He told me he wanted to get to Sixty, so I got out my car and told him to follow me. I was pretty sore about it, but I figured the only thing to do was to help him out. He'd upset the valley and the sooner out the better.
I drove for thirty minutes before I began to get confused myself. That was twice as long as it should have taken to get out to the highway. But the road looked all right and there seemed to be nothing wrong, except for the time it took. So I kept on going. At the end of forty-five minutes we were back in front of my place again. I couldn't figure it out for the life of me. I got out of my car and went back to Rickard's car.
"You see what I mean," he said.
"We must have got turned around," I said.
His wife was almost hysterical. "What's going on?" she asked me in a high, shrill voice. "What is going on around here?"
"We'll try again," I said. "We'll drive slower this time so we don't make the same mistake."
I drove slower and this time it took an hour to get back to the farm. So we tried for Eighty-five and forty minutes later were right back where we started.
"I give up," I told them. "Get out and come in. We'll fix up some beds. You can spend the night and we'll get you out come light."
I cooked up some coffee and found stuff to make sandwiches while Helen fixed up beds to take care of the five of them. "The dog can sleep out here in the kitchen," she said.
I got an apple box and quilt and fixed the dog a bed. The dog was a nice little fellow, a wirehair who was full of fun, and the Rickard kids were about as fine a bunch of kids as you'd find anywhere.