“Make no mistake. They will attempt to identify us as evil. To label this band of people who believe they have certain rights, certain freedoms, as enemies of humanity. They will say this about people who believe that the very earth itself has certain rights and certain freedoms!”
He shouted the last words, expecting to hear support, excitement.
Instead, the group was quiet, and the energy in the air was weak. They were uncertain. Hesitant.
He studied them and thought about their hopes and their fears. He knew the language that would incite them-it was what had brought them here. And yet now they seemed strangely unmoved.
He looked toward Violet. He wanted this to be his own moment, and he deserved it to be, but he’d arrived in this place through a special understanding of manipulation. Each audience had its own trigger.
“Violet,” he said. “I would like you to speak for the land.”
For several seconds she was silent, and he was afraid he’d made a mistake. If she could not inspire, things might unravel swiftly. Just before he was about to speak again, she broke the silence.
She didn’t speak. She chanted. An unknown tongue, but a musical one, an ancient half wail that belonged to this place, to the peoples she’d studied for so long.
The murmurs of approval grew louder, the energy from the group changing. Eli saw one woman reach out and squeeze the hand of the man she’d come with. Another man closed his eyes and bobbed his head as if in agreement with the wordless song.
The sun was tinting the edges of the earth now, the gray giving way to a thin band of pink, and it was magical. It was perfect.
Violet stopped the strange chant.
“The land speaks,” she said softly. “The land speaks to those who care to hear. There are whispers from the high peaks, whispers within the deepest caves, the emptiest oceans. And for those who can hear, the tone has changed. The whispers are louder now, my friends; they are shouts. More than shouts, they are cries. The land is crying out, and do you know what it says?”
She paused, looked at every individual face, each of them beginning to take on a new clarity in the rising dawn light.
“It says that it will not be mocked.”
The woman who had been clutching her companion’s hand now dipped her head as if she were about to faint. Another man had made a fist so tight his knuckles bulged. He held it in front of him like a weapon, but his eyes were locked on Violet.
All of their eyes were.
For this, Eli thought, tolerating her was worth it.
The truth was, he couldn’t summon his usual contemptuousness of her. He’d become suddenly uneasy. There was a unique magic to her voice, the depth of the believer. He wanted to interrupt her, to reclaim control of the moment, but he knew better and willed the impulse down.
“Someday,” she said, “we will all be returned to the earth. This is the certainty of our existence, the only certainty. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Whether as ashes or dust, you will return to the earth. How do you wish to be greeted?”
No one spoke. Violet began to make a soft humming noise, rising and falling like a chant, and Eli knew that she had said all she intended to say. The baton was back in his hand.
“We will be challenged,” he said. “We will be pursued. We will be hated. All of this is understood and accepted, because the time has come. Not the day of reckoning, but the day of reminding. Perhaps we are not all as lost as it often seems. Perhaps there is more hope out there than we have often believed. But the reminder must be issued. The populace must be shaken. And then, I hope, I pray, that we will all find the essential things we lost along the way.”
He turned from them and faced the sunrise. The pink had deepened to crimson, and it lit him and cast his shadow large across the ground. He closed his eyes and breathed, deep inhalations and exhalations, seven of them, and then he spoke again without turning.
“The world awakens. She calls to us. Today is the day. If some of you choose to depart, you will not be stopped, nor will you be questioned or shamed. The task ahead is not for everyone. If anyone wishes to leave, now is the time, and go in silence.”
No one moved. He counted seven more breaths.
“So we begin. I will ask you to speak now. Not to me, but to the land. This is a sacred place, and it is filled with listeners, I assure you. Speak to them now. Share the day’s message.”
They spoke nearly in unison but just enough ahead or behind each other to make the group sound larger than it was; their fourteen voices turned to forty. They spoke loudly, eagerly, and they spoke without fear. Eli closed his eyes with pleasure. Finally, it was here. Finally, they announced it to an unknowing world at the break of the western dawn.
“Rise the dark, rise the dark, rise the dark.”
46
By the time Larry was ready to go, the sun was fully risen and the Soda Butte glittered like scattered diamonds in the white light. Larry surveyed the Tahoe and said, “Damn nice vehicle, and I’d like to take it, but how’s your back trail?”
It was a good question. By now the police probably had the make, model, and plate number.
“I don’t think anyone knows that I headed this way when I left Red Lodge, but the vehicle is a risk,” Mark admitted.
“Kind of figured that. We’ll take Blue, then.”
“Blue?” Mark had a bad feeling. “You don’t mean the Ford?”
“Hell yes, the Ford!”
“That truck was barely running twenty years ago, Uncle.”
“I’ve made some improvements.”
The improvements certainly weren’t visual. The 1971 Ford Sport Custom pickup was behind the cabin, and the wheels seemed to be attached to the axles. That was the best that could be said for the truck.
“Get your shit,” Larry said. Mark got his things out of the Tahoe and slipped his shoulder holster on. Larry watched without comment.
“Where are we headed?” Mark asked once he was in the truck, the passenger seat wheezing beneath him, and Larry cursing and pumping the gas as he tried to coax the engine to life. The exhaust let out a burst like a cannon shot and then settled down to a clatter that shook the dirt on the floorboards, but Larry smiled with pleasure, so evidently this was a good sign.
“Five Points Hot Springs.”
“You think Pate is holed up in a resort?” Five Points was an old-time inn built around a natural hot springs. It catered to people who wanted a taste of the rugged West but without leaving fine dining behind.
“No, I don’t. But I think Salvador Cantu will be. He’s blowing his cash at the bar down there and trying to blow his load with a waitress.”
“Who is Salvador Cantu?”
The truck went into motion, and it seemed that the lurch forward had been at least partially inspired by the engine.
“He runs meth out to the oil fields,” Larry said. “He’s been doing well lately. The Bakken’s been better to the drug business than it has to the oil business. He also helped with the whip on the day that I mentioned.”
His voice didn’t change when he said that, but Mark’s throat tightened.
They crossed the Soda Butte and turned onto 212 in Silver Gate. The Range Rider, an old boardinghouse and saloon, was just across the street. That had been Larry’s favorite hell-raising spot in the old days. Mark wasn’t looking at the town, though, but up at the once-wooded slopes of Republic Pass. The thick forest that faded out into the granite peaks was a grim gray burnout now, a testament to the pair of brothers who’d set it on fire three summers earlier. Blackwell, their names had been. Dangerous men.