[00:00.81]It was hot in the valley,
[00:02.44]hotter still in San Bernadino,
[00:04.46]and it was still hot at five thousand feet,
[00:06.95]fifteen miles up
[00:07.79]the high-gear road to Puma Lake.
[00:10.44]I had done forty of the fifty miles of curving
[00:12.99]twisting highway before it started to cool off,
[00:15.89]but it didn't really get cool
[00:17.67]until I reached the dam and started
[00:19.38]along the south shore of the lake
[00:21.32]past the piled-up granite boulders
[00:23.31]and the sprawled camps in the flats beyond.
[00:26.24]It was early evening
[00:27.36]when I reached Puma Point and
[00:29.08]I was as empty as a gutted fish.
[00:32.39]The Indian Head Hotel was a brown
[00:34.17]building on corner,opposite a dance hall.
[00:37.02]I registered,carried my suitcase upstairs
[00:39.39]and dropped it in a bleak,
[00:40.85]hard-looking room with an oval rug
[00:42.23]on the floor,a double bed in the corner,
[00:45.09]and nothing on the bare pine wall
[00:46.73]but a hardware-store calendar all curled up
[00:49.42]from the dry mountain summer.
[00:51.39]I washed my face and hands
[00:52.61]and went downstairs to eat...
[00:54.98]I gobbled down what they called
[00:56.79]the regular dinner,
[00:58.41]drank a brandy to sit on it,
[00:59.79]and went out...
[01:02.00]The phone office was a log cabin,
[01:04.20]and there was a booth in the corner
[01:05.66]with a coin-in-the-slot telephone.
[01:07.92]I shut myself inside and dropped my nickel
[01:10.20]and dialed 2306.A woman's voice answered.
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