don’t think he’s on the road and I don’t think he’s looking for Lottie, neither.”
“Pike is a strong man,” said Peachy quietly. “But he’s a frightful man, too.”
“Yeah,” Hammond said.
“Maybe we need frightening men to fight other scary men, but it just don’t sit right with me, Connelly. It just don’t.”
“I know,” said Connelly. “Are you armed?”
Hammond nodded.
“Where’s it at?”
“Two. In the bindlestick. Both loaded.” He pointed to the satchel.
“Okay,” said Connelly.
They looked at the two tents. Neither Pike nor Roosevelt stirred. Then Hammond and Peachy went to bed and Connelly slept beneath the tree.
They went north again the next day. Roosevelt had to be led, like an old man.
“We know he went this way, Mr. Connelly,” said Pike, striding along with his walking stick. He did not seem nearly so tired or beaten as all the rest. “You are right, he is weakening. Slowing. We will prevail, don’t you worry.”
“Let’s hope,” said Hammond, more to himself than anyone. He limped slightly but his face did not show any pain, or at least what remained of it.
Connelly dropped back to speak to Peachy. “You don’t have to come with us, you know.”
Peachy smiled. “I know.”
“This is dangerous stuff.”
“Know that, too.”
“I appreciate you keeping me up and going in jail but, hell, that isn’t worth this. You don’t have to do this.”
Peachy laughed. “It ain’t about worth. We’re not bargaining, keeping a ledger or nothing. I just figure, well, you folks need help. Seems like you all have a rough road ahead, but… Well, these fellas believe in what they’re doing. They believe it’s right. And I think it may be, though it scares me. Besides,” he said, and lifted his face to the sun, “you got to keep to those who keep to you. If I’m not good, then who will be?”
“Well,” said Connelly. “Okay, then.”
“There used to be a town close to here,” said Rosie, and he sounded more lucid than normal.
“Did there, Mr. Roosevelt?” Pike said.
“Yeah. Real nice town. Everyone there was nice and if you were coming through they’d give you a bed and coffee and a nice warm bit of sup. I was there when I was a boy. Real churchy town. Everyone there was nice.”
“I didn’t know you were out here as a boy, Rosie,” Hammond said.
Roosevelt looked briefly confused, like he forgot where he was. Then his face went slack and he said, “Father traveled through there with me. Before we went up to Chicago. I think we should go there. I think we should go up to that nice little town.”
“It would be nice to get some rest and some real food,” admitted Hammond.
“Yeah,” said Connelly. “What do you say, Pike?”
“Where is it, Roosevelt?” Pike asked.
“Oh,” he said faintly. “Oh, it’s a bit northwest of here, I think. I think. I remember it had a nice white steeple and big old oaks. Mountains rising up behind it. Yes, it’s just a little northwest of here, an old dirt road running beside the mountains, big white steeple. I remember.”
“What’s its name?” said Hammond.
“Gurry,” said Roosevelt quietly. “Gurry.”
“Hm. Well. It’s along our way, a little. And we are hurting, hurting something fierce.” He twirled his walking stick absentmindedly. “Certainly. A little rest and Christian aid for our ills could be what we need before the final run.”
Evening fell softly. The gently clouded sky swam past the mountains, dappling the hillsides with violet spots and streaks. As they followed the road they came by a dance taking place in a field. Lanterns and torches bobbed up and down and sousaphones and trombones played a civilized waltz. They listened and followed the music.
They crested a small knoll and looked out on the field and saw young men and women laughing and dancing, the women in ghostly white, the men in dour brown. They wheeled and waltzed and held one another while their friends clapped and looked on. Small children aped them with an air far more serious than their elders, bowing like dignitaries at a ball. Then the waltz slowed and couples drew close and swayed back and forth in the freshly mown grass.
Connelly’s stomach rumbled. He swigged water to dull it. Someone whooped in the night and a young man hefted a woman up and spun her around and brought her back down, laughing. Drew her hips close to his and kissed her deeply and placed her head on his shoulder.
Pike watched them, still as stone. He said, “It must be a very easy life indeed where love is your only concern.”
They walked back down to the road and continued on. The sounds of the band died soon enough and they were glad of it.
They found a small abandoned church and stayed the night there. Its short white steeple stabbed the sky, and inside the broken windows let light fall on the lacquered pews so they gleamed like guns on the rack. Pike made bed up at the pulpit. He sat before the big white cross and muttered to himself for hours before falling silent. He might have fallen asleep but none wanted to check.
Peachy and Hammond sat in the corner, sipping whisky and talking of women. They ate cured squirrel meat they had prepared along the road, no more than a handful. As the temperature dropped Connelly wound a dusty blanket around himself and kicked a pile of leaves from underneath the pews and lay down between them.
When his eyes shut he saw the desert once more.
Still the wild blue sky, still the bleached-bone sands. He was standing in the middle of the basin from before, barefoot and nude, and when he looked at himself he saw scars crisscrossing his body like a roadmap. Some he knew—the blow from the man on the train, the beatings from the sheriff, the gouges from all the fences and ditches and forests he had crawled through. Others he did not know. A white puckered scar from what was surely a gunshot shone at him from his shoulder.
He looked up. On the lip of the basin he saw the pale young man sitting cross-legged. Connelly called to him but he did not answer. It may have been the distance but to Connelly’s eye the young man was weeping.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
They found the town the next morning. They were nearing the mountains now. Roosevelt led them without watching where he was going, his head bowed like a cripple. He became distracted by many things in the road. He spent minutes staring at a dead field mouse, his gaze fixed on its stiff little body, and with childish glee he began grinding its skull beneath the heel of his shoe. Pike reprimanded him severely and Rosie laughed gently, like he had done no more than strike the head of a daisy from its stem.
“Boy ain’t right,” said Peachy.
“No,” said Connelly.
Then they wound about a group of tall firs and before them they saw a small, quaint little village nestled in the hills, and all the surrounding area was the greenest and healthiest any of them had seen in months. Dry scrub
