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.”
“Well, nobody else lives out that way.” He hesitated. “Hey, there’s something I’d like to ask.”
“Sure. Like what?”
“Well, them people pretty much keep themselves to themselves, I don’t mean they’re stuck-up or anything, but-well, I’ve always wondered. Where they from? One of them overrun countries in Europe? They’re foreigners, ain’t they? And seems like most of what Europe exports any more is DP’s. Are them people some?”
“Well, yes, you might call them that. Why?”
“Well, they talk just as good as anybody and it must have been a war a long time ago because they’ve been around since my Dad’s time, but they just-feel different.” He caught his upper lip between his teeth reflectively. “Good different. Real nice different.” He grinned again. “Wouldn’t mind shining up to some of them gals myself. Don’t get no encouragement, though.
“Anyway, keep on this road. It’s easy. No other road going that way. Jackass Flat will beat the tar outa your tires, but you’ll probably make it, less’n comes up a heavy rain. Then you’ll skate over half the county and most likely end up in a ditch. Slickest mud in the world. Colder’n hell-beg pardon, lady-out there on the flat when the wind starts blowing. Better bundle up.”
“Thanks, fella,” I said. “Thanks a lot. Think we’ll make it before dark?”
“Oh, sure. ‘Tain’t so awful far but the road’s lousy. Oughta make it in two-three hours, less’n like I said, comes up a heavy rain.”
We knew when we hit Jackass Flat. It was like dropping off the edge. If we had thought the road to Kerry Canyon was bad we revised our opinions, but fast. In the first place it was choose your own ruts. Then the tracks were deep sunk in heavy clay generously mixed with sharp splintery shale and rocks as big as your two fists that were like a gigantic gravel as far as we could see across the lifeless expanse of the flat.
But to make it worse, the ruts I chose kept ending abruptly as though the cars that had made them had either backed away from the job or jumped over. Jumped over! I drove, in and out of ruts, so wrapped up in surmises that I hardly noticed the tough going until a cry from Bethie aroused me.
“Stop the car!” she cried. “Oh, Peter! Stop the car!”
I braked so fast that the pickup swerved wildly, mounted the side of a rut, lurched and settled sickeningly down on the back tire which sighed itself flatly into the rising wind.
“What on earth!” I yelped, as near to being mad at Bethie as I’d ever been in my life. “What was that for?”
Bethie, white-faced, was emerging from the army blanket she had huddled in against the cold. “It just came to me. Peter, supposing they don’t want us?”
“Don’t want us? What do you mean?” I growled, wondering if that lace doily I called my spare tire would be worth the trouble of putting it on.
“We never thought. It didn’t even occur to us. Peter, we-we don’t belong. We won’t be like them. We’re partly of Earth-as much as we are of wherever else. Supposing they reject us? Supposing they think we’re undesirable-?” Bethie turned her face away. “Maybe we don’t belong anywhere, Peter, not anywhere at all.”
I felt a chill sweep over me that was not of the weather. We had assumed so blithely that we would be welcome. But how did we know? Maybe they wouldn’t want us. We weren’t of the People. We weren’t of Earth. Maybe we didn’t belong-not anywhere.
“Sure they’ll want us,” I forced out heartily. Then my eyes wavered away from Bethie’s and I said defensively, “Mother said they would help us. She said we were woven of the same fabric-“