“All’s clear,” he said. “Carry on, lads.”

When everything was cut which they could reach and cut, Hayduke pulled the dipstick from the engine block—to check the oil? not exactly—and poured a handful of fine sand into the crankcase. Too slow. He unscrewed the oil-filler cap, took chisel and hammer and punched a hole through the oil strainer and poured in more sand. Smith removed the fuel-tank cap and emptied four quart bottles of sweet Karo syrup into the fuel tank. Injected into the cylinders, that sugar would form a solid coat of carbon on cylinder walls and piston rings. The engine should seize up like a block of iron, when they got it running. If they could get it running.

What else? Abbzug, Smith and Hayduke stood back a little and stared at the quiet hulk of the machine. All were impressed by what they had done. The murder of a machine. Deicide. All of them, even Hayduke, a little awed by the enormity of their crime. By the sacrilege of it.

“Let’s slash the seat,” said Bonnie.

“That’s vandalism,” Doc said. “I’m against vandalism. Slashing seats is petty-bourgeois.”

“So okay, okay,” Bonnie said. “Let’s get on to the next item.”

“Then we’ll all meet back here?” Doc said.

“It’s the only way back up on the ridge,” Smith said.

“But if there’s any shit,” Hayduke said, “don’t wait for us. We’ll meet at the truck.”

“I couldn’t find my way back there if my life depended on it,” Doc said. “Not in the dark.”

Smith scratched his long jaw. “Well, Doc,” he said, “if there’s any kind of trouble maybe you better just hightail it up on the bank there, above the road, and wait for us. Don’t forget the hoot owl. We’ll find you that way.”

They left him there in the dark, perched on the seat of the maimed and poisoned compactor. The one red eye of his cigar watched them depart. The plan was for Bonnie to stand watch at the far west end of the project, alone, while Hayduke and Smith worked on the equipment down in the wash. She murmured against them.

“You ain’t afraid of the dark, are you?” Smith asked.

“Of course I’m afraid of the dark.”

“You afraid to be alone?”

“Of course I’m afraid to be alone.”

“You mean you don’t want to be lookout?”

“I’ll be lookout.”

“No place for women,” Hayduke muttered.

“You shut up,” she said. “Am I complaining? I’ll be lookout. So shut up before I take your jaw off.”

The dark seemed warm, comfortable, secure to Hayduke. He liked it. The Enemy, if he appeared, would come loudly announced with roar of engines, blaze of flares, an Operation Rolling Thunder of shells and bombs, just as in Vietnam. So Hayduke assumed. For the night and the wilderness belong to us. This is Indian country. Our country. Or so he assumed.

Downhill, maybe a mile, in one great switchback, the roadway descended through the gap to the built-up fill across the floor of Comb Wash. They soon reached the first group of machines—the earthmovers, the big trucks, the landscape architects.