Silver City Page #6

on the tracks.

See ya.

- Dinner at La Fonda?

- Yeah.

He was the love of my life.

It rains like the dickens

in these mountains...

but you won't see any streams

running down them.

So where does the water go?

What you're looking at

is honeycombed with hundreds...

maybe thousands of mine shafts.

When you stop

pumping the water out...

over time those holes

fill up top to bottom...

till there's nowhere else

for it to go.

A huge pressure builds up

looking for an outlet.

In 1943...

four miners broke a pick hole...

in a wall to an adjacent area...

that hadn't been worked

in 20 years.

Water exploded

out of that wall...

drove those four fellas

and their equipment...

back through the shaft they'd dug,

out into the main tunnel...

that Newhouse had built

to service the mine...

blasted through an opening...

and blew the water clear across

the river to the other side.

For three days, water blasted out

of that mountain...

timber, tracks, loose rocks,

half-ton ore cars...

flying through the air

like they were toys.

You know, we think

we can wound this planet.

We think we can cut costs

and stick the money in our pockets...

and just walk away with it.

But someday the bill comes due.

This ore you're looking at...

assays out at about

an ounce and a half a ton...

which can be

worth your while...

depending on how much it costs you

to get it out of the ground.

You gotta knock it down

with dynamite...

throw it on one

of those carts up there...

and then upstairs,

run it through all the crushers...

and chemicals separate out

the valuable stuff from the tailings.

Yeah. Now, if you want to move up ahead

to under that stope...

and look off to the left...

you'll see what every miner

was hoping for...

a vein of almost pure

yellow stuff.

You can all fit in.

I'll join you in a minute.

So you were a miner?

Mining engineer...

until I went to work for the feds.

Got interested

in how to do the job...

better and safer.

That was under Carter.

He put some teeth in the rules.

What's your beef

with Dickie Pilager?

You're not here just for the tour,

are you?

I have to inform you

you're being watched.

Is that so?

There was an incident

on the campaign trail the other day...

and your name came up

as a potential...

- Perpetrator?

- Something like that.

It's the old man

whose guts I hate.

- The senator.

- Him and his pal Benteen.

Take a good look, Dickie.

What do you see?

Mountains?

I see a big sign that says,

"No Americans allowed."

You do?

You look at a map, they got

half the West under lock and key.

They?

Bureau of Land Management,

Forest Service...

national parks,

the State.

Right. Right.

It's like a treasure chest

waiting to be opened...

only there's a 500-pound bureaucrat

sitting on it.

I'm a small government man.

That's why we chose you, son.

Of course, the people...

The people gotta be grabbed by the horns

and dragged to what's good for 'em.

The people.

You remember the shale oil?

Over in Parachute.

The big oil companies say

they were gonna squeeze oil out of rock.

The people come flocking

like a damn herd of sheep.

Thought they were all

gonna get rich quick...

like with every other mineral strike

in the history of this state.

But who's left holding the shiny stuff

after all the dust clears?

Who?

- The folks that see the big picture.

- Right.

That's me and you, son.

We're looking at it right now,

all around us.

Right.

Couple of weeks,

I'm gonna have to call you Governor.

You know what the big picture is,

don't you, Dickie?

It's...

Privatization.

The land was meant

for the citizens...

not them damn pencil pushers

in Washington.

Like this Silver City deal?

Just a pile of mine debris

I'm trying to unload.

Son, we got resources here

you wouldn't believe.

Untapped resources.

You and your dad are the point men in

the fight to liberate those resources...

for the American people.

Aspen, Vail.

That ain't sh*t compared

to what I could build...

if they opened this up

to somebody with some ideas...

with some know-how.

I understand.

And the people won't get it done...

not by a long sight.

They get distracted worrying about

some postcard idea of the Rockies...

some black-footed ferret

or endangered tumbleweed.

But if a man of vision

were to come along...

I can see it.

How's that saddle feeling?

It's coming along.

We'll make a cowboy

out of you yet.

We'd done so well with that one...

I took on the second biggest

hazard in the state...

the Silver City

mining operation.

Owned by Dickie Pilager.

He owned the land, but Benteen was

leasing the mineral rights.

They go hand in glove,

you know...

the Benteens

and the Pilagers.

- They were still digging.

- They had acres and acres of tailings...

piled up from

the Silver City glory days.

Looked like a pile of trash rock...

but if you could process it

on a large enough scale...

I'm talking about bulldozers

the size of battleships...

you could make a fortune.

Providing jobs for

the economically depressed.

A few, sure.

But then we started getting

nasty pH readings...

from the watershed

all around them.

Started getting

fish die-off...

heavy metal residue.

The company said it was from the old mine

shafts in these mountains around them.

There was nothing

they could do about it.

Not true?

They were concentrating the gold

in these huge leach piles...

and then dumping

cyanide solution on them.

- They used cyanide?

- Sodium cyanide.

It's a lixiviate.

Basic chemistry.

Smells like apricots

for miles around.

I had an informant inside.

Or I thought I did.

Esparza... that was his name.

Vincent Esparza.

He told me they were pushing

all the contaminants to one side.

No treatment,

no containment.

Just leaving it out there

for the elements.

And that was what's getting

into our water system.

He even helped me plan

my surprise inspection.

But when I got there...

nothing but a bunch

of empty pits...

and a workforce

with their lips buttoned.

I felt like an idiot.

I'd brought the press,

photographers.

And your inside man, Esparza?

Gone with the wind. They said

he'd been fired months earlier.

You got sandbagged.

Benteen, he doesn't take any prisoners.

He had his friend,

Senator Pilager...

appoint a new man

at the top...

whose only mission was

to castrate the agency.

And who do you think

got fired first?

Then they started allegations

of misuse of funds.

There were even public hints

about a drinking problem.

And when I tried to go back to work

as a mining engineer...

I found out soon enough I was

all but unhireable in the industry.

Yeah.

And then I figured, well...

since they accused me of

having a drinking problem...

I just might as well develop one.

And even with all that,

you still wouldn't...

They don't have to worry about me,

the Pilagers.

I know when I'm licked.

If there's one thing I know

all of you good folks have in common...

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