The Dinosaur Hunter(12)
5
Fillmore County is 5,500 square miles of big, or about the same size as the state of Connecticut. That New England state, however, has a population of 3.5 million people while the last census of Fillmore County listed us at 770. I thought that probably included some double-counting of the confusing Brescoe clan. What we lacked in people, we more than made up with livestock, which included, rounding off, 50,000 cattle, 15,000 sheep, 900 horses, 300 buffalo, and 125 pigs.
The county is divided up more or less fifty-fifty into private and public lands, public meaning the state and the feds, mostly the feds. The federal government manages its property through two entities, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Charles M. Russell National Park (CMR). Of the two, the BLM is the more interesting outfit. It is, in its own opinion, mostly misunderstood. Some locals call it the Bureau of Land Mismanagement. Jeanette calls it the Big Lousy Monster. None of the ranchers like it because it controls the land leases they depend on.
Ranchers Road is around thirty-five miles long and runs south to north into a peninsula formed by Lake Fort Peck, a big depression-era man-made lake. The road is the north-south lifeline of the six ranches it connects to the east-west state highway that crosses Fillmore County, a highway otherwise unhindered by any town except the county seat of Jericho. Heading up Ranchers Road, the first ranch reached is the Haxby place, which is owned by Sam Haxby, otherwise known as Sam the Survivalist. Sam’s ranch is essentially a fortress. Although I thought the Haxbys were plenty peculiar, Jeanette said she was happy to have them as neighbors. They kept their fences strong, their cattle contained, and their business to themselves. Sam and Ina Haxby had six children over the years, all boys, four of whom had moved away. Jack and Carl, both in their forties, stayed behind to ranch, raise their families, and I guess also to prepare for Armageddon.
The next ranch along the road was us. The Square C was the biggest ranch on the road, although I won’t say how big. If you want to tick a Fillmore County rancher off, ask him how big his ranch is, how many cattle he has, and how many guns he owns. You’ll not likely get an answer but you’ll surely get a steely eyed stare.
The Feldmark ranch, known as the Spear F, lay north of us. Aaron Feldmark was in his early seventies, his wife Flora about fifty-five. They lived alone, not counting all their animals. They had raised a family of three boys and four girls, all of whom had moved away as soon as they graduated from high school. Mrs. Feldmark had arrived here as a school teacher in one of the one-room schools in the county and ended up marrying a rancher. This was not unusual. School marms come out from towns like Billings, single and scared, and before you knew it, some rancher had taken her to a dance, fixed her flat tire, tossed a couple of steaks in her little freezer, and she was here for life.
The Thomason ranch, the Lazy T, was next up the road. Buddy Thomason was a widower, his wife dead from pneumonia when his daughter Amelia was but three years old. It was one of those things. It was spring, the rains had come, Ranchers Road was one long strip of impassable gumbo, and Greta Thomason, a mail-order bride from Germany who Buddy had picked from a catalog, came down with a terrible cold that turned into pneumonia. Greta passed before anything could be done, leaving Buddy to raise Amelia. Far as I could tell, he’d done a pretty good job of it.
Next up the road was the Brescoe ranch, one of several Brescoe ranches in the county although all the others were south of Jericho. There were more Brescoes in Fillmore County than any other family. At the high school, there were sixty-three students and thirty-eight of them were Brescoes, nearly all of them boys, which I guess made prom night a bit awkward. Julius and Mathis were the Brescoes along our road. They were in their fifties and all their kids, six of them, had grown up and moved away.
Ranchers Road ended at the gate that led into the Corbel place, except the Corbels were long gone, sold out three years back to a Californian named Cade Morgan who some folks said had once been the director of a television show or something. I’d never heard of him even though I’d spent years in Hollywood troubleshooting for some of the big studios. But the television crowd and the big movie people didn’t mix that much so maybe that explained why I didn’t know him. Anyway, Cade had sold off the Corbel cows and, far as I could tell, wasn’t farming, either. What he was doing out there on his ranch, nobody knew, but it was his business. Being able to tend to your own business is what generally attracts outsiders to this part of Montana, including me.
The Fillmore County 4th of July Independence Day organizing committee gathered in the back room of the Hell Creek Bar, Jericho’s favorite watering hole and conference center. Although I had my grocery list, I loitered at the door and watched Jeanette sit down beside Sam Haxby and share a couple of words with the survivalist. Sam was one of those little guys built like a fireplug, and about as tough. A quick look around revealed representatives from the other ranches along Ranchers Road. There was Aaron Feldmark, looking like a gentleman cowboy with a big “Hoss Cartwright” hat, black vest, string bolo tie, and striped pants tucked into intricately carved cowboy boots. Sitting a couple chairs away was Buddy Thomason, Amelia’s dad, dressed in dirty jeans and old boots spattered with dried mud. Julius Brescoe, his nose stuck in the latest issue of Western Ag Reporter, sat behind them in bib overalls. I’d noticed his truck outside with his dogs, a couple of border collies, sitting patiently in back waiting for his return.