In the mountains the repair men were still laboring. Their foreman had a portable telephone attached to the wires, and through it he kept in touch with Sacramento. Once he came back looking not so comfortable.

“Well, they found him,” he said.

Everybody knew what he meant. They paused.

“He was under the snow, but some fellows from Truckee brought in a collie dog that was trained to work in the mountains, and the dog found him.”

Still they waited.

“For Christ’s sake, who do you think you’re workin’ for—the Old People’s Home? Sure, he was dead. Why don’t you get on with the job?”

They worked hard after that, and nobody talked much.

9

For the newspapers Max and Jen were not very useful. Their being unmarried lent a touch of piquancy, and her hair could be played up as blonde. The reporters got a photograph from Jen’s sister, and after the art department of the Register had put in some work the picture was not very valuable for identification, but it had some suggestions of the femme fatale. From the newspaperman’s point of view however, the trouble with the story was that it had no follow-up; the pair just went out of the picture as Dot saw them drive away into the rain.

A rumor cropped up about a Nevada couple who had been married in Yuma. But when a reporter located an embarrassed young couple in a tourist-court, the girl turned out to be a Mexican-type brunette, and the story was a flop.

The officers of the Highway Patrol kept working, especially between San Francisco and Sacramento, and from there by U.S. 40 over the pass to the state line. In the thorough and unhurrying way of good professionals they asked a lot of questions at garages and service-stations; conscientiously plying their trade, they ran down a few unlikely rumors. But they discovered absolutely nothing.

10

On the University campus the sea-gulls stood about by ones and twos on the green lawn—refugees from the storm. (Now, over their homes on reef and ledge the furious invading waves pounded and swept and foamed; high upon the cliffs the salt-spume filled the air.) Misplaced-looking, they stood, or flew here and there in restless, purposeless flights, or walked a few steps this way or that, raising feet awkwardly as if at the foreign feeling of grass tickling on their webs.

A professor preparing a lecture on modern literature looked out and saw them. “Sea-gulls on the grass,” he thought. “Sea-gulls on the grass, alas! Perhaps that was what she meant. That would make sense—means a big storm at sea. They look the part too—moping! Sea-gulls on the grass, alas!”

11