The next day's search-party started out modestly at eight o'clock with half a dozen searchers - Stu, Fran, Harold, Dick Vollman, Larry Underwood, and Lucy Swann. By noon the party had swelled to twenty, and by dusk (accompanied by the usual brief spat of ram and lightning in the foothills) there were better than fifty people combing the brush west of Boulder, splashing through streams, hunting up and down canyons, and stepping all over each other's CB transmissions.
A strange mood of resigned dread had gradually replaced yesterday's acceptance. Despite the powerful force of the dreams that accorded Mother Abagail a semidivine status in the Zone, most of the people had been through enough to be realists about survival: The old woman was well past a hundred, and she had been out all night on her own. And now a second night was coming on.
The fellow who had struggled across the country from Louisiana to Boulder with a party of twelve summed it up perfectly. He had come in with his people at noon the day before. When told that Mother Abagail was gone, this man, Norman Kellogg by name, threw his Astros baseball cap on the ground and said, "Ain't that my f**king luck... who you got hunting her up?"
Charlie Impening, who had more or less become the Zone's resident doomcrier (he had been the one to pass the cheerful news about snow in September), began to suggest to people that if Mother Abagail had bugged out, maybe that was a sign for all of them to bug out. After all, Boulder was just too damn close. Too close to what? Never mind, you know what it's too close to, and New York or Boston would make Mavis Impening's boy Charlie feel a whole hell of a lot safer. He had no takers. People were tired and ready to sit. If it got cold and there was no heat, they might move, but not before. They were healing. Impening was asked politely if he planned to go alone. Impening said he believed he would wait until a few more people had seen the daylight. Glen Bateman was heard to opine that Charlie Impening would make a hell of a poor Moses.
"Resigned dread" was as far as the community's feelings went, Glen Bateman believed, because they were still rationally minded people in spite of all the dreams, in spite of their deep-seated dread concerning whatever might be going on west of the Rockies. Superstition, like true love, needs time to grow and reflect upon itself. When you finish a barn, he told Nick and Stu and Fran after darkness had put an end to the search for the night, you hang a horseshoe ends up over the door to keep the luck in. But if one of the nails falls out and the horseshoe swings points down, you don't abandon the barn.
"The day may come when we or our children may abandon the barn if the horseshoe spills the luck out, but that's years away. Right now all we feel is a little strange and lost. And that will pass, I think. If Mother Abagail is dead - and God knows I hope she isn't - it probably couldn't have come at a better time for the mental health of this community."
Nick wrote, "But if she was meant as a check for our Adversary, his opposite number, someone put here to keep the scales in balance..."
"Yes, I know," Glen said gloomily. "I know. The days when the horseshoe didn't matter may really be passing... or already gone. Believe me, I know."
Frannie said: "You don't really think our grandchildren are going to be superstitious natives, do you, Glen? Burning witches and spitting through their fingers for luck?"