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explain the history of the park and points of interest.
    “Ready for that lunch?” Ert asked when he saw the look on Beth’s face that said she had experienced enough historical education for the day.
    At the El Tovar Hotel restaurant, they ordered rib eyes and wild greens salad. While they savored the smell of their steaks and the house vinaigrette dressing, that had a mild hint of garlic, they lurched in their seats to see over the precipice into the Grand Canyon, its bottom obscured in the early evening mist that made the whole enormous pit look like a cauldron of ghosts preparing for a night raid.
    “Do you have any idea what we think we will learn?” Beth asked half way through their meal.
    “Not a clue,” Ert said. “I think we will know it when we see it, though. Josh said he would never leave us, and, Lord knows, I am in way over my head right now.”
    “So far, the answers have come when the time was right,” Beth said.
    •  •  •
    After their late lunch, they settled in for the night in their hotel room. Ert picked up the book bag and drew out one of the journals. He handed Beth another. He sat at the desk with a legal pad in front of him as she positioned herself in a large leather chair next to a floor lamp, which illuminated the room. As was his custom, when Ert read anything, he took occasional notes. Neither of them spoke for a long time.
    “Oh my,” Beth said as she closed her volume a third of the way through. Tears filled her eyes as she held the book against her as if it were one of her children who had just breathed her last breath before dying.
    “That’s the same way I feel,” Ert said as he put down his pen and rested his face in his hands, staring down at the journal which lay open before him.
    The next morning, they rose early and re-traced their steps, returning the journals to the vault on their way to the Phoenix airport. While they were waiting for their boarding call, Ert went to a news stand for a paper. He quickly scanned the headlines of the
New York Times
, and the
Wall Street Journal
, but it was the
Dallas Morning News
that caught his eye. On the front page, above the fold, he saw a picture of Leon Martinez addressing an overflow crowd at the Houston convention center with the governor of Texas in the background egging him on. The caption said: “Martinez calls on Christian Militants to separate themselves from a heathen nation.”
    “Can you believe this?” Ert asked her.
    “The last year has taught me that people are capable of almost anything,” Beth said.
    As the clerk at the counter called their group number, they lined up with others to board. Just before they handed their tickets to the clerk, a news bulletin came on Fox News.
    “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have just learned that at the Christian Militant convention in Houston, the Militants voted to call a secession convention two weeks from today. The governor of Texas has issued a statement in support of secession, pledging his support in the Christian’s effort to break Texas away from the United States. We have no word, yet, about any results from the other Christian Militant conventions around the country.”
    “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ert said.
    A man behind him in line turned to him and said, “Praise the Lord. President Whitfield better watch his ass.”
    Ert caught him with a strong right hand and laid him flat. When security arrived, he told them, “This man has just threatened the life of the President of the United States. I’ll stand witness to it.”

CHAPTER 13
     
    “NICE RIDE, BB,” Bass Whitfield said to Beauregard Butler, Jr. as they careened around a corner, the jacked up Ford F250 teetering for a second like it wanted to roll over.
    “Ain’t she a beaut’, Mr. President?” BB said, grinning from ear to ear.
    With Nate riding shotgun in the front seat and Leadoff Pickens in the rear passenger seat, the President of the United States made his way from the center of his