On the opposite wall to the right of the door was a counter and a sink with shelves beneath. A plump wood stove sat to the left of the door. Two small screen windows let in air and light.
“You can cover those with plastic when it gets cold,” Peggy said, “if you end up staying that long. I brought some old cast-iron pans and a pot we don’t use anymore. Also a few plates, cups, silverware.”
“Thank you,” said Neal.
“Glad to get rid of them. There’s a lister bag out there for you boys to hang up.”
They went outside. Steve took the big green canvas bag, tied a rope to a ring at the top, hoisted it up on a branch near the creek, and tied it off on the tree trunk.
“Just fill it with water from the creek, hoist it back up, turn the spigot, and you have a shower,” he said. Then he showed Neal where the outhouse was, behind the cabin hidden in some pines. It was a little bigger than a phone booth and had a bench with a hole in it.
“Here’s how you flush,” Steve said. He poured a little gasoline down the hole, lit a match and tossed it in. “That usually does it.”
Shelly was in the saddle when they got back.
“You want a ride, Neal?” she asked.
“No thanks.”
“Have you ever been on a horse?” she asked.
“Sure, and I almost caught the brass ring.”
“You’re just afraid,” she teased.
“You’re just right,” answered Neal.
“Where are you headed, honey?” Steve asked.
“I’m going for a ride with Jory. Up there.” She nodded toward the mountains.
“Where is he?”
“He didn’t want to wait. We’re going to meet up at the spring below the caves.”
“You stay out of those caves!” Peggy hollered from the cabin.
Shelly rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “Don’t worry! They give me the creeps!” she said. She pointed toward the cabin door. “Ever vigilant.”
Then she gave Dash a little kick in the ribs and set out at a trot up the lower slopes of the mountain. She waved good-bye without turning back.
“Well,” Steve said as much to himself as to Neal, “I suppose it’s better than her hanging around some mall all day.”
Peggy came out on the porch.
“Do you suppose they’re sleeping together?” she asked evenly.
“Peg! Jesus!”
“I’m not saying they are, Steve,” she said. “But we should look at the possibility.”
“Maybe it isn’t better than hanging around some mall,” Steve considered.
They tinkered around the cabin for a little while longer, making sure Neal was all set up, and then left to let him get settled in and have some privacy. They invited him to dinner, but Neal said that he might just as well get started in being self-sufficient.
Besides, he had some things to do.
First of all he laid out his stuff. It didn’t take long. He had his new work clothes, some of his old street wear, and his new breaking-and-entering regulation black jersey, jeans, socks, tennis shoes, and cap. He had the dog-eared paperback of Smollet’s Roderick Random which had saved him from going crazy during his three years’ confinement in Sichuan.
He took his collection of racist literature-The Turner Diaries, The Zion Watchman newsletter, and a couple of C. Wesley Carter’s cheaply printed tracts-and hid them where anyone tossing the place could find them.
Then he unpacked his binoculars, the little Peterson bird glasses that came so highly recommended by one Joseph Graham, and went for a hike.
He climbed up the north side of the spur, pulling himself up the flaky ground by grabbing onto pines, until he came to a shelf of rock on the top. He edged around that, gained another fifty feet of elevation, and walked along until he found what he was looking for.
It was a little outcrop on the south side of the spur. A small grove of aspens provided cover but left enough of the view; a lovely panorama of the main compound of Hansen’s a thousand or so yards down and away from his perch.
My hunch was right, Neal thought with an unbecoming degree of satisfaction. Just as the slope of the ground shields my cabin from Mills’, so does the same geography create dead ground behind Hansen’s. Except the dead ground is quite lively this late Saturday afternoon.
First of all, he could see the construction even with the naked eye. It was a frigging stockade. The center building was a large bunker-basically rectangular, but with circular gun ports built at the corners to provide a field of fire that could sweep all of the ground around it. It was built low to the ground with a sandbagged roof, over which was stretched a net stuffed with sagebrush. Neal imagined that the foundation was dug deep into the ground to protect against explosives.
There were three smaller bunkers on the other side of the main one. They were all circles of poured concrete; two had gun slits barely aboveground. Neal guessed that they were supply dumps of some sort, perhaps for food and ammunition. The other one looked like it might be for prisoners. All were similarly camouflaged in sagebrush.
Somebody knows what the hell he’s doing, Neal thought. A casual observer from the trails along the mountain would barely pick this out, and if he did it would look like an old mining operation or cattle pen. The bunkers would be impervious from fire directed from the mountain slopes. You’d need artillery or at least mortars to do any serious damage, and who was going to haul that up here? But the fort clearly had been constructed to defend against an attack coming from the valley, not the mountains. A charge across the flat sagebrush plain into these bunkers would be suicidal folly.
Three sides of the compound were flanked by a twelve-foot-high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The fourth side, the one that faced the Hansen house, was the one under construction at the moment. It looked like they were trying to build the fence to allow a gate to open onto a dirt trail that cut all the way back to the main Hansen compound. Even now men were unrolling wire along the trail.
What are they expecting? Neal wondered. Armageddon?
They probably are, he thought. Probably the idea would be to give up the big house and withdraw to the stockade. Fight it out there until the good guys win.
Neal put the field glasses to his eyes and adjusted the lenses for distance. Even with the powerful binoculars, the busy figures were indistinct against the dull gray of the sagebrush-covered ground. Neal could just make out the figure of Bob Hansen, mostly because of the cowboy hat. Neal scanned the compound to see if he could locate the rangy figure of Cal Strekker, but he didn’t find him.
Maybe he’s in one of the bunkers, Neal thought. Maybe Harley McCall and Cody are too. Maybe I should be as well.
Neal watched for a few minutes longer and then pulled off the outcrop and found himself a place to sit among the pines farther back. There was no sense in being exposed for too long, and he wanted to wait until the light got a little softer before trying to get any closer.
If McCall and the boy are in that compound, he thought while he sat, it isn’t going to be any easy bag job. I don’t care how much high-priced muscle Ed can bring in, we aren’t getting the kid out of there. We’re going to have to find a way to lure Harley and the boy off the place and then take them. And I don’t have a clue yet how to do that.
Neal waited for an hour before he got up and started to ease himself along the slope closer to the stockade. He figured that even a couple hundred yards might give him a shot at recognizing faces, primarily to see if Harley was one of them, but also to start getting an idea of just how many people they’d be up against.
Then the thought hit him with almost nauseating force: just how the hell many people know about this? Shit. Jory Hansen certainly, the same kid who is on a trail ride with Shelly Mills, the daughter of my friends Steve and Peggy. Do I tell them?