“Yeah, and Kim Basinger wants me real bad,” Skinner replied.
“You got any better ideas?” Ruby asked.
“I’ve been talking to some of the other guys,” Skinner said, lowering his voice and quickly looking around. “And they think we need to organize. Otherwise, they’ll pick us off one by one. You know, divide and conquer.”
“We are organized,” Roper said. “It’s called the Garfield/Kane Cattleman’s Association.”
“Nah, we was thinkin’ of somethin’ more discrete, more covert.” Skinner stood up and looked Roper in the eye. “Somethin’ whose actions are not so easily traced.”
Roper evenly met Skinner’s glance. “I flat don’t like secret organizations.”
“That so?” Skinner sneered. “What about that Mormon Church of yours? Talk about secret organizations.”
“What are you talking about?” Roper asked, gritting his teeth.
“All right, that temple over there in St. George. Tell me what goes on in there.”
“I can’t discuss that.”
“My point, ‘zactly,” Skinner grinned, again reshaping his moustache. “I’d think you’d be sore by now.”
“Sore?” Roper asked, winkling his forehead.
“From all that pole fence sittin’. People say to me, that Roper ain’t got no balls, but I tell ‘em, yeah, he’s got balls all right, just sore ones from being sit on.”
Roper glared at Skinner for a moment and took a threatening step in his direction.
“Come on, you token cowboy” Skinner taunted, raising his fists. “I’ve waited for this a long time.”
Instinctively, Roper also hoisted both fists, the left one looking a bit asymmetric with the index knuckle and finger gone.
“Consider this payback,” Skinner snarled.
“Payback?”
“Payback for that bottomland your father stole from me,” Skinner hissed, his face taut and his fists ready.
“I wouldn’t exactly call outbidding, stealing,” Roper replied, taking another step forward.
Swinging wildly, Skinner’s right fist clipped Roper’s chin. Roper staggered backward, but regained his balance. He then hooked with his left and as Skinner was ducking from that punch, he quickly jabbed with his right hand, solidly connecting with the side of Skinner’s face.
Instantly, Ruby wedged between them. “This is not the time,” she said firmly as she shoved them apart. “We’ve got real problems ahead and we don’t need all this testosterone bullshit.”
“This ain’t over yet,” Skinner said, pointing a finger at Roper, “not by a long shot.
“I’m not looking for a fight,” Roper said. “Let’s just forget it.”
Skinner glared at Roper for a few seconds then turned to Ruby. “How about you, Rubles? You interested in our little group?”
Hesitating, Ruby gnawed at her lower lip. Alternately, she glanced at Skinner then at Roper, then back at Skinner again. Throwing up her hands, she walked toward her buckskin. Turning back she muttered, “maybe, I don’t know. I’ve got to know more about it.”
“Well, we’re havin’ a meetin’ at Bucky Eakins cabin tomorrow night at eight. You ought’a come, Rubles.” Skinner crushed his empty beer can with his boot heel. “In fact, I could pick you up and we could go together.”
“I don’t know about that, Skinner.”
“I’ll throw in a sit-down restaurant dinner at the Prospector’s Inn.”
“You know I don’t have time for no sit-down dinners,” Ruby replied gruffly. “But if I’m out in that area anyway, I might drop in. See what it’s all about.”
“I can’t save myself for you forever, Rubles.” Skinner flashed a full-toothed grin. “Not with all the other ladies after me.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s been tough on you,” Ruby said, dead-panning.
“What about you, college boy?” Without warning, Skinner hurled the crushed beer can at Roper, bouncing it squarely off his chest. “Wouldn’t hurt you none to hear both sides.”
“Believe you me, I know both sides,” Roper said, picking up the beer can and pitching it in Ruby’s trash bag. “And there’s got to be a better way.”
“Like advisory committees?” Skinner snarled.
“Yeah, that for one.”
“Well, you best be careful out there,” Skinner warned, eyes narrowing. “You have no idea what you’re getting in to.”
5
THE WHITE CLIFFS
Running east to west, the third rung on the staircase, the White Cliffs, form an immense chain of sheer face-rock covering almost a hundred miles across southern Utah. One of nature’s favored rocks to sculpt, it tends to fracture along vertical lines and is often etched into huge domes and sheer perpendicular walls or hollowed into alcoves and arches. The eroding, receding cliff line shows the distinctive wind blown layers, often resembling the huge primordial sand dunes from which they were born.
Undoubtedly one of the most visible formations in the area, the White Cliffs are composed of white to pink, coarse Jurassic sandstone appropriately christened Navajo sandstone. Created during an arid climate one hundred and eighty million years ago, the White Cliffs are three to six hundred foot sand drifts that were swept into the area by violent Jurassic winds and over the eons have slowly solidified.
It was early, 7:30 a.m., when the teams departed the prefab, clay brown office in Escalante, Utah. Immediately splitting into assigned pairs, each squad had a different mission as commissioned by Deputy Manager Ron Sparks. The unlikely team of Douglas Roper Rehnquist and Sean Dunn O’Grady climbed in Sean’s 1990 dusty, dented and rusted Toyota Landrover and headed out of town.
In silence, they drove east on State Road 12 through the tiny Mormon farming community of Henrieville, then onto equally small Cannonville. There, Sean turned due south on the paved Cottonwood Road, driving right on past the right hand fork of the Skutumpah Road. A little further down they passed the road to Kodachrome Basin on the left. At this point the blacktop abruptly ended, but the road continued on, now gravel, still proceeding roughly in a southerly direction.
Dust billowed and swirled from the back of the Landrover and sifted into the cab through Sean’s cracked-open window as well as up from small fractures in the metal floorboard. The ongoing drought coupled with increasing tourist traffic had pulverized roadbed to fine clay powder. Roper rubbed his nose and stifled a sneeze then glanced at Sean, wondering if he dared suggest he close his window. In grim silence, Sean focused on the road.
At Grosvenor Arch, he turned from the main road, angling east on a two track lane, at times hard to see. Roper knew this track eventually led to the top of the seven thousand foot Kaiparowits Plateau. After another ten minutes, they descended down a precarious perpendicular canyon into a cavernous gorge aptly christened, the Gut. In places, the road was no more than a downward slanting rock shelf that had been carved into the solid sandstone wall, barely offering enough room for the Landrover to squeeze by. In lieu of a shoulder on the left, the terrain abruptly dropped straight off for a dizzying two to three hundred feet. Occasionally, when Sean bounced over imbedded gnarly roots or squeezed by