That made her smile.
They were on the outskirts of Templeton again, coming back in. Hauck noticed the high school. Like every thing else around here it looked dated and run-down. A one-level-brick-and-glass building. Vintage seventies.
“Look at that …” His eye was drawn to something as they went past.
There was a big new football field with fancy bleachers and a state-of-the-art scoreboard. Large enough for everyone who lived in this godforsaken town, and half the county, too. A big GO MUSTANGS! sign at the top of the scoreboard. Maybe in Texas, Hauck was thinking, where Friday night football was king. Or one of those showcase high schools in Denver or Boulder. But what was it doing here?
My boy’s captain of the team. They’ve won the league championship twice. He’s heading off to play at CSU.
“What?” Dani asked, turning to see what he was referring to.
“Nothing.” He looked at it again in the rearview mirror as they drove on.
The second time through, the town didn’t get any less run-down. The main street looked as rickety as if a loud clap of thunder would bring it down. Which wouldn’t necessarily have been a terrible thing, Hauck thought. Templeton was a town of ranchers and farmers, and there clearly wasn’t a whole lot of ranching or farming happening. Ten years from now it might not even be on the map.
Except for the damn football field.
As they went through town, they noticed something else, too. A beautiful park. It was clearly new, with pretty plantings, sloping down to the river. Almost like a town green. There was a large gazebo and an outdoor public stage, maybe for concerts. A cool-looking playground for the kids, with a skateboard park. More green than there was in the rest of the town all together. In fact, it was about the only thing of beauty in it.
“I bet it’s the place to be during the Potato Festival,” Dani joked as they went by.
“Yeah. Hard to figure why, though.” Something just wasn’t making full sense to Hauck. As Allie said, most of the town looked like it was the place time forgot.
“Why do you have to try and figure out the reason, Uncle Ty?” Dani turned to him. “It’s just pretty. That’s all.”
He glanced at her and smiled. “You’re right.”
They stopped and had coffee. And a freshly baked apple crisp. Then they got back in the car and continued past a couple of motels. These both looked really run-down. They kept driving, toward Greeley, another sixteen miles, following the low-lying river.
“So where are we going now?”
“To look for a place to stay,” Hauck said.
Her eyes lit up. “You’re going to check out Adrian?”
“I don’t know.”
“You are, aren’t you?”
He shrugged noncommittally. “One night. Long as we drove all this way … That’s all. After the funeral we head back. Understand? After you go to the funeral. Watkins made it fairly clear, he doesn’t want me there.”
Dani nestled back in her seat, pleased. “Thank you, Uncle Ty.”
“Just so you know the rules.”
There was a slowdown up ahead on the road, some large rigs coming to a crawl, backing up traffic.
“There’s a university in Greeley. There has to be somewhere decent to stay.”
“The U of Northern Colorado,” Dani confirmed. “I have some friends who went there. They specialize in—”
“Dani, hold on!” Hauck hit the brakes, throwing his arm out to restrain her. A large, eighteen-wheel tanker pulled out in front of them from a road coming up from the river, almost cutting them off.
“What the hell was that?” he said. As they passed the road, Hauck could see two more rigs, identical to the one that almost hit them, pulling up to the intersection about to turn. Each, a long, metal cylindrical tanker. The ones he had seen up ahead slowing traffic looked the same.
Hauck turned and looked down toward the river. “What do you think they’re bringing up from down there?”
“Has to be oil.” Dani shrugged. “Or natural gas, maybe. There must be a well.”
Hauck sped up and passed the one that had pulled out in front of him. They all had the same large logo on the sides.
RMM.
“One helluva well,” Hauck said. “Those things are all over the place here.”
In fact, they’d passed several wells on the ride so far, some dug right in the middle of people’s crop fields. Dani said they were called pumpjacks. A steel trestle and a large, bobbing drill head that resembled a Tyrannosaurus rex, but was actually called a horse head. Churning up and down. It operated by hydraulic power to pump the oil or natural gas back up from underground.
“How do you know all that?” Hauck asked her.
“I told you, I was a geology major in school.”
The crops couldn’t grow, so the farmers leased the land out to the exploration companies in hopes of something far more profitable. He knew new drilling advances had made exploration out here a lot more feasible.
Ahead of them, the convoy of big trucks picked up speed. Gleaming in the late-day sun.
He looked at the rig again. An arrow, circling through the letters RMM.
It was like the farmland had just been handed over to the oil and mining companies out here.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
They found a place to stay at a Fairfield Inn on the main road leading into Greeley.
The next morning, Hauck drove Dani back to Templeton and dropped her off at the church just before ten o’clock. People were already filing in. He told her he’d be back to pick her up in a couple of hours.
“What are you going to do?” she asked as she got out of the car.
“Sightsee.”
“Just watch out, Uncle Ty. I hear the sights can be a little dangerous here.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”