In this episode, Route 66 cuts through the Mojave Desert as Perry Smith and Dick return from Mexico and search the highway for a vulnerable traveler. It is at once a practical route across the desert and the exposed stage for their attempt to turn hitchhiking into robbery and murder; when a prospective victim refuses them a ride, they simply continue on foot.

Setting and Circumstances

At midday, Perry Smith sits on a straw suitcase playing a harmonica while Dick watches the empty, black-surfaced highway for passing cars. They have reached the desert after a fifty-hour bus ride from Mexico City to Barstow and half a day trekking across the Mojave. Their journey has reduced their belongings to a single suitcase, which holds Perry’s souvenirs and a few necessities: three shirts, five pairs of white socks, aspirin, tequila, scissors, a safety razor, and a fingernail file. Their other possessions have been pawned, left with a Mexican bartender, or shipped to Las Vegas.

The pair are not seeking an ordinary lift. They want a solitary traveler in a decent car who appears to have money, so they can rob him, strangle him, and leave him in the desert. A truck driver bound for Needles offers them a ride, but Dick declines: the driver is not the kind of target they are waiting for. The road’s sparse traffic prolongs their search; few motorists pass, and none stop for them.

The Failed Attempt to Hitch a Ride

When Dick hears an approaching car before it comes into view, Perry pockets the harmonica, lifts the suitcase, and joins him at the roadside. The car becomes a blue Dodge sedan carrying one passenger, a bald, thin man. Dick waves and smiles as the Dodge slows. The driver looks the two men up and down, evidently alarmed by their bearded, dusty appearance, then drives away without stopping.

The moment reverses the pair’s plan: they have selected the driver as a potential victim, but he judges them and escapes. Dick calls after the car, laughs, and shoulders the suitcase. The rejection does not end their search. He is, as he later recalled, too glad to be back in the United States to become truly angry, and assumes another car will come along.

Walking and the Road’s Narrative Role

Perry resumes playing the harmonica, which he stole the previous day from a variety store in Barstow. He plays the opening of a favorite song that has become their “marching music”; he has taught Dick all five stanzas. Side by side, they walk along Route 66 and sing the hymn’s lines about the coming of the Lord and the grapes of wrath. Their young voices carry through the desert’s silence.

The contrast gives the highway scene its force. The song’s religious language accompanies two men looking for someone to rob and kill, while the road keeps offering movement without delivering the ride they want. Route 66 is therefore more than a backdrop: it concentrates their flight, their search for a victim, and the uneasy dissonance between their marching song and their intended violence in one stark desert passage.