barn where he was hiding. In a frenzy of what was really claustrophobic terror but looked very much like a God-inspired hunger for revenge, he shot out of the milking barn and bolted straight through a clothesline, picking up a white bedsheet on the way. Along with his improvised helmet and flailing arms, the flowing white fabric created the impression in the cowardly dogs that had besieged the Quists that a heavenly demonic warrior had risen up against them.
McGitney took this new image of himself to heart and transformed himself into a brave and demanding patriarch. “Increase Charged!” became the catch cry of the Quists, and the feat did indeed temporarily stave off eradication of the faithful. But the onslaught against them continued, and their leader did not help matters by making the morally admirable but politically lamentable decision of decrying the government policy of relocating Indians, welcoming them into the Pumpkin Creek community and seeking their advice as farmers, hunters, and fishers—as well as the unforgivable stance of opposing slavery and encouraging free and equal intermarriage with Negroes (in Increase’s case, several).
The effect of this obstinacy was that barns and temples were burned, woodpeckers were ritually slaughtered, and more than a few members were impaled on stakes or hysterically kicked to death by angry mobs who feared the new faith might have a sufficiently oblique and inclusive appeal to unite fringe Christians, Jews, Indians, blacks, and the always superstitious and rabble-rousing Irish, who were arriving in ever-growing numbers. The threat of Illinois becoming a quasi-renegade Christian-Zionist-Indian-Hoodoo-Druid state had forced the second Quist diaspora. Sadly for them, Missouri, as it had for the Mormons, had proved even more hostile, and so they were forced to flee farther west. Just like the Chickasaws, Choctaws, Cherokees, and Seminoles, and other tribes and nations too numerous to mention—along with thousands of West Africans and, of course, the Latter-Day Saints. (Here was another displaced people on the move, trying to sow the seeds of their own survival in a whirlwind of ideology, emerging technology, and the culturally sanctioned greed known as eminent domain.)
“I like those things they wear around their heads,” Lloyd remarked.
“You stay clear a-dem,” Rapture cautioned, noting the number of Negroes and Indians shouldered up beside the wild-eyed white people. In her mind, the last thing they needed, other than for Hephaestus to go off on a drinking binge, was to fall in with a rebel congregation of colored misfits and crazy folk. What they needed now was to lie low—to find a place to stay and plan their supply-gathering and transportation needs for the journey across the wilds of Kansas, a lawless outland of harsh weather, savage animals, desperate people, and mysterious unknowns.
Lloyd took the opposite view. He saw the presence of blacks and Indians in the ranks of the head-wrapped and plain-dressed whites as a good sign. After all, were not they, the Sitturds, refugees from Zanesville, just as much a mixed bag? Having shared those secret moments with Hattie, he felt different about his breeding now, and he was becoming aware that there are kinships and affinities within us all that we may never know or understand, but which attempt to reveal themselves in the people we gravitate toward and the paths our lives take. Rapture, however, stood firm on the matter and focused the family’s attention on getting fed and finding someplace to stay.
For refreshment they settled on thin flour tortillas, which they bought from a stumpy old man who worked from a stone fire and a foldup table among the Spaniards. To everyone’s satisfaction, Rapture handled the whole transaction without saying a word, and Hephaestus wondered if her mind talk was working again. Accommodation did not look as if it would be so easy to find. All that passed for the local hotels and rooming houses were crammed with human body heat. German families clung to their wagons, Irish to their carts. Blacks pitched makeshift tents, Indians threw up hide-framed shelters. Some stray men just overturned crates. The excuse for the town hoosegow was full and foul, as were the grim attempts at houses of worship. Everywhere one looked, there was more canvas than lumber and more people and animals than either.
While sawmills up and down the river had been busy, the rumor mills had been frantic. In addition to tales of the latest cholera scare, there were stories going around of far stranger outbreaks. Some Kansas Indians up from the South had appeared with bizarre deformities