After midnight, as they stopped once again to move rocks from the road, Shan thought he heard something. A metallic rattle, a machine noise, coming from far ahead of them. He heard only a snippet of sound, then it was gone, so quickly he wasn't sure he had heard it at all. Sound traveled unpredictably in the high, rarified atmosphere. It could have been a truck on the lonely road ahead of them. It could have been a helicopter behind them. It could have been a plane in the far distance. No one spoke about the noise, but when they finished Jowa checked the two empty barrels with his hand lantern and insisted that Gendun switch places with Lokesh. If he slammed the brakes hard three times, it was the signal for Gendun and Shan to hide.

But when the need arose there was no time for a signal. Shan woke from a deep slumber as the truck lurched to a stop, then heard Jowa calling out in anger to someone on the road.

He quickly helped Gendun into one of the barrels and covered it, then peered over the top of the truck cab as Jowa switched on their headlights. Half a dozen men stood by a heavy red truck, the size of their own, though much newer. The engine hood of the truck was braced open, and strewn across the road were a spare tire and metallic objects that could have been engine parts.

They were not Public Security, Shan saw with relief, nor the army. He could see Jowa speaking with one of the men, a big, broad-shouldered Han Chinese wearing a white shirt. Jowa was pointing at the red truck and at the road, which was blocked by the tire and parts.

Two of the men, in light brown shirts and pants of matching color, bent over the tire in the road, glancing frequently toward the man in the white shirt. Another stood with a foot on the bumper of the red truck, watching the sky. And a pair stood just behind the man who spoke with Jowa. They were all Han, and though they did not carry themselves as stiffly as soldiers, they had the quick, hunting eyes of soldiers. Shan looked back at the truck. An emblem was on the driver's door, what appeared in the dim light to be two outstretched arms, joined at the top.

Shan silently climbed down in the shadows and inched his way along the far side of their own truck, out of the strangers' view, until he reached the passenger door, where he ventured another look over the hood. What was it, he thought, what was so peculiar about these men? They were well dressed. They all wore the same trim brown clothing, except for the white-shirted man speaking with Jowa. They had no visible weapons, but three had large wrenches extending out of their pockets, and one held a ball-peen hammer. Two had heavy wooden sticks like truncheons hanging from their belts. Inside the cab of the truck he saw a figure in the passenger seat, the face lost in the night. A bright orange ember moved to and from the face. A plume of smoke rose from the window. Shan looked back at the man who watched the sky. The demon had been called away by lightning, the woman had said. Demons used lightning to speak with each other.

They needed a few more minutes to complete repairs, Shan heard the white-shirted man explain to Jowa. But no one seemed to be working on the engine. The man asked where Jowa was heading. North, was Jowa's reply, north to sell salt. The two men behind the speaker began to move away, distancing themselves from Jowa as though wary of his reach, then circling about, toward the Tibetans' truck.

"Can we help you?" Jowa asked loudly, watching the two men as they approached his open door.

"Nothing up north," the stranger in the white shirt observed in an accusing tone, still the only one of his company to speak. "Nothing but bandits."

Lokesh climbed out of the truck and stepped to Jowa's side. The man in the white shirt stared at him intently, surveying him from head to toe.

Shan realized he could be mistaken. Public Security didn't always wear uniforms. But Public Security carried submachine guns, not wrenches.

"You a bandit, old man?" the big-shouldered Han asked with a lightless grin. His deep voice echoed off the rockface. "Where you going, sneaking about like this in the middle of the night?"

"Salt," Lokesh replied in a dry, croaking voice, and Shan saw him do something he had often seen him do in prison. He began shaking his head, and then his arm, as if he could not control it, as if he suffered from a disease of the aged. "Good Tibetan salt. Going as far as it takes to sell our salt," Lokesh said. Still shaking, he stepped toward the man, who retreated a step as if scared of him. "You should buy it so we can turn around and go home. This old truck hurts my bones," Lokesh groaned. "I want to go home."

The Han walked a complete circle around Lokesh, studying him again, then gave a shallow laugh. "Takes papers to sell things, old man. Bet you don't have papers. That's why you travel at night."

Shan's mind raced. If the strangers were bandits, what did the Tibetans have of value that might appease them? An old pair of binoculars. A week's supply of food. Perhaps the truck itself, and its barrels of salt. He had a nightmarish vision of the strangers driving away with Gendun still in his barrel.

The two men continued to circle the truck, aiming hand lanterns into the cargo bay. The man in white glanced back at the cab of his truck, toward the glowing cigarette that hung in the shadow.

Suddenly Shan was in the beams of the two brilliant lanterns held behind him. He stood like a dumb animal trapped by the light and let himself be led, one man pulling each elbow, to the man in the white shirt.

The man circled Shan as he had Lokesh, then stood in front of him, disappointment obvious on his face. He leaned close to Shan's ear. "Don't turn your back on the damned locusts," he said in a low voice. "They'll hit you with a stone and call it an avalanche." Locusts. The term was an epithet used by the Chinese for Tibetans, for the sound they made when chanting their mantras. The man looked back with a broad smile, apparently pleased with his suggestion, then stood in front of the three men.

"Don't think we can let you go north tonight," he announced. The men who had pretended to work on the tire rose, as if the words were a cue.

Shan glanced at Jowa, whose body was tightening like a coiled spring.

Shan put his hands in his pockets and shuffled forward, standing in front of Jowa. "You'll have to," he said in a good-natured tone.

The man in the white shirt seemed amused by Shan's announcement. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. "Why so, comrade?" He turned his body sideways, as if to make sure Shan saw the men assembled behind him.

"Because the People's Liberation Army is chasing us," Shan said matter-of-factly.

The man's smile broadened. "The three of you and an antique truck," he said with a skeptical air.

"You know the army," Shan shot back. "Sometimes they just do it for practice."

As Shan returned the man's steady gaze his smile began to fade. He nodded at one of the men beside him, who bolted toward the truck, disappearing into the shadows by the passenger's door. He surveyed Shan, Lokesh, and Jowa once more, as if being sure he could remember their faces, then looked at the cab a moment and snapped his fingers.

His men leapt into action. In less than a minute the road was cleared.

"Be careful, comrades," the man warned in an icy voice. "Bandits are around every corner."

Jowa stepped toward the cab with a sideways motion, his eyes jumping from man to man. Shan pulled Lokesh back to the truck, and seconds later they were in the cab and driving away.