"Oh, well," the old man said. He lifted the jug and took a long and gurgling drink. He lowered the jug and whooshed out his breath, but it was not so spectacular this time. There was no butterfly.
Sutton climbed the bank to the blaze of sun again.
"Sure," said the station agent, "the Suttons live just across the river, over in Grant County. Several ways to get there. Which one would you like?"
"The longest one," Sutton told him. "I'm not in any hurry."
The moon was coming up when Sutton climbed the hill to reach the bridge.
He was in no hurry, for he had all night.
XXXIV
The land was wild…wilder than anything Sutton had ever seen on the lawn-mowered, trimmed and watered parks of his native Earth. The land tilted upward, as if it rested on a knife edge, and it was littered by great clumps of stone which appeared to have been flung down in godlike anger by a giant hand out of forgotten time. Stark bluffs speared upward, soaring massively, masked by mighty trees that seemed to have strived, at one time, to match the height and dignity of the rocky cliffs. But now they stood defeated, content to be less than the very cliffs, but with a certain dignity and patience learned, no doubt, through their ancient striving.
Summer flowers huddled in the spaces between the strewn rocks or clung close to the mossy root-mounds of the larger trees. A squirrel sat on a limb somewhere and chattered half in anger, half in rapture at the rising sun.
Sutton toiled upward, following the rock-filled ravine from the river road. At times he walked, but more often he went on hands and knees, clawing his way up the slope.