Roy and his riders were in the foothills on one of the mountain ranges that you had to get through before you got to the real mountains.

It was evening and cool. The smoke from the campfire hung in the cold air, but it smelled good. The men seemed generally happy. They hadn't seen Bonner in a couple of days. Roy had led them on a roundabout route through the Snowstates—they figured they were out of the Snows and that they had left Bonner behind somewhere on the road. That made everyone feel better.

The loot from the Snowman supply column had gone a long way towards making everyone happier too. There was something approaching fresh food— some black sides of beef and some six-week-old-vegetates, smelted and moldy. There was a certain amount of spirited debate about exactly what they were. Most claimed they were beets, some of the riders said turnips. A stubborn few insisted they were carrots.

"Carrots don't get that big."

"Yes they do."

"The fuck they do."

' 'Listen,'' said the rider who was losing his temper, "I know a fuckin' carrot when I see one."

"You're both wrong," said Buggy, "they're rutabagas."

"Carrots."

"Turnips."

"I'm telling you, they're beets."

"Rutabagas."

They all agreed though, that the mushy roots were extremely tasty. They tossed them onto the fire and and waited until they were charred on the outside and then chowed them down, eating them off the sticks that they used to fish the things out of the fire.

Once they thought that they heard, far off, an engine. It echoed in the night, coming down the valley, then vanishing in the night. That shook everybody up and dispelled the good feeling that was left over from dinner.

"It's him," said someone.

"The hell it is," insisted Roy. "You know how he's been operating. He's been working quiet. He wouldn't come roaring down the valley."

"Well, I dunno about you fucks, but I think quiet is worse than noisy."

"Shuttup," said Roy. He didn't like this kind of talk. He made sure that eveyone noticed that he tripled the guard that night.

In the morning they all woke up and looked around them and saw that everything was okay and felt good again.

Someone started a fire and one of Roy's boys put on a bucket of flour and water mixed with salt and pepper that tasted terrible but it warmed you up. They all sat around and watched sleepily while the sludge came to a burping boil.

"Hey," said Gaucho, "somebody got a DT?"

"Find your own fucking smokes," said someone cheerfully.

"Warren always has some to spare," said Gaucho and he crawled off to Warren who still lay in his blanket.

Gaucho kicked the sleeping form. "Yo, Warren. Gimme a turd, man."

Warren didn't stir.

"Warren . . ." Gaucho kicked the form again. Then he looked down. Where Warren's throat had been, there was an ugly red gash. His blankets were sopped with his own blood. "Fuckpiss!" announced Gaucho at the top of his voice.

The squad of riders moved out in less than five minutes. This time they were really scared. None of the guards had heard or seen a single thing out of the ordinary. Bonner had walked into their camp, right into the middle of them, cut Warren's throat silently, and vanished.

The man was not real . . .

They left the mush bubbling on the fire. The Mean Brothers ate it.

"That was a good trick," said Clara looking at Warren's dead body. "How did you do it?" "I was quiet," said Bonner.

Roy and his riders were climbing now. They were pushing deep into the hills and with each foot they climbed they wished they could believe Roy and breathe a little easier.

"No one goes this way over the mountains," said Roy confidently.

"Oh yeah," Buggy, "how come?"

"Because it's spooked."

"Swell," said someone.

"Whaddya mean spooked?"

"You'll see."

"Wait, you mean there's something up ahead that's gonna spook Bonner?"

"That's right."

"Well, that's just fucking wonderful, Roy. 'Cause if it spooks Bonner it's gonna scare me to death."

"It'll only scare him because he don't know what it is."

"Well, neither do I."

"But / do and I know it's harmless."

"So what is it?"

"Well," said Roy. "I figure it's God."

"Great," said Buggy.

They drove another twenty miles before God appeared. The riders stopped and stared. A couple of them reached for their guns but the sight was so overwhelming that they knew that there was nothing they could do if those great faces so much as spat at them.

Across the valley four giant faces stared at them. They looked like they were part of the mountain itself. Three looked at them directly on. The forth seemed to be aloof, looking down the valley.

"Now just what in the hell are those?" demanded Gaucho.

"Well, we figure they were some kind of idol that the old people used to worship."

"You think we oughta say a prayer or something?"

"Nawww. The one on the end looks like a fairy, doncha think?" said Roy. He didn't call them friend anymore.

"Be quiet."

"What? Afraid he might hear you?"

"It's just pretty strange, that's all."

"Okay," said Roy, "let's get going."

"I don't think it's gonna spook Bonner," mumbled Buggy.

He was right. About an hour later Bonner, the Mean Brothers, and the Sisters stopped just where the riders had been.

"Now what in the hell are those guys?" demanded Clara.

"It's called Mount Rushmore," said Bonner. He had read about it. And he had seen it a couple of times before.

"Yeah, but who are they?"

"They were presidents," explained Bonner.

"Presidents? Leatherman calls himself 'The President,' right? Were they like old-time Leathermen?"

"That's right. Sort of." Bonner smiled to himself.

"Who's the dude with the mustache?" asked Sheila.

"Theodore Roosevelt," said Bonner.

"He's kind of cute."

"Get over here, you bitch," barked Belle.

"They sure had weird names back then, didn't they?" said Clara.

"Well everybody had two or three names," said Bonner. He didn't much understand it himself. But he read books and books almost always gave everybody two or three names.

"Oh, you mean like 'Carey the Kook.' "

"Close enough," said Bonner.

They mounted up and moved off again. They were only five or six miles beyond the statues when Bonner held up a hand and slowed everybody down.

"What are you doing?" demanded Clara over the growling low gear of her bike engine.

"I'm stopping."

"What for?"

"To wait."

"For what?"

"It's not a what. It's a who."

"Now who the fuck is up here? Besides us and them?"

"Duffy."

It seemed to Clara that Duffy appeared absolutely silently. One minute it was just Bonner, the Means, and the Sisters and the next it was Bonner, the Means, the Sisters, and Duffy. No one heard him show up. He was just there.

He was just about six foot and thin. He wore an outfit made entirely of the skins of animals he had killed. His deerskin pants were ragged around the cuffs, the tunic he wore was laced together with a buckskin tie. Around his middle were two thick belts that held two handguns that he had found in an old Park Service office. He had a long barrel rifle that he leaned against.

"Hey Bonner," he said quietly.

"Duff."

"Been a while," said Duffy.

"Headed to the coast."

"Pack of creatures come through here a while ago."

"We're chasing them."

Duffy smiled. "Thought you woulda been able to catch 'em by now."

"That's what I say, mister," barked Clara. "We coulda taken them a long time ago."

"Duffy, I'd like you to meet some friends of mine. This is Clara. These are the Sisters. And these are the Mean Brothers."

"Big," said Duffy.

"Duffy is a man of few words," explained Bonner to Clara.

"Then he oughta sit down and have a jaw with your Mean Brothers here."

"You know," said a voice from the back, "he's kind of-" Belle slapped Sheila in the chops.

"We need some help, Duffy."

"Sure."

"We need to get over this mountain before them riders that just passed through do."

"What do we have to do that for?" demanded Clara.

"Just to give them a little surprise."

"Don't you think you've scared them pack rats enough?"

"No," said Bonner, "I don't."

"I do," mumbled Clara.

"So Duff, what do you say? You know a way over this mountain?"

"Sure. Problem though."

"What problem?" asked Bonner.

"Stormers on the other side."

"Wait a minute," said Clara. "Stormers. out here?"

"S'what I said."

"Duff, what are Stormers doing out here?" asked Bonner, perplexed.

Duffy shrugged.

Bonner and Clara looked at one another. "What do you figure, Bonner?"

"I have no idea."

"Could be lost ..."

"Can you get so lost that you get this far and not know it?"

"You don't suppose that Leather has decided to conquer himself a piece of this territory, do you?" said Clara.

"How many are there, Duffy?" asked Bonner.

" 'Bout fifty."

"Too small," said Clara. "Maybe scouts."

"But it's enough," said Bonner.

"Enough for what?"

"To carve up that squad of riders we've been chasing . . . Duffy, where's your four-wheel?"

Duffy gestured with his chin. "Up a ways."

Bonner followed Duffy's directions down the main road a piece and then off the road. A faded sign said:

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR. ACCESS ROAD. ENTRY PROHIBITED

It always gave Bonner a little thrill that he couldn't quite understand, when he saw the words United States. The concept seemed so fine, yet so strange in the world that he inhabited. He had read about the United States of America. There were fifty of them— ten times the number that existed now—and they seemed never to go to war with one another. Except once, in a time so long ago that most of the books he read referred to it as distant history. They called it The Civil War. ...

Fifty States and only one war between them in all that time. Bonner couldn't imagine it, just the way he had trouble conjuring up a time as far past as the 1860s. Damn, he thought, he wished he knew what year it was—what century would be a start. He told himself that one day he was going to figure it all out. Time, the Bomb, the time before the Bomb. He was going to do all that when the killing was done. . . .

They were climbing on the steep dirt road now, high up above the blacktop they had left behind. There were silent pine forests up here, Duffy's natural habitat. Bonner had met him the first time he traveled over the mountains. He was a silent, grizzled man, who knew the mountain inside out. And he always—but always—appeared when Bonner had traveled these roads.

Parked high up on the mountain was the four-wheel-drive jeep that Duffy had managed to get going. It had a reinforced back axle and not much bodywork. He kept the back of the vehicle loaded down with rocks to keep traction up. He drove it everywhere. There was no terrain on the mountains so tough that he wouldn't try it now and then.

Duffy hopped out of Bonner's machine and into his own just before he started it up he paused, like a pointer dog, sensing something. Bonner listened too and after a second or two, he caught it on the edge of the breeze.

"What? What?" demanded Clara.

"Bonner," said Duffy. He pointed up a path, too narrow for the passage of any vehicle.

"What?"

"Come on."

Duffy led Bonner up the track a few hundred yards. At the end of it stood a high watchtower that rangers had once used to look for forest fires. Duffy slung his long-barreled rifle across his shoulders and started to climb the ladder that led up to the platform at the top of the tower.

Bonner followed.

The view form the cabin was fantastic. Spread out around them was a magnificent mountain range. The trees were green, the peaks blue and gray where the sun hit them. Duffy pointed down the mountain.

Scurrying along the road were Roy and his riders.

They looked so small and far off that Bonner found it hard to believe that they were the same men who had hurt the the girl, the men whose camp he had been in the night before . . .

Duffy unslung his rifle. He had built it himself. The barrel was a good seven feet long. He laid it carefully on the broken window sill of the cabin, licked his thumb, and wiped it over the sight. Then he cocked the weapon.

"Not the leader," said Bonner.

Duffy nodded and leaned down over his long weapon.

The pack of riders rode in a cocoon of noise. Each engine joined with the one next to it and behind it and beside it to make for a nonstop, seamless steel symphony. Beyond those walls of sound they could hear some things—a pistol shot, for example—but no one heard one and they were damned if they could explain why Gaucho was suddenly torn from his bike and sent hurtling into the underbrush.

"Neck wire!" screamed someone and they all fell flat onto the tanks of their bikes or slid low in the seats of their cars.

"The hell it was!" yelled Buggy.

The riders stopped and went back to Gaucho. He was lying next to the road bleeding from what was obviously a gunshot.

"Well, said Buggy, "how do you explain that?"

"Maybe," said someone, "his gun went off and he shot hisself."

"In the back of the head?"

"We better keep moving."

"Aw fuck it," said a rider, "let's face it. We're all dead men."

"Speak for yourself," said Roy. "Once we get to the Rich Man ..."

"There you go with that Rich Man shit again," yelled someone.

"You got a better plan?" demanded Roy.

They shuffled their feet nervously. They couldn't go back and take the chance of running straight into Bonner. They had to go forward. But privately they agreed with their brother rider. They were all dead men with guns.

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