The days passed in quiet research and observation, but there weren’t any breakthroughs. She knew that this region was the most likely one for the three men to be hiding. There were mountains, thick woods, rivers, and lakes. But there was possibly one place where they were hiding, and a vast number of places where they weren’t. There were many thousands of visitors in the summer driving cars bearing out-of-state plates, and there were people who didn’t seem to be doing much, not because they were criminals or federal agents, but because they were on vacation. There were people who looked like right-wing militia members who turned out to be painters and sculptors represented by galleries in New York and Los Angeles. People she followed drove to Bentonville to pitch some product to the Walmart executives for inclusion in stores.

After three weeks, Leah asked Art Sprague at the Weldonville police station to mail her the drone she’d used in California. When it arrived, she began waiting near highways in the early morning watching for cars to come down the roads from the mountains to drive toward the towns. When she spotted a likely road, she would send the drone up to backtrack the roads to higher altitudes and search the forested land for settlements. At the end of the fourth week, she had eliminated hundreds of places, but she was aware that thousands remained.

* * *

Ed Leonard lasted through the clearing of the garden plot. The work of removing rocks and stumps was backbreaking, but then it was over. Other crews began to run a rototiller up and down the length of the field, and if any undiscovered rocks turned up, he didn’t hear of it. The next phase was to build a pipeline from the bed of one of the lakes high above the community down to the large farm plot.

Laying the pipe required that a crew of men dig a narrow trench from the edge of the lake along the wooded slope all the way down to the garden. The intake was suspended a few feet above the bottom of the lake to avoid blockages, and ten feet below the surface in summer to prevent having the intake protrude above the water line. The downward tilt of the irrigation pipe from the lake was pronounced, but shut-off valves at several spots along the route would control the velocity of the flow. The downward tilt would also facilitate the draining of the pipes in winter to prevent them from freezing and bursting.

At break time each day, Ed would walk down to the vegetable plot and watch the work. A team composed mostly of women and children worked to plant the winter seeds, and another male labor crew was laying more PVC pipe that would feed sprinkler heads to water the crops during dry weeks. He would always find a seat where he could see Charlotte work.