Kelly wore Wrangler jeans, scuffed Durango saddle boots, and a turquoise short-sleeve plaid shirt. In keeping with her no-nonsense style, Kelly wore no jewelry other than a fairly ornate silver belt buckle.

"How long've you been a rider?" she asked.

"Since I was old enough to walk."

She grinned. "Me, too."

They stared at each other's face for a while, smiling.

Joshua was so caught up in the moment, he asked, "Would you like to go for a ride somewhere tomorrow after church?"

Kelly laughed, and said, "Whoa there, cowboy. Could we get past some preliminaries first, like your family name, and the church you attend and such?"

Over lunch, they plunged into a wide-ranging two-hour conversation. As the picnic gathering broke up, they scheduled a horseback ride at Buffalo Jump State Park, ten miles south of Great Falls.

At just before two the next afternoon, Kelly Monroe pulled her pickup and trailer into the dusty extension lot at the park, beyond the pavement. There were seven pickups with horse trailers there. She could see that Joshua already had his horse saddled and waiting.

She said simply, "Hi!" and stepped out of the cab. Joshua led his horse over to the front of Kelly's horse trailer, and fastened his mare's reins to a tie-down.

"I'd like you to meet Shirley Temple," he said.

Kelly approached the big chesnut mare and exclaimed, "Oh, she's a beauty. The waves in her coat are just amazing."

"And that's just her summer coat. You ought to see her in the winter. It has little ringlets."

Kelly walked around and sized up the mare. She said simply, "Wow." Then she added, "Her eyes have a strange look to them. Kinda sleepy-looking."

"Yeah, that's a trait of American Bashkirs. Slanty eyes. Just like us Nipponese."

They both laughed.

Kelly asked, "How much of the Russian blood does she have?"

Joshua shook his head and said, "Oh, now I must warn you that you're veering off into myth, legend, and Breed a.s.sociation marketing hype. Truth be told, and after all the genetic tests were run, the American Bashkir Curlies were proven not related at all to the original Russian Bashkirs. They just both happen to have the same genetic abnormality that produces a curly coat. Near as I can figure, the real root stock of the American Bashkir is just a Morgan Horse having a bad hair day. But of course that reality doesn't stop the breeders from playing up the Russian angle." Joshua chuckled. "Ready to unload?"

After so many years of practice, it took just a minute for Kelly to unload her gelding, Fritz. Tacking him up was also remarkably quick, as she worked with practiced precision. Joshua was impressed by the way Kelly had set up the inside of the front door of her horse trailer with a peg board with hooks for hoof care tools and grooming supplies, two leads, a quirt, and two sets of hobbles. The items were all in neat rows and bundled with rubber bands. After b.u.t.toning up the back of the trailer, Kelly said, "Okay, let's roll."

They mounted their horses and started off at a loose-reined walk. Since it was a hot afternoon, they never advanced the gait beyond a trot. And, as they both desired anyway, a walking pace was more conducive to conversation. They stopped frequently to drink, to check hooves, and to let the horses rest.

Kelly's horse was a seal brown, a deep brown with lighter points-what was sometimes called a "copper-nosed" brown. Fritz was just half a hand taller than Shirley. Shirley's height was considered atypical of American Bashkirs, since the mares were rarely more than fourteen hands tall.

A couple of times the horses were startled by darting ground squirrels which were present in large numbers at the park. Kelly commented, "It's a good thing my dog isn't here. She'd be going crazy."

They rode all of the trails that were open to horses that afternoon, ranging around three sides of the dramatic jump cliff at the 1,400-acre park, staying until just before the park closed at 6 p.m. They watered their horses before loading them back into their respective trailers.

Part of how Joshua and Kelly apprized each other was through horsemanship. Both of them were favorably impressed. Kelly took particular note of Joshua's quiet humility. He wasn't a braggart or a show-off. Kelly liked that. She also thought that he had a remarkable vocabulary for someone without a college degree. Joshua felt himself drawn to Kelly like no woman he had ever met before. He felt blessed to have found a young woman who was a fellow Christian, and with whom he had so many things in common. And seeing Kelly astride her horse, handling him so expertly, greatly impressed Joshua.

Joshua's next short duty day was the following Friday. It was Kelly who had suggested a rendezvous. As well-educated Christians, they both disliked the word "dating," since both properly saw their meetings as courting for marriage. As Kelly put it, "I never get beyond the 'howdy-dos' unless I think a man is fit for marriage."

They met for dinner at Jaker's steak house. The attire there was casual, so both Joshua and Kelly dressed up only to the extent of wearing freshly laundered jeans and nicer shirts.

Two items of clothing never seemed to change, regardless of Kelly's wardrobe: a brown and black horsehair western belt from Deer Lodge, and her embroidered brown suede horse logo baseball cap. Whenever she wasn't wearing the baseball cap, she habitually carried it clipped on a mini-carabiner on a belt loop-the same carabiner where she carried her key ring. She refused to carry a purse.

When Joshua noticed that Kelly wore no makeup, his estimation of her went up immensely. Here at last was an honest-to-goodness rancher's daughter with no pretensions, even when out on the town for a dinner and talking about marriage. There was something about Kelly that Joshua couldn't pin down. It was something beyond her smile and her figure. It was also something beyond the common ground that they found in their faith in Christ. Joshua couldn't say just what it was, but she definitely had it. And whatever it was, Joshua was thoroughly smitten.

They nibbled on salad while waiting for their steaks. Kelly filled Joshua in about her family's history: Her father, Jim Monroe, had been raised on a cattle ranch a few miles south of the whistle-stop town of Raynesford, which was fifteen miles southeast of Great Falls. The "town" consisted of just a post office, a church, and a few houses. The eighty-acre ranch straddled Big Otter Creek. It had thirty-seven acres of hayfields. It also included an adjoining 320-acre seasonal grazing permit in the Lewis and Clark National Forest. The grazing permit land stretched up toward Peterson Mountain. This was a ten-year renewable lease. The Monroe family fenced the leased land just like their deeded acres. From a practical standpoint, the only difference was that they couldn't stop anyone from using the 320 acres of Forest Service land for hunting, and they couldn't build any structures on it.

As the second-born son, Jim was not in line to inherit the ranch, so he enlisted in the Army. But while he was off on active duty, his elder brother botched running the ranch-incurring too many debts and mismanaging the livestock, which cost the lives of five calves.

When Jim was released from active duty, his brother declared, "I'm just not cut out for raising cattle. I want to go into sales. What do you say I sign the ranch and livestock over to you, in exchange for an informal note for $100,000, with payments only in the years that you turn a profit, plus hunting on the ranch for life, plus all the beef I need for my family for life?"

The deal was sealed with a handshake, and no papers were signed except for the quit claim deed on the ranch. The ranch was paid off in 2007. Kelly's uncle, who lived in Rapid City, still came each November for elk season and to collect an aged side of beef.

Kelly asked, "What about your family?"

Joshua began, "My great-grandfather Watanabe immigrated from eastern j.a.pan to Hawaii in 1890. He was a farmer. In 1927 he moved to eastern Washington, in what is now called the Tri-Cities area, near Kennewick. My grandparents and great-grandparents were spared the ignominy of being placed in an internment camp during the Second World War. Only j.a.panese families who lived in the Coastal Exclusion Zone were required to relocate."

Kelly nodded, and Joshua went on. "There was a great irony in this, though, since the family farm was just twenty miles east of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where plutonium was produced as part of the Manhattan Project. But very few people knew that the plutonium used in making the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki came from the Hanford site. Most of the locals didn't find out about that until the 1950s."

He laughed, and continued, "So now, seven decades later, I'm entrusted with the maintenance on MIRVed strategic nuclear missiles that are capable of wiping out millions of people in a matter of minutes. And for all I know, those warheads include plutonium that was originally processed just twenty miles from where I grew up."

Kelly nodded again, and said, "That's doubly ironic."

"It also shows you that we are living in the greatest nation on earth. In almost every other country, immigrants get treated like dirt. Here in America, any citizen who is willing to learn English, study, and work hard can be successful."

Kelly smiled and nodded. Then she asked, "Tell me about how you got Shirley."

Joshua leaned back in his booth seat and said, "On my first leave after getting rea.s.signed to Malmstrom-that was right after I got promoted to E-4-I told my folks how bored I was and how I missed being in the saddle. I basically begged my dad to lend me one of his Bashkir Curlies. He breeds them, you know. He said he wouldn't lend me one, but he would give me one-his 'problem child,' Shirley. Originally, he wanted to keep her as a brood mare, but she didn't get along well with the other horses, even for that. She's a biter, at least in a pasture with other mares. So my dad gave me both Shirley and his old two-horse trailer. He helped me wire the trailer lights to my pickup, and off we went. I had to board her at a stable near Belt for the first few months. Then I found the rental house out by Fife. That, of course, required permission."

Kelly c.o.c.ked her head. "Permission?"

"Let me explain a recent change of policy. Traditionally, once you became an E-3 with three years of service, you could live off-base. But last year, as a cost reduction measure, anyone who was unmarried that was E-4 or below was required to live in on-base dormitories. Under the new policy, you can't live off-base until you become a staff sergeant. That's an E-5. So I guess I'm the 'exceptional exception,' because of Shirley. But I had to get permission from my squadron commander. He was willing to approve it, after my NCOIC vouched that I had, quote, 'exceptional maturity and potential for commissioning.'"

Their steaks and baked potatoes arrived and they dug in. Kelly was pleased to see that Joshua asked only for a gla.s.s of iced tea with his dinner. Their conversation shifted to religion and they spent a half hour discussing Christian doctrine. They were in full agreement on Calvinist principles except for the issue of election. Kelly believed in election, but Joshua held to free will.

"Someday, let's do a Bible study," Kelly suggested. "We'll take a concordance and go through each instance where the words 'chosen,' 'predestined,' and 'elect' are used. There are a lot of them, believe me. After that, I'm confident that you'll come around to my way of thinking."

Joshua countered, "So when I was twelve years old and I recognized that Christ is the Son of G.o.d and I asked for forgiveness of my sins, that wasn't my choice?"

"No, I believe that what we have is the illusion of free will. We were chosen unto salvation by G.o.d before the foundations of the earth. How can G.o.d be truly all powerful and all knowing if he couldn't see into the future who would 'choose' to be saved, and ordain it? Yes, it is mysterious, but if G.o.d truly is Sovereign then there is only one explanation. G.o.d's predestination of the Elect is a mystery that we need to accept without fully understanding in this mortal life."

Joshua grinned. "You are a woman of powerful conviction." After a moment he added, choosing his words carefully, "We may have a minor difference on election, but when it comes to the other aspects of G.o.d's guiding hand, I believe that nothing happens by chance. I want to make it clear that I am courting you for marriage. I don't believe in flirtations or trifling relationships. I wouldn't be sitting across from you right now unless I thought that you were someone worthy of marriage. And we wouldn't be having this conversation if it wasn't G.o.d's will. Nothing happens by chance."

Kelly threw in, "My point, exactly."

Joshua's first visit to the Monroe ranch came a week later. The ranch house had been built in the 1970s, following a chimney fire that had destroyed the original homestead cabin. The house was utilitarian, furnished with indestructible brown Naugahyde chairs and couches. Kelly had grown up hearing a standing joke about "those poor, defenseless Naugas that gave their lives for our furniture."

The living room and family room were lightly decorated with a few Charles M. Russell western prints that seemed almost obligatory anywhere within a 100-mile radius of Great Falls. The walls of the living room and family room were lined with mounted trophies and antlers from more than a dozen mule deer, elk, and antelope. There was also a black bear skin and two bobcat hides.

Kelly was the Monroes' only child. Her mother, Rhonda, was lean and energetic, and a great cook. Her health, ranching background, and her temperament made her well prepared for hard times. Jim Monroe's only active preparation, early in the Crunch, had been acquiring a four-year-old Guernsey milk cow that had always been hand-milked. He got the cow in trade for six 1,200-pound steers that were eighteen months old. Jim had grown up hearing his father and grandfather talk about the Great Depression. So getting a reliable milk cow seemed a logical thing to do. Rhonda had stocked up on canned goods, bulk rice, and beans as best she could as the buying power of their savings evaporated.

As the Crunch set in, the Monroes had sixty-eight Charolais and Charolais-Hereford cross cattle. The ranch had at one time carried more than 100 head, but Jim had scaled back, in part to discourage the advance of noxious weeds-since more intensive grazing encouraged weeds to gain ground-and in part because Jim had a bad back and could no longer tolerate the extra hours working outdoors to manage a large herd.

They also had four saddle horses, including Kelly's gelding, Fritz. Rhonda Monroe owned a Paint mare named Beverly. The horse was named after the western artist Bev Doolittle, whose paintings often featured Paint horses. The master bedroom in the house was decorated with four serialized Bev Doolittle prints, all depicting Paint horses.

As Kelly showed Joshua around the ranch, the only thing that seemed out of the ordinary was a Unimog truck. Kelly mentioned that her father had become fascinated by Unimogs when he was stationed in Germany. In 1995, he bought one from Cold War Remarketing, a military vehicle dealer in Englewood, Colorado. This Unimog had originally been a radio vehicle for the West German Bundeswehr. Jim Monroe used the "Mog" as a snowplow in the winter (with chains on all four wheels), and as a mobile hunting cabin each fall. He had equipped it with a tiny woodstove that had originally been designed for use in hunting guide wall tents.

That day they took a long horseback ride from the ranch to the ghost town of Hughesville. The town had been abandoned in 1943, but its heyday was in the 1890s, so most of the buildings were very old. Many of them were collapsed or semi-collapsed and not safe to enter. It was the first time that Joshua had been there-and in fact the first time he had been in any ghost town-but Kelly had been there many times. She showed him some interesting buildings that most tourists overlooked. One of them was a cabin that was up in a side canyon. When they walked in the door, Joshua was surprised to see that there were still some rusty pans on the stove and chairs under the table. This cabin was the highlight of the town for Joshua, because its contents were so intact. There were even a few McCall's, National Geographic, and Sat.u.r.day Evening Post magazines from the 1930s and early 1940s on a shelf. Their edges had been ravaged by packrats and mice, but the magazines were still largely intact and legible. They left the cabin just as they had found it, carefully wedging the door shut with a twig to keep the weather out.

It was while they were riding home from Hughesville that Joshua first proposed marriage. Kelly rebuffed him, but Joshua was persistent and optimistic. He was falling deeply in love with Kelly, and he hoped that she felt the same. It was the pragmatist in her that triggered her first refusal.

11.

s.p.a.ce Rifles.

"The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction."

-Henry St. George Tucker, in Blackstone's 1768 Commentaries on the Laws of England.

West Branch, Iowa.

November, the First Year.

As they entered the outskirts of West Branch, Iowa, it was dawn. They had walked slowly all night. Ken began to ask people they met if they knew of anyone looking for someone to hire for security for farms or ranches. Most seemed wary.

As they walked down 280th Street and reached Downey Street, they hailed a young man riding on a bicycle. He stopped and identified himself as a member of the Society of Friends church. In answer to Terry's queries, he said that he indeed knew of someone who was looking for "security" for a farm. He pulled a sc.r.a.p of paper from his wallet, and wrote on it: "D. Perkins Farm, North Charles Avenue. 2 mi. north of Main."

The young man gave them directions to the farm. This required several hundred yards of backtracking. Before riding off, the man said, "I'll let them know that you're coming."

The farmhouse sat just twenty yards back from Charles Avenue. It was far enough out of West Branch that it definitely didn't feel "in town." The farmhouses were fairly widely distanced apart, depending on the acreage. Most the farms appeared to be 80 to 160 acres. Many of the farms used traditional windmills. As with the other windmills that the Laytons had seen traversing the plains, their tails were painted with names like Aermotor, Woodmanse, Monitor, and Challenge. Terry mentioned that seeing windmill water pumps in operation was a good sign of self-sufficiency.

Ken sized up the farm as they approached it. It was 120 acres, mostly planted in corn and soybeans, now harvested. There was a large hay barn, grain storage silos, a cattle loafing shed, an Aermotor windmill, a water tower, and a dairy parlor with a low roof. There were about twenty brown cows in the pen adjoining the shed. Ken didn't recognize the breed but he could see that there were several cow-calf pairs.

The white two-story house looked like it had been built in the 1930s or 1940s. The front porch sagged a bit, but otherwise it looked well maintained and recently painted.

There were both propane and home heating oil tanks on the south side of the house. The modern touches included a DISH TV satellite dish and a CB radio antenna.

An open-sided four-bay tractor shed sat to the east of the house. In addition to a Ford tractor and its implements, the tractor shed also housed a late-model Toyota Tacoma pickup, an older Toyota Corolla sedan, and a muddy ATV. Beyond were some a.s.sorted outbuildings, two small Butler brand galvanized steel grain silos, and one forty-foot silo that looked fairly new. They later learned that the silo was more than twenty-five years old, but it was still shiny because it was constructed mostly of stainless steel.

There was a pitifully small kitchen garden plot-now heaped with foot-deep straw mulch for winter-with a five-foot-tall fence that looked incapable of keeping out deer.

Ken and Terry reslung their rifles muzzle down so that they would look less hostile as they approached the house. Ken rapped on the frame of the front porch's outer door.

A man armed with a scoped Remington Model 760 pump action deer rifle opened the door to the house and asked warily, "Who are you?"

Seeing the rifle pointed at his chest unnerved Ken.

"I'm Ken Layton and this is my wife, Terry."

"Durward Perkins is my name. My friends call me D. We heard you were coming. Step on in."

There was an uneasy moment as they appraised each other. Perkins lowered the rifle muzzle, but it was still uncomfortably pointed at Ken's knees. As he later mentioned to Terry, he still felt like he was being "muzzled."

Perkins was in his forties, with sandy-brown hair, slightly chubby, and starting to bald.

Ken offered, "We heard that you were looking for someone to provide security."

Perkins nodded. "That's right." He lifted his free hand to his chin and asked, "Are you Christian folk?"

"Yes, we're Catholic, and we attend Ma.s.s regularly."

Perkins nodded. "We're Quakers, but we don't get to church very often."

Ken said, "We're trustworthy and we know how to use these guns. I'm also a light truck mechanic with seven years of experience-I'm ASE-certified A5, T6, and E3."

"That's all Greek to me. You've got no car?"

"We had a car and an older Bronco that I had restored and modified, but we got ambushed on our way out of Chicago. So what you see here is all of our worldly possessions."

"Do you mean to stay around Iowa City? Long-term?"

"No sir. We plan to continue on out west, next spring. We're looking for a place to spend the winter. There's a group of our friends waiting for us in Idaho. We're what you'd call preppers or survivalists."

Perkins nodded. "Uh-huh." Then he pointed to Ken's HK clone and asked, "So those black s.p.a.ce rifles you've got-hers looks like a short M16, and what's that one you've got there?"

"It's a Vector V91-that's a clone of the German HK91 rifle. It shoots 7.62 NATO, same as .308 Winchester. Terry's is what's called an M4gery or what I still call a CAR-15. It shoots 5.56 NATO, like an M16. They're both semiauto only." After a pause, he added, "We've both put in a lot of trigger time with our rifles. We've shot compet.i.tion and qualification high-power rifle matches-both CMP and Appleseed. We were also both trained by a former Force Recon Marine in our survival group-a staff sergeant named Jeff Trasel. He taught us all the tricks: perimeter security, patrolling, and small unit tactics."

"So neither of you're military veterans? Iraq, Afghanistan?"

"No sir."

Perkins gave a slight groan and said, "Well, that's what I was hoping for. But beggars can't be choosers, I guess."

There was another long, uncomfortable pause.