"Yes, the highlands just above those inland dunes were the finest coffee growing regions in the world for many generations, but the beans were stolen and replanted in the tropical soils of Indonesia and the New World. Those lands proved much more fertile and eventually lured the trading ships away. The town has died a little more each year since the Dutch and English ships left. It's hard to believe that twenty thousand people lived there at its height."

"How many live there today?"

"Less than a thousand, fishermen mostly."

"What happened to the rest of it?"

He glanced back over his shoulder. "It was reclaimed by the desert. There is a saying in these parts, cities that rise from the sands too quickly, soon sink back into them."

The bumps in the road smoothed to a dull vibration as he coaxed the horse to a gallop.

"Can I ask you a personal question?"

"Surely," answered Clovis.

"Why are you so averse to flying?"

He leaned forward on the bench, folded the leather reins over in his hands to take up the slack and cast his eyes down at the hard dirt road skittering past underneath us. He looked up at the horizon as he spoke. "I have been around for over nineteen hundred years Evan, and in all that time I have never traveled faster than a good horse could gallop between my legs. I have gotten around that way all my life and can do it now. Right boy," he said, cracking the reins across the horse's back.

"Have you ever been in a plane or a car without sleeping?"

"No. What is the point of it? I am more comfortable with this. Last night was only the third time I had traveled in their machines, and I did it then only to meet the modern timetables to which the others now adhere. No, my friend, that way is not for me."

He pointed to the right in the distance where the road turned and paralleled the sea. "From here on in is my favorite stretch of road in the world. I think it a sin to pass it by any faster than necessary."

I smiled and took in the beautiful scene. "They told me you are the oldest of us. Is it true?" I asked.

"They say quite a bit do they not?"

"And not enough sometimes."

He looked over at me and smiled. "Yes, it is true. I am the oldest."

"How many members like me have you found in all this time?"

"That I have found personally?" he asked looking at me.

"Yes."