too much on a dream and a hope. Let’s go back, Bethie. We’ve got just enough gas money along to make it. Let’s give it up.”
“And go back to what?” Bethie asked, her face pinched. “No, Peter. Here.”
I looked up as she handed me one of her sunlight patterns, a handful of brilliance that twisted briefly in my fingers before it flickered out.
“Is that Earth?” she asked quietly. “How many of our friends can fly? How many-” she hesitated, “how many can Remember?”
“Remember!” I said slowly, and then I whacked the steering wheel with my fist. “Oh, Bethie, of all the stupid-! Why, it’s Bub all over again!”
I kicked the pickup into life and turned on the first faint desert trail beyond the junction. I pulled off even that suggestion of a trail and headed across the nearly naked desert toward a clump of ironwood, mesquite and catclaw that marked a sand wash against the foothills. With the westering sun making shadow lace through the thin foliage we made camp.
I lay on my back in the wash and looked deep into the arch of the desert sky. The trees made a typical desert pattern of warmth and coolness on me, warm in the sun, cool in the shadow, as I let my mind clear smoother, smoother, until the soft intake of Bethie’s breath as she sat beside me sent a bright ripple across it.
And I remembered. But only Mother-and-Dad and the little campfire I had gathered up, and Glib with the trap on his foot and Bethie curled, face to knees on the bed, and the thin crying sound of her labored breath.
I blinked at the sky. I had to Remember. I just had to. I shut my eyes and concentrated and concentrated, until I was exhausted. Nothing came now, not even a hint of memory. In despair I relaxed, limp against the chilling sand. And all at once unaccustomed gears shifted and slipped into place in my mind and there I was, just as I had been, hovering over the life-sized map.
Slowly and painfully I located Socorro and the thin thread that marked the Rio Gordo. I followed it and lost it and followed it again, the finger of my attention pressing close. Then I located Vulcan Springs Valley and traced its broad rolling to the upsweep of the desert, to the Sierra Cobrena Mountains. It was an eerie sensation to look down on the infinitesimal groove that must be where I was lying now. Then I hand-spanned my thinking around our camp spot. Nothing. I probed farther north, and east, and north again. I drew a deep breath and exhaled it shakily. There it was. The Home twinge. The call of familiarity.
I read it off to Bethie. The high thrust of a mountain that pushed up baldly past its timber, the huge tailings dump across the range from the mountain. The casual wreathing of smoke from what must be a logging town, all forming sides of a slender triangle. Somewhere in this area was the place.
I opened my eyes to find Bethie in tears.
“Why, Bethie!” I said. “What’s wrong? Aren’t you glad-?”
Bethie tried to smile but her lips quivered. She hid her face in the crook of her elbow and whispered. “I saw, too! Oh, Peter, this time I saw, too!”
We got out the road map and by the fading afternoon light we tried to translate our rememberings. As nearly as we could figure out we should head for a place way off the highway called Kerry Canyon. It was apparently the only inhabited spot anywhere near the big bald mountain. I looked at the little black dot in the kink in the third-rate road and wondered if it would turn out to be a period to all our hopes or the point for the beginning of new lives for the two of us. Life and sanity for Bethie, and for me … In a sudden spasm of emotion I crumpled the map in my hand. I felt blindly that in all my life I had never known anyone but Mother and Dad and Bethie. That I was a ghost walking the world. If only I could see even one other person that felt like our kind! Just to know that Bethie and I weren’t all alone with our unearthly heritage!
I smoothed out the map and folded it again. Night was on us and the wind was cold. We shivered as we scurried around looking for wood for our campfire.
Kerry Canyon was one business street, two service stations, two saloons, two stores, two churches and a handful of houses flung at random over the hillsides that sloped down to an area that looked too small to accommodate the road. A creek which was now thinned to an intermittent trickle that loitered along, waited for the fall rains to begin. A sudden speckling across our windshield suggested it hadn’t long to wait.
We rattled over the old bridge and half through the town. The road swung up sharply over a rusty single-line railroad and turned left, shying away from the bluff that was hollowed just enough to accommodate one of the service stations.
We pulled into the station. The uniformed attendant came alongside.
“We just want some information,” I said, conscious of the thinness of my billfold. We had picked up our last tankful of gas before plunging into the maze of canyons between the main highway and here. Our stopping place would have to be soon whether we found the People or not.
“Sure! Sure! Glad to oblige.” The attendant pushed his cap back from his forehead. “How can I help you?”
I hesitated, trying to gather my thoughts and words-and some of the hope that had jolted out of me since we had left the junction. “We’re trying to locate some-friends-of ours. We were told they lived out the other side of here, out by Baldy. Is there anyone-?”
“Friends of them people?” he asked in astonishment. “Well, say, now, that’s interesting! You’re the first I ever had come asking after them.”
I felt Bethie’s arm trembling against mine. Then there was something beyond Kerry Canyon!
“How come? What’s wrong with them?”
“Why, nothing, Mac, nothing. Matter of fact they’re dern nice people. Trade here a lot. Come in to church and the dances.”
“Dances?” I glanced around the steep sloping hills.
“‘Sure. We ain’t as dead as we look,” the attendant grinned.
“Come Saturday night we’re quite a town. Lots of ranches around these hills. Course, not much out Cougar Canyon way. That’s where your friends live, didn’t you say?”
“Yeah. Out by Baldy.”
