,under Marcheta's
influence.
There wag noth~ng
particularly I wanted to see in Reno; there was no-
thing about the place that I knew except that rich
people could get divorces there. But the dullness of
the everlasting desert and the vibration of the bus
and the fact that I spent most of my nights on the
bus and was very tired made it impossible for me to
ride for an extended time without stopping off and
stretching. I had intended to walk for a few hours
around Reno, to enter a saloon, perhavs to watch
some gambling and that evening to go on.
But when we entered a gambling house and there
before us saw the playing tables covered with green
cloth, surrounded by intent people, heard the dealers'
voices, heard the click made by the roulette wheels,
the soft fall of dice thrown against a board, Mar-
cheta became very excited. She stood looking intent-
ly around the room, and then she went up to the
oldest dealer and said to him, "Do you know
Harvey Pierce ?"
The dealer asked, "vVho's Harvey Pierce?"
"He's my brother.
He ran away from home."
The dealer was angry. "How do you expect to
find him in Reno?"
Marcheta said, "You don't have to get sore. I
just thought he might be here."
Nothing made sense. Marcheta took money out
of her bag and began playing blackjack; she began
winning. I walked away from her and to a crap table
and began throwing dice. When Lwalked away from
the table, I had perhaps three dollars left in my
pocket. I joined Marcheta just as she was leaving
her table. She said, "I lost every cent I had."
We walked out of the gambling house and into a
drug store and we each drank a glass of milk. Mar-
cheta said, "vVell, we've got our tickets, and we can
live together in San Francisco."
I
said, "I'm not going to live with you."
She said, "Oh, I'll wire my husband for money."
"I'm wiring for money, too, to New York," I
said. "But still I'm not going to live with you."
We went to the telegraph station,
and then in
the bus depot we waited five hours for the next bus.
II
Before the bus left Reno we heard that on Don-
ner Summit it was snowing hard; and later when the
driver had shifted into low and begun twisting and
straining up the last mountain before California,
it
began to rain.
It changed into snow; it became
thicker snow, beating, as I have never seen before,
directly into the windshield,
like blinding rays of
light. The driver must have felt his way up that
road, because nothing could be seen beyond the soap-
sud-covered glass, and as in a ship blinded by the
fog, he constantly tooted on his horn.
From some-
where else came an answering
toot;
the driver
stopped; rolled down his side window and we saw
PARTISAN
REVIEW AND ANVIL
the hazy outline of an east-bound bus, and heard its
driver's voice:
"There's been a snow slide on Donner Summit.
How's the road ahead?"
Our driver said it was passable; rolled up his win-
dow; both busses "so long-ed" each other with a
toot; and we continued climbing.
Everyone was nervous, except Marcheta.
She was
asleep and slept all through that night; but every-
body else talked to everybody else, and some became
indignant.
A man demanded that we turn that huge
bus around in the narrow mountain road and return
to Reno.
Somebody insisted that we stop and wait.
The driver said, "There's rocks coming down on all
sides; if we don't get through we're likely to get
crushed."
\Ve passed the fall of snow, and through the
windshield we could'see the road again.
It was clear
in places, and then we would come to a pile of snow
and had to steer around it close to the sheer fall on
the other side.
Or we came to a rock in the middle
of the road, and we watched the driver stop, get
out, push the rock over to the side; and again we
started.
A baby was whimpering and murmuring,
"lVlama, mama," endlessly.
A man and I volunteered to save time by walking
ahead of the bus and to push rocks
out
of the way.
Some of them were so unwieldy and heavy the driver
had to help us.
And outside it was cold, and the
rocks were newly broken and sharp and wouldn't
push away, and except in the line of the bus's head-
lights, enrywhere 'Nas darkness.
vVe heard rocks
rolling down the mountain,
and then with a thud
stopping somewhere.
And it gave an eerie feeling
to find around a bend a huge boulder crushed by the
impact into smaller pieces, and to think the bus might
have been under it.
It took hours to get through to a clearer road;
we were soaked when we got back inside, and our
hands were raw.
And again it snowed and it rained.
It was a wild night.
We stopped for some coffee at
a rest station, and there was a man staggering up
and down the place and shouting, "I'm as drunk as
a hoot owl."
"Wait till your wife finds out."
"My wife went to Reno in her car, to a picture
show; and I hope she met a lot of rocks on the way
back."
Again in the bus, most people were asleep. I sat
beside Marcheta,
who was sound asleep,
and
watched in the slow coming of the dawn the outsid::
take on shape. "vVe were in California,
and slowly
rolling down. and the darkness had become a pine
forest; then as the sun rose somewhere back of the
mountains,
it was a clear day, and the woods sud-
denly tl:rned green, and the earth turned red. There
were trees with leaves, there were hills rolling with
a beautiful green through red, there were flowers;
there were sheep grazing on real grass. After the
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