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at the Depot. What did your tribe do, call you in since you’re with the Army or something? Them lands belong to taxpaying people of this county. Not some so-called sovereign Indian nation that’s going to put up another casino, another gas station, and another cigarette store and not pay taxes on any of it!”
    Jake tossed his head back and mockingly laughed. Now he got it — the pending sale of the abandoned Seneca Army Depot lands, a sprawling weapons storage facility not a mile to the west. He should have known this was coming out of left field. The volunteer’s anti-Indian helmet sticker said it all.
    “Listen,” replied Jake, with a wry grin and tepid tone. “You seriously must be on meth or something to make a leap like that. I just happened to be driving through, heard the radio call, and acted. So next time, before you soil my race and my uniform, you better think twice about wagging that little tongue of yours.”
    The volunteer’s upper lip curled. His jaw muscles twitched. He was just about to spit something back when the captain walked up.
    “Get your ass back to the truck now!” barked the fire officer. He wore a stone cold expression on his face. The volunteer immediately huffed off into the swamp without saying a word.
    The captain turned to Jake, hiding his eyes under the rim of his red helmet. In a low voice of utter embarrassment, he said, “I apologize about firefighter Owens, sir. He does not represent the views of our department.”
    Jake shook his head. “Captain, all I have to say is good timing because his jaw was as good as broken with one more piece of bullshit coming out of his mouth.”
    The captain looked up. “Sir, I wish you would have. I wouldn’t have stopped you. None of the cops would have either. Tommy Owens is our resident no-brains jackass. Every department has one. Problem is we need all the vollies we can get because of manpower shortages. And sometimes they aren’t the brightest crayon in the box.”
    “Listen, I hear you,” replied Jake. He cooled his tone with a light chuckle. “You should see some of the loose nuts we recruit in the Army. Believe me, a high school diploma is a terrible thing to waste.” He smiled and shook hands with the captain indicating no harm was done.
    “Thanks Major. I appreciate your understanding. Listen, the state police investigator said to not to leave the scene until she gets your statement.”
    “Figured that.”
    The captain walked off, wishing Jake good luck with everything. But inside Jake still simmered at the volunteer’s ignorance. He knew the broken treaty land claims, in reference to property the Iroquois lost after the American Revolution, had been a hot button issue in New York State for decades, but he had never come face to face with the emotions it had brewed. Tempers on both sides of the fight had always been high, especially on the issues of sovereignty, tax collection, and gambling. At one boiling point years ago, riots even had to be suppressed by the State Police on the Onondaga Nation south of Syracuse. And eventually, lives were lost during a Mohawk tribal stand off up in the Adirondacks. Finally, cooler heads had prevailed, and in 2006 all land claim lawsuits were put to rest with a Supreme Court ruling against the Indians. But now the pending sale of the interior of the abandoned Seneca Army Depot raised the slumbering political beast back to the surface once again. It was a story Jake had been following off and on simply because of the military history attached to the famous Army facility.
    Constructed in the 1940s between the two largest Finger Lakes, the sprawling 10,000-acre base had served the important role as a storage installation for every piece of weaponry and ammunition in the U.S. Army’s arsenal since World War II. The Depot, as locals named it, later became the transshipment point for nuclear bombs and missiles servicing the entire eastern theater of military operations. The Department of