Bone Dry (Blanco County Mysteries)

by Ben Rehder

  Trey Sweeney was the county wildlife biologist—an ace in his field, but somewhat eccentric. Sweeney had recently returned from a vacation in Brazil, where he had contracted a mean case of dengue fever. His health was much better now, but Trey had been acting a little more strangely than usual lately. The previous Saturday night, a deputy had found Trey at the high school football stadium, rooting wildly for the home team. Unfortunately, the football game had been played the night before.

  Marlin nodded at Susannah. “I’m glad you called. I think it’s important that the ranchers and other landowners hear the other side of the brush-clearing story.”

  Six months ago, with Blanco County in the middle of a severe drought, county commissioners had recommended that residents remove as much brush from their land as possible. After all, brush—chiefly small scrub cedar trees—consumed an enormous amount of surface and ground water. By removing it, residents hoped to replenish the aquifer and pump life back into sluggish wells.

  Residents had responded by conducting an all-out assault on cedar trees. Across the countryside, the buzz of chainsaws became as persistent as the droning of summertime cicadas. Huge mounds of cut cedar waited to be burned on every ranch, deer lease, and rural homesite in the county. To date, officials estimated that ten percent of the cedar had been removed. To John Marlin and other wildlife officials, this was cause for alarm. They knew that a drastic change to the ecosystem—like clearing every cedar in the county—could have less visible long-term implications.

  Susannah removed a small tape recorder from her satchel. “You mind if I tape this?” she asked. “Helps me get all the quotes right.”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  “Well, Mr. Marlin,” Susannah said with false formality—something she herself found rather charming—“tell me what you think about all this cedar-clearing.”

  Marlin paused for a moment and took a sip of coffee. “Let me start by saying that it’s not necessarily a bad idea. But it might not be a good idea, either. We obviously have a water problem, as we’ve all known for some time. Seems like every year we hear about how it’s getting worse. Wells run dry, springs and creeks quit flowing, and Pedernales Reservoir is at a record low, even though we haven’t opened a floodgate since the dam was built. And just looking at the face of it, clearing cedar seems like a good way to attack the problem.”

  “But...” Susannah prompted him.

  Marlin shrugged. “I think we’re all kind of rushing things. We need to step back, take a look at the bigger picture, and think about how our actions could affect the wildlife. Animals have four basic biological requirements—food, water, space, and cover. Whenever man interferes with any one of those, it can have major consequences. For instance, white-tailed deer need brush cover to survive.”

  “But the deer don’t eat cedar trees, do they?”

  “No, but they usually bed down in thick brush. And they use it to move around without being seen. Without all the cedars, they’d be a lot more vulnerable to predators like coyotes, cougars, and bobcats. Especially the fawns.”

  “I never thought about that.”

  Marlin shook his head. “Most people don’t. But for all the ranch owners who are making good money with deer leases, it’s something they should consider. They should be wondering what the deer population will be like in five or ten years.

  “It’s not just the deer,” Marlin continued, speaking with obvious heartfelt intensity. “Wild turkey, rabbits, raccoons—they all need a fair amount of brushy habitat. And people should keep in mind that if you fool around with one link in the food chain, it can cause a domino effect. Let’s say—just as an example—we remove all the brush, and rabbits become easy prey. Coyotes will have a field day for a while and their population will explode. Pretty soon, we’ve got coyotes all over the place, but they’ve eaten all the rabbits. So what do they go after next? Livestock. Goats, sheep, calves. I know the ranchers don’t want that.

  “Or here’s another good example: the beaver. Five hundred years ago, before the Europeans came over, there were maybe three hundred million beavers in North America. Place was crawling with them, from Mexico all the way up to Alaska. But then one of the English kings ruled that only beaver fur could be used to make hats. So beaver fur became big business, and it almost wiped ’em out. Fewer beavers meant fewer beaver dams, and that had a horrible impact on the natural habitat. Suddenly, all the ponds and watering holes the beavers created were disappearing, which had an effect on waterfowl, songbirds, deer and elk, raccoons—the list goes on. Hell, those dams even helped keep the aquifers full back then by slowing down runoff. They limited soil erosion, even helped ease flooding.”

  Marlin shook his head and smiled thinly. “I know I’m rambling on a little. We’re here to talk about cedar-clearing, right?”

  “No, that’s all right,” Susannah said, leaning forward, trying to make eye contact. “Like you say, it all ties together. I can tell this issue means a lot to you. You’re a very passionate man, John. I can see that in you.”

  The game warden held her gaze for a few seconds, smiling, playing the game with her. Then he glanced down at his cup. “I need a little more coffee. You want some?”

  Susannah nodded, and Marlin gestured at the waitress.

  “Okay, next question,” she said. “What about the red-necked sapsucker?”

  “I was afraid you were going to ask me that.” He thought for a moment. “Yes, it’s an endangered species, and yes, it nests almost exclusively in cedar trees in Central Texas. So the official Parks and Wildlife Department position is that we are against most brush-clearing in sapsucker habitat.”

  “And what’s your personal position, John?” Susannah asked.

  He gave her an appreciative smile, acknowledging the double entendre. Just as he was about to respond, the waitress appeared to refill their coffee cups. After she left, Marlin’s face was serious again. Back to business.

  “Can we talk off the record?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “I think, sometimes, when a species becomes endangered, that’s the way nature wants it. Think about it: More than ninety-nine percent of all species that ever existed are now extinct. And man has had little to do with the decline of the majority of them. Hell, with most of them, we couldn’t have kept them around if we wanted to. They just weren’t in Mother Nature’s plan anymore, and when that happens, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.”

  “That’s an interesting point.” Susannah paused, stirring her coffee, unsure what to ask next. “You’re looking good, Susannah,” Marlin said, out of the blue. “Beautiful as ever.”

  Susannah could feel her face getting warm. She was used to a little back-and-forth flirting, but nothing so direct and sincere. “Why, thank you, John. That’s…that’s very sweet.”

  He nodded, drank the last of his coffee, then said, “So—we all done here?”

  “One more question.” Susannah reached down and switched off the tape recorder. “Would you like to have coffee with me sometime?”

  The game warden grinned and held up his cup. “We are having coffee.”

  “No,” Susannah said. “I mean... well, you know what I mean.”

  For the longest time, Susannah thought he wasn’t going to answer.

  CHAPTER THREE

  At seven o’clock Sunday morning, a dented red Ford truck with a primer-gray hood trundled down the isolated dirt roads of a quiet Blanco County ranch. Dust plumed behind the truck, hanging in the air like fog. The driver, a wiry man named Red O’Brien, was having another frustrating discussion with his passenger, poaching partner, and best friend, Billy Don Craddock.

  “All I’m wonderin’,” Billy Don said while scratching his massive belly, the impressive centerpiece of his three-hundred-pound physique, “is why they call it the BrushBuster 3000. Last year’s model was the BrushBuster 2000, then all of a sudden they come out with the dang BrushBuster 3000. But shit if I can see the difference. Motor looks the
same. Body’s the same. Even the same damn colors. So what the hell’s that ‘3000’ mean, anyhow?”

  “Who the hell cares?” Red said, drumming the steering wheel, impatient.

  “Don’t you ever think about stuff like that, Red? I mean, don’t it make you wonder?”

  “Well, goddamn, Billy Don, it means it’s better by a thousand. What the hell you think it means?”

  “But a thousand what?”

  Red shook his head, hoping to draw the conversation to a close. He took a sip of coffee from a traveler’s mug and said, “All I know is, we got plenty of work to do. Mr. Slaton’s payin’ us by the acre to clear these damn cedars, and the faster we work, the more we rake in. Comprende?”

  Billy Don plucked at his muttonchop sideburns and stared out the window as the truck progressed into the ranch.

  “This is easy money, Billy Don,” Red continued. “I mean, people all over the county are practically shittin’ themselves tryin’ to get rid of all the cedar trees. All because of a few dry wells—which don’t make a lot of sense to me because wells do that on occasion. It’s just a matter of hydrological semantics.”

  Billy Don glanced over, but said nothing. Red liked to flaunt his vocabulary now and then, but Billy Don had caught Red making up phrases a couple of times. This time, though, the big man let it go.

  “Be that as it were,” Red said, “we gotta make hay now, before they all come to their senses. You see, Billy Don, it’s what you call a limited marketplace.” Red also enjoyed showing off his mastery of economic issues. “They’s only so much work to go around, so we need to get what we can, while we can. Plus, if this drought breaks, people are gonna forget all about clearing cedar. You foller me?”

  Billy Don nodded and donned a serious expression. “You think it has sumpin’ to do with horsepower?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The ‘3000.’ Maybe that’s the number of—”

  “Will you quit harping about that shit!”

  Red pulled around a copse of live oaks and spied the two bulky tree-cutting machines looming in the early dawn. The BrushBuster 3000 was truly an awesome piece of work. It looked a lot like a tractor—except for the ominous steel appendage jutting out in front. It resembled nothing so much as an overgrown lobster claw, with two hydraulic pincers that could shear a twenty-inch tree at ground level in a matter of seconds. Red loved the rush of power he felt when sitting at the BrushBuster’s controls. And the fantastic noises it made! Man, when you got that ol’ diesel engine screaming at eight thousand RPMs, and combined that with the wrenching noises the blades made when they bit into a big softwood tree like a cedar... goddamn! It sounded like you were beating a pig to death with an accordion. And the amazing thing was, it was supposed to sound that way! It sure beat anything Red had ever seen at the monster-truck rallies.

  Red pulled up beside the twin machines and cut the truck’s engine. “Billy Don, we’ll be working in separate areas today. That means I’m not gonna be around to watch after ya, so pay attention to what you’re doing. No screwups today, all right?”

  Red was referring to a minor flaw in Billy Don’s botanical skills that had caused some problems the week before. Namely, Billy Don could hardly tell a cedar tree from a telephone pole.

  They had been working a ranch that was home to the single largest madrone grove in Texas. The madrone was a fairly uncommon tree—now even more rare thanks to Billy Don. He had polished off a six-pack of Busch with lunch, then proceeded to level half of the ten-acre grove before the infuriated rancher shot out both of Billy Don’s tires with a twelve-gauge. Mr. Slaton had been boiling mad when he heard about it, but Red talked him out of firing Billy Don. Red had become good friends with the old guy, but boy could he get wound up tight sometimes!

  Both men fired up their BrushBusters, and Red watched Billy Don head off toward the northernmost pasture on the ranch. It was a damn big place. They had been working the ranch for three days solid and hadn’t laid eyes on the house or even seen another vehicle. Most owners would stop by every so often to check the progress, but not this one. Red figured the owner might live over in Austin or down in San Antonio. Maybe a fancy lawyer or doctor. Those kinds loved owning big ranches: someplace they could bring their buddies and act like a big-shot cowboy.

  Red was just about to put his BrushBuster in gear when a Land Rover pulled up beside him. Speak of the devil, Red thought. Must be the owner, finally deciding to take a look. Out of the vehicle climbed a man in his fifties, hair graying, wearing outdoor gear straight out of some catalog. Red cut his engine and hopped down to introduce himself. It never hurt to get acquainted with these society types. He might get invited to a party…or better yet, he could learn the man’s schedule and come out and poach a few deer when nobody was around.

  “’Mornin’,” Red said. “Red O’Brien.”

  The man shook Red’s hand, but had a strange expression on his otherwise friendly face. “Uh, yeah, I’m Walter Gibbs, the owner. I saw the tracks in here and—well, uh, I’m kinda wondering what you’re doing out here.”

  “Sir?”

  “What exactly are you doing on my ranch?”

  Red gestured at the BrushBuster. “Clearing cedar, just like you asked.”

  “But I didn’t order any land-clearing. I was thinking about getting it done, same as everyone else, but—”

  Red scratched his head. “This is the Leaning X, right?”

  Gibbs chuckled. “I hate to tell you this, but no. It’s Raven Hill Ranch. The Leaning X is the next gate down.”

  The man continued talking, but Red didn’t hear any of it. His mouth had gone dry, his temperature was rising, and all he could hear was what Billy Don had told him just three days ago: Aw, hell, this is the place, Red. It’s right here on the map. Slaton musta given us the wrong combination to the lock. Let’s just cut it off and git to work.

  “So what’d you tell her?” Phil Colby asked.

  John Marlin steered his Dodge Ram off the highway onto a gravel-topped county road. He was answering a hunter-harassment call from a man named Cecil Pritchard. It was a low-priority call from the day before, and Marlin had been too busy to respond yesterday. Colby, Marlin’s best friend since childhood, was joining him on what the Parks and Wildlife Department called a “ride-along,” a chance for civilians to get an up-close look at a game warden’s daily activities and responsibilities. Colby joined Marlin several times a year and Marlin always enjoyed the company.

  “Well, Susannah Branson is a nice gal, no doubt about it, so I wasn’t sure what to say,” Marlin said. “And I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. So I told her that it might be nice sometime.”

  Colby nodded. “No harm in that. It’s no big deal, just a couple of friends getting together for coffee.”

  Marlin gave Colby a sideways glance.

  “On the other hand,” Colby grinned, “she’s damn good-lookin’. Hell, if you don’t wanna take her out, give her my number.” Colby was trying to lighten the mood a little, but Marlin was having none of it. After a pause, Colby said, “Listen, John, you know how sorry I am about this whole deal with Becky. But that’s how things work out sometimes. You gotta tell yourself it’s for the best.”

  Marlin didn’t reply. He pulled into a dirt driveway and approached a run-down mobile home where a filthy toddler was playing in the barren yard. Marlin recognized Beth Pritchard sitting on the porch steps, in white shorts and a pink tube top, smoking a cigarette. Next to the house was Cecil Pritchard’s gray Chevy truck, with a bumper sticker that read: KEEP HONKING. I’M RELOADING.

  “’Mornin’, Beth,” Marlin called as he and Colby stepped out of the cruiser. “I hear Cecil’s been doing a little hunting this weekend.”

  “Wasting time and money is what I call it,” Beth sneered. She gestured around her. “What do you think, John? Does it look like we can afford a deer lease?”

  Marlin simply shrugged, not wanting to get in the middle of a domestic squabble. He looked over at Col
by for help, but Phil was suddenly interested in something on the horizon. A few yards away, wisps of smoke floated out of a barrel, carrying the acrid scent of smoldering garbage. Evidently, Cecil was too chintzy to pay for trash pickup. Marlin considered mentioning that there was a burn ban in effect in Blanco County—due to the drought—but then Cecil Pritchard would probably just toss his trash out on the highway.

  “Cecil around?” Marlin asked.

  Beth gave a dismissive wave. “He’s out in his workshop. Do me a favor and arrest him for somethin’, will ya?”

  “Thanks, Beth.” Marlin eyed the toddler. “Looks like Junior’s growing up real good.”