Cattle In The Cold Desert, Expanded Edition

1. Gray Ocean of Sagebrush

10 The Open Land deWreWghters on hundreds of Wres. On the deadly Haystack burn in northern California they had held Indian Creek Ridge with hand tools when heavy equipment operators turned and ran.5 But local papers often devoted more space to how the Indians danced for rain than to how skillfully they constructed and held Wre lines. Harold“Pete”DavisofSocorro,NewMexico,wasaliaisonoYcerwith a twenty-Wve-man Taos Indian crew. The crew chief, Albert Martinez, rousted his men out of the Taos pueblo early Sunday morning on August 16. Edward Archuleta said good-bye to his wife, Cesarita, and Wve children , and left with the crew to Wght Wres in Elko County for $2.09 per hour. Air Force c-119s airlifted the Taos crew to Elko. Buses took them from the airport to a downtown tourist restaurant where they were fed a steak dinner. The waitress and townspeople in the restaurant were very gladtoseethem.Afterthemeal,theyweretakentotheElkoHighSchool football Weld, which was being used as a staging area, and then transported to the Palisade Wre with a crew of Zia Indians. The Navaho Number 1 crew from Rock Point Trading Post at Chinle, Arizona,hadamoreexcitingexperiencegettingtotheWres.Thecrewwas composed of eighteen-year-olds on their WrstWre and men in their late Wfties who had toured the West Wghting Wres. When they arrived at the Wre, no one knew where the Wre lines were. They also lacked suYcient hand tools. After many delays, paper sleeping bags were distributed. There were not enough bags for the entire group, but they bedded down in the dust as best they could to await the dawn. Twice during the night, thecampwasawakenedbycriesthattheWrewascomingcloserandthey had to move in a mad scramble. For sheer terror, a fast-moving wildWre approachingatthirtymilesperhourinthemiddleofthenightinstrange country is hard to top. The Indian crews were not the only ones on the move at the Boulder Wre on that terror-Wlled Sunday night. The air force had sent tractors equipped with bulldozers to the Wre with airmen, third class, operators freshoutofheavyequipmentschool.Theyhadoperatedtractorsthrough 10 Prologue Gray Ocean of Sagebrush 11 obstacle courses on training grounds, but not in rugged terrain in the dark with the danger of entrapment by fast-moving Wres. The Wre boss putexperiencedIndianWreWghtersonthetractorsbesidetheairmento oVer advice and steady taut nerves. Some of the Southwest Indians had limitedEnglishvocabularies,buttheycalmedthenervesoftheyoungair force men with a look, a nod, a hand on the shoulder. Experienced wildWre Wghters knew the characteristics of sagebrush Wres and tried to use this knowledge to their advantage. Fires burn uphill much better than downhill. Experienced WreWghters never get upslopeofadvancingWres,especiallyiftherearerocksorcliVsaheadthat block their escape. Near Orvada, Nevada, there is a monument to the memory of a crew of ccc men who failed to obey that rule. However, on the Boulder Wre the Xames refused to obey the rules. Flames roared upslopeandcrestedtheridges.Then,insteadofdyingdownasthestandard script prescribes, the Xames rolled down the back slope without evenpausing.FireWghterswereastoundedtoseeXamesadvanceagainst the wind through some trick of convection. TheconvectioncolumnabovetheBoulderWrewassotoweringandso intensely hot that it literally broke up thunderheads. The blazing walls of Xames distilled gases from the sagebrush fuel ahead of the Wre itself. Occasionally,thesegaseswouldexplosivelyignite,causingtheXamesto leapfrog ahead in spectacular fashion. The Brewer’s sparrow is a bird species characteristic of degraded sagebrush rangelands. On the BoulderWre ,WreWghtersreportedseeingBrewer’ssparrowsbeingkickedup fromthesagebrushcoverbyadvancingXames.ThebirdstriedtoXyaway from the oncoming Wre, but the suction created by the updraft impeded their progress until the zone of distilling gases caught up with them. Whenthedistillationzoneignited,thebirdsvanishedinapuVofincandescent gases.6 Ross Ferris, the Wre boss on the Maggie Creek Wre, cussed the whirlwindsonMondayafternoon .I.C.Russelloncedescribedthewhirlwinds thatstartoutonsalt-Xatplayasanddancealongassensuouscolumnsthat Prologue 11 12 The Open Land seem to support the entire summer Nevada sky.7 The whirlwinds that dancedacrosstheMaggieCreekWreweredirtywithashesanddust.They picked up cow chips and pieces of sagebrush bark, some still smoldering . When these embers hit unburned fuel, the Wre was again oV and running. The botanist P. B. Kennedy visited the area of the Maggie Creek Wre in 1901.8 The plant communities of the Maggie Creek watershed he described were largely degraded at that time, but the alien cheatgrass had not yet invaded the area. Now, sixty-three years later, cheatgrass provided the fuel that Xashed the Wre from shrub to shrub. Marion Escobar had come from the Las Vegas oYce of the blm to be Wre boss on the Palisade Wre. He was pleased with the Zia and Taos Indian crews, who built Wre trails so fast that Wre bosses had a hard time stayingoutoftheirway.DespitetheirmaximumeVorts,though,thenew Wreracedoverthehillsatthirty-Wvemilesperhourandeventuallyconsumedthirtythousandacres .Thatnight,PeteDavis...