Durango (7 page)

From his earliest days with his father, Sheridan had fly-fished the Florida from its banks on his own land and above and below and eventually in the Lemon Reservoir. You could not be a westerner without deep, almost profound appreciation for the importance of that water to virtually all life—to the deep-rooted ponderosa pines that could get their tentacles near its moisture, to the wildflowers it helped nourish, to the cattle and the farmers down below where the land leveled out, to his grandmother, who in her earlier pioneer days carried buckets from the stream for all the household needs.

Occasionally Sheridan reflected that his family and the Utes shared the same water. He left his bedroom window open in all weather so that he could hear the waters surging and gurgling on their way south. He knew the Florida, like the Animas and all other creeks, streams, and rivers in western Colorado, indeed throughout the West, were derived from the snow in the high country—in his case, the 14,000-plus-foot mountains in the Weminuche Wilderness Area, part of the great San Juan National Forest in the San Juan Mountains to his north and east.

Though some of the forest in the San Juans could be timbered under management by the US Forest Service, the Weminuche, named after one of the original Ute bands, was now permanently set aside from development or use other than for recreation. Its extraordinary wild natural beauty could be hiked and camped. But its resources were preserved, and no motor would violate its stillness. As a boy Sheridan had hiked it first with his father, then with high school friends, then in middle and later years more often by himself. The Weminuche was as close to a cathedral as he would need to get.

On some occasions, he and Caroline had put panniers on a spare packhorse and camped out in the Weminuche. The wilderness had been his escape to safety in the bad days. He guessed others might call it a refuge. The wilderness had saved his life, he reflected on more than one occasion. Or at least his sanity.

In recent years he had also reflected on more than one occasion that it might not be a bad place in which to die.

12.

All this local history was well known to the Monday and Friday coffee club, if for no other reason than that Sam Maynard kept the group filled in on developments in the far-off corridors of economic and judicial power. The politics of it all they could pretty well figure out for themselves.

On the occasion that Leonard Cloud joined them, he would, in his laconic manner, keep them up to date on tribal developments. Given that most tribal council meetings were open to the public, the
Durango Herald
faithfully carried next-day stories of its deliberations. Less well known were the behind-the-scenes dealings with financiers, boosters, and fast-buck pitchmen. And, of course, that was where most of the drama occurred.

On a Friday morning after the Utes' fortunes changed, Mr. Murphy had said, I always had high regard for Mr. Cloud. But I have to say, the way he's handling all this oil and gas and coal money they're about to get is pretty shrewd.

Shrewd isn't the word for it, the professor said. He's a regular financial wizard. Future generations of Utes will honor his name.

Maybe we oughta send him to Washington…as president or something, Bill Van Ness said. That idea amused them.

Could do a whole lot worse, Sheridan suggested.

And we no doubt will, Mr. Murphy offered. Laughter all around.

Sam Maynard said, They're not home free yet, by any means. The Southern Ute Tribe now has investments in office buildings in Denver and even farther on and energy projects all over the place. They got to be careful. They're still learning that markets can go down as well as up.

Bill Van Ness said, We all had to learn that one, now didn't we? There were nods all around. What do they call their company?

Sam said, Red Willow. But now there are Red Willow subsidiaries sprouting all over the place.

Mr. Murphy winked when Sam's head was turned. They'll be hiring some big-shot Denver law firms, I suspect, he said. Maybe even New York ones. Big-time corporations like that need those fancy lawyers.

Sam smiled and said, We'll see. Mr. Cloud remembers who helped him when. They've always paid their legal bills. But back when, sometimes they had to wait awhile.

What was that case where that big old oil company had to pay a fine, Sam? the professor asked.

Sam said, It wasn't exactly a fine. My law firm brought a suit against one of the big oil companies to give the tribe ownership of the methane gas locked up in their big coal deposits. The idea was that if they owned the coal, which by now it was clear they did, then they also had to own the gas trapped in it. And that methane gas was itself worth a fortune. Anyway, they ultimately lost the legal argument. But before they did, the oil company settled with them.

How much did they get? Mr. Murphy asked

Half a billion, Sam said.

Half a what? Van Ness exclaimed.

Billion, Sam said.

Wow, the professor said. Which oil company was that?

It was Amoco, Sam said. But it's not Amoco anymore. It belongs to a giant outfit you may have heard of called British Petroleum—BP.

Years later, the remaining members of the coffee club would have occasion to remember this conversation after BP tried to fill the Gulf of Mexico with oil.

Sheridan pushed back his chair and bid them good-bye. He collected his aged straw Stetson hat off the tree and waved over his shoulder.

The rest of them drank their coffee for a while. Presently Bill Van Ness said, He usually doesn't like all this talk about money, does he?

After a moment Mr. Murphy said, No, he doesn't very much. But you can't actually blame him. He never was a man for the money talk in any case. Now it's like mentioning rope in the house of a man who's been hanged.

Sheridan drove the familiar route up Florida Road, always pronounced “flor-eye-da” by the locals, past the Lemon Reservoir to his place. His small Hereford herd was in a high meadow a couple of miles above his ranch. He parked the truck and went to the barn to saddle Red, along the way frowning at a couple of loose boards near the weathered barn door and making a note to nail them down and set aside a few days to repaint the barn. Once in the saddle, he let the horse know he wanted to go up the winding meadow trail and then relaxed for the half hour or so it would take him to get there.

More than once he found himself wondering what Caroline would be doing. He supposed she would have packed her easel and paints on her horse and would be up in a similar meadow to the west, sketching and then filling in the deep greens of the pine trees, bright yellows of the quaking aspen leaves and their white tree trunks, the mixed blues, purples, whites, and yellows of the wild mountain flowers and, of course, her favorites, the wild columbines in colors ranging from pale yellow to deep burgundy.

The thought made him smile. As she collected his carvings, he collected her paintings. He must have a half dozen or more throughout the ranch house. His favorite—elk and deer in the meadow where he was headed—hung on the wall opposite his bed. He saw it every morning when he awoke and every late evening before turning out his reading light.

For a while she had not been able to stay at his house overnight. It had become a common occurrence for her to wake him from a dream, he overheated and interrupted in mid-groan, to calm him down. Once or twice, at her insistence, he had told her they were always the same: a chase, a maze, he pursuing or being pursued. What he did not tell her was that she was with him in virtually all of them.

Seeing that painting in the early morning, at or before dawn, always contented him. The mornings were the best, the early hours of the night the worst.

As the big horse methodically climbed the trail, he reflected on the good fortunes of his life—Caroline chief among them—and that brief, chaotic period when it all fell apart. If one was the price of the other, he had long since decided, it was well worth the trade-off.

13.

Going back through the
Herƒald
stories of a decade and a half ago for the second time, Patrick still couldn't make the pieces fit—even with the background Mrs. Farnsworth had given him.

After rebuffing more than one set of financiers seeking his help in getting close to the Southern Utes, Daniel Sheridan had accepted a deal with one of the investment banks, paid bribes to at least two tribal council members to encourage their support of this bank's bid to be sole financial advisor to the tribe, carried on an affair with Mrs. Caroline Chandler, been found out by her husband, and had taken the bank's money to pay blackmail to her husband. His complex maze discovered, Sheridan had resigned from the La Plata County Commission and had forgone a promising campaign for governor. That's the way the
Herald,
the Denver papers, and even some national media had portrayed the story.

Patrick's research also revealed a notice some months later of the Chandlers' divorce. There was a one-sentence mention of the previous scandal that the Farnsworths had seemed reluctantly obliged to include in the story. Thereafter in the chronology there was no mention of Mr. Chandler. The young man made a note to try to find out what happened to him. He also began to wonder what kind of man Chandler was, what his interests were, why he might have wanted to destroy Sheridan other than to seek revenge as a wronged husband.

But there were also few mentions of Daniel Sheridan in any community stories thereafter. He searched for Sheridan in the
Herald
's archives and found only one or two mentions of his presence at a funeral of some prominent figure. Sheridan's only semipublic appearances had been one or two lectures to Professor Smithson's Colorado history class at Fort Lewis College. In each case he had been described as a “third-generation Durangoan.” That was all.

Patrick now had pages of questions. Given his position and promising future, why would a man like Dan Sheridan risk it all to make money—particularly since he had already turned down chances to make plenty of money? Even if there had been an affair, and Sheridan had steadfastly denied it, why was it such a big deal back then, when it seemed almost routine in the late twentieth century? Patrick would need to do some research on changing social mores. Was there something about Sheridan's relationship with the Southern Utes, and Leonard Cloud particularly, that had made him a target? The hotshot financial high-rollers had other ways to curry favor with the tribe. Why hadn't Sheridan put up a more vigorous public defense? He had simply walked away, almost without comment. What would have been more important to him than clearing up the record and seeking exoneration?

But the one man who quite possibly—even quite probably—could answer most of these and a myriad of other questions wasn't talking. Patrick's boss had said all that she would say. Professor Smithson had asked him to stop working on the Sheridan profile. Virtually everyone to whom he had mentioned Sheridan's name had said only the most complimentary things about him or had simply said he was entitled to his privacy now. He had found one or two old-timers who still seemed to carry a grudge against Sheridan, whose noses turned up and mouths turned down when Patrick asked them about him. He let us down, was about all they would say.

Patrick wondered if Caroline Chandler might know some things that she had not revealed and, if so, if she would be willing to discuss them now.

14.

Leonard Cloud had tried to find Dan Sheridan for days after his resignation from the county commission back then. Though reluctant to impose on his old friend's privacy, he had even driven up to the Sheridan ranch on two occasions. But Sheridan was not there. Harv Waldron's son was keeping the place up and looking after the animals. Cloud did note that Toby didn't dash out to greet him, and the big red horse was not in his usual corral.

Sheridan was somewhere up in the Weminuche, the tribal chairman had concluded. He'd come down when it was time to.

Years before, while still in high school, Dan Sheridan had found a small high meadow, no more than a dozen acres, with a small stream forming a natural lake deep in the wilderness. The place was miles off the nearest trail, and that was a remote one. It was totally surrounded by tall ponderosas and was protected on two sides by twenty-foot cliffs. Well trained by woodsmen grandfather and father alike, Sheridan knew to build a fire pit near the lake and well away from the pines. There was a perpetual supply of beetle-kill timber on the ground for firewood. He packed in supplies, strung them from a high limb, and pulled them up high at night. What little food waste there was he buried well away from the campsite to prevent bear visits day or night.

Besides the food he packed in, the stream seemed always to have six- to eight-inch trout eager for his hand-tied flies. He had calculated in his youth that if the country were overrun with aliens of one kind or another he could survive in his secluded hideaway for about as long as he needed to.

And, of course, he had the Winchester he had inherited from his father. Through repeated practice with cans on fence posts, Sheridan had assured himself he could handle bear or cougar so long as they didn't jump him in the night. He had learned the creatures' habits from his father and grandfather. Grandfather Sheridan told endless tales of encounters with the predators hunting his horses or cattle, some virtually on the ranch house doorstep. One of Sheridan's earliest memories—chilling at the time—was hearing the late-night mating scream of the cougar. From time to time over the years, the big cats would venture down near the top of Florida Road, usually very early in the morning or as the sun set, looking for a deer or young elk or even one of Sheridan's calves.

You would see them…and then you wouldn't. You would think you saw one, but then you weren't sure. Once or twice he had passed under a tree without checking above eye level only to hear a deep purring growl. Once he found himself fifteen feet away from a full-grown mountain lion. Its leaping range was thirty feet. Though he knew better, he could not help but look fully into the wide, staring, incredibly wise yellow eyes of the magnificent creature. He never forgot the sense of beauty and strength the great cat possessed.