Chapter 4

Andy remained in Shepherds Crossing when Christina and the other Jackson County mourners returned to Waypoint after the funeral. He intended to investigate the dam at the head end of Shepherds Cut, the canyon that breached Sundown Ridge west of Shepherds Crossing. While similar to Isabella Canyon, which cut through Sundown Ridge southwest of Waypoint, Shepherds Cut was a much shorter canyon, as the ridge was narrower there, while also broader and more open, providing easy passage much of the year.

However, in the spring and early summer, Shepherds Creek often ran high through the canyon, inundating its entire width at spots, though only to a few inches of depth in many places. Usually by late June or early July, the creek dried up, though it varied from year to year, depending on snow pack and weather patterns.

A dam had been built, some thirty-five miles downstream from the Cut, just above its confluence with the Rio Isabella, in the northeast corner of the Malik ranch. Valerian Malik, Emil’s and Andy’s late father, had placed a low earth and rock structure across a broad, shallow valley to impound the annual runoff of Shepherds Creek for irrigating crops. He’d named the reservoir Summer Lake, since it held water only for the summer months before it, too, went dry.

Valerian Malik was the first person to catch and hold water from Shepherds Creek and divert it into an irrigation system. No one had ever tried to use the creek for anything before, simply because it only flowed a few weeks or months every year. The many dry months made it an undependable water source. But Valerian realized he could impound enough water for at least three cuttings of hay.

Most significant, however, was the fact that Valerian Malik was first to use the water. Under Arenoso water use laws, that gave him the senior rights to any water in Shepherds Creek. Other users might tap into the creek, but they had to assure that the Malik ranch received all the water they normally used. And, as a practical matter, other than in the rare years of exceptionally high flow, the Malik ranch used virtually all of that water.

Anyone who dammed Shepherds Creek was, in effect, stealing water from the Malik ranch. But there were no law enforcement officers assigned to patrol for water rights infractions.

Instead, the enforcement of water laws fell to the party whose rights were infringed. It was up to that person to bring a complaint to the water court. Water court was a separate state judicial system, just as criminal court was separate from civil court or probate court. Water court would decide water disputes and then order one party or the other to comply. If one did not comply, one could be cited for contempt of court, and then an arrest order would be issued for action by the state bailiffs, who were the equivalent of a state police force.

Lonegan and Malik had remained on the train at Waypoint to disembark some fifty miles further south, at Dorado Springs, which was the county seat of Sonora County.

That town also accommodated the headquarters of the Sonora Indian Reservation. The reservation itself was a roughly five hundred square mile expanse of land that occupied most of central Sonora County, west of Dorado Springs.

Beyond the reservation, in the western reaches of Sonora County, which was the second largest county in the state, lay both the Tsosie ranch, in the Flat Grass Valley, and, to its south, in Smoky Valley, the former Lestly ranch, inherited by Gabriela upon her first husband’s death. She had renamed the ranch the Doña Anna, in memory of her daughter, who’d been raped and beaten to death by Gabriela’s brother-in-law, Granger Lestly. Gabriela, in turn, had shot and killed Lestly, though no one knew of his fate, other than Malik and Cowboy.

The Sonora reservation headquarters office was in what had been a storehouse for the old Franciscan mission community of the Spanish colonial period. That building was not on the reservation, per se, but was in the town of Dorado Springs, itself, a few hundred yards from the reservation’s eastern boundary. It had been located there some twenty years earlier, before the town existed and when it was part of a larger reservation, prior to the last round of reservation shrinkage at the behest of the federal government. The reservation’s headquarters building housed the reservation manager, a man employed by and representing the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, the BIA, a division of the U.S. Department of the Interior. That manager was the de facto civil governor of the reservation.

The headquarters building was on the west side of a large plaza, another remnant of the Franciscan padres’ planning. In the center of the plaza was a small fountain, a low structure of purely pragmatic design, which dispersed the flow of an artesian spring, the primary source of fresh water for the town. It was one of three springs in the area, one of which was a spring of hot, mineral-laden water.

Also on the west side of the plaza was the former mission church and its attached adobe friary, a complex that now served as the Sonora County Courthouse. Most of the remaining space on the east and south sides of the plaza was occupied by various small Sonora businesses and trade stalls, while the north and west sides were, by custom, left open, save for those former mission buildings already noted.

Beyond the commercial structures on the south side were several twisting streets fronted, for the most part, by homes, some of which were substantial adobe structures while others were mere hovels. There were even a few traditional nomadic dwellings, both low wickiups and tall tipis, as both styles were used by the Sonora. The better commercial buildings and homes tended to be east of the tracks and were largely occupied by a mix of Anglo and Mexican families, though there was an area of poorer dwellings further north, closer to the rail yard.

A newer mission church, this one run by the Society of Jesus, known as the Jesuits, a Roman Catholic religious order, was also situated east of the railroad tracks. Near it was another adobe building housing a combined elementary and secondary school, also operated by the Jesuit padres.

Lonegan and Malik were just off the south side of the plaza, in what was essentially an outdoor cafe. It included a food counter and three, long, rough-cut board tables with attached bench seats, all under a corrugated tin roof, set in the open air.

“Boy howdy!” Lonegan said. “You weren’t kidding about this food. Whatever’s in this chorizo really sets it off. And what makes these tortillas so tasty?” He held a tortilla-wrapped concoction above the sheet of newspaper in which it had been served.

Malik said, “According to reports, there are bits of gooseberries in the sausage. The tortillas are a mix of wheat flour and masa flour, and they add a little honey to the water.”

“What’s ‘masa’?”

“It’s a type of corn flour, made from hominy.”

“Like the corn in that Mexican soup, what’s it called, uh ... pozole?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, this food is great. Wish I’d have realized it was here years ago.” The marshal looked around at the crowed benches. “They look to be doing a land office business. Why don’t they fix the place up, put up a real building?”

“I asked that of one of the three Sonora sisters who run it. She said they don’t want to get into all the extra problems that a more standard restaurant service would entail. They also like the idea that it’s all about the food, not the service or the surroundings. From the customer’s perspective, it keeps the price low. They’re always busy, so it seems to be working.”

“Yeah,” Lonegan said, as he looked around at the little business and its customers. “It’s hard to argue with success, or to think it’s a good idea to fix something that’s already working fine. I’ve known too many government people who are always looking to make things perfect, like they never noticed that human beings couldn’t be perfect even if they had a two-hour head start.”

Malik nodded in agreement. “The Indian Affairs agent here, Morton Quincy, is sometimes like that. The Sonora clan is pretty comfortable with what they have and how they live. Most of them like feeling a part of their natural setting. But he would prefer all of them build adobe houses. Failing that, he wants them to put their tipis and wickiups in orderly rows along identifiable streets.”

Malik shrugged, sating, “Still, I must give him credit for putting in outhouse privies around the native quarter. That did alleviate what had been a sanitary hazard, especially for the children.”

Then he lowered his voice. “But it also points up why I’m concerned about this silver mine. If these folks, the Sonora, that is, get more money, they’re not going to know what to do with it. They’ll be preyed upon by unscrupulous people who, if they don’t sell them useless stuff of all sorts, will outright steal or defraud them of the money. Now, I’m not against people spending their own money on whatever they want, no matter what I think of it. But the money, itself, will attract a bad element to Dorado Springs, the type of scum who won’t just stop at taking only the money from the silver mine. They’ll want to pick the Sonora clean of anything else they have.”

“You’re right about that,” Lonegan agreed. “It won’t be as bad as a real gold or silver rush, but it will still attract swindlers and chiselers who will strip them of everything they can, including the little they have now. And that’s besides those who will be selling them cheap hooch and lots of it.”

Malik sat silently, looking toward the table top, slowly chewing the last of the tortilla-wrapped breakfast. After a time, he said, “Maybe I’ve been thinking about this wrong.” He looked up at Lonegan. “I’ve been visualizing the earnings from the mine going directly to the individual members of the clan. But it doesn’t have to work like that.

“Neither the Sonora nor any Indian tribe I’ve heard of, handles major clan resources that way. They don’t divide up the prairie, for instance, into individual holdings. Assuredly, they hold items like horses, or weapons, or sheep, or their tipi as personal possessions, I mean objects or animals they personally create, or raise, or capture. But their natural surroundings, the organic products of mother earth, are understood to be used by everyone, similar to the old village green concept back east, though that concept’s mostly been outgrown.”

“Yeah,” Lonegan said, “That’s pretty much common knowledge, at least among anyone who deals with Indian tribes. Gives lots a’ white folks the fits, though. They just can’t feature it, the idea of not owning everything.”

Malik said, “Exactly. These people hold different values, ingrained through centuries of cultural immersion. It seems so persistent, I have to wonder if there may be actual differences in the way our minds work. My point is, though, that the Sonora do not look at that silver mine the same as do the white men who have brought this situation to emergence by suggesting the eminent domain takeover.

“The Sonora clan members all know about the mine, but no Sonora that I know of is clamoring for it to be developed. None of them are saying, ‘I want my share,’ because they don’t think of it that way. First, they probably don’t think of it at all, as money is just not where their concerns lie. Beyond that, if it was developed and they were forced to deal with the income, they’d sit in council and they’d ask, ‘What are we going to do with this money?’

“To do it the white man’s way, to pay out individual shares, someone would actually have to convince them to go against their own ways of doing things. If it’s a resource, they’d see the mine as a collective clan resource, something that benefits them as a group. It’s like how they conceive of the prairie, which supplies both grazing for the buffalo or their sheep and things like camas root, which is a favored food among some tribes of the northern prairies. They use the forest and its resources the same way. Not as ‘mine,’ not even so much as ‘ours,’ but more as a part of nature that their clan takes benefit from. They live in the resource, they don’t own it.”

“You’ve got a scheme goin’, don’cha?” Lonegan probed.

“Actually, a couple things come to mind,” Malik repled.

“One is that we need to make sure Sheriff Ulney is on board with the way the Sonora look at things. Assuming he signs onto this Indian deputy plan, he’s going to be working closely with those deputies and, more generally, with the clan itself. When you talk to him, see if he can just leave the Sonoras to be themselves without thinking that white man values are something better that the Indians need convincing of.”

Lonegan shrugged. “We both know him. He seems pretty easy-going to me. I’ve never heard of him havin’ troubles with the Sonoras, and he’s been dealin’ with ‘em for years.”

“Good point. And it reminds me that I’ve not harbored a second thought about him being able to handle this successfully.”

“So what’s the other thing?”

“What? Oh, yeah. I think the mine income could be handled as a clan resource in a formal, white-man way so as to protect it from white predators. I’ll recommend to Blue Maize that the money go into a trust and that some form of clan council become the trustees. I mean, they won’t have to actually deal with it using those white-man banking terms, but it will amount to the same thing. Overall control will rest with the clan group and be subject to clan values. They’ll be able to deal with it just like other inherent resources they use, like the water from the springs.”

Malik then said, “Actually, the hard part may be trying to get them to do anything at all with the money.” He paused, then said, “Which, as I think about it, is just my white man culture talking. There’s no credo that requires the Sonora to do anything with the money. However, though it still reflects my Euro-American attitude, if the Sonora pursue even a passive, conservative investment plan, a gradually increasing capital fund might serve them well in some future crisis or need. I might recommend to Blue Maize that they hire some good investing advice, like from Robert Smith, at the bank in Waypoint.”

Malik chuckled and shook his head. “But I’m getting way ahead of myself. No one’s even assayed the mine, yet and her I am investing the proceeds.” He pulled out his watch and consulted it. “I figure if we take one walk around the plaza to settle this good food, it would then be time for our meetings.”

“Fine with me,” Lonegan said. “I wanted to look at some of the jewelry, anyway.”

“Oh? Got a sweetheart?”

“Of a sorts. My niece, my sister’s oldest, back in Pennsylvania. She’s their only girl and she’s got four younger brothers. I’ve been buyin’ her nice pieces since she was about nine. She’ll be fourteen, this year. I send her brothers things like Indian drums and tomahawks, then sit back and imagine the chaos they bring. It’s the price I extract for all the times my sis tattled on me when we were younkers.”

Malik chuckled. “Andy and I were the same way, at least up until Ma was killed. That brought all three of us together, y’know, with our Pa. That’s when Pa first included me in the hard parts of life, when we chased down those raiders that killed Ma and the others. Andy was still a bit young for that. So was I, if you care to think about it. But I’ve got no regrets.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen, a couple months shy of sixteen. Not a whole lot older than your niece. But seein’ what those raiders did at the ranch, that aged me fast.”

Malik looked off toward the fountain in the center of the plaza. “It was just this time of year. Some of the men had taken a herd up to the rail yards, at the Crossing. Other of the hands were on the Saturday supply run to Waypoint, along with a few that just wanted to go to town. The Tsosies, including Cowboy, were already moving the sheep up toward the mountains for the season. Andy, Pa, and I had gone down to do some regular maintenance on the dam at Summer Lake. Winters always opened up a few cracks and holes.

“Val Garcia was the one who came to get us. He was thirteen that year. He’d stayed at the ranch to help with chores. He’d been moving some horses to a new pasture when he heard the gunfire. By the time he got there, the raiders had been driven off, but Ma and two others were dead and three men were wounded. The three of us rode back fast as we could. By then, one of the wounded men had died, too.

“There’d been eight raiders. One of ‘em had been shot dead and they thought they’d wounded another. They had, as we found out later. The only house they’d managed to get into was our big hacienda. By then, enough of the ranch men had gathered to drive them off.

“Pa told me to saddle fresh horses, long-winded ones, for him and me. He got supply packs together and we left on their trail. Only took us a day to catch up to ‘em. They were stupid and careless and we took advantage of it. But each one knew why he was dyin’.” Malik walked on in silence. Lonegan had been quiet throughout the tale.

They came to a Sonora man sitting behind a blanket on which he displayed his jewelry work. Lonegan stopped and went to one knee for a closer look. Malik paused and let his eyes wander slowly around the plaza, sometimes tracking an individual for a few moments.

Eventually, Lonegan stood up. He was examining a copper wrist band with an engraved design inlaid with silver filigree and three low profile, cabochon-cut turquoise. Malik asked, “That’s nice. Gonna buy it?”

“Already have.” Lonegan slipped the band in his trousers pocket -- both men were dressed in ranch or riding garb -- then he pulled his watch from his waistcoat and said, “‘Bout time for our meetings.”

Malik said, “See you in a bit,” and the two men separated.

Lonegan headed to the courthouse, Malik toward the ramada, next to the Indian Agent’s office, where Blue Maize was seated on a blanket. Both men had sent wires the day before, Malik requesting a meeting with Blue Maize, Lonegan with Sheriff Ulney. They had decided to approach them individually, but at the same time. If everything worked out, then they would bring them together.

Blue Maize was forty-eight, an advanced age for a North American native. He had a broad face and a prominent, though not distracting, nose. His visage showed the weathering and color of old wood, with deep wrinkles in the mahogany surface. He wore his graying, black hair in the traditional style of a Sonora man: not quite shoulder length, and combed back, held in place with a broad, colorful, cloth band that extended over his forehead and was tied in back. While his features were stern, an air of serenity could be read in his eyes. He spoke in a gravelly, though not harsh, baritone.

After several minutes of the preliminary, quasi-formal expressions of honor and gratitude by each, followed by inquiries about family and the resulting discussion, Malik brought the conversation to the business at hand.

He explained to Blue Maize that ignoring the silver mine was not going to make the problem go away. Moreover, he told the chief that soon white men could own the silver mine and the land around it. He explained that the white man’s god had declared that the earth was a divine gift meant to be used by his people and that the laws of the white men reflected that belief. Under the law, white men could take the silver to use it because the Sonora were not making good use of this divine gift.

Blue Maize insisted that Sonora spirits persisted on the reservation, not the white man’s spirit.

Malik asked him if he had ever known a time when Sonora spirits had not eventually been overcome by the white man’s god. He pointed out the plight of the Lakota when gold was discovered in their sacred Black Hills.

“It is not a question of whether Sonora spirits or white man’s god are wiser or more just, but a question of which has more followers and more powerful weapons. This has been the deciding cause in all conflicts between white men and Indians. When Sitting Bull had more Indians and better weapons, he defeated Custer. But that is a rare and unusual event and came about because Custer was foolhardy and Sitting Bull was shrewd. Even so, the Lakota and their allies were eventually defeated and the Black Hills now belong to the white man.”

Blue Maize did not protest this apparent injustice because he did not have any conception of the supposed American cultural value of equity often expressed by children in that catchphrase: “That’s not fair.” That phrase was not known among the Sonora. For the clan, it was simply a matter of what happened or what did not happen, what was or what was not. The idea that one might seriously protest the vagaries of life was never in their rationale.

Malik said, “Blue Maize, I think I can arrange things that will change life here very little, except where you and the elders decide to change it, and I can keep the white man out. But the mine has to be developed or white men will take it away from you, including all the land around it.”

Blue Maize took another puff of the Guardia Real Malik had given him, then held out the ash-tipped stogie to regard it. He asked, “Will your plan help us to obtain more of these cigars, Shadow?”

Malik took the question seriously. “Yes, if that is what you and the elders decide.”

The discussion continued, turning to other subjects.

Blue Maize had no objection to having Sonora men appointed deputy federal marshals. The clan members were familiar with the federal deputies who came to the reservation to investigate crimes and arrest miscreants. That Sonoras could do the job better seemed self-evident to the chief. He readily named six candidates, the brothers Long Hand and Stream-In-Winter, in their mid-thirties, being the oldest, with the other four men being mostly in their twenties, with the youngest being Stone Raven, at eighteen.

Blue Maize said, “The older men can lead the younger men and, after time passes, the younger men take the older men’s places. Long Hand and Stream-In-Winter have younger brothers and sons who can care for their horses and sheep while they do deputy work.”

Nor did Blue Maize raise objections to paying the deputies’ upkeep and salary from the silver mine’s earnings, nor did he object to the idea of paying an equivalent to white man’s taxes in order to keep the white men out. He did have some problem accepting that white mining engineers would have to manage the mine.

“Shadow, you say this will keep the white men out, but now you tell me the white men are still coming.”

“Blue Maize, they will be working for the clan, not for other white men. It is the only way to keep the mine workers safe. Mining engineers have special knowledge of how rock behaves and they know ways to control it, to keep it from falling on the men in the mine.

“But think on this: If you and the elders decide, you can use the money from the silver to send some of the young men of the clan to the white man’s school to learn to be mining engineers. Young men and women from the clan can go to college and learn how to get better harvests from the same land, they can learn to be doctors, they can learn to write down the clan’s stories so all can know them, and they can learn how to teach other clan members to do these things. Such learning takes many years, though, starting from when they are children, like at the Jesuit mission school, until they are the age of the younger men you selected for deputies.

“While you think about the white mining engineer, remember also that mine workers are necessary. If the clan members prefer not to dig in the mine tunnels, then someone else will have to do it. You might have to hire white men. Or you could hire Chinese men. They might be better, because they will not want your land, only their pay, so they can have money to take back to their homeland.” Sonoras and Mexicans were traditional enemies and therefore not on Malik’s list of potential workers. Known individuals might pass muster, but not as a group.

“Shadow, I must speak with the elders and senior men. Perhaps you would be nearby, to explain some things.”

“Of course. I will help where I can. I want the clan to remain secure and free.”

“Then you and I shall meet with Sheriff Ulney and Marshal Lonegan and talk about the deputies.”

That meeting, between the lawmen and Blue Maize, went better than expected, with Ulney having only one objection to the nominated deputies.

“I know he is your sister’s younger son, Blue Maize, but Stone Raven likewise knows that his mother’s brother is the clan leader. He has found that he can behave in shameful ways and then escape his due when he reminds people you are his uncle. He has been in my jail three times, two times for drunkenness and destroying property and once for stealing a horse. Each time, your clan members came to me for help. Then, when they learned it was your nephew who did these things, they didn’t want my help anymore. Making him a deputy would be bad for the clan and it would be bad for him. He would become even less than the child-man he is now.”

Nodding, Blue Maize said, “Of course, you are right, Sheriff Ulney.” He took a draw on another of Malik’s cigars, then slowly blew it out. “But now I can tell my sister that I wanted Stone Raven but you would not have him. She will accept that.”

Ulney chuckled, shaking his head. “Blue Maize, the more I treat with you, the more I can understand why you are clan leader.”

“Neither of us have our posts by chance, Sheriff Ulney.”

That evening, the clan elders, including the shaman, Walks-On-Sand, and most of the senior men, which included three of the nominated deputies, met under the ramada on the west side of the plaza. Any interested clan members could attend, but the immediate discussion was only for the elders and, with permission of Blue Maize, the senior men.

The eleven elders sat, on blankets, in a circle around a small fire, between the ramada and the BIA office. The senior men, perhaps four dozen in number, had gathered under the ramada near the elders’ circle, also on blankets. A larger group of Sonora men sat on the hardpan surface of the plaza, in the corner nearest the ramada; most of those were likewise seated on blankets.

Some of the women had gathered further away and were standing by the fountain. A few women closest to the men’s group listened and reported the proceeding to the other women. Their own quiet discussion was covered by the splash of the water.

Malik, Lonegan, and Ulney sat well outside the gathered clan, on a bench against the side of the BIA building. Morton Quincy, the Bureau of Indian Affairs agent, was at his desk in his office, the light of a single oil lamp showed that the window closest to the ramada was open.

The discussion was in the Sonora dialect, of which Malik knew only a few words and phrases; he could converse in rudimentary Navajo, but there was no similarity between the languages. Ulney had a limited facility in Sonora, as did the Indian agent, Quincy. Lonegan, on the other hand, was totally adrift.

The council began with each of the elders expounding for some minutes, except Walks-On-Sand, who spoke but a few quiet words, and Blue Maize, who remained largely silent. After a time, one of the elders said something and everyone laughed and looked at the three white men, there on the bench, sitting in the night’s darkness. Following that, the discussion appeared to become more earnest, with a solemn, but lively, exchange. This went on for some time, as Blue Maize allowed each elder an opportunity to make his mind known and to rebut points in contention. There appeared to be two factions among the elders, one side doing much head shaking, with dour faces, the other expressing themselves with broad gestures and more lively miens. Each side seemed unyielding. This went on for the better part of an hour.

Then Long Hand asked to speak. With permission from Blue Maize, Long Hand stood and spoke only for a few minutes, but with an intensity that drew in the clan members. The lawmen could see heads nodding and whispered conversations in the larger group. As Long Hand continued, he pointed in an all-encompassing gesture, with his right arm outstretched, but speaking so low, the gathered clan grew fully silent to hear him. Then, he made an abbreviated gesture with both arms, pushing outward from his chest. Finally, when he sat down, there was a surge of low conversations among the clan members and a few even called out “Uvisa!”

Ulney said, quietly “What they’re saying means ‘True,’ or maybe, ‘He’s right’.”

Malik said, “I only know that Long Hand mentioned white men and something about tomorrow, but I think it means the future. Did you pick up anything more?”

“He spoke about the clan gathering, about the deputies and the mine, and he used a phrase that means, ‘why not?’ repeated maybe four times.”

“Whatever it was,” Lonegan said, “it sure seemed to impress people. They were hangin’ on every word, after a bit.”

One-on-one conversations persisted among the clan, including in the elders’ circle.

Malik said, quietly, “My Pa was friends with Long Hand’s pa and his uncle, who was chief before Blue Maize. I know Pa thought well of them. Long Hand and Stream-In-Winter shepherded for us when they were younkers and the Tsosies were running our sheep. I’ve yet to find the man Pa liked who doesn’t ring true. I harbored suspicions about George Miller, when he was Jackson County Clerk. I had word that he was in thick with that courthouse gang, then it turns out he was gathering information on their doings for the state attorney general. Pa was a good judge of men. Women, too, I reckon,