The money problem returned to torment him.  Of what use was this preparation, unless he had some real money to use with it?  He took off his shoes again, and his hat; pulled on his bathrobe over the khaki and went out and across to his mother’s room.

Mrs. Singleton Corey had another illusion among her collection of illusions about herself.  She believed that she was a very light sleeper; that the slightest noise woke her, and that she would then lie for hours wide-eyed.  Indeed she frequently declared that she did her best mental work during “the sleepless hours of the night.”

However that might be, she certainly was asleep when Jack pushed open her door.  She lay on her back with her mouth half open, and she was snoring rhythmically, emphatically—­as one would hardly believe it possible for a Mrs. Singleton Corey to snore.  Jack looked at her oddly, but his eyes went immediately to her dresser and the purse lying where she had carelessly laid it down on coming home from one of her quests for impurity which she might purify.

She had a little more than forty-two dollars in her purse, and Jack took all of it and went back to his room.  There, he issued a check to her for that amount—­unwittingly overdrawing his balance at the bank to do so—­and wrote this note to his mother: 

“Dear Mother: 

“I borrowed some money from you, and I am leaving this check to cover the amount.  I am going on a fishing trip.  Maybe to Mexico where dad made his stake.  Thanks for the car today.

“Your son,
“Jack.”

He took check and note to her room and placed them on her purse to the tune of her snoring, looked at her with a certain wistfulness for the mothering he had never received from her, and went away.

He climbed out of the house as he had climbed in, and cut across lots until he had reached a street some distance from his own neighborhood.  Then keeping carefully in the shadows, he took the shortest route to the S.P. depot.  An early car clanged toward him, but he waited in a dark spot until it had passed and then hurried on.  He passed an all-night taxi stand in front of a hotel, but he did not disturb the sleepy drivers.  So by walking every step of the way, he believed that he had reached the depot unnoticed, just when daylight was upon him with gray wreaths of fog.

By the depot clock it was five minutes to five.  A train was being called, and the sing-song chant informed him that it was bound for “Sa-anta Bar-bra—­Sa-an Louis Oh bispo—­Sa-linas—­Sa-an ’Osay—­Sa-an Fransisco, and a-a-ll points north!”

Jack, with his rubber boots flapping on his back, took a run and a slide to the ticket window and bought a ticket for San Francisco, thinking rather feverishly of the various points north.

CHAPTER THREE

TO THE FEATHER RIVER COUNTRY AND FREEDOM