Edgars shook his head. “No. No business stays open at all, because of the curfew.”
“That’s a very small-town thing, a curfew,” said Grofield. “Big cities talk about it, but small towns do it.”
Wycza said, “What about a newspaper?”
“A weekly,” Edgars told him. “It comes out on Thursday, for the convenience of the shoppers.”
“No reporters on at night?”
“No. Most of the paper is written by the secretaries of women’s organizations.”
They were all silent, then, all trying to think of other people who might be out and around late at night. After a minute, Paulus said, “That’s it, then. We need another man, to cover the fire department. And we have to find out about the Western Union office.”
Wycza said, “What about the getaway?”
“I got the two maps like Parker suggested.” Edgars answered. “There’s no other way to get out of town except the road, but I think I’ve found the hideout.”
“I don’t like that barracks,” Wycza said.
Grofield said, “An idle thought. What about the mine?”
They looked at him. Edgars said, “What about it?”
“Are there no entrances other than at the back of the canyon? No shafts leading out anywhere else? No emergency exits?”
Edgars shook his head. “I don’t think so. All the shafts go straight down in from the canyon. There’s no reason for any other way in.”
“Just a thought.” Grofield smiled. “I visualized us trundling away on ore carts with the loot, like the seven dwarfs.”
“We have to go past the barracks,” Parker said. “There’s no other choice. We space it so we don’t have a convoy go by all at once, and we’ll be all right.” He turned to Edgars. “What about the hideout?”
“Let me get the maps.” He stood up. “More beer?”
They all wanted more beer. He went away and came back with a double handful of beer cans. He set them down on the table, and took two maps out of his hip pocket. He spread them out on the table, covering most of the table’s surface. One was a state roadmap, the other a topographical map.
They were all standing now, leaning over the maps. Edgars pointed to the topographical map, saying, “See, there’s Copper Canyon. That’s a mesa back of it, it gradually levels down again. Out in front, it’s lowland for over a hundred miles. Down in here is one of the coal beds, lignite coal. This is just about the edge of the Badlands here. This whole section here is full of lignite coal. Some of it’s right out on the surface, burning, been burning for years.”
Parker didn’t give a damn about lignite coal, burning or not. He said, “The hideout.”
“I’m getting to it. Like I said, this section here is just about the edge of the Badlands, so it’s away from the tourist areas and it’s away from the mining operations. There was a strip mine working there a few years ago, but they’re gone now; they cleaned out what they could get and left. There’s an eighty-foot-deep ravine there now, where they scraped the topsoil off and took the coal out. There’s nobody there now at all. There’s some kind of sulphur by-product oozes out of the ground, pollutes the water, and stinks the place up, so nobody goes near it. But the mining company built a road into it, and their old sheds should still be there, on the lip of the ravine.”
“What kind of road?” Parker asked him.
“Dirt. But passable. They brought trucks in and out.”
“How do we get to it?”
Edgars switched over to the other map. “See, here’s 22A here, coming out of Copper Canyon. We pick up the highway here and turn left. Then there’s this smaller road, here, goes off to the right. We’d be on the highway maybe three miles. This small road we stay on for five or six miles, and then the mining company road goes off that to the left.”
“This land is all flat here?”
“It’s plains land. Rolling land.”
“When we turn off the small road onto the mining company road, can we be seen from the highway?”
“No, not a chance. That’s wild country in there, and there’s some trees.”
“How many miles in on the mining company road?”
“Maybe seven.”
“And how many miles from Copper Canyon to the highway?”
“Eight.”
Parker ran his finger along the map. “Eight miles to the highway, then three miles to the secondary road, six miles to the mining company road, seven miles in from there. Twenty-four miles.”
“Looks good,” said Paulus.
Grofield said, “How much traffic on that highway early in the morning?”
“Six in the morning?” Edgars shook his head. “None.”
“Good,” said Paulus. “We won’t be seen.”
