“Could you watch my stuff?” he called to the cashier. He put on his best Important Traveler voice, and she smiled at him and nodded. “Sure.”

“Thanks.”

He felt a little better. His disguise was in place and he was safely ensconced here with other people. He walked into the bathroom, looked at himself in the mirror. He hadn’t shaved yet today and was starting to look a little raggedy, but his sweat-clumped hair was the main problem, and he took out a comb, held it under the faucet and ran it through his hair.

Much better.

He realized suddenly that he had to take a whiz, and he walked over to the closest urinal, unzipping his pants—

—and saw out of the corner of his eye a fluttering black shape.

It was there for only a second, in one of the mirrors, and he whirled around, already zipping up, his mouth suddenly dry, his heart once again pounding.

A cold hand touched his shoulder.

“No!” he screamed, jerking around.

But there was nothing there.

He ran out of the rest room as fast as he could.

Wyoming

It was an omen, her mother would have said, and Patty was not so sure she disagreed. Hube would laugh at her if she told him that, would make fun of her and her mother and her entire family, would tell her to move into the twentieth century, but Hube didn’t know as much as he thought he did. There were a lot of things science could explain, but there were a lot of things it couldn’t, and Patty wasn’t so close-minded that she automatically dismissed anything that didn’t agree with her preconceived notions.

She stared at the crow sitting atop the garbage can. The crow stared back at her, blinked.

It had been there when she’d come out to hang the wash on the line, the biggest crow she’d ever seen, and it had not flown away as she walked past it but had sat and watched her as she hung up the underwear and the socks and the towels. She’d told it to shoo, had stomped her foot and made threatening movements, but the crow had not been afraid. It seemed to know that she wouldn’t hurt it, and it seemed to have its own agenda. It wasn’t going to leave until it did what it had come here to do.

Just what that was, Patty didn’t know, but she couldn’t help thinking that the black bird was trying to warn her, that it had been sent here for a purpose, in order to tell her something, and it was up to her to figure out exactly what that was.

She wished her mother were here.