They worked their way off Cape Claire, driving the unreliable two-wheel-drive pickup down stony ravines and across sand-filled washes and onto the deep-rutted jeep trail that meandered in various directions around numerous obstacles but kept bearing north. Henry stopped frequently to get out his shovel and bevel off cutbanks, remove rocks and circle ahead on foot in search of the route when it disappeared on acres of bare hardpan. They found a shortcut through the Grand Wash Cliffs, camped under the Virgin Mountains and by noon of the second day reached a town named Mesquite and the paved highway that led to Las Vegas. By late afternoon they were lying together in a tub of hot soapy water in a room on the tenth floor of the Mint Hotel. They stayed there for two nights, saw Woody Allen at Caesars Palace, ate the bargain meals at the Stardust, admired the Las Vegas architecture, won seventy dollars at the blackjack tables in the Fremont Casino and left town quickly.

I don’t like this, she said.

Why not?

We’re too lucky.

Don’t worry, said Henry. We deserve it.

They drove the pickup, refueled, retuned and repaired, across the basins and over the ranges of the Amargosa Desert, the Grapevine Mountains, Death Valley, the Panamint Range, Saline Valley, Eureka Valley, the Inyo Mountains and down into Lone Pine on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevadas, left their signatures in the hikers’ register on the summit of Mount Whitney (14,494 feet above sea level), drove south to Mojave, Santa Monica, Laguna Beach, Oceanside, dipped their feet and immersed their bodies together in the green waves and white surf of the western sea. Unable to afford a hotel room, they drove eastward to the crest of the Vallecito Mountains and made camp on a high good place from which they could see west to the Pacific, east to Arizona. They counted their money. Four dollars and two cents.

We’re broke, she said, delighted by the novelty of the sensation.

You want to go back to Denver?

And live with Mother? You’re kidding of course. No thanks. Anywhere but there. Let’s go someplace different.

Different from what?

Different from Denver.

They drove east next day across the desert, past the Salton Sea, the Chocolate Mountains, the Sand Hills, across the Colorado through Yuma and deep into the Sonoran Desert, refueling at Gila Bend, Fan Belt Capital of southern Arizona, soon after dark. Claire disapproved, as Henry knew she would, but finally agreed out of necessity to stand guard while Henry dipped his siphon hose into the tank of a city car behind City Hall. They drove on to Tucson that night and camped in the saguaro forest west of the city. Tucson, they decided, would do for the winter. In the morning Claire found a job as a waitress at the Arizona Inn near the University; she placed an ad in the school paper offering tutorial instruction in music theory, history, piano, flute and violin. Henry stood in line for two hours at the State Department of Employment Security, downtown, made formal application for a position as professor of philosophy, park ranger, fire lookout or social worker, and filed a claim against Utah and the National Park Service for unemployment compensation. Such gall, such brass, such insolence—but was he not “entitled,” by custom and by law? He was. But he knew what his old man would have said about such beggary and he dared not even imagine what his brother Will would think. The economic honeymoon was over.