RED, GREEN, OR MURDER - Poisoned Pen Press (UK)

42 Steven F. Havill
“Herb’s good for it,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.” Pat
signed in cramped, angular printing, and I gave him Herb’s copy
marked “paid”, which would make the state bookkeepers cringe
if they knew. But they didn’t need to know. I included one of
my business cards as well. “I can’t imagine anybody giving you
grief, but if you have any problems, give me a call.”
“You bet. Thanks.”
With the great work of the state finished, I left the H-Bar-T
ranch and drove north on County Road 14, a rough, jouncing
ride that I usually avoided. But this particular day, it felt good
to be out and away. The sky was touched here and there with jet
trails that wafted out and turned into wispy clouds, the wind just
enough to occasionally kick up a little dust and whip it around
in tiny devils. I ambled along with the SUV’s windows open.
A mile north, beyond Herb’s last section fence, dust blew
off the tops of fresh tracks that had turned off the main road.
The derrick of a well-driller’s rig rose above the runty piñon and
juniper a few hundred yards to the east. It surprised me that
someone imagined that there was still water left under that dry
patch of desert. Nosy as ever, I turned and followed the tracks.
The trail wound along the flank of San Patricio Mesa, dodging
stands of cacti, water-stressed juniper, creosote bush, and the
occasional snarl of stunted oak. Amid a growing litter of beer
cans, plastic oil jugs, plastic bags and similar touches of human
grace, the two-track headed up a particularly picturesque canyon.
It couldn’t continue in that direction for long, since the jumbled
rock of the mesa edge reared up in the way.
A tawny swale of dry bunch grass had been flattened to dust
by traffic, and the drill rig sat on its hydraulic feet, a flood of
dried, cracked slurry paving the area around the drill hole. I
parked and gazed at the rig, thinking this a damn odd place for
a water well. The bulk of San Patricio Mesa protected the area
from the breezes unless the wind was from the northeast, and
the last time we’d had a ‘downeaster’ in southern New Mexico,
the ice age was in control. A windmill in this spot would sit idle
most of the time.