"The 3 S's for dealing with predators are shoot, shovel, and shut up," was the advice Monty had heard one speaker give off-the-record at an alfalfa-growers conference. That was the method used by most ranchers. The problem was handled quietly (except for the loud boom of a high-powered rifle late at night) and talked about only among themselves. The ranches were so large and the distances so great that there was virtually no chance that a sheriff's deputy or a game warden would be anywhere near in the middle of the night to observe the unlawful act. And so tonight, aided by a full moon so that he wouldn't need to use lights, Monty would take care of this pig predation problem before it grew to threaten his livelihood.
At the barn, Monty swung down from the saddle, his long legs accomplishing this maneuver with a grace which spoke of thousands of past repetitions. He undid the cinch, then reached up to grasp the saddle horn with his left hand, the cantle in his right, the little finger on each hand hooked under the edge of the colorful Navajo-style blanket beneath. His biceps, shoulder, and chest muscles, which had been built up by lifting 130-pound 3-wire hay bales, barely tensed as he lifted and swung the heavy saddle off in one fluid motion. He carried it in to the saddle rack, having let the reins fall to the ground in front of Buck. Even though there was fragrant alfalfa hay nearby, the big buckskin remained motionless where his rider had dismounted. He had been trained to be ground-tied, but the moment Monty scooped up the reins Buck eagerly stepped toward the gate to his pasture, knowing that once the hackamore had been slipped over his ears he would get his reward for the day's work.
With his horse and tack taken care of, Monty headed for the main house for a hot shower and dinner. But his path took him past the little old original ranch house, and what he saw as he rounded the corner seemed guaranteed to make him change that to a cold shower - a very long, icy-cold shower. It was Mercedes, the young wife of his hired hand Roberto, and she was taking down clothes which had been hung on the line to dry in the afternoon sun.
For the first year after his parents' death, Monty had thrown himself into ranch work, working alone outdoors from earliest light until it grew too dark to see, then on projects in or around the buildings under lights. But he had seen that there were a lot of jobs which really could be done better with two people, so he had hired a succession of men who stayed for a time, then drifted on. A few years ago a neighbor had mentioned a hard-working young Mexican who was looking for a place to live, and Monty had checked him out. Roberto was eager and ambitious, and when they met each had liked what he saw in the other. Since ranch work wasn't all-consuming, they adopted a flexible schedule so that Roberto was free to register with his cousin, a farm labor contractor in King City. Whenever the cousin got a particularly lucrative job lined up with the potential of high earnings through piecework or overtime, he made a phone call. Unless there was some especially pressing ranch work, Monty always sent his cowboy off to pick up some extra cash. If it was work which was not too heavy, Mercedes went too. Neither of them spent money smoking or drinking, and although they loved their relatives' kids, they were postponing children until they had enough money to buy a house of their own. Monty was glad to help them realize their dream, and he enjoyed Roberto's company when they worked together. He rarely saw Mercedes, since he was usually away from the buildings, and when he did, she was just a figure in the distance wearing jeans and a shirt. But today when he rounded the corner of the house she was not more than twenty feet away, and today she was not wearing jeans and a shirt.