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mean rain and the land could use the rain-or it might be nothing, for above the merging river valleys the air currents were erratic and there was no way a man could tell where those clouds might flow.
    He did not see the traveler until he turned in at the gate. He was a tall and gangling one and his clothes were dusty and from the appearance of him he had walked a far way. He came up the path and Enoch sat waiting for him, watching him, but not stirring from the steps.
    “Good day, sir,” Enoch finally said. “It’s a hot day to be walking. Why don’t you sit a while.”
    “Quite willingly,” said the stranger. “But first, I wonder, could I
    have a drink of water?”
    Enoch got up to his feet. “Come along,” he said. “I’ll pump a fresh one for you.”
    He went down across the barnyard until he reached the pump. He unhooked the dipper from where it hung upon a bolt and handed it to the man. He grasped the handle of the pump and worked it up and down.
    “Let it run a while,” he said. “It takes a time for it to get real cool.”
    The water splashed out of the spout, running on the boards that formed file:///F|/rah/Clifford%20D.Simak/Clifford%20Simak%20-%20Waystation.txt (12 of 103) [1/19/03 4:01:51 PM]
     
    file:///F|/rah/Clifford%20D.Simak/Clifford%20Simak%20-%20Waystation.txt the cover of the well. It came in spurts as Enoch worked the handle.
    “Do you think,” the stranger asked, “that it is about to rain?”
    “A man can’t tell,” said Enoch. “We have to wait and see.”
    There was something about this traveler that disturbed him. Nothing, actually, that one could put a finger on, but a certain strangeness that was vaguely disquieting. He watched him narrowly as he pumped and decided that probably this stranger’s ears were just a bit too pointed at the top, but put it down to his imagination, for when he looked again they seemed to be all right.
    “I think,” said Enoch, “that the water should be cold by now.”
    The traveler put down the dipper and waited for it to fill. He offered it to Enoch. Enoch shook his head.
    “You first. You need it worse than I do.”
    The stranger drank greedily and with much slobbering.
    “Another one?” asked Enoch.
    “No, thank you,” said the stranger. “But I’ll catch another dipperful for you if you wish me to.”
    Enoch pumped, and when the dipper was full the stranger handed it to him. The water was cold and Enoch, realizing for the first time that he had been thirsty, drank it almost to the bottom.
    He hung the dipper back on its bolt and said to the man, “Now, let’s get in that sitting.”
    The stranger grinned. “I could do with some of it,” he said. Enoch pulled a red bandanna from his pocket and mopped his face. “The air gets close,” he said, “just before a rain.”
    And as he mopped his face, quite supenly he knew what it was that had disturbed him about the traveler. Despite his bedraggled clothes and his dusty shoes, which attested to long walking, despite the heat of this time-before-a-rain, the stranger was not sweating. He appeared as fresh and cool as if he had been lying at his ease beneath a tree in springtime.
    Enoch put the bandanna back into his pocket and they walked back to the steps and sat there, side by side.
    “You’ve traveled a far way,” said Enoch, gently prying.
    “Very far, indeed,” the stranger told him. “I’m a right smart piece from home.”
    “And you have a far way yet to go?”
    “No,” the stranger said, “I believe that I have gotten to the place where I am going.”
    “You mean …” asked Enoch, and left the question hanging. “I mean right here,” said the stranger, “sitting on these steps. I have been looking for a man and I think that man is you. I did not know his name nor where to look for him, but yet I knew that one day I would find him.”
    “But me,” Enoch said, astonished. “Why should you look for me?”
    “I was looking for a man of many different parts. One