The Mystery of the Blazing Cliffs - M. V. Carey [5]
For an instant there was a sadness in Detweiler’s eyes. “Very good,” he said. “You’re right. I was foreman at the Armstrong Ranch near Austin, Texas, until Mr. Barron came to visit there last year and hired me away. He made me a good offer, but sometimes this place does seem kind of hedged in.”
Detweiler put his clipboard down on the hood of a pickup truck that stood near the shed. “You boys come all the way from Rocky Beach to help unload this stuff?” he said.
“That’s pretty generous of you. Don’t know as I’d have done the same when I was your age. But then maybe you’re curious about the ranch?”
Jupiter nodded eagerly, and Detweiler grinned.
“Okay,” said Detweiler. “If you’ve got time, I’ll show you around. It’s an interesting place—not your usual run-of-the-mill truck farm.”
The foreman led the way into the shed where the purchases from the salvage yard were being stored. Konrad and the boys saw a warehouse that was crammed to the rafters with all sorts of objects, from machine parts to leather hides to bolts of cloth.
Next door to the warehouse was a smaller building that housed a machine shop. There the visitors were introduced to John Aleman, a snub-nosed young man who was the mechanic for the ranch.
“John keeps our vehicles running and all our machinery in order,” said Detweiler.
“Course, he shouldn’t be here. He should be out designing big power plants and irrigation systems.”
“Kind of hard to get a job designing a power plant when you quit school after the tenth grade,” said Aleman, but he didn’t seem unhappy.
Next to the machine shop were sheds used for food storage, and beyond these was a dairy barn which was empty at this hour.
“We have Guernseys here on the ranch,” said Detweiler. “Right now the herd is grazing in the pasture up at the north end, under the dam. We have beef cattle, too, and sheep and pigs and chickens. And of course we’ve got horses.”
Detweiler went on to the stable, where a sandy-haired young woman named Mary Sedlack was crouched in a stall next to a handsome palomino stallion. She had the horse’s left rear hoof in her hands, and she was frowning at something she saw in the frog of the horse’s foot.
“Mary tends to our animals when they get sick,” said Detweiler. “Other times she just plain babies them.”
“Better stand back,” the girl warned. “Asphodel gets nervous if he thinks somebody’s crowding him.”
“Asphodel is one temperamental horse,” said Hank Detweiler. “Mary’s the only one who can get anywhere near him.”
Detweiler and the visitors retreated to the parking area, where they got into a small sedan. Detweiler drove slowly out along a dirt track that ran north through the fields, away from the storage buildings.
“Forty-seven people work here on the ranch,” said the foreman. “That’s not counting the children, of course, or the people Mr. Barron considers his own personal staff —
specialists like Mary and John — and the supervisors. I’m the chief supervisor, and I’m responsible for everything that comes in here or goes out. Then there’s Rafael Banales.”
Detweiler waved to a thin, not very tall man who stood at the edge of a field where labourers were planting some sort of crop. “Rafe is in charge of the field workers. He is one very progressive farmer. He’s a graduate of the University of California at Davis.”
They went on, and Detweiler showed them the small building where John Aleman was experimenting with solar energy. He pointed to the slopes under the cliffs to the east, several miles away, where beef cattle grazed. He came at last to a lush green pasture beyond the fields of carrots and lettuce and peppers and marrows. The dairy herd was there, and beyond the pasture was a cement dam.
“We have our own water supply for emergencies,