As I strapped the bottles to my waistband, the thought returned to me, what was Pamela doing for water? What if she really meant what she’d said about dying? I hoped, for her sake, that she’d gotten smart and caught a ride back to Custer, or wherever she’d left her car. She had to have. She couldn’t have made it this far without finding water somewhere.

After my stop at the rest area, the frequency of the Wall Drug assault increased, assuring me that I was getting close. At my current pace, I would reach Wall by late afternoon.

Black Hills Gold. Wall Drug

Exit 109. Wall Drug

Experience Wall Drug

Coffee 5 cents. Wall Drug

Conoco and Wall Drug

The Wild West. Wall Drug

Tour Bus Stop. Wall Drug

Free Coffee and Donuts for Veterans. Wall Drug

Famous Western Art Gallery—A Wall Drug Must See

I was still keeping track of the signs in my journal. Out of curiosity, I counted the entries when I stopped for lunch. Fifty-two. And that was just what I’d passed going east. I was sure there were just as many on the other side of Wall. That was more than a hundred signs. Considering where the signs were placed, on the outskirts of farms, I figured that the Wall Drug folk weren’t paying usual advertising rates, as an outdoor campaign of that magnitude would cost a fortune. It was probably handled as a neighbor deal, a weekly pie or two, or free ice cream for the farmer’s kids. Southern South Dakota still seemed to be that kind of place.

A couple of miles later, I saw train tracks on the south side of the road. I wondered where they had been for the last fifty miles.

An hour after lunch I came upon a decent-sized pond with inviting blue water. I climbed down the sloped shoulder of the highway to the edge of the pond. When there were no cars in sight, I stripped down and jumped in. I hadn’t bathed for two days, not since the Happy Holiday Motel, and I was as sticky as a roll of flypaper. The water felt magnificent. I washed my hair and body with a small bottle of shampoo I had left over from the Holly House Bed and Breakfast.

I bathed for about twenty minutes, dried myself off, dressed, and climbed back to the highway. I had been walking for two hours when I heard the familiar sound of a car stopping behind me. Pamela. At least she doesn’t have any trouble getting people to pick her up, I thought. Of course, if I saw a stranger—a mature woman—hitchhiking along this road, my conscience wouldn’t let me pass her by. But to me she was no stranger. I knew what she had done.