Emily Hahn

“ There is a silence, and you both light cigarettes.
“Quiet,” you mutter. In the deep stillness the air seems full of life. Some animal crashes through the bushes, but the moonlight is not so bright as it seemed and you cannot see him. You sigh, throw your cigarette out onto the ground, and take the girl into your arms. She does not resist at first, except to say “Quit! You’ll burn yourself.” Then she too casts aside her cigarette and settles down comfortably. ”

“ Breakfast and lunch next day merged in the kitchen into one long period of torture—aching arms and weary feet for Gin, and greasy, coolish water for Teddy and Blake. She carried trays back and forth from the dining-room and the flies followed everywhere. But the meals were good enough and they would need the money. After lunch, when they had rested and felt more cheerful, they brushed themselves off and went to see the most important part of the rodeo, the bronco-busting. ”

“ You walk down the aisle, staggering as the train sways. She looks at you idly. You are tall and skinny, and when she sees that you are beginning to get bald, she loses interest. At the same time you see her. You have been looking for her ever since she passed through the club car on her way from lunch: you like them small and blonde and young when there are no tall and blonde and snappy ones. Stop by her chair and smile at her. ”

“ Wally looked worried.
“It’s a strange life,” she repeated. “Everything is peculiar. Don’t you think so? Really, don’t you?”
Flo sighed audibly. “Leave her alone; she’s off again.”
“But it is,” Gin persisted. A messianic zeal possessed her: she must convey the message in her soul or die unappeased. The moon, the bushes, the beautiful silent horses, all waited with an understanding patience while she spoke to these scoffers. “It is,” she said again. “Here I am sitting by a fire out in the middle of Nature, wearing pants and drinking tequila. ”

“ He grunted and rolled over with his nose burrowed into the blanket.
“That’s why we bother our heads about little things,” said Gin. “When we try to figure out big ones, we go crazy.”
“Some people do,” Teddy said. “They stop thinking about everything but that one question, What is Truth? Scientists....”
“I know,” she said impatiently. “Arrowsmith stuff. What difference does it all make?” She unrolled her blanket and started to take off her shoes.
“We’re like a legend,” Blake said after a moment. “Three brave people going out into the world. It makes me feel brave to sleep next to a fire. ”

“ Her shining eyes are fixed on something invisible that hovers in the room just over your head. Mystery, or the answer to all mystery? A new confidence, a new belief, are coming into her life. It is like being kissed in a dream ”

“ But Flo had no use for the Camino crowd at all: she refused to consider them human. “Nuts,” she called them, and forgot all about them.
The soft ceaseless flow of words from Wally and the loping horses pushed Gin into an exaltation, after a little. She was part of the Western world at last: not the West of the daytime where people brushed their teeth and went to offices, but the real West that existed in the fifteen-cent magazines on drugstore racks and the old films that were shown at the theatre Saturday nights.
Baldy slowed down suddenly to a walk, stopped by the horses ahead of him. ”

“ Eloise shakes her head quickly and decisively. “I didn’t ask you over!” she reminds you. It is a warning that she is on her guard; that she is a difficult proposition; that she is a Nice Girl.
“Well, gee, can’t a guy try to be human?” Your voice should be petulant and youthful. “I was just trying to be human. I was lonesome.” It is a plaintive speech, and you look plaintive. But nevertheless you are a masculine being, strong and undefeated. Probably it is the bathing suit, or perhaps the air with which you light your cigarette. Eloise gazes at your profile in uncertainty. ”

“ Gin said triumphantly. “You have a standard.”
“No, I haven’t. That doesn’t follow.” He stood up and stretched,
Teddy said, “Of course you have. You believe in painting, don’t you? Some of it is better than the rest, isn’t it? Well then, you have standards.”
“Oh, no. Those are personal preferences. What I am, not what I think. My likes and dislikes aren’t my thoughts.”
“How can you decide which is you, and which is what you think?”
Blake was silent. It was too much like that old thing that used to puzzle him so at breakfast; the picture of the girl on the box of cornflakes. ”

“ No nice girl will admit the possibility of harm. She ignores your remark, therefore, by rising and starting for the dining car. It is seven cars away, and some of the long passages are difficult to manage without staggering from side to side. Hold her elbow in a firm grasp, squeezing it as she stumbles against you, and laugh a good deal. You are much better friends when you reach the diner.
She looks out of the window at the sweeping darkness and you watch her and she knows it. The speed of the train and the feeling of not belonging anywhere are very exciting. ”

“ An hour or so passed in jerks; quick lovely spaces of time with the Victrola playing and short horrible periods that dragged on for years, when she relapsed into stupidity and stared at the beaded vest and tried not to talk about life. She saw Tom once in a while, as it were, looking at her and grinning in a monotonous way: she leaned against his shoulder in an unpleasant spell of dizziness, and it was there that Flo found her when she came stamping in with Wally. She heard Flo’s sharp voice.
“Look at that! Did you ever? We’d better get a taxi.” ”

“ We find ourselves in a restless age, a time of experiment; when almost everyone is urged by the same desire to revise and improve.
It is the Golden Age of good living, consequently it is the age of impending boredom. In such an atmosphere we would expect to find a development of parlour pastimes. These conditions, this pleasant leisure, this much vaunted, generally diffused prosperity, this impatience for hallowed tradition and the time-honoured devices for improving one’s time, have given rise to crossword puzzles, introspection, and modern seduction. ”

“ His nose expected an odor of pine and wet ground; instead there was a faint parched perfume of burning wood and sunburnt clay. It was almost dark. He changed his tie and went in to tea.
Bob Stuart had come to welcome him. Sitting on the edge of a chair, talking fast and gesticulating with his free hand while he steadied his tea-cup on his knee, he looked all wrong out here. He was practically an uncle and he belonged to another world. He was embarrassing to Blake; he took from the adventure and the new world its exclusive adventurous quality. ”