The Picture Ranch 61

Moose was squinting at the wristwatch in the palm of his hand trying to line up the hour hand with the sun,

'Got the damn shakes after that joy-powder.' He threw out his fore-finger towards the scrub, 'North's that way.'

He executed a neat about face and slung the Caruso dame over one shoulder like a rag doll. She passed out, again. We headed south, more or less back the way we'd come along the dirt road. That was what I had been going to do anyway, but I didn't tell Moose.

The sun was high overhead a bare hour later, like it was running fast as a dime-store clock. I took a sip from the canteen. Held it out for Moose to take a drink. He grunted,

'Wet the dame's lips, she can have my share.'

That was all I did. Her head was hanging down the right side of Moose's back, she wasn't going to swallow much like that. She made a grab for the canteen, but she used the wrong hand, and fainted again.

Moose looked okay. I guessed I didn't. We started the-one-foot-in front of the other boogie again. I figured we'd covered three miles as the crow dies. I had no idea how long we had been in the back of the truck. The dirt road was somewhere over to our right, I hoped. Moose stayed in front trudging along steadily as though the woman was no more than a sack of feathers – and a half-empty one at that.

Two hours later the canteen was empty. I'd had most of it, Moose had had about half of the remainder. Twice, he'd laid the woman out on the dirt as gently as a mourner laying a wreath and did more than wet her lips. We were still nowhere. Although the dirt road had circled round and caught up with us. That, or we hadn't walked as straight as we thought. It looked a long, straight stretch as far as the horizon.

The woman struggled to get up, then gave up. She rolled onto her good side and said 'Look!'. I looked all around, before I noticed Moose was jumping up and down, waving his arms at a distant but discernible cloud of dust down the road apiece.

It was ten minutes before the Packard Convertible pulled up. It was the last vehicle I’d have brought so far out of Encino, but I was damn glad somebody else had.