Chapter 17 - The Old Foreman's Wall
Before the private contractors could fire a single round, the deafening blare of an air horn shattered the canyon silence.
From the dark access spur behind the wooden trestle, a sixty-ton Kenworth logging truck—its bed loaded with forty-foot white oak trunks—roared out of the trees like an armored freight train.
The driver didn't brake. The massive steel cowcatcher of the Kenworth slammed directly into the side of Ryan Keller's parked sedan, obliterating the vehicle in a shower of sparks and crumpled steel, shoving it violently off the bridge and down into the freezing gorge below.
Ryan dove into the snowbank at the edge of the trestle, screaming in terror as his rifle went flying into the rocks.
The Kenworth's door flew open. Standing on the running board with a twelve-gauge pump shotgun resting on his shoulder was Thomas—my former shop foreman from Loomis & Co.
Behind the Kenworth, three more heavy industrial dump trucks from the local sawmill rumbled into view, their blinding halogen utility bars lighting up the entire gorge like midday sun. Stepping out of the cabs were seven of my veteran woodworkers—men whose pensions I had protected, men whose families had worked the Loomis timber stands for three generations.
"Thomas!" I shouted, disbelief and overwhelming relief catching in my throat.
"You think you're the only one who knows these mountain roads, Heather?" Thomas shouted over the roar of the diesels, his weather-beaten face carved from stone. "We saw the smoke on 4th Street. We knew Marcus Vance was cleaning house. You don't touch Arthur's girls while we're drawing breath!"
The two private contractors behind us took one look at eight armed, furious mountain timbermen wielding shotguns, heavy wrenches, and hydraulic chains, and immediately raised their hands, dropping their weapons into the snow.
Ryan lay shivering in the frozen slush, weeping hysterically, his ankle monitor blinking a futile, frantic red against the dark snow.
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Thomas walked over, kicked Ryan's dropped rifle into the creek, and leveled his shotgun at the boy's chest.
"Get up, Ryan," Thomas spat. "You're taking a ride with us to Harrisonburg."
