Chapter 6 #2
She came out of the block building with a basket and went to the wire and started taking down the laundry that she had hung at dawn, moving stiffly, with her shoulders pulled in.
Burner got the glasses on her.
"That's her," he said.
"Who?"
"They took a girl from the Kettle in July. Nineteen."
Sable was quiet for a second.
"Her name's Neve," she said.
"You know her?"
"I know her name because Halstead says it out loud when he wants her and I've been lying on this hill for sixteen days." Sable's jaw was set. "She's not in the shed. She's in the building. That's all I know and I'd rather not have worked out what it means."
Burner watched the woman take down a shirt, fold it, put it in the basket. Take down a second one. Fold it.
She was not hurrying and she was not slow. She was working at exactly the speed of somebody who has learned what happens if you do either.
He put the glasses down and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.
I do not engage. He had said it out loud. He had said it to a man's face on a rock six days ago.
"You're thinking about going down there," Sable said.
"No."
"You are."
"I am thinking about it," Burner said, "and I'm not going to do it, and those are different things, and I'd appreciate it if you'd help me by talking about something else."
She let it go, which he had not expected.
The drill came at two in the afternoon.
He watched it and he learned more in nine minutes than he had in the previous six hours.
Twelve men. They formed by the bay door without being called twice. Four stacked on the shop entrance and went through it and the other eight covered in two teams of four, and they moved with their muzzles down and they called rooms and they did not bunch up at the doorway.
"Told you," Sable said.
"Who taught them?"
"Halstead. He's the one standing by the barrel with his hands behind his back."
Burner found him in the glasses.
Late forties. Canvas barn coat, no hat. He stood absolutely still while twelve armed men worked in front of him and he did not gesture and he did not shout, and once he lifted one finger and pointed at a man's feet, and the man looked down and adjusted his stance and nodded.
Burner watched him for a long time.
"He was a soldier," he said.
"Or he taught them."
"No. Look at him. He's not doing the moving. He's watching the feet." Burner lowered the glasses slowly. "He was an instructor."
Sable let out a breath.
"That's what I was afraid you'd say."
They lay up through the afternoon and did not talk much.
Burner ate two strips of smoked deer and gave one to the dog and one to Sable, who took it without comment and ate it in small pieces, which told him she had been rationing herself down to nothing for a while.
"When did you eat last?"
"Yesterday."
"Eat this too."
"No."
"Eat it. You're no use to your brother as a corpse and I've got four days on me."
She took it.
Around four he asked her the question he had been circling all day.
"What's your plan?"
"For what?"
"For your brother."
She did not answer for a long time.
"I don't have one," she said finally. "That's the truth and I'm tired enough to say it out loud. I've been up here sixteen days making a map in my head of a place I cannot get into. I know their sweep. I know their drill.
I know which man drinks and which one falls asleep on the east fence at three in the morning. And none of it adds up to a way in for one woman with a single shot twenty gauge."
"No," Burner said. "It doesn't."
"I keep thinking that if I just watch long enough there'll be a gap."
"There won't be. Not for one person."
"I know."
"There might be for fifty."
She turned her head slowly.
"Say that again."
"I said there might be for fifty," Burner said. "I'm not promising it. I'm telling you what I'm looking at. You've got sixteen days of observation in your head that nobody else in this state has, and I've got a camp full of people who just voted thirty-eight to eleven to not be farmed."
"They voted to defend a fence line. That's not the same as walking down here."
"No," Burner agreed. "It isn't. And I'm not going to lie to you and say I can make them."
She looked back down at the yard.
"But?"
"But six days ago the argument up there was whether to hand over four people," Burner said. "Now I'm going to walk back in and tell them there are twelve people in a shed and they're collecting more. That changes the shape of the thing."
"Does it? For most people it makes it worse. Twelve more reasons to keep your head down."
"Some of them, yes."
"Most of them."
"Maybe."
Sable was quiet.
"Why are you offering me this?" she said. "You don't know me. I put a shotgun on the back of your head six hours ago."
"Because you've got the map," Burner said, "and because you've been sitting on this hill for sixteen days for one man, and a person who'll do that is a person I'd rather have than not."
She did not say anything.
But she shifted the twenty gauge so the muzzle was pointed away from him, which she had not done all day, and he noticed it and did not mention it.