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billion-dollar child of copper, gold, and silver had been blasted, stripped, and smelted. Down, down the pickup dropped, exhaust popping, over the ashes of Chinamen and miners, over the graves of whores and gamblers, away from the acid stink of greed and into the innocent night.
    "Pull over," Cotton ordered. "They must be buttsprung back there."
    When they were off the road, outside Clarkdale, and stopped, and when he hopped out to switch places, what he saw in back made him swallow a lump in his throat. Seated with his back to the cab, Shecker had his arms clasped around Goodenow, who sat between his legs, while Goodenow's arms enfolded Lally 1, who sat between his legs with the buffalo head over his own. They had done it for warmth up on the mountain. From three radios Jimmie Rodgers yodeled about peach-pickin' time in Georgia. They were sound asleep and snug as eggs in a carton. Cotton stood looking at them. He recalled a shot he had once seen on a TV science show for kids: a nest of eggs filmed just as the baby chicks were pecking their shells apart to be born and to see what the hell was going on outside, the eggs wobbling and beaks chip, chip, chipping, then tiny, interested eyes and wet, delicate heads. We've got to do this tonight, he told himself, this last thing. The greatest. But can we. Was our egg rotten. Or were we cracked in the nest. Something chipped at him. A sensation wet and delicate emerged. It might have been mercy. Yes, we will, he told the three asleep, inside himself. We will no matter what, I promise. We'll go home supermen, I swear to God. Angrily he swiped at his nose with a sleeve and whacked the side of the pickup hard.
    "Wake up, dammit!" he cried. "Two of you in the cab—move it!"
    If you wanted to be Apaches badly enough, the Director had consoled them, you could. If you wanted to avoid the humiliation of being low team on the totem pole of achievement, you might. It was up to you. And it was true, for no matter how awkward or irresolute you might be on first base or with a bow, camp custom granted you a second chance, there was another way you might hoist yourself by the seat of your own Levi's. You could raid. If, in the night, you could steal the trophy of any tribe higher in rank, it was yours until the next powwow, together with the name and rewards.
    Initially there were many raids, particularly upon the trophies of the Apaches and the Sioux, hung in places of honor on cabin walls and guarded savagely—unsuccessful raids although the Navajo moved up a notch by bagging the bear head of the Comanches. Without warning, warwhoops startled the canyon out of sleep as attacks were launched and repelled with fists and firecrackers and pails of water and other campers stumbled from their cabins, yawning, to watch the fun. The counselors never interfered. Raiding was good for boys. It taught grit. Into character it built cunning.
    The Bedwetters knew they would never need to defend their chamber pot, and also that they could never expect to climb the camp ladder by physical prowess. Disorganized but dutiful they entered the game, attempting a raid the second night. They aimed high. The Apaches had already beaten off one foray by the Cheyenne, and the camp was scarcely settled down again when the Bedwetters stripped to undershorts and barefooted through the ponderosa after the biggest prize of all: the head of the bull buffalo.
    Of course they botched it. They had an advantage, for the Apaches, having unposted their guards after the Cheyenne raid, were sacked out in arrogance and snoring. As softly as they could, the Bedwetters slipped from the shadow of one pine to the next. Goodenow giggled once. Lally 2 tripped on a root and fell fiat. They reached the cabin of the enemy, inched the screen door open. Teft and Shecker, the strongest, were to go in first and lip the trophy down, but they were clumsier than cub bears and for some dumb reason Shecker had clipped his radio to the elastic band of his