into
the seat beside her.

The two men slid out of their seats, and a hand clamped his shoulder.
"Come on, Broken Wing, let's go back to bed."

"My name's Hogey," he said. "Big Hogey Parker. I was just kidding about
being a Indian."

"Yeah. Come on, let's go have a drink." They got him on his feet, and
led him stumbling back down the aisle.

"My ma was half Cherokee, see? That's how come I said it. You wanta hear
a war whoop? Real stuff."

"Never mind."

He cupped his hands to his mouth and favored them with a blood-curdling
proof of his ancestry, while the female passengers stirred restlessly
and hunched in their seats. The driver stopped the bus and went back to
warn him against any further display. The driver flashed a deputy's
badge and threatened to turn him over to a constable.

"I gotta get home," Big Hogey told him. "I got me a son now, that's why.
You know? A little baby pigeon of a son. Haven't seen him yet."

"Will you just sit still and be quiet then, eh?"

Big Hogey nodded emphatically. "Shorry, officer, I didn't mean to make
any trouble."

When the bus started again, he fell on his side and lay still. He made
retching sounds for a time, then rested, snoring softly. The bus driver
woke him again at Caine's junction, retrieved his gin bottle from behind
the seat, and helped him down the aisle and out of the bus.

Big Hogey stumbled about for a moment, then sat down hard in the gravel
at the shoulder of the road. The driver paused with one foot on the
step, looking around. There was not even a store at the road junction,
but only a freight building next to the railroad track, a couple of
farmhouses at the edge of a side-road, and, just across the way, a
deserted filling station with a sagging roof. The land was Great Plains
country, treeless, barren, and rolling.

Big Hogey got up and staggered around in front of the bus, clutching at
it for support, losing his duffle bag.

"Hey, watch the traffic!" The driver warned. With a surge of unwelcome
compassion he trotted around after his troublesome passenger, taking his
arm as he sagged again. "You crossing?"

"Yah," Hogey muttered. "Lemme alone, I'm okay."

The driver started across the highway with him. The traffic was sparse,
but fast and dangerous in the central ninety-mile lane.

"I'm okay," Hogey kept protesting. "I'm a tumbler, ya know? Gravity's
got me. Damn gravity. I'm not used to gravity, ya know? I used to be a
tumbler--_huk!_--on