I like driving through the badlands, though. They don't happen to be stretched, on this leg of the trek. A half hour, a quarter of an hour sometimes. Makes me feel like I've checked out of life for a bit, when I'm rolling through them. Sort of like the Protestants when they sing Peace in the Valley, came to me the other day. There will be peace in the valley, peace in the valley for me, oh Lord, neatly they harmonize, checking out of the durn place for a minute or two; and they are good and ready for another day, or a week, after that.

By three Wyoming came up.

The country was similar at first, then the peaks showed up far west. The Bighorns, the Rockies' first big time range.

Ranches. Mostly cattle, some sheep outfits. Hundreds of deer on the slopes. A herd of antelope.

By five the town of New Muleshoe began popping up on signs. It came up, I drove off the interstate, a third of a mile on a local highway, a valley opened up, about half a thousand homes, a classic. The highway unnoticeably turned into Main Street, a classic too. Main swung left and right, for no good reason, urban-wise, it seemed. They must’ve built it along a former buffalo trail, the prairie towns often did, it was easier.

A billboard for Outlaw Inn caught my eye by a Texaco station and after a swing right and left, I parked in front of the inn on the main block of Main. The inn had a false front. Whether it was fake false or real false, going back to the cattle wars was still hard to figure. It had a hitching rail out front alright, though.

A shower, a burger across the street, a couple pints in a bar on Main. Some NBA on TV. Dropped a quarter and shot a game of pool with two homeboys and a girl when the hoops ended.

Might stay on till Monday, hunt for a little employment maybe. Stick on for a week, or a month. Try liking it here.

Or in another town.

Going out to breakfast, there was this neat Quaker woman talking on the phone behind the front desk. The hair long, all up in a schoolmarm's bun, the dress equally old-time country. Long-sleeved, buttoned up to the chin. Ironed too, now that's something. A card-carrying fundamentalist Christian, you could bet your boots.

“Now, Molly,” I opened up, getting her name off her lapel tag, “there's some half dozen motels in New Muleshoe and it's got to be the Outlaw Inn you’ve hired out to?”

“Is there something wrong with the Outlaw Inn?” she worried.

“Well, concerning myself, nothing, as I’m of course a drifter. But you, a fine Quaker character—”

“I am not a Quaker,” she denied politely.

Back in the lobby from breakfast and she, it seemed, not busy, I pulled over for a chat. A fundamentalist alright. Except that her church wasn’t just the run-of-the-mill literalistic Scriptural operation, for which I first took it, but practiced that other doctrine, of Jesus being a man like the rest of us. Not man and God simultaneously, like our big doctrine says.

“Jesus was a man, a perfect man, but only a man...” Molly let out by the end of our talk, warmed up by some twenty minutes of my interest. Her breath choked a bit when she was serving that.