The first official letter arrived the next week. It informed me that my barbed-wire perimeter fence did not meet Ridgecrest's visual standards and invited me to submit a replacement design for approval. A second complained about airborne dust supposedly generated by the herd. A third said my cattle were engaging in "aggressive visual trespass" by looking into neighboring yards. I walked out to inspect the offenders. Three Hereford cows stood in the shade chewing grass with the vacant serenity of creatures who had never heard of a homeowners association.
The complaints didn't stay on paper. Linda called animal control alleging that my cattle were wandering outside their fences. Phil Moreno, the inspector, came out and spent a leisurely half hour checking the pasture. He found every gate secured and every animal exactly where it belonged. When he finished, he scratched Rusty behind the ears and told me, "I've seen more dangerous behavior at the grocery store on a Saturday afternoon." He filed a clean report and went back to town.
Linda then petitioned the county to limit livestock density near Ridgecrest. She wanted no more than twenty cattle on my twelve hundred acres, a proposal that would have made commercial ranching a sentimental hobby. She arrived at neighbors' doors with wine, a clipboard, and a story about protecting children from agricultural hazards. Thirty-four names appeared on her petition. One was Gerald Faulkner, a man who had been dead for two years.
Hank Morrison brought me the document. Hank's ranch bordered mine to the north, and his family had worked that land longer than mine had owned ours. He was sixty-one, wore his hat until the sweat band disintegrated, and had no patience for officials who confused impressive language with meaningful information. We sat on my tailgate and examined the signatures together. He put one blunt finger on Gerald's name and asked whether they had started getting voter registrations from the cemetery.
"I don't know who signed it," I said. "But Gerald didn't."
"His widow is going to be furious." Hank took a slow drink of coffee. "That woman spends more time campaigning against your cows than I've spent campaigning for anything in my whole life. You ever wonder why?"
I did wonder. The county rejected the petition because the zoning board couldn't simply impose subdivision rules on established agricultural land, and I submitted the questionable signature for review. Nothing immediate came from that complaint, but the episode stayed in my mind. Linda didn't have a practical problem she was trying to solve. She had a fixed objective and was trying every available form of pressure until something gave way. I couldn't yet see what she wanted badly enough to risk her reputation for it.