“And then to top it all off we pick up an old hitchhiker and he tells us there’s a good chance Théo went to California, not Oregon! He’s never laid eyes on your brother, but he says without the slightest hesitation that he went to California.”

“San Francisco, to be precise! He even knows which city!”

“We should have asked for the address . . . Maybe he’d have given it to us!”

“And a letter of reference!” said Jack.

He began to laugh.

“And the worst thing is,” he said, serious again, “the worst is that if this keeps up, the two zouaves will probably go to California . . . What do you think?”

“It seems to me the two zouaves don’t really have much choice,” replied the girl.

The sky was cloudy. The old man slept under the picnic table, wrapped in his canvas. When they woke up next morning he had already gone.

XXVI. The California Trail

XXVI

The California Trail

At Fort Hall, they took a secondary road going southwest; this road, which would bring them to Interstate 80 in Nevada, was the Gold Route, the California Trail.

La Grande Sauterelle was driving slowly because of the road mice. These little animals — somewhere between a field mouse and a squirrel in size — stood on their hind paws by the side of the road, watching the vehicle pull up, then at the last moment they would cross. You had to constantly jerk the wheel or slam on the brakes to avoid them. The girl’s nerves were shot.

The altitude had decreased. The landscape was now very arid. On either side of the road were greyish expanses of ground spotted green by sagebrush.

Jack was concerned about the road mice, too, but he was even more concerned about the old Volks. In midafternoon, when the heat was most intense, what he had been afraid of finally happened: the engine began to cough.

He tried to sound reassuring: “Grit in the gas tank,” he said.

The engine coughed again, then stalled. The girl barely had time to pull the minibus over to the shoulder. She tried to start the motor again, but in vain.

“I’ll have a look,” said Jack.

He got out and opened the motor compartment. He shrank back because of the heat it gave off, then stuck his head inside and glanced briefly at the various parts of the motor.

“Try again!” he shouted to the girl.

She tried the ignition: the engine turned over but it wouldn’t start.

“What’s going on?” she called.

“I haven’t the foggiest!”

Then she got out. The man was peering into the engine compartment, and she asked him what he was doing.

“Looking at the battery,” he said.

“Don’t do that!” she said. “If the starter’s working, the battery . . .”

“Oh, you’re right.”

“It must be the gas: sounds like it isn’t getting to the carburetor.”

“Could we be out?”