Steven Havill: Red, Green, or Murder

“Hooooowhup!” Dale Torrance bellowed, and his horse understood whatever that language was and ducked hard to the left, cutting off a calf’s escape. Dale and another of the H-Bar-T hands, Pat Gabaldon, worked the herd counter-clockwise around the corral’s perimeter. Every now and then a calf, all gangly and awkward like a teenager, would bolt sideways from the flow, figuring who knows what in its bovine brain.

I stood in the middle of the arena with Herb Torrance and enjoyed watching the two kids do all the hard work. Half of their efforts went into playing rodeo stars, and they were spending a good deal more time having fun than the actual task at hand demanded. But we were in no hurry-although if I dawdled much longer, I would be late for lunch. Since I had no other plans on this pleasant day, I had agreed to meet another old friend, George Payton, for a take-out burrito after I’d finished with the paperwork for the Torrances.

The late September sun baked the khaki shirt against my shoulders, and the sweet tang of New Mexico dust mixed with livestock manure, horse sweat, and leather. The notes on my clipboard reminded me that I’d hit the same count three times with this particular lot-fourteen cows, four heifers, and six calves. Patrick’s blue heeler, Socks, worked the cattle with his nose close to the ground, beady little eyes unwavering.

The twenty-four H-Bar-T brands were all correct, high on the left flank. As each wide-eyed Angus paraded past us, I saw no signs of disease, no coughing or diarrhea, no runny or glazed eyes, no hitches in gait, no dings or dents. But then again, even though I’d been a livestock inspector for less than a year, I could have eyeballed any of Herb Torrance’s livestock from the other side of Posadas County with my eyes closed.

“Can you imagine John Chisum doin’ this?” Herb’s smoke-eroded voice jarred me out of la-la land. I looked across at him, amused. I knew exactly what he meant, and he knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t take offense at a gentle jibe aimed at my employers.

“He would have shot somebody, probably, ” I said. Well, maybe not. Maybe old John would have been enough of a gentleman not to do that. But he sure would have shaken his head in disgust at the thought of the government meddling in his affairs, demanding all kinds of penny-ante paperwork and fancy-schmancy permits.

Today, all Herb Torrance wanted to do was move this particular little herd of cattle from the pasture near his home to a section leased from the U.S. Forest Service up on the back side of Cat Mesa, north of Posadas-about forty miles as the ravens flew, maybe sixty-five by road. The grass was tall and lush there, and the cattle would fatten up for market. But bureaucracies being what they were, ranchers couldn’t just move cattle anymore. They couldn’t just hire a bunch of dollar-a-day cowpunchers and drive the herd here or there as John Chisum would have done back in the 1880s.

Now, the critters traveled in the modern style, sandwiched hide to hide in a stock trailer pulled behind a snorting diesel one-ton pick-up truck. And before ranchers could even do that, the State of New Mexico and the livestock board wanted their cut from the operation, because, after all, it’s always about the money.

In this case, the tally that Herb Torrance would have to pay for a transportation permit from me included forty cents for each set of four legs, plus a five dollar service fee, plus a buck a head paid to the New Mexico Beef Council. Herb would fork over $38.60 for a state permit to truck this modest bunch from one little dry patch of New Mexico to another just a few miles away.

If I valued my time even a little bit, the money paid wouldn’t cover my time and travel from Posadas to Herb’s ranch. But the bureaucrats evidently felt better when the cattle trail was littered with paperwork.

As the herd circled for my inspection-and to give the boys some much-needed practice with their fancy horsemanship-the wind kicked up a little. All morning, it had been calm enough that the dust had risen from the hoof-stirred arena in a great cloud, drifting straight up. Now I felt the breeze against the back of my neck, a reminder that this was a good time to finish up before I missed my luncheon date and before the afternoon gusts made working outside a miserable chore.

As if someone else agreed, the phone in my truck chirped its imperative. I knew my phone was the culprit, since Herb’s was on his belt and he made no move for it. I ignored the summons. The phone could wait. The two cowpunchers on horseback gathered the cattle for me once more, and then I waved a “good enough.”

The breeze found a foam coffee cup that had been lying under one of the pickup trucks parked outside the arena and gave it a kick. I saw the flicker of white about the same time as did Dale Torrance’s sorrel gelding. Why a thousand-pound horse thought a cup was a fearsome threat, only he knew. Up until then, the horse had been handling himself with professional skill. Young Torrance was only a fair rider, more at home on a four-wheeler or motorcycle, tending to saw the gelding’s reins like a pair of handlebars.

He kicked his mount toward the corral side of the herd just as the little white cup bounced and clattered under the rails, then blew between the animal’s hind hooves. The gelding saw it and promptly came unglued. The critter crashed sideways into one of the railroad tie uprights, crushing the young cowboy’s leg-a thousand-pound hammer with Dale caught against the hard, smelly anvil of the creosoted oak.

A heifer jostled the big gelding and doubled his panic. He danced hard to the left, losing Dale in the process. The youngster went down with a crash, a flail of arms and legs in the dust. The sorrel, brain empty, inadvertently planted a hoof squarely on Dale Torrance’s right knee and then rocketed off to mix it up with the cattle. The kid’s scream was shrill and chopped off abruptly.

Herb dove into motion. He raced toward his son, his own lame knee turning his sprint into an awkward, skipping shuffle. With a deft snatch, Pat Gabaldon caught the loose horse and eased him back to reality, the gelding’s eyes wide and nostrils flared. The cattle drifted into a confused, milling bunch across the way. Socks, the blue heeler, yapped his excitement without a clue about what to do next.

By the time I had crossed the corral, Dale’s face was a pasty gray. He had squirmed under the bottom rail of the arena and now lay flat on his back, fists clenched and beating a tattoo on the hard dirt. His breath hissed through clenched teeth, coupled with whimpers and tears. It didn’t take an orthopedic surgeon to see that his right knee was a wreck, with the lower half of his leg at a grotesque angle. Another bolt of pain bent Dale at the waist, and he clawed at his leg with both hands.

“Easy now,” his father said, and dropped to his knees in a fashion that any other time would have been funny, his own bad leg crabbed straight out to the side, boot heel dug in for support. “God damn, son,” he observed. “That’s sure as hell broke.” He glanced up at me.

I looked around for options. This wasn’t the sort of injury where we could just shoulder him to his feet and hop-a-long to the house for an ice pack. We had pieces of bone where they weren’t supposed to be, and an orthopedist was going to have to do some reassembly.

If we tried to fold Dale into the cab of one of the pickups, he’d have to bend the wreckage of that knee, and that wouldn’t work-not for a fifty-mile ride, part of it on hopeless dirt roads. Riding in the back with all the hay, shovels, reels of barbed wire, steel posts and bags of Nutri-Steer wouldn’t be a whole lot better. His mother’s Chrysler was parked across the road in front of the Torrance’s double-wide, and no way in hell Dale would fold into that. But we couldn’t just stand dumb and wait while an ambulance took the better part of an hour to run all the way out from Posadas.