The Rocky Mountains

Montana Slim and I began going to the bars. I had about seven dollars. We picked up two pretty girls, a pretty young blonde and a fat girl with black hair. They were moody and not very intelligent, but we wanted to make love to them. We took them to a nightclub which was already closing, and I spent five dollars on whiskies for them and beer for us. I was drunk, but I didn't care. Everything was great. I just wanted the little blonde. I put my arms around her and wanted to tell her. The nightclub closed and we all wandered out into the dusty streets. I looked up at the sky. The wonderful stars were still there, burning.

The girls wanted to go to the bus station, so we went there, but it was to meet a sailor who was waiting for them. He was the fat girl's cousin, and he had friends with him. The blonde wanted to go to her home, in Colorado, just south of Cheyenne. "I'll take you in a bus," I said.

"No," she said, then went on, "I want to go to New York. I'm tired of this. There's no place to go except Cheyenne, and there's nothing in Cheyenne."

"There's nothing in New York," I said.

She went to join the sailor and the others. Slim was sleeping on a seat. I sat down and told myself that I was stupid. "Why didn't I save my money?" I thought. "Why did I spend it all on that stupid girl?" I laid down on the seat with my bag for a pillow and went to sleep.

I woke up at eight o'clock in the morning with a big headache. Slim had gone - to Montana, I guess. And there in the blue air I saw for the first time, far away, the great snowy tops of the Rocky Mountains. And I knew that I had to get to Denver at once.

I got a ride in a car with a young fellow from Connecticut. He talked and talked. I was sick from drinking, and once I almost had to put my head out of the window. But by the time he let me off at Longmont, Colorado, I was feeling OK.

It was beautiful in Longmont. I slept for two hours under a big tree near a gas station, then got a ride with a Denver businessman. We had a long, warm conversation about life, all the way to Denver.

In those days I didn't know Dean as well as I do now, so I phoned Chad King's house. He came and picked me up in his old Ford car that he used for trips into the mountains. Chad is a slim blond boy, and he smiled when he saw me.

Chad had decided not to be Dean's friend any more, for some strange reason, and he didn't even know where he lived.

"Is Carlo Marx in town?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. But he wasn't talking to him any more either. It seemed that Chad King, Tim Gray, Roland Major, and the Rawlinses were not seeing or speaking with Dean Moriarty and Carlo Marx. And I was in the middle of this interesting war.

My first afternoon in Denver I slept in Chad Kings room while Chad worked at the library, and in the evening his mother cooked us a wonderful dinner.

But where was Dean?

by Jack Kerouac

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Chapter 4