Ancient Shores (26 page)

He was twice divorced. His life had been too mobile and too erratic for either of his ex-wives. He had two sons, both of whom (with some justification) blamed Horace for the domestic failures, and whose relationships with their father were cool. Horace had found nothing to replace the wreckage of his personal life, and consequently he worked too many hours. His boss, Carl Rossini, liked to joke that Horace needed a woman in his life. He did, and he knew it.

Meantime, Horace took his entertainments where he could find them. These were growing fewer with the passing years, a result of his own aging and the narrowing of his taste. But there were occasional delights, one of which took the form of Emily Passenger, a gorgeous young woman he’d met at a fund-raiser for the Pineville library. They’d gone to dinner several times, seen a couple of shows, and had taken to jogging together. He had noted some reluctance on her part, however, toward pursuing a relationship, and he ascribed it to his track record. She did not want to become a third casualty.

Consequently Horace had embarked on a campaign to demonstrate that he was now both mature and thoroughly domesticated. The first step was to invite her for dinner at his place, and when she agreed, he had enthusiastically set about preparing the evening. He got in a couple of T-bones and an expensive bottle of champagne, invested in a kerosene lamp, which would help provide an offbeat atmosphere, and spent the day cleaning up. That evening, twenty minutes after he’d opened the champagne, his phone rang.

A thin, bearded man gazed out over the Pacific from his home
at Laguna Beach. A freighter moved beneath a cloud-streaked sky. The sea was flat and calm.

There was an air of uncertainty in his bearing, and an observer would have had a difficult time deciding where his attention was directed. He held a glass of Mondavi chardonnay in his right hand.

The town, like the harbor, lay spread out before him. Traffic moved steadily along the coastal highway. He glanced at his watch, as he had been doing every few minutes for the past hour.

The phone rang.

He turned away from the window and sat down at his desk. “Hello?”

“Greg. It’s all set.”

It was almost two in Fargo. “Okay. Do they know we’re coming?”

“Not yet. Listen. How much influence do
you
have with the feds?”

“Not much.”

“Ditto.”

The man in Laguna Beach was looking at his plane tickets. “Have faith, Walter. See you in a few hours.”

Pete Pappadopolou had worked in the shipping room of ABC Pistons, Inc., for four years, and had recently risen to his first supervisory position. His marriage had collapsed six months earlier, when his wife ran off with the operator of a beer distributorship, leaving him to care for their asthmatic son.

Pete had worked a second job, delivering Chinese food, to pay for the nurse and associated medical care. He hadn’t been sleeping well. He was depressed, and his life seemed to be going nowhere. He missed his wife, and his doctor put him on tranquilizers. But the promotion came, bringing a sizable salary increase and the promise of more as ABC expanded into allied fields. Moreover, the child’s attacks had begun to lessen in both frequency and intensity. They had turned a corner.

Unfortunately, ABC was going through changes as well. Their expansion was to have been financed by a secondary stock offering. But the value of the company’s
stock had plummeted in recent weeks, and the banks, after a long period of watchful waiting, backed off.

ABC found itself with an unexpected surplus of people. The executive suite responded by eliminating eighteen hundred middle-management and first-line supervisory jobs. Pete, who had recently separated from the union in order to move up, discovered to his horror that he had no protection whatever.

On the day before the official notification would have been delivered (the rumor mill at ABC was quite efficient), Pete bought a .38 and used it on his plant manager and a colleague who had been making it clear that he should have got the promotion that went to Pete.

The plant manager, despite being hit six times, survived. The colleague took a bullet in the heart. The company responded by hiring additional security personnel.

James Walker loved solitude. He remembered staring out the windows of the schoolhouse years ago, gazing across snow-blown prairies, imagining himself alone in the world beyond the horizon. He had pictured a place of sun-dappled forest and green rivers and gentle winds heavy with the fragrance of flowers. Where the paths were grass rather than blacktop, and the land was free of county lines and posted limits and tumbledown barns.

Walker listened to his wife, Maria, working in the kitchen, her radio playing softly. A book lay open on his lap, but he couldn’t have told anyone what the title was. Events on the ridge had filled his waking hours since Arky had first called him to report the discovery. Now Arky was dead, and people on the reservation and throughout the area were afraid of the night. George Freewater had told him flat out that something had got loose. “There’s no doubt in my mind,” he’d said.

A jigsaw puzzle lay half done on a table near the window. It was titled “Mountain Glory,” and it portrayed a gray snow-capped peak rising out of lush woodland. A rock-filled stream rushed through the foreground. He had done a thousand such puzzles during his lifetime.

It saddened him there was no wilderness for the Mini Wakan Oyaté like the landscapes on the boxes. He had dreamed all his life that the Sioux would recover their lost world. How this might occur he’d had no idea. But it seemed right that it should happen, and he therefore fervently believed that in time it would.

But the shadows were advancing now. One day soon, he knew, the long night would begin for him. The Sioux had outlived their way of life, had turned it over to the white technicians, who would map everything. That was what he most disliked about them: that they sought to know all things, and did not realize that a forest without dark places has value only to the woodcutter.

Now a road to the stars had opened. From Sioux land. Arky had understood all along, had cautioned him that the Roundhouse might prove far more valuable than any commodity that could be offered in exchange for it. Possibly, the new wilderness was at hand.

The government car drew up outside. He sighed and watched Jason Fleury get out. There were two others with him, but they did not move. Fleury seemed ill at ease.

Walker met him at the door and escorted him back to his office. “I assume,” he said, “you are not bringing good news.”

“No.” Fleury shook his head. “There’s no good news for
anyone
these days.”

The tribal chairman produced two cups of coffee. “What do they propose to do?” he asked.

“I must ask you first, Mr. Chairman, whether you are taping this meeting.”

“Would it make a difference?”

“Only in what I would feel free to tell you.”

Walker sat down on the couch beside his visitor. “There is no device,” he said.

“Good. I didn’t think there would be.” Fleury took a deep breath. “I hardly know how to begin.”

“Let me help,” said Walker. “You are about to seize our land. Again.”

For a long time Fleury didn’t speak. Finally he cleared his throat. “They don’t feel they have a choice in the matter, sir.”

“No,” said Walker. “I’m sure they don’t.”

“Officially our position is that we are reacting in order to allay panic in the local towns and in southern Canada from the rumors that
something
has got loose from the Roundhouse.”

“What panic?” asked Walker.

Fleury smiled, an attempt to break the tension. It didn’t work. “It is true that people are frightened, Chairman. Surely you know that?”

“Give it a few days and it will go away of its own accord.”

“No doubt. Nevertheless, there’s been a death, and there’s political pressure. The government has no choice but to act. It will take over Johnson’s Ridge and temporarily administer the property until we can be assured the situation is stabilized.”

“And when will the situation be considered ‘stabilized’?”

Their eyes locked. Walker could see that Fleury was making a decision. “What I have to say may not be repeated outside this room.”

“It will not be, if you wish.”

“That moment will come when the port and the Roundhouse have been destroyed.”

“I see.”

“There will be an accident. I don’t know how they’ll arrange it, but it’s the only way out.”

Walker nodded slowly. “Thank you for your honesty,” he said. “I must repeat, Johnson’s Ridge belongs to the Mini Wakan Oyaté. We will resist any effort to take it.”

“Try to understand,” said Fleury. “There are forces at work now over which no one has any real control.”

The chairman felt as if he were caught in the gears of a giant clock. “Jason,” he said, “I understand quite well. But I am being asked to choose a reservation for my grandsons when they might have a wilderness. Rather, your people need to put aside their fear. There is nothing destructive in the Roundhouse. The difficulties now besetting the larger world stem from ignorance. And fear.”

Fleury’s eyes were bleak. “Many of us sympathize with your position. You have more friends than you know.”

“But none who are prepared to come forward.”

Fleury struggled with his words. “Chairman, the President counts himself among your friends. But he feels compelled, by his duty to the nation, to take action.”

“I am sorry,” said Walker, standing up to signal an end to the conversation. “I truly am.”

“Chairman, listen.” A note of desperation crept into Fleury’s voice. “It’s out of your hands. The court order has already been issued. It will be served on your people within the hour.”

“On the tribal council?”

“On your representatives at Johnson’s Ridge.”

“Adam will not accept it.”

“That’s why I’m here. To explain what’s happening. And to ask for your assistance. We will pay ample compensation.”

“And what would you offer me in exchange for the future of my people? Keep off the ridge, Mr. Fleury. It belongs to the Sioux. We will not surrender it.”

Max picked up his phone. It was Lasker. “Listen, Max,” he said, “there’s something you ought to know.”

“You sold the boat,” Max said.

“Yeah. Listen, they offered a
lot
of money, Max. More than I’ll ever need.”

“It’s okay, Tom.”

“I don’t know if it’s going to have any kind of impact up there. I was afraid—”

“Where’s the boat now?”

“They’re outside loading it onto a trailer.”

“Wells?”

“No. It’s government money. These guys are from the Treasury.”

Deputy U.S. Marshal Elizabeth Silvera served the court order on Adam Sky. She was in her late forties, tall, rangy, impersonal. Her black hair was just beginning to show streaks of gray.

She was accompanied by Chief Doutable.

Adam’s office in the security station was small and cramped. Its walls, which until yesterday had been bare save for a tribal drum and a framed picture of his wife, were now covered with weapons. Bows, antique rifles, Adam’s old service revolver, whatever he’d been able to find had been put on display.

Silvera extracted a document from her jacket. “Mr. Sky,” she said, “A federal court order requiring that this premises, the Roundhouse, and everything in it, save personal property, be remanded into the custody of the federal government.

“The action is necessitated,” she continued, “because the area has been determined to be a public hazard.”

When the security chief made no move to accept the court order, she laid it on his desk. “You have until midnight tonight to comply.” Her tone changed, as if she were offering friendly advice: “The sooner
you clear the site, Mr. Sky, the better it will be for all concerned.”

“We won’t be leaving,” Adam said coolly.

She met his eyes. “You don’t have that option. You can’t defy the court.”

“This is our property. If you come back to take it from us, come armed.”

Silvera’s eyes hardened. “I
am
sorry,” she said. “You have until midnight.” She turned, walked to the door, and paused. “Under the circumstances I should remind you that resisting a federal court order is a felony. I have no discretion here, Mr. Sky. I have no choice but to enforce the order. By whatever means necessary.”

Walker had been waiting for the call from Adam. When it came, he listened intently to the security chief’s narrative. When he asked for instructions, the chairman hesitated. “Adam,” he said, “how far are you prepared to go?”

“I do not wish to accept this.”

“Are you prepared to defend the ridge?”

“Yes. I’d prefer not to. But I don’t think we have a choice.”

“But,” said Walker, “armed resistance will not produce a victory.”

“Then what do you suggest? That we give in again?”

“The real question is whether we can find a way to keep our hold on the wilderness world.”

“If the federals are prepared to come against us in force, I think not.”

“So,” said Walker, “we can take our money and end it here. Or we can fight with no hope of victory.”

“Yes,” said Adam. “Those seem to be our choices.”

The chairman glanced around his office. The walls, the battered windows, even the fireplace seemed somehow mementos of captivity. “I agree. We must fight.”