Time Is the Simplest Thing by Clifford D. Simak

leave.
    â€œThey gave up finally,” said Harriet. “They may still have left a man behind, but we’ll have to chance that.”
    She started the engine and turned up the jets. With the lights switched on, the car nosed up the stream bed. The way grew steeper and the bed pinched out. The car moved along a hog’s back, dodging clumps of bushes. They picked up a wall of rock again, but it was on the left side now. The car dipped into a crevasse no more than a paint-layer distant away from either side and they inched along it. The crevasse pinched sharply out, and they were on a narrow ledge with black rock above and black emptiness below. For an eternity they climbed, and the wind grew chill and bitter and finally before them was a flatness, flooded by a moon dipping toward the west.
    Harriet stopped the car and slumped in the seat.
    Blaine got out and fumbled in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He finally found it and there was only one left in the pack. It was very badly crumpled. He straightened it out carefully and lit it. Then he walked around the car and stuck it between Harriet’s lips.
    She puffed on it gratefully.
    â€œThe border’s up ahead,” she said. “You take the wheel. Another fifty miles across country. Very easy going. There’s a little town where we can stop for breakfast.”

SEVEN
    The crowd had gathered across the street from the restaurant. It was clustered thickly about Harriet’s car and it was watching closely and it was deadly silent. Ugly, but not noisy. Angry, and perhaps just slightly apprehensive, perhaps just on the edge of fear. Angry, more than likely, because it was afraid.
    Blaine pressed his back against the wall of the restaurant where, a few minutes before, they had finished breakfast. And there had been nothing wrong at breakfast. It had been all right. No one had said a thing. No one stared at them. Everything had been normal and very commonplace.
    â€œHow could they tell?” asked Blaine.
    â€œI don’t know,” said Harriet.
    â€œThey took down the sign.”
    â€œOr maybe it fell over. Maybe they never had one. There are some that don’t. It takes a lot of belligerence to put up a sign.”
    â€œThese babies look belligerent enough.”
    â€œThey may not be after us.”
    â€œMaybe not,” he said. But there was no one else, there was nothing else against which they would be banded.
    Listen closely, Shep. If something happens. If we are separated. Go to South Dakota. Pierre in South Dakota (map of the United States with Pierre marked with a star and the name in big red letters and a purple road that led from this tiny border town to the city on the wide Missouri) .
    I know the place , said Blaine.
    Ask for me at this restaurant (the façade of a building, stone-fronted, big plate windows with an ornate, silver-mounted saddle hanging in one window, a magnificent set of elk antlers fixed above the door). It’s up on the hill, above the river. Almost anyone will know me. They can tell you where I am .
    We won’t get separated .
    But if we do, you mind what I say .
    Of course I will , said Blaine. You have lugged me this far. I’ll trust you all the way .
    The crowd was beginning to seethe a little—not actually moving, but stirring around, beginning to get restless, as if it might be gently frothing. And a murmur rose from it, a sullen, growling murmur without any words.
    An old crone pushed through it and shambled out into the street. She was an ancient thing. What could be seen of her—her head, her hands, her bare and muddy feet—were a mass of wrinkles. Her hair was dirty, ragged white and it drooped in wisps all about her head.
    She lifted a feeble arm, from which flabby muscles hung like an obscene pouch, and she pointed a crooked, bony, quavering forefinger straight in Blaine’s direction.
    â€œThat is him,” she screamed. “He is the one I spotted.