He changed shirts and, while buttoning his shirt, looked out the window. The snow where he had seen the tracks was gone. It had been the last of the season, and in just the few days that had passed, everything had changed. Of course, he was a thousand feet higher in altitude than on the mesa of the ruin. These were the San Juan Mountains; down there he had been in semi-desert.
The Navajo reservation had once lain just to the south of him, covering an area larger than the combined size of Belgium and the Netherlands, half the size of England. Turning away from the window, he looked around again. This was real. This was his. His living quarters in his world. A comfortable, easy place to be, a world of pleasant reality with people coming and going, enjoying themselves or working, a place he understood and liked. And out there?
He shied from the thought. He would be going into something he neither knew nor understood, and there was a chance he might not return. What if he opened one of those doors that could close behind him, lock him in forever? With nothing around him but blank stone walls, impossibly thick, and on the floor the bones of unfortunates who had preceded him?
He need not go. He could stay here, then catch a plane and fly back to New York or to Los Angeles. Erik might make it on his own. Slipping into his coat, Mike Raglan knew he was arguing with himself to no purpose, for he was going back. He was not even sure if he was making a free choice. It might be that all his years of becoming what he was were dictating the issue.
How much choice did a man have, after all? Are we not all conditioned to certain expressions of life? Do we have a choice, whether we run or fight? He slipped a notepad into his pocket and went out to the car. He was hungry. That was reality, and an issue he could confront here and now.
As he turned up the road, he drove over a spot where a couple of years ago he had seen a weasel cross the road with a gopher in his mouth. Was he to be the weasel or the gopher? The predator or the prey?
What the hell, he told himself. They’ve grabbed Erik, they burned the cafe, they tried to get me. They laid out the course they wished to travel. If they wanted it that way, they could have it.
Magic. He had been a magician, but would that help? The chances were that they would be better at it than he. After all, most of the basic illusions were known to many people, including witch doctors in Central Africa or in the jungles of Brazil.
When he was seated at a table in the San Juan Room and had ordered, he glanced around the room. It was at least two-thirds full, a bright, interested looking bunch of people. As he considered it, a tall old man, quite heavy, got up from a nearby table and crossed over to him.
The man was well dressed in a casual, western fashion, had rumpled gray hair and a pleasant smile. “Mr. Raglan? May I join you?”
“Please do.”
He ordered coffee and looked at Raglan. “Been wanting to talk to you, Raglan. We know some of the same people, Gallagher, for instance.”
“He’s a good man.”
“He is that. One of the best.” The old man paused, his eyes wandering about the room. “My name’s Weston, Artemus Weston. Used to be a banker, one time. Retired a few years back. Been a lot of things in my time. Punched cows when I was a youngster, mostly over Utah way. Had a head for figures, an’ my boss seen it. Saw it. He took me into the office to handle his books. Done that for a few years an’ then the boss went into bankin’ and took me along. When he passed on, I kept on at the bank, settled his estate.”
Weston took up his cup and sipped coffee thoughtfully. “S’pose you’re wonderin’ what I’m gettin’ at. Just stay in the saddle an’ listen.
“Man like me, doesn’t talk a lot, listens mostly, he picks up things. Hears things. I done some surmisin’, too. A body does, you know. Never had much book-learning but I could put two an’ two together. There at the bank the boss moved me into the loan division. I had a head for business, did well with the loan part of it, but I handled property the bank owned, too.
“Don’t get me wrong. This was a two-by-four western town bank where all the business we done in a month a city bank would do in a day, maybe. Thing we had to do to survive was to know the folks.
“People we did business with. We had to know them. Did they pay their bills? Did they put in the hours or were they shiftless? Who was their family? Was somebody sponging off them? Did their ranches have good grass an’ water? Things like that. We had to know, and mostly we did. We knew things about folks they’d have been embarrassed to tell. We never talked about it, but one way to be successful in the small-town bankin’ business is just to know folks, to know what goes on in their heads.
“Few days ago I was talkin’ to Gallagher. He speaks well of you, an’ I’ve got a granddaughter back East who reads what you write. Swears by you.
“Gallagher says you got a friend missin’ out thataway?”
“I have.”
“Rough country. Easy for a man to get lost out there.” He paused again to taste his coffee. “Easy to get lost but not easy to disappear. Dry country. Has a way of preserving whatever it gets. Dries ’em out, but keeps ’em. A body now? It doesn’t fall apart like in wetter country, so if a man dies out there, they usually find his remains.
“Found a couple of them myself. Dead cows, too, an’ horses. Takes years to do away with a body. So if you miss somebody there’s got to be a reason.
“Now you take that country. Wide, beautiful, and mostly dry as all get-out. I love it. Could ride forever in it, only I don’t ride anymore. Too old to break any bones, an’ even the best of horses can fall. That’s rough out there.
“Strange country. Looks all wide-open to the eyes, but you an’ me, we know different. The Navajo knew different and the Hopis knew. So did the Paiutes.
“More of them around when I was punchin’ cows, and some of them were a bad lot, like that bunch that run with Posey. Steal a horse right from under your saddle while you’re sittin’ on it. But there was places they wouldn’t go. Other places they did go but they were careful.”
He let the waiter refill his cup. “S’pose you wonder what I’m gettin’ at?”
“No, I’m enjoying it.”
Weston chuckled suddenly. “I’m an old fool! Butt in-sky. Got no call to come worryin’ you with my talk. No call at all, ‘cept I like what Gallagher had to say an’ I got to worryin’ some.
“I rode that country quite a few years, as cowboy an’ as a banker checkin’ on things. Rode it a lot just for the pleasure. Some of it I fought shy of.”
He waited awhile, looking around the room, and Raglan waited with him, his curiosity excited. “Mostly we had to know if a man was good for a loan, an’ one time or another, most of them came to us. Most of ’em, but not Volkmeer.”
Startled, Raglan looked up, but the old man’s eyes were wandering—his eyes, but not his attention. “Volkmeer punched cows, branded a few heads here an’ there. Don’t recall he ever had any breeding stock, there at first, but he registered a brand and bought a few head, mostly steers.
“Those steers, now? Good stock. Never knowed any steers that were good for breedin’. Ain’t in their nature, but nonetheless, here an’ there one sees such a herd gatherin’ size. Somebody with a wide loop, y’ know? Well, first thing y’ know, Volkmeer’s runnin’ a couple of hundred head. Then he rode off up into the Oregon country and bought several hundred head of white-faces.”
“He was always a shrewd man, Weston.” Raglan spoke carefully. “As for the wide loop, you and I both know that many a big rancher got his start with a running-iron. There were always cattle in those old days that ran wild in the breaks and folks got around to branding them when they had time. Unless somebody got there first.”
“Sure. Man, the stories I could tell you! I’ve seen some herds grow mighty fast, like every cow-critter was havin’ four or five calves a year!”