"Nichols, John - New Mexico Trilogy 01 - The Milagro Beanfield War 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nichol John)

The other commissioner, Meliton Mondragon, added, "What kind of harm does anybody think this really might do, anyway?"
"It's a bad precedent," Lavadie said. "This could steamroll into something as unmanageable as Pa-checo's pig. Any fool can see that."
"Are you calling me a pendejo?" Meliton Mon-dragon asked.
"Not you personally, no. Of course not. But it's obvious the question isn't whether to let this go on or not. The only question is, how do we stop it?" There was silence. Nobody had a suggestion. At length, Bernabe Montoya said, "If I go over and tell him to stop he'll tell me to shove a chili or something you know where. If I go over to arrest him he'll try to kick me in the balls. And anyway, I don't know what the water law is, I don't even know what to arrest him for or charge him with or how long I could hold him. I know as soon as we fined him, or he got out of the Chamisa V. jail, he'd go back to irrigating that field again. It seems to me it's more up to the water users, to the ditch commissioners and the ditch bosses here, to stop him."
"Well, have them talk to him, then," Bud Gleason said. "How's that sound to you boys?"
It didn't sound that good to the boys. The two commissioners and the mayordomo shrugged, remaining self-consciously silent.
"For crissakes!" Lavadie suddenly exploded. "What a bunch of gutless wonders we got hi this room! If you all are too chicken to do it, I'll go talk to that little bastard myself. There's no room in a town like ours for this kind of outrageous lawlessness--"
Five minutes later Lavadie's four-wheel-drive pickup lurched into Joe Mondragon's yard, scattering chickens and a few flea-bitten hounds.
A cigarette lodged toughly between his lips, Joe emerged from his shop tinkering busily with a crowbar.
"Howdy, cousin," Lavadie said. Joe nodded, eyes crinkled against the cigarette smoke. Nancy opened the front door and stood there, flanked by two big-eyed kids.
"I came over to talk to you about that field you're irrigating on the other side of the highway," Lavadie said.
"What interest you got in that beanfield?" Joe asked.
"I figure what's bad for this town, whatever stirs up unnecessary trouble, is bad for all of us, que no?"
Joe shrugged, inhaled, exhaled, and replaced the cigarette Bogey-like between his lips.
"I just came from a meeting we had over in Nick's store," Lavadie said. "We decided that since it's illegal to irrigate those west side fields, we ought to tell you to quit fucking around over there."
Joe delicately flicked the head off a small sunflower with the crowbar.
"Well--?" Lavadie said.
"Well, what?"
"What's your answer to that?"
Joe shrugged again. "Who says it's me irrigating over there?"
"I guess a little birdie told somebody," Lavadie grunted sarcastically.
"Hmm," Joe commented.
"So what's your answer?" Lavadie demanded.
Joe spit the cigarette butt from his lips and, swinging the crowbar like a baseball bat, expertly caught the butt, lining it across the yard at his antagonist, missing him only by inches. "Maybe you better quit fucking around over here."
Lavadie flushed, but kept his -cool. "Are you or are you not going to stop irrigating that field?" he asked.
Joe smiled blandly. "The real question is, are you or are you not gonna get off my property, Mr. Lava-die?" He advanced a few steps flexing the crowbar.
Lavadie hastily backed up to bis truck. "What are you doing ... are you threatening me?"
"This is my property," Joe explained matter-of-factly.
"Well, goddamn you . . ."
Lavadie slid behind the wheel of his truck and started it up. "I'll go over there myself and see that not another drop goes into that field," he threatened.
"You do and won't nobody show up for work at your place tomorrow, Mr. Lavadie," Joe said quietly. "Your hay and your corrals might get burned by accident, too."
Lavadie fumed silently for a full ten seconds before jamming the gearshift into reverse and bouncing backward out of the yard.
"And--?" Bernabe Montoya politely inquired several minutes later.
Lavadie, pacing around the sheriffs living room, shook his head nervously. "What do you think, Ber-nie? Could he really get people to stop working at my place? Would he have the guts to burn my hay?" "Sure. Maybe. Who knows?" "I'd be up the creek without a paddle if that happened." Lavadie picked his nose. "This is more complicated than I thought. That little shithead's got no respect, does he?" "Nope."
Following an awkward pause, Lavadie said, "I think maybe I better back out of this, Bernie. I think maybe the best thing right now is I shouldn't get involved, que no?"
"Suit yourself, Mr. Lavadie." "It's just I didn't realize--I had no idea ..." After Lavadie had slunk off, Bernabe slouched out to his pickup, tuned the radio to mariachi music coming from KKCV in Chamisaville, and steered onto the highway, turning south. Like everyone else in town, he automatically fired an obscene gesture (known as a "birdie") at Ladd Devine's Miracle Valley Recreation Area sign. Almost immediately after that he shuddered going over a painted cattleguard on the road, muttering to himself, "It sure beats me how a handful of white stripes can fool cows like that." Then, smoking thoughtfully, he listened to the radio and allowed his eyes to drift half-assedly around the landscape as he drove the fifteen or so miles to Dona Luz. In a field some kids were flying kites. Magpies hunkered atop flattened prairie dog carcasses along the shoulder. A few miles farther, the sheriff had to stop for some cows stupidly milling around on the highway. After that he tried to think about Joe's beanfield, but quit because already it made him uncomfortable to confront this thing; he had no idea how to deal with it. It was a situation like~this, in fact, that could cost him his job. If he blew it, which was more than likely, that three-vote margin over Pancho Armijo every two years could dissolve into a landslide victory for his opponent.
So he had decided to try and pass the buck.
Two men occupied the tiny cinderblock state police headquarters at Dona Luz: a crew-cut good of' boy state cop, Bill Koontz, and a young good-looking radio dispatcher, Emilio Cisneros.
BernabS leaned against the counter behind which the two men sat--Koontz reading a comic book, and Cisneros typing up some forms--and he lit another cigarette.
"What's new up hi the boondocks?" Koontz asked lazily. "Who shot whose cow last night?"
Bernabe smiled tircdly. He disliked the state police; he was also slightly awed by them. They were well-equipped men with an organization to back up their actions, and he himself was a loner with one stupid deputy. Any difficult crime he always referred to the state police: hi fact, they wound up processing most of his arrests. Accident victims always awaited state cars to take them to the medical facilities hi the south. All the same, he disliked going to cops like Bill Koontz for help or advice because that usually meant he wound up siccing them on his own people. And although nothing much ever really came of that, it made him uncomfortable all the same.
Now he said thoughtfully, "I came down here because I got a problem."
Koontz smiled. "So what else is new?"
"This one is kind of funny."
"Shoot," Koontz said.
"Well, there's a guy up in my town, maybe you know him--Joe Mondragon--"
"Sure, I know that S.O.B. What's he up to now?"
"He's irrigating his old man's beanfield on the western side of the highway." "So--?"
"None of the land over there that used to have irrigation rights has irrigation rights anymore. I don't know the whole complicated story of how it happened, but it's got to do with the 1935 water compact."
"Sounds to me like the ditch boss, the one you people call the major domo, ought to handle this land of thing," Koontz said. "What could we do about it?" "Maybe you don't understand." Bernabe scratched behind one ear. "It's not like he's just irrigating this little beanfield. There's a lot of people in Milagro, you know, who aren't too happy with the way things are changing there, or down in Chamisaville, or all around the north. Up in Milagro--you've been along the Mi-lagro-Garcia spur, haven't you? You've seen the houses people used to live hi out there, the old farmhouses, and all those fields?"