Inland, as they drove in Neil’s pickup through the Valley of the Moon, the afternoon was densely hazy and hot. They negotiated the curved, cultivated hills that rose between Sonoma and Napa counties, past hillside farms of tan-colored cattle and furrowed fields, and then they were sloping down into the broad flats of the southern Napa Valley. Ahead of them, blue and forested against dim sky, was the rugged outline of the Vaca Mountains. It was up there, beyond those peaks, that Lake Berryessa lay. A long rectangular sheet of ruffled water, twelve miles long and two miles across.

Singing Rock, steadily chewing tobacco, said, “In certain parts of New England, the Indians called rounded mountains uncanoonucks, which simply translated means ‘women’s breasts.’”

Harry, joggling up and down comfortably in his seat as Neil sped the pickup along the blacktop, commented, “What name do they have for medicine men who try to keep you amused by telling you trivial oddities of Indian lore?”

His elbow resting casually on the pickup’s window ledge, Singing Rock turned to Harry and smiled. “The same name they have for irritable paleface mystics.”

Neil leaned over and turned on the pickup’s radio. He twiddled the dial through blurts of country-and-western music, snatches of evangelism, burbles of laughing. He said, “Maybe there’s some news about the school bus. The story should have gotten out by now.”

Singing Rock asked, “How long is it going to take us to get up to the lake from here?”

“Maybe another twenty minutes at most,” Neil told him. They were speeding along the freeway through Napa now, and he was switching lanes to leave the main road and head east through the city and up to the mountains.

He added, “I hope to God we’re not too late. If anything happened to Toby now, I tell you—”

Harry said reassuringly, “You heard what Singing Rock said. Nothing’s going to break until the moon goddess appears. It’s—what—four o’clock now. We’ve got six hours to go.”

They drove through the outskirts of Napa, along Lincoln Avenue. The traffic was heavy and flowing at a slow, sedate twenty miles an hour. There was nothing that Neil could do except hold his speed down and wait until they were clear of the city. At each red traffic signal, he sat biting his lip and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

“Come on, come on, you bastard,” he muttered under his breath, as they finally crossed the city limit behind a rusting Matador. He put his foot down, and they pulled ahead, roaring along the eucalyptus-shaded avenue that led to the mountains.