A Nose for Justice Read Online Free PDF

Basque hearts today, pulverized any hopes of self-governance.
    Enrique, however, cared little about his genetic heritage. This is hardly uncommon even among those who live in their genetic culture. His world was Jeep’s world. She and Dorothy “Dot” Jocham, her deceased partner, were the only parents he had known. Enrique was a Nevada cowboy through and through—with exceptional building and mechanical skills. The ferocious storm was testing them.
    The path between his house and the stables was packed-down snow. He’d shoveled it twice already but the continued snowfall convinced him this was futile. So he fired up the 500hp ATV and ran back and forth over the path, packing it down. Then he did the same for a walkway between his house and the main house, another to the cattle sheds, and yet another to the first barn built on the ranch, the one undergoing reconstruction.
    Power stayed on. A godsend.
    Stock came first. Throwing hay, checking water troughs, and chopping ice consumed the dark day. Low, dark clouds made it feel like six o’clock in the evening. Winter made every moment of light precious, each day another minute lost until the solstice in two weeks.
    He walked into the property’s original barn, snow still falling. A huge gas tank fueled a heat unit that looked like an open-ended torpedo. The open end flickered red, blue, and white with the gas flame. The flame roared—you couldn’t hear yourself think—but it warmed a large area.
    “Shit!” Enrique exclaimed as he pushed open the doors so he could get in the ATV.
    One of the workers on Jeep’s barn restoration had left the heat unit on. Its gas tank was enormous so it kept going. The other farmhands, all trapped in their houses off Wings Ranch, probably wouldn’t get to work for a good two days. Enrique figured it would be at least that long before Red Rock Road, then Dry Valley Road, and finally Dixie Lane would be plowed.
    Still cursing, he walked over to cut off the unit, stopped, and looked down at his feet. The ground was unfrozen around the heater. That part of the aisle and the back end of a former stall near the gas looked relatively workable. He and the boys had been digging out the stalls and center aisle. They wanted to go down three feet to lay eight-inch-diameter ceramic drainage pipes. Jeep’s intent was to restore the exterior of the stable to its pristine form, as well as re-create the interior as it would have looked in the1880s, with beautiful brass fittings. However, the barn would still be modern and functional in terms of drainage, plumbing, electricity, and footing. Drainage pipes would run under each stall. Each stall would have a pipe on a downward grade to the center aisle. Two large drains in the aisle and a large underground ceramic pipe running the length of the barn would carry waste to a septic tank. The manure would be handled as it had been since before Xenophon, by picking out the stalls.
    He plucked a spade hanging on a hook on the wall. Tools hung neatly in a row. This would be changed later when they’d hang in a small storage room off the aisle. People or horses could back into tools not tucked safely away. At this stage of construction there was only the metal sheet exterior covering the original clapboard, which were planks hauled by rail from California, off-loaded at Reno Junction, then carried here by mule wagons. To have a clapboard barn screamed filthy rich. The Ford brothers put their money in the front window. Jeep, rich herself, proved more circumspect. Her argument was that Wings Ranch should be what it was in the beginning. Nevada was owed its heritage.
    Enrique nudged the soil with the spade tip. The stall had already been dug down two feet. The soil gave way easily. He pulled off his old blanket-lined jacket and started digging. There wasn’t much else he could do. The stock would come in the other barns at nightfall. In these conditions, animals could tell better than the humans when it truly was