Smith was right; the construction workers departed all together long before sundown. Leaving their equipment lined up along the right-of-way, nose to tail, like a herd of iron elephants, or simply in situ, where quitting time found them, the operators straggled back in small groups to their transport vehicles. Far above, Doc and Hayduke could hear their voices, the laughter, the rattle of lunch buckets. The carryalls and pickups driven by men at the eastern end of the job came down through the big notch to meet the equipment operators. The men climbed in; the trucks turned and ground uphill through the dust, into the notch again and out of sight. For some time there was the fading sound of motors, a cloud of dust rising above the pinyon and juniper; then that too was gone. A tanker truck appeared, full of diesel fuel, groaning down the grade toward the machines, and proceeded from one to the next, the driver and his helper filling the fuel tanks of each, topping them off. Finished, the tanker turned and followed the others back through the evening toward the distant glow of town, somewhere beyond the eastward bulge of the plateau.

Now the stillness was complete. The watchers on the rim, eating their suppers from tin plates, heard the croon of a mourning dove far down the wash. They heard the hoot of an owl, the cries of little birds retiring to sleep in the dusty cottonwoods. The great golden light of the setting sun streamed across the sky, glowing upon the clouds and the mountains. Almost all the country within their view was roadless, uninhabited, a wilderness. They meant to keep it that way. They sure meant to try. Keep it like it was.

The sun went down.

Tactics, materials, tools, gear.

Hayduke was reading off his checklist. “Gloves! Everybody got his gloves? Put ’em on now. Anybody goes fucking around down there without gloves I’ll chop his hand off.”

“You haven’t washed the dishes yet,” Bonnie said.

“Hard hat! Everybody got his hard hat?” He looked around at the crew. “You—put that thing on your head.”

“It doesn’t fit,” she said.

“Make it fit. Somebody show her how to adjust the headband. Jesus Christ.” Looking back at his list. “Bolt cutters!” Hayduke brandished his own, a twenty-four-inch pair of cross-levered steel jaws for cutting bolts, rods, wire, most anything up to half an inch in diameter. The rest of the party were equipped with fencing pliers, good enough for most purposes.

“Now, you lookouts,” he went on, addressing Bonnie and Doc. “Do you know your signals?”

“One short and a long for warning, take cover,” Doc said, holding up his metal whistle. “One short and two longs for all clear, resume operations. Three longs for distress, come help. Four longs for…what are four longs for?”

“Four longs mean work completed, am returning to camp,” Bonnie said. “And one long means acknowledgment, message received.”

“Don’t much like them tin whistles,” Smith said. “We need something more natural. More eco-logical. Owl hoots, maybe. Anybody hears them tin whistles will know there’s two-legged animals slinkin’ around. Lemme show you how to hoot like a owl.”