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Four generations back, Rick's ancestor Cyrus B. Mendenhall might have rolled over the very ground where the courthouse now stood in his ox-drawn wagon on his way to the Montana goldfields. Like his great-great-grandfather, Rick Jarrett was an enterprising fellow with grit and ingenuity, determined to claim his share of Montana's rich resources. The wind that flowed over Rick's land was his treasure—a valuable crop ripe for harvest.

Wind turbines would scoop gold from the air, turning slashing westerlies into electricity that would power Big Timber and rain down money on Rick Jarrett and his kin. With his share of the profits from Crazy Mountain Wind, Rick could pay his debts, gift the ranch to his kids, and retire, secure in the knowledge that the place would be there for his grandchildren. The wind would provide for them all.

In the front row, Rick's neighbors Jan and Karen Engwis looked the other way as he settled on a seat across the aisle. Jan owned a 5,500-acre ranch on the Yellowstone where he ran a small herd of Black Angus cows and grew alfalfa. A former cop who made his fortune in the rock-blasting business, he saw it as his duty to preserve and protect his piece of Montana's sagebrush Eden from Rick Jarrett's obsessive wind development efforts. Jan grew up in Midland, Michigan, home of the Dow Chemical Company. Maybe people who grew up in Big Timber stopped noticing its natural beauty and open vistas. Maybe they'd been there too long.

The Engwises greeted David and Diana Chesnoff, who owned a two-hundred-acre ranch just east of theirs. The Chesnoffs had flown in from Las Vegas for the hearing. A criminal defense attorney, David was as much a celebrity in some circles as the pop stars, poker players, and mobsters he defended. Montana was his place to relax and enjoy the beauty, to get away from the work he did, because what he did was pretty stressful.

But not today. David was dressed for court in a tailored dark suit. The other wealthy litigants wore jeans, including Diana, who had paired her skinny denims with wedge-heeled Chanel snow boots. The Chesnoffs positioned themselves directly behind the table where the plaintiffs' team of lawyers would sit, the better to pass them notes, as David would do throughout the three-day hearing. Diana did not remove her oversized sunglasses.

Russell Gordy hunkered down on a pew at the back of the courtroom. He was sixty-eight, same age as Rick Jarrett, but he wore his years more lightly. February wasn't ordinarily a month you'd find Gordy in Montana. You might find him hunting quail at La Ceniza, his sprawling ranch in South Texas, or at one of his ski homes in Utah's Deer Valley. Or maybe you'd find him sea fishing for tarpon at the oceanfront retreat in the Bahamas that he bought as a surprise birthday gift for his wife, Glenda, who was more of a beach person. In any event, Gordy was due back in Houston on Friday, when he and Glenda would be honored at a black-tie gala. The Gordys had given $5 million to endow a new three-theater complex—The Gordy. There would be toasts and video tributes, and a three-course banquet served under trellises of tulip magnolias.

But first, there was this court deal to get through. Gordy had never met Rick Jarrett. But the prospect of Jarrett's giant windmills had loomed like a blight over Gordy's Montana ranch for well over a decade. It was a beautiful piece of land, a small kingdom that stretched from the Yellowstone River to the Crazy Mountains. Gordy just loved the place.

Alfred Anderson entered the courtroom with his granddaughter and looked around for Rick, his business partner and codefendant. Alfred was eighty-seven and he didn't see so good, particularly at night, so his granddaughter would drive him home after the hearing. He'd gotten up at dawn to chop up the ice on the cows' frozen water tanks and throw square bales of hay to the buck sheep, and he still wore his square-toed work boots. Alfred found a seat near Rick and settled beneath the gaze of past Sixth District Court justices, whose black-and-white photographs lined the walls. Although Alfred had come to the courthouse to pay his taxes and serve his jury duty over the years, he had never been involved in a legal proceeding before. It didn't sit right. You should be able to do what you wanted to do with your land, Alfred thought. It was a free country.

Rick did not share his old friend's uneasiness. He was glad to finally take the fight to these neighbors of his. "The Oligarchs," his lawyer called them. They wanted to stop Rick from harvesting his million-dollar wind. They wanted to control what he did on his land. Well, Rick Jarrett knew his goddamn property rights. All right, he thought, eyes shining as he surveyed the courtroom. Let's start this son of a bitch.

CHAPTER ONE

RANCHING IT

RICHARD JARRETT, having first been duly sworn, testified as follows:

Q: Mr. Jarrett, did you decide to lease your ground to Crazy Mountain Wind? 

MR. JARRETT: I did.