“ ’Night,” she said.
“Good night,” I called.
Louie, slightly embarrassed, kept silent, pretending to think she had been talking only to me. She raised herself on one elbow. “Hey, Louie,” she called.
“What?”
“ ’Night.”
“Good night,” he mumbled self-consciously.
We waited a few minutes until she had settled herself in her blankets, then Louie and I got out of our clothes and snuggled down into our covers in our underwear.
I wondered how cold it was going to get. I could feel the tip of my nose getting cold. The stars were hanging in the sky directly above me. I wondered if one of them might fall, and if so whether it would hit me — then suddenly I opened my eyes, and an entirely different assortment of stars was in the heavens. The ground was hard underneath, and my muscles were cramped, but the clear fresh air, keen with the tang of dustless cold, had purified my blood, sucked the poisons out of me, and left me feeling as relaxed as though I’d been sleeping for a month.
I closed my eyes again. Once I woke up just before dawn to see the frosty glitter of bluish green where the sky was just beginning to take on color above a band of pale orange. I watched the orange grow vivid, saw a little cloud leap into crimson prominence. Listened to the rhythmic breathing of the girl on one side, heard Louie’s placid snoring — thought about getting up at the “crack of dawn,” and then snuggled down into the warmth of my blankets.
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.