Refuge in Montana

As I sit here, writing the day's events with a wooden pencil in a high school wire-bound notebook, I have to wryly smile. Before, I would have been typing them into my laptop and committing the little electronic bits of information to the innards of a mysterious little box called a hard drive or into the vast unseen accumulation then called "the cloud". Today, I am fortunate to have the pencil and the paper, though calling myself "fortunate" is something with which I usually have to struggle.

I suppose I have faithfully recorded everything of the last two years out of some sort of personal goal to document our new lives for future generations. Future generations? Ha! I guess that means Gordy and Veronica and Oren and Beth and their own children. They're probably the only people who will ever read any of the hundred or so notebooks stacked on the bookshelf beneath the stuffed pheasant and the mantle clock that ticks away the days and nights of our lives.

I'll keep writing, though, because I can't bear the thought of our lives going the way of the lives of most ancient peoples. Their stories were passed on through word of mouth, gaining and losing a little bit with each passing generation, until the story is relegated by scholars like myself to the realm of myth and superstition. I hold the hope that someday there will again be scholars to write and people to read an analysis of the past.

My life's work was supposed to be that of a historian, deciphering those myths and superstitions and turning them into pictures of life in the distant past. My mother understood. She would be proud of my journals. They're much like the ones she kept of our trips to places we went every summer. They were the written version of the photographs she also took - my father with the big northern pike he pulled from the lake in Canada, my sister and I feeding the ducks at the park, and my brother and I at a Cub's game in our ball caps with our gloves. Well, my brother had his glove, anyway. As I remember that picture, I didn't look very happy to be there. As I remember that day, I wasn't happy at all. Mom understood that too, but encouraged me to smile. Dad didn't understand, but then, he couldn't understand much about me anyway. He was baseball and outdoors and fixing things. I was reading about the past, thinking about the future, and more or less oblivious to anything else.

So, here I am tonight as most other nights, writing about our past. I try not to think further into the future than the end of this harvest season.

Chapter 1

For most of two years, I had been musing about hearing my name, Gordon Talbert Clarke, spoken by the President of the University of Illinois at Chicago and then walking across the stage to receive my doctorate in History. I envisioned my future as enlightening the world about the history of civilizations of the past while teaching eager students at some respected university. If all went according to my vision, I would someday become a dean, and then finally retire to concentrate on more research and writing. I needed only to complete my thesis about the Columbian Exchange and its impact upon European civilization to begin the journey in my vision.

My job as an assistant professor wouldn't support much of a life in the Chicago suburb of River Grove, so Cheryl, my wife, was helping make ends meet by doing what she loved. Both her parents had been teachers and Cheryl had dreamed of being a teacher since she was a child. The year she graduated, she got the job she had dreamed of - teaching second grade at one of the local elementary schools. The summer after she achieved that goal, we married and settled down in a studio apartment on Thatcher.

Between preparing for classes, determining and grading homework assignments, and office hours with my students, writing the thesis was proving to be a difficult task. All my research was complete as were the notes about circumstances and events I felt other historians had overlooked. My advisor assured me that my theories were sound and the thesis would shed new light on an important period of human history. I just needed a couple of months to put it all into logical, readable text and submit it for review.

One evening as I sat at my desk reading student papers on the demise of power of the British monarchy, I decided the only way to complete my thesis was to get away from lectures, students, homework and everything else that pulled me from writing. After thinking further, the summer seemed to be the only time. The three months Cheryl was not teaching would free her to go, and the university would have no problem if I took that time off. What I needed was a place sufficiently isolated that I wouldn't be disturbed by visitors, phone calls, and the normal bustle of our apartment complex.

The next morning, I shared my thoughts with Cheryl. Cheryl is the practical side of our marriage, and if there was a way to do what I thought I needed to do, I knew she'd find it. Cheryl had seen my struggles and agreed that we needed to get away to somewhere. That "somewhere" was the sticking point.

I would be happy as a clam living for three months with no people, cars, buses, or anything else around. Cheryl needed something with which to occupy her time. She began searching for someplace that would fill both our needs and fit into our budget as well. A resort with cabins where you could cook your own meals seemed to be a viable alternative at first, and her inquiries found many that were affordable if we stretched the budget a little. Unfortunately, they were all near beaches, theme parks, or in other places that promised a wonderful vacation full of exciting things to do. Cheryl thought they sounded interesting because she'd have something to do while I wrote, but she knew we'd be drawn to them at the expense of my thesis.

That evening, Cheryl made a phone call to her sister, Mary. After the usual hour-long gab session that they enjoy, Cheryl came into the bedroom smiling.

"I, or rather Mary, found the answer. We need to take someone with us when we go on this trip you're planning."

"OK, but who would want to go where we need to go?"

"Mary would."

"Mary? What about Bill? Night and day, he's always on the phone talking to someone about his business. He wouldn't want to go, and if I know Bill, he wouldn't want to spend the summer by himself either."

"Bill wants to go, too. He has a manager now who takes care of everything but the big, downtown real estate transactions, and Mary says he needs a vacation."

"OK, I'll buy that, but could we ever agree on where? I mean, you'll have Mary to talk to and do things with. I'll have my thesis. Bill would have what?"

"He's looking for that now."

"Bill's looking?"

"Yes. He has real estate connections all over the states, and he's looking for that secluded spot you want... with a town close enough that we other three won't go nuts for something to do besides play canasta and stare at each other."

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I figured if there was such a place, Bill would find it. Bill, or Billy, as Mary calls her husband, is an interesting guy, not really my type of guy, but still an interesting one. His dad was a contractor who started a real estate business back in the fifties to make more profit on the houses he built. Over the years, that business grew from selling residential properties in the Chicago suburbs to include a division that worked with properties in the downtown area as well as the industrial areas of the city and surrounding area. Bill grew up in that environment and got his real estate license when he was just nineteen. He's a great salesman, one of those people who loves to be around people, loves talking to people, and who never in his life met anyone who wasn't immediately a friend. I like people, but not like Bill likes people.

He would have done great as just an agent, but his dad would have none of that. William James Rhodes was not about to turn over his business to an uneducated man, so four years after high school, Bill got his bachelors in economics, and a year later, his MBA. His dad made him vice president of the company, and Bill began growing the business even more. I don't know how much income Bill brought home, but he and Mary lived in a six bedroom house in Lincolnwood.

One would never know how well off Bill and Mary really are. Mary is a carbon copy of Cheryl, except she's a little taller, and just as practical. Bill is, well, just Bill. I think he would be the same guy flipping burgers as he is managing his business, always friendly, always ready to help, and just a really nice guy.

Oh, he does sometimes get a little carried away with his one hobby, that being his ham radio. I don't have a clue about all the jargon he uses when he gets really wound up, but having his own radio station fits his personality. With the radio, Bill can talk to people all over the world, and he loves doing it. Bill's only vice is good food and drink, and it shows. He's not obese, but he's not slim by any means. Mary tries hard to keep him on the straight and narrow, but she loves him too much to ever get really upset with him.

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On the twenty-first of April, Bill and Mary came over for some burgers. As we stood on the tiny balcony of our second floor apartment, drinking a beer and waiting for the burgers to cook, Bill said he'd found the place.

"Don't know if you'll like it or not, but an agent in Montana I met at a conference last year called me yesterday about a ranch up in the mountains. He said The Dapple Horse Ranch was kind of a dude ranch, but it wasn't really a place people went to vacation. It was a place they went to learn how things were done on a ranch in the 1800's. Guests could do as much of the work as they wanted, or they could just watch while the employees and other guests did everything. Jay Milburn, that's the agent I know out there, is emailing me their brochure, but he filled me in on the important stuff.

"The owner's husband passed away a month ago and she's trying to sell it. She's not in good enough health to live there by herself, so she moved into town and needs someone to watch the place until it sells.

"They did all the work with horses. In the spring they went out and brought in the cattle to give the calves their shots and brand them. They also castrated the bull calves then. In summer, they'd move them to pastures up in the mountains. Fall was the time to sell the steers and cows they didn't want to keep, so they'd bring them down from the mountain pastures into the pens at the ranch and load them onto cattle trucks.

"If you didn't want to work the cattle, you could mow hay and bring it in to the barn or work in the oat, wheat, and cornfields. Horses pulled the mower and hay wagons, and horses pulled the plow, planter, and cultivators. The corn was picked by hand and thrown into a wagon pulled by more horses. Oats and wheat were harvested with something Jay called a binder. It was pulled by horses too.

"There was also a huge garden. Mostly women guests worked in the garden, just like they did back then. The ranch bought canned vegetables as a back up, but most of what they ate, all the carrots and potatoes and tomatoes and stuff came from that garden. They'd teach the women how to preserve the veggies by canning or drying them when they were ready to pick.

"Meat wasn't a problem. When they ran low, they'd slaughter a steer. The kitchen in the lodge has two refrigerators and two freezers they used to store the beef until they could use it all. If you happened to be there at the right time, you could help with the butchering. Guests could also fish in the stream that runs through the property. Jay said there are some nice trout in that stream.

"Winter was hunting season, and the ranch changed from a ranch to a hunting resort. From what Jay said, there are deer and bear all over up there, along with some elk and lots of smaller animals.

"The ranch has electricity from a generator, but they only ran it from dark until about ten at night, just enough time for dinner and a game of cards or a few chapters of a book before bed. We can use it, but we'll have to buy the diesel if we run the tank dry.

"The owner wants to sell the lodge as a package, so a lot of the stuff needed to run it is still there. The kitchen is still stocked with pots and pans and tableware. There's a kitchen sink with hot and cold water. The water comes from the creek. They pump it from there to a big tank on top of a stand beside the lodge. There is a filter system for the water that strains out all the nasty stuff and they add a little chlorine just like the city water system does. Jay said that's all that's needed and the water has passed the state tests.

"There's a central shower and laundry. Like the stoves, refrigerators and freezers, the water heaters are propane. The propane tank will be full when we get there, and Jay said it should last the four of us for at least three months. If it runs low, we'll have to drive to town and pay to get it filled back up again."

Bill drank the last of his beer, then threw the empty in the trashcan, and reached in the cooler for another.

"Kinda like being house sitters, I guess, except it's ranch sitting.

"Anyway, it has a main lodge and six cabins. We can use the lodge, but just like when you sell a house, it has to be kept neat and clean so it'll make a good impression. The place is twenty miles from a little town called Sleepy Creek. There's a little over six hundred acres, by the way. The fields aren't very big, so most of it is pine and birch trees. There's also a couple of barns, a bunk house, tool shed, and an outdoor cook pit we can use."

It sounded like it would work for me, but I wasn't sure about the rest of them.

"What's in Sleepy Creek?"

"Well, there's a saloon with a big dance floor if you get tired of typing and want to go kick up your heels a little."

"I don't think that's me. What else?"

"Just the usual stuff, grocery store, hardware store, bank, gas station, you know, the stuff little towns had before there were big-box stores, mom and pop places."

"You'd be happy there for three months?"

"Yeah. I used to fish a little when I was a kid. I figure I can catch us dinner once in a while. I'll take my radio and an antenna, too. I can't spend half the time I'd like on my radio when I'm home. Reception oughta be pretty good in the mountains. "

"What about Mary?"

"She'll have Cheryl to keep her company, and you know they both love being outdoors. We'll have to take them to town once in a while, I suppose. Mary goes nuts if she can't go shopping. She never buys much, but she just has to go look. They'll do fine."

I still wasn't sure. Cheryl and Mary would do well together for a while. I was confident about that. The old saw about absence making the heart grow fonder nagged at me a little. I figured if that was true, being close might make for less fondness and what that might bring. Cheryl and Mary both have never been known to keep their feelings inside very well.

That night, as Cheryl and I lay in bed, I asked her if she really wanted to do this, or if she was just saying that because she knew I needed to get away. Her answer was a little surprising.

"Yes, I want to go to that ranch, and so does Mary. We talked about it before dinner. Bill has been having really bad headaches lately. His doctor said it isn't migraines or anything to worry about for now. It's just the stress of his job causing them, but he does need to get away. Mary said his doctor told him to go somewhere for a couple weeks and do nothing but relax.

"She's worried that he won't unless they go with us. You know how Bill is. He always has a phone stuck on his ear, or he's emailing somebody about something. If he's in Montana, his cell phone won't work and neither will his laptop.

"Mary wants to go too, and not just because of Bill. He's been so busy making money they haven't done anything together for ages. He keeps telling her they will, but then some business deal always comes up and they stay home.

"We could use a vacation together as well. Do you realize it's been over three years since we've been anywhere together? All year long, you teach and grade papers. In the summer, you do your research. All year long, I teach and do lesson plans. In the summer, I look for new things for my classroom and to help teach my kids. At the end of every day, we eat, watch TV and then go to bed. We need some private time together, like a second honeymoon."

"It won't be very private with Bill and Mary along."

"Yes it will, because they'll be in a different room in the lodge."

"I'll still be working on my thesis."

"I know, but you'll get more done in an hour there than you get done in a week here. We'll still have time together, a lot more than we do now, and I can take pictures of Montana and find out a bunch of stuff to teach my kids next year."

"Yes, I'll get a lot done, but I'll also be busy. You and Mary and Bill won't be. Think you'll all get along for three months?"

"We talked about that too. If things get a little too close, one the couples will go into town or just take a walk. It'll work itself out."

The next evening, Cheryl called Mary and asked if Bill could make the arrangements for the ranch. They talked for an hour after that, during which they decided on a departure date and what they would need to take with them. I don't know how that took all of an hour. Bill and I had talked about that as well, for about ten minutes.

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Cheryl turned in her grade book and keys on May 26th. My last day for the summer was June 1st. My leave of absence would let me stay away from everything until the first week of September. I wasn't getting paid, but my payment would be a bound thesis and my doctorate in January, or perhaps the next June if I had to make some revisions after my formal defense to the committee.

It took a week for Cheryl and Mary to pack. It took me a day. Clothes weren't a big problem for me. I just tossed all my jeans, shirts, socks and underwear into my duffle bag. I packed a couple shirts and good slacks in my overnight bag along with my only pair of dress shoes, and I was ready.

What took the most time was packing the three big plastic storage boxes that held my research papers, notes, two laptops, a dozen thumb drives, two printers with spare ink, and twenty reams of paper. I didn't want to leave any of my years of research behind, and I didn't know if things like printer ink and a spare laptop would be readily available where we were going. I could just see myself sitting in the middle of nowhere with a broken laptop screen and no way to get another laptop without driving for three hours each way.

Our departure time was six o'clock AM on June 3rd. The day before, I packed everything into our little Toyota hatchback except for the things Cheryl said she absolutely needed the next morning. That evening, Bill and Mary drove over to spend the night at our apartment so we could leave early the next morning.

Cheryl poured a cup of coffee for each of them, and we sat at our kitchen table while Bill showed us the brochure his realtor friend, Jay Milburn, had sent. He also explained the conditions of our stay.

"We're there to make sure nobody breaks into the lodge or steals anything, so it won't cost us anything except maybe for diesel fuel for the generator and propane for the stoves, refrigerators and water heater. Those tanks will be full when we get there, but if we use it all, we'll have to pay to have them filled again. Jay said the generator burns quite a lot of diesel, so we'll have to agree on a time to fire it up and shut it off. It would cost too much to let it run all day and all night.

"In addition to the lodge we can use any of the other five hundred or so acres around it that aren't fields. There's a barn as well."

Bill looked at Mary and grinned.

"Don't know what we'd do in there except have that roll in the hay I've always heard about."

Mary slapped him on the arm as he continued.

"There's a bunkhouse too, but since all the employees have moved out, it'll be empty. Might be a good place for you to spread out your stuff, Gordy. That way, you wouldn't have to put it away every night.

"Behind the lodge is a patio with a big charcoal grill they used to cook steaks and such for the clients. It's ours to use. We can fish the stream and walk anywhere on the property we want."

In one of the pictures I saw a satellite dish.

"I see a dish. I don't really care one way of the other, but does it have TV?

"Not any more. Jay said there's a big screen in the lodge, but the owner stopped the service. It doesn't matter. I have a player and a whole stack of DVD's if we want to watch a movie. We'll take my little TV too in case someone wants to watch a movie in private."

"How about a phone?"

"There was a landline to the place, but I gather it's been disconnected. I suppose we could get it connected again, but we'll have my radio if we really need to get in touch with somebody. Didn't you know ham operators were helping people way before 911 was even thought about? Besides, Sleepy Creek is only about half an hour away. They have a doctor, and Jay said his office is as good as a hospital unless you need major surgery."

After they finished their coffee, Cheryl and Mary made a run to the local drugstore for some things they said they'd forgotten and couldn't do without. Bill and I had another cup of coffee and watched a movie on TV. By ten, we were all in bed.

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Our plan had been for us to take two cars and keep in touch via cell phone. The next morning, when Bill said we should be loading up, I said I had done that already. He chuckled.

"Gordy, you drive slow and I drive fast. We'd just get separated. I bought a car that'll get us there all together. Come look."

It was an SUV, but I didn't realize GM still made monsters like this. It had two rows of two seats and another seat for three behind that. Behind that seat was more space than in the back of our Toyota hatchback.

"Bill, you bought this just for this trip?"

He grinned.

"Always wanted one, but I couldn't convince Mary I needed one until now. It has built in wi-fi, satellite radio, GPS with maps to everywhere, and it's four-wheel drive. It'll go anywhere except over water. The seats are heated for winter, and they're like sitting on your living room couch. Come on, let's load your stuff in the back and get going."

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It was about nine before Bill backed out of the parking space and drove to the street. He stopped and keyed in 123 Northwoods Drive, Sleepy Creek, Montana. The screen changed to a map of River Grove with a green line following the drive out to the street, and a female voice said "Please proceed to the highlighted route".

"Lead the way, Honey", said Bill, and steered the black SUV out of the parking lot.

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Bill had christened the computer generated voice of his GPS system as Geena, after his favorite movie star. Geena directed us to North Cumberland and then onto I-94. Bill set the cruise control on seventy-five, and settled down in the leather drivers seat. I rode shotgun so Cheryl and Mary could talk.

I-94 took us around Rockford, and then on to Janesville, Wisconsin. We had to make a potty stop in Janesville for the girls, though I admit relieving myself of the morning coffee felt good too. Then it was on to Madison and lunch. I drove the big SUV from Madison through Eau Claire and then to Minneapolis. Bill played with the satellite radio, and had us listening to country western music most of the way. He said we might as well get into the mood for life in the west.

Geena steered me through the maze of city streets to the hotel Mary had booked for us. I suppose it was the excitement of finally getting away from the city, but we were all tired. After dinner at a nearby restaurant, we went to our rooms. Cheryl was in the shower when I went in to use the toilet, and I peeked behind the shower curtain. She pulled it back closed and told me if I'd leave her in peace, she'd join me in bed in a few minutes. I guess she did, but those few minutes were all it took to put me to sleep.

The next morning, we were sitting in the lounge of the hotel enjoying their continental breakfast. It was breakfast, but I'm not sure on what continent they would call it that. There were scrambled eggs and bacon strips that weren't too bad. There were pasty textured biscuits and sausage gravy that was. Cheryl and Mary, always conscious of their weight, had cereal from little boxes with skim milk. They picked up an apple and a banana each for what they called a mid-morning snack.

The television in the lounge was turned to some news program, but the sound was off. The headlines that scrolled across the bottom and the captions that wrote what the newscaster was saying served to fill us in on the state of the world as of that morning. Nothing was much different than yesterday. The Middle East was still a mess, the Dow was headed up or down depending upon which economist was speaking, and the USDA was concerned about a new strain of bird flu in China and had shut off all imports of poultry products from the Pacific Rim. With school out, a couple of malls in Minneapolis had declared teens without parents not welcome. Then came the local weather and fishing reports.

We left the lounge and checked out around eight, topped off the SUV, and then Geena led Bill back through the spaghetti of cloverleaves and lane splits to I-94 again. By nine, Minneapolis was out of sight and the next stop would be Fargo, North Dakota.

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Up until Minneapolis, the country wasn't much different than northern Illinois. There were more trees in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but there were still a lot of small and middle size towns along the route. After Minneapolis, the towns got further apart. That wasn't a problem for Bill or me, but Cheryl and Mary started hinting about a place to stop an hour and a half after we left the hotel. Geena responded to Bill's question with the information that Fergus Falls was the nearest town on our route. It was another half hour before we rolled into a gasoline station and convenience store just off I-94. Cheryl and Mary headed for the ladies room, Bill and I to the men's, and in fifteen minutes we were back on the highway.

It was a good thing we'd stopped, because there wasn't much between Fergus Falls and Fargo except farmland. A few farmhouses and barns were visible from the interstate, and we saw one town that looked to be a couple of miles off to the south west, but there were none of the usual signs indicating the town had any place to stay or places to eat.

Fargo was lunch and a fill-up, and then back on the highway to Bismark, our planned stopping point for the night. The day before, we hadn't stretched our driving time much. The drive today was longer because it had to be. Mary had booked our hotel rooms for the trip, and said she hadn't found much in the way of hotels along the way because there were no cities big enough to attract any of the chains. We drove past Valley City and Jamestown, but stopped at a truck stop in Steele because both Cheryl and Mary were squirming in their seats. It was late afternoon when I steered the SUV into the parking lot of the Comfort Suites.

We were all starved and there was a Mexican place a few minutes away. I'm not a big fan of spicy food, so I ordered mesquite grilled chicken breast. Cheryl and Mary both had chicken breast with enchiladas on the side. Bill went all out with a huge combo platter of enchiladas, tacos, and refried beans. When he ordered Mary sighed.

"Billy, don't you remember what your doctor told you about fats? Once a week is what I remember."

Bill grinned sheepishly.

"Yeah, that's what he said. This is my once in a week."

"Yeah, that's what you said last night when you had steak and shrimp."

"Oh... I guess I forgot about that."

Bill waggled his eyebrows at Mary.

"Honey, if it worries you that much, we can work it off with a little "boom-boom" tonight."

"You can boom-boom yourself. I'm tired and all I'm going to do is sit in the tub for half an hour and then go to sleep."

Mary sounded aggravated, but I knew she really wasn't. She and Cheryl are so much alike. They both take care of their men because they love them. Sometimes, they treat us like little boys, but I suppose we act that way sometimes, like Bill ordering food he knows he's not really supposed to have.

The next morning, after another continental breakfast, we were headed toward Billings, Montana. This drive was an even longer stretch, but the towns and cities weren't really spaced right for anything else. Beach, North Dakota was our first pit stop. Glendive, Montana was lunch, and the afternoon stop was in Miles City.

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We had been seeing the Rockies for a while, still just peaks low on the horizon, but it was exciting to know we were getting close. I was ready to begin the work I'd put off for almost a year. While we were riding and in between conversations with Bill, I had been formulating how my thesis would be written. I could hardly wait until I could begin transferring those thoughts into words.

I would begin with an analysis of the conditions up to the time of the Columbian Exchange with concentration on the social climate and government. Then would come the description of the Exchange itself along with my theories on why certain plants, animals, and social customs made the trip back to Europe. My analysis would follow with my conclusions about how the Exchange changed civilization on both continents.

Cheryl and Mary were talking about all the pictures they would take, and how they'd enjoy walking around the grounds. They both love being outside, Cheryl to gain insights into nature in order to teach her students and Mary because she loves watching animals. She was a member of a bird-watching club at home, and went out every other Saturday to watch for some bird that's not supposed to be there, but is. I'm not sure how watching birds is fun, but she likes it.

Bill was on a roll with his plans for a radio station.

"Yessir, once I get my antenna strung up, Whiskey Alpha Niner November Alpha Delta - portable Victor Echo Six will be on the air. I probably won't get as many contacts out here as at home because my antenna won't be quite as good, but it'll still work. I bought a..."

He went on to talk about multi-band dipole antennas and standing wave ratios and a bunch of other things I didn't understand, but I kept nodding. Bill is always like this when it comes to his business and his radio, and it's best to humor him.

I have to admit it was comforting to know we wouldn't be completely shut off from the outside world, though. I wanted peace and quiet, but sometimes things happen that require help from someone else. Bill's radio would be a way to get that help, or so I thought at the time.

The mountains grew taller as we neared Billings. We rolled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn just as the sun was setting over the mountains. The final rays painted the clouds orange with dark purple highlights, and Cheryl and Mary were all ooh's and ahh's at the sight. It took five minutes to get them to stop taking pictures with their cell phones and emailing those pictures to our home email addresses.

We were all tired of sitting but also hungry. A Cracker Barrel a couple minutes away fixed the hunger problem. Bill started to order a ham steak, but after a stern look from Mary, change his order to the grilled chicken. That sounded good to the rest of us, so we made it four orders. After eating, we headed for bed, but it took me a while to get to sleep. I knew that by tomorrow night, we'd be at the ranch and the next morning I could start the task for which we'd come all this way. My thoughts kept running through my head - sequences, how to detail my observations and study, and how to justify my conclusions - and it was well past midnight when I finally went to sleep.

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The next morning, Geena directed Bill toward I-90 and we were soon out of the city and travelling west again. An hour and a half later, we made a pit stop in Livingston, and then went on to Bozeman where we stopped at a fast food place for lunch. None of us wanted to spend more time eating than necessary. We wanted to get to the ranch.

From Bozeman, we climbed up and down low mountains until we came to Missoula. After Missoula, we followed Geena's directions and turned onto Montana 93 at Wye. Half an hour later, Bill parked in front of Milburn Realty in the quiet little town of Sleepy Creek, population eleven hundred and three according to the sign at the entrance of town.

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Bill went in to meet Jay, and then came back out to the car.

"Jay's out with a client right now. What say we hit the grocery store for some food? I need to get some eye screws too because I forgot the ones I had at home. The girls can buy groceries and we'll go get my eye screws."

We dropped Cheryl and Mary off at the small grocery store and drove to Ames Hardware. Bill found his eye screws, and carried them to the counter. The clerk, an older man wearing a cowboy hat, said he didn't remember seeing us before. Bill explained why we were there, and the man smiled and stuck out his hand.

"I'm Warren Ames, and I know Virginia well. Jake, that was her husband, Jake always came here to buy what he needed to keep the place running. Coulda gone to Missoula and saved a little money, but he always came here. Said he believed in supporting the town businesses. Nice guy, Jake was. Shame about his heart, but then, what he was doing up there was work from sunup to sundown. Loved it though. Diein' was the only way he'd ever have stopped.

"So, you're gonna take care of the place until it sells and Jay found the place for you? Well, he'll tell you what you need to know. It's a nice place, up there. Used to go fish that creek once in a while. You gonna fish it?"

Bill said yes.

"Well, you'll be needin' a fishing license then. How long you stayin'?"

Bill said three months.

"You might as well get an annual then. Here, just fill out these forms and I'll fix you right up."

We left with two fishing licenses at a cost of seventy dollars each. I only got one because Bill said I'd need to relax once in a while. I thought it was going to be an expensive way to eat unless Bill and I caught a lot of fish.

We picked up Cheryl and Mary at the store. They were waiting outside with two full grocery carts. I suppose I looked a little dumfounded because Cheryl giggled at me.

"Did we buy too much?"

"I'm surprised there's anything left in the place. What did you buy?"

"Well, Mary and I talked it over, and we decided to buy enough stuff to last us at least a month. A month will give you enough time to get your thesis started, and a month up there will get Bill relaxed. We'll come back then and stock up for another month."

Bill was looking over the contents of the shopping carts.

"Are there any steaks or hamburgers? All I see is chicken, canned vegetables and fruit, and about eight boxes of oatmeal."

"Yes, Billy, we have some steaks and hamburgers", said Mary, "but they're only for when we say they are."

"Potatoes? I have to have baked potatoes with my steak."

"Yes, thirty pounds of potatoes."

"How about charcoal for the grill?"

"Four bags under the other cart, and two bottles of lighter."

Bill kissed Mary on the forehead.

"That's my Mary. Always looking out for me."

He looked at his watch.

"It's time Jay should be back. Let's load all this stuff up and go see if he is."

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I had two bags of potatoes on my lap, Cheryl had a box of vegetables on hers, and Mary had a box of canned fruit. There was nowhere else to put them, because everywhere else in the SUV was stuffed to the ceiling with food.

Bill went into the realtor's office and came back out with an older man in jeans, plaid shirt, and a cowboy hat. He introduced him as Jay Milburn. Jay laughed when he saw us holding the food in our laps.

"Sleepy Creek Grocery is open more than today, you know."

"We know that", said Bill, "but the girls are bound and determined to spend a month up there before we come back."

"Well, follow me and I'll take you up, give you the keys, and you can get started."

Chapter 2

The drive to the ranch was a winding, two lane road that ultimately petered out to a gravel drive at the end. The gravel drive wound through the mountain slopes and dense pine trees to turn a corner and emerge into a flat valley. The rocky faces of the mountains erupted from the valley floor on three sides and gave the flat, green surface the appearance of being the courtyard of a huge, stone fortress. The small river for which the town was named, Sleepy Creek, ran from a small gap in those mountains and down through the fenced-in pastures about a half a mile from the buildings that sat nearly in the center of the valley. Beyond that, the majestic peaks of the Rockies edged up against a deep blue sky. Cheryl gasped when she saw it from her side window.

"It looks like something you'd see in a magazine. It's beautiful."

It was beautiful, and was more so when we parked in front of the buildings. The lodge was a huge log structure with dormer windows on the front and a porch that ran all across the front and around each side. Wood rocking chairs and tables were placed at intervals on the porch. A stone chimney protruded through the roof, and if the size of the chimney was any indication, the fireplace inside would be huge. Three log cabins, also with stone chimneys on one side, were placed on each side of the lodge.

The oval area in front of the lodge was at least a hundred feet wide and two hundred long. It was all grass except for a gravel drive that circled it. On the other side of the drive was a huge barn with a smaller structure next to it with a sign that said "Bunk House". Beside that was another building that would have to be the tool shed.

Behind those buildings were several pens made of posts with wood rails I assumed were for the horses and cattle that were part of the attraction to the lodge. Beyond those pens were wire-fenced enclosures that divided the valley into several different areas. A long, fenced aisle ran down the front of those enclosures from another pen beside the barn and a gravel road paralleled that. The rest of the open areas appeared to be the fields that were tilled, planted, and harvested as part of the guest's experience.

Jay parked his truck in front of the lodge and Bill pulled in beside him. Getting out was a bit cumbersome because of the groceries on our laps, but in a couple minutes, Jay led us to the front door of the lodge, unlocked it, and waved us inside.

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As soon as they walked in the door, Cheryl and Mary just stopped and stood there with their mouths hanging open. Bill and I walked around them and then stopped too. I'm no interior decorator by any means, but even I could see the rustic charm of the place.

The dormers on the front didn't lead to rooms upstairs. They opened into the main area of the lodge. The sunlight streaming through the expanse of windows cast shadows of the massive beams overhead onto the polished, pine floor. Above the beams were more, lighter beams and ceiling joists that had aged to a deep brown color. Wide pine planks covered the ceiling joists. The beams, ceiling joists, and planking all bore the marks of the huge saw that had been used to cut them.

The room ran the entire length of the lodge, about seventy feet by my estimate, and right in the center was the stone fireplace. It was wide enough I could easily have lain inside it, and was at least four feet deep. The wood mantle held a few pictures of cowboys on horses, and one of a chuck wagon.

On the log walls beside the fireplace hung the mounted heads of deer, elk, and one big horn sheep, along with mounted ducks and geese that seemed to be flying along the wall. In front of the fireplace were three couches arranged in a "U" shape with coffee tables in front of each.

The floor, with the exception of the area in front of the fireplace, was pine that had been polished over the years by thousands and thousands of footsteps. On the stone floor in front of the fireplace and off to the right side was a low table with a checkerboard flanked by two chairs. Against the wall on the right side of the fireplace was a bookcase filled with books. On the left side were steps leading to the second floor of the lodge.

On the front wall and to the right of the front door were four tables for four, and on each was a deck of cards and a box of dominos. To the left of the door was evidently the dining area. There were two long tables with chairs for about a dozen at each table. Along the outside wall of that area, as well as on the other ends of the room, windows looked out on the barn and other structures. In the background were the snow-capped peaks of the mountains and the green of the trees that outlined the pastures and fields. Jay watched us stare for a few minutes and then cleared his throat.

"Pretty neat, huh? The lodge was built in 1906 from logs cut on the property. You won't find many in as good shape. This one has been in the family since it was built, and they took care of it. If you can stop staring long enough, I'll show you the rest of the place."

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A door on the fireplace wall to the side of the dining area led to the kitchen. Jay explained why it looked modern.

"The family kept improving this area, but really, they had to in order to stay in business. They had to pass a health inspection every year. That's why you see the freezers and refrigerators. Bill did explain they run on propane, didn't he? Well, the tank is out back and hidden by some shrubbery. I had it filled last week. The stoves and ovens are commercial models that also use propane. So does the deep fryer. The pots and pans you see are yours to use, as is the tableware. I don't mean to be rude, but the owner expects everything to be just like this any time a potential buyer comes to look at the place."

I said we understood that, and it wouldn't be a problem.

"Well, let's go look at the rooms then."

On the lower floor was the owner's suite. It was really nice, with a large area for sitting and another for sleeping and it had a private bath, but we'd already agreed we wouldn't use that one. We'd stay in two of the ten guest suites. Those were nearly as nice. Each had a queen size bed and a closet. Four of the rooms had bunk beds for any children the guests might bring along. Each room had a window opening onto the view of the mountains around the lodge.

Cheryl asked about a bathroom.

"Yes, there are two half baths with a commode and a sink, one in the center of this hall, and one downstairs as well as the full bath in the owner's suite. The cabins on each end were their premium cabins and they have a toilet and a sink with just cold water. The showers are in another building just to the side of the lodge. There are two, one for men and one for women. The water for the ranch gets pumped from Sleepy Creek to a big tank beside the lodge. It'll refill itself automatically if the generator is running, but if it runs dry, you'll have to start the generator to fill it back up. There's a filter and chlorine injector to please the inspector, but the water was safe without any treatment up until Montana required them.

"The fireplace heats the main room really nice, but it won't heat the upstairs very well. There is a central, propane furnace for that, but you probably won't need it. It's in a closet in the kitchen.

"There's a laundry beside the showers, but you'll have to run the generator to use it. The washer is electric. The dryer uses propane for heat, but uses electricity to turn the drum. The generator is in the tool shed, by the way. I'll show you how to start and stop it before I leave.

Let's go have a look at the barn. There's been a slight change in what you need to do while you're here. Rocky should be here by now and he'll explain it to you."

When we went outside, a beat-up blue pickup was parked in front of the barn. As Jay led the way, he explained the change.

"All the livestock sold quickly except for one draft team. Rocky has been taking care of them, but he has a new job now. That's what has changed. You'll need to feed them every day. The pasture they're in goes down to the creek, so water isn't something you need to worry about. Rocky will show you how and what to feed."

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Rocky was a likeable guy who had an obvious affection for the two big Belgian horses that came trotting up when he whistled.

"These guys are tame as puppies, and they're big babies. They just got to have their treats every day, doncha guys?"

Rocky reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out two hard brown biscuits. The horses nickered and their big lips made little kissing movements until Rocky gave one to each. As they munched away, Rocky stroked each one, and then turned to us.

"You're gonna take care of my buddies here?"

Bill and I both said yes. Ricky patted each horse on the neck and then sighed.

"It's a darn shame somebody didn't buy 'em, but not many people want to feed 'em anymore. Mrs. Elgin even kept back the harness for 'em, kinda like a buy and drive deal, but nobody wanted them. If I had the money and a place to put 'em, I'da bought 'em myself. You just take good care of 'em, OK. I can't come back to check on 'em for a month or so, but I will. You have any trouble with 'em, just go to town and tell Warren at the hardware store. He'll get in touch with me. Oh, I pulled their shoes last week. If they're not workin' they won't need 'em, and you won't have to worry about gettin' the farrier up here every month or so.

Rocky led the way into the barn. It was split into two sections of stalls, two on the right side of a wide planked aisle with bins on one side, and several smaller stalls on the left. He opened the sloping lid of one of the bins.

"This is their feed. They don't need much since they're not working any more, but there are some minerals in this that they do need, and they like the molasses in it. Give em a coffee can full in the mornings. You got enough here for several months since they're the only horses left. They'll get the rest of what they need from the pasture. The pasture might dry up about August, and if it does, just give 'em all the hay they'll eat. There's enough in the loft to feed 'em for a couple years. Oh, their treats are in this bin. I buy 'em by the fifty pound bag, and last time I bought two, so there's plenty for several months."

Rocky walked back outside. He pulled two more biscuits from his shirt pocket and both horses nickered.

"The one with the star is Jim. The other one's Duke. They've been together since they were yearlings. They'll do anything - plow, run the horsepower, pull the mower and then the hay rack, anything. I hate to leave 'em, but I gotta have a job. Nearest thing was a ranch twenty miles from here, and it's time to give this year's calves their shots. I'll be workin' after that to take 'em up to the mountain pastures for a month at least. I'll be back after that though."

Rocky patted each horses neck, and then walked to his truck, started it, and drove off. I was sure I saw him wipe his eyes right after he turned the truck around. Jay saw it too.

"I feel sorry for Rocky. He loved working here. He tried to buy this place when he learned it was for sale. I tried, but there was no way he could get a loan. He's forty-six, and had no down payment and no collateral. The ranch did well, but with that much debt, it would have been hard. No one wanted to finance it with that much risk.

"It's a shame too. Rocky's what kept this place going. There's no better stockman around, and he knew how to work a team. He also knew how to teach other people to work with stock, and that kept the guests coming back, year after year. Well, let me show you the generator and then I'll leave you to enjoy yourselves."

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The tool shed was a lot bigger than it looked from the outside because it was long and narrow. The front was partitioned off for storage of shovels, hoes, and the other hand tools that hung on the walls. In the center was what looked like a small cooking grill set in the middle of a sheet of iron almost four feet square. Beside that was a huge anvil. Jay explained why it was there.

"Rocky did all the horse shoeing for the ranch, and this is the forge and anvil he used. The owner thought she wouldn't get much for everything here, so just like the kitchen, she left all the tools. The generator's back here."

Jay led through a door in the back wall of the tool shed portion of the building. The generator looked fairly new, and sat on top of a metal tank.

"The generator can supply all the cabins as well as the lodge and water pump, but it's a thirsty beast. The tank holds three hundred gallons of diesel, and it's full. The generator will burn about a gallon an hour if it's just running the lodge, so you might want to ration yourselves some. If you run the tank empty, you'll have to pay for whatever Roger puts in, and it's not cheap by the time he drives his truck up here. The same goes for the propane tanks. You should be fine as long as you don't do a lot of washing though.

Jay pointed to another door behind the generator.

"In there is where they kept all the equipment, the wagon and such. It's all still there, just like in the kitchen. It's hard to come by that stuff anymore, and the owner really wants this place to start up again like it was before so she didn't sell it at the auction. I gather it was her husband's wish too.

"Well, that's about it. Oh, one other thing. There are bears in the mountains, both black bears and grizzlies. They probably won't bother you as long as you don't leave garbage around. There's a chain link enclosure about half a mile from here where the dumpster is located. It's at the end of the gravel road beside the stock pens. At the end of every day, take all your trash, and I mean all of it including the trash from your bathroom, to that dumpster and shut and latch the gate on your way out. I'll see that it gets hauled away when after you leave.

"Oh, almost forgot. If you go through the door in the kitchen, there's a cellar underneath it. It's where they kept the food and there was also a wine cellar there. All that's gone, but you're welcome to store your things there if you want.

Jay took a ring of keys from his pocket and handed then to Bill.

"Bill, it was good seeing you again. These keys fit the lodge and cabin doors. I hope you have a great time, but if anything goes amiss, just drive down to my office and I'll fix it."

Jay got in his pickup, and in a few more seconds, the four of us were standing in the drive in front of the lodge by ourselves.

"Well, let's get this show on the road", said Mary. "Bill has an antenna to put up and Gordy has to start writing. Cheryl and I have to fix dinner, and we can't do that if the food is still in the car. Everybody grab a sack or a box of groceries and let's get it put away."

Chapter 3

Some may find it odd, as do I, that the details of that trip from Chicago to Sleepy Creek were not lost in the myriad of other things that have transpired since. I would suppose the novelty of it all tended to heighten my memory of everything we did. Would that our first month at the ranch was as indelibly engraved in my mind. The first few days are relatively clear memories, as are the last, though I believe the first few days are a bit more dim. They are certainly more pleasant.

The in-between times which I describe now are a conglomeration of our collective memories. They were dredged up at a time that frightened us all, and over the years I have amended the tales with information remembered on brighter days.

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The morning after we arrived, Cheryl and Mary made breakfast of pancakes and coffee. The rest of the morning was spent in unloading the SUV and putting everything in our respective rooms. After lunch, I took my boxes of research materials to the bunkhouse and laid them out on two of the three tables there. The third was reserved for my laptop, printer, note pad and a space for the research materials then in need.

Each table had an oil lamp, I supposed for the ranch employees to use if they needed to be up after the generator was turned out. They fit the atmosphere of the place as well as served to preserve the comfort of the guests. While it would have been a simple matter to restart the generator if one of the employees had to take care of a sick animal, one or more of the guests might have forgotten to turn off the lights in their cabin or room. The generator starting would have turned those lights back on and caused them to wake and wonder what was going on.

On a shelf on one wall were two containers of lamp oil. I put the lamps on the shelf. My writing would be done during the day using the laptop battery and my standby power supply for power. They would be recharged at night while the generator was running.

I sat down, composed my thoughts, and began to write.

An hour later, Bill knocked on the door and asked if I would assist him in putting up his antenna. I turned off the laptop to conserve the battery until we started the generator that night, and went to help. His plan was to tie one end to the top of a large pine tree just outside the lodge and tie the other to another pine some three hundred feet away. He assured me he had more than enough wire to make a suitable antenna.

Since Bill was considerably larger than I, what he really wanted was someone to climb both trees. After tying one end of the antenna wire to my belt, I scaled the pine until I became uneasy with the strength of the branches on which I was standing. Bill yelled that I was high enough, and said I should screw one of the eye screws into the tree trunk. It was not a simple undertaking, but the pliers Bill had given me helped a great deal, and the eye screw was soon firmly embedded in the tree. As Bill had instructed, I threaded the end of his antenna wire through the eye and then tied it to itself. Bill gave it a firm pull to test the strength, and also shook the tree enough I grabbed a branch and held on tight. He was satisfied, so I climbed back down.

Fastening the other end in the second tree went a bit more smoothly, and when that was finished, Bill's wire was stretched fairly tight across the span between the two trees. In the center was what Bill called a "ladder line", and would connect his radio to the antenna. We tied this high enough in the first pine tree it wouldn't hang one of us if we walked there in the dark, and then threaded it between the window and sill in one of the extra bedrooms. It was into this bedroom Bill had carried his radio and assorted gadgets, and as I left him, he was talking to himself as he set everything up.

It was after four when I saved the file to one of my thumb drives, and then saved it again to a second. One of the thumb drives stayed with the laptop. The other went into my pocket and into the lodge with me. On my way to the lodge, I met Mary coming from the barn.

"Bill and I flipped a coin, and I get to take care of the horses", she said. "Not that he'd ever remember. He's been up there trying to get somebody to talk to him for the last two hours.

"God, they are huge. Their feet are as big as a frying pan. They're really nice though. I gave them their sweet feed like Billy said, but they wouldn't eat. Then I remembered about their cookies, so I got two out of the bin. They saw me and started making... well, they sounded like happy noises to me, and their lips were making this little smacking sound. Once they had their cookies, they started to eat their feed. I think they like me."

I had to smile.

"They did the same to Rocky. Maybe you'll be their new best buddy. Just don't get too close. Rocky said they weigh about a ton each. They wouldn't even know if they mashed you."

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that. We're going to have to get to know each other before I get closer."

Mary grinned.

"I never pet on the first date."

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For the next three weeks, our lives were really laid back, well, except for mine. I was deep into my analysis of what happened in Europe prior to the Exchange. I wrote, read what I'd written, and then deleted it all and started over. All those facts and deductions had been running around in my head for so long, I had to stop and re-read my research. By the second week, everything was making sense again, and I began to write in earnest.

The others, Cheryl, Mary, and Bill were having the time of their life. Mary may not have been one to pet on the first date, but she found a curry comb and brush in the barn, and by the third, was giving Jim and Duke a daily brushing. During a break from writing one afternoon, I watched as she worked the horses over with both. I would swear they both sighed at the first touch of the curry comb, and were smiling when she finished with the brush. They both got a "cookie" after that, "for being such good boys", she said.

Cheryl had planted a few seeds she found in one of the storage cabinets in the cellar, and spent an hour each day weeding her plot. I wasn't sure what she intended doing with the vegetables since we had enough cans of beans, peas, carrots, and beets to feed a small army, but she was enjoying herself.

Bill spent hours every day talking, or trying to talk on his radio. He tried to explain what he was doing to me one Sunday afternoon.

"See, I tune the radio to the frequency I want, and then adjust the SWR with this knob until it shows two or less. Then the antenna is tuned and I can transmit"

He keyed his mike.

"Is this frequency in use?"

Bill waited about thirty seconds with no response. He keyed his mike again.

"CQ, CQ, CQ, This is Whisky Alpha Niner November Alpha Delta portable Victor Echo Six calling CQ.

Bill turned to me.

"If anybody's listening to this frequency, they'll reply. If not, I'll try another frequency."

Just then, the speaker on the radio crackled and a voice came through.

"This is Whiskey Two Zulu Tango India calling."

Bill keyed his mike again.

"This is Whiskey Alpha Niner November Alpha Delta portable Victor Echo Six. Thanks for the call. Your signal is five by niner. My name is Bill and my QTH is River Park, Illinois. How do you copy? Whiskey Two Zulu Tango India, this is Whisky Alpha Niner November Alpha Delta portable Victor Echo Six. Over."

"This is Whiskey Two Zulu Tango India. I'm David. I read you four by four. You in a hole somewhere? Over."

"No, I'm in the mountains of Montana on a multiband dipole. Over"

"Ah. That's why your signal is a little weak. Be glad you're out there. Wish I was. We got ourselves a flu epidemic here in NYC. Over."

"Flu? Over."

"Yeah. It's weird though. You start out with a queasy stomach and a headache like usual. The papers say a couple weeks later, you're starting to act really odd, forgetting things, stuff like that. They aren't saying much more, but one of the papers said over a hundred people have died from it. Over."

"Well, some do every year. I'll be here for another couple months. It'll have calmed down by then. Over."

"That's what the mayor is saying, the Surgeon General too. I'm retired, so I don't go out much, and I got a flu shot last fall. I figure I'm pretty safe. What's it like in Montana? Over."

Bill started telling David about mountains and how great the lodge was and what we were doing there. I don't think he even realized when I left, but knowing how Bill likes people, I couldn't blame him. He was doing what he loved, just like I was.

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We fell into a routine that suited us all. Mornings came early, with the sun, because we'd only run the generator until about ten. Going to bed that early meant we couldn't sleep very late. I'd work on my thesis while Bill fiddled with his radio or went fishing. Cheryl tended her garden and Mary took care of Jim and Duke, and between Cheryl and Mary, they cooked our meals. Afternoons usually included a walk down to Sleepy Creek. After we ate at night, I'd take the trash down to the dumpster in the SUV. By ten, we were all in bed, though usually we didn't go to sleep right away. Cheryl and Mary had picked the rooms, and had been careful to pick one on each side of the lodge. We couldn't hear them, and they couldn't hear us, but Cheryl said they were enjoying each other just like we were.

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One of the things I remember well was the day Mary climbed the fence and let herself down on Jim's back. I was walking back to the house to use the bathroom, and she yelled at me.

"Gordy, look. I'm a cowgirl."

She was sitting on Jim's broad back and holding on to his mane. While I watched, she patted Jim on the butt and he started to walk. She kept saying "Whoa", but he wasn't stopping. I didn't think she was in much danger, because he was still just walking, but it looked like she was scared. I whistled, like I'd heard Rocky do.

Jim pricked up his ears, turned around, and trotted back to the fence. In the process, he bounced Mary all over the place. If his back hadn't been so broad, I think she'd have fallen off. As it was, she was smiling when Jim stopped at the fence and nickered. Mary laughed.

"He wants a cookie now. Go get a couple so Duke won't be jealous."

While the horses munched away, Mary slid to the ground and stepped between the rails of the fence.

"That was fun. It was a little scary, but it was fun."

"If you're going to ride them, you need some way to control them. I don't know where he was going, but you'd have gone with him if I hadn't whistled."

"I know. I found a book in the big bookcase about riding horses. I'm supposed to have a thing called a bridle. I didn't know if we have one or not, so I thought I'd just try sitting on him. I didn't think he'd start to walk away. Did Rocky show you where the harness is? There should be a bridle there."

Mary found the bridles the next day. Since they were meant to be used when the horses were in harness, they didn't have reins. She fixed that with two pieces of rope and she never looked back. It was fun to watch. She couldn't reach high enough to put the bridle on either horse, so she'd climb the fence and put it on one from there, and then lead him close enough to the fence she could get on his back. She never went anywhere except in the pasture, but she'd spend an hour every day riding around.

I about fell over when she talked Cheryl into riding too. Cheryl has always liked animals like dogs and cats. We'd probably have had several of each if our lease had allowed them. I never figured her for anything as big as a horse, and especially not for a horse as big as Jim and Duke. After the first ride, she was hooked. If she and Mary weren't in the house or garden, it was a sure bet I'd find them in the pasture, walking the horses down to Sleepy Creek or just sitting on them and talking.

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Bill became pretty good at fishing during this time, and we had trout dinners on several occasions. Mary was happy about that, because it meant Bill couldn't have the steak and hamburgers he kept asking her about. She did relent, once a week and usually on Sunday.

On those days, Bill would fire up the big grill on the patio behind the lodge, and ask each of us if we wanted rare, medium, or well done. One would think after the first two times, he'd remember, but he always asked.

Bill was happy with his radio setup, though it seemed he couldn't find many people to talk with. He said it was his signal strength, and that if he'd had his antenna at home, he'd have done better. Still, he managed to contact several people on the East coast and some in California. Every night he'd fire up the generator and then start broadcasting his CQ, CQ, CQ. After half an hour or so of chatting with one of his new friends, he'd change frequencies and start calling again.

The next morning he'd fill us in on their conversations. Most of his chats were just having a good time talking to someone far away, but there was some news of the outside world. There were finally some peace talks in the middle east. They were progressing slowly and the fighting hadn't stopped, but at least they were talking. Three terrorists had been arrested while attempting to break through the security of a nuclear power plant in Illinois. The strange flu had spread from New York to Chicago, and had also been identified in the bigger cities of California as well as the rest of the world. The US Government had declared it an epidemic, and the wheels of government began to turn as the CDC assigned a special team to investigate.

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The third of July, if I remember correctly, was the day we all felt a chill at the news Bill brought.

"Nobody was on the air last night except Steve, the paraplegic who lives in upstate New York. He hasn't been out of the house in a couple weeks, so he couldn't say if it's true or not, but he said it's getting pretty bad in New York City. They've had a couple thousand people die so far, and they figure about thirty thousand are infected. It's the same in Chicago and LA. The CDC doesn't know what it is yet, but the Surgeon General is telling people not to worry. He says it's a new strain of the flu virus and that if people just take the same steps they would with any flu virus, they'll be OK. I guess most of the people who have died are older people or people who travel a lot on business, sales people and the like. They've set up some special clinics in most of the bigger cities for the people who are infected so they can keep them isolated."

Mary asked if the flu had gotten this far.

"I don't think so, but nobody around here seems to be a ham. I haven't been able to contact anybody local."

"Well, that's good. Next week, we need to go back to town. We're about out of fruit because you keep snacking on it, and Cheryl and I need a few things too. I'd hate to go to town and then get sick."

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We all continued our normal activities until the next Saturday. That was the day Cheryl and Mary said we had to drive down to Sleepy Creek. After lunch, Bill steered the SUV down the gravel road and on toward town.

We didn't see anybody else on the road, but I didn't think that was unusual. We were the only people in several miles. It was a bit odd that we didn't see anyone when we drove into town, though. I figured on a July Saturday, people would be out mowing yards or there would be kids riding around on bikes. We had still seen no one on the street when Bill parked the SUV in front of the grocery store. Mary and Cheryl walked through the door and then came back out a minute later.

"There's nobody in there", said Mary. "No customers or clerks, and it doesn't look like anybody's been stocking anything. We even went in back where they store everything that's not on the shelves. There was nobody there either. What bread is left is moldy, and the expiration date on the milk in the dairy case is last week."

Cheryl handed me a sheet of paper from a student's wire-bound composition book.

"This was taped to the door. The flu is here, too."

The paper was a hand written notice that the clinic in the doctor's office was open and that anyone with flu symptoms should go there.

Bill turned to me.

"Let's go see if the hardware guy, Warren, was that his name? Let's go see if he knows what's going on. Girls, why don't you try the post office."

The hardware store was just as deserted as the grocery, and the same notice was taped on the door. Bill and I were walking back to the SUV when Cheryl came out of the post office with a paper in her hand.

"It's the same as the one at the grocery store."

When Bill parked the SUV in front of the doctor's office, there were no people there either. There was just a sign on the door that said the clinic had been moved to the grade school. I was beginning to have one of those feelings one experiences when something happens that could never happen. I'd had that feeling on 9/11, and then again with the Covid pandemic.

"Let's drive over to the grade school, but I don't think we should get out. If the people there are sick, we'll likely catch it too."

The banner over the propped open door said "Clinic", but there were no people outside. Bill started to open his door, but I stopped him.

"Just drive up as close as you can get to the windows. Maybe we can see what's going on."

There was nothing going on inside the building, but there had been. We could see all the desks had been piled in one corner of the room, and gym mats had been used to provide beds for the people there. None of those people were moving. Several had sheets covering them, but most were just laying there with their eyes open. Cheryl shrieked when a coyote looked out the window and then disappeared.

"God, it can't be. They're all dead, and now... that animal is in there... How could this happen? This can't be flu."

Bill had shifted the SUV into reverse and was watching the rear view camera on the dash.

"There's more than one coyote. They're running off and there are fifteen or twenty of them. I don't like this. A whole town doesn't just die from the flu. Old people and babies, maybe, but not a whole town of a thousand people. I'm going back to the lodge and see if I can raise anybody on the radio."

}|{

All of us went to Bill's radio room. Bill keyed his mike and went through his normal routine of calling. For half an hour, he got no answer on several different frequencies. Then, on a frequency Bill said ham operators had reserved for civil defense, he got an answer before he could make his call.

It wasn't a person. It was a recorded message that kept repeating. I'm transcribing it here so it will not be lost or corrupted by the re-telling. I do not know of what value it might be to anyone in the future. I'm not even sure there will be such a thing as a future, but I am reluctant to let it go unrecorded.

"Report Date, twenty-six June, two thousand twenty-nine. The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning relative to the outbreak of what has been named Zang-Chuha syndrome. While the causative agent has not yet been identified, it is suspected to be a mutation of H7N7 Influenza Type A virus. The disease is transmitted by body fluids in liquid, solid, and aerosol forms and occasionally by only skin contact with an infected individual. It is known that an infected individual will produce the infectious agent within twenty-four hours of infection, but symptoms do not appear for approximately fourteen days post infection.

"Individuals who suspect they have been infected should report to a clinic or hospital for testing and isolation. Individuals who exhibit any of the aforementioned symptoms should be taken to a clinic or hospital for treatment.

"There is as yet no prophylaxis to prevent infection for the disease. Opiates can be administered to alleviate the convulsions and the pain that accompanies them.

"While little is understood about the disease other than its method of infection and progression, some initial testing indicates that within twenty four hours of death, the causative agent is rendered non-infectious.

"As a preventive measure, those individuals responsible for caring for the dead should refrain from any contact with the body until forty-eight hours have passed, and should wash themselves, clothing, and any other items in contact with the body with a solution of 1% common chlorine bleach. If contact must be made prior to the twenty-four hour time period, it is mandatory that appropriate biological contamination suits with filters rated for bio-hazards be utilized. The same cleansing procedures should be followed after such contact.

"Use caution when approaching animals that indicate any of the above symptoms for though no cases of transfer of the disease agent from humans to animals has been recorded, no study has been done to prove the contrary."

Cheryl squeezed my hand, and there were tears in her eyes.

"Does this mean we're going to die?"

"I don't know. We didn't get close to anyone in town, and as bad as it is to think about, coyotes wouldn't have gone in there unless they were sure all the people were dead. It looked to me like most of them had been dead for a while. When I was a kid, I visited a friend on his farm. One of their cows didn't come to the barn one night. We found her two days later. The uh... the bloating was pretty severe. Most of the people in the school looked like that."

"If it's been more than two days, we should be safe, right", said Mary.

Bill patted Mary's shoulder.

"If the radio message was right, I think so. We'll just have to watch each other. In the mean time, we have to decide what we're going to do now."

At the time, I was having problems thinking about what had already happened, much less about the future.

"What do you mean."

"What I mean is if the people in Sleepy Creek caught whatever it is, they had to be exposed by someone from outside. The recording sounded like it's only transmitted from one person to another. The disease is probably being spread from the cities. That's what happened during the Plague isn't it? People from the cities went to the country trying to escape it, and carried their fleas with them. The fleas ended up infecting the people in the small towns. What that means for us is the cities are probably full of it too, and it got to Sleepy Creek by a visitor or a trucker who stopped for fuel or to deliver something.

"As small as Sleepy Creek is, it would have spread quickly. Kids who played together would have infected each other, and in turn would have infected their parents. Anyone meeting anyone and shaking hands or touching would probably be infected that way. It's easy to see how the whole town could have it before anyone knew what was going on.

"If it's in the cities, that means we're on our own out here. There won't be any more food in the grocery store, and no more gasoline, diesel, or propane. During the Plague, people were pretty self-sufficient. We're not, but we have to figure out how to be in order to survive."

I tried to be rational to calm Bill down.

"Bill, the CDC is working on it as we speak. They'll find a vaccine if not a cure."

"It doesn't sound to me like they're making much headway."

"It's only been a month. I'm sure they'll figure it out and stop it. Remember the ebola scare a few years back? It killed a lot of people in West Africa, but they eventually developed a few vaccines. One of them was used and proved effective on at least one individual. This one should be easier if it's a known flu virus."

"So, what do we do", asked Mary.

I can honestly say I didn't know what to do. Bill did.

"I think we should go back to town tomorrow and load up all the food we can carry as well as things like over the counter drugs, toilet paper, and stuff like that. Nobody there needs it now."

I didn't like the idea of stealing food.

"Bill, what happens when things get back to normal? The store owner will have heirs. They'll find out the store is empty and the police will start looking for the person who stole everything."

Bill sighed.

"OK. We'll make a list of what we take, and if things get back to normal, we'll find who owns the store then and settle up."

"What about the diesel for the generator and propane?"

"Jay said we should be good for at least three months. We probably won't be here that long."

}|{

The next morning, we went back to Sleepy Creek. Although the SUV was pretty big, we couldn't begin to pack all the food in it. The canned goods were OK because we could stack them. The other stuff, the produce that would keep, like potatoes and onions, wouldn't stack. Bill said he thought he had a solution and walked out of the store. A half hour later, we heard the honk of a horn outside.

Bill stepped out of the cab of a big truck with an enclosed bed, the kind people rent when they move. The big box bed would have held a small car. Painted on the side was "Williams Forestry Products".

"I walked down to that logging company we passed coming into town. Dad always kept the keys to the company trucks in the office and they were no different. It took a while to match a key with the right kind of truck, but I found one. We can load everything in the store in it."

Mary kept the tally sheet while Cheryl and I carried. Bill stayed in the truck and packed everything in tight. Even with the thirty cases of beer Bill insisted on taking, there was still room to spare.

After we finished loading, we stopped for a rest before driving back to the ranch. Bill asked a question I hadn't thought about, and one I really didn't want to think about.

"Gordy, some people survived the Plague, didn't they?"

"Yes, a lot of people in fact. If they hadn't, Europe would be a very different place now."

"So there are probably other people besides us who will be OK."

"I suppose so. Why?"

"Well, it sounded crazy at the time, but a couple weeks ago, I was talking with a guy from North Dakota. He was one of those guys you see on TV or read about. They call them "preppers". He and his wife and kids live out in the middle of nowhere in a house he built underground. They home school their kids and raise chickens and goats and have a big garden. He was telling me the economy was going to go belly-up and there would be people in the cities rioting for food. I figured he was a nut-cake. Now, I'm not so sure. What will happen when anybody who doesn't catch this flu runs out of food?"

"I suppose they'll start trying to find some."

"Like we just did, right?"

"Yes."

"And when they can't find any in the stores?"

"They'll go looking elsewhere."

"Elsewhere meaning anybody else who isn't sick and has food, right? Like us."

"Yes, I suppose so."

"So, would we welcome them in and feed them?"

"I'd like to think we would."

"What if it's twenty, or thirty, or what if they don't ask and just try to take what we have? That's what the guy said would happen. He had some pretty good reasons for saying that - Katrina and that big earthquake in California last year."

"We couldn't let them do that, not if we we're going to survive."

"How would we stop them?"

I knew where he was going, and I didn't like it. I didn't have any good alternatives though.

"I suppose we'd have to be ready to defend what we have. That would mean weapons of some sort."

"That's what the guy said too. According to him, we need guns and a lot of ammunition. Like I said before, I thought he was in la-la land at the time, but now... I mean, it's all well and good to be a nice guy, but when your life depends on it..."

"So we should carry around guns and shoot anybody who comes to the lodge?"

"No, of course not, but if someone was to try to take what we have, wouldn't it be smart to have a way to stop them?"

I wasn't new to guns. I was a Boy Scout for about a year. It was interesting learning how to tie knots and pitch a tent and all the other things Boy Scouts learn. That summer I went to Boy Scout camp. We learned gun safety and then shot at clay pigeons with a.22 rifle loaded with bird shot and at paper targets with pellet guns.

I'd also studied weapons used through the centuries because they partially defined the type of society that existed then. I thought guns had served a function at times, and were all right for some people, but I'd never had a reason to own one.

I couldn't argue with Bill's logic though. Katrina and other smaller disasters had proved that disaster brings out the best and the worst in people, and I knew from my studies in history that when faced with disaster, mankind will do whatever is needed to survive.

Bill and I drove the truck to the hardware store. It took another two hours and a lot of work, but we emptied the gun racks and pistol case as well as the boxed guns in the storeroom, and then took all the ammunition.

I didn't have a problem with most of the guns we took. In my mind, they were tools we'd use for hunting and for self-defense if absolutely necessary. The four AR-15 rifles were a different story with me. I viewed the evil looking, black rifles as instruments of war, and not really useful for anything except killing other people. I was reluctant to even pick one up until Bill reminded me of why we were taking every gun in the place.

"Gordy, I know what you're thinking because we've had that conversation before. If we leave them and somebody else gets them, will it make you feel better that you're killed with one of those black rifles because you didn't want them? That's what anyone who gets them will be doing with them. Even if we don't use them, isn't it better that we keep them away from anybody else who would?

Some of the ammunition wasn't the right size for the rifles, shotguns, and pistols we took and I asked Bill why we were taking every bit of ammunition. His answer was logical, though it sent a chill down my spine.

"My survival guy said everybody will be trying to do the same thing, and that leaving guns and ammunition they could use would be like shooting ourselves. We probably need to take all the bows and arrows and knives for the same reason. If we have them, they can't use them against us.

"We need to make one more stop because of another thing the survival guy said. We need to get all the liquor we can find. He said it would be good to trade with."

This was getting out of hand. We were being selfish by taking everything when there were other people who might need those things. It was also going to be very expensive when we had to settle up after things got back to normal. The food was one thing. We could at least eat the food. I didn't need a bunch of booze that would last me the rest of my life, and I surely didn't need enough guns and ammunition to arm a small army.

"Bill, why would we need to trade liquor for anything? It's not like we'll be here for years, and paying for all this is going to cost a fortune."

"I hope we aren't, but what if we are? This is like what happens in real estate. You see a property that's available and think it has future value. Even if you don't have a potential buyer in mind, you buy it, because you know it'll pay off, maybe not tomorrow, but sometime, because there's no way to make more land. If you don't buy it, somebody else will, and you won't have the chance to make a profit from the sale.

"What we're doing today is the same. For a while at least, there won't be a way to make any more of this stuff. We may not need what we're taking, but if we don't take it and find out we do need it... well, the profit from having it is security. The loss if we don't have it and need it might be that we don't survive.

"Don't worry about the money. I'll cover it and we can split up the cost later. If we don't use what we take, we can always sell it and get most of the money back."

When Bill rolled down the door on the back of the truck and latched it, almost a hundred cases of beer and all the liquor in the saloon - sixteen cases of bourbon, eight of scotch, six of gin, and twenty each of vodka and rum - had joined the rest of our trove as had a dozen cases of wine and several cases of different liqueurs.

We were ready to leave when Cheryl asked if we shouldn't do something about the people in the school.

"I know those people can't feel anything, but Mary and I do. It just doesn't seem right to let the animals do what they're doing."

Even knowing what I know now as I write this, I'm ashamed I hadn't considered doing anything with the people except leave them alone. When I think about it now, I tell myself it was the horror of what happened at that school that caused me to be so unfeeling, but I had no desire to do anything except leave with what we had and go back to the ranch. I tried to justify that, but my words, though true, sounded cold and angry.

"They're dead and at least for the time being, we're alive. We can't help them, and I don't know how we'd bury them all. Besides, even if the flu is no longer contagious, there might be other diseases in there that are, like cholera."

Cheryl's mouth formed a firm line that I knew meant she'd never give in.

"I can't go back to the ranch knowing I'm safe but the little kids in there are being... being... Can't we at least shut the door and make sure it won't open again."

After picking up some lengths of chain and a few padlocks from the hardware store, I drove the SUV back to the grade school alone. There was no sense in exposing Cheryl or Mary to that sight again, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do anyway. Bill stayed behind with one of the shotguns in case anything happened. I thought that was a bit extreme, but thinking back as I write this, it was a good idea.

Even though it really hadn't begun to warm up during the day much past the seventies, the stench from the open door was overpowering. I lost my breakfast and then spent the next five minutes trying to heave up an empty stomach before I could do anything. With my nose stuck in my armpit, I walked back to the door.

The door had been propped open with a heavy rock from the flowerbeds in front of the school. The only rationale I could see for keeping the door open was that a lot of the people must have come to the school at the same time. That would make sense because if most of them had been exposed over a relatively short period of time, they would have developed symptoms and sought treatment at about the same time as well. There was a line across the yard where the grass had been trampled down to bare earth that reinforced this theory.

It looked as if the line had stretched from the school door out to the parking lot. A couple other things made me believe my theory. There were two little cars, the metal models that little boys love, lying on the ground a few feet from the door. A little further down the trampled track, a little girl's doll lay on the ground. It wasn't difficult to imagine children had dropped the toys while they waited in line and were too sick to pick them back up.

There were also some faint, but grisly reminders that this had been a horrifying experience for the people who now lay dead on the gym mats. I saw a hand, or what was left of one, laying a few yards from the door, and further away, a cowboy boot with part of a leg sticking out of it. In my mind, I could put together the story of those lone body parts.

It would probably have been much the same as what happened in the Pacific Islands during World War II. The fighting had been very heavy as the Marines tried to take an island from the Japanese. Many times, a Marine was shot and killed, but his fellow soldiers were forced to leave him where he was. Trying to get him would have meant they'd be shot too.

Most of these fallen heroes were eventually taken to staging areas and then buried. A few just sort of disappeared because they were never found. By the time the fighting had subsided enough to make searching safe, the bodies were either decomposed enough they had little odor, or had been run over by the tanks engaged in the battles. The vegetation was too high for the tank drivers to see them.

These people had been fighting a battle too, but the battle was with a disease instead of with men with rifles. They could see those who'd fallen out of line, but they'd been too sick to bring them into the grade school. Once the line ended, those who hadn't made it were just left outside. The odor would have attracted the coyotes, vultures, and other animals that do the cleaning up for Nature.

After looping a short length of chain through the door handles, I locked them shut with one of the padlocks. Each outside door on the grade school got the same treatment, and when I finished, I was pretty sure nothing could get inside again. I hoped that would be enough to satisfy Cheryl.

Chapter 4

It took all afternoon to unload the truck at the ranch. After starting the generator so we would have lights, we carried all the food except what frozen stuff there was down to the cellar. There were shelves on all the walls down there, and when we were done, it looked almost like the grocery store.

Bill and I designated one of the guest rooms upstairs as our armory, and we carried all the guns and ammunition and bows and arrows and knives up there. As the sun was setting, Mary made a trip to the barn to feed Jim and Duke while Cheryl put one of the frozen pizzas we'd brought into the oven. Bill went up to his radio.

I went to the bunkhouse to make certain my laptop was plugged in and charging. It was when I was straightening up my research material that the full meaning of what we'd seen in town hit me. Up until that second, I was convinced the government would have the epidemic well in hand in a few weeks and things would get back to normal. I hadn't been kidding myself about that. I truly believed it, or at least I wanted to. After seeing what had happened in Sleepy Creek, the reality of the situation was beginning to take hold.

With every big disaster that had hit the US since I became old enough to understand what a disaster was, the government had been there within a couple of days. If there was time to issue a warning, like when a tornado hit in the Midwest or when a hurricane hit one of the Gulf States, it was quicker.

Sleepy Creek had telephones, and the county sheriff had a radio. Why hadn't they called for help as soon as they knew there was a problem? From the radio message we'd heard, this disease didn't just let you feel fine at ten o'clock in the morning and kill you by eleven. People had symptoms for a week or so, and the doctor in town would have known the disease was there.

There should have been people in contamination suits, or the military, or some government agency there caring for the sick and burying the dead. Instead, there was nothing except a school full of dead people and coyotes taking advantage of their new food source.

The thought nagged at my mind that maybe they had called and nobody came. That shouldn't be possible because agencies like the CDC and FEMA had lots of people ready to help. There was also the Red Cross and other volunteer relief agencies that would have responded, just like they did during Katrina and on 9/11. The explanation for that wasn't one I wanted to think about because the only logic that would explain it made me shudder. I went back to the house to see if Bill had been able to contact anyone.

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His radio had proven to be a blessing. The ranch was in a valley between mountains, and evidently this shielded us from any of the local radio stations. Even the satellite radio in the SUV wasn't very reliable. It would pick up stations just fine until we got into the mountains. Then, reception went in and out depending on how many trees there were and how close to a mountain the road ran. At the lodge, we seldom got any signal from commercial stations.

Bill had explained his ability to contact other hams was because he was bouncing his radio waves, and they, theirs, off the ionosphere. It seemed strange to me that radio waves would bounce off air, but it worked. I was hoping it was working that day and he could get some news of what was going on in the rest of the country.

When I entered the room, Bill was speaking into his microphone.

"Everywhere? Over."

"Everywhere I know about. Over."

"Do they know what it is yet? Over."

"I picked up a broadcast from WHO last night on one four two two five. They've figured it out, for all the good that will do. Over."

"What does that mean? Over."

"Go listen for yourself, mate. It's too long to repeat and it's too depressing. Over."

Bill closed his conversation and began turning the knob on his transmitter.

"That guy lives on a farm in the Outback of Australia. What he said was happening wasn't good."

"How so?"

"It's spread all over the world, faster than anybody's ever seen before, and it's killing people faster too. The cities were a mess with riots and people trying to get out up until a week ago. Now, they're quiet because anybody still there is either dead or too sick to do anything. He said half the people in Sydney are dead now and the rest are sick with it. They were giving people morphine to stop the convulsions until they ran out. They're working with confiscated heroin and fentanyl now."

Bill's radio speaker squawked and he slowed down his turning motion. The signal was faint, but it was there. Bill turned up the volume and we heard a woman speaking in German. A little later, the language was French, then Russian, and finally English. I picked up the pad and pen Bill used to log his contacts and began writing as fast as I could. After three repeats of the recorded message, I had it all down.

"This is a recorded message from the World Health Organization. Today's date is ten, July, two thousand twenty-nine. This broadcast is provided for information to doctors, emergency personnel, and hospitals around the world.

"The World Health Organization in conjunction with the US Center for Disease Control has identified the cause of the pandemic infection now sweeping the world. It was originally identified by Doctor Xang Chuha of the People's Republic of China as a strain of influenza. Subsequent study by WHO and CDC revealed the causative factor to be not a virus as previously believed, but a little understood protein known as a prion.

"Prions are known to exist in nature and cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease in cattle and scapies in sheep. It is also found in wild populations of other ungulates and some rodents. Some strains can be transmitted to humans by eating meat of infected animals with the brain and spinal cord being the most infectious, and causes the infected individual to develop Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

"Most known prion infections on record have been the result of feeding animal by-products of infected animals to food animals and thence to humans. There have been a few infections cause by consumption of bovine brains and squirrel brains in the southern United States, and others in certain primitive tribes who practice ritual cannibalism of the dead.

"The prion responsible for the world-wide infection is similar in most respects but exhibits both a more infectious behavior as well as more rapid development of the disease in infected individuals. While the causes of the mutation are not understood, this prion is readily transmitted by any body excretion to include the aerosols produced by coughing and sneezing as well as normal perspiration. The infectious effects are confined to humans. Though numerous tests have been conducted, no case of transmission to an animal has been observed.

"Progression of the disease is accelerated from that of Creutzfeldt-Jakob in that symptoms develop one to two weeks post exposure rather than the years associated with Creutzfeldt-Jakob.

"The initially observed symptoms are influenza-like muscle aches, fatigue, coughing and nasal discharge. In some cases, nausea has been observed. Two weeks after exposure, the influenza like symptoms are followed by dementia that worsens over a period of two to three days.

"Muscle spasms begin eighteen to twenty days post exposure. The muscle spasms continue for twenty four to thirty six hours during which the spasms may be strong enough to cause fracture of the weaker portions of the skeletal structure or separation of the spinal column. Death follows from one of these causes or by cessation of function of the autonomous areas of the brain responsible for breathing and heartbeat.

"Dementia and ultimately, death, is caused by the prion inducing healthy proteins to adopt its peculiar folded structure. The chemistry and mechanics of this phenomenon are not completely understood, but this effect is concentrated in the brain and spinal cord. As these organs are overtaken by increasingly large numbers of folded proteins, they cease to function. It is important to understand that the areas of the brain that register pain are among the last areas to be affected by the disease. High concentrations of narcotic drugs are required to alleviate the pain caused by the characteristic muscle spasms.

"These folded proteins are chemically indistinguishable from normal proteins, hence no chemical cure has been identified. The probability of death three to four weeks after exposure is generally accepted as one hundred percent.

"It has been determined the prion is smaller than the typical filters used with bio-chemical hazard protective equipment. Several researchers at CDC were infected even though adhering to the strict protocols in place. Medical personnel are advised to wear full containment suits with SCBA breathing apparatus, and to thoroughly clean the suit before removing it.

"Normal anti-viral cleaning agents are not successful at destroying prions adhering to the suit. Only a solution of one-Normal sodium hydroxide applied at least three times has proven effective. Each containment suit should be carefully inspected for damage prior to each use.

"Further research has shown the prion to quickly become inactive once the host body dies. As the body decomposes, the proteins are attacked by bacteria internal to the body and destroyed. Unless the body is in a refrigerated environment, the prions become non-infectious forty-eight hours after death of the host.

"The prion is not viable for longer than twelve hours if outside the host. The proteins become desiccated and are no longer infectious. While suitable contamination efforts should be made to clean any surfaces and other areas suspected to contain the prion, abstaining from contact with these areas for a minimum of twenty-four hours is sufficient to eliminate the risk of infection.

"Further updates will be transmitted when any new information is learned."

Bill and I looked at each other for a few seconds. Then he blew out his cheeks as he exhaled.

"My old Sunday School teacher said the world would be destroyed by fire and brimstone. I always figured it would take a nuclear war to end civilization, but this is it, isn't it?"

"I don't know. If the CDC is still working on it, maybe they can find some way to cure it."

"The guy in Australia said it's all over the world. That means people are dying all over the world. As fast as this stuff works, they're going to have to hurry or people will be extinct, including the doctors at the CDC."

"We need more information. Haven't you been able to raise anyone else?"

"No, and that had me worried even before I talked to the guy in Australia. Steve is usually on the air about this time, and so is my guy in California. I haven't been able to raise either in three days."

"Well, try again. Maybe somebody out there can tell us what's really going on."

Half an hour later, there was a return call to Bill's CQ. It was Steve, the paraplegic from New York.

"Sorry I haven't been on the air for the last couple days, Bill. We lost power and I don't have a generator. I transmitted with my backup batteries for a couple hours, but then they died too. It took a couple days to recharge them with my little solar cell array. Over."

"You lost power? What happened? Over."

"It's bad here, Bill, bad enough the government shut down all the nuclear power plants. There weren't enough healthy people left to safely run them. From what the TV said, they've done the same all over the world. It's taken two days for them to get everything sorted out on the grid, and they're saying when the coal and gas plants run out of fuel, they'll shut down too. I guess I should have bought a generator like I was going to. Over."

"What else is happening? Over."

"I only know what I hear on the news, and I don't think they're telling us everything. Well, they weren't anyway. TV shut off last night except for this thing from the World Health Organization they play over and over and over. Local radio stations are still up and running though. They're saying about eighty percent of the population of the world is infected. If the WHO thing is right, that means eighty percent are going to be dead in about a month. They're also saying anyone who has had contact with anybody is also probably infected. Over."

"Uh... Steve, buddy... how about you? Over."

"Not so far. I locked all my doors and windows a week ago, and I haven't seen anybody walking past the house. Haven't seen my neighbors either. People seem to be getting real scarce around here. Over."

"You gonna be all right? Over."

"Yeah. I never told you how I lost the use of my legs. It was an IED in Afghanistan. I got plenty of food for me, and plenty of ammo for my AK and nine mil. I can take care of myself. Over."

After Bill signed off, he turned to me.

"It sounds like we won't be going home for a while, Gordy."

"No, it doesn't. We need to tell Cheryl and Mary."

Chapter 5

Cheryl just stood there for a few seconds with her mouth open, then tears began streaming down her face.

"'We have to go home."

I was trying to be gentle, but as cruel as they were, the facts were facts.

"Cheryl, Honey, please try to understand what Bill and I just said. We haven't heard anything about Chicago, but if most of the people in Sydney are known to be or suspected of being infected, Chicago will be the same. Every city will be.

"Almost a quarter of a million people go through O'hare every day. That's over a million a week. If all of them were infected and they talked to even five other people, that five million infected in a week. In two weeks, the whole city would be infected. If those people flew on to other airports, and you know most of them do, they'd have spread the infection to those cities too.

"It's likely by the time we got back, most of the people in Chicago and the suburbs would be dead, and the ones that weren't would infect us. Then we'd die too. Our only hope is to stay here."

"We can't stay here."

"Why would you say that? What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong except I screwed up. I thought once you finished your thesis, we'd be able to start a family, so I stopped taking my pills. I think I'm about two months pregnant."

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The news of Cheryl's pregnancy was both joyful as well as worrisome. Cheryl was in good health, and we had enough food to keep her that way. We both wanted at least two kids, and had only postponed starting a family because I was working on my doctorate. Though it seemed a bit egotistical, I rationalized that the baby might be the first step in preserving the human species.

The worrisome part was the lack of any medical facility should anything go awry. While Cheryl and Mary knew how pregnancy progressed and how a baby was born, neither had had the experience. If something happened, we could lose both the baby and Cheryl.

It's funny how I just wrote that last sentence, not ha-ha funny, but because it shows how much I and the others had changed in such a short time. Before, I would have just written "I" instead of "we", but "we" was appropriate. Almost overnight, we'd changed from two married couples to a community of four people who needed each other in order to survive.

I tried to be comforting by reminding them both that over the millennia of human existence, most women have given birth without assistance, or with only the assistance of another woman. I fear I was not so convincing as I wished, because I was just as worried.

This was Cheryl's main concern and her reason for saying we had to go back home. Once she came to grips with the fact that things at home would be no better, and could very well be much worse, her practical side took over. She and Mary sorted through all the over-the-counter drugs we'd brought from the grocery store and picked out all the vitamins and calcium supplements. Cheryl was still concerned, as were we all, but she was doing the best she could with what we had.

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July passed without much else happening to us. A lot was happening in the world though. Bill's radio kept us somewhat up to date, though his contacts were few and far between. Most were people like us, remote from civilization and intent on keeping it that way. Most had made that choice long before the disease began wiping humans from the face of the earth. A few lucky ones with a place to go had left before the infection spread. Though they were willing to talk, most were searching for information just as we were.

There were a few short wave stations broadcasting recorded messages from the WHO and CDC, but they eventually shut down too. We heard from ham operators it was because the power grid had failed. The remaining ham operators were all working either on generator power or on batteries charged by solar panels. Through them, we learned what we knew, and also what we never anticipated could happen.

The president and a few selected members of his cabinet and Congress had been whisked away to an undisclosed location after the first deaths in Washington, D. C. The rest of the city lasted for four more weeks, two weeks of unstoppable riots, and two of unstoppable death. The last ham operator in D. C. had broadcast this information shortly before taking his own life while he was still sufficiently cognizant to do so.

We did pick up a broadcast from that undisclosed location. The President explained the world was going through a trying time, but that there was every indication it would emerge from this trial stronger than ever before. He said the world was already coming together to face this emergency, and the future would be characterized by world-wide common goals for humanity and the environment. He related that the group insulated from everything in their retreat were developing plans to revive the society that existed before the outbreak.

That speech infuriated me. It was obvious the President either was a complete fool, or he was trying to make people feel as if their government was actually doing something besides protecting a select few. He needed to come to Sleepy Creek and take a walk through the grade school if he thought things would ever return to normal, let alone get better. It seemed to me then that the whole group hiding from reality in that safe retreat would have done well to listen to the ham radio operators who returned our calls.

In retrospect, I have realized they would have done so, and chose to either ignore the information, or were incapable of doing anything. After further thought, I decided it was both. They ignored reality because they had no resources left with which to do anything.

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From a ham in Georgia we learned the leaders of the Charismatic Church movement as well as those from some of the more fundamentalist religions had been broadcasting that the Judgement was coming. Tens of thousands had come together in churches across the US to be baptized and receive salvation, and church attendance was up in most other denominations. Of course, this only meant everyone who attended and had not been previously infected were infected by those who already were. Their salvation was an agonizing death four weeks later.

For a while, the US Army and the National Guard had been deployed to the larger cities in an attempt to maintain order. At first, they patrolled the streets in standard issue chemical, biological and radiation protective equipment with empty weapons. When that proved unsuccessful because two dozen of them were killed by a mob looting a clothing store, they were issued ammunition with orders to shoot only in self defense. After another week, their orders were to shoot anyone suspected of looting or any other crime. After three, they had all been infected, developed symptoms, and had been eliminated as an order-keeping force. It really didn't matter by then. Few people in the cities were well enough to do anything except die.

Most of the information we received was relatively old. The ham radio operators who reported it could only do so until they lost power or they became incapacitated by the disease. Only about the first of August did we hear any first hand accounts by people who believed the disease had run its course and were venturing out of their retreats. The news was usually worse than would have been staying ignorant.

Initially, funeral homes were very busy. As more people died, caskets, vaults, and embalming chemicals were quickly exhausted. People to dig graves were dying along with the rest of the population. A ham operator from Indianapolis, Indiana reported seeing a trench a hundred feet long partially filled with bodies. It had not been covered, probably because there was no one left to do so. The descriptions of the mass graves utilized during the Plague epidemic came to mind. I wondered if those responsible for taking the dead to the trench wore masks as did the handlers of the dead during the Plague. Of course, the masks would not have had the long, leather breathing tube filled with herbs as had the masks of the doctors and handlers of the dead of that time. They would have been made of rubber with filters that weren't discovered to offer no protection until it was too late.

As disconcerting as the treatment of the dead was, the treatment of the living was worse. As Bill had theorized, many people actually survived the prion epidemic. They were people who were loners for one reason or another.

Even in the largest cities, there were survivors. Those people lived in the secret recesses of the access tunnels to the city's water, power, and sewer systems. If they had accumulated enough food and were smart enough to not venture out, they weren't infected.

In other areas of the cities some people like Steve, people who couldn't easily go outside their homes by themselves, were effectively isolated from the general population. They also survived.

In the countryside, many people were unaffected by the disease. Even in the heavily populated states, there were a few people living on subsistence farms who didn't associate with others anyway. They apparently understood the risks, and maintained that lifestyle until the wave subsided.

In the thinly populated states of the west, many people survived. These people were like our small community - relatively isolated and for the most part, self-sufficient. Many, also like us, did not even know of the infection until after it had nearly run its course.

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As I write this, I have to smile grimly. The survivors, except perhaps the underground dwellers we used to call homeless people, sound as if they were all law abiding, hard working individuals and families. Unfortunately, that was not always the case.

With the collapse of the government, a fact we had inferred since the broadcasts from the secret Presidential retreat location had ceased, most of the United States became the territory of the strongest, of the best armed, and of the most ruthless of the survivors. Such has been the situation after most disasters, though one would have thought the magnitude of the prion infection would have made people take stock of themselves and try to save what was left of civilization. That was the wishful thinking with which I placated myself when we learned most people on Earth would surely die.

The reality set in upon Bill's contact with Jasper, a retired Chicago cop who had been at his summer cabin on an island on a remote Minnesota lake when the outbreak occurred. He had survived by eating a lot of fish and by the fact he was half a mile from the mainland.

From high in a tall pine on his island, Jasper could see the highway and the edge of the small nearby town with his binoculars. Once he knew of the situation on the mainland, he kept watch for anyone who might need assistance. What he saw one day was chilling. A band of four men and six women, carrying the weapons of the US military, were going house to house in search of whatever they could find. When they had finished with the town, they began following the road. The road led them to the fishing resort landing Jasper used when going back and forth to his island.

Several small fishing boats, open decked and with outboard motors, were tied to the dock there. The group embarked towards Joshua's island in two of the boats.

Joshua climbed down from his tree, went to his cabin and retrieved his shotgun and pistol. When he reached the dock at his island, he called to the group to turn around and leave. His answer was a spray of automatic rifle fire. He was fortunately not hit, and managed to find cover behind some trees. The rest of his tale is more gruesome than that of the prion. Joshua was forced to open fire on the boats because they would not return to the mainland. He was certain he killed at least six before they turned their boats around, and two more afterward. As of the time of his conversation with Bill, the two remaining had not returned and he had seen no one else.

We heard similar stories from other ham operators. Gangs of former underground residents roamed New York City, Chicago, and most other large cities. When the last of the Army and National Guard troops died, their weapons were left where they fell because there was no one to recover and secure them. The criminal element of the city who survived had picked them up, and were using them to intimidate the remaining citizens.

At that time in my life, I could not understand why people would attack another person with the intention of taking his possessions. I knew this had happened before the disease, but had always somewhat justified it to myself as the result of poverty and lack of education.

Now, there was no poverty or wealth except for the wealth of knowledge and work. Jasper's tale began to eat away at my always-logical explanations of people's actions and reactions. It was replaced by a growing understanding that there will always be some people to whom adversity is opportunity to take what they have not earned, and to take it by force if necessary. There are also always a few to whom force is a pleasure to be relished at every opportunity. So it would seem was the situation in most of the larger cities.

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It was with this knowledge our small group set out to protect ourselves from those outside our community should that become necessary. It seemed very selfish to me then, but our first step was a set of laws governing not ourselves, but governing the conduct of anyone who might come to our ranch. The statement of assumed ownership was the first article of what would become a sort of charter for our community.

Article 1 - The ranch and surrounding area and all property is the sole property of the four original inhabitants, those being Gordon Clarke, Cheryl Clarke, Bill Rhodes, and Mary Rhodes. As such, all rules accepted by the owners shall be applied to any and all persons on any portion of the property.

We debated this statement for almost an hour, first to decide if we truly had any claim to the property. After deciding we did now own the property based on the old adage that "possession is nine tenths of the law", we added that others might be allocated ownership with the agreement of the original four. It seems a senseless debate now, as I emend our actions of that time. There were no courts to hear a trial over ownership even had there been another party who claimed the property. Though we could not yet admit so at the time, the court of the land now lay in the bedroom that served as our armory and in our skill and willingness to apply it without reluctance when required.

We did practice that method of administering justice, but only after Bill insisted. Behind the lodge was a shooting range used by the hunters who were guests during hunting season. Bill and I took one of each type of weapon to that range and fired them until we were familiar with their operation. Cheryl and Mary were unwilling to do so. Neither grew up in a household where firearms were present, and both were fearful of them.

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The first test of our willingness to defend our community came the first week of August. Cheryl was working in the garden, more now for the seeds for next year than for food for this year, when she saw a truck leaving a dust trail on the drive to the lodge. She immediately came into the lodge and told Bill and I that someone was coming. Bill handed me the pump shotgun I had assumed as my weapon of choice and he picked up his lever action rifle. We stepped out onto the porch just as the pickup truck came to a stop in front of the barn. The man who got out was Rocky. I called to him to stay where he was while we talked, and Bill and I held our weapons at the ready should he decide to come toward us.

"Rocky, stay where you are for right now. We need to talk for a while before you come any closer."

"Why, Mr. Clarke? You know me."

"Where have you been since you left the ranch?'

Rocky shrugged.

"I spent a couple days catching calves and giving them their shots, and then me and my crew drove the herd up into the mountain pastures. They came back down a week later. One of those pastures has a big hole that they'd lost a cow or two in before they fenced it off. That fence busted in six places over the winter, so I stayed up there an extra month to fix it. When I came back down a day ago and couldn't find a soul at the Lazy Q, I figured I'd come here and see if you were still here. What the hell happened to make you pull those guns on me?"

I explained to Rocky what had happened since left. He stared at the mountains for a few minutes, then turned back to me.

"Everybody's gone in town?"

"As far as we could tell. There was nobody anywhere except the grade school."

"And it's everywhere?"

"Well, it was the last we heard. That's why we want you to stay there. If you're infected you won't know it until two weeks later. You'll have given it to us by then if you come close."

"So, what should I do now? There's no sense going back to the Lazy Q if they're all dead."

Bill tapped me on the shoulder. His voice was just above a whisper.

"Gordy, he knows how to do things we don't. We need him. How far away do you suppose he'd have to stay so he won't give us that prion thing if he has it?"

"From what the WHO thing said, just far enough that he can't cough or sneeze on us, or touch us. He couldn't use the shower or one of the bathrooms either."

"What about the cabin on the end? It doesn't have a shower but it has a toilet."

"He'd have to stay there at least two weeks. How would we get food to him?"

"We could stock the cabin before he goes in with enough food and bottled water to last two weeks."

I turned back to Rocky.

"Rocky, we have an idea if you're in agreement. We'll have you stay in one of the cabins. We'll stock it with enough food to last you a couple weeks. At the end of that time, if you're not sick, you can join us."

Rocky took off his Stetson and scratched his head.

"What if I am sick?"

I looked at Bill, and he shrugged.

"There's no cure, and from what we know, the end isn't very pretty. Maybe he'd want some help getting it over with."

"You're saying we should kill him?" I began shaking my head. "No! No, we can't do that. That's murder."

Bill's face was grim.

"Gordy, a month ago, it was murder. With what we know now, it's mercy. Let Rocky decide."

I turned back to Rocky.

"If you have it, there's nothing we can do. There's no cure that we've heard about, and the end is pretty painful. We'll do the best we can, but we don't have any drugs. From what we've heard from the ham radio operators we'd talked with, nobody else does either. The only thing we have is", I pointed to Billy's rifle, "one of these."

Rocky put his hat back on.

"Kinda like when a horse breaks a leg, huh? Well, I've never let a horse suffer in my life. You do what I'd do if it comes to that. I won't blame you."

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We hauled enough canned goods and bottled water into the cabin furthest from the lodge, then put in a couple of pots and some tableware. Mary came running out just as we were leaving to get Rocky. She had six rolls of toilet paper and two blankets in her arms.

"He'll need these too."

Rocky was leaning against his truck when we came back to the front of the lodge.

"Hey, Mr. Clarke, I won't give it to Jim and Duke if I touch them, will I?"

The WHO information had said they'd never seen it, but I didn't want to take the chance.

"We don't know for sure, Rocky. It's probably best if you don't?"

"OK, I won't go see them. Can I go to the cabin now?"

"Yes, but please don't come out, not for any reason. If you do... well, we have to protect ourselves. I hope you understand that."

"Yeah, I do. I don't like it, but I understand. Just look in on me once in a while to make sure I'm OK, OK?"

We promised to do so, and Rocky went to the cabin. Bill and I went back inside the lodge, and decided it would be prudent to keep watch over the cabin for the next two weeks. One of the symptoms of the disease was delirium, and though we trusted Rocky not to do anything now, if he reached that state, he wouldn't be able to control his actions. Bill took the watch from seven in the morning until seven at night. I've always been somewhat of a night owl, so I watched from seven at night until seven the next morning.

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The two weeks went by faster than I'd anticipated because we all tried to stay busy. Bill stayed on his radio for more news when he wasn't keeping watch over Rocky's cabin. Cheryl had her garden, and Mary had the horses. Together, they had each other, and spent a lot of time talking about Cheryl's baby.

I had given up on my thesis. There didn't seem to be any point in writing it since there would be no one to read it. Instead, I occupied my time on the porch at night with reading from the large library beside the stone fireplace. Most of the books were about things the guests would have done while they were there - working with livestock, plowing, planting, and harvesting with horses, and how to make the things required on any farm in the nineteenth century. There were several about hunting the local game animals, and two about trapping. There were a few about preserving food that I gave to Cheryl.

It was difficult to read once I stopped the generator at ten, but two of the oil lamps from the bunkhouse provided enough light I could read for another hour before my head began to hurt. I would stop, take a walk around the lodge, get a drink, and then read some more. Each morning, I'd walk past Rocky's cabin. He was always up, and he'd tap on the window and grin. Each evening, I'd make the same walk, and Rocky would tap on his window again.

It was good to see that he didn't seem to be infected, and we were all relieved when he showed no signs of coughing or sneezing at the end of the quarantine period. That morning, I walked up to Rocky's window as he stood there grinning.

"Rocky, how do you feel?"

He grinned and shrugged.

"'Bout like always."

"No aches or pains? No cough or runny nose?"

"Nope."

"Then you're fine as far as we know. Want some breakfast? Cheryl and Mary are cooking ham and fried potatoes."

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Billy had been right about having Rocky join our group. He was a wealth of knowledge about the ranch and how things had been done in the nineteenth century and before. He also fit well into our group because he was intelligent. Rocky had only graduated from high school, but he had a logical mind, and his unique way of looking at things caused the rest of us to reconsider some of our own thoughts about what we were going to do.

In those early days of our community, our inexperience at being self-sufficient was telling. We were concerned with only three things - food, shelter, and safety, and those concerns were relatively short-term in scope.

Shelter, of course, could be considered long term thinking, but there was little thought actually involved with that subject. We had taken possession of the ranch, and there was no reason to believe our status would change. The simple fact was we believed there was no one left close enough to change that status.

We thought of food, or rather, Bill did, but the volume of canned goods and frozen food we took from the store in Sleepy Creek seemed to be more than we could eat in months. I held a secret hope that somehow this would end and we could all get back to our normal lives in no longer than a few months. The others have since confirmed their thoughts were the same though they would not speak them at the time. Our hopes made it difficult to consider how we would feed ourselves if we were forced to stay longer.

It was Bill who brought up the subject of safety, and at his urging, we had taken all the firearms, ammunition, bows and arrows from the hardware store. With them safely stored inside the lodge, we held what we confidently believed to be the only weapons in the vicinity. Our short practice session had instilled in Bill and myself the thought we could defend our sanctuary were that to become necessary.

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Bill had not been successful in his radio CQ broadcasts for two weeks, and even the stations that had broadcast only recorded messages had ceased to transmit. Our only contact with the outside world had come a week before that, and had been a very weak transmission from someone who could not receive our signal. The speaker sounded exhausted, and just kept repeating a chilling warning.

"To anyone who is receiving this frequency, if you are safe and have food and water, stay where you are. If you are not in a safe place, seek refuge as far from the city as possible. In the country, you may find food and water. The disease seems to have run its course, but now, the cities are not safe. There is no food and no water. There are many groups of armed people roaming the streets taking what they find and killing anyone who resists. I repeat, if you are safe, stay where you are. If you are not safe..."

The signal faded after that, and we had not been able to determine the speaker's location. We had not been able to receive it or any other communications since that evening.

Another unspoken concern was the weather. We were comfortable in the lodge, but the nights were cooling and reminded us that Montana winters are much different than the winters in Chicago. On the morning of the first of September, the thermometer on the lodge porch registered a temperature of forty-two degrees Fahrenheit. When Mary and Rocky went to feed the horses, Rocky put on the winter coat he had brought with him. Mary put on the light jacket she had brought as well as a couple of Bill's shirts. She was shivering when they came back inside.

By noon, the temperature had warmed to seventy-three, but we understood that warmth would soon leave us. The brochure for the lodge had a chart of expected temperatures for each month. September would be the last month until the following May when the day-time temperature would reach above sixty. Night-time temperatures would drop below freezing in late October, and not rise above that temperature until late April.

We had the fireplace for heat inside the lodge, but no clothing that would protect us from the icy winds of winter should we have to venture outside. We had also not thought about how much firewood we would consume over the winter. There was a large stack of logs already cut and stacked behind the lodge, but it had become obvious we would quickly exhaust that supply once the days were cold as well as the nights.

Water would also be a problem. Water for the lodge, cabin, and barn was pumped from the creek to a large holding tank on a hill behind the lodge. When the temperature dropped below freezing, our water tank would also freeze. The only way to get water would be to go to the creek, break a hole in the ice that would surely cover it, and bring the water back in buckets.

Chapter 6

It was on a Sunday in the middle of September that Mary announced the steaks Bill was cooking that evening were our last. No one said anything in reply, because it was another of the indications of our true situation that were becoming apparent. Though we did not discuss those indications, we all feared the future.

We finished eating in silence, each lost in the thoughts he or she tried unsuccessfully not to think. Only Rocky seemed at ease. He complimented Bill on the steak, and then asked Mary and Cheryl if they could do as well with a beef roast. Cheryl stopped chewing and stared at Rocky for a moment before replying.

"I can, but we don't have any."

Rocky shrugged.

"We can get more beef. That's easy."

"How is that easy? We took everything from the store in town. There's nothing left."

Rocky grinned.

"There's a couple hundred head of roasts and steaks up on the mountain pastures. All we have to do is go get 'em. They need to come down by the end of the month anyway."

"And how would we do that?"

"Well, we'd take horses, ride up there, and drive 'em back to the pasture here."

Mary chuckled.

"Do you really think Jim and Duke could do that. As slow as they walk, it would take forever."

Rocky shook his head.

"Not Jim and Duke. They're draft horses. We'd need horses who know their way around cattle, and I know where to get some if you're interested."

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As he explained how we would do it, we all felt a mixture of excitement and dread. Rocky's idea sounded crazy, dangerous, and would split our community for a while, but it was a way to get more meat. We all agreed it was the smartest thing to do.

The three of us, Rocky, Bill, and I, drove into Sleepy Creek in the big truck the next morning. I was glad the hardware store had been the only store in town other than the saloon and the grocery store. Since it was the only place in town to buy anything other than food, the owners had stocked it pretty well with a lot of things a hardware store in a bigger city would not have had. Two hours later, we left with what Rocky said we needed as well as a lot of other stuff we'd need for the winter.

There wasn't a lot of clothing, and most of it was jeans and shirts or clothes for hunting, but there were a few winter coats and some gloves. We took everything including the socks, boots and shoes. Most of what we found was too large to fit the girls, but as Rocky had pointed out, too big was better than too small. Bill's prize of the day was a rack of cowboy hats. We took those too. Rocky said they were pretty good for keeping the sun out of your eyes and the rain off your head. Bill just thought they looked cool, and wore a black one the rest of the day.

We also took the six sleeping bags that were there and all the rope and chain we could find. I didn't know anyone still made the old-style kerosene barn lanterns, but there were ten in the store along with six more oil lamps. We took them as well as all the oil and spare wicks. The truck wasn't nearly full, so after getting the things Rocky said we would need for his plan we went back in for things we would probably use someday and would be difficult to find anywhere else. One trip cleaned off the shelf of nails, screws, and other hardware such as mending straps, hinges, and padlocks and hasps. Another trip brought several axes, hatchets, hammers and saws and other woodworking tools.

It took two of us to get it to the truck, but we took the tool box filled with wrenches and other mechanic's tools Bill had found in the back of the store. When we finished, about all that was left on the racks and shelves were parts for lawn mowers, a few window air conditioners, and the cash register.

At Rocky's suggestion, we also drove to the doctor's office and loaded every medical instrument, bandage, and prescription drug we could find onto the truck. The doctor's personal office yielded several books on diseases, surgery, and dosage for prescription drugs. We took those as well. Rocky's logic was the same as Bill's had been. We might not ever need a scalpel or a suture needle or a penicillin shot, but if we ever did and didn't have one, the results could be disastrous.

Cheryl had asked if we'd check on the grade school, so on the way out of town, we drove around it to make sure all the doors were still locked shut. They were, but we didn't venture closer. None of us wanted to look in the windows again.

We spent the rest of the day putting everything away. One of the cabins became our clothing stores, the tools, hardware and other things were consigned to the tool shed. The former owners rooms became our dispensary.

At dinner that night, we made the decision about which each of us had been thinking - who of us would go with Rocky and who would stay behind to look after the ranch. He said all of us would be better, but we could do it with three people.

Bill and I were both uncomfortable leaving the girls by themselves. Neither had even picked up one of the firearms, let alone learned how to use one. From what we'd experienced so far, they wouldn't have any reason to use one, but if such would occur, they'd be helpless. That meant one of them would have to go, and either Bill or I would have to stay behind.

I quietly said Cheryl couldn't go. Bill and Mary nodded their agreement. Cheryl was not in agreement.

"I don't see why I should have to stay here. I'm pregnant, not sick, and I hardly show yet."

"No, I can't agree to let you go. You're too important."

"How am I important? I'm no different than Mary."

The thought I'd had when Cheryl said she was pregnant came tumbling out of my mouth.

"You're pregnant, and from what we know, or don't know, you might be one of the few women left who can start another generation to carry on. That's important, Cheryl. We... we won't live forever, you know."

Mary put her hand on Cheryl's shoulder.

"Sis, Gordy's right and you know it. You and I have talked about this before. You stay here for your baby. I'll go."

Bill smiled.

"Well, Rocky, Gordy here is pretty good with the history stuff, but he's not much for the outdoors, so I'll be going with you too. When do we leave?"

I had a feeling Bill was so adamant about going because he didn't want Mary and Rocky together without him. Rocky was a very likeable guy, and Mary had been infatuated with horses since she started taking care of Jim and Duke. Rocky loved the two big geldings, and had been teaching Mary about them and horses in general. Mary was also, like Cheryl, a person who tended to punctuate her conversations with touches. When she did that to Rocky, he'd always grin. I'd never seen anything else happening between Rocky and Mary, but it was probable Bill was feeling a little threatened.

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The next morning Mary and Bill raided our clothing store for what Rocky said they needed. They came back to the lodge and packed it while Rocky instructed.

Inside the sleeping bag each brought went three pairs of jeans, three shirts, six pairs of socks and a sweatshirt. The rolled up sleeping bag was then wrapped with one of the rain slickers we'd brought, and the bundle tied tight with some of the quarter-inch rope from the reels we'd taken from the store.

In a duffel bag, Rocky put a dozen cans of beans, another dozen of canned fruit, six cans each of chili and spaghetti, a can of coffee, and a box of salt. He then added a frying pan and a pot big enough to hold three plates, three cups and three forks, spoons, and knives. An old fashioned coffee pot he found on a shelf in the bunkhouse completed what he called his chuck wagon.

It was ten when they put everything in the back of Rocky's pickup and drove down the lane. Bill had looked excited and his black cowboy hat and heavy coat made him look like he could have stepped out of a western movie. Mary was cute in her brown cowboy hat, though her coat was pretty big. She seemed really proud that she'd found some turquoise cowboy boots that fit her if she wore two pairs of socks.

Cheryl was working hard at holding back her tears, and I admit to a lump in my throat that made saying goodbye difficult. When the dust settled back down on the gravel lane to the lodge, we went back inside to wait for their return.

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The next days were an exercise in the futility of attempting to be productive while being filled with a feeling I didn't understand at first. Cheryl felt the same way, and she couldn't explain it either. I know now that it was loneliness, something neither of us had really ever experienced. We'd never been further away from our friends and relatives than a phone call, and most were within a few minutes drive. Here, with just the two of us by ourselves, we realized just how alone in the world we really were.

We missed Rocky and Mary and Bill, if for only the fact that they were there to talk and listen. The lodge seemed to be dead inside without them. Cheryl and I went about our daily chores as usual, but the days seemed to grow longer as the time passed.

Cheryl fed the horses for Mary and took her daily ride on Jim or Duke, but I could tell she only took those rides to have something to do besides worry about Bill and Mary and Rocky. I too had to have some diversion. The big stack of logs behind the lodge needed to be split, or at least the smaller stack needed splitting. I got an axe from the tool shed and spent my days turning logs into wedges of wood that would warm us through the winter.

On the seventh day, Cheryl came running into the lodge.

"They're back, and they have a whole bunch of cows."

I ran outside. Coming up the gravel drive to the lodge was a herd of coal-black cattle and several loose horses. Behind them, on two more horses, I could make out Bill's black cowboy hat and Rocky's weatherworn coat. Rocky's pickup truck brought up the rear. As they got closer, I could see Mary's grin through the windshield.

Rocky rode around the herd and up to the fence, opened the gate and waited while the cows meandered through. A couple tried to avoid the gate, but Rocky dodged this way and that with his horse until they fell in line. As the last went through into the pasture, Rocky dismounted and closed the gate. Bill then dismounted and they led their horses to the barn. Mary stopped Rocky's truck in front of the lodge, jumped out and ran to Cheryl. I'm not sure which one was the happier. Both had tears in their eyes. Mary was trying to talk while sniffing and wiping her face.

"Cheryl, it was a lot of fun, but I worried about you all the time. It's better to be back here."

Cheryl smiled.

"Why would you worry about me? I was here safe. It was you out there with God knows what."

"No, we were safe. We did see a bear, but it ran away. Rocky said it was afraid of us, and wouldn't come back until we left."

They both went inside. I walked to the barn. Rocky and Bill were taking the saddles off their horses. They both put the saddles and bridles in the room inside the barn where the harness was stored, and then came back out. Rocky grinned.

"We only brought fifty back here because there was just the three of us. The rest are at the Lazy Q, and we can bring 'em back here over the next few days. The south pasture will hold 'em all over the winter. We'll need to get the bulls too if we're going to keep having calves every spring. They're in another pasture about a mile south of the Lazy Q."

Rocky's grin changed to a frown.

"Gordon, we may have a problem. Mary doesn't know about this because we didn't tell her, but I found a dead steer in one of the upper pastures. Somebody had cut off his hind quarters and left the rest."

"Somebody? You mean another person? How do you know it wasn't wolves or a bear?"

Rocky frowned.

"Wolves and bears don't use a knife to cut their meat and they don't carry rifles. That steer had been shot. I found where the bullet went through his shoulder blade. Looked like a small caliber, and it tore up things pretty bad after it went in. When I was in the Army, I spent a year in Iraq. It looked like the wounds I saw from an AK."

"So, we're not alone out here?"

"Doesn't look like it to me. The coyotes and buzzards had been at him so it was hard to tell how long he'd been dead, but it couldn't have been more than a week or so."

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What I now record is a combination of the stories the three told when they returned.

Their first destination was the Lazy Q, the ranch where Rocky had worked. The reason for the stop was two-fold. Rocky wanted to see if anyone had come back and deal with that situation accordingly. If they were healthy, we'd agreed he would tell them to stay in the house until they came down from the mountains with the cattle, and then they'd bring them back to the lodge. If they weren't...

It was probably a good thing I didn't go with them. I don't know if I could do what they would have to do in that case. As Bill had so practically stated, it would have been mercy, but still...

The second reason was they needed horses and saddles. Horses were the only way of getting to the cattle, and Rocky said there were horses in the pasture when he'd left. When they drove up in front of the house an hour later, the horses were still there, eleven of them grazing in the pasture.

They got out of Rocky's truck and checked their weapons, Bill, the Winchester rifle he favored, and Rocky, the Smith and Wesson.357 magnum revolver on his hip. Rocky had also taken a 30-06 Remington bolt action rifle and a little Ruger.22 semi-automatic rifle, but he left them in the truck saying his revolver would be better for what they might find. Mary, of course, was unarmed, so they told her to stay in the truck.

They found no one in the house or barn. Rocky said he figured his crew had gone to town to relax a little, and were now probably residing in the grade school with the rest of the townspeople. His reasoning was the timing would have been about right for them to have been infected shortly after getting to town, and to have died before we discovered the tragedy inside the grade school.

Rocky whistled and all the horses pricked up their ears and then trotted into the barn. He closed the door behind them, and then led Bill and Mary to a room at the front of the barn. Inside were six saddles and bridles along with saddle blankets. They carried three sets to the loose stalls of the barn, and then Rocky picked out a horse for each of them.

"Bill, you're a big guy, so you need a big horse. The pinto over there, his name is Buster. He'll carry you up those mountains without breaking a sweat. He's pretty gentle too, though you'll have to hold tight once we start driving the cows home. He's a cow horse, through and through. You won't have to tell him what to do, but he'll do it pretty fast and he'll leave you sittin' on your backside if you're not careful.

"Mary, you're not very tall, so you take the black mare over there. Her name's Buttercup, and she's sweet as a buttercup too. She's got cow sense, like old Buster there, so you need to hold on just like I told Bill."

Rocky saddled a tall palomino he called Jasper, demonstrating how to do it in the process.

"First thing you do is put on the bridle. That gives you a way to hold the horse in one place, and they know when they're wearing a bridle they're supposed to stand still. You just lift it here and hold the bit with your other hand. The horse will open his mouth so you can slide it in. If he doesn't want to cooperate just put your thumb in his mouth, right here, and squeeze a little. He'll open up then."

Mary said Jim and Duke always opened their mouths for her, and asked Rocky if she wouldn't get bitten if she did that.

Rocky laughed and pulled the horse's lips apart.

"He can't. He doesn't have any teeth there, see? That's where the bit goes, right there where there's no teeth."

After a couple minutes of trying, and a little help from Rocky, Bill and Mary had the bridles on their horses. Rocky picked up one of the saddle blankets they'd brought from the room.

"Now, before you do anything else, you make sure there's no dirt or stuff on his back. That's important. If there is, the saddle'll rub the skin raw and you'll be walkin' and leadin' your horse instead of ridin'. We'll take a curry comb and brush along with us just to make sure. Then you put the blanket on his back and center it up, like this.

"Next comes the saddle. Bill, we might have to help Mary with this because these saddles are pretty heavy. Put the right stirrup and the cinches and bellybands over the seat, lift the saddle up, and put it on his back. You try it and I'll watch... That's right, Bill, but a little further up toward his withers. That's the bump where his neck starts. Yeah, that's good. Mary can you lift yours or do you need help?"

"I think I can. It doesn't feel too heavy."

"OK, just lift it up and put it on her back like I showed you... Yeah, that's good. You're stronger than you look.

"Now we need to tie the cinches. They need to be tight or you'll find yourself and the saddle sliding off sideways. Just reach under the horse and grab that front strap, then pull it up and through this d-ring, over the top of the ring first, then around the strap to make a loop, back through the d-ring from the back this time, and then down through the loop around the strap. Pull it tight and you're done with that one. The back one is the same, but it can be a little looser. It's just there so the saddle has something to pull against when you use a rope. Now, you try."

Rocky checked the cinches on both Bill's and Mary's horses.

"Yours are fine, Bill. Mary, yours need to be a little tighter. Watch for when she lets her breath out and pull the cinch tight then. That's right. It's good now. I need to get a pack saddle on that bay mare so she'll carry all our stuff. Then, we'll be ready to start."

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They rode toward the mountains for an hour and then stopped to eat. Rocky said he wanted them to get feel of what each horse needed so it would understand what they wanted to do.

"They'll both neck-rein, so you don't have to pull on a rein or anything. Just lay the rein on the side of the horse's neck opposite the direction you want him to go, like this. If you want to go the other direction, do the opposite. See how they know? Now, if you want to stop, don't go yankin' hard. A horse's mouth is just as sensitive as yours is. Just ease back on the reins and say whoa. He'll stop. When you want him to go, just cluck your tongue and squeeze his sides with your legs. The harder you squeeze, the faster he'll go.

"Now, you have to remember, these aren't horses like we had for the guests at the ranch. They're horses trained to work with cows. When we're driving the cows and one starts to move away from the main bunch, you'll have to bring her back in. You won't need to drive. All you have to do is point the horse in the direction of the cow, and then hang on. The horse will bring her back, but if you don't hang on, he might leave you sitting on the ground."

After a lunch of spaghetti and peaches, they rode on. It was nearly dusk when they came to the first pasture. Rocky stopped and looked over the fifty cows and half-grown steers grazing on the grass beginning to brown with the freezes of a Montana fall.

"Looks like they did OK. The steers are plenty big. We'll leave them be until we bring the rest down. They're higher up."

It took them two days to bring all the cattle down to join those in the first pasture, two days of leaning to trust their horses and to appreciate how much Rocky knew about horses, cattle, and the country around the area of the two ranches.

Mary related how her horse, Buttercup, had almost thrown her when she had to chase a steer back into the main herd.

"I just did what Rocky said and started Buttercup toward the steer. I should have held on to the saddle horn, because the steer started to run, and Buttercup started to run too. I did grab it then after she almost left me behind. It was amazing. Buttercup knew just what to do to make that steer go back with the others. If he went one way, she'd run in front of him. If he turned around, so did she. It was fun once I got over being scared."

She grinned and looked at Bill.

"Does your butt still hurt, Honey?"

"No, and you don't have to tell everything you know."

Mary grinned again.

"Billy didn't hold on either the first time he chased a cow. We had to catch his horse and take it back to him. He held on after that, though."

Bill grinned.

"At least I didn't ask where the bathroom was."

Mary blushed.

"Well, you're not a woman, so you wouldn't understand. I just thought since the cowboys went up there every year, they might have made one. I did all right once I figured it out."

They'd seen the bear as they were riding to the pasture furthest up in the mountains. Bill saw it first and asked Rocky if he was going to shoot it. Rocky said not unless he had to, told them to stay where they were, and rode toward the bear. He yelled at the bear to leave, and as he got closer the bear ran through a gap in the trees and into the rocks. Rocky followed, still yelling for the bear to leave. When he came back to Bill and Mary, he said that pasture wasn't the one he'd thought, and there were no cows there.

I figured that pasture was where Rocky had found the dead steer. I didn't ask if that was true since Mary didn't know what he'd found there.

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They started back down with all the cattle on the third day. Rocky said they had a relatively easy time taking them back to the Lazy Q because the cows all knew the way and didn't stray much. They arrived at the Lazy Q about noon. Because of the dead cow he'd found, Rocky didn't want to stay at the ranch. It would have been an ideal place for anyone looking for shelter for the winter, just like our ranch was. They put most of the cows in the fenced areas of the ranch and started for ours with fifty cows and the rest of the horses. Mary carried the rest of the saddles and other tack in the back of Rocky's pickup truck. The distance forced them to spend another night in the open.

As Rocky told me at the barn, though he and Bill had watched carefully, they saw no sign of anyone else while coming down from the mountain pastures or at the ranch. That bothered Rocky.

"If somebody else is up in those mountains, they might have seen us. I'm pretty sure nobody followed us. Once we were out of the mountains, the ground is pretty flat and we'd have seen 'em. What I can't figure out is why they wouldn't have come to meet us unless they didn't want us to know they were there. I left about forty head in that pasture. We don't really need 'em, and I thought if there was somebody up there and they had beef to eat, it might keep 'em away from us. I hope I'm right."

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Over the next two weeks, we brought the rest of the cattle from the Circle Q to our ranch. I went along a couple of times. After their trip up the mountains, Bill seemed satisfied that Rocky wasn't going to try to take Mary away from him. I couldn't really understand why he'd think that anyway. Rocky was a good twenty years older than Mary.

I have to say that driving the cattle the twenty miles from one ranch to another was enjoyable though fatiguing. I'd studied the old west in one of my history classes, but my understanding of what life was like back then was a little contorted by the western movies I saw as a kid. When I lived it, if only for the two days it took to get from one ranch to the other and back, a lot of things took on a different meaning.

Driving cattle wasn't sitting on a horse and singing songs while the cattle obediently walked quietly along. It also wasn't the pandemonium of a stampede caused by the gunshots of the cattle rustlers that seemed to be in every western. It wasn't quiet nights around a campfire, drinking coffee and exchanging exciting tales of the range and women.

Instead, it was work, work that left me exhausted at the end of each day. The part about sitting on a horse as we drove the cattle was true, but the horse only walked part of the time. To this day, I believe cows have a streak of obstinacy that makes them do the opposite of what they're supposed to do. We'd get the herd, if you could call fifty or so cows and steers a herd, started in one direction, and ten seconds later, a cow would decide she didn't want to go that direction. She'd head off toward the mountains or some other direction that made no sense at all, and one of us would have to go bring her back.

Mary was right about the horses. Using them to keep the herd together was like riding a ride at a theme park. Sometimes it was exhilarating, sometimes it was scary, and always, it was fascinating. You couldn't do much to guide the horse, but you didn't need to. All you had to do was hold on and watch the horse do all the work. It was like the horse knew what the cow was going to do before she did, and always was there to turn her back to the herd.

In the evening, there was little conversation other than who would stay up for four hours and ride around the cows to make sure they didn't stray during the night. If I drew the long straw, I'd have the first four hour watch, and could then sleep through the rest of the night. If I wasn't, it always felt like I'd just drifted off, and then shaken by Mary or Rocky to take my turn.

It was those night watches, the holding on and the cooling weather that made us crawl into our sleeping bags early in the evening. I have to admit, though, that the sun setting and rising were beautiful and inspiring things to witness. I'd always heard that Montana was called "Big Sky Country", but until those short cattle drives, I never really understood. Out there in the open country, the sky reached from horizon to horizon and was indeed a deep, beautiful blue. There were occasional clouds, but nothing like back in Chicago.

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Bringing the bulls back to the ranch was a different story. When Rocky and I rode up to the barn south of the house at the Lazy Q one evening, I was impressed by the quiet power and size of the six angus bulls. When Rocky explained what we were going to have to watch for, I was more than a bit fearful.

"Don't you trust any of these big guys. They look fat and slow, but they're almost as fast as a horse, and if they get you on the ground, they'll pound you to a pulp. It's the one that seems the tamest that'll kill you. The young ones, like those two over there, are usually pretty laid back, and probably won't cause us much trouble. The older ones can go from standing and looking at you to mean and trying to grind you into the ground at the drop of a hat."

"If they're that dangerous, why did they keep them?"

"You still need a bull to make a calf. Most ranchers don't... didn't keep their own bulls anymore. Artificial insemination is cheaper and they could pick the bull they want from any of the registered stock in the world. Well, before, they could anyway. Mr. Jenkins just liked bulls. He didn't need this many, but he rented two or three out every spring for a little cash money. A month with one of these guys would cost a rancher five hundred, but that's cheaper than feeding them year round, and you don't have to build your fences as strong."

"If he didn't need this many, we shouldn't either. Why are we taking them all?"

"Well, an older bull can breed around fifty cows a season, but it runs them down a bunch. The younger ones can only cover about thirty. A couple of these bulls are getting pretty old, so we'll have a few skips - that's cows that don't get bred. I figure we need to make sure we don't have any skips, and it'll be a couple of years before this year's bull calves are old enough to breed, so we need them all. When we have some to replace the older ones, we'll slaughter them for meat. It won't be the greatest meat, but it'll be all right for stews and such.

"We need to make this drive in one day so we don't have to stop. I don't want to be off a horse with them walking around loose. I don't know these guys very well yet, so if one looks like he's going to cause trouble, you yell at me and I'll take care of it."

Fortunately, there were few problems with the bulls other than keeping them going where we wanted, and I was more than a little happy about that. One look at their thick, muscular necks and bodies, and at the way they seemed to view us with quiet contempt made me shudder at the thought of facing one on foot. They looked like the bullies in high school who tormented everybody who was more into studying than sports. I guess that where the term "bully" originated.

We'd started at daylight, and it took us nine hours to get them from the Circle Q to the smaller, heavily fenced pasture beside the barn. When Rocky closed the gate, we both breathed a sigh of relief. The bulls just walked over to the thick board fence to sniff at the cows that had gathered to see what was happening, and then began to graze.

I hadn't noticed Rocky walk up beside me.

"They're not interested in the cows now, because the cows are all carrying calves. They'll just eat and rest until spring. Once the calves are born, we'll turn the bulls out with the cows for a month or so. They'll cover all the cows, and then it'll be back to the bull pen for them again."

"You'll just turn all of them loose with the cows? Won't they fight each other? On the nature shows I've watched on TV, the males always fight for the females."

"Oh yeah, they'd fight if we did that. That's why there are several areas of the pasture fenced off. We'll put one bull with about thirty or forty cows in each section. That row of fence that runs down along each section is so we can put each cow and bull where they belong. They might make a little show over the fence, but as long as each bull has his own group of cows, they won't fight."

Rocky grinned.

"They'll be too busy to fight. We'll split up the herd into the different pens over the winter. After the calves are born, we'll turn in the bulls. We'll record the ear tag numbers on each cow and bull so we don't get bulls breeding their own daughters. Mr. Jenkins kept his herd book in the tack room in the barn. It's in my truck now, so we'll know which cows to put with each bull. This year's heifers we'll mark with ear notches since we won't have more tags. It won't be quite as easy, but it used to work, and it'll work now."

Chapter 7

Life got pretty hectic for the rest of September and on into October. All of us worked to sort out the cows. The pen into which we had placed the herd had a sort of funnel at one end. In the small part of this funnel was a short section just big enough to hold a cow with a sliding gate at each end. One of the sides would also move toward the other so that once inside, a cow or steer could be virtually immobilized. Rocky called it a "squeeze chute", and said it was used for doctoring injured cows as well as for the use to which we put it.

Rocky and Bill sat on their horses in the fenced aisle that ran down the front of the fenced areas of pasture. Mary and I were on ours inside the pasture where all the cows had been driven. Cheryl stood beside the squeeze chute and worked the gates.

Mary and I would start a small group of cows and steers toward the squeeze chute. As they walked into the ever-narrowing opening, they would try to turn and go back. Mary and I let our horses keep them going in the right direction.

As one found its way into the chute, Cheryl would close the gate behind it, and then read the number on the tag secured through the animal's ear. She'd then look up that number in the Lazy Q herd book, and find the bull that had been its sire. She'd call out that number to Bill and Rocky, and then open the gate that led from the chute to the aisle. As the cow or steer ran from the chute, Rocky and Bill would drive it to the appropriate section of pasture. Steers went into one section. Each cow went into one of the six other sections to make certain that she wasn't bred the next spring by the bull who had sired her. Because of our other chores and because there were only five of us, the sorting took us two weeks.

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Cheryl's garden had stopped producing because of the cool nights, but she was in the process of doing what she'd read in one of the books in the library. To have seeds for the next spring, she was drying some of the vegetables. When they were completely dried, she opened them and placed the seeds into some of the plastic containers we'd brought from the grocery and hardware stores. These were placed in the cellar where they would keep until spring. Several pounds of potatoes were there already, stored in sand in the dark as were a few beets and carrots.

Mary continued to care for Jim and Duke. Rocky, Bill, and I split firewood. The three of us also talked every day about our security.

We were fairly certain no one was left in Sleepy Creek who knew of the location of the ranch or knew we were there. It was possible there were people at other ranches in the area, but if they had visited Sleepy Creek in June or July, it was likely they were dead as well. Neither of those scenarios explained the dead cow Rocky had found. There had to be, or at least had been other people in the area. It was disconcerting that they hadn't made an attempt at contact. The stories of the retired cop in Minnesota and the man in New York City kept coming into my mind.

We agreed that anyone in need would be welcomed, but only if they asked for help, and then only after spending at least two weeks in isolation, just as had Rocky. The two week isolation period was probably irrelevant now, but the consequences of allowing anyone to join our group without assurance they did not carry the disease would be catastrophic. Thus was born the second article of our charter.

Article 2 - Any person or persons who wish to join our group must first be placed with adequate food, water and other necessities in a cabin or cabins designated as the quarantine area. Larger groups will be quarantined in the bunkhouse. If, after the two week period of quarantine, the person or persons are judged unaffected by the disease, they will be allowed to join the group with the stipulation that all must work for the betterment of the community.

At that time we were not prepared to commit in writing the corollary to that statement, that being what would be our course of action should a person or group appear to be infected, or should that person or group attempt to take our refuge from us. Bill, Rocky, and I did discuss it.

I believe we all understood the actions that would be required. Rocky made the fitting analogy of such people to rabid dogs.

"When you see a rabid dog or a coyote, you don't try to fix him because you can't. You just put him out of his misery. It's better for you and it's better for him."

I fear Bill and I were still swayed by the ways of the world before. We had felt secure behind our locked doors, and knew the police would be there to protect us from anything that happened. We had doctors and hospitals to take care of injuries and sickness. Thinking of intentionally harming another person was just something we could not accept at that time. That thinking was to prove nearly disastrous, though we had several months of relative peace that allowed us to shy away from the decision that had to be made and accepted.

Chapter 8

The first hard freeze came on the first of October and the first snow on the eighteenth. The hard freeze was a bit of a shock even though we knew it was coming. In Chicago, we would have had frosts by then, but a solid freeze up wouldn't have happened until later in the month. Still, all it meant was heavy coats in the early morning and late at night.

The first snow was both a joy and a sad occasion. It was only half an inch or so, barely enough to warrant getting a shovel and clearing the walk and patio, but it turned the countryside into a picture of serene beauty. Cloaks of white sat on the shoulders of the pines behind the lodge, and the expanses of the pastures were white canvas dotted with the solid black of the angus cattle who pushed aside the snow to get at the grass beneath. We saw the tracks of rabbits and deer who visited those same pastures in the early hours of the morning.

Our sadness was the realization that winter had arrived and we would be unable to do many of the things we had enjoyed throughout the summer and fall. Cheryl's garden was now just the withered, brown remnants of tomato and bean plants. Our Sunday cookouts had to move indoors, and the wonderful flavor of meat seared over the charcoal fire was gone until spring.

The horses loved the chill and the snow. Even Jim and Duke kicked up their heels as much as their weight would allow. The others ran and cavorted on their way to Sleepy Creek for their morning drink.

In Chicago, the streets would have been quickly cleared and the inevitable warm spell that followed would have melted what snow remained. Here, at the lodge, the snow stayed on the ground, and was joined a week later by more snow. What had been pristine white laced with dark lines by the hooves of the cattle and horses in their travels around the pastures, became white again, as if Nature had become dissatisfied and waved her brush over the land to purify it.

What had been a refuge from the plague of the prion became a wonderland of white sprouting the snow capped pines that ringed the valley, a wonderland that was nearly shattered on the second of November.

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It was well below freezing that morning when Rocky went to feed the horses. Mary didn't go with him. She was roasting her front side in front of the fireplace. She had just turned to warm up her back when Rocky burst into the front door.

"We have visitors, in the barn."

Our weapons were leaning beside the front door as they had been since Rocky found the dead cow. Bill and I quickly put on our coats and picked up my shotgun and his rifle. Rocky had put his revolver in the holster before he went out and motioned for us to hurry.

As we ran across the open space between the lodge and barn I asked Rocky how many there were.

"Two, I think. I saw the tracks in the snow. I didn't go in."

We stopped at the door to the barn. There were two sets of tracks in the snow that had fallen overnight. They looked small, and one of the people had been dragging a foot as they walked.

While Rocky opened the door, Bill and I stood with our weapons at the ready. I called in, "Whoever you are, come out where we can see you, but don't approach us."

For a couple minutes, there was no sound from the barn except for the neighs and snorts from Jim and Duke. They were getting impatient for their hay and feed. I yelled the same thing again, and I heard a very weak, "We can't come out. We're almost frozen."

The voice was a woman's voice, and the clatter of her teeth as she spoke told me she was telling the truth.

"Stay there, and we'll get some blankets and hot coffee."

Bill and I ran back to the house leaving Rocky to make sure they didn't come out. It had been a long time since the initial outbreak of the disease, but I didn't want to take the risk that some pockets of the infection were still active somewhere.

We came back with two blankets and two steaming cups of coffee. I called into the barn again.

"Where are you? We'll leave the blankets and coffee where you can get them, but we aren't going to risk getting the infection."

The weak, female voice answered.

"Between the two horses, trying to get warm."

Rocky looked shocked, but he held out his hands.

"I'll take the stuff back there. They just better hope they didn't give it to Jim and Duke. If they did, they'll wish they were still just cold."

Rocky was gone for all of two minutes. When he came back, he was frowning.

"There's two of 'em and they're in there hugging Jim and Duke. Couldn't see 'em very good, but they don't have much on for clothes. No coats, just pants, shirts, and boots and they have a blanket wrapped around them. It's a wonder they aren't froze stiff. What're we going to do with them? They don't act sick, just cold."

There were some noises from inside the barn, and as we looked, the two women crawled out of the stall and into the feedway. They first sat up and wrapped themselves in the blankets, and then picked up the cups of coffee. Both were shaking so badly, a lot of the coffee spilled out of the cups before they got them to their lips. Each sipped at first to test the temperature, but the cold air had cooled the coffee quite a bit. They each drank a swallow, then two, and then tipped the cups and drained them. The woman on our right asked if they could have another cup.

Bill went to the house for two more cups of coffee. Rocky asked who the women were and how they got there. The woman on our right answered.

"I'm Angela Norquist, and she is Peggy Sharp. We walked here to get away from Nelson."

"Who's Nelson", asked Rocky.

"He's a man who ought to be dead, and he would be if I could have figured out how to do it."

Bill came back with the coffee, and Rocky carried it inside. He stopped about ten feet from the two women and sat the cups on the floor.

"I'm not coming any closer until we know you're not sick."

Angela frowned and then waved her hand.

"Then get back out of the way so we can get warmed up some more."

Once they had finished the second two cups, Angela spoke.

"If by sick, you mean what killed all the people, we don't have it. I hadn't seen or talked to anybody since my husband called me from town and told me to stay home. He said he was going to die, and there wasn't any sense in me dying too. I guess he did die, because I never heard from him again.

"About a month later, Nelson and his bunch came riding up to my house. Damned fool that I am, I let 'em in and fed 'em. They got done eating and said they were taking all the food. Nelson said I was a good cook and they needed one, so he was taking me too.

"Peggy here was living up in the mountains with her husband. Nelson caught 'em outside their bunker a month ago and shot her husband. He brought her back to his camp so they could... well, I don't have to tell you what they did with her. They did the same with me, too."

I asked if Nelson was still in the area. Angela shook her head.

"I don't know, but I don't think so. He has a cabin somewhere up in the mountains, and they were headed up there the night we ran away. He wanted to get up there before the big snows closed all the trails. If he didn't keep going, he wouldn't have made it.

"Now, I've said all I'm going to say until I get a whole lot warmer. You got any more coffee and a couple more blankets? A fire would be nice too."

I looked at Rocky and Bill. The both nodded, so I spoke to the women.

"We have a cabin you can use. Give us a little while to put in some firewood and food. I hope you understand, but you'll have to stay there for two weeks by yourself. We can't take the risk. When we know you're not sick, then we'll talk some more. Can you walk?"

"Mister, if there's a fire in there and something to eat, we'll crawl if we have to."

Cheryl and Mary filled a sack with canned goods while Bill and I built a fire in the cabin and then carried in four armloads of wood. By the time Mary brought the food, the cabin was warm enough it was uncomfortable in my coat. Bill and I went back to the barn. Rocky was grinning.

"Angela there is fifty two, and the way she talks, I don't think I'd like to be this Nelson guy if she ever gets a gun and catches up with him. She's a fireball.

"Peggy is around thirty, and Angela says she hasn't said a word since Nelson brought them back to his camp except to tell her that Nelson killed her husband and then took her with him."

I nodded.

"Well, the cabin's ready. Let's get them in there. We'll find out everything they know in two weeks. Let's hope they're not infected."

We told the women to come out of the barn and go to the cabin on the end. They walked slowly, Peggy with her arm around Angela's shoulders. I saw it was Peggy who dragged her foot. Bill, Rocky, and I walked with them, our weapons pointed in the air, but with our fingers on the safeties. I felt like a prison guard and I didn't like the feeling, but there was no alternative, not with Cheryl and the baby and the rest of our lives at stake.

As they entered the cabin, I told them we'd check on them every day, and that one of them should go to the window when we tapped so we could see if they showed any symptoms. I also said if they needed more firewood, to hold up a match. We'd bring more and put it on the porch by the cabin door.

Before we got back to the lodge, Rocky stopped us.

"You know, I'd bet my last dollar this Nelson guy is the one who shot that cow. If he'd do that and do what he did to these two women, he sounds like bad news to me. We need to know where this Nelson and his bunch are camped. If it's up high, Angela is right. He won't be able to get back down until spring and with those cows and steers I left up there, he won't have to. We need to be ready by then."

"Ready for what."

"Ready for him to come here and do what he did at Angela's and Peggy's."

While I completely understood what Rocky meant, my tendency to rationalize the behavior of people as response to their situation was troubling. I mean, from birth, I'd been taught it was everyone's responsibility to care for each other. Maybe this Nelson was just reacting to the situation in which he found himself out of self-preservation and could be reasoned with if we offered the opportunity to join our group. I thought we had the responsibility to try even though he'd done things that we would normally condemn. This wasn't the normal situation, I reasoned, and we owed it to the future to preserve as many people as possible.

Then, the realist I was slowly becoming filled my head with opposing thoughts. Killing Peggy's husband and then kidnapping her was not something he would have had to do to survive. Physically abusing her and Angela wasn't either. Perhaps he was one of those people I had some time earlier recognized exist in any society - a person bent on cruelty and destruction no matter what the situation. If so, Rocky was exactly correct about needing to prepare.

Caution indicated we should hope for the best but prepare for the worst. I agreed we should hold a council as soon as Angela and Peggy were proven well or ill as the case might be. With the onset of winter and Nelson's probable isolation in the mountains, it didn't seem necessary to rush into any plan, and if Angela and Peggy joined our group, they should have the opportunity to voice their opinions as well.

Chapter 9

Just as we had done when Rocky came back, we stood guard over the lodge while Angela and Peggy were in quarantine. The first morning I tapped on the window, and Angela quickly walked up to it. She smiled and yelled, "Thank you".

I smiled back, somewhat because of her thought, but also because she was a nice looking woman. Knowing how women like to look their best, Mary had added a comb and a hairbrush to the items we left in the cabin. Angela had combed her hair, and though it was streaked with silver, the long black tresses still made a pretty frame around her smiling face. Peggy limped up beside her a moment later. She didn't smile or frown. Her look was one of... surrender might describe it, or maybe a loss of the ability to care. Angela hugged her, but Peggy didn't really seem to notice.

On the fourteenth day, I knocked on the door and Angela answered my knock.

"Can we come out now?"

"How do you feel?"

She grinned.

"Like I've been froze solid, thawed out, and cooked until I'm done. I also don't think I'm ever going to eat spinach again. Three nights a week was OK, but spinach for breakfast isn't all that good."

"How about Peggy?"

"Peggy's OK too. She's still not talking, but she's been through a lot over the past few weeks."

"How about her leg? We were in such a hurry to get you warmed up, I forgot to ask what happened. Is she doing better?"

"All she did was sprain her ankle when we ran away. I wrapped it so it didn't hurt as bad, and once she could stay off it for two weeks, she's fine now.

I didn't want to ask, but had to for our safety.

"Peggy seemed, I don't know how to describe it other than she doesn't seem to really care about anything. How is she... mentally?"

Angela sighed.

"You know, I'm really not sure. She's been through a lot over the past few weeks. If she'd just talk to me, maybe I could tell, but she didn't say a word the whole two weeks we were in here. I don't know if she hasn't realized she's finally free, or if she thinks this place won't be any better, or what.

"When I was her age, if somebody had shot my Jacob and then raped me, I'd have tried to kill him even if it meant I'd get killed. Peggy seems to be pretty submissive. She didn't put up a fight when they took her, and I had to practically drag her away with me. There's something that's making her this way, but I don't think she's dangerous, if that's what you're asking."

"I had to ask."

"I know. If I'd have asked a few more questions, I might still be there on my ranch with my goats and chickens, and Nelson and his bunch would be fertilizing my pasture."

"Well, bring Peggy up to the lodge. We have a room you can share there, and you can meet Cheryl and Mary."

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Cheryl and Mary were overjoyed at having two more women in our group. While they had not yet met until that morning, we had discussed our impressions of both new members of our community during their quarantine. I fear they may have frightened Angela and Peggy by their enthusiasm at first, but after a bit of conversation, all except Peggy were relating their experiences up to that time.

Peggy sat mute, listening, but with no response by speaking or by expression. Cheryl attempted to bring her into their chatter, but Peggy just sat, still and quiet as the others talked.

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We men left the women on the couches in front of the fireplace and retired to the dining area for a preliminary discussion of how we might prepare for what might be an invasion when the snow melted. Rocky had brought pencil and paper to our meeting, and had sketched the layout of the valley. He began the discussion with an analysis of our location.

"I learned a lot in Iraq about defense. Over there, we never knew when some small group might try to attack, and it happened several times. They didn't wear uniforms like soldiers do in most wars, so we couldn't tell the soldiers from ordinary citizens. We had to treat everybody like they were going to try to kill us.

"Our base was surrounded by two fences about ten feet apart, and set up with guard houses at every gate. Other guards walked between the fences. The guards watched for any group approaching our base and stopped them before they got too close. We had to do it that way because we were in the middle of just a bunch of flat sand without any natural cover.

"We don't have enough people to build a double fence or to have guard posts like that, but I don't think we have to. Look at my drawing and you'll see. There are mountains on three sides. I suppose it's possible to get to our valley over those mountains, but there's no trails that I know about and I've lived around here all my life. To get into our ranch, Nelson or anybody else has only two ways - the gravel road and area around it, and by coming up Sleepy Creek. Those places are where we need something to stop someone or at least to slow them down so we know they're coming."

I had to admire Rocky's logical explanation of our situation. I had given the matter some thought prior to our meeting, and had foreseen invaders coming at us from all sides. I had thought about the middle ages because the people there were in much the same situation as we. After the Carolingian Empire collapsed, the countryside was divided into areas controlled by individual lords who warred with those lords surrounding their lands. In order to have a base for both defense and offence, they constructed massive castles with stone walls around the enclosed buildings. Those walls were high enough any invader would have had to use ladders and were sometimes twenty feet thick.

Those thoughts led me to think about how we might construct such a barrier around the lodge and other areas. It was useless to protect ourselves if the cattle, horses, garden and the river were left unprotected. We would be alive but without food or water. Rocky had just explained that the fortress of which I had mused was already there in the form of the mountains. We had only to devise a defense of the road and Sleepy Creek. I thanked Rocky for his perceptions.

"Rocky, I understand what you're saying and it eases my mind to think of the mountains as providing most of the barriers to any attackers. Have you thought about how to defend the road and Sleepy Creek?"

Rocky scratched his head.

"Well, in Iraq, our chain link fences were twelve feet high with concertina wire on the top. There were only a few ways in and out, and that was through gates that were always closed unless a guard opened one for you. We need something like that, but there's no place around here to find chain link fence that high and I don't think there's any concertina wire anywhere we could get to now that it's winter. I did think about barbed wire though. There's several miles of it that we brought from the hardware store. String that stuff close enough together and it'll even stop a bull."

"What about a gate", asked Bill.

"Oh, we can build a gate easy. We just need a couple of logs sunk in the ground and some boards. There's plenty of trees for logs, and there's a saw mill in the tool shed we can use to cut the boards."

Bill frowned.

"Cutting boards by hand seems like a lot of work, especially now that it's winter."

"No, not by hand. We'll use Jim and Duke on the horsepower. We did it all the time for the guests when we cut firewood."

Bill shook his head.

"You'll have to explain that. I know what horsepower is, but I've never heard of a horsepower."

Rocky sketched on his paper for a minute, and then turned it around so Bill could see his drawing.

"It's just a gearbox with long poles connected to the drive shaft at the top. At the bottom is the driven shaft, and it runs along the ground out farther than the poles on top. You just hitch your horses to the poles on top and they walk in a circle and pull on the poles. When they do that, the poles turn the gearbox which turns the driven shaft. There's a pulley on the driven shaft that we connect to the saw mill with a wide, canvas belt.

"We used to use two horses to run the saw, but one will work. If we use just one of our pair, one can be working while the other one rests. That way, we won't have to stop. When one horse needs a rest, we'll change them. We'll just have to saw a little slower."

Rocky had just explained a "horsepower" when Cheryl came running up to our table. There were tears in her eyes.

"Gordy, we have to go to where Peggy used to live and we have to go today."

I was a little taken aback by what seemed to be a demand from Cheryl rather than a request, and also by the place she demanded we go. I asked why we needed to do this and why today.

In a rapid monologue Cheryl explained that she, Mary, and Angela were talking about all the things women seem to love discussing. Peggy was just sitting there with a blank stare until Cheryl said she was concerned about having her baby with no doctor or hospital available. Angela had just chuckled.

"Cheryl, Honey, I've had two kids myself, so I know how things go, and I've been a midwife to hundreds of doe goats and several cows over the years. You probably won't have any problems, but I've never lost a kid or a calf yet. I'll make sure everything goes like it's suppose to go."

Cheryl said she was about to respond, when Peggy murmured, "I can help too. I had my boy and girl by myself."

Angela looked at Peggy.

"Peggy, you never told me you had children. Where are they?"

"Back in our bunker. That's where they were when Nelson killed Jack and took me."

"How old are they?"

"Oren is eight and Beth is six."

Angela frowned, and then stroked Peggy's shoulder.

"Honey, do you really think they're still... still there?"

Peggy's blank look turned into a face of defiance then.

"I know they are. Oren was raised to look after Beth, and they both know not to go outside unless Jack or I was with them."

"But did they have food and water? They'd have to go out for that, wouldn't they?"

"No, they wouldn't. We had enough food in the bunker for at least a year, and Jack ran water from a little creek right into the bunker, so they had all the water they needed."

"But, wouldn't they have gone out to look for you when you didn't come back?"

"Not if they did what Jack taught them to do. We'd been gone for up to a week before when we were hunting, and they were all right."

"But it's been what, two months?"

Mary had been listening in silence, but Peggy's confidence made her speak up.

"I don't care how long it's been. We have to go see, don't we."

Cheryl nodded and ran to our table with her demand. The other women had joined us during Cheryl's explanation. Mary took a chair beside Bill and Cheryl one beside me. Angela and Peggy sat beside Rocky. Rocky puffed out his cheeks as he blew out a deep breath before speaking.

"Peggy, where is your bunker?"

Peggy looked as if she was about to break into tears, but she took a breath and replied.

"I don't know exactly, but I can lead us there from Sleepy Creek. Jack and I went to Sleepy Creek a few times, and he made me memorize the way. It took about three hours to walk because the road's not very good and it stops ten miles from the bunker. It was slower when we got to the path we cut through the trees because you have to watch for the markers."

Rocky was frowning.

"So, about two on horseback, maybe three because of the snow. It'll have to be on horses because the road will be snowed pretty deep by now. Can you draw me a map?"

Peggy shook her head.

"No, I'm going. I can ride a horse and I have to go. The bunker door locks from the inside and Oren and Beth won't let anybody else in but me or... or Jack. You couldn't get in even if you tried."

Angela's voice was soft, but there could be no doubt about her conviction.

"I'm going too, just so... just so Peggy has somebody to... well, we don't know what we're going to find, now do we?"

Rocky stroked his chin.

"It's a little before noon. If we leave in an hour, we'll be there before dark, but we'll have to spend the night. I don't want to be trying to get back in the dark."

"We can stay in the bunker", said Peggy. "Like I said, there's food there and it'll be warm because Oren knows how to use the little stove."

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We agreed Bill would stay with Cheryl and Mary, and that I would go with Rocky, Angela, and Peggy. It was almost one-thirty before we'd eaten and saddled the horses. Bill, Cheryl, and Mary waved as we walked the horses down the gravel road toward Sleepy Creek.

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Sleepy Creek hadn't changed since our last visit. There was still nobody there as far as we could tell. We didn't stop to go house to house, but there was no smoke from any of the chimneys we saw, and no tracks in the snow that blanketed everything. Half way down the main street, beside the saloon, Peggy pointed to the north.

"There. That's where we have to go."

The "road" of which Peggy spoke was really just an old logging trail through the trees. There may have been gravel on it at one time or another, but the foot or so of snow that covered it made it impossible to tell. Rocky had been right about needing horses. There were places where the snow was almost two feet deep, and even the horses struggled a little getting through. Any vehicle short of a bulldozer wouldn't have had a chance and it would have been almost as slow as the horses.

We rode down the logging trail for almost an hour before Peggy stopped her horse and looked around.

"It looks different in winter, but I think it's here we turn off."

She continued scanning the trees for a minute, and then smiled - the first time I'd ever seen her do that.

"Yeah, it's here. See that bare patch on that big pine tree? Jack made that so we could find the way back.

"It just looks like any gap in any other pine tree to me", said Rocky.

"It's supposed to look that way, but it's different. See how three branches are missing, one above the other? That's because Jack cut them that way."

Without waiting for the rest of us, Peggy turned her horse into the trees and rode slowly on while looking from side to side. About fifteen minutes later, she stopped at a huge oak that still had last year's leaves hanging, brown and withered, from the branches.

"This is the second marker."

I couldn't see anything and neither could Rocky.

"Where? he asked.

"See that lowest branch, the one that bends down and then back up? Jack tied it that way when we first came here to mark the trail. It's a lot thicker now, but it still shows the way."

As before, Peggy urged her horse ahead. A few minutes later, she stopped again.

"See that tree leaning against another one up ahead?"

Rocky and I said "yes".

"That's a marker, but it points in the wrong direction. Jack wanted to leave some false markers in case somebody figured out the first two. We need to go the other way."

And so it went on our excursion through the trees. Peggy's Jack had been a true woodsman and had left markers that looked completely natural to anyone who didn't know their secret meaning. Several markers were plainly made by someone and easy to see, but were false clues. An arrow blazed on the side of an oak tree led one away from the bunker if followed. A log bridge led invitingly over a small stream ahead.

Going that direction led one to a steep bluff, or so said Peggy. Instead, one had to turn right a hundred feet before the bridge into a gap in the rocks almost tight enough to prevent the horses from going through. As it was, we had to dismount and lead them through the gash in the rock. There wasn't enough room for our legs if we rode through.

Once through that gap, a narrow valley appeared. Peggy cried out, "This is our valley", jumped off her horse, and tried to run toward a small grove of pines about a hundred feet away. She promptly tripped and fell down, only to get back up and try to run again. Rocky caught up to her and held her back.

"Peggy, you're going to hurt yourself trying to run, and they'll still be there in a few more minutes."

Peggy looked at Rocky and sobbed.

"I need to see. Can't you understand?"

"Yes, but let's all see together, OK?"

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Even if one had managed to find the small valley, it would have been nearly impossible to find the bunker except by accident. It was just a small steel door set into the side of what looked like a natural hill on the valley floor. The door appeared to have been bolted together from multiple steel plates, and had several levers that looked like handles in various spots on the surface. We were only feet away before we saw it because two pines stood in front. We had to push through the branches before it was visible.

I smelled wood smoke at the same time as Peggy yelled, "See, they're still here".

She ran up to the door and carefully moved one of the levers near the bottom of the door clockwise, and then back counterclockwise half way. She waited a few seconds, and then turned a different lever at the top in the opposite directions.

About five minutes passed with nothing happening, but Peggy didn't seem to be upset by the lack of activity.

"Oren is waiting for the next signal", was all she said.

When that time had passed, Peggy tapped three times on the door, waited a few seconds, and then tapped twice more. I heard a click and one of the steel plates moved up to open a slight crack, almost like the mail slots in the door of one of the old brownstones back in Chicago. Only a second later, there were three more clicks, the door swung open, and a boy ran out and into Peggy's arms.

A few pounding heartbeats later, a smaller girl ran out of the bunker door and wrapped her arms around Peggy's waist.

Peggy was crying her eyes out as was Angela, and I admit to having some difficulty seeing myself. Rocky had turned away, "to find somewhere to tie the horses" he said, but I think he was having similar emotions.

Rocky did find a place inside the trees where the snow wasn't quite so deep, and stretched a length of rope between two big pines. After replacing their bridles with halters, Rocky tied each horse to that rope and then took off their saddles. About then, Peggy led Angela and the two children into the bunker. I went to help Rocky. We carried all the tack into the bunker after which the boy, Oren, closed the door, latched the three latches, and led us down the narrow entry into the living chamber.

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Even today and after all we've done, I'm amazed at what people can do with just their own two hands and the will to succeed. The bunker was a wonder considering it had been built with just the manual labor of two people - Jack and Peggy. It was made of local stone, part of the scree from the nearby mountains stuck together with mortar. The floor was of similar stone, though made flatter by the application of mortar to level them.

The bunker was about thirty feet long and ten wide. Along the back wall was a wide bed. Against one long wall were two bunk beds along with shelves for storage. Along the other wall was a small stove with a stove pipe that led out through the roof of the bunker, a sink from which ran a constant stream of water, and another set of shelves holding pots, pans, and other utensils. Beside the stove was a small table with four chairs. On the wall near the entrance stood a gun rack with four rifles, three shotguns, and four pistols. Boxes of ammunition were on a shelf below that.

Mary was somewhat in awe of the bunker, both because of its very existence, but also because she could not imagine how it was built. She asked Peggy who helped them. Peggy smiled.

"It was just us two who did this. It was twelve years ago that Jack and I came up here. We had two shovels and some other tools, and we carried everything in here on our backs, a little at a time. The hardest was the cement. Jack carried it in, all sixty bags of it, one every day for two months. We had an old truck then, and drove it up to where we turned off the road from Sleepy Creek with the bags of cement and other stuff. We had to carry it the rest of the way through the woods.

"We dug out the hole and piled the dirt and rocks to the side. Then Jack started laying the stones while I dragged them from the mountain on a sled he built out of small logs. It took a long time, it seemed then, though it was only about a month. We slept in a tent until Jack got the roof on. When it had set up, he pulled out the supports, and when it didn't fall in, we started living inside. After that, we put the dirt from the hole over the top. Once the grass and bushes grew back, you couldn't see it unless you were right at the door. That's what Jack wanted."

It was small for a family of four by any standards, and yet was rather comfortable looking in a way. The family would have been together when they did everything. There was no television, computer, or video game to keep the children from observing everything their parents did, and so they learned by watching. They had learned well, too.

While we were talking, Oren stoked the small stove with more wood, filled a kettle with water from the sink, and set it on the stove to boil. Beth carefully took down four cups from a shelf and set them on the table, then tugged at Peggy's sleeve.

"Mommy, do they want clover or mint?"

Peggy looked down at Beth, stroked her head and smiled.

"Well, it's pretty cold outside, so I think the mint. What do you think?"

Beth beamed an adorable smile.

"I would say mint, too."

Beth scurried off to one of the shelves and returned with a glass jar full of leaves. She put three leaves in each cup, carefully closed the jar, and returned it to the shelf. When she returned, Oren was pouring boiling water into each cup. Beth held up a jar that, judging by the honeycomb inside, must have been honey.

"Mommy, you like honey with your tea, so I brought it."

Peggy smiled.

"That's my girl. You did a good job, Sweetie."

While we drank our tea, which I must say was better than I had expected, Oren fed more wood to the fire and then asked Peggy what we wanted to eat. I think if she hadn't said she'd take care of cooking the meal, that boy would have done it all himself. After hearing that, Oren went to sit on the bunk bed. I was a little surprised that Rocky went over and sat down beside him, and more surprised when they began talking. They were talking too softly for me to hear what they said, but after a couple of minutes, they were both smiling like they'd known each other for years.

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Dinner was stew made with venison jerky and potatoes and carrots Peggy took from a bin of sand under the bottom bunk bed. After she and Beth washed up the pot and our utensils, we turned in for the night. Peggy, Angela, and Beth took the big bed at the end of the bunker. I took the bottom bunk bed and Oren took the top. Rocky said he'd sleep on the floor and keep the fire going. When I fell asleep, Oren hadn't yet climbed up to the top bunk. He was sitting there beside Rocky.

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The next morning, Peggy said she didn't have any eggs or bacon, but she had some corn meal she'd ground from the corn she raised in her garden, and she'd make us what she called "grits". I'd heard of grits but never tasted them. With a little honey, they tasted pretty good. I made a mental note to have Peggy bring her seeds for corn and her grinder when we returned to the ranch.

As it was, we also brought the rest of her garden seeds as well all the firearms and ammunition. Peggy had some heavy canvas bags she said she used when picking from her garden, and we used those to carry everything. Each bag had two loops for handles, and by slinging the loops over the horns of our saddles, it was easy to carry all that to the opening in the rock that led to her valley. The handguns we put into one bag. The long guns we tied to our saddles. We talked about the food and other things she had left and decided to leave it in the bunker. We knew where the bunker was now, and a second source of food and supplies might come in handy should we be forced to leave the ranch for some reason.

It took almost an hour to unload the horses, lead them through the gap in the rocks and then carry all the bags through the gap, but once we had everything through the gap and back on our saddles, we started the trip back to Sleepy Creek and then on to the ranch. We didn't stop for lunch, and arrived at the ranch at about noon.

Chapter 10

It felt to me as if we'd been gone for a month instead of just overnight. Cheryl and Mary hugged Angela and Peggy like they hadn't seen them for weeks. Bill wasn't quite so demonstrative. He just smiled and said he was glad we got back safe. Oren and Beth looked really bewildered, but I guess if I'd spent all my life in a bunker with nobody else around except for my parents, I'd have been bewildered too.

Cheryl and Mary fixed a quick lunch of vegetable soup, and while we ate, I and Angela related what we'd found at Peggy's bunker. Rocky didn't say much. He was too busy answering the whispered questions from Oren.

Once lunch was over, the women and Beth went to talk about what women always seem to find to talk about. Rocky, Bill, and I carried the firearms up to our armory and then went back down to the dining area to discuss the defense plan that had been interrupted by the rescue of Peggy's children.

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Bill looked at the rough plan Rocky had drawn for where we'd put a fence and where we'd put our gate. After he counted the posts, he looked at Rocky.

"That looks like we're going to do a lot of digging, and we won't be able to start until it thaws in the spring."

Rocky nodded.

"Yeah, about thirty postholes, I think. Won't be too bad though. There's two sets of jobbers in the shed."

Bill grinned.

"I think there's a way we could do it this winter and we wouldn't wear ourselves out. I've been thinking about it since we went through Sleepy Creek on the way back from our last trip. Remember that logging company where I got the truck? Well, they have a backhoe sitting on a trailer in their lot and that trailer has a fuel tank on it too. If that tank is full, and we can find a truck to pull it, we can drive it up here and use the backhoe to dig our holes. My dad taught me how to run a backhoe when I was still in high school. With the backhoe, we can dig deeper and make the fence and gate stronger. The backhoe can lift up the logs to get them into the holes too."

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After some discussion about if the truck could make it from Sleepy Creek to the ranch with snow on the ground and Bill saying he'd seen one truck that looked to him like it had four-wheel drive, we decided he and Rocky should go to Sleepy Creek and try to bring the backhoe to the ranch. They'd take two horses down, and Bill would drive the truck back while Rocky brought the other horse back.

They left the next morning at daylight, and about noon, Oren yelled that he saw something coming up the lane. I looked out and saw Bill's black stetson through the windshield of a large, flatbed truck towing a trailer. Rocky came behind the truck leading Bill's horse.

Bill was all grins when he stepped out of the truck cab.

"Got the backhoe and the fuel tank on the trailer is half full. Had a bit of a problem getting through a couple places, but by doing some scooping and going slow, we got here. Got some other stuff that'll come in handy too. Come look."

Bill's "other stuff" was three chainsaws with another, smaller fuel tank for chainsaw fuel and a supply of oil for the fuel as well as oil for the chainsaw bars, about two dozen extra saw chains in different sizes, a set of blocks and tackles, and two dozen log chains in different sizes.

He grinned again.

"With a chainsaw, it'll be faster to cut down trees and cut them into logs. We can use the backhoe to put the logs on the truck to take them where we need them too. I got the blocks and tackles and chains just because I thought they might be useful some day."

I noticed a stack of lumber on each side of the backhoe then.

"Bill, where did you get all the boards?"

He was still grinning.

"I didn't know there was a lumber yard in Sleepy Springs, but there is, right next door to the logging business. They didn't just cut down trees. They sawed them into lumber too. We stopped by there and got all the two inch thick lumber they had. Rocky says the green boards are treated to resist the weather and that it would make our gates for us without having to saw up trees."

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Having the power of the backhoe and the truck changed our plans for defense quite a bit. Our original plan had been to put a gate on the lane to the lodge and a fence across the creek. That was because of the amount of work required to set the posts and build the gate. We wouldn't have time to do much more than that until after the spring thaw and there was a real possibility that Nelson or whoever was wintering over in the mountains would come down to take what we had. We hoped he'd try one of the two places so we could stop him.

Rocky inventoried our stock of barbed wire and found out we had enough to fence about twenty miles. It was just under a mile from where the creek wound around some big rocks and onto the ranch to where the mountains came down beside the lane. We had enough barbed wire to fence the entire thing with a lot left over. Rocky suggested a use for some of that extra wire.

"The reason we had two fences in Iraq was that if somebody managed to cut through the first fence, they still had to cut through the second before they could get to us. By the time they started on the second fence, the men patrolling between the two fences would see them and we could drive them back. We don't have enough people to patrol between two fences, but we could still make it hard for them to get to the lodge if they did manage to get in through the fence or the gate.

"If we build another fence that starts at the East cattle pen and crosses the lane to the mountain, that's another fence they'll have to get through. If we can't hold them off at the first fence, we'll hold them off at the second."

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Our final plan was to cut all the trees within a hundred yards of where we planned to build the fence and use them to build a fence from one side of the valley to the other. It would be six strands of barbed wire on posts set every twenty feet with the top strand six feet off the ground and the bottom strand just a foot. Rocky said that would stop anybody on a horse. We'd put a heavy gate across the lane at the first fence, and then build a second fence and gate that was still about a hundred yards from the lodge, barn, and other buildings. We started cutting trees the next day.

I wasn't comfortable using one of the chainsaws, so Rocky took care of felling the trees. I used an axe to trim the branches and once that was done, Rocky cut the bare trunks into twelve-foot lengths. By the end of the second day, we had enough posts to start Bill digging. It was tough getting the first bites in the frozen ground, but once Bill was through that, the digging went faster.

What he dug was more of a short trench than an actual hole, but once the post was in the ground, he used the bucket on the backhoe to fill in the hole and then tamp down the dirt to hold the post in place.

We worked every day until the twenty-third of December, and I was surprised at how much we'd gotten done. Once Bill started digging, he kept digging short trenches until he was at the other side of the valley. By then, Rocky and I had cut enough posts to fill all the trenches. It was that night at dinner that Cheryl reminded me it was just two more days until Christmas and said we should take a break until after the holidays.

Chapter 11

That Christmas was a different Christmas than any I'd ever experienced. Every year before that, Christmas had meant getting together with family, sharing conversation over dinner, and then exchanging gifts. Our first Christmas on the ranch was still sort of a family get together, but the family was so much different. None of us except for Cheryl and Mary was blood kin to any of the others, but after living together and having a shared experience, it was almost like we were.

We didn't have a turkey and all the trimmings for dinner. Instead, we had one of the canned hams we'd gotten on our trip to the grocery store, mashed potatoes, and some canned sweet potatoes. We did have the traditional gift exchange, though because Amanda and Peggy basically had just the clothes they'd worn when they made their escape, they didn't have much to give.

Cheryl and Mary gave each woman a pair pants, a shirt, and some underwear. Amanda looked at the pants and said her butt wasn't going to fit, but she could fix that. Peggy was happy and said even if her pants were too small she still appreciated them.

Rocky gave Oren one of the knives we'd taken from the hardware store, and between Cheryl and Mary, they'd made a doll for Beth out of a pair of pants that Cheryl had torn at some point.

Amanda baked cookies for everyone and Peggy had brought her herbs and honey for the tea we had after dinner.

We did have some conversation like we would have had with family, though instead of relating what we'd been up to over the last few months, our conversation was about our future.

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It's funny when you realize that you almost never talk about the future in normal conversation. You only talk about today, yesterday, and maybe tomorrow, but not much further than tomorrow unless it's to talk about the vacation you're going to take in the summer. You don't need to talk about the future because you just assume the future will be a continuation of today.

I suppose when that future is still pretty hazy, it's natural to talk about it and we did. We just didn't talk about the worry all of us had.

Peggy said she was happy to have her kids back with her. She said she'd start home-schooling them again after the first of the year. Cheryl said she'd been a teacher before and if Peggy wanted some help, she'd be glad to help her. I felt pretty good about that. Cheryl had lived to teach kids, and I could tell she missed it.

Amanda said she'd like to go back to her ranch sometime and get at least some of her goats and chickens and her milk cow. Rocky said we might be able to do that once the weather warmed up enough and that he didn't know anything about goats but if she had a milk cow it would be worth the trip. Amanda said she had one, but didn't know if she'd been bred that year or not.

All the women talked about Cheryl's baby, what that meant for the future and how they were going to handle the birth. That got to be a little much for us men, so we retired to the sofa and chairs in front of the fireplace. Our discussion was more about our security than anything else.

I said I thought we were in a pretty good position since we had the fence up and the gate in place. Rocky shook his head.

"We're what I'd call OK, but we don't know how many of them there are. Half a dozen we can probably handle as long as you two don't hesitate. If they come on like they mean business, it'll be just like Iraq. We have to assume they have weapons and if they come in shooting and you hesitate, one of us will get shot.

"If there's more than a few, well, we need more shooters. Amanda tells me she can shoot a rifle and a shotgun, and I'd guess since Peggy lived out there in that bunker for all those years she can too. We really need to start teaching Mary and Cheryl how to shoot, at least one of the.22's."

Oren had come with us, and tugged on Rocky's sleeve.

"I can shoot a gun too. Dad taught me how."

Rocky smiled.

"Well, Oren, if something happens, we just might need you, but unless I say so, you stay back and don't let anything happen to Beth, OK?"

Oren didn't look very happy, but he nodded.

Our decision that night was that Cheryl and Mary had to learn how to shoot at least a rifle. We interrupted their conversation about preserving vegetables for the winter to tell them.

Amanda just nodded and said she'd have no problem with either a rifle or a shotgun. Peggy said she'd shot a.22 rifle before to kill rabbits and squirrels and had killed a deer with their.30-30 lever acton.

Cheryl shook her head.

"Gordy, I can learn how to shoot a gun, but I don't think I could ever kill another person."

I started to try to convince Cheryl, but Amanda interrupted.

"Cheryl, after what they did to me and to Peggy, those men are more animals than humans, and that's how you have to think about them. This isn't like it used to be where good people always did what was right. What it is now is that good people have to do what they have to do to survive. I can tell you right now that killing one of them wouldn't feel any different to me than killing a rattler that was going to bite me."

I think Rocky helped Cheryl decide.

"Mrs. Clarke, even if you don't hit one of them, just shooting at them will keep their heads down and let the rest of us take care of them. It might even make them decide to leave. We'll need all the firepower we have though, so you and Mary need to at least learn how to handle a weapon."

Cherly agreed she try, and after looking at Bill, Mary said she'd try too.

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We did celebrate New Years, but it was a subdued celebration. We opened a bottle of champagne we'd taken from the saloon in town and had a couple toasts. There didn't seem to be much point in staying up until midnight, so about ten, we all went to bed.

The next day we started on our security fence again. It took a week to get all the barbed wire laid out, stretched tight, and stapled to the posts. It took another week to build the two gates and hang them from their posts. Rocky spent a couple days forging heavy hinges and latches with thick bolts to secure the gates to the posts. The padlocks from the hardware store served to lock the latches closed.

We spent another week clearing out the limbs from our clear area and piling them beside the firewood pile. The small branches would burn fast and hot, and would quickly start the logs that would burn all night. When we finally got that done, we parked the truck and trailer about fifty yards from the second gate and between the gate and the lodge.

Chapter 12

By the first of February, we all felt safer. As Rocky said, our fences wouldn't stop somebody determined to break in and take what we had, but they would slow them down enough we could either kill them or at least drive them away. We settled back into the life we'd lived before with a few changes.

Up until that time, we hadn't seriously looked at our energy situation, but knowing we wouldn't be leaving the ranch anytime soon, we did and decided we had to conserve as much as we could. We began rationing our propane supply by not heating the upstairs and by heating the downstairs with the big fireplace. It got cool enough some nights that we wore sweatshirts inside, but that was better than the alternative. The firewood was replaceable. The propane wasn't.

We discussed going back to Sleepy Creek and bringing more propane up, but it would have required electricity to pump the tank truck full. We also didn't know how much, or if any, propane remained in the shop tanks. We didn't need the refrigerators since it was cold, so one of the cabins became our freezer for what frozen food we had left. The propane was reserved for kitchen use.

We still had a good supply of diesel for the generator as well as a little left over from the use of the backhoe, but that would have been just as big problem to replace. There was a tank of diesel in the filling station in town, but that would also have required electricity. Rocky thought we could probably figure out a way to use the pump on the fuel tank truck to pump from the underground tank and into the truck. That would have to wait until we were sure we weren't going to have visitors. The last thing any of us wanted was to leave anyone at the ranch if Nelson or whoever tried to break in.

As a result, we ran the generator for only an hour and a half a day. That was enough time for the women to have enough light to fix dinner and enough time for Bill to try making contact on his radio. Light at night was from lamps and lanterns that burned lamp oil. We had a lot of lamp oil, and I knew that most vegetable oils would work in our lamps and lanterns although they wouldn't produce as much light. We also had a supply of candles.

The result of our conservation efforts was that we went to bed fairly early, about like I imagined our ancestors did, and we woke up just as the sun was rising. Going to bed early also had another benefit. Two people in a bed can keep each other warm if there are enough blankets, and all of us except Rocky shared a bed with another person. Amanda and Peggy each slept with one child. Rocky said he was good in a sleeping bag in front of the fire, and by sleeping there, he could keep the fire going all night.

We spent our days taking care of the horses and watching the cattle for the first calves, and in planning for what we were going to do the next summer. The women wanted a garden and Rocky said that wouldn't be a problem. He'd plowed the ranch garden with the horses every year before.

The women also had long discussions about Cheryl's pending labor and the birth of our child. Cheryl's estimate of early February for the birth seemed to be accurate to both Amanda and Peggy, and February was only a few weeks away. They set about gathering what they thought they would need, and after one discussion, they decided the master bedroom downstairs would be the labor and delivery room. They also decided that the day Cheryl gave birth, it would be necessary to run the generator until she was done.

Bill had about given up on his radio because he'd not been able to contact anybody for the past two months. Instead, he began reading from our library about the ways things were done in the past. One of those things was near and dear to his heart and he read everything he could find about butchering livestock.

We'd been so busy since Amanda and Penny came to visit we hadn't given any thought to killing and butchering a steer. Bill figured it was time we had some beef again, and he and Rocky began making plans for how they'd do it. Rocky said he'd killed a steer before and could dress it out, but didn't know how to cut it into steaks and roasts. Bill said he'd studied that process and thought he could manage it.

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I won't forget that day, though it's been repeated once a year since then. I'd grown up thinking meat was something you got at the grocery store and hadn't stopped to think how that meat got there. After I got older, I knew meat came from cows, pigs, and chickens, but the method was not something I really wanted to know. That day, I learned a lot about how our ancestors survived.

Killing the beef wasn't hard. Rocky just shot it in the forehead with one of the.22 rifles. Bill drove the backhoe around to the rear of the steer. Rocky slit the steer's back legs between the bone and the tendon, and then inserted two big hooks he called "gambrel hooks". Then he took one of the small chains they'd brought from the logger's business to each hook and looped them over the bucket of the backhoe. When Bill raised the bucket of the backhoe, the steer was lifted off the ground until it swung from the chains.

Rocky climbed up on the backhoe, and he and Bill drove the backhoe out to the furthest part of the property. I went along because Rocky had already explained the next steps but I'd never seen the process before.

What he did was slit the steer's throat and let him bleed until the blood stopped flowing. After that, he had Bill lower the bucket until he could reach under the steer's tail. He cut through the skin around the steer's anus and then extended the cut down the steer's belly to his throat. After that came cutting off the steer's head and opening the body cavity to remove the internal organs.

After Rocky had cut away the heart and liver and put them in a bucket, he and Bill removed the hide from the steer. What was left was the carcass ready for cutting into parts.

I found the process to be both fascinating and sickening. I admit to having a queasy stomach from the smell and sight. I'd also never witnessed any thing dying before, and it was somewhat of a reminder of my own mortality and how quickly that mortality could happen.

The reason for taking the steer so far for that part of the process was the smell would inevitably attract bears, and Rocky didn't want any bears close to the cattle or the house.

"They're in hibernation right now, but all that will freeze and stay frozen until the spring thaw. Once it thaws out, the bears will be out and looking for something to eat. By leaving the guts and hide there, they'll stay away from the house."

It took the rest of the day and part of the next to cut the steer into roasts and steaks. Bill and Rocky put it all in some of the plastic bins we'd gotten at the hardware store and Amanda, Peggy, and I carried them to our "freezer cabin". They'd stay frozen until we needed them, though I wondered how we'd eat all the meat before it got warm enough to start thawing it out. Amanda said that's why she wanted her goats. A goat would feed us for a couple days so we wouldn't have to be concerned about keeping the meat frozen.

We celebrated our new meat supply with the steer's liver. Rocky said it was traditional to eat the liver on the day of the butchering. I've never been a fan of liver of any type, but Amanda fried it with a bunch of sliced onions and it was at least bearable.

Much to Bill's delight, we ate beef for almost every evening meal after that. Amanda said Cheryl needed the protein and Cheryl seemed to agree. Mary stopped cautioning Bill about eating so much red meat because with all the work we'd been doing, he'd lost about thirty pounds and said he felt like he did when he was twenty.

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Cheryl lost about thirty pounds on the fifteenth of February when our son was born. She went into labor at about five that morning, and Gordon Junior finally made his way into the world at about eleven that night. It was a long day for me, because I was worried sick that something would go wrong. When Amanda came to tell me I was a father, she was grinning.

"Everything went just like it was supposed to. Cheryl's pretty tired, but she's nursing your little boy and he seems to be fine to me and Peggy."

Cheryl looked about done in, but she was smiling.

"Isn't he beautiful, Gordy?"

Well, to tell the truth, he looked like a mess to me. He was all red and his head was funny looking. I looked at Amanda and she grinned.

"Not what you were expecting? Give him a few days. He'll look like a little boy. A year from now, you'll be chasing him down so he doesn't get into trouble."

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It was about the middle of April that we noticed the icicles on the roof of the lodge start to drip during the day. Two weeks later, the snow was just a few patches that were in the shade most of the day. Going outside still required a coat, but we all welcomed the start of the warm season.

What we weren't welcoming was the knowledge that now the snow was mostly gone, we were again vulnerable to intruders. Between Rocky, Bill, and myself, we set up a schedule of guards for the ranch. Because Rocky was taking care of the horses and cattle, he'd be our sentry from daylight until one in the afternoon. Bill would take over from one until nine. I'd be the watch through the night.

April passed without incident and we'd almost begun to relax. It was warm enough we had to do something with the remaining beef. We'd started the freezers as soon as the night warmed up above freezing, but keeping them running over the summer would just use propane we'd need for cooking. After one last dinner of steaks, we reluctantly took the rest out to where we'd butchered the beef and used the backhoe to bury it. It was a shame to waste that much meat, but the risk of illness made it necessary.

As a result, we planned to kill another beef the next winter as soon as the nighttime temperatures dropped below freezing. Until then, we'd live on small game and fish supplemented by some of our canned food. Bill began searching our library for ways to preserve meat.

We also planned on making a trip to Amanda's farm when we felt it was safe to do so. If we could bring some of her goats and chickens to the ranch, we'd have meat in smaller amounts that we could use in a day or so. We wouldn't do that until we were sure that Nelson and his gang were gone. At the ranch, we were relatively secure. Out in the open, we were at risk.

Chapter 13

I'd been trying to keep up with what day was which, and I think it was about May fifteenth when I heard a horse snort just as the sky was starting to show the signs of daylight. Rocky was up and feeding the horses, and when he walked back to the lodge, I asked him if it was one of ours. His voice was just a whisper.

"I heard it, and it wasn't one of our horses. No need to get everybody in a panic until we know if it's just a loose horse or if somebody's here. I'm going to get my binoculars."

When Rocky came back, it took him a few minutes to find the horse and rider. That was because our first fence was almost a third of a mile from where we stood on the porch of the lodge. When he did, the man was riding down toward the creek. Rocky chuckled.

"It's one guy and he probably thought he could come around the fence at the creek. He's gonna get a surprise when he gets there."

Rocky turned to me then.

"See if you can wake up Amanda. I wanna know if she's seen this guy before."

When I brought Amanda out to the porch, Rocky handed her his binoculars.

"There's a guy on a horse riding up the fence toward the gate. Have a look and see if you know him."

Amanda started looking at the creek and then scanned up towards the fence. She slowed down when she found the man, and I saw her frown. She put down the binoculars and looked at Rocky.

"It's not Nelson, but it's one of his gang, a guy named Brian. He looks about twenty and pretty harmless, but he's just as bad as the rest. He raped me six times before we got away. Want me to shoot him?"

Rocky shook his head.

"No. No sense in starting something before everybody's up and ready. Let's wait and see what he does. In the meantime, Amanda, go wake up everybody and tell them what's going on. Tell Bill to get his rifle and come out. Cheryl, Mary, and Peggy should stay with the kids unless it gets really bad. Tell them to get dressed and get their guns ready though, in case we need them."

When Amanda went back inside, Rocky turned to me.

"I think this guy is just the point man. He's trying to get us to respond so Nelson knows what to expect. Since he didn't find a way in, I figure he'll go back and tell Nelson what he's seen and then the whole bunch will come.

"They might try to cut the fence or they might try to break down the gate. Either way, we need to be ready to stop them at the second fence and gate. We have to be closer to do that, and that's why I had Bill park the truck and trailer about fifty yards from the second gate. Fifty yards from the fence was the minimum we used for firing positions in Iraq. I doubt they have anything but rifles and pistols, but if they do, we'll be far enough away that a molotov cocktail or a hand grenade wouldn't reach us. We'll use the truck and trailer as cover from their fire."

Bill joined us with his lever action rifle a minute later.

"Amanda said there's a guy out here trying to get in. She said it's one of Nelson's guys. This is the showdown, isn't it?"

Rocky shrugged.

"Maybe he'll tell Nelson that there's no way in and they'll leave for some other place. If this Nelson is like Amanda says he is, I doubt he'll do that, but there's always that chance. We need to be ready if he tries to shoot his way in. You two keep watching him. I'm going to go get my bear rifle and my.357 and a couple boxes of ammo for each. When I get back, you two go inside and do the same. I'll tell Amanda she needs plenty of ammo too. We don't know how well these guys'll be armed."

When Rocky came back out of the lodge with Amanda, he was carrying his Marlin lever action 45-70. The gym bag he was carrying looked heavy. I'd shot that rifle a couple times when we were practicing with Cheryl and Mary, and it wasn't for the faint of heart. My 12 gauge Mossberg kicked pretty hard, but shooting Rocky's rifle felt like someone had slammed my shoulder with a hammer. It didn't seem to bother Rocky all that much, and he said it would stop a bear in its tracks.

Amanda had her 20 gauge Remington 870 and another bag that looked even heavier. She gave me a worried grin and asked me if I thought two hundred shells of buckshot would be enough.

Bill and I left them so I could get my Mossberg and shells and so Bill could get more cartridges for his rifle. When we came back outside, each of us was carrying a hundred cartridges. I'd checked on Cheryl and Mary and they looked scared to death, but they'd put Peggy and the kids in one room upstairs and were sitting by the window of the room that faced the lane and our fences and gates. Cheryl and Mary each had one of the AR-15 rifles we'd gotten from the hardware store. They were comfortable shooting them and had some practice at targets out to a hundred yards.

Rocky said the guy had left while we were gone, but he figured he'd be back with the whole gang sometime soon.

"They probably camped somewhere close a day or so ago and have been watching us trying to see how many of us there are. That's what I'd do so I'd have an idea of what I was up against. I don't think any of the women have been outside except for the garden and I don't think they can see the garden from the fence. They might think it's just us three guys. Amanda said there are six of them, so even if he saw the women, he'll probably think he has the upper hand. We need to show him that he doesn't.

"Bill, you and Amanda go down to the truck and stay behind the wheels. Gordy and I'll go down behind the trailer. Don't start shooting until I do, but once it starts, don't stop until they're all dead or they've run off. Amanda, if you see your buckshot hitting the dirt, raise your aim and keep firing until you hit them. Same to you Gordy. "

Rocky looked at us and his face looked like the face on the cop who'd stopped me for speeding back in Chicago. There'd been no doubt in my mind that the cop was serious. There wasn't any doubt that Rocky was serious too because of what he said then.

"I know what you're thinking because I thought the same thing before my first firefight in Iraq. You're thinking it's wrong to kill another person and you don't know if you can or not. Well, what you have to realize is that after what they did to Amanda, Peggy, and Peggy's husband, they won't have any problem killing us and once they do, they'll take Cheryl and Mary and Peggy.

"They'll probably think they're going to have an easy time of this, so you can't hesitate. We need to confuse them with a lot of firepower so they have to stop and think about what they're doing. It's while they're thinking that we need to cut them down."

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It was about an hour later that we heard men laughing as they rode up the lane. After they rounded a bend in the lane, we could see that there were six, just like Amanda had said. Rocky looked through his binoculars and frowned.

"They're all carrying AK's. That's more firepower than I figured on them having."

Rocky looked over at Bill and Amanda and put his finger to his lips, then turned back to me.

"Let's see what they do next."

What they did next was get off their horses and walk up to the gate across the lane. One of them tried the gate, but it wouldn't budge. I saw one of them, the man I assumed to be Nelson, wave at two others. Those two went back to their horses and then came back to one of the big tree trunks from which the gate was mounted.

There was a sharp "ping" as the top strand of barbed wire coiled back toward the next post. That ping was followed by others until all the strands had been cut. The six then got back on their horses and rode through the gap.

They were almost at the second fence and gate when Rocky yelled, "You're not welcome here. Turn your ass around and ride off and don't come back."

It was easy to figure out which one was Nelson then. The man with the brown stetson laughed.

"Your fancy fence and gate didn't stop me, and this one won't either. You think you're gonna stop me, you and the other two? You let us in and give us what we want, or we'll kill you all and take it."

He motioned to two of the others. They did the same thing as with the first fence, but this time, they didn't bother to hide behind the gate. That was a huge mistake.

Amanda later said she recognized the guy who'd raped her, and she didn't wait like Rocky said. She raised up enough to see over the truck and pointed her shotgun at one of the men with the cutters. He went down and stayed down. Amanda racked the slide on her shotgun and shot the second man as he bent down to pull the first behind the gate.

The other four were still on their horses when Nelson started firing at the truck. Rocky's 45-70 slug hit him in the chest and knocked him off his horse at about the same time Bill raised up and fired at the gate. There was an answering shot from one of the men and I heard Bill cry out as he fell back behind the truck. Amanda dropped her shotgun and turned to help Bill.

I read somewhere that you never know how strong you are until being strong is the only option, and I proved that to myself that day. When Bill got shot, it changed my thinking about killing another person. Before, I'd had this thought that maybe Rocky or I could talk the group into peacefully joining us and together making it through until something changed. I was ready to explain what they'd done to Amanda, Peggy, and Peggy's husband as the actions of men driven to the brink of sanity by the situation. With enough time and care, they could be changed into the people they once were. I really wanted to believe that once they were in a safe environment with shelter and food, they'd give up their killing and raping.

After they shot Bill, I realized the six men weren't really humans as I'd always thought of humans. They were human, but they were evil down to the core and nothing was going to change that. It was like Rocky had said - if you see a rabid dog, you don't try to help him. You just put him down.

I knelt beside the truck tire and started shooting my shotgun at the gate as fast as I could pull the trigger, rack the slide, and pull the trigger again. I didn't notice the recoil. All I did was watch for any movement between the boards of the gate, aim at that place, and pull the trigger. More than once I heard a scream from the other side of the gate, so I knew I'd hit at least one enough to cause that. I was also aware of the loud boom of Rocky's rifle and the way the boards of the gate seemed to erupt in splinters when his bullet hit.

I was reloading the shotgun for the third time when one of the men ran for his horse, got on, and started riding for the first gate. I heard the sharp crack of a rifle and looked for the sound. What I saw was Mary, Cheryl, and Peggy in the lodge window sighting down the barrels of their AR-15's. They must have fired fifty rapid shots before the guy on the horse fell off. Once he did, they left the window, and a few seconds later Mary came running from the lodge to where Bill lay.

Rocky nudged me then.

"You stay here and keep that shotgun on the fence. I'm gonna go see how many are still alive. You see any movement through that gate, you shoot. Just don't shoot me once I get close."

He pulled the revolver from his holster, looked quickly around the front tire of the truck, and then ran to the shallow depression beside the lane. He waited for almost a minute and when there was no return fire, he started crawling in that depression toward the gate.

I kept watching, but didn't see any movement. Apparently Rocky didn't either because when he was within a few feet of the gate, he stood up and walked to it. I saw him look over the top of the gate and then climb up the boards and drop down on the other side. A second later, I heard the report of his revolver twice. Then, Rocky climbed back over the gate and ran back to the truck and trailer.

As soon as Rocky started back, I ran to Amanda, Mary, and Bill. Bill was sitting up against one tire of the trailer, Mary was crying, and Amanda was holding a piece she'd torn from her shirt sleeve over his arm. Rocky and I got there at about the same time. Rocky asked Amanda how bad it was and she smiled.

"He's lucky. I've seen goats hurt worse than this running around in a couple days. We need to get him back to the lodge so I can get it cleaned up and have a better look."

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I'd always thought that anytime a person got shot, they needed surgery to put things right. That's what I always read about a shooting in Chicago. The news article always said the victim had been transported to the hospital. I guess some of that was just the journalist trying to make things seem worse, because after Amanda got Bill's wound cleaned up, she said the bullet had just gone through the muscle of his arm.

"He's not bleeding real bad so the bullet didn't hit an artery or a vein, and he can still move his arm so there's probably no damage to the bone. I've had a goat that got horned by another goat and it looked about like this. We can fix it the same way I fixed that goat."

I think it hurt Bill more than getting shot when Amanda started pouring alcohol into the bullet hole. She used half a bottle and then put a thick gauze pad from our medical supplies over the hole on each side of Bill's arm and wrapped his arm with more gauze and tape to hold the pads in place.

Amanda patted Bill on the head then.

"You were a good boy. I gave my goat some sugar for being a good boy. You want some sugar?"

Bill just groaned, "No, but a good stiff drink might help. It hurts like hell."

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It wasn't until dinner that night that I was able to put together the whole story of what happened that day.

Amanda said she recognized one of the men trying to cut the fence and decided it was time to take revenge. Once she'd shot him and another tried to pull the guy back behind the gate, she recognized him too and shot him.

Bill had raised up because he saw movement between the boards of the gate and couldn't see to aim from where he was. According to Rocky, Bill had shot that guy, but another had seen Bill and took a shot at him.

According to Rocky, either he or I had hit three. He said it was hard to tell which because they all had bullet holes from his rifle and holes from my buckshot. Two were still alive when he got there, but had been hit so bad they wouldn't recover, or so he said. I wasn't so sure of that, but I wasn't about to argue with him. The two shots I'd heard were him ending their suffering.

Rocky said the last man had been hit at least ten times by bullets from either Cheryl or Mary or Peggy. He grinned and said they'd done good, but he'd told them to stay with the kids. It was Peggy who explained what happened.

"When we heard the shots, I ran out of the bedroom and told Cheryl and Mary that we couldn't let you four do it all by yourselves. If you didn't get them all, they'd have come to the lodge and ...

"Well, we decided we weren't going to let that happen. We saw them shoot Bill, so we opened the window but we couldn't see any of them until that guy got on his horse and started riding off. If he got away, he'd just come back and he might bring more men with him, so we kept shooting until he fell off his horse."

Rocky asked Peggy why she'd leave the kids alone to do that, and Peggy smiled.

"We didn't leave them alone. Beth took care of Gordy and Oren took care of them both. He knows how to shoot a rifle and I gave him one of the.22's and told him if anybody but us came in the room to shoot them."

Rocky chuckled and rubbed Oren's head.

"Well, pardner, I guess we did need you after all. Thanks for helping out."

Rocky looked at Bill then.

"Bill, I know you're hurting, but we need to do something with those six dead men. You got enough diesel in that backhoe so we can dig a hole? If we don't get them in the ground, we'll have bears on our doorstep by morning."

Bill said he'd filled the tank after we'd set the last posts and the tank on the trailer was still half full, but he didn't think he could run the backhoe because of his arm.

Rocky chuckled.

"I didn't figure you'd do the diggin'. I figured I'd do it. I watched you a few times and I think I got it figured out. Might need you to tell me a couple things if you feel up to it."

That afternoon, we put all six bodies in the farm wagon and Jim and Duke pulled it out to where we'd butchered the beef.

Rocky wasn't as fast as Bill, but between Bill directing and Rocky pulling the levers, they got a hole dug big enough to hold all six. Rocky used the bucket on the backhoe to fill in the hole and then drove over it several times to pack the dirt down.

When we finished, we got all the weapons and equipment they'd been carrying. All their horses had run away once the shooting started, so we couldn't add those to our herd, but Rocky said a few might come back because of the horses we already had. If they did, we'd catch them.

Chapter 14

We all felt safer once the Nelson problem was taken care of, but we were still wary about any other people who might be in the area. To that end, we patched the fence but left the boards with bullet holes on the gate. We figured that might be a hint to anybody that wanted in that they should reconsider.

We were also behind in planting our field crops. We needed corn and oats for the horses, and wheat for bread for us. Once we had buried Nelson and his gang, we started plowing the fields. Since Bill still couldn't do much, I went along with Rocky to help.

The whole plowing, disking, and planting process was fascinating. I'd read about it and I'd seen videos of horses working in a field, but being there was a lot different.

Rocky hitched Jim and Duke to the one-bottom riding plow and drove them to the first field, the field that would be planted in corn. He said he'd always plowed with three horses because three could pull longer without having to rest. With just Jim and Duke, he'd have to go slower and rest them more often, but we should be able to plow up the ten acres in about four days. Then we'd plow up the field where we would plant oats.

I could walk almost as fast as Jim and Duke pulled the plow, and after Rocky had plowed up one side and then down the other, he asked if I'd like to try driving Jim and Duke.

"You don't have to do much. They've pulled a plow enough times then know what they're supposed to do. All you have to do is drop the plow at the start and then raise it up at the end."

Well, I don't know how to describe the feeling of knowing I had that much power on my hands, and also knowing that the only way I had to control that power was the leather reins in my hands. After a few minutes when I was expecting Jim and Duke to start across the field in a mad dash for freedom, I settled down and watched the plow cut into the soil and turn it over.

It was relaxing after a few more minutes, and by the time we got to the end of the field, I was wondering at why any farmer would have traded his horses for a tractor. It sounds romantic, I know, but that day, it was just me, Jim and Duke, and Nature working the soil to raise food for our family without all the noise a tractor would have generated.

Over the rest of the month of June, we plowed, disked, and planted our corn and oats from what was left in the grain bins in the barn. The wheat, we'd plant before winter and harvest the following summer, but we had enough left in the bin to plant if we didn't go overboard on bread.

Under Amanda's watchful eye, Bill mostly healed in the space of a month. His arm was still sore, but he helped Cheryl, Mary, and Amanda in the garden. He seemed happy, though he kept saying he wished we had a way to keep beef over the summer. I think Mary was thankful because by eating mostly fish and vegetables, Bill had lost some more weight.

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It was about a month after the attack that I noticed Peggy didn't work much in the garden though she had the most knowledge about what needed to be done. Instead, she started spending a lot of time with Rocky while he took care of the horses and cattle. Oren was always with Rocky anyway, so at first, I figured Peggy was going with us to watch out for Oren.

As the days passed though, it became obvious that Peggy was a lot more interested in Rocky than she was in watching Oren. She started joking with Rocky, something she'd never done with any of us before. When that happened, I thought maybe Peggy respected Rocky because he'd sort of become our leader. Neither Bill nor I minded him taking that role. It was just the simple matter of Rocky knowing how to do things we didn't. Now, he was all smiles any time Peggy was around, and seemed to go out of his way to help her do something.

Bill noticed it too. One evening when we were sitting on the porch, he asked if I'd noticed anything different about Rocky. I said I had and related what I'd seen. Bill chuckled then.

"I think we're going to have a change of sleeping arrangements pretty soon. Peggy told Mary that Oren and Beth are getting old enough they need their own bedrooms. Now, I can see why Peggy might want a separate bedroom for Oren, but not for Beth, not for a few years yet. I think she has somebody else in mind to share her bedroom, and I think Rocky is in agreement."

Apparently Mary had told Cheryl about that conversation. That night Cheryl asked what we'd do when Oren got old enough to want a wife.

"If he found a partner how would they get married? I mean, I'd want them to be married before they started sleeping together, wouldn't you?"

I shrugged.

"Well, there have been marriage ceremonies for eons, I suppose, but preachers and formal marriage vows are relatively new, and they vary for different cultures. In some Native American cultures, all that's required is for the couple to spend one night together and they're considered to be married. From about the 1500's until the mid 1800's, the custom was to announce the intentions of the couple in church on three separate Sundays. It was called "saying the banns". That was so the community could oppose the marriage on legal or moral grounds, like if the couple were closely related.

"None of us are particularly religious, so I would think some sort of agreement between the couple would suffice. I think we have a while to figure it out, though. Oren's only eight."

Cheryl let the subject drop then, but it was about a week later when Rocky said he really liked having Oren with him.

"Never had any kids of my own and I'm getting' to old to start now, but havin' that little guy followin' me around is pretty neat. Too bad he doesn't have a dad to show him how to do stuff."

I thought I knew where Rocky was going with this train of thought.

"Well, Rocky, I think he's kind of adopted you as his dad. That's how it looks anyway. He's with you from the time he gets up until he goes to bed."

Rocky shook his head.

"Yeah, but it isn't the same as if I was his dad. Wish it was, but it isn't."

"Well, from what Bill tells me and from what I've seen, I think you could make it almost the same. All you'd have to do is marry Peggy. I don't think she'd tell you no because she's with you as much as Oren is. I don't think she'd do that unless she felt something for you."

"But how would we do that? There's no preachers around anywhere. The only one I know of lived in Sleepy Creek, and he's dead."

I smiled.

"We're pretty much on our own out here and that means we can make up our own rules. If you and Peggy decided this is what you want, I'm sure we can come up with a way to get you married."

Chapter 15

By July, we were pretty satisfied that there were no other people at least in our area. Rocky and I had ridden out in an attempt to find Nelson's camp and didn't see any signs of any other people. We did find the camp, but Nelson's group didn't have much of any use, just an axe and three metal canisters of cartridges for the AK-47's they'd used at the ranch. We brought those back to the lodge and added them to our armory.

We spent the summer taking care of the garden and the fields. Bill and I hand weeded the corn and the oats. Cheryl, Mary, and Amanda took care of the garden. We had some really good meals once they could pick fresh green beans and tomatoes.

Neither Rocky nor Peggy said anything about getting together officially, for all that meant in our current situation, but Peggy was with Rocky every day helping him take care of the cattle. She even helped him castrate the bull calves we wouldn't need for breeding bulls. My opinion of Peggy grew with every day. I could only imagine what she'd gone through - her husband killed in front of her, her repeated abuse by Nelson and his gang, and knowing her children had been left all alone. She'd come through all that and seemed ready to get on with life now.

Over the months since we rescued her children, Peggy had changed from a meek little woman into a woman who wasn't backward about tackling any job. Once Rocky had taught her, Peggy was as comfortable sitting on a horse and helping Rocky drive the calves into a pen as she was sitting on a couch and reading a story with Oren on one side and Beth on the other.

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It was August when Amanda said we should think about going to her ranch and bringing at least a few of her goats back.

"Nelson and his bunch are dead and we haven't seen anybody else since then. My ranch is only about fifteen miles from Sleepy Creek. Could we at least ride there and see if there's anything left? If I have some goats left it won't be hard to drive them back."

Rocky said he'd go if Amanda went along to show him the way. As soon as he said that, Peggy said she'd go too if Mary would watch over Oren and Beth. Oren wasn't having any of that. He said he'd to too in case Rocky need some help again.

They left the next morning at daylight. Rocky had his bear rifle in the scabbard on his saddle and his.357 in his holster. Amanda had her shotgun in hers and Peggy had her AR-15 on a sling over her shoulder. They all looked a little fearful. They had no idea what they might run across. Only Oren looked happy. He had a.22 rifle in his saddle scabbard. I knew that Rocky had loaded the magazine, but not the chamber so I wasn't too worried.

Rocky said they'd be at Amanda's ranch by noon, would spend a couple hours there if they needed to, and then start back. He figured they'd be back by five or six. The rest of us went back to doing what we usually did during the day.

Bill and I made another pass through the corn for any weeds we'd missed before. Mary took Beth to see Jim and Duke and then to see the calves that had been born that spring. Cheryl took Gordy Junior outside on a blanket on the grass.

After lunch, Bill and I went to the oat field, and Cheryl and Mary put Beth and Gordy Junior down for a nap. Then they started fixing dinner. They didn't have to start that early, but I think like we all were, they were anxious for the rest of our group to come back and needed something to do.

Six came and went, and Mary said we might as well eat dinner. By seven, they still hadn't returned and Cheryl and Mary put the leftovers in the oven to stay warm.

It was almost dark when I heard a strange sound, sort of a "maa-maa" sound. Bill heard it too and we walked to the door, picked up our guns and stepped outside. There were a bunch of goats being driven into the horse pasture by five riders.

I recognized Rocky, Peggy, Amanda, and Oren. There was also a man on a horse beside Amanda and the man was leading a brown cow and a calf. Amanda, Peggy, and Oren all had some sort of bag tied behind their saddles.

I was pretty sure that after almost a year the disease had run it's course and we weren't in any danger of being infected, but Amanda had violated one of our rules. I'd have to talk to her about that. Right then though, I was just happy to see them all back safe.

By the time Bill and I walked across the drive to the fence, Rocky had put the goats and cow and calf in one of the horse pens and closed the gate. Amanda and the others were taking chickens out of the bags and putting them in one of the stalls in the barn.

Rocky walked up with a grin.

"Never worked goats before, but the horses didn't seem to know the difference. Just took us a while 'cause goats don't walk as fast as cows. Took forever to catch all them chickens too."

I asked Rocky who the man was and how they'd found him. He just chuckled.

"You'll have to ask Amanda about that. It was her idea. Right now, we need to get these horses put to bed for the night. Got any food left? I'm starved."

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As they ate their late dinner, we met Willard Jansen, the man with Amanda, and heard the story of their trip.

They'd ridden to Sleepy Creek and then on to Amanda's ranch and hadn't seen anybody else. When they got to Amanda's ranch they saw smoke coming from the chimney and knew that meant somebody was there.

Rocky told Amanda and Peggy to stay with the horses while he went to find out what was going on, but Amanda said the house was hers and she was going too. They left Peggy and Oren to hold the horses and walked up to the house, Rocky with his revolver drawn and Amanda with her shotgun ready.

Rocky had tried the door and it wasn't locked, so he slammed it open, looked around the door frame, and saw a man asleep on the couch with a lever action rifle on the floor beside the couch. He yelled for the man to lay still and then walked up to the couch and pulled the rifle out of the man's reach.

Amanda had followed Rocky through the door, and when she saw the man she yelled, "Willard. What in God's name are you doing here?"

The man sat up, looked at Amanda, and frowned.

"I got me some rocky mountain maples and some box elder trees 'bout two miles from my house and I always tap 'em for the sap in the spring. I was up there in my little cabin makin' maple syrup all through half of May and most of June. Lucy stayed at the house to take care of the chickens and the milk cow.

"When I come back down with my syrup, I couldn't find Lucy at first. What I did find was somebody'd gone through our place and took all the food and most everything else that they figured they could use.

"I figured they took Lucy too, but I didn't know what for. I found out when I found her out by the chicken house. It was bad... they'd..."

He started to choke on his words, and Amanda put her arm around his shoulders.

"Willard, you don't have to say any more. That was probably Nelson and he did the same thing to me and Peggy. He'd have killed us if we hadn't run away."

Willard wiped his eyes and then continued.

"Well, after I buried Lucy, there weren't no use in staying there. They'd killed or run off all my chickens and took all the food we had. Shot up my truck enough it wouldn't run too. I thought maybe you'd still have something so I rode Rowdy over here.

"Just before I left, Jewel, my milk cow come walking out of the trees with her calf beside her. She always has her calves out in the trees, so I guess them men didn't see her. I brought her and her calf along with me.

"When I got here, it looked like they'd done the same to you. You still had some chickens runnin' around, I suppose 'cause you let 'em run free, but I didn't kill any of 'em. I just ate the eggs they laid. Not sure if I ever want to eat another egg.

"I know you had a milk cow, but I couldn't find her. I suppose them bastards got her too. I did kill a some goats to have something to eat until I could get a couple deer last winter, and I'll be paying you for them as soon as I can get some money."

Amanda stroked his cheek.

"Willard, If you'll help us round up the goats that are left and all the chickens we can find, that's payment enough. You come back with us too. We could use another man."

As soon as they'd rounded up all the goats and chickens and Willard had tied a rope around the milk cow's horns, they started back. They hadn't seen anybody in Sleepy Creek or on the way.

"Looks like we're here all by ourselves", said Rocky. "Don't know if that's good or bad, but at least for now, it's probably a good thing.

Chapter 16

As a historian, I'm at ease writing about the past - the history of people long gone, how they lived, and how they died. This tome that I've been writing is the history of eleven people who by some stroke of fate found themselves isolated from a world when that world was collapsed by one tiny little particle of protein.

I say it's eleven people, but it will be twelve in about another six months. Mary was pretty taken by Gordy Junior, and decided if the human race was going to survive, she'd have to start a family as well. Bill is just like I was - happy he's going to be a father and worried about Marry.

It's entirely possible our little colony will grow even further. Cheryl is talking like she wants a little girl and maybe another little boy. Since they're very much alike, I'm sure Mary will want the same thing. I never really thought about it before, but throughout history, the primary role of women has been to make a home and bear children. I'm sure the feminists wouldn't agree, but I don't think there are any left anyway. It will be the women like Cheryl, Mary, and Peggy who keep the human race going.

Peggy was talking to Mary one day and said that Gordy Junior would need a partner one of these days. She thought maybe Beth could be that partner, but wondered what Oren would do.

Mary said she didn't know, but if she or Cheryl had a daughter there would be quite an age difference, but maybe they could be partners. Then Peggy said she wasn't too old to have more kids.

It wasn't long after that, that we sat down around one of the tables in the dining area and drafted another rule.

Article 3 - Should any member of our group decide to marry another of our group, the marriage will be certified by each of the partners pledging their troth in front of the group. Once they have done that, they will be considered by the group to be man and wife.

A week later at dinner, Rocky and Peggy stood up and held hands. Rocky promised to provide for Peggy, Oren, and Beth and to protect them from any and all dangers. Beth promised to care for Rocky and to make a home for them.

At Cheryl's suggestion, it was agreed that the owner's suite and former delivery room would also serve as our "honeymoon suite". Rocky and Peggy spent their first night there. Mary took Beth and Amanda took Oren to their beds for that night. The next day, Rocky and Peggy moved into one of the rooms with bunk beds for Oren and Beth.

It was a month later that Willard and Amanda pledged the same vows. I gather their night in our honeymoon suite was satisfying for both. I know the attention they'd been showing each other since Willard joined us seemed to increase a lot.

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We have been back to Sleepy Creek a few times. Willard had some experience as a plumber, and between him and Rocky, they figured out a way to plumb the pumps on the propane tanker and the fuel tanker to be able to pump propane, gasoline, and diesel from the tanks at those suppliers into the delivery trucks. We think between our full tanks and what's left at those shops, we have enough propane to last several years and enough diesel to use the generator a couple hours a night and to run the backhoe to improve our defenses. We probably won't be driving the SUV anymore other than to take the trash out to the small landfill we started once the dumpster was full. What gasoline we use will just go into the chainsaws when we need them.

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Well, I've about filled this spiral notebook with my history and it's time to shut off the generator anyway. Tomorrow, I'll start a new notebook and begin recording how and what we're doing.

What has happened seems strange to me. There have been civilizations that collapsed since time began, but they never collapsed so completely and in such a short amount of time. The collapse was also limited to a certain area and not the entire planet. I guess there are probably primitive tribes in the Amazon or in Indonesia who don't realize anything has happened, but from what we know from the ham operators before they stopped transmitting, it's world-wide. We keep hoping to hear from others who survived, but so far, Bill's radio has been silent.

Willard was a man who had isolated himself from the rest of society long enough to escape being infected. I'm sure there have to be others out there. Maybe they're afraid to identify themselves. Maybe they don't have a way to communicate with anyone. I don't know, but I'm confident they're out there. We just have to find them. Since Montana was a favorite place for the so-called "preppers", maybe they're closer than we think.

We have no plans to go looking for them. Cheryl, Mary, Amanda, Peggy, Rocky, Bill, Willard, and I are too old to go roaming around the countryside looking for anyone. If anyone of us does go searching, it will be Oren or Beth or Gordy Junior or one of our other kids. It will be hard to let them go, but our little community won't survive for long without some new blood, and surviving is the most important thing we can do for ourselves and for humanity.