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.Elijah sniffed, disappointed he preferred the other.He let Baal loose to feed on the clumped grasses that managed to grow despite the little light the trees permitted.“I am finished.”“I know,” Marvin said.“Do you think I am a sinner?”“Did you enjoy those things people would call sin?” Marvin asked him.“No.”“It cannot be a sin unless you enjoyed it,” Marvin said.Elijah nodded and Marvin led him to a tipi outside the camp’s boundaries, close to the stream serving the makeshift village, yet far enough to permit him his thoughts.Inside were a lantern and some oil and a copy of his good book.twenty - twoStrawl rested a full day under the peak of Copper Mountain, eating the last of his frybread and the remnants of a salami stick.Elijah had not varied his trek, riding as if nobody was interested, or more likely, as if he knew those following and saw no reason to discourage them.The camp before him was impressive—enough so, Strawl determined Elijah could not have managed the project alone.Evening, he watched the pickets exchange, and through his spyglass he made out groups of women laboring at the long pit and silhouetted men walking alone or in pairs across the firelit commons into or past the tents, yellow wraiths where the glow ebbed and ended.Strawl heard stones scrape from the stream bank as another contingent of women and young girls cleaned pots or beat clothes with broom handles soaked in lye.The encampment appeared comic.Even in this country no one built villages or towns to hide them.They wanted businesses and roads and railroads.They wanted to be found.A man like Rutherford Hayes might hermit himself.Even a family or two who believed in some smoky deity so strange and private that they could only believe in it themselves if no neighbors existed to argue could still be assured seclusion if they risked the most primitive corners of the region.Any group larger, though, necessitated not company—that would be the least of their concerns—but more than would be accessible within walking or riding distance.That meant restocking at stores and liveries, and those don’t occur without people, and if reduced to that, what was the point of going off?As it grew later, Strawl made for the camp.He avoided the pickets with no trouble, even with the horse in tow.At the creek bed were seven women, each heavy with child.They scoured a stack of pans and kettles with river gravel, chattering.He passed without nodding and a quarter mile later arrived at the clearing between canopies.Enormous trees had been pruned ten feet up from the ground, the long phallic trunks appeared sins from the uncharted country in people’s minds.Squares of brown tarp were tied fifteen feet high in the trees cinched tight with hemp rope to the sturdiest limbs some places and tethered to the ground with iron stakes in others.The group had scattered leaves and needles atop them to make the place appear nothing unusual.Underneath, the hardpan was swept clean as a floor.In the center, the firepit had high walls and a deep well to mute the light.Inez stirred what smelled like a broth of some kind.A bruise remained beneath her ear.Her grandchildren scrambled toward a tent upon seeing Strawl, and Marvin intercepted him, coming from the darkness.“You’re a party to this?” Strawl asked.“Yes,” Marvin said.“I thought you knew nothing of these doings.”“I lied.”Strawl smiled.“Well, the truth is overrated.”He decided to press no further.Marvin loaded a pipe with kinnikinnick and lit it.“I apologize for hurting Inez,” Strawl said.Marvin nodded.“No one can help who they are.”“You included?”“Yes,” Marvin answered.“There guns on me?”Marvin shrugged.“I can’t speak for everyone here.If you came to shoot us, some will shoot back.”“I’m accustomed to those I shoot at shooting back,” Strawl said.He sat on a flat boulder that looked like it was meant for the purpose.The camp had begun buttoning up.Mothers herded children to their canvas abodes, and several pregnant women tottered across the clearing, turning misshapen silhouettes as they left the fire’s glow.Strawl watched two tents glow as lanterns inside clicked to life and flickered with their quaking oil feeds.“Are you looking for a truce?” Strawl asked.“Yes.”Strawl stared at the ground.“You know who I’m here for?”“He told me.”“You want this truce extended to him, too, I suppose?”Marvin nodded.“You know what he’s done and who he’s done it to?”“Yes,” Marvin said.“I can’t promise you anything on that.”“ Is that why you’re here? To shoot your son?”“He’s not blood to me.”Marvin said, “He is like you.He has no blood father.He is your son.You are his father.His deeds are yours.Blood is not necessary.He is why you are here.”Strawl shook his head.“I am not sure what’s put me here, but unless someone throws lead my direction, I don’t plan on shooting.”“Will you arrest us, then?”“Who here would allow it without guns? And I already told you I’m not inclined to do that.Elijah, however, is excluded on both counts.”Marvin nodded.He steered Strawl up a trail to a rock outcropping that overlooked the camp.They sat and smoked a long time.“One of those women wife to a Cloud boy?” Strawl asked.“Two,” Marvin answered.“One to each.”Beneath them, Inez organized the women into something resembling an apple-packing line at two split logs, which served as tables.There, some chopped roots and vegetables raised in a garden they’d passed climbing to where they now sat.Others gutted a stringer of trout, and two more plucked sage hens.They were preparing tomorrow’s meals.“Couldn’t help but notice she was with child.A good deal of others seem in the same state.I’m guessing you’re not building a home for wayward women out this far.”“No,” Marvin said.“No felony,” Strawl said.“Impolite and a sin, but law doesn’t reach that far.”“They are all pregnant with Elijah’s children.” Marvin tapped the pipe then struck a match and handed it to Strawl, who smoked then tried not to cough at the harsh mixture.“But those Cloud girls, their husbands are barely cold.”“He had made them pregnant before.”“That why he killed them?”Marvin shook his head.“He decided they would die before he made their wives pregnant, even.”Strawl handed the pipe back to him.The women below were separating the contents of their meal into pots to stew through the night.Inez ground some grain with a homemade pestle.Marvin studied their work.His hair was long and he wore it in a braid that he’d tied with a yellow handkerchief.“You didn’t stop him?”Marvin puffed on the pipe and watched the smoke break in the cold air.“He asked permission.”“Permission to kill someone? Who from, his good book?”“Me,” Marvin said.“Though the book he listened to, as well.”“You told him it was all right to kill those Cloud boys.”Marvin nodded.“After he asked, I told him to copulate with their women and then to kill the men.”“Those other boys, too?”Marvin nodded.“Except Jacob Chin.That was his own killing, though I am sure he thought it necessary.”“Marvin
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