Horses were being led into the camp area and men were mounting. Someone cursed at his horse. Then they were moving out. Hoofs padded against the ground, saddle leather creaked, words went back and forth.
Cushing and Rollo squatted, listening as the hoof beats receded and finally ceased.
"They'll get out of the valley as soon as they can," said Cushing. "Out on the prairie they can make better time."
"What do we do now?"
"We stay right here. A little later, just before dawn, I'll cross and scout. As soon as we know they're out on the prairie, we'll be on our way.
The stars were paling in the east when Cushing waded the stream. At the campsite the fires still smoked and cooling embers blinked among the ashes. Slipping through the trees, he found the trail, chewed by pounding hoofs, that the nomads had taken, angling up the bluff. He found the place where they had emerged upon the prairie and used the glasses to examine the wide sweep of rolling ground. A herd of wild cattle grazed in the middle distance. A bear was flipping over stones with an agile paw, to look for ants or grubs. A fox was slinking home after a night of hunting. Ducks gabbled in a tiny prairie pond. There were other animals, but no sign of humans. The nomads had been swallowed in the distance.
All the stars were gone and the east had brightened when he turned downhill for the camp. He snorted in disdain at the disorder of the place. No attempt had been made to police the grounds. Gnawed bones were scattered about the dead campfires. A forgotten double-bitted axe leaned against a tree. Someone had discarded a pair of worn-out moccasins. A buckskin sack lay beneath a bush.
He used his toe to push the sack from beneath the bush, knelt to unfasten the throngs, then seized it by the bottom and upended it.
Loot. Three knives, a small mirror in which the glass had become clouded, a ball of twine, a decanter of cut glass, a small metal fry-pan, an ancient pocket watch that probably had not run for years, a necklace of opaque red and purple beads, a thin, board-covered book, several folded squares of paper. A pitiful pile of loot, thought Cushing, bending over and sorting through it, looking at it. Not much to risk one's life and limb for. Although loot, he supposed, had been a small by-product, no more than souvenirs. Glory was what the owner of the bag had ridden for.
He picked up the book and leafed through the pages. A children's book from long ago, with many colored illustrations of imaginary places and imaginary people. A pretty book. Something to be shown and wondered over beside a winter campfire.
He dropped it on the pile of loot and picked up one of the squares of folded paper. It was brittle from long folding— perhaps for centuries—and required gingerly handling. Fold by careful fold he spread it out, seeing as he did so that it was more tightly folded and larger than he had thought. Finally the last fold was free and he spread it out, still being careful of it. In the growing light of dawn he bent close above it to make out what it was and, for a moment, was not certain—only a flat and time-yellowed surface with faint brown squiggle lines that ran in insane curves and wiggles and with brown printing on it. And then he saw—a topographical map, and, from the shape of it, of the one-time state of Minnesota. He shifted it so he could read the legends, and there they were—the Mississippi, the Minnesota, the Mesabi and Vermilion ranges, Mule Lacs, the North Shore.
He dropped it and grabbed another, unfolded it more rapidly and with less caution. Wisconsin. He dropped it in disappointment and picked up the third. There were only two others.
Let it be there, he prayed. Let it be there!
Before he had finished unfolding it, he knew he had what he was looking for. Just across the great Missouri, Rollo had said, and that had to be one of the Dakotas. Or did it have to be: It could be Montana. Or Nebraska. Although, if he remembered rightly from his reading, there were few buttes in Nebraska, or at least few near the river.
He spread the South Dakota map flat on the ground and smoothed it out, knelt to look at it. With a shaking finger he traced out the snaky trail of the mighty river. And there it was, west of the river and almost to the North Dakota line: THUNDER BUTTE, with the legend faint in the weak morning light, with the wide-spreading, close-together brown contour lines showing the shape and extent of it. Thunder Butte, at last!
He felt the surge of elation in him and fought to hold it
down. Rollo might be wrong. The old hunter who had told him might have been wrong—or worse, simply spinning out a story. Or this might be the wrong Thunder Butte; there might be many others.
But he could not force himself to believe these cautionary doubts. This was Thunder Butte, the right Thunder Butte. It had to be.
He rose, clutching the map in hand and faced toward the west. He was on his way. For the first time since he'd started, he knew where he was going.
A week later, they had traveled as far north as they could go. Cushing spread out the map to show them. "See, we've passed the lake. Big Stone Lake, it's called. There is another lake a few miles north of here, but the water flows north from it, into the Red. Thunder Butte lies straight west from here, perhaps a little north or a little south. Two hundred miles or so. Ten days, if we are lucky. Two weeks, more than likely." He said to Rollo, "You know this country?"
Rollo shook his head. "Not this country. Other country like it. It can be mean. Hard going."
"That's right," said Cushing. "Water may be hard to find. No streams that we can follow. A few flowing south and that is all. We'll have to carry water. I have this jacket and my pants. Good buckskin. There'll be some seepage through the leather, but not too much. They'll do for water bags."
"They'll do for bags," said Meg, "but poorly. You will die of sunburn."
"I worked all summer with the potatoes and no shirt. I am used to it."
"Your shirt only, then," she said. "Barbaric we may be, but I'll not have you prancing across two hundred miles without a stitch upon you.
"I could wear a blanket."
"A blanket would he poor clothing," Rollo said, "to go through a cactus bed. And there'll he cactus out there. There's no missing it. Soon I will kill a bear. I'm running now on grease. When I do, we can use the bearskin to make us a bag."
"Lower down the river," Cushing said, "there were a lot of hear. You could have killed any number of them."
"Black bear," said Rollo, with disdain. "When there are any others, I do not kill black bear. We'll be heading into grizzly country. Grizzly grease is better."
"You're raving mad," said Cushing. "Grizzly grease is no different from any other bear grease. One of these days, tangling with a grizzly, you'll get your head knocked off."
"Mad I may be," said Rollo, "but grizzly grease is better. And the killing of a black bear is as nothing to the killing of a grizzly."
"It seems to me," said Cushing, "that for a lowly robot you're a shade pugnacious."
"I have my pride," said Rollo.
They moved into the west, and every mile they moved, the land became bleaker. It was level land and seemed to run on forever, to a far horizon that was no more than a faint blue line against the blueness of the sky.
There were no signs of nomads; there had been none since that morning when the war party had moved so quickly out of camp. Now there were increasingly larger herds of wild cattle, with, here and there, small herds of buffalo. Occasionally, in the distance, they sighted small bands of wild horses. The deer had vanished; there were some antelope. Prairie chickens were plentiful and they feasted on them. They came on prairie-dog towns, acres of ground hummocked by the burrows of the little rodents. A close watch was kept for rattlesnakes, smaller than the timber rattlers they'd seen farther east. Andy developed a hatred for the buzzing reptiles, killing with slashing hoofs all that came within his reach. Andy, too, became their water hunter, setting out in a purposeful fashion and leading them to pitiful little streams or stagnant potholes.