No one wanted to be caught on the road when the storm hit. Including Max. “You ready?” he asked April.

“Yes,” she said. “Go ahead. I’m right behind you.”

Max put on his coat. The wind was beginning to fill with snow. Visibility would soon go to near zero.

“Hey,” he said, “how about if I stop and get a pizza?”

“Sure. I’ll see you back at the motel.”

Max nodded and hurried out the door. The wind almost took it out of his hands.

He walked to the gate and was greeted by Andrea Hawk, one of the security guards. She was also a radio entertainer of some sort in Devil’s Lake, Max recalled, and she was extremely attractive. “Good night, Mr. Collingwood,” Andrea said. “Be careful. The road is treacherous.”

“How about you?” he asked. “When are you leaving?”

“We’ll stay here tonight, or until our relief comes. Whichever.”

Max frowned. “You sure?”

“Sure,” she said. “We’re safer than you.”

Whiteouts are windstorms, gales roaring across the plains at fifty miles an hour, loaded with dry snow. The snow may accompany the storm, or it might just be lying around on the ground. It doesn’t much matter. Anyone trying to drive will see little more than windshield wipers.

April resented the delay caused by the storm. She seldom thought about anything now other than the Roundhouse. She was desperate to know what was inside and who the builders were, and she spent much of her time watching the laborious effort to clear the channel.

The day she’d seen Tom Lasker’s boat, she had begun a journal. Chiding herself for an attack of arrogance, she had nevertheless concluded that she was embarked on events of historic significance and that a detailed record would be of interest. During the first few days she’d satisfied herself with accounts of procedures and results. After Max had found Johnson’s Ridge, she’d begun to speculate. And after she had closed the operation down for the winter, she had realized that she would eventually write a memoir. Consequently, she’d begun describing her emotional reactions.

The stag’s head intrigued her. It seemed so much a human creation that it caused her to doubt her results. Somehow, everything she had come to believe seemed mad in the face of that single, simple design. She had spent much of the afternoon trying to formulate precisely how she felt and then trying to get the journal entry right. Important not to sound like a nut.

She put it in a desk drawer and listened to the wind. Time to go. She signed off the computer, and headed out into the storm. She was about ten minutes behind Max.

At the entrance, John Little Ghost forced the gate open against the wind and suggested that maybe she should stay the night. “Going to be dangerous on the road!” he said, throwing each word toward her to get over the storm.

“I’ll be careful,” April said.

She was grateful to get to her car, where she caught her breath and turned the ignition. The engine started. There was an accumulation of snow on the rear window. She got her brush out of the trunk and cleared that off, and then waited until she had enough heat to keep the snow off the glass. Then she inched out of the lot and turned toward the opening in the trees that concealed the access road. She drove through a landscape in motion. The storm roared around her.

Maybe Little Ghost had been right.

She turned left, toward the western exit. It was a long run across the top of the escarpment, several hundred yards during which she was exposed to the full bite of the storm. But she kept the wheel straight and opened the driver’s door so she could see the ruts other cars had made. The wind died when she arrived finally among a screen of elms and box elders.

She passed an abandoned Toyota and started down.

Snow piles up quickly in a sheltered section, and one has to maintain speed to avoid getting stuck. It obliterates markers and roadsides and hides ditches. To make matters worse, this was the second road, just opened by police, and April wasn’t used to it.

She struggled to keep moving. She slid down sharp descents and fought her way around curves. She gunned the engine through deep snow, but finally lost control and slid sidewise into a snowbank. She tried to back out, but the car only rocked and sank deeper.

Damn.

She buttoned her coat, opened the door cautiously against the wind, and put one foot out. She sank to her knee. Some of the snow slid down inside her boot.

An hour and a quarter later, scared and half frozen, she showed up at the security station. “Thank God for the fence,” she told her startled hosts, “or I’d never have found you.”

Andrea Hawk was a talk show host on KPLI-FM in Devil’s Lake. She’d worked her way through a series of reservation jobs, usually exploiting her considerable Indian-maiden charm to sell baskets, moccasins, and canoe paddles to well-heeled tourists. She’d done a year with the reservation police before discovering her onair talents, which had begun with a series of public-service pleas to kids about drugs and crime. She was still selling automobiles, deodorants, CDs, and a host of other products to her dewy-eyed audience. Along the shores of Devil’s Lake, everybody loved the Snowhawk.

She was twenty-six years old and hoping for a chance to move up. Two years ago a Minneapolis producer had been in the area, heard her show, and made overtures. She’d gone to the Twin Cities thinking she had a job, but the producer drove his car into a tractor-trailer, and his replacement, a vindictive middle-aged woman with the eyes of a cobra, did not honor the agreement.

Andrea was planning to do several of her shows on the scene from Johnson’s Ridge. It was clear to her that she was sitting on a big story, and she planned to make the most of it. She’d got Adam’s permission, worked out her schedule so that it would not conflict with her air time, and stocked the security module with equipment.

It was cold inside, despite the electric heater. The modular buildings were well insulated, but they weren’t designed to withstand winter conditions atop a North Dakota escarpment. The wind blew right through the building. Andrea sank down inside her heavy woolen sweater, wishing for a fireplace.

She wondered whether she’d be able to keep her teeth from rattling when she went on at nine o’clock via her remote hookup. As was her habit, she had begun making notes on subjects she wanted to talk about during the broadcast, and she was reviewing these when April stumbled in.

Little Ghost caught her and lowered her into a chair. “Hello,” she said with an embarrassed smile. And then she recognized her old friend. “Andrea,” she said, “is that really you?”

“Hi,” said the Snowhawk.

When April woke, the windows were dark, and the air was filled with the sweet aroma of potatoes and roast beef. A bank of monitors flickered in a corner of the room. “How are you feeling?” asked Andrea.

“Okay.” April pushed the toes of one foot against the other ankle. Someone had put heavy socks on her feet. “What are you doing here?” She vaguely remembered having asked the question before but couldn’t recall the answer.

Andrea pulled her chair forward so April could see her without having to sit up. “Security,” she said. “It pays well.”

“Why didn’t you come see me?”

“I would have, eventually. I wasn’t sure it was appropriate.” She felt April’s forehead. “I think you’re okay,” she said. “What were you doing out there?”

“Waited too long to leave.”

Andrea nodded. “How about something to eat? We only have TV dinners, but they’re decent.”

April decided on meatloaf, and Andrea put one in the microwave. “Max called,” she said. “We told him you were here.”

There was a coziness in the hut that warmed April. Little Ghost didn’t talk much, but he was a good listener, which is a faculty guaranteed to make people popular. He stayed close to the monitors, although they showed little more than dancing blobs of light and curving shadows. They talked, and April saw that Andrea was fascinated by the Roundhouse.