“I don’t know. Somewhere near it, I think. I’m very comfortable, aren’t you? You’re warm, except your cheeks. How funny they are when they’re wet. Still, you always feel like you. I like this. I could walk to Flagstaff. It’s fun, not being able to see anything. I feel surer of you when I can’t see you. Will you run away with me?”
Thea laughed. “I won’t run far to-night. I’ll think about it. Look, Fred, there’s somebody coming.”
“Henry, with his lantern. Good enough! Halloo! Hallo—o—o!” Fred shouted.
The moving light bobbed toward them. In half an hour Thea was in her big feather bed, drinking hot lentil soup, and almost before the soup was swallowed she was asleep.
VIII
On the first day of September Fred Ottenburg and Thea Kronborg left Flagstaff by the east-bound express. As the bright morning advanced, they sat alone on the rear platform of the observation car, watching the yellow miles unfold and disappear. With complete content they saw the brilliant, empty country flash by. They were tired of the desert and the dead races, of a world without change or ideas. Fred said he was glad to sit back and let the Santa Fé do the work for a while.
“And where are we going, anyhow?” he added.
“To Chicago, I suppose. Where else would we be going?” Thea hunted for a handkerchief in her handbag.
“I wasn’t sure, so I had the trunks checked to Albuquerque. We can recheck there to Chicago, if you like. Why Chicago? You’ll never go back to Bowers. Why wouldn’t this be a good time to make a run for it? We could take the southern branch at Albuquerque, down to El Paso, and then over into Mexico. We are exceptionally free. Nobody waiting for us anywhere.”
Thea sighted along the steel rails that quivered in the light behind them. “I don’t see why I couldn’t marry you in Chicago, as well as any place,” she brought out with some embarrassment.