a dirt road, leading south to the middle of nowhere.
¢I’here’s a town down there?’ he asked.
‘According to the map,’ Neagley said.
He backed up and made the turn. The dirt road ran a mile
through pines and then broke out with a view of absolutely
nothing.
‘Keep going,’ Neagley said.
They drove on, twenty miles, thirty. The road rose and fell.
Then it peaked and the land fell away in front of them into a
fifty-mile-wide bowl of grass and sage. The road ran ahead
through it straight south like a faint pencil line and crossed a
river in the base of the bowl. Two more roads ran in to the
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bridge from nowhere. There were tiny buildings scattered
randomly. The whole thing looked like a capital letter K, lightly
peppered with habitation where the strokes of the letter met at
the bridge.
I’hat’s Grace, Wyoming,’ Neagley said. ‘Where this road
crosses the south fork of the Cheyenne river.’
Reacher eased the Yukon to a stop. Put it in park and crossed
his arms on the top of the wheel. Leaned forward with his chin
on his hands and stared ahead through the windshield.
‘We should be on horses,’ he said.
‘Wearing white hats,’ Neagley said. ‘With Colt .45s.’
‘I’ll stick with the Steyrs,’ Reacher said. ‘How many ways
in?’
Neagley traced her finger over the map. ‘North or south,’ she
said. ‘On this road. The other two roads don’t go anywhere.
They peter out in the brush. Maybe they head out to old cattle
ranches.’
‘Which way will the bad guys come?’
‘Nevada, they’ll come in from the south. Idaho, from the
north.’
‘So we can’t stay right here and block the road.’
qey might be down there already.’
One of the buildings was a tiny pinprick of white in a square
of green. Froelich’s church, he thought. He opened his door and
got out of the car. Walked around to the tailgate and came back
with the birdwatcher’s spotting scope. It was like half of a huge
pair of binoculars. He steadied it against the open door and put
it to his eye.
The optics compressed the view into a flat grainy picture that
danced and quivered with his heartbeat. He focused until it was
like looking down at the town from a half-mile away. The river
was a narrow cut. The bridge was a stone structure. The roads
were all dirt. There were more buildings than he had first
thought. The church stood alone in a tended acre inside the
south angle of the K. It had a stone foundation and the rest of it
was clapboard painted white. It would have looked right at
home in Massachusetts. Its grounds widened out to the south
and were mowed grass studded with headstones.
South of the graveyard was a fence, and behind the fence was
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a cluster of two-storey buildings made of weathered cedar.
They were set at random angles to each other. North of the
church were more of the same. Houses, stores, barns. Along
the short legs of the K were more buildings. Some of them
were painted white. They were close together near the centre of
town, farther apart as the distance increased. The river ran blue
and clear, east and north into the sea of grass. There were cars
and pick-ups parked here and there. Some pedestrian activity. It
looked like the population might reach a couple of hundred.
‘It was a cattle town, I guess,’ Neagley said. ‘They brought
the railroad in as far as Casper, through Douglas. They must
have driven the herds sixty, seventy miles south and picked it
up there.’
‘So what do they do now?’ Reacher asked.
The town wobbled in the scope as he spoke.
‘No idea,’ she said. ‘Maybe they all invest on-line.’
He passed her the scope and she refocused and stared down
through it. He watched the lens move fractionally up and down
and side to side as she covered the whole area
hey’ll set up to the south,’ she said. ‘All the pre-service
activity will happen south of the church. They’ve got a couple of
old barns a hundred yards out, and some natural cover.’