Roland inspected along the line of tangled pine branches, then stopped and plucked several aside. This created an opening like a doorway, and he gestured her to go through. “Be sharp in your looks,” he said. “I doubt if they’ve bothered to set traps or tripwires, but ’tis always best to be careful.”

Behind the camouflaging boughs, the tankers had been as neatly lined up as toy soldiers at the end of the day, and Susan at once saw one reason why they had been hidden: they had been re-equipped with wheels, well-made ones of solid oak which came as high as her chest. Each had been rimmed with a thin iron strip. The wheels were new, so were the strips, and the hubs had been custom-made. Susan knew only one blacksmith in Barony capable of such fine work: Brian Hookey, to whom she had gone for Felicia’s new shoes. Brian Hookey, who had smiled and clapped her on the shoulder like a compadre when she had come in with her da’s shoebag hanging on her hip. Brian Hookey, who had been one of Pat Delgado’s best friends.

She recalled looking around and thinking that times had been good for sai Hookey, and of course she had been right. Work in the blacksmithing line had been plentiful. Hookey had been making lots of wheels and rims, for one thing, and someone must have been paying him to do it. Eldred Jonas was one possibility; Kimba Rimer an even better one. Hart? She simply couldn’t believe that. Hart had his mind—what little there was of it—fixed on other matters this summer.

There was a kind of rough path behind the tankers. Roland walked slowly along it, pacing like a preacher with his hands clasped at the small of his back, reading the incomprehensible words writ upon the tankers’ rear decks: CITGO. SUNOCO. EXXON. CONOCO. He paused once and read aloud, haltingly: “Cleaner fuel for a better tomorrow.” He snorted softly. “Rot! This is tomorrow.”

“Roland—Will, I mean—what are they for?”

He didn’t answer at first, but turned and walked back down the line of bright steel cans. Fourteen on this side of the mysteriously reactivated oil-supply pipe, and, she assumed, a like number on the other. As he walked, he rapped his fist on the side of each. The sound was dull and clunky. They were full of oil from the Citgo oilpatch.