Fire Brand

“I hate Brahmans,” Ned said pleasantly, and smiled as if at some secret joke, his lean hands ladling chili into a bowl from the red pot on the table. “Ugliest damned cattle in the world.”

“Yes, they are,” Aggie chuckled, “but very suited to desert conditions.”

Bowie finished his cigarette and put it out with a deliberate motion that meant trouble.

“What breed of cattle do you like, Mr. Courtland?”

“Call me Ned.” He pursed his lips as he sampled the ham. “I like red and white ones.”

Gaby picked up her napkin and smothered a helpless laugh in it. Aggie was doing the same thing. Bowie looked as if he might take a bite out of his plate and then Mr. Courtland.

“Have some ham, Bowie.” Gaby offered the platter to him quickly.

He searched her eyes with pure malice, but he took the hint. He fell to eating while Aggie and Gaby caught up on each other’s gossip. Mr. Courtland seemed pretty intent on his own food, but there was a definitely amused gleam in his dark eyes the one time Gaby got a good look at them.

After lunch, Gaby stuck to Bowie like glue, torn between her growing attraction for him and her need to help Aggie ward off his temper before it exploded over Mr. Courtland.

The pasture stretched all the way to the main highway. Parts of it were fenced, only to keep in certain cattle. The rest, like most ranch land, was open range, and the cattle wandered where food and water were available. Bowie had plenty of windmills that pumped out groundwater into troughs for the cattle. All the same, the groundwater table on his land was dropping steadily. There were small streams running out of the mountains, but not nearly enough to supply his vast herds of cattle with adequate drinking water. It was this facet of ranching that the proposed agricultural project threatened. Agriculture used tremendous amounts of water for irrigation, and drawing it out of an already stressed aquifer only made the water table drop even lower. Besides that was the danger of pesticides leaching into that ground water and contaminating it, and the erosion from the disturbed soil. Agriculture was big business all over Arizona, but more and more farmland was being sold as agricultural ventures failed. Farmland was being developed into housing and business enterprises, which used less water.

But Gaby had a sneaking suspicion that Bowie would be just as opposed to a housing project or an industrial park on his land—maybe more so. It was the history and heritage of the land that he wanted to preserve, and its natural beauty. He had a keen sense of continuity, of saving his heritage for posterity—laudable goals that were hard-kept against the kind of public opinion that was polarizing against him. Unemployed workers wanted jobs. Conservation was all well and good, but it didn’t pay bills and feed hungry children.

“We have some fine grazing land here,” Aggie was telling Ned, sighing over the panorama that spread to the mountains on the horizon. “Despite the desert environment, there’s plenty of food for the livestock.”

“We can even feed them prickly pear—cholla and oco-tillo, too, but the thorns have to be burned off first,” Bowie offered.

“How do you get enough water to them?” Ned asked.

“We use windmills to pump it out of the ground,” Aggie said.

Ned frowned. “Why not pump it out of the river?”

Aggie laughed. “Ned, our rivers aren’t like yours up in Wyoming. Ours only run during the rainy season. We wouldn’t know what to do with a river that ran year-round.”

“My God,” Ned said reverently.

“Do you have prickly pear up your way, Mr. Courtland?” Gaby asked politely.

He shook his head. “Lodgepole pine, aspens, prairie grass. It’s an easier country for cowboys, except in the winter. We lose a hand or two every winter to wanner country. Six-foot snowdrifts just don’t appeal to everybody.”

“We get snow here once in a while,” Aggie said. “Up around Tucson, the saguaro cacti get a white dusting of it. It sure is pretty. Did you know that saguaro grows nowhere else in the country except in southern California, Arizona, and Mexico?”

“I thought I’d seen a few in west Texas and New Mexico.” Ned frowned.

“Organ pipe cactus, maybe, or cardon cactus.” Aggie nodded. “But not saguaro. There’s a lot to learn about them.”

“For example?” Ned grinned.

“Well, they can live for over a hundred and fifty years. They can weigh up to three tons. They’re pleated so that they can expand during the rainy season like an accordion. They’re woody inside. The fruit was and is gathered by the Papago Indians to make jelly and a fermented drink...”

“Tohono O’odham,” Gaby corrected. “They changed the name.”

Aggie made an irritated sound. “You and your Papago history. Well, I can’t pronounce that and I won’t try.”

“Yes, you will.” Gaby chuckled.

“Yes, I will,” Aggie sighed. “But it’s hard.”

“All the same, it’s their own word, in their own language, not a borrowed name in Zũni, which Papago is,” the younger woman replied. “Tohono O’odham means ‘People of the Desert.’”

“You people sure do know a lot about where you live,” Ned commented.

“Oh, we haven’t started yet.” Aggie smiled. “We’ll have to take you out on the reservation and show you the White Dove of the Desert—the San Xavier Mission—and buy you some Papago fry bread and take you through the Saguaro National Monument and out to Old Tucson where they make Western movies.”

“And that’s only the tip of the iceberg,” Gaby added as they walked toward the fence. “You could stay busy for weeks and still not see half the sights. Tombstone is just a few minutes down the road, and it’s a must-see.”

“Will it spoil your day if I tell you I’ve been there?” Ned chuckled. “When I was a boy, it was the dream of my life to stand where the Earps did. I spent a week in Tombstone when I was in my twenties, and I’ve never forgotten a thing about it.”

“So this isn’t your first time in Arizona?” Bowie asked as he bent his head to light a cigarette. He was bareheaded, and the sun burnished his blond hair like a halo.