After twenty minutes of cautious driving, they reached a barbed-wire fence and a shattered gate. “We have to walk from here,” Antonio said, and everyone got out of the truck. Carrying the food bags, they slipped through a hole in the gate and headed down the road.

Gabriel could see one of Antonio’s windmills in the distance. The heat rising from the dirt made the tower waver and bend. Before he could react, a snake slithered across the road. It was about three feet long with a rounded head, a black body with cream-colored bands. Maya stopped and touched her sword case.

“It’s not poisonous,” Gabriel said. “I think it’s a garter snake or gopher snake. They’re usually pretty shy.”

“It’s a king snake,” Antonio told them. “And they’re not shy around here.”

They kept walking and saw another king snake moving through the dirt, then a third one sunning itself on the road. All the snakes had black bodies, but the pattern and color of their bands seemed to vary. White. Cream. Pale yellow.

More snakes appeared on the road and Gabriel stopped counting. Dozens of reptiles coiled and slithered and looked around with their little black eyes. Maya appeared nervous-almost frightened.

“You don’t like snakes?”

She lowered her arms and tried to relax. “You don’t see many in England.”

As they got closer to the windmill, Gabriel saw that it had been built next to a rectangular concrete area about the size of a football field. It looked like an enormous machine-gun bunker abandoned by the army. Directly south of the concrete area was a small aluminum trailer that reflected the desert light. A parachute had been set up as a sunscreen over a wooden picnic table and plastic boxes filled with tools and supplies.

The Pathfinder was kneeling near the base of the windmill, welding a reinforcement strut. He wore blue jeans, a long-sleeved checkered shirt, and thick leather gloves. A welder’s helmet covered his face and he appeared to be concentrating on the flame as he fused two pieces of metal.

A four-foot-long king snake slithered by, almost grazing the tip of Gabriel’s boots. He could see that the sand on both sides of the road was marked with thousands of faint S curves, a sign of reptile movements across the dry land.

Thirty feet from the tower, Antonio shouted and waved his arms. The Pathfinder heard him, stood up, and raised the welder’s helmet. At first Gabriel assumed that the Pathfinder was an old man with white hair. As they got closer he realized that they were about to meet a woman who was more than seventy years old. She had a broad forehead and a straight nose. It was a face of great strength without an ounce of sentimentality.

“Good morning, Antonio. You brought some friends this time.”

“Dr. Briggs, this is Gabriel Corrigan. He’s the son of a Traveler and wants to know if-”

“Yes. Of course. Welcome.” The doctor had a brisk New England accent. She pulled off one of the welder’s gloves and shook Gabriel’s hand. “I’m Sophia Briggs.” Her fingers were strong and her blue-green eyes were intense, critical. Gabriel felt like he was being evaluated and then she turned away from him. “And you are…”

“Maya. Gabriel’s friend.”

Dr. Briggs noticed the black metal case hanging from Maya’s shoulder and understood what it contained. “How interesting. I thought all you Harlequins were dead, slaughtered after various self-destructive gestures. Perhaps you’re too young for this business.”

“And maybe you’re too old.”

“There’s some spirit. A little resistance. I like that.” Sophia returned to her trailer and tossed the welder’s gear into a plastic milk crate lying on the ground. Startled by the noise, two large king snakes came out of the shadow beneath the trailer and slithered over to the windmill.

“Welcome to the land of Lampropeltis getula, the common king snake. Of course, there’s nothing common about them. They’re brave, clever, perfectly lovely reptiles-another one of God’s gifts to a fallen world. What you’re seeing is subspecies splendida, the Arizona desert king snake. They eat copperheads and rattlesnakes as well as frogs, birds, and rats. They just love to kill rats. Especially large, nasty ones.”

“Dr. Briggs studies snakes,” Antonio said.

“I’m a biologist specializing in reptiles. I taught for twenty-eight years at the University of New Hampshire until they forced me out. You should have seen President Mitchell, a silly little man who can barely walk upstairs without huffing and puffing, telling me that I was too frail for the classroom. What nonsense. A few weeks after the retirement dinner, I started getting messages from my Internet friends that the Tabula had discovered I was a Pathfinder.”

Antonio dropped his canvas food bag on the table. “But she wouldn’t leave.”

“And why should I? I’m no coward. I own three firearms and know how to use them. Then Antonio and Martin found out about this site and lured me here. You two are clever schoolboys.”

“We knew you couldn’t resist,” Antonio said.

“You’re right about that. Fifty years ago the government wasted millions of dollars building this ridiculous missile site.” Sophia moved past the trailer and pointed at the site. Gabriel saw three enormous concrete disks set in rusty steel frames. “Right over there are the silo lids. They could be opened and shut from the inside. That was where they stored the missiles.”

She turned on her heel and pointed to a mound of dirt about half a mile away. “After the missiles were pulled out, the county turned that area over there into a dump. Beneath nine inches of dirt and a plastic tarp is twenty years of rotting garbage that sustains an enormous population of rats. The rats eat the garbage and multiply. The king snakes eat the rats, then live and breed in the silo. I study splendida and it’s been quite successful, so far.”

“So what are we going to do?” Gabriel asked.

“Have lunch, of course. Better eat this bread before it goes stale.”

Sophia gave them all jobs and they prepared a meal with the perishable food. Maya was in charge of slicing a loaf of bread and she seemed annoyed with the dull knife. Lunch was simple, but delicious. Fresh tomatoes mixed with oil and vinegar. A very rich goat cheese cut into chunks. Rye bread. Strawberries. For dessert, Sophia took out a bar of Belgian chocolate and gave everyone exactly two squares.

Snakes were everywhere. If they got in the way, Sophia picked them up firmly and carried them over to a moist patch of ground near the shed. Maya sat yoga style at the table as if one of the reptiles might slither up her leg. During the meal, Gabriel learned a few more facts about Sophia Briggs. No children. Never married. She had consented to hip surgery a few years ago but-other than that-she tried to stay away from doctors.

In her forties, Sophia began to make annual trips up to the Narcisse Snake Dens in Manitoba to study the fifty thousand red-sided garter snakes that emerged from limestone caves during their annual breeding cycle. She became close friends with a Catholic priest living in the area and, after many years, he revealed that he was a Pathfinder.

“Father Morrissey was an amazing man,” she said. “Like most priests, he presided over thousands of christenings, weddings, and funerals, but he had actually learned something from the experience. He was a perceptive person. Very wise. Sometimes I felt he could read my mind.”

“So why did he pick you?” Gabriel asked.

Sophia smeared the soft goat cheese on a piece of bread. “My people skills aren’t the best in the world. In fact, I don’t like people all that much. They’re vain and foolish. But I’ve trained myself to be observant. I can focus on one thing and get rid of the extraneous details. Maybe Father Morrissey could have found someone better, but he got lymphatic cancer and died seventeen weeks after the diagnosis. I took a semester off and sat by the hospital bed while he gave me his knowledge.”