They rode in deadly silence, with no banter back and forth. In an ugly mood, Cushing told himself, remembering what the old man had said about how they’d be coming back. And if that were the case, he knew, it had been doubly wise to get under cover. In such a mood, they’d be looking for someone upon whom they could vent their anger.
Behind the main band came a small string of packhorses, carrying leather sacks and bails, a few of the loads topped with carcasses of deer.
The party came down into the valley, swung slightly upstream into a grove of cottonwoods. There they stopped, dismounted, hobbled their horses and set about making camp. Now that they had stopped, there was some talk, the sound of it carrying down the river—but only talk, no shouting back and forth. Axes came into play, to cut wood for their fires, and the sound of chopping echoed between the encroaching bluffs.
Cushing backed away from the river’s edge and made his way to where the others waited. Andy was lying down, nodding, his head half resting in Meg’s lap.
“He’s a lamb,” said Meg. “I got him to lie down. It’s safer that way, isn’t it?”
Cushing nodded. “They’re making camp just up the river. Forty or fifty of them. They’ll be gone by morning light. We’ll have to wait it out.”
“You think they’re dangerous, laddie?”
“I couldn’t say,” he told her. “They’re quieter than they should be. No laughing, no joking, no shouting, no horseplay. They seem in an ugly mood. I think they took a licking at the City. Scratch one conqueror’s itch for conquest. In that kind of situation, I’d just as soon not meet them.”
“Come night,” said Rollo, “I could cross the river and creep close up to their fires, listen to what they say. It would be nothing new for me. I’ve done it many times before, crawling upon campfires, lying there and listening, afraid to show myself but so starved for conversation, for the sound of voices, that I took the chance. Although there was really little chance, for I can be silent when I want to be and my eyes are as good at night as they are in daylight.”
“You’ll stay right here,” said Cushing sharply. “There’ll be no creeping up. By morning they’ll be gone, and we can trail them for a while to see where they are going, then be on our way.”
He slipped the knapsack off his shoulder and untied the thongs. He took out the chunk of jerky and, cutting off a piece of it, handed it to Meg.
“Tonight,” he said, “this is your supper. Don’t let me ever again hear you disparage it.”
Night came down across the valley. In the darkness the river seemed to gurgle louder. Far off an owl began to chuckle. On the blufftop a coyote sang his yapping song. A fish splashed nearby and through the screening willows could be seen the flare of the campfire across the river. Cushing crept to the river’s edge and stared across the water, at the camp. Dark figures moved about the fires and he caught the smell of frying meat. Off in the darkness horses moved restlessly, stamping and snorting. Cushing squatted in the willows for an hour or more, alert to any danger. When he was satisfied there seemed to be none, he made his way back to where Meg and Rollo sat with Andy.
Cushing made a motion toward the horse. “Is he all right?” he asked.
“I talked to him,” said Meg. “I explained to him. He will give no trouble.”
“No spells?” he asked, jokingly. “You put no spell upon him?”
“Perhaps a slight one, only. It will never harm him.”
“We should get some sleep,” he said. “How about it, Rollo? Can you watch the horse for us?”
Rollo reached out a hand and stroked Andy’s neck. “He likes me,” he said. “He is not frightened of me.”
“Why should he be frightened of you?” asked Meg. “He knows you are his friend.”
“Things at times are frightened of me,” the robot said. “I come in the general shape of men but I am not a man. Go on and sleep. I need no sleep. I will stay and watch. If need be, I will waken you.”
“Be sure you do,” said Cushing. “If there is anything at all. I think it is all right. Everything is quiet. They’re settling down over there, across the river.”
Wrapped in the blanket, he stared up through the willows. There was no wind and the leaves hung limply. Through them a few stars could be seen. The river murmured at him, talking its way down across the land. His mind cast back across the days and he tried to number them, but the numbers ran together and became a broad stream, like the river, slipping down the land. It had been good, he thought—the sun, the nights, the river and the land. There were no protective walls, no potato patches. Was this the way, he wondered, that a man was meant to live, in freedom and communion with the land, the water and the weather? Somewhere in the past, had man taken the wrong turning that brought him to walls, to wars and to potato patches? Somewhere down the river the owl heard earlier in the evening (could it be the same one?) chuckled, and far off a coyote sang in loneliness, and above the willows the stars seemed to leave their stations far in space and come to lean above him.
He was wakened by a hand that was gently shaking him.
“Cushing,” someone was saying. “Cushing, come awake. The camp across the river. There is something going on.”
He saw that it was Rollo, the starlight glinting on his metal.
He half scrambled from the blanket. “What is it?” he asked.
“There’s a lot of commotion. They are pulling out, I think. Dawn hours off and they are pulling out.”
Cushing scrambled out of the blanket. “Okay, let us have a look.”
Squatted at the water’s edge, he stared across the river. The fires, burned low, were red eyes in the darkness. Hurrying figures moved darkly among them. The sound of stamping horses, the creak of saddle leather, but there was little talking.
“You’re right,” said Cushing. “Something spooked them.”
“An expedition from the City? Following them?”
“Maybe,” said Cushing. “I doubt it. If the city tribes beat them off, they’d be quite satisfied to leave them alone. But if these friends of ours across the river did take a beating, they’d be jumpy. They would run at shadows. They’re in a hurry to get back to their old home grounds, wherever that may be.”
Except for the muted noises of the camp and the murmur of the river, the land lay in silence. Both coyote and owl were quiet.
“We were lucky, sir,” said Rollo.
“Yes, we were,” said Cushing. “If they had spotted us, we might have been hard pressed to get away.”
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 hoofbeats 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 thongs, 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, Mille 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.
14
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 be poor clothing,” Rollo said, “to go through a cactus bed. And there’ll be cactus out there. There’s no missing it. Soon I will kill a bear. I’m running low 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 bear. 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.
“He can smell it out,” said Meg, triumphantly. “I told you he would be an asset on our travels.”
The Shivering Snake stayed with them now around the clock, circling Rollo and, at various times, Meg. She took kindly to it.
“It’s so cute,” she said.
And now, out in the loneliness, they were joined by something else—gray-purple shadows that slunk along behind them and on either side. At first they could not be sure if they were really shadows or only their imagination, born of the emptiness they traveled. But, finally, there could be no question of their actuality. They had no form or shape. Never for an instant could one gain a solid glimpse of them. It was as if a tiny cloud had passed across the sun to give rise to a fleeting shadow. But there were no clouds in the sky; the sun beat down mercilessly on them out of the brassy bowl that arced above their heads.
None of them spoke of it until one evening by a campfire located in a tiny glade, with a slowly trickling stream of reluctant water running along a pebbled creek bed, a small clump of plum bushes, heavy with ripened fruit, standing close beside the water.
“They’re still with us,” said Meg. “You can see them out there, just beyond the firelight.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Cushing.
“The shadows, laddie boy. Don’t pretend you haven’t seen them. They’ve been stalking us for the last two days.”
Meg appealed to Rollo. “You have seen them, too. More than likely, you kn
ow what they are. You’ve traveled up and down this land.”
Rollo shrugged. “They’re something no one can put a finger on. They follow people, that’s all.”
“But what are they?”
“Followers,” said Rollo.
“It seems to me,” said Cushing, “that on this trip we have had more than our share of strangenesses. A living rock, Shivering Snake and, now, the Followers.”
“You could have passed that rock a dozen times,” said Meg, “and not known what it was. It would have been just another rock to you. Andy sensed it first, then I…”
“Yes, I know,” said Cushing. “I could have missed the rock, but not the snake, nor the Followers.”
“This is lonesome land,” said Rollo. “It gives rise to many strangenesses.”
“Everywhere in the West?” asked Cushing, “or this particular area?”
“Mostly here,” said Rollo. “There are many stories told.”
“Would it have something to do,” asked Cushing, “with the Place of Going to the Stars?”
“I don’t know,” the robot said. “I know nothing about this Place of Going to the Stars. I only told you what I heard.”
“It seems to me, Sir Robot,” said Meg, “that you are full of evasiveness. Can you tell us further of the Followers?”
“They eat you,” Rollo said.
“Eat us?”
“That is right. Not the flesh of you, for they have no need of flesh. The soul and mind of you.”
“Well, that is fine,” said Meg. “So we are to be eaten, the soul and mind of us, and yet you tell us nothing of it. Not until this minute.”
“You’ll not be harmed,” said Rollo. “You’ll still have mind and soul intact. They do not take them from you. They only savor of them.”
“You have tried to sense them, Meg?” asked Cushing.
She nodded. “Confusing. Hard to come to grips with. As if there were more of them than there really are, although one never knows how many of them there really are, for you cannot count them. As if there were a crowd of them. As if there were a crowd of people, very many people.”