Chapter 2

It had been a year-and-a-half since Cowboy was killed. The intervening time had been overfilled with activities and events, some that were satisfying, fulfilling, and joyous, and some that were less so, even devastatingly tragic. Perhaps it was the dynamic of the never-ceasing turmoil of life that made the time feel so short and kept the memory of lost loved ones so fresh and painful.

At Cowboy’s death, Matilda had inherited his share of the Lake Manuela Partnership, and, in the weeks after she had buried her husband, she immersed herself in that partnership’s dealings. The urgency of the situation, as the community’s mining cooperative strove to forestall a silver rush, to install flood control structures, and to begin to assemble the equipment, men, and supplies necessary to mine silver, provided a worthwhile distraction from her grief.

It had been Matilda’s idea to advise the other towns in the affected counties regarding the potential wealth and problems that the Dry Valleys might represent. She suggested that they contact one or two reasonable community leaders in each town and explain the situation to them and how it was being handled in Jackson County.

Andy Malik took on that role, visiting people known through various business, political, and personal associations in the several counties.

On June, twenty-sixth, eighteen eighty-seven, the last Sunday of the month, he chaired a meeting at the Old Courthouse Inn, in Waypoint. Select business, political, and social leaders from McCabe, Franklin, and Sonora Counties were invited to attend. Waypoint’s own Robert Smith, managing partner and President of the Jackson County Agricultural and Mercantile Bank, and Jacob Baylor, proprietor of Baylor’s Mercantile and General Store and President of the Waypoint Business Association -- and Andy’s father-in-law -- joined Andy to help explain the manner in which Jackson County had approached things. Malik sat in, too.

However, this meeting was not as sanguine as had been those of the Jackson County groups.

The circumstances were quite different for the other towns and communities represented. There was no certainty of valuable minerals, such as was enjoyed by the Waypoint group and the railroad. In addition, the railroad still held options on mineral rights to hundreds of thousands of acres spanning Jackson, Franklin. and McCabe Counties. In effect, there was some resentment directed at the Maliks in the beginning.

But Andy had an ace up his sleeve. He placed a deal on the table on behalf of the K&ASR.

The board of the Kansas & Arizona Southern Railroad, through its K&AS Land Resources Division, proposed a partnership with any community syndicate willing to meet certain terms. Under its existing purchase agreement with the state, the railroad would pay half the mineral rights option fee on any available sections that a local group would care to select. For the locals, purchasing under the railroad’s discounted rate, and only paying half of that, was a major incentive.

As part of the deal, the community investors agreed to purchase, outright, one section of land, to be designated by the railroad. That section would be used by the K&ASR for flood mitigation, at the railroad’s expense, though ownership would otherwise be retained by the community’s partnership syndicate.

In exchange for its options partnership, the railroad would receive five percent of gross return on extracted minerals. There were other provisions to ascertain that the groups legitimately represented local communities as well as other relevant strictures, but the deal proved persuasive among the various local representatives.

Within days, Malik was busy writing partnership contracts and drawing up incorporation papers for groups from Cleveland, the McCabe County seat, to Romulus, a village in southern Sonora County. In this sudden flurry of paper, Malik had sought the assistance of Wilford Bream, the Franklin County Attorney and prosecutor. Malik’s usual outside work partner, Raul Castillo, had accepted appointment as the K&ASR’s general counsel. Castillo had moved to Wichita and had immersed himself in the railroad’s business.

In support of the mineral-option partnerships, the railroad sent out their own geology crews to do an initial survey of the available sections. The geologists did not perform the same close examination they were applying to the railroad’s own optioned sections, but they did at least view and assess the sections under consideration by the syndicates and provide the local groups with a report of their findings. In those reports there was some good news, with copper, among other minerals, being indicated in several areas, as well as the discovery of less valuable minerals sometimes known to carry silver or gold, though that was not a guarantee.

After that late June meeting, with so many people privy to the information, it did not take long for word of the silver “strike” to leak out. Even so, the arrival of the first prospectors helped to spur the local groups to action, and sectional mineral rights were soon being established. News about the dearth of available land for prospecting served as a damper on the dreaded rush, benefiting Waypoint most of all.

Meanwhile, the K&ASR had opted to build a three-foot (measured between the inside edges of the rails) narrow-gauge line to Long Valley, the middle of the three, so-called, Dry Valleys. The railroad’s board of directors, including Malik, had met with the K&ASR surveyors and construction engineers for two days to assess the best approach to reaching the coal deposits and to serve the expected industrial and precious metals mining in the Dry Valleys. In the end, with Pete Pottinger’s unqualified support, a three-foot narrow gauge line was chosen over installing “standard” gauge (four feet, eight and a half inches between the rails. In longstanding tradition, no railroader ever referred to the gauge width as fifty-six and a half inches. It was called “Four foot, eight and a half”).

The line would run from a new freight-exchange terminal which would adjoin the main trunk line between Utica Switch and Dorado Springs. They chose a site in Sonora County where the Utica-Kylie Trail crossed the main line right-of-way. From there, the projected line would proceed west, on leased Sonora Reservation land, to Sundown Ridge, proceed up the ridge, through a tunnel, down and into the Toonilini Valley, then northwest, across the Rio Isabella, eventually crossing into Jackson County, then west over Shepherds Ridge, via a second tunnel, all on land owned by the Jackson County community mining syndicate. That community partnership, that is, the Lake Manuela Partners, the Waypoint Mining Partnership, the Ranch Home Mining Partnership, and several individual investors, had incorporated under the name Dry Valleys Mining Cooperative.

The K&ASR board’s choice of narrow gauge was not surprising. Narrow gauge was easier, faster, and more economic to construct in the mountain-like terrain that Sundown Ridge and Shepherds Ridge represented. Nor did the railroad expect any wider scope of freight service from the unpopulated valleys, save for increases associated with mining, so narrow gauge rolling stock would more than suffice.

Even with the additional expense of having to transfer cargo from the narrow gauge hoppers to standard gauge hoppers, the economies of narrow-gauge construction -- shorter curve radii, narrower roadbeds, smaller bridges and tunnels, lighter-weight rails, fewer, shorter ties -- made it well worthwhile. Then, when the mineral deposits finally played out, it would also be easier to recover the rails. The remaining roadbed, already surfaced with gravel ballast, could, with minimal improvements, be repurposed as a wagon trail.

One additional consideration was that the K&ASR owned considerable narrow gauge rolling stock, which had been included with the purchase of a mining-access short line in northern New Mexico Territory.

Within seven months of the board’s decision, and having tunneled under both ridges and built one major bridge over the Rio Isabella, the railroad had reached its coal deposit, a distance of just over fifty miles from the cargo transfer terminal. The route crossed over the silver vein and would provide economic shipping access for both the Sonora mine and that of the Dry Valleys Mining Co-op.

Malik began “circuit riding” with his business car after Independence Day, eighteen eighty-seven. He had placed an advertisement in the Fort Birney Saber, which had editions Monday through Saturday and was distributed throughout the southeastern part of the state. The ads announced the days, times, and locations that he would be available in each town. He put similar ads in the local weeklies: the Cleveland Fair Dealer, the Shepherds Crook, the Waypoint Monument, and the Sonora Drum. All of those weeklies were owned and published by the Saber.

He scheduled his circuit to run from north to south, starting at Cleveland, then Shepherds Crossing, then all the way south to Dorado Springs, then back up to Waypoint. Initially, he planned only two days in each of the three towns every month. During those first months, he also made several day trips to Dorado Springs on mine business, as he was also the general manager of the Sonora Mining Corporation, a business that had been formed on behalf of the Sonora tribe to manage its silver mine.

Even so, as he was completing his second circuit visit to Dorado Springs early in August, he wasn’t particularly surprised to see Morton Quincy, the Indian agent, approaching the car.

Quincy knocked on the door frame of the platform door, Malik having left open all the doors and windows in deference to the August heat.

Malik rose from the table and went toward the door to the front cabin. “Come in, Mister Quincy, come in. It’s good to see you.” He reached out and the men shook hands.

“Mister Malik, good morning.” Quincy was looking around the car. “So this is where all the big ideas are hatched. I will have to admit, I figured there would be smoke and mirrors.”

“Ah, no, Mister Quincy. I get my big ideas from the Montgomery Ward catalog. They come by express shipment from Chicago.”

“I must be receiving a different edition of their catalog,” Quincy quipped.

“Probably. I had to forego the women’s dainties section in order to receive the solutions-to-all-problems version.”

“Ah, I see. Well, that is good to know, because I have a lulu of a problem and I am not at all sure how to handle it.” Quincy’s face had changed to an expression of distress.

“Do we need privacy, Mister Quincy? I can close these windows and doors.”

The Indian agent paused for a moment, then said, “No. I do not think so. It seems unlikely anyone would want to be seen skulking around your car, in any event. Someone else would warn them off. For that matter, what I have is actually a public problem.”

“Having to do with the Sonora?”

“Precisely.”

“Should Blue Maize be here?”

Again, Quincy paused. “Yes, of course he should. I am so distracted by this that I am forgetting myself.”

Malik, perhaps remembering a similar faux pas in which he had inadvertently excluded Quincy from an important meeting, smiled wryly. “I know the experience.”

But Quincy, obviously troubled, was oblivious to the irony.

Malik asked, “Is Blue Maize at the ramada?”

“What? Oh, yes, yes he is.”

“Then why don’t we walk over there and we can meet in your office, if that would suit you.”

“Well, my office is a bit cooler than this.” The Indian Affairs building was adobe, thus better resistant to temperature change, especially if carefully managed by complimentary practices, such as opening all the windows at night.

“Then let’s go.” Malik opened his humidor and took out several Guardia Real cigars, which he slipped in his inner frock coat pocket. He closed and locked the doors on the way out.

Ten minutes later, all three men were seated on chairs in Quincy’s office. Blue Maize had accepted one of Malik’s cigars, but Quincy had politely refused one, saying he “did not indulge.”

“Friend Quincy,” Blue Maize addressed the man, “I can see that there is a thought that weighs heavy on your mind. Tell us, that we might share your burden.” Both Malik and the chief sat watching Quincy.

That man was shaking his head, but then stopped, looked at each of them, and then addressed the chief, “In February,” he turned, briefly, to Malik, “about when the Interstate Commerce Act was in the news, Mister Malik, there was another law being passed. It is named for its sponsor, Senator Dawes, from Massachusetts.”

“The chairman of the Indian Affairs committee?” Malik inquired.

Quincy, who’d been concentrating on Blue Maize, shifted his gaze back to Malik. “One and the same. I have admired his efforts on behalf of Indians, but this latest development seems to me to be terribly misguided. I have just received directives from Washington. It’s ... I find this mortifying.”

Blue Maize said, “You are here, with us, Friend Quincy, at Dorado Springs. What is done in a far-away meeting room is not a burden of your making.”

“Blue Maize is right, Quincy. You’re just the messenger. The messenger is not responsible for the content of the message, only for its delivery.”

“Yes, of course,” Quincy agreed. He reached inside his coat and brought out several folded pages. “This is a ... communication that arrived yesterday. It describes the procedure that is necessary in order to meet the tenets of the Dawes Act. I mean, I see what he wanted to do, but ... The point of the law is to bring Indians more into the benefits of American citizenship and society, but ... I think this just ends up being one more land grab.”

Blue Maize leaned forward. “Then it is not the first and it will not be the last, Friend Quincy. For us, it is an old story, always proceeded with words that say, ‘We are doing this to help you.’ How are we being helped this time?”

Quincy was now looking at the papers that were on his desk. He began to speak, seeming to read aloud, but the text was hidden under his spread hands, as if he were trying to hold that text to the pages.

“The Dawes Act requires that Indian reservations be surveyed and broken into allotments of one hundred sixty acres, and that adult Indian men, in order to hold those allotments, must live on and work the assigned acreage. Any reservation land which is not used in that manner within four years will be put up for sale to the general public.” Quincy did not raise his eyes.

After a moment of silence, Malik asked, “And the supposed benefit?”

Quincy looked up. His eyes were tear-filled. “Oh, yes. Any Indian so cooperating is granted both state and federal citizenship, with all the rights and responsibilities thereof, as well as title to the land -- after twenty-five years.”

Blue Maize took a puff on the cigar and then held it out and looked at it. “They want to kill the clan without having to kill any Indians. It is very clever,” he observed.

Malik looked over at Blue Maize, recognition dawning. “Of course. I hadn’t thought of that effect. It breaks the communal holding of the reservation land. Rather than clever, I think it is insidious.”

“Insidious?” Blue Maize said. “I do not know this word.”

Malik thought, momentarily. “It means clever, but in a hidden and cruel way.”

“Insidious,” Blue Maize repeated. “It rolls around on the tongue. I will enjoy using it to describe the new law.”

Malik sounded exasperated. “They expect the Sonora to farm the Dry Valleys? Are they insane in Washington?” After the briefest of pauses, he added, “Never mind. I’ve been there.”

Blue Maize said, “We can farm along the Rio Isabella. We can take from its headwaters and carry that water with channels which we will dig across the hillsides.”

Malik protested. “But that’s only a small portion of your land. The rest will be put up for sale.”

“Who would buy it, Shadow? The reason it was given to us was because no one thought it was worth anything.” He took another puff on the cigar. “We will lose the silver mine, then, in four years, since a mine cannot be plowed.”

“We will leave them nothing in it,” Malik vowed.

Two days later, Malik and Gabriela were sitting at the big table in the kitchen of the Doña Anna hacienda. Malik had ridden Tsela from Dorado Springs to Gabriela’s ranch for his midsummer break from the heat, as the Doña Anna was situated at nearly seven thousand feet altitude and was dependably cooler.

Les Toomey and Wren Tsosie had joined them for supper.

“You mean,” Toomey was asking, with a tone of incredulity, “those yahoos expect the Sonoras to farm those worthless valleys, or they’ll take the land away from them? How in the name of all that’s holy is that supposed to work?”