sold cattle in the fall and the money went into the ranch account he’d spend it right out of there instead of paying his debts.”
She paused, searching for something to add. “Hal always had Sally get him first-class tickets when he flew— Sally has Mancos Travel—and first class costs an arm and a leg.”
“And coach class gets there almost as quick,” Leaphorn said.
Mrs. Rivera nodded. “Even when they went places together Sally had her instructions to put Hal into first class and Demott in coach. Now what do you think of that?”
Leaphorn shook his head.
“Well, I think it’s insulting,” Mrs. Rivera said.
“Could have been Demott’s idea,” Leaphorn said.
“I don’t think so,” Mrs. Rivera said. “Sally told—” She cut that off.
“I talked to Demott when I was investigating Breedlove’s disappearance,” Leaphorn said. “He seemed like a solid citizen.”
“Well, yes. I guess so. But he’s a strange one, too.” She chuckled. “I guess maybe we all get a little odd. Living up here with mountains all around us, you know.”
“Strange,” Leaphorn said. “How?”
Mrs. Rivera looked slightly embarrassed. She shrugged. “Well, he’s a bachelor for one thing. But I guess there’s a lot of bachelors around here. And he’s sort of a halfway tree-hugger. Or so people say. We have some of those around here, too, but they’re mostly move-ins from California or back East. Not the kind of people who ever had to worry about feeding kids or working for a living.”
“Tree-hugger? How’d he get that reputation?” Leaphorn was thinking of a favorite nephew, a tree-hugger who’d gotten himself arrested leading a noisy protest at a tribal council meeting, trying to stop a logging operation in the Chuskas. In Leaphorn’s opinion his nephew had been on the right side of that controversy.
“Well, I don’t know,” Mrs. Rivera said. “But they say Eldon was why they didn’t do that moly operation. Up there in the edge of the San Juan National Forest.”
Leaphorn said, “Oh. What happened?”
“It was years ago. I think the spring after Hal went missing. We weren’t in on the deal, of course. This bank is way too little for the multimillion-dollar things like that. A bank up in Denver was involved I think. And I think the mining company was MCA, the Moly Corp. Anyway, the way it was told around here, there was some sort of contract drawn up, a mineral lease involving Breedlove land up the canyon, and then at first the widow was going to handle it, but Hal legally was still alive and she didn’t want to file the necessary papers to have the courts say he was dead. So that tied it up. People say she stalled on that because Demott was against it. Demott’s her brother, you know. But to tell the truth, I think it was her own idea. She’s loved that place since she was a tot. Grew up on it, you know.”
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“I don’t know much about their background,” Leaphorn said.
“Well, it used to be the Double D ranch. Demott’s daddy owned it. The price of beef was way down in the thirties. Lot of ranches around here went at sheriff’s auction, including that one. Old Edgar Breedlove bought it, and he kept the old man on as foreman.
Old Breedlove didn’t care a thing about ranching. One of his prospectors had found the moly deposit up the headwaters of Cache Creek and that’s what he wanted. But anyway, Eldon and Elisa grew up on the place.”
“Why didn’t he mine the molybdenum?” Leaphorn asked.
“War broke out and I guess he couldn’t get the right kind of priority to get the manpower or the equipment.” She laughed. “Then when the war ended, the price of the ore fell. Stayed down for years and then went shooting up. Then Hal got himself lost and that tied it all up once again.”
“And by the time she had Breedlove declared dead, the price of ore had gone down. Is that right?”
“Right,” Mrs. Rivera said. And looked thoughtful.
“And now it’s up again,” Leaphorn said.
“That’s just what I was thinking.”
“You think that might be why the Breedlove Corporation would pay me the twenty thousand?” She looked over her glasses at him. “That’s an unkind thought,” she said, “but I confess it occurred to me.”
“Even though Hal’s widow owns the place now?”
“She owns it, unless they can prove she had something to do with killing him. We had our lawyer look into that. She wanted to extend a mortgage on the place.” She looked mildly apologetic. “Can’t take chances, you know, with your investors’ money.”
“Did you extend the mortgage?”
Mrs. Rivera folded her arms again. But finally she said, “Well, yes, we did.” Leaphorn grinned. “Could I guess then that you don’t think she had anything to do with killing Breedlove? Or anyway, nobody is ever going to prove it?”
“I just own a piece of this bank,” Mrs. Rivera said. “There’s people I’m responsible to. So I’d have to agree with you. I thought the loan was safe enough.”
“Still do?”
