Bobcat tried swallowing without spittle. “Liz, where are you?”
“I’m in Canada. I was hurt badly. But I’m feeling strong now. I want to come east.”
“Oh, you do. Well, um, I….” Bobcat’s sentence fell apart. He couldn’t frame his thought, so his voice sputtered to a halt.
“Robert, what’s going on?”
The chill of water ice clamped down on Bobcat’s shoulders. He shuttered. “Liz, it’s your daughter, Pelee.”
“Yes, she’s there? Let me speak to her.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“She’s not here, Liz. Pelee was badly injured. A week ago.”
“Injured?” Liz’s bones locked rigid. “Is she all right?”
“No! No, Liz, she’s not all right.”
“What’s the matter with her?” squealed Liz.
“She was wounded, a gunshot, Liz. She was hit. She bled much too much. She’s gone.”
Sinopa had hustled Liz to the town offices to use a telephone. A Siksika clansman brought emergency equipment including a satellite phone to the Stand-off Creek community offices at Sinopa’s insistence. The Blackfoot doctor stood by as Liz tried to get a connection.
The phone slipped from Liz’s hand and clattered to the floor.
“What are you doing?” snapped Sinopa, grabbing in vain for the falling instrument. When she looked back at Liz, she witnessed the woman’s skin tone wash out to the color of skim milk.
Chapter One Hundred-Five
A fitful night in the headhouse behind him, Harland awoke in a fetid mood. The initial shudder of panic that he’d felt when the tear gas shell exploded the day before had left behind a thick residue of resolve. The gall of the Guard personnel below, fumed the farmer. Agents of the federal government sought to cripple a productive U.S. citizen and an Army veteran trying to protect the edible bounty that he himself had willed from the ground. How dare they!
Harland jogged down to the far end of the headhouse again and took up a position in the morning shadows to one side of the window. He surveyed the activity at the train.
Behind the lead rail cars, Jim Bottomly paced back and forth, agonizing over what Harland and Percy might do from their sniper’s perch. The National Guard unit commander approached. Hampstead collared Jim, led him into the second car of the train and seated the coop manager in a tiny partitioned area. The officer introduced another individual standing in the room, a man dressed in a blue jump jacket with the letters FEMA stitched into the breast. Jim nodded to the Federal Emergency Management Administration employee. Hampstead took a seat directly across from Bottomly.
“If you don’t mind, I would like to address you by your proper name,” said the officer in a polite tone.
“I’m Jim Bottomly. I manage the coop here.”
“Very well, Mr. Bottomly, Jim, you obviously have a hand in this.”
The coop manager admitted nothing.
“Someone is at the top of the elevator. Do you know how many?”
“Two. I don’t think there is anybody else left.”
“What is their purpose?”
“Well,” Jim sighed, “they’re not willing to let the grain go.”
“Are they well armed?”
Bottomly looked the officer squarely in the eye. “And if they are?”
Hampstead scratched the short stubble on the top of his head. “Jim, my orders are to get the grain out under any circumstances. I told you, other Guard units have encountered resistance elsewhere. In every case, Jim, the Guard has prevailed.”
“What do you want me to do?” Jim asked.
“You can get up there, right?”
“Of course.”
“Then I want you to tell them to come out with you immediately, no questions asked. We don’t want to hurt anyone. If they don’t come out, though, we will use force.”
“What are you going to do to those poor bastards? That’s their grain, sir.”
“Not anymore,” grumbled the man in the FEMA jacket.
Captain Hampstead folded his hands. “If they don’t come out, we’ll put a shell in the works up there.”
“You can’t do that,” Jim screeched.
The officer sat tightlipped.
“You set off a charge up there and we’re going to lose those towers. They’re half full. There’s grain dust everywhere. Look, you’ve got….”
“Never mind,” the officer snapped. “Do you know those men well?”
“Very well.”
“Are they your neighbors?”
“Yes.”
“Then do them a favor and talk to them. Bring them down. Tell them they are going to be evacuated with the rest of the townspeople anyway in a week or two—alive. Tell them that. There will be no charges filed against them if they come peacefully. They’ve got twenty-four hours. Once we mend that rail, they had better be down and gone.”
Bottomly’s heart sank. He buried his head in his hands.
“Can you do that?” asked the FEMA agent.
“I can, yes!”
The coop manager walked into the cavernous expanse of the towers and got aboard the man-lift. He threw the breaker and up he went. In several seconds the lift stopped. Bottomly shouted up the shaft and told the boys above to engage the breaker on the headhouse floor so he could reach the top.
Percy Bliss pulled Bottomly off the lift and Harland came over to round out the trio.
“What do you have, Jim?”
Jim ground his teeth together. “Boys, it’s time you came down.”
“Not going to happen,” said Harland.
“I talked to the field officer down there. He says if you don’t come out within twenty-four hours, things are going to get hot up here.”
“Okay, Jim, tell whoever he is down there that we’ve got a job to do up here. Our job is to keep the grain here in Sweetly. That’s what I’m going to do. Percy and these folks can leave if they want.”
“I’m staying put,” insisted Bliss. The couple backed away toward the lift.
“All right then, Percy and I are staying. But I want you to throw a monkey wrench in the works when you go down. You tell the guy in charge that our flanks are protected. If the Guard fires on us, then there are men in strategic locations around the perimeter of the coop that will fire on the Guard.”
Jim Bottomly’s eyes swelled to saucer size. “What? I didn’t know that.”
“Just tell him that for me, Jim. Make him understand that.”
“Jesus, double Jesus! Okay, okay. But I’m going to tell him I had no idea.”
“Fine, just tell him.”
The coop manager’s blood pressure spiked. He felt faint.
“And another thing, Jim,” said Harland. “Is that a fighting force down there or is it just a bunch of fellas moving ash around?”
Jim pondered the question. “I don’t know, Harland. I didn’t see a thing that looked like real firepower.”
The coop manager turned and stepped back on the lift. Before flipping the breaker he called out to Harland. “You’ve got twenty-four hours. That’s what they told me. They’ve got to get a new rail in here anyway. They’ve got to pull one up from a siding somewhere and bring it up here. So it will be a while before they do anything, I guess.”
At that Jim disappeared down the shaft. The couple followed, leaving Percy and Harland to their fate.
Percy watched them vanish below before turning to Harland. “Now, where did you come up with that, Harland?”
“Look at it this way, Percy,” the tall weathered Swede frowned, “if the troops down there think we’re the only thing between them and the grain, then all their focus will be on us. Now, if they think that they’re being flanked by hostile folks, they are going to think twice about making a move.”