“I didn’t even know there was anyone in the area,” I said.
“No one has checked in since we got here this spring. Can you see them from here?”
Remy threaded his way through the clump of aspen and was peering out dramatically, twining himself around the trunk of a tree that wasn’t nearly big enough to hide him.
“No,” he said. “The hill hides him. Or them. I wonder how many there are.”
“Well, let’s stop lurking like criminals and go up and see,” I said. “It’s only neighborly-“
The trail up to the Selkirk was steep, rocky, and overgrown with brush and we were both panting when we got to the top.
“Hi!” yelled Remy, “anybody home?” There was no answer except the squawk of a starred jay. “Hey!” he yelled again, “anyone here?”
“Are you sure you saw someone?” I asked, “or is this another-“
“Sure I saw someone!” Remy was headed for the sagging shack that drooped against the slope of the hill.
It was too quick for me even to say a word to Remy. It would have been forever too late to try to reach him, so I just lifted his feet out from under him and sent him sprawling to the ground under the crazy paneless window of the shack. His yell of surprise and anger was wiped out by an explosive
roar. The muzzle of a shotgun stabbed through the window, where smoke was eddying.
“Git” came a tight, cold voice. “Git going back down that trail. There’s plenty more buckshot where that came from.”
“Hey, wait a minute.” Remy hugged the wall under the window. “We just came to see-“
“That’s what I thought.” The gun barrel moved farther out. “Sneaking around. Prying-“
“No,” I said. “You don’t yell ‘hi’ when you’re sneaking. We just wondered who our neighbors were. We don’t want to pry. If you’d rather, we’ll go away. But we’d like to visit with you-” I could feel the tension lessening and saw the gun waver.
“Doesn’t seem like they’d send kids,” the voice muttered, and a pale, old face wavered just inside the window. “You from the FBI?” the old man asked.
“FBI”? Remy knelt under the window, his eyes topping the sill. “Heck, no. What would the FBI be wanting up here?”
“Allen says the government-” He stopped and blinked. I caught a stab of sorrow from him that made me catch my breath. “Allen’s my son,” he said, struggling with some emotion or combination of emotions I hadn’t learned to read yet.
“Allen says nobody can come around, especially G-men-” He ran one hand through his heavy white hair. “You don’t look like G-men.”
“We’re not,” I laughed. “You just ask your son.”
“My son?” The gun disappeared and I could hear the thump of the butt on the splintered old floor of the shack.
“My son-” It was a carefully controlled phrase, but I could hear behind it a great soaring wall. “My son’s busy,” he said briskly. “And don’t ask what’s he doing. I won’t tell you. Go on away and play. We got no time for kids.”
“We just wanted to say ‘hi,’” I hastened before Remy could cloud up at being told to go play. “And to see if you need anything-“
“Why should we need anything?” The voice was cold again and the muzzle of the gun came back up on the sill, not four inches from Remy’s startled eyes. “I have the plans. Practically everything was ready-” Again the hinting stab of sorrow came from him and another wave of that mixture of emotions, so heavy a wave that it almost blinded me and the next thing I knew, Remy was helping me back down the trail. As soon as we were out of sight of the shack, we lifted back to the aspen thicket. There I lay down on the wiry grass and, closing my eyes, I Channeled whatever the discomfort was, while Remy sat by sympathetically silent.
“I wonder what he’s so tender of up there,” he finally said after I had sighed and sat up.
“I don’t know, but he’s suffering from something. His thoughts don’t pattern as they should. It’s as though they were circling around and around a hard something he can’t accept nor deny.”
“Something slender and shiny and complicated?” said Remy idly.
“Well, yes,” I said, casting back into my mind. “Maybe it does have something to do with that, but there’s something really bad that’s bothering him.”
“Well, then, let’s figure out what that slender, shiny thing is, then maybe we can help him figure out that much-By the way, thanks for getting me out of range. I could have got perforated, but good-“
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think he was really aiming at you.”
“Aiming or not, I sure felt drafty there when I saw what he was holding.”
I smiled and went on with the original topic. “If only we could get up closer,” I said. “I’m not an expert at this Sensing stuff yet.”
“Well, try it anyway,” said Remy. “Read it to me and I’ll draw it and then we’ll see what it is.” He cleared a little space, shoving the aspen litter aside, and taking up a twig, held it poised.
“I’ve studied hardly a thing about shapes yet,” I said, lying back against the curve of the slope, “but I’ll try.” So I cleared my mind of everything and began to coax back the awareness of whatever the metal was at the Selkirk. I read it to Remy-all that metal so closely surrounded by the granite of the mountain and yet no intermingling! If you took away the metal there’d he nothing left but a tall, slender hole-My eyes flipped open. “The mine shaft!” I cried. “Whatever it is, it’s filling the mine shaft-the one that goes straight down. All the drifts take off from there!”
“So now we have a hole,” said Rainy. “Fill it up. And I’ll bet it’s just the old workings-the hoist-the cage—”
