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looked winded as if he’d run the entire
perimeter. Silly eejit. He probably
had.
    “Da, you won’t believe how many breaks there
are in the fence. It must be fifty percent holes and gaps. It’ll
take a year to plug ‘em.”
    Mike didn’t answer. He
knew he was spitting in the wind with this argument. But he
couldn’t help think it wasn’t the wisdom of his idea people were
having trouble with. It was the work involved to pull it
off.
    Gilhooley and Declan had
turned around and were making their way back toward him. His eye
caught the motion of Iain running across the field to intercept
them. Something about the way he ran made Mike think he had
information. He frowned when he saw the three men stop and
confer.
    Obviously, information he
doesn’t feel necessary to bring to me first.
    “Da? Did you talk to Mr. Gilhooley about his
idea on fortifying the perimeter without having to dig pits or
stringing new wire?”
    Mike looked up at the sky.
It had been raining all morning which was the main reason the men
were examining the fence line instead of finishing the harvest. One
of the women in camp swore she’d seen a wolf skulking about the
edge of the woods. There hadn’t been a wolf in Ireland since the
late seventeen hundreds.
    The gray clouds overhead
were billowing high in the sky, forming dark and threatening
thunderheads. Mike sighed. It looked like the entire day was going
to be a wash. The wheat for sure didn’t
need any more damn water. If it kept up like this much longer,
they’d start to lose crop.
    “Da?”
    “No, Gavin, I haven’t talked with Mr.
Gilhooley about his idea.” Mike watched the three men approach.
They looked like they were all of one mind about something.
    Gilhooley raised a hand in greeting even
though they’d all spent the morning together. “Donovan!” he called.
“Declan got something to tell you.”
    Mike watched Declan
approach, his gait unhurried but purposeful.
    Something tells me I’m about to hear
Gilhooley’s words come tumbling out of me good mate, Declan’s,
gob.
    “I’m listening,” he said.
    Declan put his hand on
Mike’s horse and patted its neck. Like many gypsies, Declan was
good with animals. Mike couldn’t help but feel that Dec was
physically soothing Mike’s horse as a substitute for trying to
placate its rider.
    “Well, I got the idea,” Dec said, “when you
were talking about how much wire we’d need to finish the job of
stringing the camp, you know?”
    Mike didn’t speak or nod.
He tried not to look at Gilhooley, who seemed to be standing back
as proud as a new parent waiting for his bairn to break into a buck
and wing.
    “And it occurred to me that instead of
trying to enclose the camp, we should focus on repelling unwanted
guests, you see? Oh, sure, have a basic barrier up…”
    “Like we’ve got now,” Gavin said.
    Declan nodded. “That’s
right. Holes and all, it’s still a kind of demarcation. But trying
to make it do the work of a castle wall is just never going to
work. We don’t have the materials or the manpower to make it
work.”
    “Is that what you think?”
Mike said mildly. He could feel his temper rising and he fought not
to let it show. “Is that your big newsflash?”
    “No, that’s the reason I felt it
necessary to come up with something different than what we’re
planning on,” Declan said with more firmness in his voice than Mike
had ever heard before. “I think we need to form an
army.”
    “ An army ?” Mike’s mouth fell
open.
    Gilhooley stepped up. “Well, really more of
a protective force or squad, right, Dec? A group of men whose sole
job it is to patrol and protect the camp.”
    “Aye,” Iain said. “Like they did in the
Middle Ages, right?”
    “Exactly,” Gilhooley said. “It worked then
because it’s a sound idea. Set aside those men in the community not
needed for planting and hunting and have them concentrate on our
full time protection.”
    “I volunteer!” Gavin said. “Can I, Da?