In Plain Sight

Joe knew it was true. Robey knew more than he probably wanted to. As county prosecutor, Robey was aware of things that he likely wished he wasn’t. But as a good man, one who valued actual justice as opposed to process, Robey had chosen simply not to ask certain questions of Joe when he had a right, and a duty, to ask them. Because of that, Joe was fiercely loyal to his friend.

THE TOPIC TURNED to the purpose of the meeting in the first place.

“It’s the curse of the third generation,” Robey said, shaking his head and absently rolling the beer bottle between the palms of his hands. “I don’t know if there is a worse thing in the West than that.”

Robey paused and glanced up at Joe. His face looked haunted. “Did I ever tell you the main reason I left private practice and ran for county attorney?”

“Let me guess,” Joe said facetiously. “Would it be . . . the curse of the third generation?”

“That would be it,” Robey said. “It’s a pattern you can pretty much predict. When I first got my license, I was involved in way too many of these cases, and it just about killed me. It works this way: A matriarch or patriarch establishes the original ranch, and passes it along to the firstborn. The heir inherits land and power, and it feels different to him because he didn’t have to fight for it or earn it. It’s his by birthright, but he’s close enough to the founders that the initial struggle still resonates. But from then on, everything starts to get comfortable. This works the same way with family-owned companies. But if we’re talking about ranches, and we are, it gets more personal than if it was a shoe factory, because on a ranch everyone lives together and eats together. Sometimes, the second generation is smart and appreciates what they’ve got and how they got it, and plans ahead. You know—they form corporations or partnerships or something.” Robey paused to take a long pull of his beer before resuming, and Joe marveled at how engaged his friend was with the subject, how much he had obviously thought about it, how it concerned him.

“So,” Robey contined, “the third generation inherits a going concern but they really don’t give a shit about how they got it. The third generation splinters. A couple of the sons and daughters want to keep the place, and the others want to do something else. So when it comes time to figure out who owns what, the lawyers are called in to battle it out. It’s like couples who divorce without considering the best interests of the children because they’re so bitter. But instead of children, we’re talking about the ranch itself. There is only so much land in the world, it’s finite. Especially good, scenic, or productive land that can’t speak for itself. The litigation gets so messy that sometimes it’s unbelievable. Other people want that land, that asset. So we’ve got brothers against brothers and sisters against sisters. You can really see the worst in human nature in a situation like that, and you just want to grab those idiots and knock their heads together and say ‘Wake up! Look what you’re doing to a place your ancestors put all of their sweat and blood into!’”

Robey rose and pretended he was grasping litigants by their necks and smashing their heads together. Joe looked around to see if anyone at the bar was watching. Fortunately, they weren’t.

Joe said, “And when it comes to our situation here with the Scarletts and the Thunderhead Ranch, we’ve got the curse in spades, right?”

“It’s like the curse has gone nuclear,” Robey said. “In this case, the original ranch was established in the eighteen-eighties, which was when most of the big ranches got going in our part of the country. Before statehood, and before homesteaders started spreading their wings. For the Thunderhead Ranch, a man named Homer Scarlett left West Virginia and used a small inheritance to buy what was then a small five-thousand-acre ranch on the river.”

“That would be the original Thunderhead Ranch?” Joe asked.

Robey shook his head. “Nope, the Thunderhead was the ranch next door at the time. Homer Scarlett, the great-grandfather, acquired it through somewhat dubious means—I think he won a big chunk of it in a poker game or something—and added it to his own holdings. He picked up five or six other small ranches along the way, and kept adding on. He was ruthless, from what I’ve heard. But he was also a hell of a businessman, because he thrived when others around him were going broke. As he added property, he put them all under the umbrella of the Thunderhead Ranch, I guess because he liked the name. Pretty soon, Scarlett owned sixty thousand acres outright and another hundred thousand acres on long-term lease from the government. He used his influence to make Saddlestring the county seat, and for a while there they almost renamed this town Scarlettville. Did you know that?”

Joe shook his head. “No. How do you know all of this?”