Excerpts

CHAPTER 1 Cameron Nichols watched the telltale plume of yellow dust trace the progress of a car up the long lane that linked his home to the Otter Creek road. That would be Hector Truehart again, and the car would be the white Lincoln the lawyer drove. Nichols waited patiently, knowing the answer to Truehart's proposition would be the same: no, not now, not ever, not in a hundred years. He linked Truehart, and even linked the lawyer's persistence. Over the years, Nichols had formed some impressions of Texans. They came in two sizes, citified peacocks, or good-old-boy sharks. But Truehart didn't fit either bill. In a minute the white Continental would pull into the circle drive, and Truehart would emerge, a rumpled, quiet, diffident man in a gray suit and quiet paisley cravat, carrying his venerable black attaché case. Nichols preferred that honest attire to the fraudulent and gaudy Western attire worn by ranch brokers and insurance salesmen. These meetings were important occasions, and Nichols dressed for them. He was not a man to do business in faded, torn jeans, boots soaked in corral muck, or shirts and jackets gummed over with manure, scours, animal blood, bull semen, calf slobber, or the residue of birthing. So he had adorned his lean, fifty-four-year-old weather-stained body with slacks, slip-on black shoes, a white shirt, and a woolen Palm Beach sport coat. That attire never failed to surprise Truehart. The man braked the dust-coated Lincoln before the rambling ranch house in a cloud of grit. The early spring had been ominously dry again. From the doorway, Nichols watched the man fold his glasses and poke them into his breast pocket, pluck up his Portfolio, and approach in an apologetic gait that could disarm the most militant, shotgun-toting No Trespass rancher. "The answer's still the same," Nichols said. "Ah, Cameron--may I call you that?--I just want to talk a little." "Sure," Nichols said, leading him into the quiet, sunny living room his wife had decorated in French provincial themes he didn't care for. "Scotch, right?" "Oh, it's a bit early. I always admire this room. That wall of mullioned windows; the view clear down to Otter Creek." "It started as a cabin. Each generation's added to this house. This room was added by my mother. She liked the view in winter." "You have roots. It's hard to give up a place that's been in the family for generations. A pioneer place." "We're not giving it up. Horoney must know that by now." "No, he's a determined man. He doesn't know it. Cameron, have you and your family really thought about what it'll be like, being all alone? Not a soul around?" "We've been living with that for ninety years. We're not isolated." "Not isolated? Here?" Nichols adjusted a Venetian blind at the rear of the room. "See that?" he asked, pointing to a grassy upland. "My Cessna takes me anywhere fast. See that phone line? We talk to friends, e-mail them, fax them. See that satellite dish? We're as connected as anyone in a city. See my four-by-four pickup? I can be in Miles City in two hours--my grandparents needed two days. Did you see that mailbox on the Tongue River Road? The postal service delivers there. FedEx and UPS right to this door." "They won't though. Not when this is launched. Tell me frankly: Does Mrs. Nichols want to say?" "She says she does." Nichols laughed. The lawyer laughed. "I thought so," Truehart said. "Family dissension." Nichols didn't reply. This family was torn by it all. He wished it had never happened; that life could continue as before. But it never would. And the divisions were there long before the National Grassland Trust polarized his own kin. "What would it take? Laslo Horoney's willing to set you up in a cattle operation as large as this, on better pasture, in a wetter climate. Or he'll pay market value for this." "Yes, we've been over that. We Nicholses are rooted down, Mr.Truehart. We've been here--well, not from the beginning, not the open range days, but not long after. This is home. Come on, I'll show you something." He led the Texas lawyer through the dining room, the kitchen, and out the battered back door, and walked swiftly toward a slope shepherded by majestic cottonwoods. The harsh March wind tugged at Truehart's fine suit, and the man was probably getting chilled, but Nichols didn't pause until he came to a half-acre plot of prairie enclosed by a black iron fence. Within were the generations, and the stones that marked them; lives begun, spun out, and ended at this pinprick place on a map of eastern Montana. Nichols opened a gate and ushered Truehart in. "I wish you could see this in late spring," he said. "It draws range agronomists from all over the area. They love these last bits of untouched native prairie." He smiled wryly. "You might say this plot was our undoing; the prank our ancestors played on us." "How is that?" "These bits of virgin prairie are what started the whole thing," Nichols said. "Patches like this are the yardstick the agronomists used to tell us we've ruined the prairie. Two hundred species of life to a square yard in here, and a root system that captures moisture, holds the earth down when it blows, helps the grasses rebound after a drought or a grazing." Truehart smiled expectantly. Nichols did not disappoint him. "The pasture isn't what it was. Can't argue with that. That wind's going to chill you, but I just wanted you to see these stones. Over thirty now. The oldest is dated 1914." Graven into it was a name, Mabel Sterling Nichols, and two dates, January 3, 1931, and August 17, 1984. "My mother," he said. "Young. Lung cancer. She smoked." Truehart nodded. "Great-grandparents, some of their brothers and sisters. Three of four grandparents, some of their siblings. Two infants. Two cousins. An uncle who broke his neck falling off a horse at nineteen. Some folks related to us by marriage." Abruptly he turned, led the lawyer back to the ranch house, and shut out the moaning wind. He wished he could shut out other winds of change as easily as closing that door. "That's where my children will plant me," he said, rubbing his hands to warm them. Truehart stared out the window that overlooked the Otter Creek Valley. "Sometimes things happen that require people to adjust to new circumstances. This is one of those things. As much as you love this place, it won't ever be the same again," he said. "I think you know that....Did the foundation make you a fair offer?" "You call it an offer?" A flash of anger laced Nichols's voice. "You call all of this an offer? Tearing apart everything that people like you and me spent blood and toil and tears to build?" Truehart smiled gently. "Have you considered what'll probably happen? How long do you expect to have electrical service? A telephone? How long will a fuel truck deliver heating oil and gasoline and aviation gas? Especially when the roads break down? You'll be taxed--but will you receive services? A landfill? Roads? Will the nonexistent school bus take your grandchildren to some nonexistent school over nonexistent roads?" He paused apologetically. "Forgive me, Cameron. I'm only describing what's likely to happen. I know how it hurts." "Look, Mr. Truehart, my parents and grandparents got along just fine without services. This ranch wasn't even connected to phone or electricity until the late fifties--like most Montana ranches. If dealers won't deliver products like gasoline, we'll go get them. If the phone company rolls up wire, we'll use our cellular. If the electric lines come down, we'll resort to solar panels or a generator." Nichols pushed back the heat building in him. "If you think you can isolate us, consider this: a nice retirement community, right on the edge of your buffalo land-- your big zoo--would draw a lot of people, and a lot of friends. If you isolate us, we'll do it. We've a dozen children on our ranches--just right to run our own school. Sorry, Mr.Truehart. You can't roll back history. You can create a sort of zoo or museum for people to glimpse the way things were--but you can't return to another time." "Mr. Horoney believes the past holds the key to the future. And buffalo are the future--the best future for a nation squandering its future. Our future ." Nichols smiled tightly, wrestling back his temper. All Nichols men had it, he more than his father or son. "Maybe we'll be forced to see what the courts say. Honoroney's foundation isn't a public body; it has no right to condemn land for public purposes. It's as private as this property." "Ah, Cameron, is your property so private--BLM land, Forest Service, land, state school sections, leased railroad land?..." "You know that it is, Mr. Truehart. Nichols Ranches are one of the largest private holdings in the west." "And riddled with holes, public land in the middle of yours, and in every hole, buffalo will roam." "You'll build a lot of fences, then. Strong enough and high enough to contain your buffalo. Cattle fences won't do. Mine won't do. It'll be your responsibility, your animals. I won't let your buffalo trespass. And if they spread brucellosis, and my herd is condemned and destroyed, you'll find yourselves in court." Truehart nodded. "A mess. Easily avoided with some flexibility." He looked impatient, as if jousting with Nichols wasn't his idea of getting things done. "Let me tell you where we are," he said. Nichols already knew, but listened impatiently. "We've got crews out rolling up fence. When we're done, there won't be any barbed wire dividing the land between Interstate 94 in Montana and Interstate 90 in Wyoming. We've other crews cleaning up ranch sites, salvaging metal, and burning the buildings to prevent squatting. That, ah, is going slower. Lots of metal buildings there. Lots more metal grain silos than we'd counted on. But we're progressing. And the utilities are rolling up phone lines, disconnecting electricity--give or take a few lines that power the oil fields." All this amused and saddened Nichols. They were tearing out the web of settlement--what they could of it, anyway. "It's an illusion, this wilderness," he said flatly. "The whole area's dotted with telecommunications towers on hilltops; interstates, roads, oil patches, strip mines and power plants. You think it'll all return to wilderness?" "Of course not. But it'll still be the Big Empty, the place where buffalo roam, the dream of millions of Americians." "It's a fantasy. Buffalo and grass. You think you can wipe out square miles of sagebrush and prickly pear?" "Our agronomists say the prairie'll recover swiftly from most of its abuse. Mr. Horoney won't put any buffalo on it the first year; and if it's a dry year, he won't put anything on it the second year. After that, he'll put five thousand bison on it, drawn from South Dakota and Ted Turner's herds. A handful of animals on a grassland the size of West Virginia." "And the sagebrush?" "You'll see range fires again when the grass returns. They burn off the sage, and then native bluestem grass crowds it the next year." He paused. "We won't control natural range fires. They're healthy. And they won't stop at your ranch fences. And there won't be fire trucks or neighbors to help you." Nichols stared out the window at the world he knew and saw it crumbling. "Cameron, let's get things on the table," Truehart said. "Mr. Horoney's authorized me to tell you that the foundation will withdraw its offer if it isn't accepted by June one. You've a fair offer for the Nichols ranches, all two hundred twenty thousand acres. Twenty-five million, and you keep the proceeds from your cattle and equipment. After June one, it'll be worth--" he shrugged. "Of course the foundation would always be willing to buy out Nichols Ranches, but not at their present market value. When your ranches become isolated patches within the National Grassland Trust, I'm afraid they'd be worth--" "Nothing," said Nichols, "and everything." Copyright (c) 1998 by Richard S. Wheeler Excerpted from The Buffalo Commons by Richard S. Wheeler All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.