Crossroads

Back in the novel’s present, the Crossroads group is nearing the Navajo reservation where they will be staying. Suddenly, a truck begins hostilely invading their bus’s space on the road, eventually forcing them to pull over. Russ gets out and speaks to one of the young Navajo men in the truck, Clyde, who angrily asks him why he is there. When Russ answers that the group has come to be of service to the Navajo people, Clyde scornfully tells them to leave. Russ’s invocation of his relationship with Keith Durochie only makes Clyde angrier before he drives away.

Although one of the adult chaperones, Ted Jernigan, thinks the group should turn back, Russ decides to keep going, sending one group to Kitsillie, the site Keith warned him not to go to, and sending the other to a separate site. All of the Kitsillie group sleep in one large room of the building designated for their use, and when they return to it after a long day’s work the following evening, they find it has been ransacked. The whole group immediately assumes Clyde was behind the break-in. They take an inventory and find that only two guitars have been stolen.