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    N ATTY HELPED ALICE set the table and put out dinner. The children came in wet from their dip in the stream, followed by Sarah and Pete, who’d changed out of their wet clothing. Bud was the last to be seated.
    While she was cutting Cat’s chicken, Natty brought up the strange events she’d witnessed that afternoon. “Came across a whole bunch of men working at a surveying job up on the south road. I ran over to see what they were up to, but they were tighter than a new jar of pickles. Gave me some phony story about building a road.” Bud and Pete stopped eating and stared at her with grim looks. It was apparent that they knew something.
    â€œSo, what’s going on?” Natty asked softly.
    Sarah, too, was curious. “Petey, Bud, do you know something?” Bud was picking at his food, clearly reluctant to comment.
    After a few moments, Pete spoke. “Th-they was up there a c-couple o’ w-weeks ago. Seen one o’ the trucks go by th-this morning.” Pete had stuttered all his life, and it pained him when he had to speak to more than one person.
    Suddenly, Bud’s deep voice filled the small dining room. “They’re comin’ for the coal.”
    Sarah reacted immediately. “Coal? What coal, Bud? There’s no coal up here.” Sarah didn’t want to hear about coal. Coal meant nothing but heartache to her.
    Bud DeWitt waited for silence. For seventy-two years he’d lived on the mountain, fifty-three of those years with his wife, Alice. He’d buried his parents, two brothers, a sister, two sons, and a granddaughter on the mountain, and he planned to be buried there, too. When Bud DeWitt talked about Redemption Mountain, it was time for everyone else to just listen.
    Bud put down his fork, readying himself to tell the family what they had a right to know. “There is coal up here. A lot of coal. Big seam, about twelve foot thick, through most of the mountain, about halfway up. The mineral rights to Redemption Mountain was owned for years by a little company from down in Tazewell County, Ferris Mining. They ran a couple dog holes a few miles south of here and a deep shaft, as I recall, somewheres over near Jolo. Never much of a company, always non-union, lot of safety problems and such. They went bankrupt about the mid-sixties, but it got tied up in the courts, and I reckon the coal business lost track of Redemption Mountain.”
    Bud paused to take a drink of his ice water. “Then, at the end of the seventies, early eighties, you know, the coal business was going bust, and they was closing the deep mines. Most of the coal taken was from the surface mines in Logan and Mingo Counties, not much from McDowell. I figured Redemption Mountain was safe. But…” He stopped and looked out the window with a grimace.
    Something serious was going on that Natty couldn’t quite figure out. “But what, Grandpa? Why is this a problem now?”
    Bud looked across the table at her. “About two and a half years ago, I’m looking at the Welch Daily and I glance at the legal notices. I see the name Ferris Mining in there, so naturally it grabs my attention. I read all that small print and learn that all the assets of the Ferris Mining Company was purchased by Ackerly Coal.”
    The name sent a shiver of recognition through Natty as she recalled that day, two years ago, when the helicopters came. The day the Canadian man gave her the OntAmex jacket. The night that Buck beat her.
    â€œNow, that bothered me some, Ackerly getting the mineral rights,” Bud continued, pulling Natty back to the present. “Ackerly’s a big company, does a lot of work in them big mountaintop mines in Logan and Mingo.”
    Natty could see a scowl on her mother’s face as she tried to understand how a seam of coal on Redemption Mountain could possibly affect their farm.
    â€œI didn’t think any more about it