Maybe Little Ghost had been right.
She turned left, toward the western exit. It was a long run across the top of the escarpment, several hundred yards during which she was exposed to the full bite of the storm. But she kept the wheel straight and opened the driver’s door so she could see the ruts other cars had made. The wind died when she arrived finally among a screen of elms and box elders.
She passed an abandoned Toyota and started down.
Snow piles up quickly in a sheltered section, and one has to maintain speed to avoid getting stuck. It obliterates markers and roadsides and hides ditches. To make matters worse, this was the second road, just opened by police, and April wasn’t used to it.
She struggled to keep moving. She slid down sharp descents and fought her way around curves. She gunned the engine through deep snow, but finally lost control and slid sidewise into a snowbank. She tried to back out, but the car only rocked and sank deeper.
Damn.
She buttoned her coat, opened the door cautiously against the wind, and put one foot out. She sank to her knee. Some of the snow slid down inside her boot.
An hour and a quarter later, scared and half frozen, she showed up at the security station. “Thank God for the fence,” she told her startled hosts, “or I’d never have found you.”
Andrea Hawk was a talk show host on KPLI-FM in Devil’s Lake. She’d worked her way through a series of reservation jobs, usually exploiting her considerable Indian-maiden charm to sell baskets, moccasins, and canoe paddles to well-heeled tourists. She’d done a year with the reservation police before discovering her onair talents, which had begun with a series of public-service pleas to kids about drugs and crime. She was still selling automobiles, deodorants, CDs, and a host of other products to her dewy-eyed audience. Along the shores of Devil’s Lake, everybody loved the Snowhawk.
She was twenty-six years old and hoping for a chance to move up. Two years ago a Minneapolis producer had been in the area, heard her show, and made overtures. She’d gone to the Twin Cities thinking she had a job, but the producer drove his car into a tractor-trailer, and his replacement, a vindictive middle-aged woman with the eyes of a cobra, did not honor the agreement.
Andrea was planning to do several of her shows on the scene from Johnson’s Ridge. It was clear to her that she was sitting on a big story, and she planned to make the most of it. She’d got Adam’s permission, worked out her schedule so that it would not conflict with her air time, and stocked the security module with equipment.
It was cold inside, despite the electric heater. The modular buildings were well insulated, but they weren’t designed to withstand winter conditions atop a North Dakota escarpment. The wind blew right through the building. Andrea sank down inside her heavy woolen sweater, wishing for a fireplace.
She wondered whether she’d be able to keep her teeth from rattling when she went on at nine o’clock via her remote hookup. As was her habit, she had begun making notes on subjects she wanted to talk about during the broadcast, and she was reviewing these when April stumbled in.
Little Ghost caught her and lowered her into a chair. “Hello,” she said with an embarrassed smile. And then she recognized her old friend. “Andrea,” she said, “is that really you?”
“Hi,” said the Snowhawk.
When April woke, the windows were dark, and the air was filled with the sweet aroma of potatoes and roast beef. A bank of monitors flickered in a corner of the room. “How are you feeling?” asked Andrea.
“Okay.” April pushed the toes of one foot against the other ankle. Someone had put heavy socks on her feet. “What are you doing here?” She vaguely remembered having asked the question before but couldn’t recall the answer.
Andrea pulled her chair forward so April could see her without having to sit up. “Security,” she said. “It pays well.”
“Why didn’t you come see me?”
“I would have, eventually. I wasn’t sure it was appropriate.” She felt April’s forehead. “I think you’re okay,” she said. “What were you doing out there?”
“Waited too long to leave.”
Andrea nodded. “How about something to eat? We only have TV dinners, but they’re decent.”
April decided on meatloaf, and Andrea put one in the microwave. “Max called,” she said. “We told him you were here.”
There was a coziness in the hut that warmed April. Little Ghost didn’t talk much, but he was a good listener, which is a faculty guaranteed to make people popular. He stayed close to the monitors, although they showed little more than dancing blobs of light and curving shadows. They talked, and April saw that Andrea was fascinated by the Roundhouse.
“I’m going to do the show on it,” she explained.
April smiled. “The Snowhawk at the cutting edge.”
“That’s right, babe. I was wondering whether you’d be interested in going on tonight. Want to be a guest?”
April considered it. She owed the woman, but she didn’t want to face phone calls. “I think I’d better pass,” she said.
But she was interested enough to stay and watch.
The Snowhawk’s show ran from nine until midnight. If the subject for the evening was the excavation, it didn’t stop people from calling in to comment on the new property tax initiative, the schools, the tendency of the county to run up postage costs unnecessarily, or other nongermane topics. The Snowhawk (funny how Andrea seemed to change personalities and become more dominant, even confrontational, in front of her microphone) dealt with these callers summarily, slicing them in midsentence. “Eddie,” she might say, “I’m on Johnson’s Ridge, freezing my little butt off, and you are out of here. Please try to stay on the rails, folks. We’re talking about the Roundhouse tonight.”
On the whole, however, April was impressed by the level of dialogue. She wasn’t sure what she had expected. The Snowhawk’s callers were reasonably rational. They were excited by the mystery surrounding the find, but by a ratio of about four to one resisted far-out resolutions in favor of the more mundane. It’ll turn out to be a mistake, they said, one after another. April was reminded of Max.
Toward the end of the show the storm began to weaken. April could make out the dome of the Roundhouse rising over the blowing snow.
It seemed to be glowing.
She turned away and looked back.
It was a trick of the security lights. Had to be. But they were dull and indistinct in the general turmoil of the storm.
Furthermore, the snow looked green.
It was hard to see clearly from the illuminated interior of the security station. She pulled on her boots and took down her jacket. Little Ghost glanced at her. “I’ll be back,” she whispered, and walked out the front door.
April caught her breath. A soft emerald halo had settled over the Roundhouse.
The Snowhawk saw that something was happening, but she was talking with Joe Greenberg in Fort Moxie and did not have a portable mike. She frowned at John Little Ghost and nodded at the door by which April had just left.
“It’s lit up,” Little Ghost said.
“What is?”
“The Roundhouse.” This exchange, of course, went out live. No damage yet. That came a moment later: “Son of a bitch, I hope it’s not radioactive.”
14
Fear has many eyes.
Walhalla, Cavalier, and Fort Moxie, like prairie towns across the Dakotas, are social units of a type probably limited to climatically harsh regions. They are composed of people who have united in the face of extreme isolation, who understand that going abroad in winter without checking the weather report can be fatal, who have acquired a common pride in their ability to hold crime and drugs at arm’s length. From Fort Moxie, the nearest mall is eighty miles away, and the nearest pharmacy is in Canada. The closest movie theater is within a half-hour, but it’s open only on weekends, and not even then during the hunting season. Consequently these communities have developed many of the characteristics of extended families.