Johnny Allred paused one last time to look the place over--the old stone ranch house, the spring with its leaky stock tank, the leaning bunkhouse made of old railroad ties--all of it once his. Settling down into the hard metal seat, he pushed the stick forward, dropped the blade of the old D4 Caterpillar bulldozer, and got to work. This would be the last time for him, now that the place was sold--his last few days working the Allred Ranch, the 2 Lazy-4-U.

Spitting a wad of brown chew out and nearly hitting his beat-up Texarkana cowboy boots, he stomped on the left brake, turning the old yellow machine toward the corrals. He'd worked this place for years, all his life really, channeling the spring, making a nice flat spot for the cattle loading chute, that kind of thing.

He'd gradually put the place in order, making it one of the nicest spots around, a pleasant ranch with big Fremont cottonwoods protectively bending over the old house. To the locals, the mesa was called "Johnny's Up In the Rocks," shortened from the original "Johnny's Place Way Up There on the Mesa in the Redrocks." That particular Johnny had been his crusty old grandfather, who had homesteaded the place long ago.

Ironically enough, Johnny thought, all his work had contributed to the place's downfall. Who would've thought this redrock-strewn mesa would have fallen into the greed of somebody who didn't know a gnat's ass from a jackass? He spat again, this time with more force.

And now, as part of the sales agreement, he was supposed to keep working on the ranch even though he didn't even own it, cleaning up some of his hundred-year-old "junk" and hauling out the old composted piles of cow manure from the corrals. Hell, those piles were so old they didn't even smell unless you stirred them up. Besides, cow manure should be part and parcel of a cattle ranch. He spat again indisgust.

As he turned the old Cat in through the corral gate, he accidentally caught the edge of the blade on a brace, pulling an old juniper post out of the ground. He cussed and jumped off the machine.

Johnny was bitter, even though he was now a wealthy man. The damn bank was the one who'd told him he had to come back and clean up the place, not the new owner. Shoot, the new owner had told him that he liked the "rustic" look of the ranch and wanted to preserve it. That was, of course, back when the bastard was still trying to deal directly with Johnny, writhing around Johnny like a rattlesnake high-centered on a prickly pear. Johnny pulled himself back up onto the Cat and commenced pushing manure from one pile into another.

Rotten and green underneath, the odor made him take out his bandanna and wrap it around his face. The stronger the smell of methane got, the more combustible Johnny's temper got until he was ready to explode. In the course of scraping the corral, he managed to pick up a tangle of old barbed wire and get it twisted in the edges of the blade. Trying to lift it off, he cussed the fool who'd left it there, probably his own long-gone father, then gave up and put the old machine in reverse.

As he backed up, the involved mass (probably collectible barbed wire in places like Santa Fe, if he'd only known) pulled tighter. Johnny gunned the Cat, and finally his right track found traction, the whole shebang jerked backwards, and the barbed wire pulled free, followed by a thundering crash--it hadtaken the corner post of the barn with it. The wire had been wrapped around an old cable which had somehow mysteriously been joined to the hundred-year-old building.

Johnny sat there in awe for a minute, then drove over to the barn, attached a chain to the other side of the wobbling structure, and commenced to "clean up the place." After all, that's what they'd wanted.

It took most of the day to raze the old house, scatter the old posts of the corrals, and finish off the barn. He never did get around to spreading out those manure piles - but shoot, without the corral, they now looked like Indian burial mounds, so maybe the new owner could capitalize on that. Finallyfinished, he grabbed a handful of rabbitbrush seed and threw it to the breeze, which blew it around the rubble that just this morning was the historic Allred Ranch Headquarters.

"There, I done cleaned up and reclaimed the place, you damned sumsabitches rich weasels," he said, forgetting for a minute that he himself was now a millionaire.

As he drove the old D4 slowly down the steep hill, he looked back only once. That was to study the huge boulder that had sat poised over the road for a thousand years or more, ready to roll anytime. Johnny drove back up the hill and let 'er rip.

***

The difference between John Allred and the man who'd bought the Allred Ranch was that Johnny had gotten rich by accident. He really hadn't ever thought about it much, other than to wonder once in awhile what it would feel like not to worry about blizzards each spring during calving--and then there were the bank payments he'd had to start making when cattle took a dive on the market. As he parked his old white Ford pickup in front of the County Courthouse, John wondered if a million dollars stacked up would reach to the moon.

He was early. He collapsed into a seat in the front row of the County Council room, ignoring the "Reserved" sign. A few other people began trickling in. The room soon filled.

Maxine Townsend sat down in Row 11 and began working on what would be her 47th afghan--she was getting bolder, this one being a gold and black zigzag pattern. Her husband, Jerry, sat next to her, waiting for the meeting to begin, cracking walnuts, nudging the hulls under the seat ahead of him with the toe of his Herman Survivors.

Gary, the publisher of the local paper, squeezed Jerry's shoulder, sat down next to him, and asked, "Hey Jerry, were you at the Allred Ranch auction yesterday? I wanted to go but had to cover that story on those women running around half-naked to save those trees up on the mountain. I sure hated to miss the auction."

"I bet you did," grinned Jerry.

Gary asked, "Is it true you boys bid the place up to over a million?"

Jerry, knowing everything he said was fair game for the morning news, answered, "Maybe."

Gary smiled, "God knows none of you boys have a nickel in the bank. What did you do, sell those collectible old pickups you all drive? Man, you must've been damn sure that city boy wanted the place."

Jerry replied, "We were." He cracked another walnut and smiled, recalling the feeling of reckless abandon they'd all had at the bidding table, an abandon that they'd never feel again, that they'd yearn for, but that would never be matched in their weekly poker games.

The crowd waited until finally, an hour late in a ploy to get people to leave, the development team arrived.

The man who'd bought the Allred Ranch sat down in the front row, two seats from John, who was now right in the middle of a cadre of lawyers from New York. Johnny looked tired, the dust and dirt on his clothes contrasting with the expensive suits around him. He had oil on his right sleeve from the D4 Cat--the oil tank sat on the right fender and always leaked, slowly dripping onto the driver.

The meeting was called to order, and the first hour was devoted to a Power Point presentation by the New York team, charts and bar graphs designed to show the people of Radium how much better off they'd be with luxury houses and a "wilderness" lodge up at Johnny's Up In the Rocks.

With each point, the speaker would pause to let his "facts" sink in, and another walnut would bite the dust. Jerry's knack for making the crack sound like a rifle shot was legendary, feared by his opponents at such meetings. During one especially important point (explaining how this project would improve the economic viability of Radium through some sort of base-job multiplier), a walnut shell shot out from under Jerry's heavy sole, ricocheted across the room, and lodged itself in the center of the projection screen.

The meeting was opened for public comment.

A tall well-weathered man stood in the back, hands in jeans pockets, wearing a brown suede Western-cut vestwith white shirt. He resolutely walked to the front, smiled a wolfish smile through his scruffy gray-streaked beard, listened dutifully as he was told

he had three minutes, then nodded to the audience, especially Jerry, and spoke.

"Fellow river rats, desert rats, and just plain sewer rats," he nodded again towards Row 1, "true wealth is about to be visited upon us, we undeserving and humble people of Radium--but not wealth for us, as would be the democratic way."

He paused, fingering his bolo tie strings, the tie clasp made of gem-quality dino-bone, found and polished by himself.

"Friends, we've all experienced the bliss of poverty, and we all know about Radium Fever--it's easy to survive here, but hard to get rich. So you live like God meant man to live- enjoy life and go sit in theriver clothed only in your voluntary poverty."

He paused for a moment, a bit nervous. "But now that's about to end, as our destiny changes and we become toadies to the rich and puissant who will make our taxes and the price of the already worthless 3.2 beer in this town go up."

"Damn sumsabitches rich weasels," Johnny muttered from the first row, sleeve bleeding oil onto the chair arm.

Encouraged, the speaker continued, "And we can sit on our backwards asses and look up to the glittering towers rising from Johnny's Up In the Rocks, monuments to those rich inbred bastards, and then we can go clean their toilets in their oxymoronic wilderness lodge--or we can put an end to this here and now, running them outta town, symbolically at least, although I myself prefer the concrete and specific."

"Yes!" yelled a woman in Row 12, a wiry mountain biker who lived on latte, Power Bars, and vitamins.

"Let us pray," the man was gaining confidence now, "pray that God sends down his angel Macaroni or whatever you Mormon folk call him,"

"Moroni!!" yelled someone from Row 5 - "sends down his angel Moroni, to burn and blast out every one of these blasphemous liars. And while he's at it, have him deal

with these sacrilegious councilmen here, backsliders from the Church of Our Holy Redrock, our elected representatives who will undoubtedly sell us to hell tonight."

"Amen, brother," called someone from Row 7.

"Companeros," he continued, "here we sit, smack in the middle of country God created as a tribute to Himself. If those of us who live in the middle of God's Cathedral can't find it within ourselves to give a rat's-ass about it, then who in hell will? Are we so wicked that we'll condone (hell, even aid and abet) a damn money-changer right in the Temple?"

"Preach it, brother!" shouted the Baptist Deacon in Row 14.

"Even a frog has the brains to not piss in his own pond. Sure, there've been lots of times we've cussed Johnny here, cussed him when his damned hooved-locomotives laid tracks (or worse) all around our springs of Living Water. But cattle come and go, they're transitory beasts without much in the way of brains, just like ourselves. But friends, construction is permanent destruction, and we, fools that we are, are only just beginning to comprehend the intricacies of the Creation of God."

The speaker paused, bowed his head, and said in a voice so soft everyone practically stopped breathing in order to hear him, "And now, we have among us a man who can't even comprehend what he's about to destroy."

He turned to the developer in Row 1 and quietly, intimately, asked, "Sir, have you ever spent an evening leaning against an old Willys Jeep looking up at the stars, surrounded by the shadows of pinon trees? You ever watched a red-tailed hawk gliding on the thermals against a sky so blue it makes you dizzy? Have you?"

The developer looked ahead, stony and expressionless.

Now the speaker's voice rose again. "I'd bet my last night on this earth with a woman that you haven't, you spawn of crooked Republicans whose idea of saving the wilderness is to collect limited-edition endangered-species prints. And now it's time for us, the insignificant people of this little insignificant town, to stand up to greed, the greed from without and the greed from within!"

"What can we do, we're powerless!" asked someone in Row 10.

"We're not powerless, we're..."

"Yer time's up," said the monitor.

"Spineless," an old ex-miner in Row 6 finished the sentence.

As the speaker returned to the back, Johnny spat in disgust, the chew landing in the open briefcase next to him.

In the end, after two hours of public comment, every single speaker was opposed to the project except a real estate agent and the State Liquor Store manager (both exhibiting true bravery to even get up and speak).

When the County Commissioners finally voted, the only dissenting vote was that of Millie Davis, owner of the Spotted Dog Ranch down by the river, whose business depended on the river guides who opposed the project.

Some called her vote an act of courage, others called it cowardice. In either case, it had no effect on the outcome. The project was overwhelmingly approved.

Soon after, Alaska gold-nugget jewelry, not available in any Radium store, became fashionable among the comishes' wives. Not surprisingly, Commissioner Millie Davis never received hers.

***

The next morning, up on Johnny's Up In the Rocks, the Ute holy man walked through the ruins of the old ranch, somber, reflective. In his beaded buckskin glove he held a mullen torch, carefully selected from the autumn-dried reeds near the spring.

The elder knew that this rugged and harsh land demanded a deep respect--deeper than Brother Beaver, the builder from New York, could give. Now he would offer a gift to this land, sacred to his ancestors.

The mesa, when littered with scorched trees, "wouldn't do" for those who demanded pristine views with their Chateau Briand and Grey Poupon.

Courage and strength come from fearful charrings, he mused, taking a small tin of peppermints from his Levi-jacket pocket. Someday the beauty would return to this place once known to the Utes as the Place Way Up High Where Sun's Fire Lingers.

Quietly, he began a holy chant, then stopped, noticing he'd lost his "Strike It Rich" book matches from the Towoac Casino. He backtracked, but the matches were nowhere to be found.

He laid the torch down. Perhaps it was a sign, he thought, a sign that it was not his decision to make.

Looking up, he noticed a storm in the distance, huge thunderheads hanging over the Salt Mountains, foreboding and laced with lightning. He smiled.

Standing, he began to dance, slow and methodic, a sacred rain dance he'd learned years ago from his Hopi friends. "Damn thing never worked before," he thought, but who knows, today might be different. May the Great Spirit speak and lightning rain down, then no one would hold it against a tired old Indian, it would be the will of the Great One.

He began hiking back down to the valley below as the winds picked up.

***

At that moment Barry, the New York developer, walked up Base Street, then opened the door to the upscale Base Cafe, next to Kool Fashions and the Hotel Off-Base. Barry didn't realize it, but he'd been the first person to unify Radium since the Ute Indian

attack in 1878.

Barry ordered a breakfast of waffles, then put his ear to his cell phone, working out the details for the purchase of a nice little condo out by the golf course. It would do until he could build his wife's dream house up at Johnny's Up In the Rocks, now dubbed "Eagles Nest--Above the Rest, A Gated Community."

Shortly after Barry ordered his waffles, Johnny walked into the cafe with Millie and sat down at a cloth-covered table with Wayne and Eric, both volunteer firefighters. The waitress, a pretty woman named Emily who was married to Eric, brought them coffee.

"Where you living these days, Johnny?" Wayne asked.

"I've got my old camper parked over at Millie's ranch, but I'm gonna have to move soon--those no-see-ums are starting to bite." Johnny replied.

"Shoot, John, why don't you just tuck it in and go buy yourself a house, now that you can afford it?" asked Eric.

"I'm gonna hold off and buy me a lot up in that new development," Johnny grinned, looking towards Barry, who obviously hadn't been up to see the reclaimed Allred Ranch Headquarters yet.

Just then, Wayne's cell phone buzzed. He talked for a second, then said, "We got a problem, something up at your old place, Johnny, a fire."

He then casually leaned back, sipping his coffee. "You wouldn't want to skip this good breakfast, would you Eric? They wouldn't have us up there otherwise, so to hell with 'em. Gated community my ass. It's un-American."

A thick wondrous cloud of black smoke rose from Johnny's Up In the Rocks. Below, the people of Radium watched as flames danced on the rim. They were helpless to stop the fire, road blocked by a huge red sandstone boulder (its fall an apparent act of God). Flames licked the sky in a fascinating and macabre dance of light, death, molecular transformation.

Hours later, a slow rain hissed the smoldering embers to silence. Below, in town, the Ute elder grimaced, studying yet another "End of the Trail" statue at the TeePee Art Gallery. He guessed he'd go get a veggie burger at the Radium Diner, then head on home.

Chinle Miller can be reached at chinlemiller@yahoo.com