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.