Short Grass Country

   On a recent Monday, light winds from the south blew a burned grass smell over Mertzon town-site. Fierce gales flamed a big fire across asphalt barrier Highway 160 between Barnhart and Ozona yesterday.

            Reports have already come in of a nine mile-long swath burned on the old Bissett and Hemphill ranch. For herders who’ve been under a burn, there’s no need to add that the new net-wire was crystallized by furnace-like blaze from the tall grasses. Herders who build modern fence know that story.

            On the same Monday morning, word over the wire came that my son Ben’s flight to New York made a forced landing at La Guardia from a fire in the cabin. He’s still a ranch kid, so he called first thing on the ground to learn if the Sunday fires reached our place.

            Appreciate that he is enough of a storyteller that he is giving his material time to formulate. It’s only two hours and one cell call old. Details like the stewardess being too frightened to use the fire extinguishers, or hand Ben one, have to be polished. Matters about seat mates (and I quizzed him on that point to help him expand), needed to develop.

            He is no slouch at telling good stories. A professional spinner, for example, never questions the truth or tests the truth. We know where to sacrifice — where to cross the line and how far to travel once we pass it.

            By the next week, the burned odor lingered over the calf marking work. The acrid grass smell kept us nervous. The sprayer stayed filled in an old pickup. Temperatures climbed above 80 degrees.

            After lunch on the third afternoon, the crew worked seven miles from the headquarters on the largest bunch. Calves hit the chute plenty hard; the men perspired deep and worthy.

            Off on a hill hunting a bull down (dead), I saw a huge billowing smoke rise in the south toward or on a friend of mine.

            Cell phones fail the marking pens or that pasture. Satisfied the bull died from causes other than oilfield toxicity, I took off for the phone at the headquarters to contact help.

            The distance is unknown; just say “60 over roads unsafe at 30.” The morning paper headlines reported 115,000 acres burned on the Plains, giving me enough incentive to fly. Smoke odors filtered into the cab; the foot-feed still had slack. The phone stayed dead.

            At the ranch house, the telephone rang upon my opening the door to announce — now get this right — “Monte, the smoke is a prescribed burn that was unreported to the fire departments or the neighbors. Are you all right?” Now take that phrase down: “unreported to the fire departments or ...”

            Yes, little firebug, incendiary of the prairies, hear this; three of my neighbors on the 09 Divide still take sprayers to grass fires to follow fire trucks, putting out stumps and extinguishing fence posts on other lands. One saw a 46 square-mile ranch burned during the bombing target days of World War II. A 46-section claim that, by the time Congress acted, the family had lost the lease and owed excessive interest.

            Until prescribed burning began, herders came from a long ways to help, especially up on this fire-prone tabosa grass mesa. Ranch women cooked extra food. We stayed over west of Angelo in cedar country once for three nights on a bad one. Three or four hundred sandwiches circulated up the fire lanes.

            After deliberate burning began, we started to have private grass fires only attended by the fire departments and a few neighbors. We never saw the volunteer firemen, or rarely did meet one before they were gone in the truck. But they sure made donating to the cause easy.

            Once the report landed that the smoke was ordered, the fireguard around the ranch house looked half as wide and twice as weed-covered. Seemed less like a guard and more like a trail is the way to put it.

            A burn does bring tender spring shoots in a coarse grass country like the Divide, if we have rain. Kills or sets back big cactus and turns dry broomweeds into a roaring furnace impossible to approach except from the sky.

            Ben called back from New York on the second day after the forced plane landing. He claimed Jet Blue offered him a hundred dollars worth of miles for that little tail spin over La Guardia. (That’s good, “little tailspin.”}

            “The fact my suit smells like soot and the woman in the next seat’s tears salted the sleeve through to my shirt accounts for part of the compensation. I guess the rest is good will.”

            Don’t go away thinking the secret prescribed fire is forgiven. He or she still has apologies to make and someone to accept them.