When I woke up, the sun was over the horizon, casting long shadows from the greasewood and sagebrush. A series of rippling contortions of the blankets next to me showed that Helen Framley was getting dressed. Louie was bent over the stove on the running-board of the car, and the fragrance of coffee stung my nostrils.
There has never been anything quite as soul-satisfying, quite as filled with the promise of life as the smell of coffee out in the open when the fresh air has done its work, and you realize that you’re ravenously hungry.
Helen Framley came up out of her blankets, to stand slim and graceful. The golden rays of the early-morning sun touched the youthful lines of her figure with reddish orange. She glanced at me, saw I was looking up at her, and said naturally, “ ’Lo, Donald.”
“ ’Lo,” I said.
Louie turned around at the sound of her voice, then whirled back to bend over the stove.
There was quiet amusement in her eyes. “Hello, Louie,” she called.
“Hello,” he called back over his shoulder.
She finished her dressing, and said, “I could go for this in a big way. I wonder why someone didn’t invent it sooner.”
“It’s been here longer than we have,” I remarked.
She stood facing the east, the sun illuminating her features. Abruptly, she flung out her arms toward the sun in an impulsive gesture, then turned, sat down, and slipped on her shoes.
Louie said, “Half a basin of water apiece, and that’s all, and breakfast’ll be ready in five minutes.”
We washed up, cleaned our teeth, sat on our blankets, while Louie gave us scrambled eggs, coffee that was golden clear, bacon cooked somehow so that it had a nutty flavor, crisp without being brittle. He had a little wood fire going, had let it die down to coals, and a screen propped on some small rocks over these coals was the grate on which he had browned thin slices of the French bread into golden-crisp toast with butter glistening on it.
Every mouthful of food seemed deliciously flavored strength. I felt as though I didn’t need boxing lessons, that I could stand up to any man on earth and blast him to the ground with my bare fists.
We sat around for a few minutes after breakfast, smoking cigarettes, soaking up the warmth of the sunlight. We finished our cigarettes. I looked at Louie. We looked at the girl. She nodded. We started rolling up the blankets, fitting them into the ancient jalopy. No one spoke much. We had no need for words.
Half an hour later, with dishes all done and put away, the car neatly packed, we were on our way, rattling across the desert, the motor full of piston slaps and bearing knocks, but managing to deliver its thirty-seven miles an hour. The sun rose higher. The shadow cast by the automobile shortened. The warmth gave place to heat. The right rear tire developed a puncture. Louie and I changed it. We didn’t find it particularly annoying. We weren’t nervous, and we weren’t hurried. Everything went like clockwork — entirely different from those occasions when I’d been dashing around in Bertha Cool’s agency car trying to get somewhere in a hurry. Then a tire would go flat, and nothing would work. The car would roll off the jack. The nuts would get cross-threaded, on the bolts, and the rim never seemed to fit right on the wheel.
We didn’t hurry. We had all the time in the world. Occasionally, we’d stop to just soak up the scenery.
We traveled all that day, camped at night on the desert, and got to Reno around noon the following day.
“Okay,” Louie said, “here we are. What’s the orders, skipper?”
The jalopy was covered with desert dust. I needed a shave. Louie had black whiskers sprouting all over his chin. All three of us were burned from the desert sun and wind, but I had never felt so serenely relaxed.
“An auto camp,” I said, “while we get cleaned up, and find out what’s to be done.”
We found an auto camp. The woman let us have a cabin which had two rooms and three beds. We scrubbed under the shower. Louie and I shaved, then I left them in the cabin while I went out to reconnoiter.
I rang up the telephone company and inquired if Mrs. Jannix had a telephone. She didn’t. I rang up all the hotels, asked them if a Mrs. Jannix was registered with them. She wasn’t. I rang up the public utilities. They didn’t want to give out any information.
I went back to the auto camp, picked up the other two, and we went out looking for a place to stay.
I finally found one just about dark, a place which was ideally suited for what we wanted. A man had a little filling station about seven miles out of town. He’d started to put up an auto court, but his finances had run out, and all he had was one big cabin back about a hundred yards from the highway.
We loaded the jalopy with provisions, and moved in that night. Louie played on his harmonica, waltzes, and Helen and I danced for a while. There was a little wood stove in the place, and we kept the cabin filled with that comfortable warmth which comes only from a wood stove in a kitchen.
Louie pulled me out of blankets early the next morning. It was time, he explained, for road work.
Helen smiled at me sleepily, said, “Have a good time,” rolled over, and went back to sleep. I put on rubber-soled tennis shoes, tightened my belt, took a drink of hot water with a little lemon juice in it, and followed Louie out into the cold. The sun was just getting up. The air stabbed through my thin clothing.
Louie saw me shiver. “You’ll be all right in a minute. You’re too light to do much sweating. Come on now, here we go.”
He started off at a slow jog. I fell in behind him. A hundred and fifty yards, and the cold gave way to tingling warmth.
I realized there was quite an elevation here. My lungs began to labor for air. Louie, however, kept slogging along. We were on the pavement now. The steady kloop — kloop — kloop of his rubber-soled shoes grew monotonous.
“How much longer?” I asked.
“Don’t talk,” he called back over his shoulder.
I kept plugging along. My legs felt as though they were weighted with metal. We were jogging slowly enough so I could manage my breathing, but I was tired, terribly tired. It seemed as though we’d run miles before Louie swung around abruptly, looked me over with the eye of a professional trainer, said, “All right, walk awhile.”
We started walking along briskly, sucking in great lungfuls of the cool, clean air. My legs were tired, but the change in muscular action was a relief.
After several minutes, Louie started jogging again, and I fell in behind him. The cabin showed up a quarter of a mile ahead. It seemed to take hours to reach it.
Louie wasn’t winded. I could see that he was breathing more deeply, but that was all.
“Try opening up the bottom part of your lungs,” he said. “Suck the air way down into the lowest part of your lungs. Okay, we’ll go through a few moves now, just some of the preliminary stuff.”
He brought out a set of sweat-stiffened boxing-gloves and put gloves on my hands. “Now then,” he said, “the most deceptive blow and the hardest to deliver is an absolutely straight punch. Now, let’s see a straight left.”
I lashed out with a left.
He shook his head. “That ain’t straight.”
“Why not?”
“Because your elbow came up with the punch. Way out from the side of your body. Keep your elbow right in close to your body as you bring your fist up. First the left, then the right.”
I tried again. Louie looked pained but patient. “Now look,” he said. “Take off that right glove for a minute. I want to show you ‘something.”
And he showed me. And he told me, and then he kept me shooting out the left until I could hardly raise my arm.
“It ain’t good,” he said, “and it ain’t bad. You’ll improve. Now, let’s try a straight right. Now when you throw a straight right—”