After studying the route, Chase had provisionally picked out a spot to camp overnight between Austin and Frenchman, somewhere along Railroad Pass. If possible he wanted to keep clear of towns, in fact any places of habitation. With the continuing exodus northward he guessed that the locals would be suspicious and perhaps hostile to strangers. Neither could he rule out the possibility that there were shanty settlements of immigrants from the southern states.
But most of all he wanted to avoid Reno, the only place of any size between them and Goose Lake. Apart from its reputation as a vacation resort and onetime divorce capital, he knew nothing about the city. But he mistrusted all cities, suspecting that that was where the frayed edges of civilization began to show first. In the backwoods there was only nature in the raw to contend with, whereas cities compressed the madness and hysteria into a volatile mixture that could explode at any moment with unpredictable results.
Thus far on the journey they had seen only a few other vehicles, so presumably the main interstate highways running due north were carrying the bulk of the traffic.
A couple of miles past Eureka (one of dozens of remote outposts with that name west of Kansas City, he supposed), they ran into the first real sign of trouble. It was midafternoon and Chase was silently congratulating himself on their unhindered progress when they came down a long sweeping curve out of the shadow of Pinto Summit into bright sunshine to find a truck, farm tractor and two patched-up cars with smeared windshields strung across the road.
Ruth got a grip on the rifle and was about to hoist it when Chase motioned with the palm of his hand, warning her not to make any sudden moves that might be misinterpreted.
He shifted down into second and brought the jeep to a halt about ten yards away. There were five men lounging about, all clad in farmer's dungarees, two of them cradling shotguns in their brawny arms. One of the others was holding a thick pine stave in his right hand, which he thwacked menacingly into his left.
As casually as he could Chase unzipped the pocket of his Wind-breaker. The butt of the automatic was hidden but within easy reach.
The men were rough-looking, unshaven, their eyes slitted against the sunlight. Hard to tell whether they were God-fearing, public-spirited citizens or mean sons of bitches with something nasty in mind. The two men with shotguns ambled to either side of the road to cover the jeep while the man with the stave came forward, a grimy Stetson-style straw hat tipped forward so that the curled brim almost rested on his sunburned nose.
Chase took off his dark glasses, feeling that more amicable contact could be made if the man could see his eyes.
"Real pleasant day fer a ride." The man had stopped a few feet away, his scratched red boots spread in an indolent stance on the blacktop. The greeting might have been innocuous enough, though Chase was uneasily aware of the double meaning it contained. "What ya got back yonder?" The soiled hat brim nodding toward the back of the jeep.
"Camping gear." Chase hesitated and then said, "We're driving up to Oregon. This lady is a doctor. We're on our way to treat a sick friend."
The man tapped his palm with the stave jerkily, as if to the beat of a metronome that only he could hear. "What kind of speech d'ya call that?"
"Speech?" Chase frowned.
"That--what ya call it?--ack-cent of your'n. Where ya from, mister?"
"I'm English."
"An' you're goin' up to Oregon," the man said in a mocking tone, "to help a sick friend."
Chase moved his hands from the wheel and placed them, fingers spread, on his thighs. Ruth was sitting tensely in the seat beside him, her fingers wrapped around the burnished blue gun barrel.
"Would you mind telling us why you've blocked the road?" Chase said.
"Jest passin' the time of day." The man smiled without opening his lips. "Never know who'll happen along."
"Are you from around here?"
The man grinned, revealing a sliver of red gums. "I really dig that ack-cent. It's right dandy. Ain't that what you English say?"
"No, it's what you # Americans say. Listen, we have to move on. What I'm telling you is the--"
But the man ignored him and walked around to Ruth's side of the jeep and stood looking at her from underneath the brim of his hat. It was difficult to see his eyes properly, but they could tell that he was taking everything in: her dark windblown hair and thickly lashed eyes, the wrinkled open vee of her shirt exposing her white throat and the slopes of her breasts swelling and falling as she tried to control her breathing, the blue denims molded to hips and thighs.
After his inspection he moved his eyes lazily up to her face again. "So you're a lady doctor, huh?"
"That's right. And my friend has just asked you why you're blocking the road. Would you mind telling us why? This isn't some kind of game. Please move those vehicles so that we can drive on."
