Tortoise Soup (11 page)

The trip to Harley’s ranch seemed endless, even with Bonnie crooning the blues. A town consisting of a gas station and a diner flashed by all too quickly. Even cows on the side of the road barely moved, hypnotized by the oppressive heat that pulsated up from the ground into their hooves. A Mojave green rattler sunned itself in the middle of the road, daring me to pass by. Four feet long and as thick as a man’s arm, the reptile barely bothered to lift its head off the asphalt. Mesmerized by the warmth that penetrated its belly, it half-heartedly shook its rattles as if I presented no more threat than a bug.

Cows were soon replaced by abandoned cars that littered the desert floor like discarded tin cans. Lying flat on their backs, their rusted axles reared up in surrender, their tires long gone. Others had become targets for gun-happy cowpokes, with bullet holes pockmarking their vanquished shells. It was clear that cowboys were little more than rednecks in chaps. Just recently one hotshot had used his double-barreled shotgun to fill a thirty-foot Joshua full of lead. In a twist of desert justice, the giant cactus had fallen on top of him, creating the first cowboy voodoo doll in the West.

The road rose sharply and then dipped out of sight, much like a roller coaster that had reached its summit. I took the plunge and found myself at the foot of the Virgin Mountains, where tumbleweed and cactus draped the desert floor. Rocky plateaus rose off in the distance.

Following the directions I’d managed to scrounge, I veered onto a dirt road, turning left at a creek, right at a bush, and left again at a twig. I’d been told that I would know Harley’s dwelling when I saw it. My guess was that it would be the only house around. I peered out of the dust that covered my windshield like a ghost bumming a free ride and caught sight of a decrepit drive. My eyes followed its zigs and zags to a run-down ranch house perched on top of a small hill. Word had it that Harley had a 7mm Magnum set up inside, mounted on a tripod facing the road. I figured I was already dead-center in its sight.

A wooden placard was mounted on a post at the entry to the drive. The sign held ten stick figures, each with a blood-red bull’s-eye smack dab in the middle of its chest. A warning read, “Federal Agents: Enter At Your Own Peril.” Not exactly your down-home western hello.

It seemed that the desert, along with its critters, was a brutal and unforgiving place. Everything out here threatened to either prick you, sting you, bite you—or maybe shoot you.

I had barely started up Harley’s drive when he appeared on horseback to greet me. A plain-faced man, Harley had skin as coarse as a lizard’s. He was dressed in a denim shirt and worn jeans, along with a red bandanna that peeked out from beneath a straw cowboy hat. When he drew closer, I saw the gun belt strapped round his waist, a .45 snugly bedded down in its holster.

I got out of the Blazer, leaving Pilot inside.

“Howdy there, miss.” Harley brushed the tips of his fingers along the rim of his hat.

No “ma’am.” I liked that. Who said he was such a bad guy?

“You lost? Or are you out here to try and do a story on me?” Harley cheerfully inquired.

Eyes as blue as a slow-burning flame took in every inch of me until I could have sworn he was flirting. I almost hated to burst his bubble.

“Good day, Mr. Rehrer. I’m Rachel Porter. I’m a special agent with …”

Harley’s friendly demeanor instantly vanished, his voice turning as prickly as cactus. “Save it. I know who you are.”

I noticed that his right hand wasn’t far from his holster, his fingers jerking as if he had a bad itch.

“I got your message about tortoises being dumped on your ranch and I was wondering if I could talk to you about it,” I began.

“You want to talk?” he spat out, nailing me with his eyes. “Let’s talk about my rights and how you’ve been trampling all over them. Let’s talk about your wacko rules all because of some slow-moving critter with a hard top.” Harley tore a dog-eared copy of the Constitution out of his shirt pocket and began waving it in my face. “Thanks to you, the American cowboy is a dying breed. We’re the ones who are becoming extinct. Not some damn tortoise.”

His eyes glared as if I were the Devil incarnate. It probably wasn’t the right time to point out that Marlboro men always hung tough until the government threatened to yank their federal subsidies, then the howl could be heard from Nevada straight to the White House.

“You’ve taken away our birthright with all your gobbledygook regulations and laws.” Harley warmed to his topic like a preacher stumping at a local revival meeting. “When it gets to the point where I can’t graze my cows because of a damned tortoise, that’s where I draw the line. If it’s between them or me, I say let’s get rid of the damn things—and the people stoppin’ me.”

He grinned malevolently and looked beyond me.

A shiver tore down my spine, and I turned around, my skin clammy though the sun was set on deep-fry. Off in the distance, two ranchers were making their way toward us on horseback. If two is company and three is a crowd, four probably meant big trouble.

I turned back and looked at Harley, wondering what he had in mind.

“Gotta hand it to you. You got some timing there, Porter.” Harley laughed grimly as the two men approached. “Those are my neighbors, Randall Jones and Deloyd Small. Besides being good, God-fearing men, they’re vice president and treasurer of our Foundation. We were just about to have a meeting on what to do when it comes to dealing with federal agents. Maybe you’d like to sit in.”

Visions of lynchings danced in my head. It wasn’t long ago that a Forest Service ranger had been shot while sitting in his pickup, the bullet lodged right between his eyes. I didn’t even want to think about the pipe bomb that had been set off at the federal Bureau of Land Management office in Reno. Or of the ranger who woke up to find the camper in his driveway ablaze like a charbroiled marshmallow.

Harley nodded to the men as they dismounted from their horses.

“Didn’t know an outsider was joining us, Harley,” stated one of the cowboys, as hard and lean as if he’d been sculpted from stone.

“Didn’t know myself till just a few minutes ago, Randall.”

Randall Jones looked me up and down. The brim of his black hat was pulled low to shade his eyes. Suspenders supported a pair of well-worn jeans that clung tightly to his hips.

“Beg pardon, ma’am, but is this a fed I’m smelling here?” Sniffing loudly, he slithered over to examine my vehicle.

Pilot let loose a low growl as Randall passed by. Randall growled back in return. A giggle drew my attention to Deloyd Small, who was anything but tiny. I’d rarely seen a hefty cowboy, but Deloyd was a mountain of flesh. His giggle escalated into a high-pitched titter that would have better suited a twelve-year-old girl.

Randall Jones and Deloyd Small were names that I had heard before. Like Harley, both men refused to pay the government for grazing their cattle on public land. Even more ominous, they’d taken potshots at the last Fish and Wildlife agent who’d dared to show up in these parts.

Deloyd’s giggling scraped against my nerves like a tooth being hit with a drill. “The dog’s a civilian. Otherwise, you’ve got it right, Randall. I’m with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” I informed him.

Randall spat on the ground in response, leaving no doubt as to his opinion on my career choice.

I sidestepped the wad. “Harley here is claiming that tortoises are being dumped on this land. Is that what you and Deloyd think as well?”

Randall moved in close until we stood face to face, leaving me to wonder whether he was going to shoot me or ask me to dance.

“Damn right those things have been planted,” Randall growled in an intimidating voice. “Deloyd has got ’em all over his place. Don’t you, Deloyd?”

Deloyd glanced around as if watching the question go by, finally picking up on the prompt. “That’s right,” he agreed, his double chin shaking like Jell-O. “Damn environmentalists are so damn stupid, they put the wrong damn tortoises on my land. I’m telling you, those damn things ain’t even the right damn color.”

Having said his piece, he turned to Randall and grinned. I half-expected him to wag his tail. Instead, Deloyd’s fingers picked at a group of angry red welts on his neck until one of the scabs came off. The thin trail of blood was a calling card for every gnat around, and a small cluster immediately converged on Deloyd, who slapped at his neck with a large, meaty paw.

“Shit, that hurt. I need a drink,” he announced.

For a God-fearing man, his language certainly could have been better. Waddling over to his horse, Deloyd pulled a canteen from his pack and proceeded to polish off the contents, the flesh under his neck bobbing like a turkey wattle.

Randall pushed even closer. One more inch and I’d be able to sue him for rape.

“Okay, Miss Hotshot Agent. Since you bothered to come all the way out here, why don’t you tell us what’s going on? How is it that we have nothing on our ranches one day and something endangered on them the next?” he demanded. “You can’t tell me that’s not a government plot.”

I could have, but something told me it wouldn’t much matter. Like Harley, both men were carrying .45s that hung like miniature saddlebags on their hips. I knew the situation called for the utmost diplomacy.

“You mean to tell me”—I snickered—“that you really believe the government is sneaking out here in the middle of the night?” I tried to hold back a chuckle. “And dumping hundreds of tortoises on your ranches—all in order to take back this land?” I couldn’t help it—I howled with laughter.

All three men stared as if I’d gone mad.

Finally Randall spoke, angrily slicing the air with his forefinger. “That’s right. And you want to know why that is?”

I tried to compose a serious face.

“It’s because the government is planning to open this land to the Japanese. That’s why,” Harley boomed before I could answer. “We’ve bought so many damned TVs and cars from them that now we owe the Japs a ton of money. So the government has decided to sell them our land to blank out the debt.”

As Lureen would have put it, either these boys were smoking some pretty strong weed or aliens had been sucking out their gray matter.

“Just think about it a minute,” I began, repressing another suicidal impulse to laugh. “Your allotments of public land run on the order of thousands of acres, right?”

The men cautiously nodded their heads, waiting for the punch line.

“Do you realize just how many tortoises someone would have to dump here in order to have the critters running all over the place?” I asked.

“Not just anyone,” Randall growled. “For all we know, it’s you that’s doing the dumping. After all, you’re the damn critter agent. Let’s see you laugh about that.”

He didn’t have to worry. The way they were all glaring at me, the urge had totally passed. Coming out here alone might have been a crazy idea.

I took a deep breath. “Look at it this way. If you figure that each tortoise is roughly one foot long by one foot wide, I’d need ten double-rigged tractor trailers filled to the brim just to haul the critters in. And,” I added, certain this had to be the clincher, “just where would I get all those tortoises from?”

“Shit, Porter. That’s an easy one.” Randall flashed a wicked grin, as if I’d just willingly stuck my neck in the noose. “Ed Garrett says the Fascist and Weirdo Service is paying a group of eco-nuts living out in some ark to break into that tort hotel you got, steal the suckers, and then dump the little buggers on our land.”

I groaned. One of six commissioners in Clark County, Garrett was an eager supporter of the county supremacy movement. He had recently introduced resolutions granting the commission power to veto the Endangered Species Act as well as to control all mining and development decisions throughout the county.

“And while we’re at it, what about all those unmarked black helicopters the government is flying out here at night? Let’s hear you explain those,” Harley jumped in. He pushed his way in front of Randall as if to reassert his position as leader.

I was surprised to hear about ’copters again. Especially unmarked ones. As far as I knew, choppers coming from Nellis bore the name of the base.

“Can’t answer that one, hotshot?” Randall sneered.

He was right. I didn’t have a clue. Jones and Harley took a few threatening steps toward me, igniting a five-alarm fire in my brain.

“Maybe she don’t want to,” Deloyd giggled. Having walked back to his horse, he lifted a coil of rope off his saddle.

“I’ve heard about the ’copters and I’m not sure what’s going on. All I can do is promise to look into it,” I offered. But the trio weren’t in a listening mood.

“If she doesn’t want to answer, it’s because she’s afraid,” Harley retorted, sticking his chest out like a bantam rooster ready for a fight. “It’s because she knows that’s how the government’s bringing the tortoises in. The suckers are being airlifted.”

“Now, you’ve got to know that’s crazy. Do you really believe that’s something the air force would do?” I began.

“Or maybe government Rambo squads are performing secret maneuvers in the dead of night to raid us,” Deloyd eagerly added. Caught up in the wave of excitement, he trotted over to join Harley and Jones.

The homegrown, ready-to-detonate militia slithered tighter around me like a large boa constrictor closing in on its prey.

“Those of us at the Foundation have decided that we’re only going to deal with Ed Garrett and the county commission from now on,” Harley informed me.

“That’s right,” Deloyd added. “And Garrett says you’re one of the feds that’s plotting against us.” He ran his hands along the length of the rope.

It struck me as odd that an official I’d never met would bother to spend his time spreading rumors about me. “If I was plotting against you, do you really think I’d have the nerve to come out here alone?” I asked.

But Harley was beyond reason. “Garrett says that the tortoise is nothing but an excuse to kick us off our land.”

Randall grinned, his eyes locking onto my own. “Since this is an official Foundation meeting concerning what to do with federal agents, I say we oughta hold this one captive.”