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Baker, and McVries again. They were almost protectively bunched up. All of them were looking straight ahead now, their faces carefully expressionless. The echoes of the carbines seemed to hang in the air still. Garraty kept thinking about the bloody footprint that Stebbins’s tennis shoe had left. He wondered if it was still tracking red, almost turned his head to look, then told himself not to be a fool. But he couldn’t help wondering. He wondered if it had hurt Curley. He wondered if Curley had felt the gas-tipped slugs hitting home or if he had just been alive one second and dead the next.
    But of course it had hurt. It had hurt before, in the worst, rupturing way, knowing there would be no more you but the universe would roll on just the same, unharmed and unhampered.
    The word came back that they had made almost nine miles before Curley bought his ticket. The Major was said to be as pleased as punch. Garraty wondered how anyone could know where the hell the Major was.
    He looked back suddenly, wanting to know what was being done with Curley’s body, but they had already rounded another curve. Curley was out of sight.
    “What have you got in that packsack?” Baker asked McVries suddenly. He was making an effort to be strictly conversational, but his voice was high and reedy, near to cracking.
    “A fresh shirt,” McVries said. “And some raw hamburger.”
    “Raw hamburger—” Olson made a sick face.
    “Good fast energy in raw hamburger,” McVries said.
    “You’re off your trolley. You’ll puke all over the place.”
    McVries only smiled.
    Garraty kind of wished he had brought some raw hamburger himself. He didn’t know about fast energy, but he liked raw hamburger. It beat chocolate bars and concentrates. Suddenly he thought of his cookies, but after Curley he wasn’t very hungry. After Curley, could he really have been thinking about eating raw hamburger?
    The word that one of the Walkers had been ticketed out ran through the spectators, and for some reason they began to cheer even more loudly. Thin applause crackled like popcorn. Garraty wondered if it was embarrassing, being shot in front of people, and guessed by the time you got to that you probably didn’t give a tin whistle. Curley hadn’t looked as if he gave a tin whistle, certainly. Having to relieve yourself, though. That would be bad. Garraty decided not to think about that.
    The hands on his watch now stood firmly straight up at noon. They crossed a rusty iron bridge spanning a high, dry gorge, and on the other side was a sign reading: ENTERING LIMESTONE CITY LIMITS—WELCOME, LONG WALKERS!
    Some of the boys cheered, but Garraty saved his breath.
    The road widened and the Walkers spread across it comfortably, the groups loosening up a little. After all, Curley was three miles back now.
    Garraty took out his cookies, and for a moment turned the foil package over in his hands. He thought homesickly of his mother, then stuffed the feeling aside. He would see Mom and Jan in Freeport. That was a promise. He ate a cookie and felt a little better.
    “You know something?” McVries said.
    Garraty shook his head. He took a swig from his canteen and waved at an elderly couple sitting beside the road with a small cardboard GARRATY sign.
    “I have no idea what I’ll want if I do win this,” McVries said. “There’s nothing that I really need. I mean, I don’t have a sick old mother sitting home or a father on a kidney machine, or anything. I don’t even have a little brother dying gamely of leukemia.” He laughed and unstrapped his canteen.
    “You’ve got a point there,” Garraty agreed.
    “You mean I don’t have a point there. The whole thing is pointless.”
    “You don’t really mean that,” Garraty said confidently. “If you had it to do all over again—”
    “Yeah, yeah, I’d still do it, but—”
    “Hey!” The boy ahead of them, Pearson, pointed. “Sidewalks!”
    They were finally coming into the town proper. Handsome