you’ll get any, I’m afraid.”
Toby jumped down, relieved himself beside a tree, circled the cart, sniffed the ground. Tibor activated the extensor and proceeded with his own simple ablutions.
I suppose I should try the bullhorn again, now, he thought. But I am afraid to. I really am. It is my last hope. If it fails me, nothing else remains.
He hesitated a long while. He searched the sky, the trees.
The blue jay? Is that what I am looking for? he wondered. I don’t know what I am looking for. I guess that I am not truly awake yet. There goes Toby into the brush. I wonder if I will ever see him again? I may be dead by the time he gets back. No telling what—Stop it! Okay. A cup of coffee would be nice. It would be so nice. A last cup… All right! I’ll try the horn. He raised it, turned it on, and called out: “Hallo! This is Tibor McMasters. I have had an accident. My cart is stuck. I am caught here. If anyone can hear me, I need help. Can you hear me? Can you help me? Is anyone there?”
Nothing. He waited for perhaps fifteen minutes and tried again. Again nothing.
Three more attempts. An hour drawn and quartered. Toby returned, discussed something with the cow, lay down in the shade.
Faintly… Was that a shout? Or a tricking of the ear? A thing compounded of hope, fear, background sounds? The cry of an animal?
He began to perspire, straining to hear through the natural noises, listening for it to come again. Toby whined.
Turning, Tibor saw that the dog had risen to its feet and was facing back along the trail, ears pointed, body tense.
He switched on the horn and raised it once again. “Hallo! Hallo! Over here! Up here! I am trapped! Caught in a collapsed cart! This is Tibor McMasters! I have had an accident! Can you hear me?”
“Yes!” The word echoed among the hills. “We are coming!”
Tibor began to laugh. His eyes were moist. He chuckled. At that moment, he thought he glimpsed the blue jay darting away among the trees. But he could not be certain.
“We are going to finish this Pilg yet, Toby,” he said. “We are going to make it, I think.”
It was another ten minutes before Pete Sands and Jack Schuld rounded the bend of the trail and came into view. Toby laid his ears flat and growled, backing up against the cart.
“It’s all right, Toby,” Tibor said. “I know one of them. He is here to do the Christian thing. Be a handy Samaritan and look over my shoulder afterward. And I need him. The price is right, whatever.”
“Tibor!” Pete called out. “Are you hurt?”
“No, it’s just the cart,” he answered. “Threw a wheel.”
They approached.
“I see the wheel,” Pete said. He glanced at his companion. “This is Jack Schuld. I met him on the trail yesterday. This is Tibor McMasters, Jack—a great artist.”
Tibor nodded.
“I can’t shake hands,” he said.
Schuld smiled.
“I’ll lend you mine,” he said. “We’ll have that wheel back on in no time. Pete has some lube.”
Schuld crossed to the wheel, raised it from the brush where it had come to rest, rolled it toward the cart.
Nimble, Tibor thought. All connoisseurs of the movements of the unmaimed would probably agree on that. What does he want?
Toby snarled as Schuld brought the wheel around to the front of the cart.
“Back up, Toby! Go away now! They’re helping me,” Tibor said.
The dog slunk off a dozen paces and sat down, watching.
Pete brought the lube around.
“We’re going to have to raise the cart,” he said. “I wonder… ?”
“I’ll raise it,” Schuld said.
As they worked, Tibor said, “I suppose I should ask what you are doing out this way.”
Pete looked up and smiled. Then he sighed.
“You know,” he said. “You left early because you didn’t want me along. All right. But I had to follow—just because of the possibility of things like this.” He gestured at the cart.
“All right,” Tibor said. “All right. As it turns out, I am not ungrateful. Thanks for showing up.”
“May I take that as an indication that I will be welcome for the balance of the journey?”
Tibor chuckled.
“Let’s just say that I can’t object to your presence now.”
“I guess that will have to do.”
Pete turned his attention back to the work.
“Where did you meet Mr. Schuld?”
“He saved me in an encounter with the Great C’s extension.”
“Handy,” Tibor said.
Schuld laughed and Tibor was jolted as the man crouched beneath the cart, then stood, raising it on his shoulders.
“Jack Schuld
I suppose that I should feel happy to have people around me again, thought Tibor, after everything I have encountered recently. Still …
“There,” Pete said. “You can lower it now.”
Schuld eased the cart down, moved out from beneath it. Pete began tightening a nut.
“I am much obliged,” Tibor said.
“Think nothing of it,” Schuld replied. “Glad to be of help. Your friend tells me you are on a Pilg.”
“That’s right. Part of a commission I have—”
“Yes, he told me about that, too. Off to get a glimpse of old Lufteufel for your mural. Worthy project, I’d say. And I believe you are getting warm.”
“You know something about him?”
“I think so. There have been rumors, you know. I travel a lot. I hear them all. Some say that’s his town to the north. No, you can’t see it from here. But keep going this way and you’ll eventually come to a settlement. That’s the one—they say.”
“Do you believe the rumors?”
Schuld rubbed his dark chin and a faraway look came into his eyes.
“I would think the odds are pretty good,” he said. “Yes. I fancy I could find him there.”
“I don’t suppose he uses his real name anymore,” Tibor said. “He has probably assumed a different identity.”
Schuld nodded.
“I understand that to be the case.”
“Do you know it?”
“The name? No. The identity? I think so. I have heard that he is a veterinarian now, that he makes his home in a remodeled fallout shelter, has a feebleminded girl living there with him.”
“Is this place in the town proper?”
“No. Out a ways from town. Easy to miss—they say.”
Pete sighed and stood. He plucked a bunch of leaves and began wiping his hands. He finished the job on his trousers.
“There,” he said. “Now if we push and you can make the cow pull, we should be able to get it back on the trail. Then we can see how it holds up. Give me a hand now, Jack, will you?”
Schuld moved away, circling to the rear of the cart.
“All right, ready,” Pete said.
“Ready.”
“Push!”
