Durango (17 page)

Chandler shook his head in annoyance. I'm sorry, he said brusquely, I'm afraid it was long ago and I was only a bystander, a new banker in town, and I really didn't know much about a lot of the things that were going on behind the scenes. I do recall it got rather messy. But I never quite understood why or how. I'm sorry I can't help.

Patrick persisted. Wasn't there something about a man named Sheridan, or something like that? Wasn't he involved in some kind of scandal? I remember my father mentioning it, but I was just a kid and never could figure it all out.

Chandler's face darkened. There may have been, he said. It was long ago. He was some kind of official or other. Somebody said he took money. It was pretty awful. But I only followed it through the papers.

But didn't you actually leave about that time? Patrick asked. They were still standing. Chandler had not asked him to sit down. Part of the confusion around that time, he continued, had to do with this man Sheridan's situation and your…departure—I heard pretty abrupt departure.

That was a long time ago, Mr. Carroll, Chandler repeated. So it is of no current interest to me and, as I have said, I knew nothing about it.

Patrick knew he had only a minute or two left. But Mr. Chandler, my dad said you were right in the middle of it. That you may have sent an accusing letter about this man Sheridan. That Mrs. Chandler was somehow involved. Could all of that possibly be true? I know my father was a very honest man. He wouldn't have told my mother those things if he hadn't believed them.

Young man, Chandler said, as he moved toward the closed door, you are treading on very old and, if I may say so, very treacherous territory. Reputations can be damaged by pursing things like this.

You mean, like Mr. Sheridan's reputation?

What is your purpose here, young man? Chandler was now clearly irritated and defensive. I don't know what you are trying to achieve here, but I'm not interested in helping you do it.

Mr. Chandler, I'm just trying to find out what happened years ago in my hometown regarding a major public project my father had a great interest in. Nothing more. This project has now become even more controversial and is dividing our town. I want to find out why.

Chandler recovered some composure and said, Well, that is very laudable and I wish I could be of help. But I've told you all I know.

Patrick played his last card. Mrs. Chandler—that is, the previous Mrs. Chandler—thinks you have a great deal of information.

Chandler said, What? She thinks what? How do you know her? Have you talked to her? We're divorced, as you must know, he said heatedly. I have not seen her or talked to her since then. But she is not a woman to spread rumors or gossip. She would not do that.

She has told someone I trust, a very important person in our town, that you are the one who sent a letter to the newspaper accusing Mr. Sheridan of corruption. I've seen that letter, Mr. Chandler, and it alleges that Mr. Sheridan was taking money from investment people to pay off tribal council members and to pay blackmail to someone who would claim that Mr. Sheridan and your wife were having an affair.

Chandler now combined anger with the confusion of the trapped. I don't know what you think you're doing, Mr. Carroll, but you have no right to be here or to make these outrageous allegations, especially so many years later. My relationship to my former wife is my business and no one else's. I doubt she said what she is supposed to have said, even to one person, but if she did, she is clearly trying to settle old scores with me. I'll have none of it.

What if it could be proved that you wrote that letter, Mr. Chandler? What if it came out that you did it?

Leave now, Mr. Carroll. You are here under some kind of false pretenses. You are trying to trap me for reasons I cannot begin to fathom. Regardless of these wild statements, you have no proof of anything and you never will. Now you must leave.

Patrick started for the door. All I can say, Mr. Chandler, is that you should at least have used a typewriter. Perhaps you were too angry or too jealous to think of that. But you have very distinctive handwriting.

Who sent you here? Who's behind this scurrilous activity of yours?

No one sent me, Mr. Chandler. I came on my own. But by the way, I'm a reporter for the
Durango Herald,
and I am in fact Congressman Carroll's son. I think you might find yourself back in the spotlight down our way pretty soon. And this time you won't be able to run away.

As Patrick made a hasty retreat from Chandler's office, he heard his quarry shout something after him. Though it shocked him, it made him smile.

32.

That same night, Sheridan and Caroline had dinner at the Strater Hotel on Main Avenue. The place was a fixture. Henry Strater built it using red brick and Colorado sandstone in 1887, and it possessed—and had preserved as if in amber—all the Victorian hallmarks of that era, including the nineteenth-century furniture decorating all the rooms. Though it was a must-see on all the tourist brochures, they nevertheless had a drink in the Diamond Belle Saloon on the hotel's street-level corner. It was always worth a chuckle to see newcomers enter the Old West swinging doors from the sunshine outside and try to accustom their eyes to the earlier-century interior, part history and part Hollywood.

When the crowds began to gather, they retreated to their back corner table in the Mahogany Grill dining room. Been up to your hidden lake recently? Caroline asked.

Just last weekend, as a matter of fact, Sheridan said. Hasn't changed much since you saw it. Probably won't change much until the next ice age.

Caroline said, I'm a paid-up member of the climate change heretics. Ice isn't going to be the problem. Your little lake could well dry up from the heat.

Hope not, Sheridan said. It'd be a real shame, now wouldn't it? It's a pretty perfect place just the way it is. I'd hate to see it turn into some kind of high country desert up there.

Then you better turn down your thermostat and go back to your kerosene lamps, she said. The projected numbers on warming don't look very good.

I do my part, Sheridan said. I keep the place pretty cold even in the winter—

Don't I know, she laughed.

And I do still have the old-timers' kerosene lanterns. Could have used one of those last weekend up above.

Why's that? she asked.

Had company up at the lake, me and Toby and Red. Big old cat up there dining out on a deer.

My God, she said. Did you see him?

Oh, yeah, he said. Saw him real good and up close. Sheridan recounted his confrontation, adding a bit to the size of the cougar and his closeness to it.

She shivered involuntarily. Maybe I won't be going back up…not that I've been invited recently. Between giant cougars and water—what do you call them—water “finortens” or some such, I may be too citified for your hideout up there.

You don't need to worry about it, Sheridan said. Between Toby and me and the Winchester, I think we can protect you from the cat. Now those finortens are a different thing altogether. But give it some thought. In another two or three weeks, it's going to begin to get cold up there at night. Even old broken-down cowboys can only put out so much warmth.

They combined their locally grown steaks with a fair red wine and celebrated with a dish of ice cream. What are you going to do about the mayor and Patrick trying to make you the peacemaker? Caroline asked.

Not much, he said. They have some fanciful notion that young Carroll can use his father's credibility to convince the Utes to accept a deal. But it seems like kind of a fool's errand to me. The young man is certainly well intentioned and carries some kind of cause left over from the congressman's day. But he's got a few years to go before he becomes a figure with the gravity required to knock heads together and settle this once and for all.

My impression—, she began.

From the omniscient Mrs. Farnsworth, I presume, he said with a smile.

Omniscient
is a pretty big word for a broken-down old cowboy, she said. Anyway, she is my best source of news around here, both printed and otherwise. My impression, received from her, is that the young man and the old man are really after you. The theory seems to be, or at least Frances's theory seems to be, that by taking Patrick in hand down to see Mr. Cloud and the tribal council, you would find yourself working out an agreement, whether you intended to or not.

Sheridan said, The mayor and the boy—sorry, young man—are operating under the impression I have some clout with the Utes. It may make a nice story, but it's way out of proportion to reality. Leonard and I are friends and have been most of our lives. But I have no evidence he sees me as anything other than a friend.

Daniel, she said, laying her hand on his arm. I've said this before and I'm going to say it again, because it's the truth. Most people around here, and certainly the Southern Utes, think you were the victim of an injustice. All that happened back then—and believe me I carry my own sense of guilt about it—shouldn't have happened. And it certainly shouldn't have driven you from public life.

Wait a minute, Sheridan said. I will say this just one more time. I'm not any kind of victim, and I wasn't driven anywhere. I made my own choice. And it was mine alone. When things get toxic, so ugly you can't manage it, it's time to step away. That's all I did. No one drove my anywhere. And whether it was just or unjust isn't for me to say. I did what I did and that's that. I don't have any need to pick up where I left off, or seek acceptance or approval from anyone, or reenter the public wrestling match. I'm happy the way things are—he laid his hand on top of hers—particularly the way things have worked out now.

Still, she said. Durango is your place. It's your family's place. You don't want to see bad feelings build up to the point people won't speak to each other or cross the street to avoid old friends. That's not Durango. It's not why we live there. If I wanted to live among layers of ancient feuds, there are lots of cities in this country to move to.

Alright, listen, Sheridan said, leaning forward. This is between us and, at least for the time being, I'd just as soon that Frances Farnsworth didn't know about this. I've asked Leonard and Sam Maynard to get together down in Ignacio in the next couple of days and see what can be worked out. I'm going to let young Carroll try to do whatever he wants to do. But after we've played out that little drama, we're going to go over several formulas for allocating the water. We're going to try to find the one that protects the Utes' interests first and is also fair to Durango and La Plata County.

He emptied the wine bottle into their glasses, and Caroline said, Daniel, I'm so happy. It is your role and your mission.

Don't get carried away with roles and missions, he chuckled. It's just a guy trying to do a job. I may pretend I don't care what's going on around here, but I do. And you know I do. Most of the time I spend up at the end of Florida Road is time spent trying to figure out just how we work ourselves out of this situation.

I know you do, she said and smiled more with her deep brown eyes than her lips. He wondered if it was the light or the wine that made her eyes shine.

33.

You did what? Mrs. Farnsworth asked incredulously.

Patrick reported on his trip to confront Russell Chandler in considerable detail, including the enlistment of his friend's search firm. I frightened him, he concluded.

It was two days after his return from Kansas City, and they sat on the Farnsworth porch in the late August afternoon. Patrick, she said, drink that beer before it gets warm and tell me exactly what happened.

He recounted the entire episode for the third time, and she shook her head. At the very least, she said when he finished, I hope you didn't claim to represent the paper. He could sue us for harassment.

He would lose, Patrick said with confidence. Even if I were wearing my reporter hat, I was within my First Amendment rights to ask him questions. He didn't have to answer. And after a few minutes he clearly wouldn't. But I basically said I was trying to sort out a complicated set of circumstances that related to my father's political history and wanted to find out what he knew. It had the benefit of being mostly true.

It is not wise to tell a falsehood, Patrick.

We can tell a falsehood, Patrick responded, when it will bring about our salvation.

Mrs. Farnsworth could not think of a response to that. They then discussed Chandler's explosion at the mention of the mystery letter.

Patrick, the elderly woman said, to my certain knowledge only two people saw the anonymous letter that accused Mr. Sheridan years ago. Myself and my late husband. How in the world could you have known it was handwritten?

I didn't, he said. I was bluffing.

34.

Alright, Leonard, Sheridan said, let's spread out these maps and see what we can invent. They were in the tribal chairman's office at Southern Ute headquarters in Ignacio, gathered around a table with tribal attorney Sam Maynard and two other tribal council members close to Cloud.

The parameters of their deliberations were defined by the Colorado Ute Indian Water Rights Settlement Agreement ratified by the state of Colorado, the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Indian tribes, and all the state and regional water conservancy districts in the area, including the Animas–La Plata Conservancy District, on June 30, 1986. After further amendment, it had been accepted and ratified by Congress two years later. Leonard Cloud and Sam Maynard had been leaders in obtaining congressional approval.

These complex arrangements had been required to guarantee the two Colorado Ute tribes a fixed amount of water from the Animas–La Plata and related Dolores River projects in exchange for the tribes' general commitment not to press their ancient tribal water rights in the courts, where the political leaders of the state and the region feared they might prevail.