Finally, just short of Wayan, Tre turned onto a dirt track that led south. Five minutes later he left the path for a copse of trees. Tre was pretty confident that he hadn’t been followed but forced himself to check anyway.
After watching the area for fifteen minutes, he left the hiding spot and returned to the path. It led through an old homestead, past an empty-eyed house, and onto a trail so faint it was difficult to tell that it had once been a driveway. Then he veered off the trail in order to climb a lightly treed slope. A couple of scrawny pines and a clutch of boulders marked the point where he could look down on his home.
He ‘d come across the property not long after his mother’s death and decided to camp there. It had been a horse farm once, with a house, barn, and corral, but at some point the house caught fire and burned to the ground. Then, over the intervening years, blackberry vines grew up around the ruins to create a thick tangle.
If it hadn’t been for the comings and goings of a feral cat, Tre would never have thought to look farther. But the animal clearly had a home inside the briar patch, which raised the possibility that there were hidden nooks and crannies within the ruins, places that might be home to items he could use or trade.
After battling his way into the center of the stickers, and suffering a dozen scratches in the process, Tre found charred wood, a concrete foundation, and a set of rubble-strewn stairs that led down into a generously proportioned basement. Tre saw the possibilities right away and went to work perfecting his new home that very afternoon.
Now, as he scanned the site with the Nikon binoculars, Tre was searching for any sign that his sanctuary had been compromised—a tendril of smoke, boot prints on a patch of snow, or a newly cut path through the stickers, any of which could spell trouble. But no, as far as Tre could tell, everything was exactly as he had left it.
The next step was to circle wide, retrieve the rubber boots hidden upstream from the Tangle, and walk down the creek, a strategy calculated to avoid footprints and the possibility of a new trail—the sort of wear pattern that could lead bandits straight to his hidey-hole.
Calf-deep water splashed away from his boots as Tre made his way downstream and entered a shallow pool. There had been some vegetation on the north bank but Tre had planted more to camouflage the main entrance, which consisted of a sturdy door that could be barred from within. Beyond that was a carefully engineered tunnel reinforced with lumber scavenged from the remains of the tumbledown barn. It slanted up to a hole in the concrete floor. After closing the door behind him, Tre shoved the pack uphill into the room above.
It was pitch-black inside, so Tre lit a match and went around the room lighting candles. They were the cheapest, most dependable source of light he had. He had lanterns too, but they required fuel that was not only expensive, but heavy. A solar panel was hidden up in the tangle above, but it was difficult for sunlight to reach it, and when it did, only a fraction of what went in could be retrieved from the system’s ancient battery.
Once all the candles were aglow, the room was suffused with a soft flickering glow and the shadows were forced back to reveal Tre’s one-room world. There was storage in the back, a bed against one wall, and a working commode opposite that. The toilet had been there from the beginning and emptied into an underground septic tank.
A small Jøtul wood-burning stove was located in one corner of the space, with a reading nook on one side and the kitchen counter on the other. It featured a sink that Tre could fill with water pumped up from the creek. That drained into a five-gallon bucket that supplied the water he used to flush the toilet.
Tre heard a noise followed by a strident meow as a sleek-looking cat slipped into the room via a two-by-four ramp constructed for his convenience. He was black with white markings, and very independent. “Hey, Ninja,” Tre said. “Did you miss me? No, of course you didn’t. I brought you a present, though… It’s from a man named Bob.”
Ninja was the one who had unintentionally revealed the basement to Tre and, though entirely self-sufficient, continued to sleep there and kept the space free of pests. His big yellow eyes watched Tre as he opened the pack and produced a can of condensed milk. Once the treat had been poured into a bowl, Ninja went over to check it out. Three seconds later he was lapping away. Tre smiled. It was good to be home.
After a leisurely evening and an uninterrupted night of sleep, Tre arose ready to do what he enjoyed almost as much as reading, and that was building things, especially useful things, like the small hydro-generator described on page 63 of the book 101 Science Projects. If Tre could build one and install the turbine in the creek, he could power some electric lights, and that would replace the need to use candles, lanterns, and the iffy solar power system.
So Tre took the book back to his neatly organized storage area and began to run through the parts list. He was going to need some cardboard to cut templates from, copper wire for coils, eight spoons, which would serve as turbine blades, something to make a rotor out of, a plastic tank similar to the old weed sprayer he had, and four strong magnets. And that was where he came up short. Tre had some kitchen cabinet magnets but knew they wouldn’t be strong enough for the job. What to do?
The question continued to dog Tre after he put the book aside. He had a strong desire to go out and find the magnets, but every trip entailed risk, and the more trips he made, the more likely it was that something would go wrong.
Tre thought about it as he did his chores, dreamed about it that night, and awoke with the decision made. He would make the two-day trip to Afton. That was the town most likely to have what he needed—then he’d come straight back. The trip would take four days in all. To speed him on his way and reduce the chances of being robbed, he would wear his most ragged clothing and carry a minimum of gear.
After a quick breakfast and some careful preparations, Tre said good-bye to Ninja and left. Now it was time to walk upstream, hide the rubber boots, and circle around to a second viewpoint, where he spent ten minutes scanning the surrounding area before heading for the highway. He was dressed in an old parka over a hoodie and raggedy jeans, the knapsack was half the size of the pack he’d carried on the trip to Jackson, and his weapons consisted of the Bowie knife he had taken off the dead bandit and a six-foot-long metal tube. It was decorated with three leather sleeves, string windings, and touches of paint.
It was cold, the snow was crunchy, and Tre had the highway to himself as he walked east. He saw people as the day wore on, but not very many, and none of them showed any interest in the scarecrow with the tiny pack and the metal pole.
Rather than camp outside Freedom as he had before, Tre elected to turn south toward Afton. The night was spent in the mummy bag curled up in the trunk of a rusty Cadillac. Breakfast consisted of oatmeal cooked over a can of Sterno. Then it was off to Afton.
There was little to no traffic on Highway 89 at first, but by midmorning Tre was part of a parade that consisted of hikers, people on horseback, and donkey-drawn carts. About half were going south as he was, and the others were headed north, having already been to Afton.
Tre didn’t like having people all around him, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Besides, he told himself, there’s safety in numbers. There were no guarantees, but bandits were less likely to attack him in such a situation, since they had no way to know how the other travelers would respond. They might decide to mind their own business or they might open fire on the thieves. Very few bandits wanted to take that chance.