Beaghler braked, and they jounced to a stop. “We’ll walk up from here,” he said. “The farmhouse is just the other side of that hill.”
They had been driving nearly an hour. Except for one five-minute period when they’d stumbled across an overgrown old dirt road and followed it for a while, they’d traveled exclusively cross-country—through meadows and open woods and an occasional rocky dry streambed. Their general trend had been upward, into mountains that looked wild at a distance and wilder up close. But there hadn’t been any heavy tangles of brush to get through, or thick woods to work their way around, or deep streams or canyons to avoid. The way had been fairly straight, the dashboard compass generally reading somewhere between northeast and southeast, and the rough ground hadn’t thrown them around as much as Parker had anticipated.
Now Beaghler had come to a stop where a shallow dry streambed they’d been following up a gradual slope split into a pair of narrow tributaries, each of them too small for the car to get into. One tributary came from a steep high heavily wooded slope to the right, the other from a more open and gentle incline straight ahead, where the trees and bushes were thinner and the ground had a loose sandy look to it.
Parker and Beaghler both stepped out onto the stony streambed and walked around to the back of the vehicle. Beaghler opened the tailgate, and Parker said, “I’ll borrow the Colt.”
Beaghler looked startled. “I was gonna offer you the rifle,” he said. “You’ll get a damn good shot down at him from the top of the hill.”
“I know handguns better,” Parker said. While Beaghler’s hands were still occupied with the tailgate, Parker reached in and took out the small box containing the revolver and its ammunition. He lifted the lid and picked up the gun, holding it pointed nowhere in particular. It was fully loaded; he could see the corners of the cartridges at the rear of the barrel. He put the box and the extra ammunition back in on the blankets.
Beaghler meanwhile had taken out the rifle and was unwrapping it from the pink baby blanket. He looked troubled, and a little confused. He said, “You sure you don’t want the rifle? It’s got a real easy action on it.”
“Don’t need it,” Parker said, and stepped backward a pace from the vehicle, where he stood watching Beaghler, waiting for his next move.
Beaghler gave the rifle an unhappy childish look, and then tossed the baby blanket into the vehicle with a fatalistic gesture, as though abandoning some idea. “Doesn’t make any difference,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“You lead the way,” Parker said. “You know this territory.”
Beaghler nodded, as though he’d expected that answer, and went crunching off around the car, following the streambed. Parker followed, and the two of them headed up the tributary straight ahead, the one that climbed through dry semi-desert soil and thin trees and shrubbery toward a well-defined hilltop.
Partway up, the streambed angled off to the right. Beaghler stepped up onto the ground, and continued straight toward the top of the hill, Parker two paces back. Once Beaghler stopped and glanced around, as though he might say something. Parker stayed where he was and watched the rifle barrel, but the pause was only for a second; then Beaghler faced front and trudged uphill again.
It took about ten minutes to climb to the top. At a couple of spots, they had to pull themselves up by holding onto bushes, and each time Parker waited for Beaghler to move a few steps beyond before following; but most of the way the going was easy, the slope gradual and soft, the ground crumbly but not difficult to get a footing in.
At the top, Beaghler dropped to the ground and inched up the last foot or so until he could see over the ridge- line. Then he glanced down over his shoulder at Parker and said, “There it is. Come on and take a look.” He sounded tired, more tired than the climb should have made him, and the expression in his eyes was slightly disgusted.
Parker moved up on Beaghler’s right side, about four feet away, and looked over the top. What he saw was a humped and rocky treeless slope leading down to a flat plain below. The slope looked gutted and pockmarked, as though eroded by a million flash floods, and the plain contained only wild grass and small bushes. Hills were leftward, to the north, but the semi-desert plain extended away to the right, south.
Down below was a house. It looked as though it had been brought here intact from the Kansas wheatfields, like the house in
It was the wrong house in the wrong place. But whoever had built it must have had a lot of different wrong ideas; what had he hoped to grow down there? Whatever it was he’d had in his mind, the country must have changed it for him; it had been a long time since anyone had lived in that house who cared about it. The exterior was weathered a silver-gray that was almost beautiful against the dun of the countryside. A part of the roof seemed to have caved in, and the porch didn’t look too secure. Several windows were broken, and an outside doorway on one of the rear additions gaped black and doorless.
But if no one who cared about the house had lived there for a long while, there was still someone in residence, at least at the moment. A green Ford station wagon was parked on the shadowed east side of the building, only the hood visible from up here.
Parker nodded toward the car. “Uhl?” he asked.
“Oh, he’s there,” Beaghler said. He sounded weary and angry, both together. “He’s there all right,” he said.
“Let’s wait awhile,” Parker said. He looked at Beaghler. “Wasn’t that what you were going to say now?”
“Until we see him,” Beaghler said. “I’m going to get out a cigarette.”
He hadn’t smoked on the way out. Parker said, “Go ahead.”
Beaghler reached into his denim jacket pocket and took out a small cardboard box that claimed to contain Sucrets cough lozenges. Parker watched his hands and his eyes. Beaghler opened the box and said, “Want one?” He extended the box toward Parker; it contained four small hand-rolled cigarettes with twisted ends.
“I don’t smoke.”
Beaghler shrugged and took one of the cigarettes and put it in his mouth. He put the box away and shifted around to reach into his trouser pocket for a match. Parker watched his movements. Beaghler lit a match and lit his cigarette and the musky smell lifted in the air.
Parker said, “Mind if I look at your rifle?”
