Most ships arrived in port no trouble, Bowman said, taking a long slow pull. The cargo was sold at auction. Farms prospered humble and God-fearing. The new nation grew up grateful as the heathens made their adieus, trading baubles and ribbons. Some scuffles ensued, sure. Scalpings and baby thefts.

“The path to Destiny is rocky,” Saul said.

“The destination and the process both.”

Bowman was deep in thought now so Saul finished the whole idea for him, Bowman nodding:

But the seeds in the black fields took root. Weeds and trees shoved off, persuaded by plows and axes. A thief isn’t a thief if he’s not a thief. The ships’ holds were stacked full of cotton, whiskey, and beaver hats and plied east to the old world. A nation was born and moved westward singing out WE ARE WHO WE ARE to blue mountains as buggy paths were bitten into rock by stinking blood and sweat, on through to the Pacific, where we prayed on knees in sand and gave thanks for good fortune and promised more modest clean living.

Dan cut in, uninvited, on their conversation from the desert island of his choice, his tarp by another creek, his patch, his mind: What if Lucifer, Dan said, had an A-bomb in his breast pocket, what if he tossed it through the Pearly Gates as he spun away, punched a hole in a cloud, or if the whore had slipped a bomb from her bundle, rolled it under the mayor’s wife’s skirts, or if from the waves the shining arm had flung the plum-sized thing that waggled lopsided across the deck?

“What if?” Bowman said.

The trio could have watched the mushroom clouds from Mount Olympus, mother-of-pearl umbrellas on hand for the rain of wings, crowns, and angel parts.

“The stirrups,” said the yellow horse. “You look like a stork.”

It was a bright sharp day.

The deputy fiddled with buckles. “Much obliged.” All his life he had not been anyone and now with buckles on a horse he was someone. “Very much obliged to you.”

“That cowboy chatter too,” said the yellow horse. “People will laugh.”

He loved this talk, though, would not quit it—the quaint phrasing of the region spoken with zesty twang and stretch of vowels mixed with leather scent—without a fight. This western phrasing was his now too.