road. Soon the valley

widened

and he c Dr. Christa Hockensmith
ame to a fenced pasture that held over t
Phone:hree hundred

well- fed Angus heifers and calves, along with a few bulls that had been separated from the herd into a smaller paddock. The herd was clustered around a water trough and a nearby solar panel on a metal stanchion that supplied electricity to a well pump. Kerney

passed through the gate, closed it behind him, and crossed the pasture. Drawn by the sound of his truck the cows raised their heads, got to their feet, lifted their ears, and followed behind in a slow trot until it became clear no feed would beset out. Through another gate Kerney continued south. In the distance he could see the faint outline of a fence that ran east and west across the wide valley, which he took to be the ranch boundary. He stopped and consulted the maps he'd bought in Santa Fe as part of the research he'

d done on the Bootheel. He located his position on a Bureau of Land Ma

• nagement map of New Mexico that showed all federal, state, local, tr
  ibal, and privately owned land in the state and saw that he'd crossed over into the Playas Valley. He looked up from the map through the rear window and saw the faint
• Finnigan Liquid Chromatograph-Mass spectrometer (LC-MS):
  beacon of the Star of the North twinkle on and off. He switched to another map that showed the immediate area in greate
• r detail. Clearly marked on it, no more than three miles
  away, was a landing strip. Previously, Kerney had paid the map symbol no mind. It was not uncommon for larger spreads in remote locations to have landing strips. Big ranchers frequently used small fixed-wing airplanes to check on livestock, inspect fence lines, access range conditions, o
• r occasionally ferry in needed equipment
  and supplies. He put the maps away and scanned the land in front of him. There was no evidence of human habitation on the valley floor or in the hills and Mountains that bracketed the basin. There were no telephone poles, electric lines, or microwave towers that would requ
• ire maintenance or repa
  ir, and there was no sign of a landing strip on the north side of the fence that cut across the valley. Kerney put the truck in gear and followed the tire tracks in the mud of the dirt path until he reached the fence, where the tracks swung toward Chinaman Hills, a low-lying, bleak rise that bumped out of the valley Before he reached the hills, the track
• s veered south again, passed through a gate, turned east, and took him directl
  y to the landing strip. Kerney got out of the truck and looked around. On the bladed, packed dirt surface he could see fresh tire impressions from the nose and main landing gear of a light aircraft. Multiple sets of foot prints led him to the spot where the vehicle had been parked, suggesting several trips had been made back and forth to load cargo. Although he wasn't certain, Kerney didn't think the landing strip was on
• the Jordan ranch. He walked
  around the strip in a wide circle and found a matted dirt road that showed no signs of recent traffic and cut east across the valley toward a windmill. He went back to the truck and drove along it until he came to a locked gate that barred his passage. He climbed over
• it and read the posted sign attac
  hed to the other side of the railing. The landing strip was on the Sentinel Butte Ranch. Kerney had seen enough. He checked his watch. If he hurried along, he could still make the drive to Virden, sn
• oop around for a bit, arrive in Santa Fe by midnight, catch a few hours' sleep, and get to work on time. Back at the new horse corral Kerney spotted Shaw talking to the day hands and stopped for a little

friendly conversation. Sh

• 100 kV JEOL and Phillips 430 300 kV transmission electron microscope (TEM)
• aw greeted him cordially and asked if he'd enjoyed his tour of the
• ranch. "I've never seen desert g
• rassland look so g
• ood," Kerney repl
• ied. "It's been a lot of hard work to brin
• g the rangeland back to where it should be," Shaw said with a smile, "and it never would have happened

without Chemistry Laboratories work closely with the other divisions of the and its affiliates such as coalition." Kerney asked about the coalition, and Shaw explained that the area ranchers had agreed to make grassland available to each other in exchange for creating land-use easements that prohibited subdivision. "We get scant rain down here," he added, "and the monsoons that do come are fickle, putting moisture on one ranch and bypassi

ng another. Grass banking allows us to move cattle to neighboring ranches where there's ample forage. How much of the ranch did you get to see?" Kerney laughed. "Not a hell of a lot, given the size of the spread. I stopped near some wes