“All I did was fix a deer cage,” I said.

“My view, too,” the captain told me. “Count yourself lucky the major is a major and I’m a captain.

“In fact,” he said, indicating it was time I left, “you ought to count yourself lucky all around.”

Part II

Chapter 12

The first thing we did on the train was flip a seat-back so Nate and I could ride facing Sam and Apple. I said, “The captain told me you talked to Reese and Sergeant Mackey. Thank you.”

Nate said, “It wasn’t much.”

“You’d have done the same for us,” Sam said.

“If you ask me, it was too easy,” Apple said. “I was all set to—”

“To what?” Nate asked.

“Well, I don’t know,” Apple said. “But I’d have thought of something, you can bet.”

We had a good laugh, and then Sam turned to Nate. “So, we’re going to your part of Montana. What’s it like?”

“Farm and ranch country, mostly, or it was. The land’s pretty shot.” Nate shook his head. “I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I don’t see what a CCC camp can do to change that.”

Apple said, “What’s confusing me is I thought the CCC was for forest work and parks.”

“No,” Sam said. “There are a lot of CCC camps under the Forest Service or National Park Service, but others do projects for state agencies, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Soil Conservation Service that the major said we’ll be working for. I read about that before I signed on.”

“You read up! Only you, Senator!” Apple said.

Sam took the ribbing good-natured.

Then we moved on to what we’d heard just before leaving Missoula: that Klein and Lukowski had been picked up not far out of town.

“What do you think’s going to happen to them?” Apple asked.

“Something bad, I hope,” Nate said. He’d lost six dollars to them and didn’t have high hopes of getting it back. “I’m just glad we’re done with them. Pair of bad apples, if you ask me.”

“Hey! Watch how you talk about apples,” Apple said.

Nate added, “I’m glad to be shut of Compton, too.”

“No more than me,” I said with feeling, and everybody laughed some more.

We were in high spirits, that was for sure.

It was almost night by the time we got to Monroe, where we were met by a driver and another stake truck outfitted with a canvas top and bench seats. “Get your gear off the baggage car and pile in,” Major Garrett ordered. “Unless I miss my guess, supper will be waiting for us.”