“What happened in Bozoburg?” the Stranger asked. They rode slowly through the Thickening, to Jericho. Geographical positions were more fixed, in the Thickening. Directions often stayed the same. Elsewhere on the Escapement compasses were generally useless, and the sun did not always set where it should. This area of human settlement was the first to be mined for substance, and old mineshafts and broken country stood side by side with fields and orchards. More than once they came across train tracks, which crisscrossed this part of the Escapement, and more and more often now they came upon small, prosperous towns, with rose gardens in the front of houses and white picket fences all neat and orderly, orderly and neat. The Stranger had been travelling for a long while, and he was destined to travel for a long while more, and the flower he sought remained forever out of his grasp.

“The Rasmussen Gang came riding into town,” the Kid said, “and there was no one to stop them. They were mean and hungry, more wolves then men, with faces painted white and noses painted red as though they had tried to go native out there in the Doinklands. They shot whoever got in their way and set fire to the town . . .” His voice faded away and he looked elsewhere, into a place that was no longer there. “They blew up the bank and, well, I was only a kid.”

“You tried to fight them?”

“I knew how to shoot, stranger.” For a moment, a rueful smile illuminated his face. “I nicked one of the brothers’ arms with a lucky bullet. That was as far as I got before they caught me. I don’t think they liked me much. Maybe it was being just a kid, maybe it was telling them that I would kill them if it was the last thing I ever did. They put the money into saddlebags, and then they threw a rope over the beam of the old courthouse, and then they strung me up. I was choking when I saw the fire on the edge of town as they rode away. I thought I was dead . . . then the beam broke. It was an old building.”

He still looked elsewhere. The sun was setting, and the blue sky deepened into purple, the flames of the setting sun streaking it in vivid red bursts. The air felt fresh and clear. In the distance they saw a farmhouse, but as they rode closer they saw that it was abandoned, the roof caved in. Beside the main building was a smaller one, the roof intact but the windows broken, and the Stranger saw that it must have once been a balloonery.