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The Alliance

CHAPTER 1

Before the world ended, the place was known as Star Valley, Wyoming. For the past eighteen years they had called it simply “the valley.” Eric Lloyd removed his broad-brimmed, crudely woven straw hat and wiped at his brow with his sleeve. The cornfield he was irrigating skirted the edge of the foothills and was slightly higher than the rest of the valley. From that vantage point he could see the whole sweep of it before him—the mountain ranges that hemmed it in on both sides, shoving some peaks up over ten thousand feet, still laced with winter snows; the neat patchwork of wheat, barley, corn, and alfalfa fields; the deeper green, more erratic lines of cottonwoods and willows along the creeks rushing down from the mountains to the Salt River; the meadowland dotted with dairy and beef cattle. From almost any spot in it, the valley presented a dazzling array of color and beauty, and Eric never tired of looking at it.

“Ricky! Ricky!”

Eric straightened and looked around, his gray eyes squinting in the early afternoon sunshine. For a moment the only sound was the soft gurgle of water as it slipped out of the irrigation ditch and into the furrows. Then the call came floating across the fields again. He replaced his hat and squinted into the sun, still unable to pinpoint the source of his sisters’ voices. Then he saw the tops of two heads—one dark brown, one a golden blonde—bouncing up and down above the level of the chest-high field of corn.

With a smile, he took two quick swipes with the shovel, slicing through the thick grass and soft dirt of the ditch bank to open up another furrow, then stuck the shovel in the opposite bank with one quick thrust. His boots made a pleasant sucking sound as he uprooted his feet from the soft mud and moved to dry ground.

“Lori! Becky! I’m over here.”

Two figures rounded the edge of the cornfield, then exploded into a spontaneous and uneven race toward him. Long-legged Lori, nine years old and three inches taller than her sister, easily outdistanced Becky. Her blonde hair streamed out in back of her as her face contorted with the efforts of victory. Becky, six and destined to be small all her life, tried valiantly to keep up, her ponytail bouncing as her feet pounded up little puffs of dust in the narrow path. They were both clothed in plain homespun woolen dresses with white pinafores. Deerskin moccasins covered their feet, standard wear for most of the children in the village during the summertime. Shoes laboriously cut and stitched from handcured and tanned cow hides were too expensive for anything but wintertime or Sunday wear.

“Ricky! Ricky!” Lori shouted as she slid to a stop, almost catapulting into the ditch. “School’s out!”