Michael McGarrity - Nothing But Trouble

“This is one of Daddy’s grass-bank pastures,” Julia said, as she matched Kerney stride for stride. “He burned two thousand acres three years ago, and it hasn’t been grazed on since.”

“It looks good,” Kerney said, his eyes fixed on the vehicles parked near the work site. A panel van, very much like the one that had passed him on the highway, stood out among the pickup trucks. In such a sparsely populated area, where most folks drove pickup trucks, he wondered what the probability of spotting another panel van might be. Perhaps not entirely unlikely, but certainly interesting nonetheless.

At the corral Julia introduced him to Walt Shaw, the ranch manager. Under his cowboy hat Shaw had the face of a man who’d called the open range his office for a lifetime. Probably in his late forties, he had a wide mouth, a long, broad nose, and a blunt chin.

Over the noise of the backhoe he greeted Julia warmly, pulled off his work gloves, shook Kerney’s hand, and smiled, showing a gap between his two front teeth.

“Where’s my father?” Julia asked.

“Took off some time ago,” Shaw replied.

“We didn’t pass him on the road,” Kerney said.

“Didn’t go that way,” Shaw said, nodding in the opposite direction. “He’s two pastures south, where we’re gathering the cattle.”

“Are you building the horse corral for the movie?” Kerney asked.

“Yep, but we get to keep it after you folks are long gone,” Shaw replied. “Bought and paid for by Hollywood. Can’t beat that, I’d say.”

“No, you can’t,” Kerney said, looking at the four men who were busy setting posts. Two of them were the cowboys who had stopped at the accident scene on the highway. “Is this your permanent crew?” he asked.

“They’re day hands I hired on for the job,” Shaw said. “My two full-time wranglers, Kent and Buster, are busy gathering. We’re planning to bring the cattle up here nice and slow.”

Kerney nodded and asked if the slot canyon through the mountains was Granite Pass, and Shaw allowed that it was, noting that the smelter sat one valley over, due southwest of their location.

Ranch raised, Kerney knew better than to ask about the size of the spread, which was akin to asking how much money the Jordan family had in the bank. But he did ask Julia how close the ranch came to the Mexican border.

“About twenty miles,” Julia replied. She went on to explain that the high country on the ranch was mostly leased state and federal land, while the valley land was all deeded property.

Behind Julia, twenty feet away, the two cowboys Kerney had seen yesterday were eyeing him and talking to their companions.

When Shaw turned to check on his crew, the men quickly broke off their conversation and got back to the job of securing a crossrail to a post.

With Shaw and Julia at his side Kerney walked to the corral, inspected the work in progress, and praised the sturdy construction to Shaw.

“It should still be standing here long after I’m gone,” Shaw replied.

Kerney nodded in agreement as he admired the handiwork and made a mental note of each of the workers, whom Shaw introduced by first names only. The two cowboys Kerney had seen on the highway were Mike and Pruitt, and their coworkers were Ross and Santiago.

On the way back to the cabin Kerney commented to Julia about the panel van. “You don’t see many cowboys driving one of those.”

“That’s Walt’s,” she said. “When the weather’s good and the roads aren’t muddy, he uses it as his portable workshop. Carts just about anything he might need in it: wire, pipe, tools, spare parts.”

“I didn’t see it at the ranch headquarters,” Kerney said.

“He keeps it at the Harley homestead that Daddy bought about twelve years ago. Walt uses the old barn there for storage and repair work. It’s centrally located and a lot more convenient than having to run back and forth to ranch headquarters.”

“Has Shaw been here long?” Kerney asked.

“Almost twenty years,” Julia replied. “He’s like family.”

“Does he have one of his own?”

Julia laughed liltingly. “He’s a confirmed bachelor, although he has been known to flirt with the idea of marriage every now and then.”

“With you?” Kerney asked.

Girlishly, Julia bumped him with her hip. “I knew you were going to ask me that. Walt gave up on that notion a long, long time ago.”

Julia had resumed her flirting full bore, but it seemed so disingenuous Kerney decided not to take it personally. He quickened his pace, wondering what dynamics in the Jordan family could have caused such arrested development in the two offspring.

During the remainder of the afternoon the crew moved from location to location, and the planning went smoothly until Charlie Zwick announced that actually filming a fifty-mile cattle drive would put the movie way over budget.

Quite simply, the problem was logistics. Johnny Jordan, who had done the initial location scouting, had assured Zwick that transporting equipment and personnel to the various sites on the ranch would be easy. In fact, some of the locations were barely accessible by four-wheel-drive vehicles. Getting the necessary equipment to the sites would be a slow, time-consuming process, add several days to the shooting schedule, and cost thousands of dollars in overtime pay.

Zwick explained all this to Usher as the production crew stood on a ledge looking down into the narrow canyon that cut through mountains. It had taken them a half hour to traverse the rough jeep trail and reach the overlook.

Usher nodded as he stood enchanted by the view. Below him the canyon walls were sheer and imposing, and the view toward the valley was vast and forbidding. He could visualize the cattle entering the canyon, pushed along by the cowboys, police vehicles streaming across the basin in hot pursuit, helicopters dropping low, stampeding the herd.

He turned to Zwick. “I want this location.”

“I’m not suggesting we drop it,” Zwick said. “But we could easily film the roundup and the cattle-drive sequences down in the valley near the cabin, and not have to move to three other locations that are difficult to reach at best.”

“Dropping those locations would screw everything up,” Johnny said hotly. “How in the hell can you film the roundup and the cattle drive in one place? It will look completely fake.”

“Not necessarily,” Usher said. “We can shoot the sequences from various directions. Use different angles, different shots. Focus on the actors, their horses, the cows. Believe me, on film it will look real.”

“Or like some cheap B Western,” Johnny replied.

Usher’s jaw tightened. “On film it will be just fine. Let me worry about what the audience sees.”

“I’ve got a say about what goes into this film,” Johnny retorted, “and the shooting script calls for a fifty-mile cattle drive.”

Usher pushed his new straw cowboy hat back on his head and smiled thinly. “And that’s exactly what you’ll get, done my way.” He turned to Zwick. “We’re finished here.”

Johnny kicked a rock into the canyon and stomped off. Kerney glanced at the faces of the crew as they dispersed toward the vehicles. None of them seemed the least bit upset by Johnny’s childish outburst.

At the vehicles Ethan Stone joined Kerney. “Not to worry,” he said gaily as he slid into the front passenger seat and waved a hand in the air. “These little catfights break out all the time.”

“That’s good to know,” Kerney said as he crammed himself into the backseat next to Julia, who’d kept up her tiresome coquettish behavior all afternoon. He’d decided she did it solely to entertain herself.

On the drive down the mountain a dust devil churned across the valley, lifting sand several hundred feet into the sky as it churned on its thin axis. Kerney tuned Julia out and turned his thoughts to Walt Shaw and his panel van.