AFEW MINUTES after Seamus and Yuxia left him behind, Richard forced himself to get on his feet and begin hobbling up the trail. He had swallowed as much ibuprofen as his system could handle and he had swaddled the sprained ankle in strips of fabric cut from Jahandar’s garments. A long tree branch, trimmed and whittled, served as a walking staff. The high road—the climb up to the top of the big flat rock, followed by the long traversal of the talus slope—would be many hours of misery for a man in his condition. But there was another way of getting to Jake’s, a low road leading along the edge of the forest, through the old abandoned mining camp and then around a spur of the mountain into the valley of Prohibition Crick. It seemed much the better choice. So he split off from the trail shortly before it pierced the tree line, and hobbled south through the woods. He had feared that this would turn into an endless, toiling death march, but once he found his stride, he began to make reasonably good time—not a hell of a lot slower than if he hadn’t sprained his ankle.