Durango (2 page)

Caroline Chandler's place was about ten or twelve miles northwest of town, around where Quinn Creek met Johnson Creek. Her acreage was smaller than Sheridan's, and she had no time for cattle. What she had time for, aside from the rare dinners with Sheridan, was a matter of some mystery. But Durango was not a town given to prying into the lives of its citizens, especially those with deep and lasting roots. The town observed an almost nineteenth-century concern for privacy and respect for personal idiosyncrasy.

Well, then, Mr. Murphy said, that's our excitement for the week. Rescued cow and calf. Doesn't take much around here.

The professor, more attuned to Sheridan's moods than the others, happily announced that enrollment at Fort Lewis College was going to be up for the next fall. Well, that's good, they all agreed. The kids bought stuff in town, frequented the bars and restaurants, and, compared to their generation elsewhere, generally behaved well. The college was a definite boost to the local economy.

Sheridan pushed back from the table, fetched his hat, and nodded all around. See you Friday, Sam said, more by way of a question. Sheridan waved over his shoulder.

Now Harv said it was a real tough trick to bring that cow and calf down, Mr. Murphy said. Dan wasn't about to admit it.

Bill Van Ness said, You didn't expect him to, did you?

Not especially, Mr. Murphy replied.

Sam inquired cautiously, Do you think he'll ever be back to his old self…the way he was?

The table was silent. I wouldn't hold my breath, Mr. Murphy finally said. If he's not his old self by now, he probably won't ever be…and even so, Ms. Chandler would be the one to know. He nodded across the street to where she was parking her car.

3.

In 1868, the federal government entered into a treaty with the consolidated bands of Ute people. Within a few decades, federal policies and the pressures of western expansion would divide the Ute people into three distinct tribes, one of which is the Southern Ute Tribe. By the late twentieth century, the tribe was down to fewer than 1,500 members, though well before the Spanish came, their ancestors had migrated around and across most of what became Colorado and large parts of New Mexico and Utah. In the late nineteenth century, the Ute Strip, basically desert land roughly fifteen miles wide and seventy-five miles long, was created by the government and became the permanent Southern Ute reservation. By the mid-1930s, even that rough terrain near the corner of Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico was half-owned by non-Indians. And the whites had managed to get much of the prime land near the several rivers and streams crossing the Southern Ute reservation.

Like everywhere else in the arid and semiarid West, there was little that could be done with the land unless you had water. A few cows might be grazed on the scrub brush and clumps of weeds, but there would be no crops for sale or gardens for family food without water. And the water did not ordinarily come from rainfall. It resulted from the high mountain snows and it had to be stored when the spring runoff from the San Juan Mountain range, just north and east of the reservation, came. The Animas and La Plata rivers, as well as the Florida and lesser streams, transited the reservation. But the tribe had no storage facilities for irrigation or domestic use. If you did not have property along one of those streams, and the means to divert it, you were living a life dominated by wind and dust, and little else.

Up until the 1960s, the Southern Utes, with few exceptions, lived pretty much hand to mouth. The small tribal treasury provided no more than one or two hundred dollars a year per tribal member. And by and large, members of the tribe were at the end of the employment chain in and around town.

By the 1960s, however, things began to change. Tourism in the spectacularly beautiful region, with its national forests and then wilderness areas, jagged peaks, ancient Native American ruins, wild streams, partially restored mining towns, nature and horse-riding trails, and plentiful campgrounds, brought a wave of economic growth. Increasing numbers of city dwellers, confronting urban crowding and pollution, visited the region, went back home and sold out, and moved to the area permanently. But all this activity and all these new people needed more of what was already lacking: water.

Not too long thereafter, a vast national search for energy resources began. As early as the 1950s, areas around Durango were mined for a new vital resource—uranium—first for nuclear weapons and then for nuclear power plants. But there was also coal, and there was oil and natural gas.

The confluence of tourism, urban escapees, and energy development meant that water from the San Juan snows could not continue to run off down the streambeds to New Mexico and Arizona. It had to be stored. And the only way to store it was to build dams, more particularly a dam collecting water from the Animas and La Plata rivers.

The federal government, in the form of the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation, was only too glad to help. It was beginning to run out of places to build dams in the West. But as planning began for the Animas–La Plata Dam around 1968, resistance arose. All those people who had recently moved into the area, now having put their roots down, were less than enthusiastic about increasing the water supply that would then encourage their former neighbors back East to come out and join them, thus bringing the congestion they themselves had only recently and eagerly escaped. The newcomers soon joined old-timers who already thought Durango overcrowded to organize opposition to the dam. Both newcomers and old-timers found support from traditional conservation and newer environmental groups opposed to dams virtually anywhere. By the late 1970s they found a political champion in Jimmy Carter.

The town of Durango itself had begun to emerge in 1880 when an entrepreneur named William Jackson Palmer brought the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad all the way to southwestern Colorado. He played a central role in laying out the very grid that would become the town, surveying and selling lots, and he saw to it that there were people out there on his railroad line who would take his trains back and forth to Silverton and Denver, miners who would come to work at the smelter built there a few years after, goods that would fill his outbound boxcars, and cattle that would crowd the inbound cattle cars back to Denver.

Over the years a frontier mystique grew up around Durango as embodying an ideal western small-town-America style of living that was human scale. People knew each other. They attended their various churches with those they worked with during the week. Parents knew teachers. Shopkeepers knew customers. Insurance agents, auto dealers, repair shops, bankers, lawyers, and cowboys mixed and mingled. It was an honest place. It was solid and trustworthy. It was about as close to perfect as a place could get.

Who wanted mining trucks, oil rigs, gypsy roughnecks breaking up Saturday night bars, bigger, noisier hotels, big chain stores, and eventually, inevitably, back-office service representatives in Bangladesh handling your insurance claims? Stop development. Stop the dam. So, peaceful Durango, representing western America if not all America in the second half of the twentieth century, found itself deeply divided.

There was one more element in this equation, however, that came into play. The Southern Ute Tribe had historic claims to water rights on the Animas and the La Plata. If any dams were built upstream for the Durango city folk, a proportionate share had to go to the Utes. And finally, after decades of hanging on in at best marginal conditions, the Utes saw the dam as offering the possibility of a major step up.

Now the equation was complicated. The pro-dam development faction had the Indian tribes on its side. And the anti-dam, anti-development faction—who by nature would normally have found themselves on the side of the hapless, downtrodden, neglected, and cheated Native Americans—found themselves opposing a substantial means for Ute improvement and self-advancement.

Out of a mixture of water and minerals emerged a serpent of greed that threatened to poison this idyllic community.

4.

Sheridan made room at his drugstore table for Caroline Chandler. You've already had plenty of caffeine with the boys, she said.

A little, he said. But on a Monday morning there's always need for more.

Without being asked, the waitress brought two large mugs of very strong coffee. Her raised eyebrows asked, Anything else? They both shook their heads.

Had my annual spring roundup with Harv Waldron, he said presently. I'm gettin' too old for this. It's my good deed for the week.

Oh, Daniel, she said, patting his rough hand, you'll be bringing Harv's cows down decades from now.

Hope to God not, he said. Though the only good part was that the excursion in the blizzard gave me an excuse for an extra Jameson.

It
is
good sleep medicine, she said with a tone of experience.

How're things up at your place? he asked.

No complaints, she said. I think I owe you a dinner.

He chuckled. That's usually a signal that you've got a big rock that needs moving or a board loose somewhere.

She looked offended. Now, that's cruel. I've fed you plenty of times where you haven't had to work for it.

He looked at her through lowered eyebrows and presented a tight smile. Not sure how you mean that.

She laughed. You know how I mean it. Don't be cute. I could put you to work for six months around my place patching and fixing, but I'd have to feed you the whole time, and I can't afford it.

Will work for food, he said. Maybe a little kindness from time to time wouldn't hurt, either.

Let's not go there, she smiled. I know your definition of “kindness.”

Just a healthy boy, he said, who gets lonely from time to time.

They both tried the cooling coffee, each ransacking memory for the long history of a complicated friendship. This cabinet of memories had hidden compartments of happiness and drawers of various sizes stuffed with webs of conflict and controversy. An air of irresolution pervaded every corner.

She broke the reverie. Been down to see Leonard Cloud recently?

The deep crease between his eyebrows deepened. We keep in touch. After a moment, he said, Why bring that up?

You know I can't leave it totally alone, she said. It's your life. And it's my life as well. Then after a pause she added, It's not over, you know.

Well, it sure as hell is for me, he grunted, and signaled for more coffee.

We're not going to pursue it, she said, at least not here, not now. But you know how I feel. A time will come when it has to come out. And it will. It has to, Daniel. Otherwise, there's no justice in this world.

He snorted. No justice. I'd say the no justice side wins this one.

After the coffee was refilled, he said, The Utes are doing well and that's all I care about. Talk about justice. They had to wait over a hundred years. But they're finally getting what they deserve. Leonard says the royalties are rolling in.

What I've heard, she said.

He's so smart, Sheridan continued. He's got the tribal council to create a trust fund. Sam's law firm helped 'em set it up. Most of the royalty money goes there. And they've got a plan to put that into education for several generations of tribal kids. They'll still have plenty left over for really decent housing for the families. And they've started work on the senior center and a new community center in Ignacio.

She said, They've finally got a chance to live like real ordinary human beings. She wanted to say more, to tell him that she had advised the Ute tribal council on how to set up a durable trust fund, but she decided it could wait until later.

He leaned back in his chair. Even poor, they were the most ordinary human beings I ever met. It's kinda interesting to wonder whether they'd get back on their horses and roam again if they could.

Be a little hard, she said, dragging their stuff across interstates and through a bunch of parking lots and truck stops.

He laughed. Sure enough. Wouldn't be the same as the old days, now would it? I just hope they don't go to hell with most of the rest of modern civilization. There'll be a few of them that'll pack up and buy some big old houses in Hollywood. He shook his head.

Have you gone to hell, Daniel? she asked.

He laughed again. Course not. If I had, you wouldn't be here, would you? And besides, I'm not big rich, in case you hadn't noticed.

That's a good question, she said. I suppose I would be here. I'd keep trying to save your soul.

Well, I appreciate that, Miss Missionary, he chuckled. My soul sure does want savin'.

If I cook something Friday, will you tell me more about what the tribe's doing? she asked. It's the only way I can find out.

Well, he said, you know Leonard as well as I do. Just get on your horse and ride out there. He'd love to see you. After a pause he said, But you know me well enough to know I'm not going to turn down a supper.

They rose, he threw a bill on the table, and they headed for the door. I'll bring the Jameson, he said as he touched her shoulder, then raised a hand in parting.

5.

He didn't tell Caroline about the ceremony. He rarely did.

The day after his adventure with Harv Waldron's cows, he had indeed met with Leonard Cloud, the tribal chairman. Then he had gone to the weathered house owned by the Southern Ute's venerable holy man on the outskirts of Ignacio. Two Hawks was well into his eighties. No one, including himself, was quite sure of the year of his birth in the early twentieth century. From his earliest years, Two Hawks had seen spirits in the wind and water. He prayed to the four compass points and the four seasons. And he communed with all the creatures. Each species of tree—sage, juniper, pinion—had its own spirit, and all required respect and reverence. The birds were messengers on the wing. Though he was an occasional meat-eater, there was no memory in the tribe of him ever purposefully harming a living thing. A rattler deserved his own space. Two Hawks would step well around.