St. Clair (Gives Light Series) (16 page)

pauwau?' asked Wolf. 'Oh, fine,' said Coyote.

And so the brothers left for their nightly hunt, for

even in those days, Wolf and Coyote were

nocturnal.

"The brothers returned to their den in the morning

and went to sleep. Soon they were awakened by

the sounds of a threatening war drum. Wolf and

Coyote rushed out of their den to see what was the

matter. There, below their plateau, stood Bear,

pounding on the war drum with her heavy paws.

For, you see, death was not permanent in those

days as it is now.

" 'Coyote,' Bear cried. 'You have killed me, so I

declare war!'

"Coyote dropped his tail between his legs and

trembled all over. 'Help me!' he said, and hid

behind his brother. Wolf sighed. 'Again, I must

fight your battles for you,' Wolf lamented. So

Wolf went to war with Bear. And they are still at

war to this day, which is why you see them clash

and battle whenever they meet in the woods."

"Fantastic," DeShawn breathed at my side.

"Skylar?"

I looked up. Autumn Rose In Winter was standing

at my other side, her hands clasped, her hair in a

girlishly high ponytail.

"Stuart's calling for us," Autumn Rose whispered.

"Who's Stuart?" DeShawn asked.

I got up off the ground. I gestured to DeShawn,

meaning he could follow us if he wanted to, but he

didn't notice. He had gone back to eating.

Autumn Rose and I walked together to the country

lane. It was exceptionally dark out, and I couldn't

really see where we were going. Autumn Rose

noticed, and I guess she had eyes like a cat,

because she took me gently by my wrist and helped

me along. She was a very sweet girl, if a bit

accident prone.

We found the doors of the flourmill thrown open.

Autumn Rose and I walked in together. The inside

of the flourmill was illuminated by the bright,

glowing flame resting on the palm of Stuart Stout's

hand.

Stuart looked angry.

Angry might be an understatement. Stuart's

forehead was pinched, his pale eyes blazing. His

mouth looked like it desperately wanted to curl

into a snarl. He closed his hand in a fist and

slammed it into the wall, sparks showering to the

floor. I heard Prairie Rose In Winter shriek. I

stomped hastily on the sparks before the whole

building caught fire.

I heard the gurgling of liquid in a bottle. I heard

the hiss of a cigarette lighter; I saw a blue flame

suspended in the darkness. The flame jumped,

spreading over the palm of Stuart's hand. Light

bounced off of the flourmill's walls. The anger

was gone from Stuart's face. Now he looked

politely blank.

I thought: This guy might be nuts.

"So," Stuart said. "The government's moving in on

the lake now. Solomon Knows the Woods says

Arizona Realty, Inc. is already putting up bids for

the land."

"Can they seriously do that?" Daisy At Dawn

asked. "Emptying out a whole lake? What about

the fish and the plants down there?"

"Do you really think they care about the wildlife?

This whole nation was built on avarice and self-

aggrandizement."

I found Annie standing by the grist with Aubrey.

This time Aubrey had brought his other brother

with him, Reuben, a man in his late twenties.

Reuben held his tiny daughter, Serafine, in his

broad arms. I made my way over to Annie and

Reuben gave me a stoic nod.

I'd found something interesting the other night when

I was looking up American land laws on Granny's

computer. In 1890, there was a court case called

Cherokee Nation v. Southern Kansas Railway.

What happened was this. In the late 1800s, the

Southern Kansas Railway Corporation decided

they just
had
to build their railroad on top of the

Cherokee reservation. Never mind that the

railway company could have built anywhere else

in Kansas. Never mind that the Cherokee were

only allowed a hundred tiny acres to live on.

Kansas wanted that reservation, damn it, and they

were going to get it. The Cherokee took their case

to the Supreme Court and begged them not to take

their land away. Wasn't it enough that the white

settlers had 80,000 square miles all to themselves,

and that in Kansas alone? Wasn't it enough that the

Cherokee had already walked the Trail of Tears?

The Supreme Court shot them down. The railroad,

they said, was more important than the

reservation. Everybody could use the railroad.

Only the Cherokee could use the reservation. Why

couldn't the Cherokee see how selfish they were

being?

It's eerie when history repeats itself.

"So, uh..." Zeke started. "Isn't there anything we

can do to the lake to keep them from taking it?"

Silence.

"Poison the water," William Sleeping Fox

suggested, in a vague, dreamlike voice. "Then they

won't want it."

"And then we'll kill the fish and the watercress,"

Holly said dully.

"Yeah, and those land junkies are already planning

on draining the water," said Daisy, "so I doubt they

care whether it's poisoned or not. Why are they

draining it, anyway?"

"Market value, I think," Stuart said. "If you can

build on top of it, you're going to make more

money off of it. You can't really build on top of a

lake."

I had a different idea, though. If the current law

only let the government snatch up property that

wasn't being used, then of course the lake needed

to be drained before the Bureau could stake a

claim on it. As long as there were fish in the water

and boats on the lake, the realty was technically in

use.

"So are we screwed?" Daisy asked.

"No. We just need to think. Think," Stuart urged

himself, the flame on his hand wavering. "How

can we turn off prospective buyers?"

"I've got an idea," said Mary Gives Light, a

gleaming, dangerous grin painted all over her

face. "Toss a couple of bodies in there and let the

government find them. No one's gonna wanna buy

an Indian burial ground. Which one of you wants

to volunteer your bloated carcass for the good of

our nation?"

Mary encroached on Allen Calling Owl. Allen

gulped, his eyes bulging with fear.

"Would you stop that?" Rafael said, his teeth

gritted.

"Aww, Raffy, are you volunteering? You brave

soul--"

"Focus, please," Stuart said hoarsely.

"I have an idea!" said Prairie Rose, bouncing on

her heels. "If there was a monster in the water,

like the Loch Ness Monster, then we could say

we're protecting it and then the government can't

take the water away."

"Sure," Holly said unenthusiastically. "Rafael, do

you have any Loch Ness Monster eggs in your

freezer?"

"
Don't
pick on me!" Prairie Rose warned.

Mary crept over to Prairie Rose and tried to pinch

her cheeks.

"Focus!" Stuart snapped.

Everyone fell accordingly silent. I think we were

all afraid he'd punch the wall again.

"Focus," Stuart said again. "We
need
to save our

land. What can we do to convince the Bureau of

Land Management that the ground underneath the

lake is worthless?"

Suddenly I knew exactly what we should do.

Eagerly, I opened my mouth.

Oh, wait. Damn. Stupid voicebox.

"Skylar?" Annie said pleasantly.

I gave her a grateful smile. That girl is an angel, I

swear.

Sinkholes
, I spelled. Mr. Red Clay had taught us a

while back that America's Great Lakes were sitting

on top of sinkholes. It was actually pretty cool.

As the groundwater eroded the soil underneath the

lakebed, whole hosts of primordial organisms

were rising to the surface of Lake Huron.
If the

government thought there were a sinkhole

beneath the lake, they wouldn't be able to build

on top of it. Anything built on top of a sinkhole is

just going to collapse into the soil.

Annie repeated what I had said.

"That's...pretty intelligent, actually," Stuart said. I

wondered whether I ought to be offended that he

sounded surprised.

"No it's not," Holly said. "I can't see how we're

going to convince anyone that there's a sinkhole

under the lake."

Well, yeah, that had me stumped, too.

"Does the Bureau of Land Management know how

deep the lake is?" Stuart asked.

"I don't know?" Zeke said. "They had this camera

thing--"

"A camera?"

"A box," Rafael said. "A box on top of a tripod."

"That's called a theodolite," Aubrey said. "And

yes, it lets you measure area and angles.

Elevation, too. It's really handy!"

"Then they'll already know that the lake is seventy-

five feet deep," Stuart said.

"Well, yes, probably," Aubrey said.

Annie's eyes took on a knowing gleam. "So if a

few inches of water were suddenly to disappear..."

"Then it would look as though the lake were sitting

on top of a sinkhole," Stuart agreed.

"Wait a minute," Rafael said. "That lake's

seventy-five feet deep, right? And ten acres total.

So we'd need to drain a quarter million gallons of

water to lower the lake just one inch. Where are

we gonna put all that water?"

"And will it hurt the fish?" Autumn Rose asked.

"I don't think it'll hurt the fish," Daisy said

cheerfully. "The catfish might not like it, but they

mostly stick to the bottom of the lake."

"Yeah, but where are we gonna put the water?"

Rafael said, returning to his point. "Never mind

that. How are we gonna get it out?"

"We'll each grab a pail," Holly said dispiritedly.

"Yeah, I've got a pail!" Zeke said. "From when I

was a kid," he said quickly.

"The irrigation canals," I heard an unfamiliar voice

say.

It took me a while to realize Reuben had spoken.

In all the time that I'd known Aubrey's family, I'd

never heard Reuben speak before. Everyone

turned simultaneously to look at him. He didn't

really notice. He had Serafine dandled on his

shoulder, and she was fast asleep.

"Oh, that's right!" Aubrey said. "Some of the farms

get their water from the lake! Not ours, of course--

we've got a pond--but--"

"Grandma's farm uses lake water," June Threefold

said.

"Hey, so does Meredith's ranch!" Zeke said.

"So...wait a minute," Rafael said, "we wanna flood

the farms? And kill the crops?"

"Sure," Holly said. "Sounds good to me."

"Please focus," Stuart said, exhausted, for the

umpteenth time. "This is a serious problem. If we

don't have a safe place to store the water until the

Bureau leaves, then this plan isn't going to work."

I tapped Annie's shoulder rapidly and she turned,

patient.

The badlands
, I signed, grinning.

"The badlands," Annie repeated, a spark of

rebellion on her face.

We high-fived each other.

"What about the badlands?" Stuart asked.

Rafael seemed to have caught on, too. "There are

gullies out there," he said. "Huge trenches in the

ground where the weather wore down the terrain.

If we could reroute the canals to the gullies, we

could store all the water out there until the FBI

leaves."

"Well, how are we going to do that?" Stuart asked.

Everyone, amusingly, looked at Reuben. Reuben

stared blankly back.

"Uu pusikwatu?" Aubrey asked him.

"The lake's canals are underground," Reuben said.

"Farmers operate hand pumps to draw water from

the canals. The pump stores the water in an

aluminum tank until the farmer needs it."

"Is that how the hand pumps outside our houses

work, too?" Autumn Rose asked excitedly.

"No. Those rely on groundwater, not lake water."

Stuart asked, "How much water does a tank like

that store?"

"A thousand gallons," Reuben replied--with great

dignity, I thought.

Stuart frowned. "That's about eight thousand

pounds. We'd never be able to carry it