“Who is it?” Violet said nervously, extending a hand for the binoculars, but he stepped aside.
“I’ll deal with it. Stay here. Tend to our guests. No disturbances.”
“But who is-”
“Violet. Do you think I haven’t anticipated this? Do you think the spirits haven’t already informed me of this? Do you actually believe in your heart that the mountains have allowed me to be surprised by this?”
“Of course not,” she murmured.
“Then please do as I say.”
He left her and went out the door and down the exterior stairs, moving with long strides, knowing that he had to cover the ground to meet Shields before he became visible. As much control as Eli had over Violet, he knew that she still had a weakness for Scott Shields. Perhaps something more than a weakness.
He punched a code into the keypad that worked the electrified fence, shoved through the gate, and clamped it shut behind him. He was standing in the middle of the trail when Shields arrived, standing in such a position that Shields had to cut the wheel abruptly to avoid running Eli down. On the precarious slope it was a dangerous maneuver, and for a blissful moment Eli thought he might roll the thing down the mountain. Shields was too experienced, though, and he cut the wheels back and hit the throttle when most men would have let off it, allowing him to spin up and over one of the high boulders and find flat ground above.
“What in the hell are you doing!” he shouted as he cut the engine.
“You’re capable enough with the machine,” Eli said. “And I’m anxious to speak with you. There’s much to discuss.”
“I should damn well say there’s much to discuss,” Shields snapped. “I haven’t heard from you in weeks. I’d like to know what you’re accomplishing on my land.”
Eli nodded. “Let’s speak, but not here. I need to return to town anyhow. We’ll have a beer together, like the old days.”
Scott’s eyes had drifted from Eli up to the fence. From this angle, the tops of the utility poles were just visible.
“What in the hell are those?”
“They’ll provide backup power as needed.”
Scott gaped. “You’re using power lines to run generators into the lodge? That’s the craziest thing I’ve-”
Eli said, “I’m not flush for time. I’m headed to town, and you can accompany me or you can stay here.”
For a terrible moment, Eli thought he would demand to stay, and then things would become messy in a hurry. Instead, though, he jerked his head at his ATV and said, “Get on. I got plenty of questions. And when we come back, I want a look around this place.”
They bounced down the trail, the creek glittering beneath them and the Bighorn Mountains that abutted the property clear and beautiful in the morning sun. They rode on twelve hundred remote and rugged acres that were protected by miles of national forest; there was no access road, and the site was deeply concealed in the difficult terrain, as perfect a spot as Eli could possibly have hoped for but one that he would never have been able to afford. Enter Scott Shields. The land was his, purchased with settlement money from a lawsuit that had occurred three years earlier, when Shields had crashed a plane in the Alaska bush and his wife had been killed. Shields had sued the manufacturer, who had just “rehabilitated” the aircraft prior to the engine stall, and they settled for what was no doubt peanuts on the company’s books but a windfall in rural Wyoming. Shields had purchased a property described as a ranch in the listing, though the land was worthless for cattle-steep, wooded, and rugged. His vision, though, was a hunting lodge with private guiding. Elk were plentiful, some moose as well, and the stream was filled with trout. The challenge was in access, but Shields had visions of using that to his advantage by bringing his clients in on horseback, enhancing the wilderness experience. It was a ridiculous use of a spectacular property. For Eli, however, the site was ideal. And so Eli had begun to work with Shields, which required working through Violet, the only woman Shields trusted. He believed she could bring him messages from his dead wife. These were the things Eli had to indulge in order to fulfill his own mission.
Violet had provided unexpected gifts. While he personally regarded her as a foolish woman who would believe a lie with eagerness and regard the truth with sorrow if not outright denial, others found her an expert navigator of the human spirit. As such, she was an ideal recruiter for Eli. The things that mattered to her-connections between earth and people, bridges between cultures, experiences of psychic phenomena-were all perfect for the candidates Eli sought. In many instances, they trusted Violet before they trusted Eli.
Shields had left his truck, a white Silverado splashed with mud, parked on the forest road, but rather than hike the two miles up, he’d used the ATV. Eli climbed off and watched as Shields got a pair of folding ramps out of the bed and used them to drive the ATV up into the truck. Eli had to turn away so his contempt wasn’t evident. Here was a man so dependent on technology that he was literally driving one vehicle into another.
While Shields worked with his ramps, Eli squinted at the high slopes. Nothing of his camp was visible to the naked eye. The tops of the utility poles blended with the dead lodgepole pines. Without a helicopter, one was unlikely to stumble across the site.
“We’ll go to my place first,” Shields announced when he had the ATV secured. “I’m not interested in running you into town until I’ve gotten my answers, Eli. The work I hired you to do up there doesn’t seem to be getting done.”
Eli didn’t realize he was smiling until Scott Shields said, “Something funny about this to you?”
“No,” Eli said. “Not at all. I was just remembering something.”
He was remembering that Shields currently lived in a massive Winnebago and considering that the man had loaded one vehicle onto another to drive to another still. What was next for him? A tractor-trailer for the Winnebago? A ship for the tractor-trailer?
At what point will you have enough large machines to feel confident about the size of your pecker, Scotty?
They drove down the forest road to the paved county road and then went west toward Lovell and continued west, toward Byron. The drive was excruciating, pulling Eli farther and farther away from the work he could not afford to delay.
They headed into a blighted countryside along another forest road, this one leading to the Shoshone River, where Shields paid for the privilege of parking his motor home. He claimed it was for the fishing, but Eli knew it was because the location was remote but still easy enough for the bikers to reach. Shields had a drug habit that had started with painkillers after his plane crash and progressed from there, and he was on a regular route for the dealers that growled through northern Wyoming, working the oil fields.
As if finally comfortable now that they’d arrived, Shields began talking even before he opened the driver’s door.
“That property is a hunting camp. You said you’d get it powered for me cheap, using your windmills and whatever the hell, but we’ve missed every hunting season this year and now I’m not even hearing from you.”
Eli took a deep breath and turned away briefly, reminding himself of why this had to be tolerated, why the burden had to be borne. Then, just as Eli turned back to Scott Shields with a calm face and a ready explanation, he paused.
Things were different now. Markus Novak, down in Cassadaga like a thorn in a wolf’s paw, required acceleration. But…if the timetable was sped up, why did he need Scott?
Scott said, “I asked you a question, Pate. Give me an answer.”
Eli turned from him again and gazed down the lonely road to Byron. At some point, someone would come looking for Scott Shields. But how soon? Scott, paranoid sort that he was, did not maintain much contact with the outside world.