5. The First Snare

The ranger came back sooner than any of them had expected.

It was the ninth day of the two-week window Sheriff Cady had given them, and the pipeline was nearly complete. The trench stretched almost three and a half miles from the spring to the reservation boundary, a buried artery of PVC pipe waiting to carry water to people who had been dying without it for generations. The holding tank was in place, hidden in the juniper stand, a five-thousand-gallon steel cistern that Elias had salvaged from a bankrupt dairy farm and hauled up the drainage on a flatbed trailer. The distribution lines were laid, a network of smaller pipes branching out from the tank toward the cluster of houses on the eastern edge of the reservation. All that remained was the final connection at the spring itself, the intake valve that would capture the water and send it flowing downhill by gravity, and the trench would be finished.

But the ranger had returned, and he had not come alone.

Orin was at the spring with Samuel and Tom, fitting the intake assembly over the mouth of the rock face, when he heard the sound of boots on stone. He turned and saw the ranger coming up the canyon with three other men in uniform. They were not wilderness rangers. They were officers from the Bureau of Land Management, their badges gleaming in the morning sun, and they were carrying sidearms.

The ranger's name was Holcomb, a young man with a earnest face and a by-the-book manner that Orin had recognized the first time they met. Now that face was set in hard lines, and his voice when he spoke was clipped and official.

"Mr. Beckett," he said. "Step away from the equipment. All of you."

Samuel and Tom looked at Orin. Orin set down the wrench he was holding and raised his hands to his sides, a gesture of compliance that was also a signal to his men. Do as they say. Don't fight. Don't make it worse.

"We're not looking for trouble," Orin said.

"Then you shouldn't have been stealing water from a federal wilderness area." Holcomb turned to one of the BLM officers. "Take photographs of everything. The intake, the pipe, the trench. Document the entire site."

The officer began snapping photos with a digital camera, the shutter clicking in the quiet air. Orin stood still and watched the work of the past nine days being catalogued as evidence. The intake assembly, carefully fitted to the rock face with steel brackets and waterproof sealant. The pipe, running down the drainage in a neat brown line. The hours of digging and hauling and sweating, all of it reduced to a set of images that would be used to prosecute them.

"Where are the others?" Holcomb asked.

"What others?"

"The other workers. I counted at least a dozen people on my last patrol. I saw the tracks. Where are they?"

Orin said nothing. The others were farther down the drainage, working on the distribution lines, and with any luck they had heard the commotion and scattered. Clara would know what to do. Clara always knew what to do.

Holcomb stepped closer, his jaw tight. "Mr. Beckett, you are in violation of the Wilderness Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and at least half a dozen other statutes. You are looking at federal charges, significant fines, and possible prison time. The more you cooperate now, the easier this will go for you."

"I've been cooperating since you arrived."

"You haven't told me where the other workers are."

"Because I don't know where they are now. They were here earlier. They're not here now. That's all I can tell you."

Holcomb stared at him for a long moment. Then he turned to the BLM officers. "Take these three into custody. Read them their rights. We'll transport them to the Drybone field office for processing."

One of the officers stepped forward with a pair of handcuffs. Orin felt the cold metal close around his wrists, a sensation he had never experienced before and had never expected to. He was seventy-four years old, and he was being arrested for the first time in his life, and somewhere beneath the fear and the adrenaline he felt a strange, unexpected calm.

The pipeline was nearly finished. The intake was in place. The holding tank was installed. All that remained was to open the valve and let the water flow, and someone else would have to do that now. But the water would flow. He had to believe that.

The BLM officers led them down the canyon toward a line of government vehicles parked at the wilderness boundary. As they walked, Orin looked back over his shoulder at the spring, at the water pouring out of the rock, two gallons a minute, patient and eternal, and he thought about Alice Chino and her failing kidneys and the promise he had made to her grandson.

He had not finished the work. But he had started it. And maybe that was enough.

The Drybone field office was a squat concrete building on the outskirts of town, surrounded by a chain-link fence and a parking lot full of government vehicles. Orin was processed with the impersonal efficiency of a system that had done this a thousand times before. Fingerprints. Photographs. A phone call. He used the phone call to dial the ranch, but no one answered, and he had no other number to try.

He was placed in a holding cell with Samuel and Tom, a small room with a concrete bench and a steel toilet and a single fluorescent light that buzzed overhead. The door clanged shut behind them, and they were alone.

Samuel sat down on the bench and put his head in his hands. "How long do you think they'll hold us?"

"I don't know," Orin said. "Federal charges take time to process. Could be a day. Could be a week."

"What about the pipeline?"

Orin looked at the concrete wall and thought about the intake valve, still waiting to be opened, and the holding tank, still waiting to be filled, and the distribution lines, still waiting to carry water to the houses on the eastern edge of the reservation.

"It's nearly done," he said. "Clara and the others will finish it. They have to."

"And if they don't?"

"Then we did all this for nothing."

The hours passed slowly in the holding cell. The fluorescent light buzzed. The steel toilet dripped. Somewhere down the hall, another prisoner shouted something unintelligible and was ignored. Orin sat on the concrete bench and stared at the wall and thought about all the moments that had led him here.

He thought about the empty peg in the barn and the calipers that measured water. He thought about the boy on his living room floor, bleeding and broken, whispering the word that had started everything. Water. I was looking for water. He thought about Clara Redfeather, standing on his porch with her hands clenched into fists, demanding to know where her nephew was. He thought about the letter her father had kept for forty-five years, the one that ended with a sentence Orin had forgotten he had written. The water exists. The engineering is feasible. All that is lacking is the will to act.

He had found the will, finally. It had taken him forty-five years, but he had found it. And now he was in a holding cell in Drybone, waiting to be charged with federal crimes, and the pipeline was still waiting to be finished.

In the late afternoon, the door clanged open and Sheriff Cady walked in.

He stood in the doorway for a moment, his hat in his hands, his face unreadable. Then he stepped inside and let the door close behind him.

"I heard what happened," he said. "The ranger called it in this morning. BLM is pushing for federal charges."

Orin looked up at him. "How bad is it?"

"Bad enough. The Wilderness Act carries penalties of up to five years in prison and a hundred thousand dollars in fines. And that's before they add on the other charges." He paused. "But there's something else you should know."

"What?"

"The ranger didn't find the pipeline on his own. Someone tipped him off."

The words landed like a blow. Orin felt the air go out of him. "Who?"

"Anonymous call. Came in to the BLM office three days ago. The caller knew exactly where the pipeline was and what you were doing. They gave GPS coordinates."

Samuel looked up from the bench, his face pale. "Someone on the reservation. Someone who knew what we were doing."

"That's my guess," Cady said. "The tribal council is divided. Some of them support what you're doing, but some of them think it's too risky. They're afraid the government will retaliate, cut off what little water they have left. One of them probably decided to stop you before you could finish."

Orin closed his eyes. He had known the risk. Clara had warned him, that first night in the canyon, that the council was divided and that controversy attracted attention. But he had not imagined that someone on the reservation would actively sabotage the project. He had not imagined that the people they were trying to help would be the ones to stop them.

"Does Clara know?" he asked.

"I haven't been able to reach her. The whole crew scattered when the ranger showed up. They're probably hiding somewhere in the backcountry." Cady paused. "But there's more. The BLM is planning to dismantle the pipeline. They're sending a crew out tomorrow to start pulling up the pipe."

"No," Orin said. "They can't."

"They can and they will. It's federal property, and you installed it without authorization. They have every legal right to remove it."

Orin stood up, his legs unsteady beneath him. "The intake is already in place. The holding tank is installed. The distribution lines are laid. All it needs is someone to open the valve. If they pull up the pipe before the water flows, it's all been for nothing. All of it."

Cady looked at him for a long moment. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. "I can't let you out of here. That would be aiding and abetting, and I'd lose my job and probably join you in prison. But I can tell you that the holding cell door isn't locked right now. It's been sticking lately. Sometimes it just swings open if you push on it hard enough."

Orin stared at him. "You're telling me to escape."

"I'm not telling you anything. I'm just making an observation about the door." Cady set the keys on the bench beside Samuel. "Those are the keys to the impound lot where they parked your truck. It's on the east side of the building. The gate is unlocked. The guard goes on break at six o'clock."

"And if we get caught?"

"Then you'll be in even more trouble than you're already in. So don't get caught." Cady walked to the door and put his hand on the handle. "One more thing. The BLM crew is starting at dawn tomorrow. If you're going to do something, you have to do it tonight."

He opened the door and walked out, and the door swung shut behind him with a soft click that was not a lock engaging.

Orin looked at Samuel. Samuel looked at Orin. Tom was already on his feet, his hand on the door handle.

"We're going," Tom said. It was not a question.

"We're going," Orin agreed.

They pushed open the door and stepped into the empty hallway. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. A radio played somewhere in the distance, a country station turned down low. They walked quickly and quietly, following Cady's directions toward the east side of the building, and no one stopped them. No one called out. The guard at the front desk was reading a magazine and did not look up as they passed.

The impound lot was a fenced yard behind the building, full of seized vehicles and abandoned equipment. Orin's truck was parked in the corner, its keys still in the ignition. He climbed behind the wheel and turned the engine over, and Samuel and Tom climbed into the bed, and they drove out through the unlocked gate and onto the highway toward the canyon.

The sun was setting as they drove, the sky streaked with bands of orange and purple, the mountains dark against the horizon. Orin gripped the wheel with both hands and pressed the accelerator to the floor. They had one night. One night to finish the pipeline and open the valve before the BLM crew arrived at dawn to tear it all apart.

They reached the canyon just after dark. The moon was up, nearly full, casting silver light across the desert. Orin parked the truck and climbed out, and Samuel and Tom followed, and together they walked up the drainage toward the spring.

Clara was waiting for them.

She stepped out of the shadows beside the rock face, a shovel in her hands, her face hard and tired and relieved all at once. Behind her, in the darkness, Orin could see the shapes of other figures. Elias. The young men from the reservation. The crew had not scattered after all. They had been waiting.

"We heard about the arrest," Clara said. "We didn't know if you'd make it back."

"We had help." Orin looked at the intake assembly, still fitted to the rock face, still waiting to be opened. "Is everything ready?"

"Everything except the final connection. We were waiting for you."

"Then let's finish it."

They worked through the night by moonlight and flashlight, connecting the last sections of pipe, sealing the last joints, tightening the last bolts. The intake valve was fitted over the mouth of the spring, a steel and PVC assembly that would capture the water and funnel it into the pipeline. Orin checked every connection, every fitting, every point where pressure might build and something might fail. His hands were shaking with exhaustion, but they were steady enough for the work.

At three in the morning, they were finished.

Orin stood at the intake valve, his hand on the lever that would open it. The others gathered around him, their faces lit by the pale glow of the moon, their eyes full of hope and fear and the unbearable tension of a moment that had been sixty years in the making.

"This is it," he said. "Once I open this valve, there's no going back. The water will flow. The government will know. And we'll have to deal with whatever comes next."

"Open it," Clara said.

Orin turned the lever.

For a moment, nothing happened. The pipe groaned softly, a sound like an animal stirring in its sleep. Then there was a gurgle, low and liquid, and the sound of water moving through the pipe, and then a rush, a steady flow, two gallons a minute pouring out of the spring and into the pipeline, running downhill by gravity toward the holding tank and the distribution lines and the houses on the eastern edge of the reservation.

The water was flowing.

Someone cheered. Someone else laughed, a sound of pure, unfiltered joy. Clara stood very still, her face wet with tears, her hands clasped in front of her like a prayer. Tom smiled, a real smile this time, his silent face transformed by something that looked almost like peace.

Orin stood at the spring and listened to the water running through the pipe, and he thought about Margaret and the yellow dress and the creek that had been dry for seven years. She would have been proud of him. He knew that now. She would have been proud.

They walked down the drainage together, following the pipeline toward the reservation boundary. The holding tank was filling, the water rising slowly in the steel cistern. The distribution lines were charged, water flowing through the smaller pipes toward the houses beyond. In another hour, the first Tulsani families would wake to find clean water running from their taps for the first time in living memory.

But the night was not over yet.

As they reached the juniper stand, Orin saw headlights on the road below. Not BLM vehicles. Not the ranger. A single sedan, old and battered, driving fast up the dirt track toward the canyon.

The sedan screeched to a halt at the boundary line, and the door flew open, and Jace Chino climbed out.

He was walking with a limp, a crutch under one arm, but he was walking, and his face was wild with something that was not joy. He saw Orin and stumbled toward him, his breath ragged, his voice cracking.

"It's my grandmother," he said. "She collapsed this evening. The clinic says it's her kidneys. They don't think she'll make it through the night."

Orin looked at the pipeline, at the water flowing through it, at the distribution lines that ran toward the houses on the eastern edge of the reservation. Alice Chino's house was on the eastern edge. Her house was one of the first on the line.

"Is the water connected to her house?" he asked.

Clara stepped forward. "Her house is connected. One of the first ones we did. But if the distribution line isn't charged yet—"

"It's charged," Elias said. "The holding tank is filling. Water's flowing to all the houses on the eastern line."

Orin turned to Jace. "Go home. Turn on the tap. Let your grandmother see the water before she dies."

Jace stared at him, his eyes wide and wet. Then he turned and limped back to the sedan and drove away into the darkness, the taillights bouncing over the rough road toward the reservation.

Orin stood in the moonlight and watched him go. The water was flowing. Alice Chino would see it, or she would not. That was out of his hands now. All that remained was to face what the morning would bring.

The first light of dawn was beginning to seep over the mountains, pale and gray and tentative. Somewhere down the drainage, the BLM crew was already mobilizing, preparing to tear up the pipeline and arrest anyone who stood in their way. And somewhere on the reservation, an old woman was dying in a house that had finally, after all these years, been given what it had been promised.

Orin sat down on a rock beside the holding tank and waited for the sun to rise.