"An hour? That will be fine," Doc said.

"And, uh, everything'll be okay with your friend? I mean you don't think he'll, uh…"

"File a complaint? Don't give it a thought," Doc said heartily. "I'll guarantee that he won't."

He sat down again as the conductor left, and tucked the railroad ticket into the breast pocket of the dead man's coat. Carol watched him, a little misty-eyed, feeling a sudden resurgence of the slavish devotion and adoration which had been about to be lost to the past.

Everything had been such a mess. Everything had seemed so different-she, Doc-everything. But now the mess was gone, the mistakes and misunderstandings brushed away-or aside. And Doc was exactly the same Doc she had dreamed of and longed for these last four years.

Relief engulfed her. Relief and gratitude at being snatched back from a last-straw, not-to-be-borne peril. She had been sinking, coming apart inside, and Doc had saved her and made her whole again. Impulsively she reached out and squeezed his hand.

"Doc," she said. "Do me a favor?"

"Practically anything." Doc slid instantly into her mood.

"If I ever get nasty again, give me a good hard kick in the pants."

Doc said he would have to investigate the possibility of breakage first; he had a very delicate foot. Then he laughed and she laughed. And quivering with the movement of the train, the dead man seemed to laugh too.

When they got off the train, Doc waved a smiling good-bye toward the window, then advised the conductor that his friend was doing nicely. "I gave him some aspirin and he's going back to sleep for a while. That's all he needs, just rest and quiet."

The conductor said there was no reason at all why the gentleman shouldn't get it. "He can sleep till Doomsday as far as I'm concerned!"

Doc thanked him for his courtesy and gave him a warm handshake. As the train pulled out, the conductor examined the bill he had received during the handshaking process. And glowing pleasantly-telling himself you could always spot a gentleman-he started back down the line of cars. His happy musings were interrupted with nerve-shattering suddenness by a screamed demand to "Stick 'em up!"

The owner of the voice had been crouching between two seats. He was about seven, dressed in cowboy regalia, and equipped anachronistically with a toy machine gun.

"What are you doing here?" the conductor gasped, his hair slowly settling back to his scalp. "I've told you about fifteen times already to stay with your moth…"

"Bang, bang, bang!" The boy screamed. "You're an old stinky booger man, an' I'm gonna shoot you dead!"

He dropped into a crouch, triggered the gun. It chattered and barked realistically. Even more realistic was the water which jetted from its muzzle, and sprayed the conductor's starched white shirtfront. The conductor grabbed at him. The boy fled,screaming with laughter, shrieking insults and threats, spreading consternation through the next six cars until he reached the sanctuary of his mother. She responded to his pursuer's complaints with a kind of arch crossness.

"Oh, my goodness! Such a fuss over one little boy. Do you expect him to just sit still with his hands folded?"

She glanced around, smiling, at the other passengers, soliciting approval. None was forthcoming. The conductor said that he expected her to keep an eye on her son; to see that he cease his rambunctious ramblings forthwith.

"I mean that, lady. I'm insisting on it. I don't want to find that young man outside of this car again."

"But I just don't understand!" The woman frowned prettily. "What possible difference does it make if the poor child moves around a little? He's not hurting anything."

"But he might get hurt. In fact," the conductor added grimly, "he's very likely to. And you'd be the first to complain if he did."

He trudged away, reflecting that it was such brats and such mothers who provided unanswerable argument for the proponents of capital punishment. _Bang, bang, bang!_ he brooded bitterly. _Ol' stinky booger man_. I'd like to booger-man him!

If he could have looked ahead a few hours-but he could not, fortunately. It would have been much to bear, in his mood, to see the boy acclaimed, however briefly, as brave, bold, brilliant and, in sum, a national hero.

Which is just what happened.

Doc McCoy had a fairly good map of the United States in his mind, surprisingly detailed, and as up-todate as he could keep it. So, leaving the train, he inquired about a remembered landmark-although it was ten years since he had been in the area. And learning that it was still in existence, he and Carol taxied out to the place.

It was some five miles out on the highway, a family-style roadhouse set down amidst several acres of picnic grounds. They had lunch inside the establishment; then, taking several bottles of beer with them, they located a secluded picnic table and settled down for the brief wait until nightfall.

They could not get a car before then; at any rate, it would not be wise to attempt it. And the way they intended to get it made night travel advisable. A hot car was always cooler at night-providing, of course, that its loss was unreported. People weren't so alert. There was a sharp reduction in the risk of raising some yokel who knew the owner.

"And there's no big hurry," Doc pointed out. "I've got a hunch that our late traveling companion will go right on sleeping, undisturbed, until that ten o'clock stop. Even if they found out the nature of his slumber before then, it wouldn't matter much. The body has to be posted. That takes time, and it can't be done in just any hick village. Then there's the conductor's story of an old neck injury-along with the conductor's guilty conscience-to add confusion to the proceedings." He laughed softly. "If I know anything about human nature, he'll swear that our friend was alive and in good health at the time we left him."

Carol nodded, laughing with him. This was the old Doc talking, her Doc. She wanted more of his warming reassurance, and Doc did his best to supply it.

"Of course, we will be suspected of bringing about the gentleman's death," he went on. "Sometime tomorrow, say, when the conductor has come clean and it's definitely determined that the broken neck was inflicted rather than accidental. But who are we, anyway? What good is our description if they don't have a channel for it? Now, if there was anything to indicate we were bank robbers, we'd be tabbed in five minutes. Just as quickly as a batch of 'wanted' cards could be run through the sorter."

"It's not going to happen," Carol said firmly. "So let's not talk about it."

"Right," Doc said. "No point to it at all."

"But it's still smart to get off the highway. One more night is as much as we can risk."

"Well, that may be putting it a little strong. We won't be tagged with Beynon's car, and we helped our chances with that longjump north. Let's just say that the railroad still seems like our best bet."

Obviously, he continued, they couldn't go back to the line they'd been on. In fact, any of the due-west routes were a poor risk; unless-and the time element precluded this-they were able to take one across the northern rim of the United States.

"So I'd say we do this. Pull another swingback; get completely away from this east-west travel route. We can push hard tonight, make Tulsa or Oklahoma City by morning, and take a southern route train. We can miss Los Angeles that way. Come into California through the Carriso Gorge, and then straight on into San Diego. We can make it in forty-eight hours if everything goes all right."

"And it will, Doc." Carol squeezed his hand. "I know it!"

"Of course it will," Doc said.

Actually, he was more than a little uneasy about their situation. There was much that he disliked about it. But since it could not be changed, he put the best possible face on it, if he was secretly, perhaps subconsciously, annoyed at the necessity for doing so.