Tom Foran Clark

Assissi was silent. Snow lay like sugar on the tops of the Subasior range. The long colonnade of the Church of Saint Francis barreled forth from one gentle green hill like a halted locomotive. Here was stillness; suspended motion.

It was bitter cold out, but the sky was serenely blue and clear. Reverently, Pike and Emery walked with their bikes along the medieval city wall. Wherever they stood, things spread away from them in equal measure of elegance and loveliness -- valleys, plains, hills. None of it was spectacular. It was of a size that seemed just right. If Pike was ever going to get his just right picture, this would be the place.

Pike and Emery were almost tiptoeing down the steep, narrow streets, so as not to disturb anything. They knew things here were as they had long, long been. When they arrived at the Basilica of Saint Francis, they parked their bikes and went along a rough, disintegrating cobblestone road on foot. From a long line of trees at a meadow’s edge a tall man emerged in a sailor’s long coat, in silhouette, a lone apparition raising his arms to the sky in either complaint or appeal -- they could not discern which. But the two knew they were witnessing a dramatic private act. Pike suggested the man was praising the heavens, but Emery felt he was condemning a harsh, unwanted fate. Slipping on a patch of moss amid the ancient stones, Pike fell down hard and yelped. The man then disappeared between trees. Emery helped Pike get back up. The two returned to the village along the path.

At the Cathedral of Saint Francis were, of course, the legendary frescoes of Giotto and others. All inspired a prayerful attitude, dignity, humility, a sense of lightly floating. Emery wanted to pitch the tent right there. When the two emerged, the sun was a huge orange ball sinking into the soft blue hues of the distant hills.

They walked up the Via San Francesco to a piazza where there was actually some activity, the square circled in souvenir, jewelry, and other shops. At a corner grocer’s, they got bread, cheeses, vegetables, fruits, and wine. They retrieved their bikes and, shivering, went out of the city through the Giacomo gate. They went to the same mountain ridge, and along the same path they’d been on before, earlier that day. They revisited the clearing where they’d seen the austere apparition, intending to pitch their tent in that meadow.

The man reappeared. This time, it was clear it was anger he had in him. Terrible fury, in fact. "What in the fuck are you two assholes doing here again?" he demanded to know, in English, coughing up tobacco and phlegm. Much of his head was bald. The light from a dazzling array of stars over Assissi glistened on his bony, polished skull. Over his ears were white, shooting tufts of hair.

"What the fuck is this," he asked, tapping Pike’s open bottle of wine with the tip of his muddy, left black boot.

Without answering, Pike picked up the wine and offered the man some. "I don’t want any of your Goddamned fucking wine," the old man barked. "I want to know what in the fucking name of the mother of God you think you’re doing here," he said.

"We’re pitching a tent," Pike said vehemently, visibly heating up. He was shaking. He dropped the wine bottle. It fell onto the grass and moss. It didn’t break, but spilled. Emery picked up the bottle and handed it back to Pike, anxiously awaiting the next word or words.

Finally, the old man spoke. "You may think you’re pitching a tent, but you are not going to pitch your Goddamned fucking tent here tonight." He took the wine bottle from Pike, by its neck. He took a good swill, and handed the bottle back with one hand, wiping the back of his other hand against his lips and beard.

"Says you and what army?" Pike asked boldly. He was grinning, as if seeking approval for these choice words. Subtly, with his hands out, palms down, Emery signaled to Pike he should take it easy, don’t antagonize the man. Obviously, the old geezer didn’t find Pike funny at all. In fact, he jumped on Pike and brought him to the ground.

It came to blows. Emery tried to push the two apart. The man hit Pike a few times, hard in the face. Now Pike was on top of him, with his hands around the old man’s neck. "You’re crazy!" Pike declared.

"Fuck you!" the old man spluttered, turning purple under Pike’s thumbs.

"What is wrong with you?" Pike cried out in exasperation, holding down the suffocating man.

"What is wrong wif ooo," the choking man spit back. Emery pulled Pike off the wild man, then helped the man up, too. His eyes looked like hell, red and yellow. He stank of sweat and smoke -- cigar or pipe tobacco. Brushing himself off, then running his cracked hands through the crazy tufts of hair over his ears, he repeated, "You are not going to pitch your fucking tent here."

"It’s too dark to go out looking for another place," Emery pointed out reasonably.

"So you talk, too!" the man fumed. "Christ, everybody’s got something they feel they have to say. Why can’t people just leave people alone?" he muttered. "I live here," he said.

Oh yeah," Pike said. "Like you’re an Italian. Give me a break."

"I’ll give you a break," the man yelled. "I’ll break your knees, you little fuck," the man screamed, and he started chasing sprightly hopping Pike around the clearing. It could have been hysterical, but it was too pathetic.

"Okay, okay!" Emery called out. "What do you suggest?"

The old man calmed down, again took a big swig of wine, and thought on it. "I live nearby," he said. "I don’t get much company."

"Yes, I’d guess you don’t have a whole lot of friends dropping by," Pike ventured.

The old man raised his fist and shook it at Pike. Strange to say, they were both smiling. Suddenly, it hit me. The two had bonded in some way. The old man was loving this, and Pike was feeling right at home now, too. "So take us to your fucking leader," Pike said snidely. Pike and Emery quickly picked up all their flung stuff, and followed the man to his home.

It was a hut. It consisted of two rooms: a bedroom and a kitchen. There was a bed in the bedroom, and a table in the kitchen. There was a hole in the kitchen ceiling and, directly under, a bucket on the floor to catch the dripping water. There was a large silver pot on the stove, and reeking pots and dishes piled high in the kitchen sink. There were dirty plates on the table, shared with a small bronze Victorian lamp with a tobacco-yellowed lampshade, a ceramic cup, a cigar in a tin ashtray, a few dog-eared paperback books, and five high piles of typing paper.

Arlen Townsend introduced himself. "What do you two clucks call yourselves?"

"Vagantes," Pike said with the best of intentions.

"Oh, Vagantes are we?" Arlen Townsend said dryly, pushing his dining room table toward a wall. "Can I get some help here?" he asked, looking at Emery.

"I am Richard Emery. This is Lawrence Pike."

"Ah, Dominic and Giles."

"Pike and Emery," Pike corrected. He helped Townsend make room for Emery and himself in the little house. The two would be sleeping in his kitchen -- dining-room, living-room, den -- or whatever it was. While Townsend helped them lay out their sleeping bags on the floor, they told him how they’d come to be in Assissi.

"Of course, Americans! I knew that right away," Townsend grumbled. "I am myself from England," he said. "But I lived much of my life in Spain -- in Minorca. There was a time I was a teacher in your country -- in Wyoming."

Pike looked over at Emery, rolling his eyes, expressing doubt.

"What the fuck are you rolling your eyes about?" Townsend said, putting his harsh and beaten face right up close to Pike’s. "I was like some Goddamned cowboy. You have been toWyoming? You have heard of the Two-Top Mountain School?"

Pike didn’t answer. He was thinking, reconnoitering, composing himself, contemplating a strategy or next volley. He stood suddenly and his hip struck a corner of the table. Townsend’s cigar rolled onto a piece of scrap paper, the lamp teetered precariously, and two glasses fell off. The paper was covered with wild scribbles, something like hieroglyphics.

Watch what you’re doing!" Townsend hollered. "Oh Christ, I’ll pay for this," he murmured. "Can I get more of that wine?" he asked.

Then the three sat around the table and drank wine and talked. Townsend smoked his stogie and Pike and Emery ate what the old blowhard insisted was barley soup. It was at best half-boiled barley grains in a watery treacle of vegetable broth.

"Don’t pretend you don’t know who I am," Townsend warned, as we sipped and slurped away. "You mean you’ve never heard of Arlen Townsend?"

Emery looked at Pike; Pike looked at Emery. Both drew a blank.

"Goddamned liars!" Townsend roared, standing up from the table. "You come here thinking I am going to lead you to the treasure! After all I’ve been through. Go to hell both of you! You’re going to have to figure it out yourselves!"

He stormed off to his bedroom and shut his door behind him. Then Townsend opened his door and stormed back into the kitchen, stammering, "Leave me alone. I didn’t ask you to come here. That’s the last thing in the world I need, more intruders barging in on me -- ‘Helloooo, anybody home? Won’t you tell us where the treasure’s buried?’ You’ve got to be kidding! Why don’t you two Vagantes just gather your fucking things and go?"

Again Pike and Emery exchanged perplexed glances. Even as they rose from the table, Townsend put his hands gently on their shoulders and began apologizing profusely. "I’m sorry," he said. "I just need to collect my thoughts." He took his seat again. "I’ve been detained in certain parts so long," he said, touching the fingertips of one rough-hewn hand to the fingertips of the other atop the table.

Pike and Emery were very ill at ease. Even amid that starry expanse of freezing midnight, they were ripe to grab their stuff and get out of there.

Townsend now pleaded that the two should be patient with him. He’d lost his temper. But there was still something he wanted to tell them, he said. He passed the wine around. They filled their cups.

"Here you are. You arrive out of the great, wide, swirling conundrum and arrive at my doorstep, thinking, ‘Ah, here’s the key to things’."

"That’s not exactly what we were thinking," Pike ridiculed.

"But you came here," Townsend went on. "You think you’ll get the answer, as if I would just turn it over to you, no questions asked."

"We came here by acci --" Pike began to interrupt.

"There is no accident," Townsend said ominously, raising his voice again. "You come here from the four nether corners of the world expecting I am going to point you in the direction you should go! I know that. Give you water, feed you Murcian oranges. The dragon’s blood.”

Townsend’s teeth were all crooked and rotten. Some were missing, and he seemed on the verge of spitting out the others. He bit his lip, and was silent. "I’m collecting my thoughts," he said gently now. Pike refilled his cup with wine.

"Dissipation," Townsend whispered. "Isolation, outrage, hurt, accusation, and in-between things," he said, pounding his fist on the table in syncopation. "I have never been a coward in my thinking, gentlemen" he announced, his eyes betraying ever increasing vacancy. Here was obviously damaged goods.

Pike now held his chin and lips in his right hand, listening carefully. He seemed intent on discerning fierce Townsend’s meaning.

"Felons," Townsend said. "They’re all wretched on the earth and don’t even know it. I hope you know it," he said almost considerately. "They came here knocking on my door insisting I tell them where it was.’ They just had to know. Arlen Townsend, hermit-philosopher, friend to Spaniards, a keeper of the map. ‘Tell us, or we’ll kill you!’ They tried to squeeze the information out. They may as well have stuck a hot cattle prod up my anus!" Townsend railed. "Excuse my French," he sighed.

Pike looked like he would erupt in laughter, but he didn’t. Instead he glanced over at Emery knowingly, putting his tongue to the back of his teeth to mimic, silently, the word "anus." Townsend was apologizing for saying "anus."

"They said they were going to write a book about the treasure," Townsend whispered. "A travel guide. It wasn’t long before I caught on! They were going to get it for themselves! I lifted those two-faced bloodsuckers by their collars and their belt loops and sent them down the slopes into the sticking nettles. Parasites! Ignoble louts! -- and indiscreet."

"Not good," Pike commented, nodding knowingly.

"You’ll soon be wiping that shit-eating grin off your face, believe me,” Townsend said, turning on Pike again. “One day the weather will shift, and there you’ll be. The sky will fall. The road you think you’re on will rise up like a whip under you and snap your existence down the middle. Everything is motion and commotion. You seek the map, I know. I also know what deception is. And transparency. And the way things are going, including misinformation, trouble, and friction."

Pike reacted not at all.

"I’m not remorseful," Townsend admitted sadly, with obvious remorse. "Life is not a promenade with couples walking arm in arm speaking of love. Life is war -- toil --violence! You have to whack evildoers smack dab on their Goddamned heads if you would do away with evil!”

Again Townsend paused, collecting his thoughts. I looked around the room. There were notes, scribblings, newspaper clippings, photos, cut-outs from magazines all over the walls. His mind seemed fully to echoe this disarray. The biggest chunk of paper was covered in drawn lines in six or seven colors, like a subway map. A chart of some kind.

"That’s the results of my research," Townsend said, reading my mind. “What’s funny,” he said, “is that it all boils down simply to the original map.”

Pike nodded knowingly.

"I can’t reveal the location of the treasure, but I know it’s there. I have lived my life quietly -- have lived to piece together the story of the journey. There you see it, written on the wall. Here -- see?” He pointed to a section of his diagram. “I left Minorca after my wife died. Do you see these lines? They go nowhere. I don’t know what became of my children. I’ll never know, I think. But I will tell you this in confidence: I know where the treasure is -- the schatz. But I have said too much already."

Townsend again got up from the table, this time calmly. He said he hoped we would sleep comfortably, and be refreshed for the new day. "There is something I must tell you," he said, and shuffled softly to his room. The door clicked quietly.

Pike looked at Emery; Emery looked at Pike. Pike shrugged. Emery reached to turn off the lamp. In pitch black darkness they slept deeply -- despite the plunk, plunk, plunk of the melting snow from the roof, dripping into the bucket on the floor.

Using water from this bucket, Townsend made a fresh batch of his barley treacle and served this, with hot coffee, the next morning. He was shaking. He insisted Pike and Emery would have to go. He had work to do. He assured them their bikes and things would still be there when they got back -- if they did come back.

"But don’t come back before nightfall," Towsend said adamantly. "Better the sorciere that you know than a woman who… she… persuaded me to live with her. She said if I deserted her, she’d… but leave now… I need… better you go,” Townsend babbled. He waved goodbye.

"Wo," Pike said simply as the two strode away. "It doesn’t get much better than that."

Pike and Emery walked through a ravine, then across a slope on a path leading to yet another canyon. A raw, shuddering wind came down from the mountains, and snow began to fall. They had heard there were grottoes carved into the sides of the canyon walls thereabouts. They found one that had been, as a bronze plaque there pointed out, dug by Brother Maseo -- or at least it had been named for him. Taking shelter from this storm, they went in and took the opportunity to catch up on writing a few notes and letters.

Emery noticed Pike was not just scratching telegraphic notations on postcards, as had been his custom. He held up a notebook in front of him, and was extensively writing, almost neatly, on a lined page. His tongue swished over his upper lip like a windshield wiper in a blizzard. emery had never seen him so concentrated. Even in the act of taking a just right photograph, he had never looked so intense.

Emery asked Pike if he had started a diary. This was not the case, he assured Emery. He was jotting down some of what Townsend had said the night before. Emery could see he’d written long, long sentences. "I couldn’t make head nor tail of anything he was saying," Emery admitted.

Pike shrugged. "Some of what he said made sense to me," he said. "It sounds like he’d been on a quest for hidden treasure, but he didn’t find it. But it must have been worth looking for, because some other people found out about it. When they caught up with him, they tried to pry the information out. It sounded like they’d tortured him, trying to get the information, but he didn’t tell them anything. It’s exciting! -- like a James Bond story, don’t you think? I mean, this espionage, intrigue. Aren’t you curious? I’m writing down some of the things he said on paper while it’s all still fresh in my head."

Outside, early in the afternoon, the wind lessened and the snow ceased to fall. The two ventured out, returning to the basilica to bask in the frescoes. Again, they stayed until sundown. Pike was obviously restless. From what he’d said in the morning, Emery knew Pike was eager to get back to Townsend’s place, to pick up the strange trail of the old man’s convoluted droppings.

"After what he did to you in the meadow, including kicking you in the ribs and pulling your nose, I’m a little astonished you’re so taken with all this," Emery said in the course of their returning to the clearing and Townsend’s hut, even as night began to fall.

"Oh, he’s all right," Pike insisted. "He’s disturbed, anyone can see that. But we should give him a break, and be patient. He’s got a story to tell. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt."

That was good of Pike, Emery thought. Here were new depths in Pike which Emery hadn’t seen. Emery figured he could himself afford to be more capacious. Cut the old bugger some slack.

But it wasn’t like either of them had all the calm and patience in the world when they got back there. Pike and Emery had done their fair share of trudging though canyons in the morning, and craning their necks in the basilica all afternoon. They didn’t exactly have a boundless appetite for marvels, treasure maps, revelations, insults, violence, or headaches. When Townsend didn’t even recognize the two when they arrived back at his front door -- or pretended he didn’t -- Emery was livid.

"It’s us," Pike pleaded. "Emery and Pike. We were here last night. Our stuff is here. We left it with you this morning and you said we should come back tonight."

This did not melt the harsh, unhappy man. He stood akimbo in his wretched little doorway, smoking a cigar and frowning, spewing out vile, debauched, wrongheaded characterizations of Pike and Emery. "You are intruders!" he accused. "Debris --sycophants! Nada to me. Nothing. Nihilo. Go away."

Pike picked up a rock from the ground and threw it at the old man’s head. This got Townsend’s attention. He leapt from the door frame and Pike ran. The chase was renewed. Emery sat down where he’d been standing and crossed his legs and watched. "Faggot!" Townsend called him. "Pisser! Interrupter!"

Pike now slowed down, obviously in order to let the slimy old noodlehead catch up with him. They had it out again, and this time Emery didn’t interfere. Pike let Townsend pull his ears and spit on him. He was in fact egging on this degradation. He was asking for it.

"You feckless scum!" Townsend obliged. "You renegade, you botched tourist!" he shouted. Pike kept silent, strangely basking in this assault, rebuke, and butchering. When he did finally speak, he said, very decidedly, "Get off of me, right now, you ragged little bone man, or I will boil you in your own soup."

This clearly cut through to Townsend. He got right up. Contrary to the fear now etched in his face, he said, rhetorically, "Am I scared? Do you think I care? It is nothing to me. Nada. Christ, I’ll be killed by gangsters in a car wreck in a week, murdered by some reckless fucking moron in a pickup truck. Or, worse, drop like a fly swatted down by giants on the causeway. The heaped up bodies of the dead. Those people are not what you’d call pleasant."

Pike gestured to me to get up. He put one arm around the old buzzard and the other arm around Emery, and led them all back into the hut.

"Restitution and revulsion," Townsend said under his breath. "Anesthesia, poisoned pens. Cloying ladies. They just adore a failing man."

Pike gently guided Townsend to his seat. He turned the lamp on.

"Youth needs confidence," the crank said with renewed sudden lucidity. "Ah well. My mind is going. I know that. I know you," he said, now looking at Pike almost affectionately. "Is that your brother?" he asked, pointing at Emery.

"That’s my friend," Pike said.

"He’s a Cavalier," Townsend blurted out. "And you’re a Roundhead. In America, in Spain, in Italy -- it’s the same all over. Avid, pursuant sensibilities without means of easing. There is no ordinate measure left -- of attainment. Let’s cut to the chase. What do you want from me?"

"We’re your friends" Pike said reassuringly.

"Like hell you are!" the buzzard refuted. "liar, liar, pants on fire! Scoundrels, that’s what you are! I see that. You come around here pretending to be minstrels, Vagantes, carrying tambourines and violins. The next thing I know, I’m gagged and duct-taped, locked up in some car trunk. I see your pretenses, deceiving people with your prattle. I am not going to give you what you came for. I am not your friend."

Pike asked politely if he’d like to share some wine. Townsend warmed up to that at once.

"You must excuse me my hard sayings," Townsend volunteered, taking in hand the glass of wine offered. "It is better to be forthcoming than hide behind ignominies and shams."

Pike said he was in perfect agreement. He filled up a second glass of wine for the old man, and another for himself. Emery put his palm over his glass to indicate he’d had enough, but Pike just went ahead and poured wine over the back of Emery's hand.

Townsend crossed himself. He bit his lip. It was a very tense moment. Pike looked at Emery blankly. He wanted to break Pike's neck. But Emery quickly caught myself, thinking: that’s all that’s needed now -- more erratic behavior. I don’t think so. Stay calm, he told himself. Emery got out paper tissue from his pants pocket, and wiped around his glass, and dried his hand.

“I was traveling in Spain,” Townsend told them, now loosening up. “I met a man, a narangero who sold oranges and water to tourists. He was then about my age now, sixty-something. His name no longer matters. He had a little stall on the banks of the Manzanares River in the Guadarama hills below Madrid, in the west. He chose his quiet life much as I have chosen this quiet life -- when it is quiet. That sweet guy made his living selling oranges. Can you believe it? That’s all he wanted! Well, that and three other things. He wanted to see certain murderers get their due, he wanted occasionally to get laid, and he wanted, finally, to be buried in a burying ground on a hill that rose up from the Manzanares River.

“What did -- “ Pike began to speak, but Townsend stopped him cold.

“Don’t interrupt me!” Townsend warned Pike ominously. "I am explaining it to you because it’s there. That little narangero suffered. He had his story so, if you’ll just shut up a minute, you’ll learn something that will change your life.

“When I met this kind narangero,” Townsend continued, “he’d just been robbed the week before. Thieves, fresh from a combination robbery-murder had stopped to drink water at the narangero’s stall. When the incompetent police arrived, the even more incompetent banditti scattered, dropping a diary -- something like a diary -- when they fled. The narangero didn’t report this finding to the authorities. He kept it for himself and, on his deathbed, he passed it on to me, saying only that the ‘key’ to the mystery -- and at that time I didn’t even know the water-seller was already deeply entangled in a mystery -- was in Assissi.

Pike very cautiously re-filled Townsend’s glass. The two of them emptied both of the bottles Pike and Emery had brought with them. Now Townsend brought out whiskey. He opened up a corner cabinet, where there were maybe twenty more bottles of the stuff. Being Pike’s friend, Emery suggested to him that he should take it easy on the whiskey. Pike took that as a criticism. His anger took the form of silence. He cut Emery out of the loop. When Emery ventured to say something further, Pike's icy stare stopped him cold.

Pike asked Townsend, "So, how did you get from Spain -- or Minorca -- or Wyoming -- to Assissi? I mean, how did you wind up here?”

“I buried the narangero according to his wishes. In return, he sent me on a treasure hunt that brought me here, to Italy -- but never took me back to Spain again. The treasure is close -- and yet a world away! When the men who killed the narangero got wind of my having the map, it was all I could do to get away! I high-tailed it -- traveled all over the world. Had to! The narangero’s map and book brought me here to Assissi, where I banged my head against the four walls of this hovel until my eyes popped out! I only knew Saint Francis held the key! Then one day it came to me. Thank you, Giles and Dominic! People think I’m mad, but I know what’s what. I will tell you this,” Townsend whispered. “The treasure still lies buried somewhere on the road to Saint James in San Diego -- Santiago -- Spain.”

"But how can you sit here in Assissi, writing about the existence of a treasure that’s buried in Spain?”

“It’s been ten or a dozen years since anybody’s bothered me. It’s generally assumed by the villagers -- and not only them -- that I’m just plain nuts. I've come from the ends of the earth to try to understand a map and diary given to me by an orange seller in the hills outside Madrid. I’ve been chased and hounded, a victim of the unruliness, shenanigans, and violence of infidels. I have wrestled with the forces, but my days are numbered now. I lost my wife and children -- they weren’t about to stop until they got what they were after. I have found a refuge here. Could you see the headlines, had I stayed in Spain? -- ‘Arlen Townsend dead because he could not bear it’."

Pike put his hands on either side of his astonished, recognizing face. Townsend filled his glass. "I send fresh wood. The soul abandons its body on earth as ashes. My life is nearly done,” Townsend intoned. " Look at what the world has come to. You are lambs among wolves that will devour you before you reach the goal of your ascent. You know about love, you think -- but hate also comes from God. There are no accidents. At first I wanted to get rid of you, thinking you were just a couple more fucking interlopers, but now I think differently. I know what brought you here. Fate brought you here.”

Emery excused himself, and crawled into his sleeping bag. The last thing he heard before he drifted off was Townsend, sounding mysterious and menacing, ensnaring Pike. “You have got to believe me,” he implored, whispering like a hypnotist. “I am telling you in confidence. There’s a treasure to be found in Spain. It's on the road to Saint James. Here is the book and map. It is your burden now, to have to carry these.”

They went on like that a while, late into the night -- well past the time Emery went to sleep. But Townsend and Pike were both up before Emery the next morning. All the whiskey they’d shared hadn’t seemed to phase either one of them. Surely Townsend was inured to the stuff -- immune. Perhaps Pike’s system mistook it for medicine..

"Human nature is evil, cunning, demonic," Townsend snarled angrily in the morning when Pike and Emery had got all their stuff together and were heading out. "The gentleness St. Francis talked about is not enough -- what's needed is a kick in the head. You have done your share of wicked things," Townsend accused Emery, sticking his fingers in his ribs most merrily. "But, in its way, that’s a good start! It has made you stronger, which you’ll need now. You’ll see."

For good measure, the old futz picked up a rock and threw it at the two when they rode away. “What was I thinking?” he yelled now. “Lion and lamb, love and force, light and fire -- all things climb the same mountain! Don’t let him fall off the mountain, Dominic! Don’t let him drown in the river!”

“Giles!” they heard him shout like a madman when they were out of sight, “Don’t lose the map!”

It felt great to get out of there. Pike was divided -- as melancholy about leaving as he was eager to press on. He seemed also aloof -- upset with Emery, feeling he'd really come up short the night before.

The sky that morning was almost a lurid yellow-gray. In Assissi village, the two riders stopped to get some food. They loaded up on fresh warm bread and some fruits. Pike bought some barley and a tiny box of chicken broth cubes. Before going on, Pike first took Emery aside and, shaking, looking cautiously around him to make sure no one was watching, he pulled out the papers Townsend had talked about -- the map and diary the narangero had found when the Spanish banditti had fled from the police. “He gave this to me,” Pike whispered.

“Wow,” Emery said. “That’s really cool. I’ll bet that’s worth something.”

“Lower your voice. You just don’t get it, do you?” Pike fumed.

Pike and Emery rode on in silence. They turned the corner at the Church of Santa Chiara and paused to regard the hills, canyons, and plains, then pushed off for Trevi and Spoleto.