Soft.

Their leaders expressed sympathy, but the hidden thought was obvious. If the Holnists are leaving the south, why should we interfere?

A day later, in the trading center of Roseburg, Gordon met with a committee of headmen from the surrounding area. Bullet-spalled windows looked out on scenes recalling the destructive seventeen-year war against the Rogue River barbarians. A blasted Denny’s, its yellow plastic sign canted and melted, showed where the enemy had been turned back from their deepest thrust, nearly a decade ago.

The wild survivalists had never penetrated as far since. Gordon felt certain the site for the meeting had been chosen to make a point.

The difference in mood and personality was unmistakable. There was little curiosity about the legendary Cyclops, or about the flickering rebirth of technology. Even tales of a nation rising from its ashes in the far lands to the east brought only mild interest. It was not that they doubted the stories. The men from Glide and Winston and Lookinglass simply did not seem to care all that much.

“This is a waste of time,” Philip told Gordon. “These hicks have been fighting their own little war for so long, they don’t give a damn about anything but day to day existence.”

Does that make them smarter, perhaps? Gordon wondered.

But Philip was right. It didn’t really matter what the bosses, mayors, sheriffs, or headmen thought anyway. They blustered, boasting of their autonomy, but it was obvious there was only one man whose opinion counted in these parts.

Two days later, Johnny Stevens rode in from the west on a steaming mount. He looked neither right nor left, but leapt from his horse to run to Gordon, breathless. This time the message he carried was three words long.

“Come on up.”

George Powhatan had agreed to hear their plea.

7

The Callahan Mountains bordered Camas Valley from Roseburg seventy miles to the sea. Below them, the main fork of the little Coquille River rushed westward under the shattered skeletons of broken bridges before meeting its north and south branches under the morning shadow of Sugarloaf Peak.

Here and there, along the north side of the valley, new fenceposts outlined pastures now covered with powdery snow. Chimney smoke rose from an occasional hilltop stockade.

On the south bank, however, there was nothing — only scorched, crumbled ruins slowly succumbing to the relentless blackberry thickets.

No fortifications overlooked the river fords. The travelers found the absence puzzling, for this valley was supposed to be where the defense against the Holnist enemy had dug in, and finally held.

Calvin Lewis tried to explain. The wiry, dark-eyed young man had guided Johnny Stevens since his earlier journey to south Oregon. Cal’s hand gestured left and right as he spoke.

“You don’t guard a river by buildin’ strong points,” he told them in the low, lazy, local drawl. “We protect the north bank by crossin’ over ourselves, from time to time, and by knowin’ everything that moves over on the other side.”

Philip Bokuto grunted, nodding in approval. Obviously, that was how he would have done it. Johnny Stevens made no comment, having heard it all before.

Gordon kept looking into the trees, wondering where the watchers were. Doubtless both sides had them out, and observed the party at intervals along the way. Occasionally he caught a glimpse of motion or a glint of what might have been a binoculars lens at some height. But the trackers were good. A damn sight better than anyone in the Army of the Willamette — excluding, perhaps, Phil Bokuto.

The war in the south did not seem to be one of armies or companies, of sieges and strategic moves. It was more as battles had been fought among the American Indians… with victory measured in quick, bloody raids, and in the number of scalps taken.

Survivalists were expert at this type of sneak and run warfare. Unaccustomed to such terror, the Willametters were their ideal prey.

Here, though, the farmers had managed to stop them. It was not his place to critique their tactics, so he let Bokuto ask most of the questions. Gordon knew that these were skills one acquired over a lifetime. He was here for one reason and one reason only — not to learn, but to persuade.

The view was spectacular as they climbed the old Sug-arloaf Mountain road, overlooking the merging forks of the Coquille. Snow-covered pine forests looked much as they must have before man came — as if the horror of the last seventeen winters was a matter of significance only to ephemeral creatures, irrelevant to the abiding Earth.

“Sometimes the bastards try to sneak by in big canoes,” Cal Lewis told them. “The south fork comes this way almost straight up from the Rogue country, and by the time it joins the center fork here, it’s movin’ pretty fast.”

The young man grinned. “But George always seems to know what they’re up to. George is always ready for ‘em.”

There it was again, that affection mixed with awe in mentioning the leader of the Camas Valley communities. Did the man eat nails for breakfast? Did he strike his enemies with lightning? After all the tales, Gordon was ready to believe anything about George Powhatan.

Bokuto’s broad nostrils flared as he suddenly reined back, stopping Gordon protectively with his left arm. The ex-Marine’s machine pistol was upraised in a blur.

“What is it, Phil?” Gordon drew his carbine as he scanned the woody slopes. The horses danced and snorted, sensing their riders’ agitation.

“It’s…” Bokuto sniffed. His eyes narrowed incredulously. “…I smell bear fat!”

Cal Lewis looked up into the trees beside the road and smiled. From just upslope there came bass, throaty laughter.

“Very good, my man! You have keen senses!”

As Gordon and the others peered, a large, shadowed figure shifted between the Douglas firs, outlined against the afternoon sun. Gordon felt a brief thrill as a part of him wondered, for just a moment, if it was a human being at all, or perhaps the legendary Sasquatch — Bigfoot of the Northwest.

Then the shape stepped forward and was revealed as a craggy-faced, middle-aged man whose shoulder-length gray hair was bound by a beaded headband. A homespun, short-sleeved shirt exposed thigh-like shoulders to the open air, but he was apparently unbothered by the cold.

“I am George Powhatan,” the grinning man said. “Welcome, gentlemen, to Sugarloaf Mountain.”

Gordon swallowed. What was it about the man’s voice that matched his physical appearance? It spoke of power so casually assumed that there was no need for bluster or display. Powhatan spread his hands. “Come on up, you with the sharp nose. And the rest of you with your fancy uniforms! You caught a whiff of bear fat? Well then, come look at my down-home weather station! You’ll see what the stuff is good for.”

The visitors relaxed and put away their weapons, put at ease by the ready laughter. No Sasquatch, Gordon told himself. Just’a hearty mountain man — nothing more.

He patted his skittish northern horse, and told himself that he, too, must have been reacting only to the smell of rendered bear.