Chapter 10

Winter in Three Valleys is a time of rain and cooler weather. Unless you’re addicted to sunshine and temperature in the 80s, it’s quite pleasant, much better than Center or other places farther north. For the record, I did not miss the ice and snow of a Center winter. In Three Valleys we wore sweaters, not heavy coats, and snow only showed up on the mountain peaks to the east and north. We also got more storms, with rain that could last for days. It was a time for relaxing, catching up on the paperwork, and doing a lot of interior work on the buildings we’d put up.

The railroad station was officially the first building completed in our new town, the bunkhouse, cookhouse, and supply center didn’t count, though the bunkhouse was going to be renovated into a hotel, and the supply center would become a warehouse. Other buildings were going up as fast as people could work. Two weeks after the railroad station was in decent shape—building the turnaround for the trains took longer than the station—they moved my office there. I didn’t have to listen to the rain on the metal roof, or endure the heat of the day. It was a great change, but in a way I missed the field construction feel to the place. We were getting far too civilized for our own good. I began to spend idle minutes thinking of the next construction project.

Of course we finished the pool next. And a food shop, and the first houses. We still didn’t have a name for the place, but that would come. In the meantime certain aspects of being civilized began to creep in. I found myself working in a skirt and blouse more often than shorts and a shirt. Partly that was because my pregnancy was finally showing. I don’t know about other women, but I was comfortable in shorts. Fashion and custom are very powerful, though, and I conformed, but I didn’t hesitate to jump into my shorts at the slightest hint of trouble.

We’d moved the location of our construction camp a little farther upstream, back where we’d had our first serious dam breakage, and isolated just a little from the main flow of people. And we had them. We had prospective buyers out nearly every day, people looking to make a fresh start in a new town. We still had a lot of construction going on, but the infrastructure was in place, and companies were busy building the amenities, streetlights, parks, and other physical plant things that make a town a place worth living, and not just a few houses and a business district.

I think Amy’s kidnapper struck because we weren’t “officially” a town. That meant there would be a lot fewer police types around.

I’d known the day was coming, and I’d done what I could to prepare for it. Amy had, too. She was never more than a step from something pointed and sharp.

“Why don’t you get a gun for protection?” Deborah asked one day.

“I don’t know how to use one,” Amy replied, and I nodded. Amy hefted one of her cleavers. “I feel better with this. I’ll warn you: if I get a chance, I’ll do him what I can do to a hog, but I’ll take a lot longer at it.” She tested the edge with her thumb. “It could get messy.”

Deborah looked at her and nodded. Amy had built up a lot of hate in four years.

I think the man had tried to kidnap her before. Those were all the footprints in the mud outside the cookhouse, the half-seen figures at night, and so on. The detectors Deborah’s friends from the Security Commission had put in registered several attempts to form a gate, but they were always in a different place. The chain-link fence was working.