Deliberately, he was belligerent. If they wanted trouble they could have it, and nothing was to be gained by seeming to be afraid.
“No. It is nothing. I look at car.”
“Help yourself.” He gestured widely. “There’s a lot of them to look at.” He pointed toward a police car in front of the cafe. “If you have any questions the police will be glad to answer them.”
“Police? Who speaks of police?” As he spoke, the man was glancing around; then, hurriedly, they turned and left.
The tourist with the children commented, “They’ve been hanging around all morning. Obviously they want nothing to do with the police.”
Raglan glanced toward the cafe. Gallagher would be waiting.
“See you!” he said, and waved a hand.
XVI
Gallagher was seated at a table in a corner eating breakfast. “Figured you’d be along,” he said. He gestured at the food. “Been up since four a.m. and didn’t want to wake the folks.”
Raglan seated himself where he could watch the street. Gallagher smiled. “Careful man. Now I like that.” He added butter to the toast. “You make trouble for a man. I had things about wrapped up around here until you showed up. Everything quiet, no problems except for a few Saturday night drunks and the usual pot-hunters. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since you got here.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I need the exercise.” He glanced at Raglan over his coffee cup. “What’s happened?”
Raglan shrugged. “There was a man at Tamarron who might have been tailing me. There was a car tailing me on the road yesterday and two men looking over my car when I came out this morning. When I pointed out your car, they skipped.”
Gallagher sized Raglan up carefully. “You think they were some of your friends from over the line?”
“I couldn’t swear to it, but I know.”
Gallagher chuckled. “Yeah, I know how that is. I know a half-dozen thieves around here, and they know I know them, but I haven’t a thing that would stand up in court and they know that, too.”
Raglan ordered his breakfast and stared out the window. Neither of them spoke for several minutes. Raglan reminded himself that he liked Gallagher. He was a good man, a tough man, and one with imagination. At least he had an open mind.
“The world’s gettin’ too damn complicated,” Gallagher said. “Used to be a man knew who his enemies were and where to find them. If you made a deal with a man, you shook hands on it and nothing more was needed. Now you got lawyers, you got the government, you got everything tangled in red tape, and then things like this come up. Who knows about fourth dimensions and parallel worlds?”
“That isn’t really new. Einstein started it all back in 1919, I think it was. From all I hear, he didn’t like it much, either. Most people are still living in that nice, comfortable world that Newton accepted.”
“I don’t know anything about that.” Gallagher filled their cups from the pot the waitress had left. “Supposing what you suggest is fact. Supposing that when the Anasazi left here they went back to that world that was evil. What do you think it would be like now?”
Raglan shrugged. “Hard to tell. It would depend so much on what influences there were that affected their culture. They were planting on mesa tops, learning to use all the water they had. I suspect they’d become pretty good dry farmers but they were into irrigation, too.
“Off to the south, where Phoenix is, there was the Hohokam culture who understood irrigation very well. Some of the ditches they dug couldn’t be improved upon.
“There was a connection with the Hohokam. I don’t know how much of a connection but there was probably some trade and exchange of ideas, so if the culture they had persisted on the Other Side, I would guess that by now they would have a very advanced system of irrigation, one that was strictly regulated.”
“When you need water,” Gallagher agreed, “somebody has to control its use or there’d be fighting all the while.”
“Exactly. And there seems to have been, for a long time at least, an effort to close off any communication with this side. To develop a civilization needs input from other peoples. Europe had a lot of useful rivers, lots of coves, harbors, and the like, so it was easy for people to come and go and each one brought new ideas, new blood.
“Nobody knows how old seafaring was in Europe. For years everything was based on what we knew about the Mediterranean, but there were ships in the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific just as early, if not earlier than the Mediterranean. There was seafaring in the Baltic and Atlantic, too. All of it enabled ideas to spread, introducing new weapons, new tools, new crops.” Raglan paused to sip his coffee.
“What are you going to do now?” Gallagher asked.
Raglan shrugged again. “Go back to Hokart’s mesa. Hang around out there and see what I can learn.” He paused. “I’ve got to find Erik. He asked for me to come, he almost begged me to come, there at the end. That wasn’t like him. He was scared.”
“Aren’t you?”
“To be frank, yes. I don’t know what’s over there. If I go, I don’t know that I can ever get back. Johnny never could make it and from what I gather he was a pretty canny old cowboy.”
“You be careful.”
“I’ll do that.” Raglan paused. “Seen any more of Eden Foster?”
Gallagher shook his head. “I’m not liable to. Not for a while. The missus like to .flew off the handle when she heard I’d been over there. She doesn’t know Eden but she suspects the worst.”
Raglan was silent, and then he said. “The way I see it, judging from what I might call contacts with them, they don’t know much about how we function over here.
“Eden knows, but she’s only one and for reasons of her own she may not be sharing what she knows. Maybe it’s because she just doesn’t think of it that way. Little things, about how to spend money, getting change, paying checks in restaurants, and even the structure of our buildings.
“At Tamarron, I don’t believe that fellow even suspected there was a door behind me. He saw a glass wall and took it for granted. He was sitting so he could watch me and the entrance, so when some confusion distracted him, I slipped out that door.”
Raglan watched the movements outside. There was nothing going on beyond the casual, everyday life of the town. Where was Kawasi? Was she safe? Or had she, too, been taken?
“Postmistress spoke to me this morning,” Gallagher commented. “Said Mr. Hokart had not been in to pick up his mail. I told her to hold it. He might be out of town.”
“She buy it?”
“I don’t believe so. She didn’t say anything but she looked doubtful, said Mr. Hokart was always very particular about his mail.” Gallagher pushed back in his chair. “That’s the beginning of it, Mike. Folks are going to start asking questions. This is a small town and they don’t miss very much. Hokart was never what you’d call neighborly, but he was always friendly in passing and one way or another he did quite a bit of business here in town.
“He bought groceries now and again, ate in the cafe, and he bought hardware—nails, tools and such …”
“Ammunition?”
“Uh-huh. He bought quite a lot. Aroused some curiosity, as it was pistol ammo. Said he was shooting at targets, trying to perfect his shooting.”
“Reasonable enough.”
“Sure, anybody will buy that. None of us shoot well enough. No matter how good you are, you can always get better.” He paused, staring out the window. “Anyway, folks are asking questions, wondering why he hasn’t been in. But they’ve just begun to wonder where he is. Soon they will be asking questions about that, and then they will begin to wonder just who you are and what you’re doing here.”
“I expect that.”
“Yeah? But are you ready for the next thing? They will be wondering how come you are around and Hokart’s vanished. They will be asking about the connection. They’ll be suspicious.
“When they start asking questions they will be wanting answers, and I don’t have any answers. Do you?”
“I am a friend of Erik’s. It is as simple as that.”
“If you’re such a good friend, why don’t you know where Erik is?” Gallagher stared at him. “You see what I mean? This is a small town. Everybody knows everybody else, but they don’t know you. Erik wasn’t one of them but they accepted him. He was doing something they thought foolish but he was doing it on his own land and he was willing to pay for it, so they are on his side.”