Gamblers at Reno, Liz was fond of telling acquaintances, liked to drive up to the rim country around Lake Tahoe to marvel at its majestic symmetry and delight in its brilliant blue waters, filling a basin once ringed with sentinel peaks of fire. Sometime in the future, Yellowstone would clothe itself in forests again, the trees standing before a huge, frigid lake that would dwarf Lake Tahoe. And like Tahoe, Yellowstone’s future lake would sport a perfectly round conical island, perhaps several of them, new volcanic cones whose only purpose would be to slowly fill in the sunken basin once again and set the Yellowstone country on a course for yet another geological cataclysm.
For now, it was just enough to stand before the blackened monster, resting fitfully in the land. Before her stretched a laboratory of such grand scale it would surely swallow up the remainder of her career—that is, if she still had a career.
In the aftermath of this disaster, would anyone anywhere care to fund the long-range study of the new caldera when the first order of business for most of the nation’s citizens was to try to hoard a few calories against the stalking specter of starvation? Would there even be a single thought given to the staffing and funding requirements of university geology departments when there was a massive cancer in the body of the nation that had already consumed half its flesh?
None of the business of livelihood mattered in the least now. Confronted with the enormity of the Yellowstone cataclysm, Liz felt chaste, her soul hollowed out. Feet on the lip of geological ground zero, the only image she could process was that of her daughter’s face, the only emotion that of overwhelming isolation.
White Elk had foreseen this. What did he say? She would find nothing at Yellowstone. ‘Empty,’ that was the word he’d used.
Liz seated herself in the volcanic grit, planted the heels of her boots firmly down, crossed her forearms over her knees, and put her head down to rest on her arms. The impoundment holding back her misery, the one her conflicted soul had fabricated to wall her emotions away from Pelee’s horrible death, gave way all at once, and the tears began to flow in a torrent.
Chapter One Hundred-Eighteen
The atmosphere persisted in a sullen state, damped down under a seamless quilt of moisture-poor snow clouds that hung over the Plains day after day throughout the month of October. Water vapor floated imprisoned, locked in needles of ice crystal, drifting aimlessly. The monotony of the Yellowstone-induced weather strangled the spirit of the Independency colonists. All were anxious for the arrival of the final grain shipment from Sweetly. Penny was planning a celebration to lift and brighten their spirits, one to celebrate their continued existence as a community on Prospect Bluffs.
An hour after sunrise on the morning of the third Thursday of the month, dozens of Independency villagers made the descent to the lake shoreline below the bluffs to see the tiny freighter and its crew off. The steamer lay locked fast in ice, however. Bitter early fall temperatures had welded black plates of lake ice an inch thick across the entire surface of the watery expanse. Max fretted the wood-fired lake steamboat might not be able to break through the ice barrier while towing the barge, made larger and more stable by the addition of newly fabricated pontoons and expanded decking. Men and women swung axes, crowbars and spitting mauls to free the vessels from their ice shackles. Max coaxed a fire to life in the cold boiler and slowly built steam pressure. Satisfied with the ice work and the strength of the head of steam, the town’s jack-of-all-trades opened a value to funnel steam to piston so that the propeller might be engaged . The tug labored mightily to gain a knot or two of momentum. The ice crackled, split and parted before the bow, and the little ship made way.
The crew huddled about the little boiler for warmth as the ship plied the icy surface of the waters. Far to the south down Big Stone Lake, smoke from the grain fires, ever smoldering inside the concrete grain silos, still trailed eastward on the incessant wind, sometimes dodging to earth to obliterate the farming town, sometimes running ruler straight hundreds of feet over the black waters. Abel kept an eye on the smoke and pondered the fate of Harland Sven. Was the farmer still alive to see the white ribbons of vaporized grain? He hadn’t seen the man for two weeks, hadn’t seen anyone in Sweetly, for that matter. But fresh food that had been delivered repeatedly to the brewery as promised, and some fraction of it had disappeared. At least a few South Dakotans were taking advantage of the victuals, behaving as nocturnal mammals would, perhaps, coming in the night unseen to forage under cover of darkness and to hole up by day out of the light.
Two hours running behind it, Max’s watercraft closed within a quarter mile of Sweetly. Winnie, intent on the landing, observed something moving in the clouds of white grain smoke drifting over the townscape and hugging the ground. A stick figure emerged from the particle haze standing at the shoreline.
“Abel, someone’s there.” Winnie raised an arm and waved toward the south. “Do you see it?”
Abel surveyed the water’s edge and picked out a slender vertical line, black against the white grain smoke.
“Our man is still with us, I think.”
“Harland?”
“Yes, the farmer.”
As the steamer made landfall, Abel leapt from the craft, splashed down in the frigid lake water, kicked plates of ice aside and jogged before the scarecrow at lakeside.
“Harland,” uttered the crewman as he came forward out of the lake, “We thought something happened to you.”
“Never mind me,” the farmer rumbled. “There are still a few people here. They’ve got to be taken out.”
“All right, we can do that.”
“Sweetly is no place for them anymore.”
“How many, Harland?”
“Just six, no more.”
“That’s it? Where are the rest of your townsfolk?”
“Evacuated, gone to Sioux Falls, they tell me, then all the way out to Minneapolis.
“How?”
“The Guard took them out by train just a day or two after the silos went up.”
“Where are those you managed to locate?”
“In the coop office. They had to get out of the school. No one can live in there anymore.”
“Are they in any condition to make the trip across the lake?”
“I’m not sure. I think maybe.”
“Okay, bring them down in two, three hours. We’ll be loaded then. They can sit on the raft. We’ll wrap them up in something to keep them warm. It will be a slow, cold ride back to the bluffs.”
As instructed, Harland led a meager band to the lakeshore, a few women, one man and several teens reduced to flesh-clothed skeletons, faces rigid with fright and simmering with rash. Harland assisted each in boarding the barge, now heavy with a conical pile of corn covered with tarpaulin. Once all were settled and protected from the wind swirling over the waters, Harland left the raft, gained the shore and swiveled to watch the crew of Max’s steam creation shove off.
Winnie hailed Abel and pointed out the farmer, feet planted in ash ashore, the grain silos belching smoke at his back.
“Harland, for goodness sake, man, come on board,” howled Abel as he vaulted from the deck and raced to confront the farmer.
“Take care of those people, mister.”
Nose in Harland’s face, Abel searched the farmer’s fixed hazel eyes. “You’re not going to tell me you won’t make the trip north with us.”
“I’ve got things to tend to here.”
Abel backed away a step, turned aside, and cast his eyes to the dull heavens. “There can’t be anything to tend to in this town any longer, farmer.”