There were also no clues to tell which driver had crossed the solid yellow line, or why. Presumably one or the other, or both, had either swerved to avoid the deer or had struck it and lost control due to the impact. Similarly, forensic experts were unable to determine if the truck driver's ability had been chemically impaired, due to the total incineration of the bodies in the fuel-fed fire. His fellow drivers, who also made that boring run a half dozen times a day hauling Clear Creek asbestos to the plant in San Ardo, knew that that driver chose to break the boredom by nursing a fifth of Scotch. It was a tedious job driving that route, and the area was so isolated that the big trucks normally had the narrow, winding two-lane road to themselves, and so some of the younger drivers did use drugs or alcohol to get through the day. But of course that information was not given to the CHP investigating the accident, although it was common talk in bars from down in Paso Robles up to Salinas for several months after the accident.
And so Monty had inherited the ranch from his father, as his father had inherited it before. Although Monty's grandfather had not listened to his doctor, who told him that his cigarette habit would kill him, he had listened to his accountant who told him he had to plan for the future of the ranch. He had worked with a very good local attorney who specialized in inheritance tax laws, particularly as they related to ranch land. Unlike many other children who inherited from large landowners, Monty was not put in the position of having to sell the ranch to pay taxes. The attorney had warned Monty that taxes could at best be postponed, and that he needed to think about producing some offspring if he wished to have any hope of not having a large part of the ranch sold for taxes some day. Monty had smiled, and said that he'd take that under advisement and that he was working on it. Thinking of that now, he winced, realizing that he would be 30 on his next birthday and that there was currently absolutely nothing going on in his life which would lead to his ever having children to inherit the ranch.
Bothered by that thought more than he wanted to admit, Monte swung Buck around onto the trail with rougher motions than he normally used, and the horse, sensing that his master was upset about something, responded by moving more briskly than usual as he started down the trail. As he had on the way up the mountain, Monte let his gaze drift along the straight line of the 4-strand barbed wire fence, looking for the tell-tale signs of trouble: a sagging wire, a fallen tree near the fence, a gap between two fence posts where there should be taut wire. One of the worst fences he had ever seen had been built around a little 40-acre parcel some city people had bought nearby. They had wanted to fence out the neighbor's cattle, and had gone to all the trouble and expense of buying and installing fence posts and a 4-wire barbed wire fence, like the ranch fences they saw around them. Unfortunately, they had not noticed nor learned that the wire had to be stretched guitar-string tight to have any value: they had pulled it by hand, and the neighbors' cows soon found no problem in putting their heads, then their necks, and finally their entire bodies between the sagging wires. For cows, the grass really is always greener on the other side, and if a cattleman was interested in keeping cows on the right side of his fence, he had to constantly check to ensure that there were no breaks or sagging spots which would allow some aggressive cow to reach under, over, or through to the extent that the minor break would soon be enlarged so that an entire herd of cows could go where they didn't belong.