrett asked, “I can see how your plan might have appeal in Arizona and New Mexico, but do you really think the Anglos in Texas are going to move away and give the state to you?”

“They’ll be allowed to remain,” Ricardo said. “But only if they submit themselves to our laws.”

“Will you be able to supply a group who can write the laws?”

“We have the inspiration,” Marquez replied.

“Sit down,” Garrett said.

“I prefer to stand.”

“Then excuse me while I sit. Ricardo, don’t you think it strange that your people have missed chance after chance at self-education?”

“Anglo education is not relevant.”

“I was making a comparison the other day. No, listen. You may find this interesting. The Takemoto family came here about the same time as the Marquez family. The five Takemotos of this generation have had ninety-seven years of free education. That’s almost twenty years for each one. As a result, they’re doctors and legislators and dentists. The Marquez family also has five in this generation, and all of you together have had thirty-eight years of education. And it’s been waiting there, free.”

“The Takemotos are slaves to the establishment,” the young man said contemptuously. “We Chicanos don’t want to be servile dentists and all that crap.”

“Then become lawyers,” Garrett said, “so that you can fight for your people.”

“The whole court system is crap,” Marquez shouted.

“Lower your voice, Ricardo. What I’d like to do is pay for your university education. I’m interested ...”

“You’re trying to buy me off. Subvert the revolution. I know how my grandfather slaved in your fields ...”

It seemed more than strange to Garrett that a young man whose sister had just married an Anglo should be abusing that very Anglo as an enemy of the race. It showed distorted thinking, but in the back of his mind Garrett suspected that if he were in Ricardo’s place, he would be tempted to behave much like him. He felt a real empathy with his brother-in-law.

“Learn their system, Ricardo. Beat them over the head with it. I’m on your side, you know.”

“You’re the enemy,” Marquez said. “And I’m warning you now. We’re going to destroy your celebration if you try to organize it without us.”

“You weren’t listening. I said I’d already brought two Chicanos onto the committee.”

“Ah! Them! The faithful old biscuits.”

“What do you mean—biscuits?”

“Brown on the outside. White on the inside. Traitors to La Raza.”

“Whom can I appoint? That you would accept?”

“The leaders of the revolution, that’s who.”

“Would they serve?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Have them see me on December first and I’ll appoint them.”

“But we shall insist on gaining control of Texas.”

“Ricardo, my dear brother in blood, that will be a long time off. The problem is, what can we do now, you and your sister and I? Because Flor and I want you to live with us.

“You can’t buy me off, Garrett.” And he left the house, gunning his old Ford down the lane.

On Tuesday Garrett was awakened by a cry which always made him feel good: “Jenny’s headin’ north.” It came from the yard below his window and signified that once more he would have to take down his shotgun with the rubber pellets.

“Come on, Flor. Jenny’s heading north.”

They dressed hurriedly, laughing as they did, and as they ran out through the kitchen, each of them grabbed a shotgun and a handful of special bullets. It took a fairly determined stand to turn Jenny around, and one shotgun blast never did the trick.

In 1960 Garrett had purchased sixty buffalo from breeders in Canada and had trucked them onto his spread. Jenny, a female weighing more than half a ton, had kicked out the sides of three trucks before the Canadians got her tranquilized for the trip south, and when she was released onto the Venneford acres she tried to revenge herself, knocking two men flat.

She seemed to have a built-in radar beamed to her old home in Canada, because each year when the time came that buffalo traditionally migrated, she would stand in the middle of the prairie, sniff in various directions, then start to walk north, ignoring fences, roads, railroad tracks and state boundaries. The only way she could be turned about was to take a position about twenty-five feet ahead of her and fire a blast of rubber pellets smack in her face.

The first shot accomplished nothing. She merely blinked, lowered her head and kept coming. It was the second and third shots, which looked as if they might blast her head off, that finally delivered the message. She would stop, shake her head as if flies were bothering her, turn around and come home.

“She’s still headin’ north,” one of the cowboys said as the Garretts reached the pasture, and there stood the shattered fences through which Jenny had walked with her accustomed insolence.

“We can head her off north of the road,” the cowboy suggested, and he drove the jeep at a good speed in the direction of the errant buffalo. After twenty minutes they saw her, head down, plodding away in response to some ancient impulse. They watched her for a few minutes, laughing at her determination. When she came to a fence she barely paused, applying her great bulk and pushing it flat.

“We’ll have to go up to the other road,” Garrett cried, so they went farther north and took their stand directly in front of the lumbering old cow. She must have seen them, but on she came.

Paul fired right at her face, but she merely swept her head from side to side. “Fire, dammit!” he yelled to his wife, and Flor banged away with a second shot. Jenny hesitated, so the cowboy sent a blast right at her. She shook her head, looked about, then turned resignedly and started back to the Crown Vee pastures, where the other buffalo were grazing peacefully.

Tim Grebe kept his promise, He arranged a deal for the sale of Garrett’s bulls to a bologna factory, but when the butcher phoned to complete the details, Garrett lost heart and said, “Sorry, I’ve changed my mind. I couldn’t possibly sell you the bulls.” He then summoned his foreman and said, “There’s got to be some smaller ranch around here that could use thirty good bulls. Sell them for whatever you can get. Give them away, if you have to.” He’d be damned if he’s sell prime Herefords to be ground up for sandwich meat.

When the foreman left, Garrett stormed about the castle in a state of anxiety. He had made a major decision and already it was haunting him. Once he grabbed me by the arm, saying earnestly, “You can see my position, can’t you, Vernor? I can’t run this ranch as a hobby. And if the Simmentals will bring in, more money, I’ve got to consider them.” I nodded.

Then he snapped his fingers and shouted to Flor, “It’s time I visited the family. I’ve had some of my best ideas when I’ve been up there,” and within fifteen minutes he and Flor had packed and we were speeding north to the reservation in western Wyoming where the remnants of the Arapaho tribe were sequestered.

Each year, from the time he was a small boy, Garrett had visited his Indian relatives, taking them presents. Most of his friends in Colorado overlooked the fact that he was part Indian, five thirty-seconds, if you traced it out on the chart in the breed book.

“I’ve never been a professional Indian apologist,” he told me as we sped along the great empty roads of Wyoming, “and I’ve always refrained from trying to capitalize on that heritage for political effect, but I do sometimes feel like a true Indian. At least I’m sympathetic to their problems, and if I were twenty years younger, I suppose I’d be one of the gun-toting activists.”

As we neared the reservation he became moody, and I could see that he was now regretting his impulse. On his previous visit he had found his various aunts and uncles caught in despondency, and now as we drove onto the Indian lands he said prayerfully, “God, I hope they’re in better shape this time.”

They weren’t. Aunt Augusta, bitter and ancient, launched her mournful litany the moment we arrived: “Government says we can have a recreation hall, but the damned Shoshone want it on their land and we want it on ours, and we may have to go to war against them.” The Arapaho-Ute antagonism was as venomous as it had been in 1750. The Shoshone were an offshoot of the Ute and nurtured the animosity that had always existed between the two tribes, made permanent by that unfortunate mistake in 1873 when President Arthur gave permission for the remnant of the Arapaho to share the reservation formerly occupied only by the Shoshone. There was enough land for two tribes, more than enough, but not when those tribes were mortal enemies.