"Water?" Stu asked.
Ralph shrugged. "Not much of that, either. Guess I'll turn in."
Larry followed suit. Glen stayed up to smoke a pipe. Stu had a few cigarettes and decided to have one. They smoked in silence for a while.
"Long way from New Hampshire, baldy," Stu said at last.
"It isn't exactly shouting distance from here to Texas."
Stu smiled. "No. No, it ain't."
"You miss Fran a lot, I guess."
"Yeah. Miss her, worry about her. Worry about the baby. It's worse after it gets dark."
Glen puffed. "That's nothing you can change, Stuart."
"I know. But I worry."
"Sure." Glen knocked out his pipe on a rock. "Something funny happened last night, Stu. I've been trying to figure out all day if it was real, or a dream, or what."
"What was it?"
"Well, I woke up in the night and Kojak was growling at something. Must have been past midnight, because the fire had burned way down. Kojak was on the other side of it with his hackles standing up. I told him to shut up and he never even looked at me. He was looking over to my right. And I thought, What if it's wolves? Ever since we saw that guy Larry calls the Wolfman - "
"Yeah, that was bad."
"But there was nothing. I had a clear view. He was growling at nothing."
"He had a scent, that's all."
"Yeah, but the crazy part is still to come. After a couple of minutes I started to feel... well, decidedly weird. I felt like there was something right over by the turnpike embankment, and that it was watching me. Watching all of us. I felt like I could almost see it, that if I squinted my eyes the right way, I would see it. But I didn't want to. Because it felt like him.
"It felt like Flagg, Stuart."
"Probably nothing," Stu said after a moment.
"It sure felt like something. It felt like something to Kojak, too."
"Well, suppose he was watching somehow? What could we do about it?"
"Nothing. But I don't like it. I don't like it that he's able to watch us... if that's what it is. It scares me shitless."
Stu finished his cigarette, stubbed it out carefully on the side of a rock, but made no move toward his sleeping bag just yet. He looked at Kojak, who was lying by the campfire with his nose on his paws and watching them.
"So Harold's dead," Stu said at last.
"Yes."
"And it was just a goddam waste. A waste of Sue and Nick. A waste of himself, too, I reckon."
"I agree."
There was nothing more to say. They had come upon Harold and his pitiful dying declaration the day after they had done the Eisenhower Tunnel. He and Nadine must have gone over Loveland Pass, because Harold still had his Triumph cycle - the remains of it, anyway - and as Ralph had said, it would have been impossible to get anything bigger than a kid's little red wagon through the Eisenhower. The buzzards had worked him over pretty well, but Harold still clutched the Permacover notebook in one stiffening hand. The .38 was jammed in his mouth like a grotesque lollipop, and although they hadn't buried Harold, Stu had removed the pistol. He had done it gently. Seeing how efficiently the dark man had destroyed Harold and how carelessly he had thrown him aside when his part was played out had made Stu hate Flagg all the more. It made him feel that they were throwing themselves away in a witless sort of children's crusade, and while he felt that they had to press on, Harold's corpse with the shattered leg haunted him the way the frozen grimace of the Wolfman haunted Larry. He had discovered he wanted to pay Flagg back for Harold as well as Nick and Susan... but he felt more and more sure that he would never get that chance.
But you want to watch out, he thought grimly. You want to look out if I get within choking distance of you, you freak.
Glen got up with a little wince. "I'm going to turn in, East Texas. Don't beg me to stay. It really is a dull party."
"How's that arthritis?"
Glen smiled and said, "Not too bad," but as he crossed to his bedroll he was limping.