“We never will know,” Demott said. “I wasn’t going to overgraze this place, that’s for damn sure. But just in time Breedlove had his big heart attack and passed away.” He chuckled. “Elisa credited it to the power of my prayers.” Leaphorn waited. And waited. But Demott was in no hurry to interrupt his memories. A breeze came down the stream, cool and fresh, rustling the leaves behind Leaphorn and humming the little song that breezes sing in the firs.
“It’s a mighty pretty day,” Demott said finally. “But blink your eyes twice and winter will be coming over the mountain.” 52 of 102
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TheFallenMan
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“You were going to tell me what went wrong with Hal,” Leaphorn said.
“I got no license to practice psychiatry,” Demott said. He hesitated just a moment, but Leaphorn knew it was coming. It was something Demott wanted to talk about—and probably had for a long, long time.
“Or theology, either,” he continued. “If that’s the word for it. Anyway, you know how the story goes in our Genesis. God created Adam and gave him absolutely everything he could want, to see if he could handle it and still be obedient and do the right thing. He couldn’t. So he fell from grace.”
Demott glanced at Leaphorn to see if he was following.
“Got kicked out of paradise,” Demott said.
“Sure,” Leaphorn said. “I remember it.” It wasn’t quite the way he’d always heard it, but he could see the point Demott might make with his version.
“Old Breedlove put Hal in paradise,” Demott said. “Gave him everything. Prep school with the other rich kids, Dartmouth with the children of the ruling class—absolutely the very goddamn best that you can buy with money. If I was a preacher I’d say Hal’s daddy spent a ton of money teaching his boy to worship Mammon—however you pronounce that. Anyway, it means making a god out of things you can buy.” He paused, gave Leaphorn a questioning glance.
“We have some of the same philosophy in our own Genesis story,” Leaphorn said. “First Man calls evil ‘the way to make money.’
Besides, I took a comparative religion course when I was a student at Arizona State. Made an A in it.”
“Okay,” Demott said. “Sorry. Anyway, when Hal was about a senior or so he flew into Mancos one summer in his own little airplane. Wanted us to grade out a landing strip for it near the house. I figured out how much it would cost, but his daddy wouldn’t come up with the money. They got into a big argument over it. Hal had already been arguing with him about taking better care of this place, putting money in instead of taking it all out. I think it was about then that the old man got pissed off. He decided he’d give Hal the ranch and nothing else and let him see if he could live off it.”
“Figuring he couldn’t?”
“Yep,” Hal said. “And of course the old man was right. Anyhow Breedlove eased up on the pressure for profits some and I got to put in a lot of fencing we needed to protect a couple of the sensitive pastures and get some equipment in there for some erosion control along the Cache. Elisa and Hal got married after that. Everything going smooth. But that didn’t last long. Hal took Elisa to Europe. Decided he just had to have himself a Ferrari. Great car for our kind of roads. But he bought it. And other stuff. Borrowed money. Before long we weren’t bringing in enough from selling our surplus hay and the beef to cover his expenses. So he went to see the old man.”
At this point Demott’s voice was thickening. He paused, rubbed his shirtsleeve across his forehead. “Warm for this time of year,” he said.
“Yeah,” Leaphorn said, thinking it was a cool, dry sixty degrees or so even with the breeze gone.
“Anyway, he came back empty. Hal didn’t have much to say but I believe they must have had a big family fight. I know for sure he tried to borrow from George—that’s George Shaw, his cousin who used to come out and climb with us—and George must have turned him down, too. I think the family must have told him they were going ahead with the moly strip mine deal, and to hell with him.”
“But they didn’t,” Leaphorn said. “Why not?”
“I think it was because the old man had his heart attack a little bit after that. When he passed away it hung everything up in probate court for a while. This ranch was in trust for Hal. He didn’t get it until he turned thirty, but of course the family didn’t control it anymore. That’s sort of where it stood for a while.”
Demott paused. He inspected his newly washed hand. Leaphorn was thinking, too, about this friction between Hal and his family and what it might imply.
“When I had my visit with Mrs. Rivera at the bank,” Leaphorn said, “she told me things were starting to brew on the moly mine development again just before Hal disappeared. But this time she thought it was going to be a deal with a different mining company.
She didn’t think the family corporation was involved.”
Demott lost interest in his hand.
“She tell you that?”
“That’s what she said. She said a Denver bank was involved in the deal somehow. It was way too big an operation for her little bank to handle the money end of it.”
“With Mrs. Rivera in business we don’t really need a newspaper around here,” Demott said.
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TheFallenMan
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“So I was thinking that if the family told Hal they were going to run right over him, maybe he decided he’d screw them instead.
