“Yes, my dear,” said the woman. “He’s in Denver and next week he’ll be in Cheyenne. He’s always travelling to catch a rodeo. Sometimes he goes as far as Calgary. But when he’s not too far, he drops in to give me a hand with the rattlesnakes.”

Like all rodeo cowboys, her husband didn’t receive a salary or any travelling expenses, and he even had to pay his own registration fees. He wasn’t paid a cent unless he won something in a rodeo. That was why he occasionally came to Chimney Rock, where he got rid of the rattlesnakes that infested the area around the stone chimney.

The woman told them a couple of things about rattlesnakes. First of all, they don’t bite people just like that, for the fun of it. They bite in self-defence if someone inadvertently steps on them while they’re warming themselves in the sun or sleeping in a rock crevice. And if you get bitten, the best thing to do is put a chunk of ice on the bite to slow down the blood circulation, and go and see a doctor without getting all worked up.

The main thing to avoid, if you don’t want a tonguelashing from the doctor, is enlarging the bite with a hunting knife and sucking the venom and spitting it out, as they do in Westerns; doctors find that the poison harms the system enough without their being required, in addition, to repair the damage a hunting knife causes to nerves, veins and muscles.

La Grande Sauterelle asked the woman what her husband did to get rid of rattlesnakes.

“How do you kill a rattlesnake?” she asked. “With a gun?”

“With a spade,” said the woman. “You just chop their heads off.”

The girl grimaced and changed the subject.

“And Théo,” she asked, “how was he?”

“Just fine,” said the woman.

“In good shape?”

“Terrific shape!”

“How long . . .” (Her voice broke, she coughed and looked furtively at Jack.) “How long did he spend here?”

“A few days, honey.”

“And where was he going when he decided to leave?”

“He was heading west, but . . .”

The woman had the impression that Théo was running away from something. In addition, he wasn’t sure if he was going to Oregon or California. Across the Rockies, on the Oregon Trail, there was a fork: the road on the left went to California, the one on the right to Oregon. And Théo still hadn’t decided which way to go . . . The junction was in Idaho, by the Snake River, near a place called Fort Hall.

When they expressed a wish to leave, the bull rider’s wife held out her arms and embraced them. They stayed in her arms for several minutes, happy as children to be enfolded in the woman’s marvellous warmth.