Just one task remained for Grant before his return to Los Angeles--to put up David's tent, in the back yard. I hated to insist on his putting up the tent when he was so tired, but I knew that having the tent up back there would be the only thing that would keep David away from the front of the motel, occupied, and out of mischief. We had agreed to keep the children as invisible from the front of the motel as possible; the sight of children is too likely to suggest to travelers that here is a place where their cars and belongings might be tampered with, and where there will be so much noise that sleeping will be difficult. About nine o'clock that night Grant went back to Los Angeles. He rented three of the cabins before he left, and we agreed on a method of keeping books. Grant would come back each weekend and possibly once during each week, although to drive ninety miles each way just to be here for a few hours would hardly be worthwhile. He wouldn't quit his job until our income from the motel was consistently so good that we knew we'd be able to make our payments and repay Grandma. I'd have all the renting to do, I'd have to supervise and help the cleaning woman, on alternate days I'd have to do all the cleaning; I'd have the two children to take care of, I'd be completely responsible for anything that might go wrong with the motel. The lights might all go off again, or the plumbing might get stopped up. I had visions of careless customers tossing towels and hairbrushes blithely down the toilets. Many authors mention, when they want to portray intense feeling, that their heroine views a certain happening with "mixed emotions." Well, my emotions as I watched Grant drive off the gravel onto the highway weren't mixed in the least. They were all the same. I was scared to death. CHAPTER THREE FORTUNATELY I HAD the children in bed, where I didn't have to worry about them, when the next customer drove in. He was a brisk-looking, gray-haired man in a new coupe. Often during my life I had heard people speak of "buck fever." It had seemed strange to me that any hunter should, at his first sight of a deer, tremble and shiver and find his fingers too numb and unresponsive to pull the trigger. Now, though, I understood. With no capable, confident husband to talk to the man, I would have to do it myself. My fingers were icy as I opened the door, and I forced my lips apart in what I hoped looked like a pleasant smile of greeting. My knees were quivering (visibly, no doubt) and my voice, when I squeaked "hello" to the man, was so like the sound of a rusty hinge that I glanced around in surprise. The tall, gray-haired man looked at me strangely and asked if I had a vacancy. I throttled the moronic impulse to gibber "I feel like there's a great big one in my head!" and carefully mouthed the words I had rehearsed for such an emergency as this. "Yes, I have," I chirped. "Would you care to see it?"