In good times, a twenty-foot-deep, hand-dug well in a lucky spot might produce bountiful water for a little while. Then it would take the expense of drilling fifty or sixty feet, and a windmill to suck the water to the surface. And finally, if the ranchers had the money and the patience, the major well-drilling rigs would smoke down through hundreds of feet of rock, sometimes finding usable water, sometimes not.
I looked at the photo of the stone house for several minutes, sipping coffee, wondering what life in that little twelve-by-sixteen shack must have been like fifty years before, when a trip into town was an hour in a jolting Model A Ford, itself twenty or more years old by that time. Maybe Martin Holman had wondered the same thing and that was what had prompted him to take the photo in the first place.
“And whose windmill is this?” I said aloud to the quiet kitchen. I didn’t recognize it, but that meant nothing. That was another question for Johnny Boyd. Maybe he knew just where it was…and maybe he knew just why Sheriff Holman had wanted a photo of it.
I would have liked to talk to the rancher right then, but my heavy eyelids told me that it made sense to wait. The windmill wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was Johnny Boyd. Come morning, he’d have half an army swarming around his ranch.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The next morning, Estelle surprised me by suggesting that we drive to the Boyds’ ranch by way of Newton, the tiny hamlet in the neighboring county that was due north of the Boyds. Straight lines were usually my habit in getting from point to point, but if my chief of detectives wanted to approach the ranch from the back by circling in from the north, that was fine with me.
The traffic up to the crash site would be heavy, both coming and going. We’d eat a lot less dust by slipping in the back door. We drove out of town on County 43, but before that route started its long climb up the mesa past Consolidated and the lake, we turned west on State 78, the main arterial that ran past the airport.
The state highway angled northwest, and in another twenty miles, we were out of Posadas County. In ten more miles, we passed the sign for the Petros Farmers’ Market and then Estelle slowed for the right turn onto a narrow, paved lane that led along the base of a series of rolling, low hills to the tiny hamlet of Newton.
What Newton’s claim to fame had once been, I didn’t know. Maybe it grew out of feeble attempts at mining. There was certainly no timber close by. Perhaps it was one of the myriad little villages that had once been active trading centers scattered across the state, places for the various dryland farmers to bring their produce or livestock. There wasn’t much left to trade anymore.
On the outskirts of Newton, perched on a mound of reddish dirt fill capped with asphalt, was the new post-office building, a little modular structure that would have looked right at home in Ohio. The Circle JEB ranch paid rent on P.O. Box 17.
Beside the post office-and separated from that federal property by a row of wrecked cars, a fair-sized collection of used irrigation pipe, and three or four tractors that would never again rumble to life-was a store labeled only as “Baca.”
I knew Floyd Baca, and knew that he had taken over the family business from his father just after World War II. Floyd Baca had seen more than seventy New Mexico summers as the sun baked Newton silent each day. I didn’t know what kept him there, and wouldn’t have presumed to ask. Besides, I’d spent nearly thirty years in Posadas without much excuse. Few folks claimed that town as the center of the universe, either.
In addition to the post office and Baca’s, downtown Newton included Our Lady of Sorrows Church, sitting back from the highway and almost touching the cinderblock corner of the Newton Community Center. Scattered around the nucleus were a dozen homes in various stages of disrepair, at least half of them empty. From the center of that village, we were just about eight miles north of the Boyd ranch.
We turned south on County 805, a road that was wide and level and paved as far as the village limits-about a hundred yards from the Baca store.
After two miles of smooth, well-crowned gravel, we reached a small sign announcing the northern boundary of Posadas County. The metal signpost had been nicked by the road grader sometime in the recent past, no doubt as it was turning around to return to Newton. The county sign hung askew, pointed down at the greasewood. Ten paces beyond, securely on Posadas County turf, was another sign, this one promising that “County Maintenance Ends.”
Despite the warning, the road was in good condition, and in another mile we reached an intersection where two narrow lanes met the main road, one from the southeast and one from the northwest. In the center of the right-hand island of bunch-grass stood a small, neatly lettered sign that pointed south along the main route and read, “Boyd 2 Miles.”
“You could get around this way from Posadas pretty fast if you had to,” I said. We passed through a low basin where the greasewood and Klein’s cholla along the road were as high as the car. Dust seeped inside and I could taste the fine, powdery grit.
“You’re going to miss all this come next week,” I said, and Estelle turned and smiled at me.
“Yes, I am,” she said, and I didn’t doubt for an instant that she was telling at least a partial truth. I thought she might elaborate, but in typical Estelle fashion, she let the three-word response do all the work.
“Leo Burkhalter tells me that Eddie Mitchell has applied to his department,” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
I looked at Estelle in surprise. “You knew already? When did you hear that he was going?”
“Well, it’s a huge department, compared to ours. And apparently they have an opening where he’ll be working Homicide. It’s a lateral transfer for him. He’ll go in there without losing his sergeant’s status.”
“And when,” I asked again, “did you hear all this?”
“He told me last week. But only that he had applied. I didn’t think he’d heard yet one way or another.”
“Huh,” I said, feeling just a tad hurt. “There’s nothing formal so far, I don’t think.”
Estelle read my mind and said, “He didn’t want to tell you until he knew for sure he was going.”
“Well, I suppose it makes sense. There’ll be lots of opportunities for him in a larger department.”
“And more regimented,” Estelle said. “I’m not sure I could work for Mr. Marine.”
“Burkhalter? He’s all right.”
Estelle grinned. “In a very, very strait laced sort of way. He’s full of himself, as Mama would say.”
“I was in the Marines, you know.”
“Yes, sir. But when you retired from the military, you didn’t take it home with you.”
“I see,” I said, not seeing at all. I reached out a hand to the dashboard as we thumped across a cattle guard and pulled under the arched, wrought-iron gate of the Boyds’ Circle JEB Ranch.
“Plus, there’s the university campus there,” Estelle added. “Eddie wants to work on his degree in criminal justice, and that’s pretty hard to do in Posadas.”
“I didn’t know he wanted to do that, either,” I said. “But I don’t know why it would surprise me.”
The road curved around a wart in the prairie, an out thrusting of limestone that sported a thick blanket of small barrel cacti. Just over the rise, one of Boyd’s windmills was clattering along at a great rate, and I could see the sunlight flashing silver off the gentle stream of water that trickled into the large stock tank.
Their house tucked under a grove of elms, about the only tree that seemed willing to put up with the scorching summers and dry winds of winter. If not appearing actually prosperous, the place looked as if there was at least a little hope in its owners’ lives.