“Rancho Valverde,” Bob decided.
Konrad drove for more than a mile before he slowed and turned left. The truck passed through an open gate on to a gravelled drive that ran north between cultivated fields and citrus groves.
Jupe stood up and looked over the cab of the truck. He saw a large grove of eucalyptus trees ahead, with buildings sheltered under them. To the right of the drive was a sprawling, two-storey ranch house which faced south towards the road. To the left and also facing south was an old-fashioned, high-roofed house which was almost a mansion. It was ornate with wooden gingerbread trim and had towers jutting above the broad, breezy veranda that ran across the front and around the sides.
“I’ll bet that’s the house Barron moved here from Milwaukee,” Bob said.
Jupe nodded. In a moment they had passed between the big house and the simpler ranch house and were driving past a dozen or more small frame cottages, where dark-haired, dark-eyed children played. The children stopped their games to wave at the truck as it went by. There was no sign of an adult until they reached a huge open area at the end of the gravel lane. It was a place where trucks and tractors were parked near large sheds and barns. As Konrad applied the brakes, a red-haired, red-faced man appeared in the doorway of one of the sheds. He had a clipboard in his hands, and he squinted up at Konrad.
“You from The Jones Salvage Yard?” he asked.
Jupe jumped down from the back of the truck. “I am Jupiter Jones,” he said importantly. He gestured toward Konrad. “This is Konrad Schmid, and these are my friends, Pete Crenshaw and Bob Andrews.”
The red-haired man smiled. “I’m Hank Detweiler,” he said. “I’m Mr Barron’s foreman.”
“Okay,” said Konrad. “Where do you want that we should unload the truck?”
“I don’t want,” Detweiler said. “Our own people will take care of it.”
As if at a signal, three men came out of the shed and began taking things out of the truck. Like the children outside the cottages, these men were dark. They spoke softly in Spanish as they worked, and Hank Detweiler checked off items on a list that was attached to his clipboard. The foreman had blunt, thick hands with the fingernails cut short and square. His face was almost crimson, as if he had a permanent case of windburn, and there were fine lines at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth.
“Well?” he said suddenly, when he glanced up and saw that Jupe was watching him. “Something you wanted to know?”
Jupe smiled. “Well, you could confirm a deduction of mine. Deducing things about people is sort of my hobby,” he explained. He looked around at the towering cliffs that enclosed the ranch on three sides, making it a landlocked oasis that was very still and peaceful in the sunny afternoon. “From the way your skin is weathered, I deduce that you haven’t been here in this sheltered valley too long,” said Jupe. “I think you must be used to wide open spaces and lots of wind.”
For an instant there was a sadness in Detweiler’s eyes. “Very good,” he said. “You’re right. I was foreman at the Armstrong Ranch near Austin, Texas, until Mr Barron came to visit there last year and hired me away. He made me a good offer, but sometimes this place does seem kind of hedged in.”
Detweiler put his clipboard down on the hood of a pickup truck that stood near the shed. “You boys come all the way from Rocky Beach to help unload this stuff?” he said. “That’s pretty generous of you. Don’t know as I’d have done the same when I was your age. But then maybe you’re curious about the ranch?”
Jupiter nodded eagerly, and Detweiler grinned.
“Okay,” said Detweiler. “If you’ve got time, I’ll show you around. It’s an interesting place–not your usual run-of-the-mill truck farm.”
The foreman led the way into the shed where the purchases from the salvage yard were being stored. Konrad and the boys saw a warehouse that was crammed to the rafters with all sorts of objects, from machine parts to leather hides to bolts of cloth.
Next door to the warehouse was a smaller building that housed a machine shop. There the visitors were introduced to John Aleman, a snub-nosed young man who was the mechanic for the ranch.
“John keeps our vehicles running and all our machinery in order,” said Detweiler. “Course, he shouldn’t be here. He should be out designing big power plants and irrigation systems.”
“Kind of hard to get a job designing a power plant when you quit school after the tenth grade,” said Aleman, but he didn’t seem unhappy.
Next to the machine shop were sheds used for food storage, and beyond these was a dairy barn which was empty at this hour.
“We have Guernseys here on the ranch,” said Detweiler. “Right now the herd is grazing in the pasture up at the north end, under the dam. We have beef cattle, too, and sheep and pigs and chickens. And of course we’ve got horses.”
Detweiler went on to the stable, where a sandy-haired young woman named Mary Sedlack was crouched in a stall next to a handsome palomino stallion. She had the horse’s left rear hoof in her hands, and she was frowning at something she saw in the frog of the horse’s foot.
“Mary tends to our animals when they get sick,” said Detweiler. “Other times she just plain babies them.”
“Better stand back,” the girl warned. “Asphodel gets nervous if he thinks somebody’s crowding him.”
“Asphodel is one temperamental horse,” said Hank Detweiler. “Mary’s the only one who can get anywhere near him.”
Detweiler and the visitors retreated to the parking area, where they got into a small sedan. Detweiler drove slowly out along a dirt track that ran north through the fields, away from the storage buildings.
“Forty-seven people work here on the ranch,” said the foreman. “That’s not counting the children, of course, or the people Mr Barron considers his own personal staff–specialists like Mary and John–and the supervisors. I’m the chief supervisor, and I’m responsible for everything that comes in here or goes out. Then there’s Rafael Banales.”
Detweiler waved to a thin, not very tall man who stood at the edge of a field where labourers were planting some sort of crop. “Rafe is in charge of the field workers. He is one very progressive farmer. He’s a graduate of the University of California at Davis.”
They went on, and Detweiler showed them the small building where John Aleman was experimenting with solar energy. He pointed to the slopes under the cliffs to the east, several miles away, where beef cattle grazed. He came at last to a lush green pasture beyond the fields of carrots and lettuce and peppers and marrows. The dairy herd was there, and beyond the pasture was a cement dam.
“We have our own water supply for emergencies,” Detweiler told Konrad and the boys. “The reservoir beyond that dam is fed by the stream you see falling down the face of that cliff. We haven’t had to use that water yet, but it’s there if we need it. Right now we use artesian wells. In an emergency we can generate our own power for the pumps, and for all our other electrical needs. Aleman built the generators and they use diesel fuel. If that runs out, we can convert and burn coal or wood.”
Detweiler turned the car around and started back towards the cluster of buildings under the eucalyptus trees.
“We keep bees here so we have a source of sugar,” he said. “We also have a smokehouse for curing hams and bacon. We have underground storage tanks for our reserve gasoline supply and root cellars for keeping potatoes and turnips. We have miles of shelves to hold the canned things that Elsie and the other woman put up when the crops are ripe.”
“Elsie?” said Jupiter.
Detweiler grinned. “Elsie is not the least of our specialists,” he said. “She cooks for John and Rafael and Mary and me, and for the Barrons, too. If you’ve got time to stop at the ranch house before you leave, she’s sure to spring for some soda pop all around.”
Detweiler parked the car near the storage sheds and led Konrad and the boys down the lane towards the ranch house.
Elsie Spratt turned out to be a hearty woman somewhere in her thirties. She had short blonde hair and a broad, easy smile, and she presided over a kitchen that was bright with sunlight and warm with the smell of cooking food. When Hank Detweiler introduced the visitors, she hurried to pour cups of coffee for the men, and she took bottles of soda pop from the refrigerator for the boys.
“Enjoy it while you may,” she said cheerily. “Comes the revolution, there won’t be any soda pop.”