u/Emergency_Cellist754

I'm picking up hints and suggestions that I didn't get on previous reads - or rather, that I didn't piece together.

It looks to me like the group that eventually saves the boy were shadowing him and the man for a LONG time. Almost from the start.

There is the early settlement where they hear the dog and the boy sees another boy.

Shortly after: "Someone had passed in the night. Running the road in the dark. He stood thinking about that." That group would definitely have seen their fire but they walked on by it.

Then shortly after that two men appear, he thinks they might see him but they just walk on by down the road.

There other hints dotted all throughout. And it leaves me with two questions. Actually three.

1. Why? I guess they are benevolent and would have simply left the man alone, but a child is too rare in this world to just ignore.

2. Why not just talk to them and ask them to join up? I think the man would have at best refused to trust them and at worst shot them when they got too close. Maybe that was their thinking too.

The final question is the biggest one.

3. How did they have the resources to do this? The man is shown to be extremely capable and he and the boy almost starve to death on numerous occasions. How could these people keep themselves and a dog sustained on a mission that wasn't about their own immediate survival?

I actually have no answers for 3, so am curious to know what others think. It's possible I've misinterpreted the book completely and all the above is wrong.

I have considered the possibility that the saviour group is just the dying man's dream, hence the returning trout imagery, and in fact the boy is simply left alone. It would feel like a more McCarthyian ending.