Chapter 1

NMT, April, 1901

Mat, Sarah, and the whole bunch ran over to examine the fallen "dignitaries" on the ranch house patio. Mat checked: every one of them had the burning cross tattoo at the base of his left thumb. All of the men were wearing an amulet with 4 stars, except one who had an amulet with 5 stars. There was no question about it, this had to be the top of the NMT Brotherhood hierarchy! Mat sent people out to check the dead Anglos to see if they all had the same tattoo and if they were wearing amulets. If so, how many stars were there?

In a few minutes, the reports came back that the corpses all had that same tattoo and they were all wearing an amulet with one, two, or three stars. With this information, Mat was sure that the NMT Brotherhood was wiped out and they could relax for the near future, at least.

A messenger was sent into Julesburg to ask the marshal to come to the ranch to see the carnage as soon as he could get there. They wouldn't clean up the mess until the marshal had seen it.

About mid-afternoon, the marshal showed up and Mat gave him a tour of the battlefield. The marshal agreed that the whole business was an unjustified attack on the York Ranch, and he would testify to that in court, if necessary. Mat thanked him and asked him to stay until tomorrow.

Bill had the draft animals hitched to the large produce wagons and the workers started loading the corpses on the wagons after stripping them of valuables. There was a suitable gully about a mile away that he planned to use as a mass grave. The bodies were hauled there and dumped in. It took the rest of the day and most of the next to process all of the corpses, but finally that job was done.

He then had the dragline brought in from the construction site and that was used to cover the bodies with dirt. The roller from the dam was used to pack down the dirt over the bodies and they were ignored after that.

There was some consternation in Santa Fe when several prominent business men and politicians and one judge simply disappeared. This was a major topic of conversation for a whole week until a new wonder showed up. Then it was forgotten.

Roland did some experimenting with the fuel while he was waiting for the next diesel engine. The coal oil he was using was pretty expensive, so he was looking for a way to cut the cost. He asked all the women to save their used cooking oil for him. He also collected the excess fat from the slaughtered animals and any other unwanted animal or vegetable oil he could find. He mixed it all up and added enough coal oil to thin it out so that it would flow freely. This mixture turned out to be a usable fuel for the diesel. It was not quite as efficient as the straight coal oil, but it was free. He set up a regular system to collect this oil as it became available.

Sarah was asked to look into planting peanuts so that he could get peanut oil. She could press the oil from the peanuts and feed the residue to the animals. The dried vines could also be used as animal food. The question was not whether or not she could grow peanuts, but whether or not there was an economic advantage to doing so. Roland estimated that he could cut his coal oil purchases in half if he could get enough peanut and other domestic oil.

They needed as much income as they could get right now: Roland wanted another diesel engine for an idea he had for replacing the draft animals. He had been so right with the war wagon experiment that they were inclined to cater to his whims in the expectation that they would pay off in a big way.

He did some experimenting with using the war wagon to pull a wagon behind it. They were all amazed at how much weight could be loaded on the towed wagon. He was able to pull up to 4 fully loaded trailing wagons, but that was where he quit—he pulled the drawbar right out of the front trailer with so much load attached. Four wagon-trailers was too much of a steering problem; he couldn't control backing up well enough to get around sharp curves. This whole concept made him think of a railroad without the track. He needed to find a way to put this tremendous pulling power to use!

Roland's next step was to test the war wagon as a way to pull the irrigation water wagon. This worked out well, and he was actually able to double the water load before the undulations in the roadway became too much for the war wagon to pull.

This looked like the best bet for what Roland was calling the mechanical mule: pulling industrial loads. They had reached the point where they were having to move a lot of material and finished product around the various construction and manufacturing sites, particularly at the concrete block plant.

This looked like the best place to use the mechanical mule. Sarah suggested that this might be the best way to move finished block to the railroad for shipment to customers. Now, they were all in a hurry to see the second diesel engine arrive. Roland had the rolling stock ready, all he needed was the engine.

The dam construction was progressing well. They should be finished with construction of the dam, itself, this season. Next they needed to install pumps to draw the water from Lake Sarah and arrange for water distribution once the lake was full.

Sarah kept coming back to trying to find a way to move the water through pipes instead of ditches. Charles Clement, our concrete specialist, suggested that she consider concrete pipes—after all, that was what the Romans used! She told him to get busy designing the pipes, and Roland would figure out how to cast them. As soon as the crops were planted, she wanted to put men to digging the trenches for the pipe.

Roland came up with a neat scheme for casting the pipe. He had a metal tube fabricated in a way that it could be opened along two side seams, much like a clam shell. The tube had end caps which also acted as bearings for rolling the pipe along its centerline. The tube was greased on the inside so the concrete wouldn't stick to it while hardening. The tube was sealed on its side seams and one end cap was attached. A measured amount of concrete was dumped inside the tube and the other cap was attached. The tube was then rolled on its axis until the concrete hardened. At that point, the tube was opened and a completed section of pipe was removed. The tube was cleaned and the process was repeated for a new section of pipe. Meanwhile, the just cast pipe section was put into storage for final curing.

Pipes as small a 1 foot in diameter and as large as 4 feet in diameter were cast against the day that they would be needed. Tees, elbows, caps, and adapters were also cast. Sarah had supervised the preparation of a plan for the installation of the pipe, so they knew how many sections of each size of pipe they would need. To be safe, they cast an extra 10 percent to allow for breakage

NMT, June, 1901

The diesel engine arrived and Roland had it installed in his mechanical mule in no time at all. The testing went so well that he was ready to start moving the concrete pipe as soon as the trenches were ready. It was a real chore getting the largest sections of pipe in place without breakage, but, with care, they were successful in doing it. They had to learn as they went along, but the pipe was going in as fast as anyone could want.

Their biggest problem was in digging the trench through the hardpan. There was a lot of this, and Roland began to wonder if the pipe was really necessary. They had to do so much blasting through the hardpan, that there was a joke going around the ranch that the July 4th celebratory fireworks this year would be an anticlimax.

That first run of piping was finished by the time the first harvest came up, so there was no scheduling problem. The mechanical mule was a great help in the harvest, though there were complaints from the concrete block factory about the loss of the mule to "those damn farmers." It looked like we were going to have Roland build another mechanical mule as soon as we could afford it.

This time, Roland hooked up three wagons as trailers behind the mechanical mule for the convoy into Julesburg. So many people wanted to go on that first trip that it was more like a circus parade than a farm produce delivery! Arturo had scouts check for ambushes before the run, but nothing untoward was found, as expected. The trip was great fun for all, and so much noise was made during the run that we probably couldn't have heard a gun shot if one had been fired.