By noon on Friday, they had reached the outskirts of Liberal, Kansas, only a few miles from the Oklahoma line. Ed pulled the Chevy wagon in to the side of the dusty highway, and wiped the sweat from his face. Behind the Chevy, the small untidy convoy of cars and wagons pulled up at the side of the road, too, and out climbed farmworkers and their wives and children, stretching themselves and lighting cigarettes and rubbing their faces with towels and handkerchiefs.

Della, sitting next to Ed, laid her hand on his arm and said, ‘How are you feeling? Are you okay?’

Ed nodded. ‘I think so. Just tired, that’s all.’

‘Do you want me to drive?’ asked Peter Kaiser, from the back.

‘Later, yes,’ said Ed. ‘We hit sixty-six at Tucumcari. New Mexico; and I want to keep us driving through New Mexico at night. You can take over then.’

Shearson, wedged in a corner, bejewelled with beads of sweat like a Chinese Buddah, said, ‘Is there any danger of getting anything to eat at this juncture? It is lunchtime, you know.’

Ed glanced at the clock on the dash. ‘We’ll stop to eat once we’re out of Kansas. You can have a swig of water if you like.’

‘Dear God for an ice-cold martini and a basket of cold pheasant,’ murmured Shearson.

Without turning around, Ed said, ‘Senator – if you’re going to talk food all the way to Los Angeles – you’d better get out now. The situation’s bad enough without you adding your frustrated gourmet fantasies to it.’

‘I shall remember you, Hardesty, when all of this is over,’ Shearson growled. ‘I shall remember you as the only man alive who ever managed to force me to diet. Not even my doctor could make me give up oysters Rockefeller; but you did. I shall have your entrails one of these days.’

‘On toast?’ asked Della. ‘Or à la mode?’

Lennie Merritt, one of the stockhands, came walking up to Ed’s wagon, brushing the flies away from his face.

‘Mr Hardesty?’ he asked.

‘What is it, Lennie?’

‘My little boy Peter’s real sick back there. Brought up his breakfast, and won’t take nothing but sips of water. I’ve talked to my wife, sir, and the Billingtons, who are riding in there with us, and I’m afraid we’ve decided to pull out of the convoy and stay here for a while. My wife has an aunt in Dodge City, and we reckoned on travelling back up there.’

Ed looked down at the man’s pinched, sweaty face, his eyes squinting against the glare of the sun. He looked like one of those labourers in those A. B. Frost paintings that Season was always going on about.