Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West (8 page)

The clerk at the Ennis grocery store asked me where I worked. When I told her, she said she knew a lot about Roger. They hadn’t ever talked, she admitted, but she held forth on how much he loved the wolves and his future plans for the Sun Ranch. She called him a “greenie” and lowered her voice to tell me about the time he refused to let a couple of local guys hunt moose on the ranch.

Her story had the ring of gossip to it, and I soon learned that Roger was a favorite and frequent subject of conversation in the Madison Valley. The particulars of his daily life constituted minor news, and some of his antics at the various picnics, auctions, and gatherings that punctuate the rural calendar were front-page material.

In the eyes of the valley’s old-guard ranching community, Roger was a consummate outsider. A Stanford grad and Bay Area native, Roger had made his hundreds of millions in the original
Silicon Valley software boom, ending up filthy rich at a fairly young age.

Roger was a well-intentioned conservationist and an avid fly fisherman. Like so many who embrace that avocation, he loved Montana passionately. In this way, his story and mine are similar: We came to Montana first as fishermen, caught big rainbows and hook-jawed browns in the late afternoons of August and watched them break the surface of the Madison. As they slung drops of clear, cold water into the low sunlight, we promised to return. We huddled through winters in dense, coastal cities and laid plans to find our way back to the mountains, the river, and the endless Big Sky.

There our paths diverged. I had come to the Madison in a little truck, with just enough for gas and groceries in my checking account. Roger had bought the best eighteen thousand acres of the valley for twenty-seven million dollars. With the deed in hand, he announced his commitment to conservation ranching and his intention to open a high-end lodge catering to “eco-tourists” on an adjoining property.

In a place where ranching was a way of life and
California
a dirty word, this made waves. At fire department meetings and around kitchen tables, people began to talk. Locals wondered if they would be able to hunt elk on the Sun Ranch and speculated about whether Roger might kick the cattle off for good. They suspected that he might be too busy hugging trees and French-kissing grizzly bears to be neighborly.

Roger did his best to nip the worst rumors in the bud and assuage the more reasonable fears. He stuck with the cows, even embraced them as a tool for fertilizing soil, controlling weeds,
and reinvigorating bunchgrass communities that thrived on periodic disturbance. He gave generously to local charities—the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the Madison Valley Ranchlands Group, and others. He sponsored events.

I watched a video of Roger speaking at an annual summer party for the Ranchlands Group’s Weed Committee, which was held under a huge, open-sided white plastic tent along the river. Men on horseback flagged down the arriving cars and pickup trucks and parked them in equal rows in the high grass. After some brief remarks by the weed coordinator about the importance of continuing the valley-wide extermination of hound’s-tongue, spotted knapweed, Canada thistle, toadflax, and other noxious plants, Roger took the stage.

No real explanation was given for his presence up there, but it seemed like everyone in the audience knew who he was and that he had in all likelihood paid for the party. Roger greeted the crowd. Then, to break the ice, he said the following:

“I told my friends in California I was coming to a weed party in Montana. ‘Whoa!’ they said. ‘What kind of people are you hanging out with up there?’ ”

He paused, and a good chunk of the audience laughed.

“One thing at a time, I told them. One thing at a time.”

The few chuckles that followed seemed nervous, forced. Roger paused and then launched into a lengthy description of the strides that had been made to control weeds on the Sun Ranch, the importance of working together, and his commitment to the health and future of the Madison Valley.

Yet, in spite of himself, Roger was controversial. When he put half of the ranch in a conservation easement with the Nature Conservancy,
neighbors took notice. When he leased irrigation water to Trout Unlimited, drying up a hundred acres of hay, it caused a stir. Roger was an emissary from a largely foreign world that promised nothing certain except for sweeping change. As such, he created curiosity and friction in equal measure.

Even on the ranch, we hired hands talked about Roger more than we talked with him. In addition to the Sun, Roger owned a telecommunications company up in Bozeman and Papoose Creek Lodge, a five-star cluster of log buildings just off Highway 287. Though the lodge was immediately adjacent to the southwest corner of the ranch, it functioned in a separate world.

Papoose Creek had its own herd of horses for trail rides, a chef, a wrangler, an outfitter, several managerial and administrative levels, and an ever-changing rabble of domestics, groundskeepers, and kitchen staff. It employed a handful of fishing guides in summer and an equal number of hunting guides in fall. Most of them lived in a cluster of cabins between the highway and the river—a cramped, noisy spot called the Madison Bend. You could get a beer down there at a place called the Grizzly Bar. The Griz catered mostly to fishermen, which meant that the food was good, if a little expensive.

The lodge staff earned their wages by making life easy for wealthy dudes, and I had a hard time forgiving them for it. They worked a good deal less than the ranch crew, and probably made more money when you counted all the tips.

I seldom went to Papoose Creek, and the lodge staff rarely made it up onto the high, sere benches of the ranch. We lived apart with one major exception: each Wednesday, the lodge held a barbecue on the bank of lower Squaw Creek. All the guests piled
into a wagon drawn by two matched Percherons, and the whole ensemble made the arduous journey of a half mile across a lush pasture where the lodge grazed their horses. Arriving at their destination, the guests were treated to a dinner of mammoth proportions.

Every week, work permitting, one or two members of the ranch crew were allowed to join the festivities. The idea, as I understood it, was to lend a bit of authenticity to the proceedings, mingle with the guests and answer any questions about the ranch that might arise. In other words: show up covered in dirt, with blistered hands and worn-out jeans, and act like a cowboy. In exchange for this, we got to eat slow-cooked ribs; barbecued chicken; roasted vegetables; multiple pasta, potato, and green salads; fresh bread; and the finest baked beans I’ve had before or since. Those beans held a special power over me. I fantasized about them at dinnertime on days other than Wednesday, comparing them in my mind to whatever leftover pasta or lonesome steak I was eating.

Roger didn’t get his money’s worth from me at those dinners. I spent most of my time with my mouth full, and the balance of it drinking beer with the pretty girls hired to help the chef, serve the food, hold the horses, and do the other hundred chores necessary to live ostentatiously in the wilderness. Still, I usually got to tell a few stories and take a couple of questions before the guests were ready to head home. After helping see them off, I walked to the spot where I had hidden my ranch truck, waited until I was sure they couldn’t hear the engine fire, and then headed down the bumpy road toward home.

Beyond the ranch and lodge, Roger had property in a handful
of states and seemed to make a fairly regular circuit of his homes and holdings, with far-flung vacation trips thrown in to break the monotony. We kept the Big House warm for him, but he didn’t visit much in early spring.

From Jeremy and others I heard that Roger spent huge sums of money every year at the auctions run by local conservation groups. Relics from his spending sprees were scattered across the ranch. One weekend afternoon I set out from the bunkhouse, walked through a culvert that goes under Highway 287, and poked my head into the old calving barn that sat next to the creek. Inside I found a dry-docked flotilla: inflatables for running rough water, a ski boat with a massive outboard, and a pair of aluminum drift boats that looked brand-new except for a coating of dust and bird shit. While poking through another old shed, this one behind Jeremy’s house, I found a wooden crate that held an unused birch canoe.

After seeing that pristine collection, I didn’t expect Roger to pull up to the bunkhouse in a muddy Subaru. I didn’t picture him small of stature with a boyish grin, dressed in faded jeans and a pair of black over-the-glasses shades that hid his face from nose to forehead. But that was Roger.

He stepped out of the car, walked over to me, and stuck out his hand.

“You must be Bryce.”

I was a little disappointed. I thought the owner of a twenty-seven-million-dollar ranch would at least wear a gold watch or fancy shoes. Instead, Roger looked like a fisherman, like my father on vacation, right down to the quick-dry shirt with a fly shop’s name stitched across the breast pocket.

Roger asked about the accommodations and how I liked my work so far. We talked for a couple of minutes before he excused himself and drove off to his house for a conference call. “Stop by anytime I’m up there,” he said.

Roger was courteous, kind to his employees, and curious about the workings of the ranch, but he was always pressed for time. He skipped from one commitment to the next like a stone across water—there and gone in an instant, leaving ripples behind.

Two wolves wandered separately through the foothills of the Madison Range. The land was sliding into winter, and deep snow had driven hundreds of elk down from the peaks. At night the elk drifted out of the hills to graze on the flat, lush pastures of the ranch. They squealed and chirped to each other in the dark. Though both wolves began to haunt the edges of big, milling herds, the two of them did not get together right away—such things are usually complicated. They orbited each other, sniffing at tracks and keeping a safe distance. They courted across half a dozen drainages and bounced howls off the bottom of the moon.

Even as he made sense of the new presence, the wolf continued to learn his country. Down on the South End, he found his way into and out of the Squaw Creek bog, a trail-less rat’s nest of broken timber, moss, and deep sinkholes. He discovered the overgrown logging road that cuts partway through the bog and used it thereafter as a shortcut. On Moose Creek, he patterned elk, learning which trails they used to cross through the foothills and where they chose to graze at night. Up Bad Luck Creek he found a perfect little defile, almost a box canyon, with live water and a well-worn game trail running through the bottom. He returned to it often until the elk grew wary and the canyon floor was littered with bones.

As he traveled, the wolf grew bolder. He learned the contours of the lower ranch and left a line of palm-sized tracks across the road when fresh snow covered the gravel of Badluck Way. From a
lofty remove, he watched a bewildering variety of machines growl across the landscape. He saw men come and go from the shop and barn, and watched as they rode horseback to gather cattle. He kept a wary distance.

In time, he found ways to become invisible, honing this skill to a razor’s edge on the North End, where every misstep sent deer and antelope scattering to the far horizon. That broad plain was a wild ungulate’s dream, a place where the deck was stacked in favor of the prey and solidly against the predator. Nearly every spot out there had a commanding view, and the ground was perfect for running. When large, vigilant herds grazed the Flats, it took a stroke of luck for wolves to get anywhere near them.

The wolf still managed to eat. He followed the gentle, almost indistinguishable swales that wind across the Flats. He covered open ground at night and ambushed deer when they came down to the creek for water. When those tactics failed, he hunted smaller game—voles, rabbits, and anything else he could get his teeth around. From time to time, as he walked a creek or paused on his way through one of many high parks in his territory, he caught whiffs of the female’s scent.

Near dusk and on the hunt, the wolf climbed to the top of a steep ridge, peered into the basin below, and caught sight of her standing at an old kill. She looked up from the bones and scattered tufts of belly hair, saw him standing near the tree line, and froze. She did not run. They drew together in the sage, sniffing at each other with tails held high. They came to an understanding and became something more than isolate wanderers out of Yellowstone.

Things moved quickly after that. They traveled together, hunted in tandem, and grew better at bringing down elk. In a little grove of timber on the south side of Stock Creek—a spot with a commanding view of the North End Flats and the strange, jumbled group of hills called the Mounds—they found an old den dug in beneath a massive pine.

A handful of wolfless years had left the den in ruins. Freeze and thaw, coupled with the creeping progress of roots, had conspired to bring the roof down in a heap of loose clods. The wolves dug in turns, pitching the dirt backward through their hind legs and into the light of day. In time, they excavated a gently sloping tunnel extending five or six feet into the hill. Though big enough for a thin man to wriggle into, the tunnel was tight, and its halfway point was marked by a sharp turn made to negotiate the pine’s main taproot. A few feet beyond, the tunnel opened up into the den proper—a low, roundish chamber studded all over with roots.