“Nope, just plants. You want to stay back and give them plenty of room, though.”
“Do they care if I watch them?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Can you ride one?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Can you teach them tricks?”
“Couldn’t tell you.”
“I wonder if they have names. Anything that big should have a name.”
“They probably won’t mind if you name them.”
“Really?” Nando seemed captivated by the idea. “I’ll name that one Washington…Lincoln…Roosevelt… Eisenhower…” He walked along the shore, pointing at each of the grazing elk.
Ruppert and Lucia changed into dry clothes, and Lucia spread out the forest-colored tarp near the lake. The three of them ate lunch on the meadow, and Lucia pointed out images in the clouds to Nando. Nando entertained them with a detailed plan of how he could invade, occupy and defend the valley with a force of fifty soldiers.
?
They remained in the valley for the rest of the day, Lucia and Ruppert taking turns between sleeping and keeping watch on Nando. As the sun began to set, they climbed back into the Bronto, and Ruppert drove them northward.
They passed into open, flat country in Montana, under a sprawling blue sky that made Ruppert feel dangerously exposed, as he had in the desert. Terror controlled the skies, and there was a lot of open sky out here. The safehouse that Lucia knew about was out in prairie country, an hour or more east of the comforting shadows of the Rocky Mountains.
They traveled in a relaxed quiet and let the stereo play songs at random from its memory. Archer had stored an unfortunately wide array of old Broadway musical numbers on his truck's hard drive, which Lucia flipped past impatiently.
It was another night of driving, and they arrived before dawn at a cluster of wooden buildings that appeared to be an actual working ranch, with a herd of a thousand or more cattle, lowing to each other in the early light. These animals impressed Nando as much as the elk.
A few men approached on horseback as Ruppert parked alongside a row of trucks. They wore cowboy hats and appeared to be in their late thirties or early forties, with deep lines worn into their faces by years of wind and sun. One of them rode up alongside Ruppert’s window.
“Help you?” he asked. Ruppert turned to Lucia.
“We’re looking for Violet Jakobsen,” Lucia told him.
“She expecting you?”
“No,” Lucia said, “But you can tell her we’re arriving under a flag of distress.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. He instructed the other two to keep watch on the unexpected visitors, then dismounted and walked up into the rambling, uneven main house, which looked as if it had grown one misfit room at a time over the years-some stone, some brick, some wooden. A collection of miniature windmills spun in the front yard.
“Is that an elk?” Nando pointed to a white and brown spotted horse. The man atop it shook his head.
“Appaloosa. Horse.”
“A horse.” Nando spoke the word in awe.
“Must come from someplace awful strange,” the other man said. “Not to know what a horse is.”
“I know what they are!” Nando sounded defensive, which amused Ruppert a little. “Alexander the Great’s horse was Bucephalus, and he conquered Afghanistan, like George Bush the Second. Soldiers used to ride them a long time ago.”
“Not all that long ago,” the man on the Appaloosa said, and his companion smiled.
The rider who had first greeted them returned, accompanied by a tall woman in a straw-colored cowboy hat-Ruppert guess this was the woman called Violet, the owner of the ranch. Her gray hair was gathered into loose, thick braids punctuated with bits of turquoise. She looked over the three strangers in the Bronto, then leaned in at Lucia’s window.
“Kipp tells me you’re travelers in trouble.” She studied Lucia’s face for a second, then looked towards Nando in the back seat. “What’s your name?”
“Private Cadet George Liberty, sir,” the boy replied. “I mean, ma’am.”
“That is surely an interesting name.” She lifted an eyebrow at Lucia. “He is your son.”
“His name is Fernando,” Lucia said.
“Child and Family Services?” Violet asked.
“We only just recovered him.”
“That must be an interesting tale. I’d love to hear how you managed it.”
“I doubt anyone could repeat it. We nearly died.”
“It’s always good to learn.”
Lucia leaned out and whispered into the woman’s ear. Violet nodded, looking to Ruppert and Nando. Ruppert didn’t know if she was explaining their story, or passing information, or using some sort of code to indicate she was a trustworthy resister. Whatever she said, it worked, because the woman hugged her and invited the three of them inside for a “late breakfast.” It was a few minutes past six in the morning.
The kitchen was clearly the biggest room in the house, arranged around an unevenly built stone fireplace at the center of the room. Violet directed them to a big picnic table that could seat twenty people at once, though none of them would be sitting in matching chairs-there were chairs of wood, wicker, bamboo, and a couple of folding aluminum seats. Two adolescent girls, one white and one Guatemalan, hurried to dish them out breakfast from an array of skillets on the brick counters flanking the stove.
Before eating, Nando said a prayer aloud: “Our Almighty King, Commander of the Legions of Heaven, Let us eat grain from the fields of our enemies, that we may grow strong on their hunger, and let our swords find their bellies empty. Amen.” Then he tore into his food, loudly proclaiming it the best he’d ever eaten.
Lucia cast a gloomy look at Ruppert.
They learned what it meant to eat like a ranch hand-the girls brought fried steak, fried eggs, fresh tomatoes, and biscuits yellow with butter. They drank hot coffee and cold milk thick with cream. After days of crackers and nuts and watery juice mix, it was a feast.
Afterward, Violet and the teenage Guatemalan girl, whose name was Ana, led Ruppert, Lucia and Nando behind the house to the long, ramshackle horse stable. They carried their luggage-Ruppert’s suitcase, Lucia’s duffle bag, and Nando empty-handed-up a narrow staircase of wooden slats into the dark loft, which was illuminated by a wide, narrow slit of a window. Violet crossed the length of the building to the rear wall, reached through the clutter of saddles, harnesses and horse blankets that hung upon it, and opened a concealed door that folded back into a dark, hidden room.
The interior of the room stank of old sweat and musty, hot air, though a little light and fresh air trickled in through a constellation of nail-holes in one wall. Fresh straw lined the floor, and on top of that people huddled together on blankets and sleeping bags in the shadows. They stirred as the door opened, but said nothing.
As Ruppert’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could see the room’s occupants consisted of two families with small children, plus a few lone individuals scattered along the rear wall.
“We have a few extra guests,” Violet announced to the people in the room, who didn’t exactly applaud the news. She turned to Lucia. “We were just about to wake the children anyhow. We let them work around the farm during the day-it ends up better for everyone.”
“Can I feed the elks and the horses?” Nando asked.
“We don’t have any elk, but we have cows,” Violet said.
Ana collected the three other children in the room, who were already awake and ready to get busy.
“Are you sure that’s safe?” Lucia asked.
“Of course,” Violet said. “Ana will keep an eye on them. We have workers’ kids running all over the farm, and everyone will assume they belong to someone else.”
“That’s not what concerns me.”
