“That’s right,” said the old man, with a grin. “It’s a fine place, one of the few where there are still plenty of wild spots by the ocean. I’m very fond of the Pacific, and I know a quiet place . . . There’s a path you can’t see from the road; it’s hidden by vegetation, so you take that path, which is very narrow and . . . What’s the French word for steep?”

“Escarpé,” said Jack, and he couldn’t resist adding: “à pic and en pente raide.”

“Thanks. You go down that steep path, carefully so you don’t kill yourself, and you come to a little cove where you find nobody, because nobody is exactly who knows about it.”

That struck him as very funny and he laughed goodnaturedly.

“Nobody, that’s me,” he said. “I haven’t got a house, but I do have a little cove hidden away somewhere in Oregon on the shore of the Pacific. At the back of my cove, there’s a grotto I share with the crabs, and I have plenty of firewood. If you’ve got what you need for fishing, you can spend a week or two, but you have to bring something to drink. If you’ve got something to drink, wine or beer, and you catch some fish, it’s heaven!”

They were driving toward Fort Hall, and the old man was petting the black cat, who had climbed on his knees. He was telling them all sorts of things because he was glad to have someone to talk to.

When he was heading out west, to the little cove that only he knew about, he always took the Oregon Trail: it was the oldest trail in America. It was older than the history of the conquest of the West, older than the coureurs de bois and the pioneers, older than all the emigrants with their ox-drawn carts. It was as old as the Indians and probably as old as America.

“When you travel out west,” he said, “you feel best when you’re on the old Oregon Trail.”

“Will you stay in Oregon very long?” asked the girl.

“No. Just till fall. Then I go down to California and in the spring, I head back east.”

“So you travel west,” said Jack, “and when you get there you come back east?”

“I know,” the old man laughed. “Sometimes I think it’s ridiculous, too. Do you know the song ‘No Roots in Rambling’? It’s by Jerry Jeff Walker.”

“No,” said Jack.

“I know it,” said La Grande Sauterelle.