Leon Uris: A God In Ruins

“I want to know about Justin Quinn!” Dan interrupted sharply.

“You should only see the way the water gushes down in the springtime after the winter snowmelt,” Pedro said.

“I want to know about Justin Quinn!”

Pedro sighed and said a soft “Amigo.” “His father was Roscoe Quinn, a bad, bad hombre. For a time the Malkovich brothers let him sharecrop and mine a claim. Roscoe was a pig,” he spat. “He beat his wife and children, and played with his daughter, you know how. Anyhow, Justin was the oldest and grew to be able to handle his father. They say their fights were vicious.”

“He was a fighter, all right,” Dan mumbled.

“Roscoe went into Denver to the cattle show and got piss assed drunk and ended up raping a woman and trying to rob a bank. He’s in the state penitentiary in Canon City. Twenty years. The wife and kids went to relatives in Arizona. Justin joined the Marine Corps.”

Dan’s voice cracked, but he knew he had to keep talking, keep thinking. “Well, too bad he didn’t get to play out his scholarship at the University ... or ... have all the valley girls falling all over him.”

“Sergeant Dan, Justin never had a scholarship. He never completed high school. As for the girls, no one wanted to come near the Quinn family.”

Dan sat by the window all night. “Fucking liar,” he said under his voice.

Siobhan felt for him in bed, then propped herself up on an elbow. The betrayal had left Dan robbed of his sacred moment. Nothing had ever clutched him so, not even the word of Quinn’s death. “Fucking liar.”

“Why can’t you feel for the pain in his life that forced him to live a lie?” she challenged.

“I do! Poor Quinn! The sonofabitch! We all lie, but nothing like this. Me? Brooklyn cop. Sure, I exaggerated about cuffing gangsters. We all lie. Impressing each other is a craft. But this was a big fucking lie!”

“Justin had a lot to lie about.”

He felt her hand on his shoulder. Oh, Jaysus, that felt fine enough. He turned around and found her breasts for his head to rest on and breathed uneasily to hold back sobs.

“He lied from day one about his grand house and prize beef. About his football scholarship. Maybe he wasn’t even American. He had kind of dark skin. The Corps was taking in Mexicans and Indians. We had three Navajos. But we never had no blacks in the Corps!”

“Dan, that’s an ugly word, I don’t like it.”

“Well, you never had to walk the beat in the colored neighborhood.”

“Shut up. You sound like a bigot.”

Dan wept.

“I feel for your sorrow,” she said. Siobhan slipped on her bathrobe and went out onto the veranda. For the first time she saw the moonlight up a string of mountaintops. Troublesome Mesa lay at the bottom of a glen in a steep, winding valley. Snow blankets and a silver sliver of a stream. What a land, indeed. She’d never known of a place like this.

“Jesus, I’m sorry,” Dan said, coming from the bedroom. “I’m really sorry. That Martinez fellow has been a good, sensitive man. I guess they import a lot of these people from Mexico. It’s nice to see a good one, I mean, not just another Mexican who would multiply and go on relief.”

“Consuelo told me that Pedro served six years in the Navy. He is from an old Colorado family, and he was wounded at Pearl Harbor, or maybe you didn’t notice that he’s blind in one eye.”

“I seem to have everything upside down,” he said softly.

“That is because your world has been set upside down. We’ll have to set it right, then.”

“Can I touch you, Siobhan? The blow goes away.”

She knew now how to fit into his big, strong arms. “Quinn knew that you would come here,” she said.

“You really think that?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“What does it mean, then?”

“Hard to say what might have gone ‘round in his head. But I know he wanted you to come here.”

LATE 1945 --ONWARD

The banker’s chair from the turn of the century was worn through in several spots, just as the decrepit First National Bank of Troublesome Mesa had survived the land rushes, the silver crash, and ever-present drought.

Mr. Dancy, a Mormon, knew every tree in the valley and beyond. He was strikingly direct. “I was able to close on the Mal kovich boys just in time. Frankly, I couldn’t have sold the M/M if I threw in the Brooklyn Bridge. Anyhow, Pedro there comes home from the war, one eye and all, and marries the most beautiful girl on the western slopes. I knew his yahoo days were over, right, Pedro?”

“I don’t even miss it,” Pedro answered.

“Pedro talked me into letting him run the place until after the war, when I could find a buyer. We’re going to stake Pedro to a couple hundred acres somewhere.”

“I’ll let you two gentlemen have at it,” Pedro added. “I’ll be down at the diner, Sergeant Dan.”

There was talk between Dan and Dancy about the size of the ranch—well

over two thousand acres with bits and pieces all over the mountain, and

the water rights were clean. The house, worth at least eleven thousand

dollars, would be part of the deal. They shillied and shallied, Dan’s

service and decorations making their own impact. Dancy had hoped to save the ranch for some Mormon boy returning from the war, but this had a hopping good flavor to it.

“What’re the numbers?” Dan gulped.

Dancy studied the ledger. “It’s a good ranch and expandable, except for where those crazy Slavs started fencing each other off and cheating with the water.”

“How much?”

“Can’t tell precisely. There’s almost thirty thousand still on the books. I’d have to research the county records, particularly the government land abutting the south. Forty-some thousand would swing it, I’d say.”

Dan’s heart became a cannonball.

“You were a cop in New York?”

“In the three days I’ve ridden with Pedro, I find I can ride a horse without too much discomfort.”

“Wounded?”

“Yes, sir. Saipan.”

“How much can you put in?”

“I have over nine thousand cash and probably can raise another four or five from my family.”

“But you don’t know doodly egg roll about cattle.”

Dan lowered his eyes and shrugged.

“I have an idea,” Dancy said. “Do you like Pedro Martinez?”

“I’d have him in my platoon any day

“He used to be a hell-raising kid, too generous with money he didn’t have, and Mexicans have no inherited family money. Fact is, Sergeant, we have already turned him down for a large loan. They are not too dependable, if you know what I mean.”

“He’s honest, isn’t he?”

“Honest as Jesus. He was in the hospital for almost a year, mostly

blindfolded with sandbags holding his head still. If you don’t find

God that way, He isn’t there for you. Right now I pay him ten percent

of the net and housing. If you were to, say,

give him twenty percent, you’d have one of the best cattlemen in Colorado.”

“Let me talk it over with the wife.”

“Confidentially, Sergeant, you and I can make a deal, but only if you have someone to train you.” Dancy leaned over close. “I’m a man of God,” he said, “and God tells me the two of you together are well worth the risk.”

It took time for Daniel Timothy O’Connell to transform from Brooklyn cop to rugged Coloradan. All of about a week. His attitude was a force, a force that wakened him every morning, led him to his knees to thank God for bringing them to this place.

Dan loved boots and cowboy hats and leather chaps. He loved to rope and brand and train his new border collie. He loved life during a challenging blizzard.

Dan loved the rodeos and the B.S. that went with cattle trading. He loved the respect. He was a tough man in a tough valley.