“It’s my fault,” she said. “I shouted because . . . with all those graves they talked about in my book, I was feeling lost, so I looked out at the river for reassurance: I like that river a lot and it was reassuring to see it every day . . . But it wasn’t there! So I shouted, ‘We’ve lost the Platte River!’ That was ridiculous, I’m sorry.”

“I liked it a lot, too,” he said. “I’d even given it a nickname. I called it ‘big two-hearted river’ because of Hemingway’s short story.”

“That’s a nice name.”

“Thank you. Didn’t the emigrants come to another river right away?”

“Yes, they walked for several hours and then they arrived at the Sweetwater River. They said the water was sweet . . .”

She coughed two or three times and continued, “You’re very sweet, too. You could have got mad at me when I shouted like that for no reason, but you didn’t: you’re very sweet and gentle and patient and you never lose your temper.”

“I’ve told you before: I’m not really gentle,” he said sadly, kneeling to pick up the oranges; then he started the motor again.

He had a theory about gentle people. In his opinion, there was a distinction to be made between truly gentle and phony gentle people. The phony ones were weak or timid; life was hard for them and they were incapable of showing hostility. The truly gentle were those with self-confidence; they didn’t feel threatened and felt no need for hostility. He placed himself in the first category.

“I don’t care if your gentleness is real or phony, I still like you,” said the girl as he drove back onto the road and picked up speed.

When they reached Casper, they left route 26. As the Oregon Trail turned southwest, they took the 220, which went in that direction. They had reached an altitude of fifteen hundred metres and the road was still climbing. Paying close attention to the sounds of the motor and the transmission, the man drove with the greatest caution: the muscles in his shoulders and the back of his neck were so tense that they ached.

A few kilometres past the town of Alcova, they arrived at the Sweetwater River.

They parked next to an enormous rock. Many emigrants had stopped there to carve their names and the dates of their passage on its rocky sides. Father DeSmet, a Jesuit, had called it “the Register of the Desert.” La Grande Sauterelle had an idea: Jack thought it was totally ridiculous, but she wanted to go and see if Théo had left his name on the rock. She agreed that Théo had studied history and that no historian would commit such an act of vandalism; she agreed with everything Jack said, but she wanted to look all the same.