Emily Hahn

“ 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. ”

“ Gin followed suit in the front seat, and the three balancing figures jogged and reeled as Harvey drove on toward Taos. It was almost as light as day. They passed one other machine: driving on in the path of the headlight glow they waved and shrieked until a curve cut it off. Blake drummed with his heels on the leather cushion in a burst of exhilaration.
They left the main road and followed the way to Frijoles Canyon. The car went slower, going through rivers with a cautious swoop and turning corners on all four wheels. Long shadows lay across the silver-splashed fields. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gin and Blake and Teddy had never seen anything like it. The riding was thrilling. They stood on tiptoe to watch over the heads of the people who were so unlike the sightseers at Vegas on the Fourth of July. Town people, the Mexicans who lived in Magdalena and Datil and Socorro and San Antonio, were mixed up with the ranchers’ families who cheered their own punchers or watched excitedly silent when they had bet on the length of time some man would stay on the back of his horse, watched eagerly while he was tossed and bounced and jerked by his bronco. ”

“ Teofilo was a great help with his professional attitude of glad-hander; he greeted all couriers with the same glad surprise, although he saw at least one a day, and he was more than willing to show his scarred head, which had once been scalped. He loved to have his picture taken.
Then, the rest of the way was quiet. The dudes arranged their cameras in their laps, peered around at the bigger pots stored in the back of the bus, and settled down to doze. The afternoon waned and the shadows lengthened across the road and the mountains darkened. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Tramp, tramp, tramp, with a little skipping noise when one of them kicked a pebble. The air was cool and dry and sweet. It grew darker. They passed a tiny fire where two Indians sat on their heels and watched a coffee pot. A long, happy, swinging cry sounded over across the valley, down the mountain. It was dark.
Out of the swelling joy in his breast, Blake cried, “We’re out of the States! We’re in another world.”
Teddy answered with silence. Tramp, tramp, tramp. He loved Teddy and the Navajos and the stars, the heavy yellow stars. ”

“ Gin was a sentimental fool. Why need they talk? Couldn’t they ever be quiet? What was that thing he had forgotten? It was important, too; very important. What was it, and what had it to do with a prize-fight? He shook his head violently, trying to jog it.
They had lunch in a little fly-swarmed town. He worked his way through two pieces of leathery pie, trying to eat himself back to good humour. They teased him about his appetite and his irritation almost broke through. On the way to the car Blake swung himself over the door and it was all Teddy could do to keep from striking him in the face. ”

“ There was no limit to his capacity for company; if he should ever have to live completely alone he would go mad. The frantic boredom that had possessed him with Mary grew more peaceful; slowly and completely died as he watched Lucy pushing a way toward the ladder that leant against their roof. She was followed by her daughter Phyllis and her daughter Phyllis’ friend Janie Peabody. Good! Soon there would be activity and noise on the roof around him, and other people would look up to the chattering crowd and say to each other, “That’s Bob Stuart.” ”

“ Gin said eagerly. “Like the Three Musketeers, but there were four Musketeers really, weren’t there? I always forget. Perhaps we’ll pick up a fourth somewhere.”
“I hope not,” said Teddy. “Four would be too many and we’d have trouble.”
“I don’t see why.”
“If we pick up another man, he’ll start making love to you; and if we pick up another girl one of us will start making love to her.”
“I don’t think so.” Blake sat up. “We don’t make love now, so why should anyone else start us off? We’re different.”
“Oh, you think so?” Teddy laughed in a nasty patronizing manner that disturbed Blake. ”

“ Teddy took care of all that, with the jealous love of a childless woman who has borrowed a nephew for the week. For Blake, stopping for gas and oil was a rude interruption. He would be far off somewhere and suddenly the car would stop in front of a dusty little red pump sitting in the middle of the landscape, with a man in overalls shambling out of the dusty little house behind it. Then Gwendolyn would order soda pop all around, and mop her face. Or she would ask for the ladies’ room in a husky whisper that made Blake ashamed to go to his side of the little house. ”

“ No dogs ran out to race with the wheels.
Blake sank back into the corner of the seat. His head dropped: the shadows blurred and the sound of the engine was more stupefying than silence. He reached with stiff fingers for a blanket, curled up in it and fell into a sort of sleep, his elbows braced against shock. In his dream he was still in the car, riding steadily through the river at school or across baked yellow plains, arguing with Dr. Miller. Sometimes he jerked and waked up, glanced worriedly at Gin’s head against the cushion ahead of him, and closed his eyes again. ”

“ A roadster full of staring tourists passed in the other direction, and swerved as the driver turned for a last look.
“Wheeee, it’s late,” said Teddy. “When do we eat? How far are we? Where are we?”
Suddenly Gin screamed and then sat still with her fist to her open mouth.
“What’s the matter?” they all asked.
“My job! I forgot. How could I?”
“Ooo,” said Blake. “And it’s late.”
“How could I?”
“I think it’s charming,” Madden answered. “It’s darling of you. I love to have people forget important things. It’s good for your soul.”
She shook her head impatiently, her eyes wet. They were all subdued. ”

“ He put his hands behind his head and looked at the sky and was happy, in spite of the ignorance of humanity.
“We ought really to have some ready-made answer to questions about life and all that,” said Teddy. “We all fool around and fool around trying to figure out an answer, and at the end we just take what we have.”
“We take what we have and then we quit,” Gin said gloomily.
“Whatever we have. It isn’t any better than what other people have, that’s the tragedy of it. It’s no nearer the real truth.”
“What truth?” asked Blake. “Is there one?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ He looked at her hopefully. He knew now that they must leave Teddy: the madman in the front seat must be overpowered and left behind. He was a traitor. The best of the adventure would be gone, with only two of them left. It was hard, but it was not fatal. They could do it. He looked at her, waiting for help....
Her eyes were fixed despairingly on Teddy’s back, and she looked more miserable than Blake himself, and as hopeless. He stared at her, and he knew that he was alone. Something had taken the strength out of her.
He was alone.
He shrank back into his corner, bouncing as the car bounced. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ From the plaza beneath there came a confused roaring: a mixture of singing and soft-beating drums where the Indians were dancing to the music of the chorus, heavily overlaid and swamped by a loud conversation going on between people squatting before the house. Bob craned his neck to see over the heads of the Indians who blocked the view. He was trying to find Teddy.
“It’s Blake’s fault,” said Mary, understanding him. “He’s always running off like that: this time he’s taken Teddy with him. It’s very rude of him. I must speak to him again.” ”

“ I want to have a good time in Mexico, that’s all, and it looks as if I’ll get it.” She patted Blake’s hand and smiled at him.
“Well, if you’re satisfied now it’s just because there isn’t anyone else around to give you ideas,” said Teddy suddenly. “We’re in an artificial state just now, the way people always are when they travel. When we get some place in Mexico and start getting acquainted with people, things will be complicated again for all of us.” ”

“ Gin sighed. “If it starts raining again tonight I’ll go to sleep sitting right up in the car. I felt lousy last night.”
“Oh, it won’t rain tonight,” Blake promised easily. “The sky is clear.” It was his trip and he felt responsible for nature. The fire burned down to a useful small smouldering size while the night crept up around them.
“It’s queer how easy it is not to worry out here,” Gin said. “I used to worry all the time about everything, and now nothing seems to be very important.”
“I know,” said Teddy.
“You? You never bothered your head about anything,” she said resentfully. ”

“ Teddy was never any good in a free-for-all; he always took Mary’s side. Blake didn’t think of criticizing him for it. Teddy was simply sometimes a baffling adult and sometimes a companion. It was all in the way you caught him. He himself, still dependent on adult decisions, accepted his bad luck without question.
They found Shiprock at evening, and left Mary and Gwendolyn in their rooms while they strolled around the town, staring. It was thus they came across the truck-driver who was willing to take passengers into the country with him. ”

“ Everything was black or white or grey.
“Like a steel engraving,” said Teddy, “but much more so.”
They were in a jumble of rock, chalky-white rock that was broken off in great chunks and piled up into mountains. The ditch emptied into a river that crossed the road farther down and crept off into a ravine of thick-growing juniper, black in the thin light.
Gin blurted, “It looks awful. I hate being in canyons.”
They agreed not to drive any more. Blake suggested climbing something. They aimlessly picked out a hill and began to crawl up the side, leaving the car somewhat askew in the road. ”

“ Teddy was still snoring.
“People change so. You might change, Gin. Even I....”
She shook her head and he thought that she looked very sad. “I’m grown up,” she said. “I’m more grown up than you are, and I know about myself. You’re the one who will change, or Teddy. ”

“ They couldn’t help being lazy and easily pleased and careless. If only they wouldn’t try to be critical about painting. There must be things they couldn’t have; there must be.
“When I am rich,” he thought, and then, “but if I never am?”
He paused with a clean towel in his hand, and looked around. The room was still the same, small and bare and cluttered and dirty. Outside the window was a blue mountain-peak beyond a broad dwindling stretch of juniper-dotted sand, but around his house there were other little low houses, mud houses sinking in the mud of the road. ”

“ Harvey stepped on the gas and for a moment they stayed together, then the train pulled ahead slowly, seemed to gather speed, marched by dragging a long tail spotted with square windows, and swung around a curve ahead to vanish forever. Only the smoke hung in the air and mixed with the smell of gasoline and burning cedar.
“What’s the matter with you?” said Harvey. “You’re pinching my arm.”
“Just playing,” she said, and moved over to her own side of the car again. ”