GARBERVILLE, Calif. -- A woman drove into the Humboldt County hills to earn some money trimming the leaves from marijuana buds.
At a cabin, the grower who'd hired her set out mounds of pot. The woman and a friend chatted as they trimmed. Suddenly, an armed man barged in. He accused the grower of stealing his pot.
The invader grabbed some of the grower's cash, handed it to the women and ordered them out. They careened down the road in their truck to the foot of the mountain.
What should they do?
"We should forget it," the woman told her friend, "not think about it, and sure as hell not talk about it. We spent this weekend out in Bear Harbor."
A week later, a girl stopped by the woman's regular job to return the purse she'd left in the hills and to deliver a message: We know where to find you.
Four months later, the woman saw a missing-person poster at a supermarket. On it was a picture of the grower who'd hired her.
This story is fiction but it could have happened -- and probably has. It was among a series of tales that began appearing on a mysterious blog two years ago, short stories about life in the secretive marijuana-growing world of Northern California.
