All the cars were lined up, honking, drivers getting out and swarming toward him. He was ready with his shotgun. "If you'll trust me, I can show you how to beat this."
They were yanking at his roadblocks.
"It's those hippies. Don't you see it?"
Yes, he knew about that too. He had informants everywhere, and he'd been talking to them since he'd been with Slaughter. There were still a few things that he didn't understand, but he knew just enough that he'd found a scapegoat. Plus, the hippies really were the enemy, and if he'd worked this angle back in 1970, he could work it once again.
"Those hippies?" The drivers paused with the roadblocks in their hands. "But they're long gone."
"I'm telling you that they're still in the mountains. Oh, they moved to some place else, but they're still up there, and they're crazy. God knows what all they've been doing, using drugs and living like a bunch of animals. They've picked up some disease now, and they're coming to the valley. Oh, sure, I know dogs and cats have got it too, but we can handle them. Those hippies are the ones I'm afraid of."
It was a prehistoric argument that took advantage of their tribal instincts, conjuring the image of some hairy foreign thing that no one understood and hence that everyone feared. Parsons was almost ashamed to use it, but he nonetheless believed it, all those hate-filled recollections of those hippies, latent, ready to be triggered, and his anger was intense enough now that he wanted to get even. Damage Slaughter. Kill those hippies. Get his town back as it was for him. Oh, yes, by God, the way Slaughter had spoken to him, he meant to see that someone paid.
He waited as they stared at him. "You don't remember nineteen-seventy? Hal there lost his boy in Vietnam while those damned hippies crudded up our town. And now those hippies are on their way back. They're going to come down from the mountains and kill us unless we make plans to stop them."
The crowd kept staring.
"I don't even need you. I'll go see the ranchers. They know what's important. They know how to keep what they've worked hard for. I'll go find some men who aren't afraid!"
Now Parsons felt emotion stirring in them. In a moment, he would ask if anybody knew the people who'd been murdered. He would tell them that the state police were heading into the mountains, that they needed help-yes, he had heard about that too-and he would tell them about Slaughter, how their chief was so inept that he himself, their mayor, was forced to come down here and take charge of his people.
THREE
Slaughter scowled down with the others at the map. They'd made arrangements for their message to be broadcast on the TV and the radio, for everyone to stay inside, to keep away from animals, from strangers, to report a bite or any odd behavior, then to call the police station for assistance, and to watch for the cruisers that were out in force along the streets. He himself had called the state police, but there was only one man on duty at the local barracks and no word had come from Altick. He had called for help from Rawlins, Lander, Sheridan, and Casper. If he had to, he would call in the state militia. But right now, his main objective was to find the commune. "You men know these mountains more than I do. Tell me where the commune is."
"It's too much area to figure," Rettig told him.
"Yes, but…" Slaughter paused and rubbed his forehead.
He'd been having pains there for several hours, from lack of food and sleep, the tension building in him, and his argument with Parsons. He was hoping he could handle this, but he was overwhelmed by what he faced, gradually more doubtful. "Yes, but there must be a couple places you can think of, caves or canyons where a group of people could live undetected."
"If you want to think about it that way, there are hundreds," Rettig said. "I remember when I was a kid there weren't even terrain maps for those mountains. Hunters, fishermen, oh yeah, they go up through there, but I used to know an Indian who lived there as a hermit for three years and never came across another person."
"What you're telling me is that we won't find any answer."
"What I'm saying is, we don't have the time for trial and error."
"Look, there has to be some logic to this," Dunlap said.
They turned to him, the city man who planned to tell them about mountains.
"Logic? Where the hell is logic?" Slaughter demanded.
"You'd know the way to do this if you were still in Detroit. Think of everything that's happened as a group of crimes you're plotting on a grid of city streets. Diagram it for the pattern."
"But there isn't any pattern," Rettig said.
"Of course, there is. Don't think about what's happened in the town. Just concentrate on incidents near the mountains. I've been here only since Friday, but I spotted right away that everything has happened on the western section of the valley."
"Don't you think I know that?" Rettig said impatiently.
"Use it!"
Slaughter shifted his attention to the map. "Okay, if you're so confident. Why not? It's worth a try. We haven't anything to lose." He drew an X. "That's Bodine's ranch, pretty close to where we found the abandoned truck. Here's the lake where Altick's men were lost."
"And here's the deserted compound."
"Don't forget your own place," Rettig told him. "It's obvious those weren't bobcats. You live near that section, too."
"Can you think of any other things?"
"The ranchers who reported mangled cattle live over there, and that hippie staggered into town from that direction."
There were X's all across that section of the map.
"I don't see what that accomplished," Slaughter said.
"I do," Lucas answered. "Draw some lines up toward the mountains. Intersect them."
Slaughter did, and the men grouped around the table, frowning toward the map.
"Well, it's high up. That's what you expected," Slaughter told Rettig.
"High enough that people don't go up there much. You see that there aren't any trails marked."
"What's this broken line here?" Slaughter asked.
"That's the railroad that went up to where they used to mine the gold back in the old days. It's all broken down now."
"Mine the gold? Mine what gold?"
"This was once the richest section of the state. Back in eighteen ninety-five. There used to be a town up there."
And Slaughter felt the chill begin.
"Dear God, the answer's been there all along, and we were just too dumb to see it," Owens said.
"The ghost town," Rettig said. "They called it Motherlode. It's hard as hell to get there now that we don't have the railroad up there. I mean, there's no wagon road, no trail. That's why they built the railroad in the first place."
"Motherlode, and there are shafts that cut in through the rock walls. If you knew what you were doing, you could live up there a long time. All those miners did."
"And now the hippies," Slaughter said.
"And now the hippies," Owens echoed. "There's no telling what we'll find up there."
"I'm sorry, Slaughter. "Parsons' voice came strong across the room. They whirled and looked beyond the glass partition at the group of men with rifles who were hurrying through the main door, standing in the middle of the larger office. Parsons was ahead of them, looming huge and staring toward the glass partition.
"You keep barging in. It's not a habit I admire," Slaughter said.