He was being led. Well, he would follow, and wait for the threads to untangle themselves.
Right now he was in a city for, supposedly, the third time in his life. He had the biographical data down pat: three years ago he had gone to market in Des Moines for his horse, and a year later he had made the trek down to St. Louis to sell grain. Both times he had been repelled by the bigness and squalor of the city. He felt the same emotion now.
But, as had happened the two previous times, there was also the feeling that the city, not the farm, was his natural habitat.
The street before them seemed familiar, though he knew he had never been in Galveston before. It stretched far out of sight, bordered on both sides by low, square, old houses and brightly-colored shops. Hawkers yelled stridently in the roadway, peddling fruits and vegetables and here and there some comely wench's favors.
Van Alen pointed toward a rickety building on their right and said, "There's a hotel. Let's room up for the night."
"Good enough," Kesley agreed.
The proprietor of the hotel was a short man in his early fifties, chubby and prosperous-looking, with an oily stubble of beard darkening his face. His bald head gleamed; it had been newly waxed.
"Hail, friends. In search of lodgings?"
"Indeed we are," van Alen said. "My friend and I are tired, and can use some rest."
The hotelman chuckled. "One room?"