My grandfather dug the first channel of that creek by hand in the winter of 1912, and eighty years later a man in a pressed shirt slid a form across my kitchen table and told me to sign on the third page without reading it.
His name was Sturgis. He ran the big operation that borders mine on the east side, the one that had swallowed three smaller ranches in the last decade the way a spring flood swallows a fence line. He was not a cruel man to look at. He had a soft handshake and a way of smiling that made you feel he was doing you a favor just by standing in your kitchen. But I have lived sixty-six years on this land, and I have learned that the men who do the most damage are almost never the ones who raise their voices.
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