Chapter 4

"A small amount of Magic? Just how small and where is here, Leslie?"

"Ray, honey, most things are really small. You can carry them of even fit some in one hand!" Ahh, some are pretty large though. We use the largest to protect 'The Preserve'. The town and castle have a little more powerful ones. The small things are hardly ever used anymore. When the land became a county, the State pretty much leaves us alone."

"And this 'Magic' does what?"

"The big thing just monitors and protects. The one in town and here might do a little bit more, but only if, if, we need help. That is why we say you, we, are always safe here in the Castle or in town. 'The Preserve' has it's own defences."

Inadvertently I had added to the list of those who either envied the town or saw in what we protected their way to wealth, a lot of wealth. Leslie informed me just one of the Redwood trees might bring $10,000 when sold. The Giants double or triple that. Loggers had decimated most other places already. We had more than two million acres of them and they would not readily take no for an answer.

The land had been purchased and was surrounded on all sides by mountains. There was only one road leading in or out, and that was through the town. The last generation had made certain that those virgin forests were safe, back in 1870. The device said to protect that valley was part of the alien artifacts. No one really knew what else it might do and none in town really cared. They felt if anything did happen to an interloper, they would only get what they deserved.

In a way I saw things that way too. My contribution though was Mr. Jones. He was no longer to get rich on the 'fruits of our labour', literally. From just that one facility $50,000 or more went to us weekly instead of into his pockets.

He, under the name of Mr. Smith had been buying meat, grains and canned foods at similar discounts from the other centres. We estimated that those inspections and reviews put us up nearly $160,000 per week and him looking for a way to get it back.

'Lucky me.' I thought.

You may wonder how this could have happened. Easy. The people here had grown up sheltered and trusting that everyone was like them, good people. They did not care to leave town and even those who were at the facilities, dealing with the farmers, growers, and ranchers outside never took much interest in those goings on in the real world.

One of the first dictums for waging a war is intelligence. One needs to gather as much information as possible. The axiom 'loose lips sink ships' was not lost on all of us. This was to be after all, a war; and we had better be prepared to win. Ralph was to be our General.

The girls had hit on one of the most important elements for our strategy, practice. We also took a chapter out of another book. We bought spies. Thus so equipped, we were now armed for the attack. It came about when we expected. Several cars came into town. I should say they got as far as the tall metal gates at the edge of town. The General(Ralph, who was also the sheriff) met them there. They said they were State and Federal inspectors there to renew our license to operate processing plants and from the USDA to determine if the meat processing was up to standards.