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. I don’t want to go back; I don’t want to do anything but this.”
He believed her, and felt lighter. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t want anything else either. Look at the star up there, over that tree. It’s green, isn’t it?”
Teddy tossed a little, and mumbled.
“We’d better be quiet,” whispered Gin. “Go on back to sleep.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Teddy woke up very early in the morning. The sun had come up and had lost its colour: it hung above the flat line of earth like a colourless lantern, a lamp made of gold but with no light in it. He did not know what had waked him, but there was a chattering birdlike noise from a hummock nearby. Prairie dogs, and they had been making a terrific row, probably. One of them put his nose out of the hole as Teddy lay on his side with wide-open eyes, watching. He crept out slowly, his plump little body elongated with caution. He drew up his back legs one after the other very gently, and sat down on the top with his paws dangling before him. His head turned slowly and he looked at the world with squirrel-like eyes that saw no importance in anything, even in the three prone giants around the smoking pile of ashes. Then he suddenly started to run close to the ground, looking for something to eat. Teddy sat up, and he squeaked and rushed down his hole again; his tail gave a last little twitch as it disappeared.
Gin’s head was covered with her blanket against mosquitos and dew; there was nothing visible of Gin but a wisp of hair. Blake’s face was turned to the sun, and his mouth was open. They both slept deeply. It must be very early indeed.
Teddy yawned, rubbed his eyes and shook his head. He propped his elbows on his knees, and his chin on his fists, waiting for something to happen. The day was gathering colour again, as if light from the sun were slowly filling the air, mixing imperceptibly, sinking down from the layer of sunshine above the clouds in little driblets, like a mixture of drinks. The ground had dropped away from under the sun. Beyond the long shallow swell of ground in front of him there came a ghost of a yell. Teddy leaned back among the folds of the blanket, and watched until he saw far off the silhouette of a man on horseback driving before him a flock of sheep, almost invisible in the irregular ground.
He moved nervously and looked again at Gin and Blake. He was depressed, full of a foreboding and a loneliness. Every morning when he woke he was uneasy until he had spoken to the others, and he was never completely at his ease until they had stopped at a store or a gasoline station and chatted with the attendant. It was like a feeling of guilt, the conviction that came to him every morning that he had no right out here under the sky. He was trespassing. Surely some day he would be waked by a policeman, and ordered out of the desert. There must be a law about sleeping out like this. One night he had been so uneasy that he had waited until the others were asleep and then crept back to the curtained car to sleep under some sort of cover, at least. It was all right unless he woke up at night: if he slept straight through and found himself still there in the morning, with no enemy standing beside him, he felt triumphant and safe for the day. Just now he was nervous. That man with the sheep—would he see them and come over to order them off? It was ridiculous, of course. The land didn’t belong to the shepherd any more than to himself, or Gin.
He looked at the sky. There were no clouds, and it would be a hot day. Where were they going? Would they be in El Paso today? He twisted around and looked at the tires of the car—no flats. The corner of the packing-box where they kept the groceries was sticking up above the door. He put on his shoes and stood up quietly.