Beginning with the first of the coming month, and until further
orders, the Chief Clerk will administer the affairs of the Mess.
It was received in a grim, not to say stony, silence. Like a
tenderfoot, I rushed in where an angel would have sought the cyclone
cellar. Cooks were employed monthly, and it was midway in the month.
That night I gave the cook her time.
Now, having ended one dynasty, it behooved me to create another. I went
to the Chief.
“When can I have the transportation necessary to my duties as maître
d’hôtel hereabouts? I’ll drive in to the railroad town.”
“Do you know the road?” the Boss asked, doubtfully.
“That doesn’t bother me. When do I get a team?”
“To-morrow,” he replied, and left me to my fate.
Now I had traversed the road but once, when coming in a month before.
The doubtful tone in his voice disturbed me. Perhaps the route-finding
would not be so easy as a trick with cards. I sought out the
pleasantest of the range men, and asked his advice concerning the
matter.
“It’s as plain as the nose on your face,” he assured, and as this would
have been very plain indeed, it heartened me. “Keep to the
main-traveled road, and take all the turns to the right—going in.”
This seemed a very simple matter, and I gave no thought to the turns I
might encounter coming out. I was then, of course,—and because of some
mental defect am yet,—notoriously the worst road-finder in all the
Southwest. And when I departed next day, with “the old woman’s team,”
there was no one to crowd additional information on me.
In the city, to lose one’s way may be foolish without being
unfortunate; but in the Desert one must arrive at his destination, or
the results may be serious. And all the road directions from old-timers
are similar. The Plains Indian can be more definite. He may say, “Three
hills and a look.” The Arizona guide is a despair.
“You can’t miss it,” they invariably prelude. “Take the main road until
you reach that little cornfield just beyond the hogan of Benally
Bega’s—remember that draw before you come to Black Mesa? That’s it.
Then the left trail until you reach that scraggy cedar; then head down
across for that old corral, where the sheriff caught Bob Peterson;
then—you know where we nooned in 1913? It’s right east of that; and
then, you can’t miss it—it’s right over from there—” the whole distance
being sixty miles, and no water in the first five townships.
One plunges deeply on the optimism indicated by “you can’t miss it,”
and starts. At midnight, with a tired team and no blankets, one
suddenly realizes that he has missed it, and missed it bad. The sun
sinks to rest, the desert grows black and threatening, he is off the
main-traveled road, and no candle-lights are gleaming through the dark.
There he remains until morning, when, cold and cramped, having kindled
a fire to warm a can of beans that a more sensible man had slung under
the seat, he finds that he has invited in the whole Navajo tribe. Five
minutes after the wisp of smoke and the aroma of the burnt beans, comes
an Indian, and another, and another, each looking earnestly for
breakfast. It never fails. Between many signs and all the beans, not
forgetting the passing of “thathli ibeso,” which is one dollar in hard,
bitable silver, he finds that he is only five miles off the road, and
that his original destination is “right over from there.”
On the cook-side of the board I played in luck. A row occurred in the
short-order section of a Harvey House, and one first-class itinerant
cook was flung headlong out of a job on the morning I reached town. It
might never happen again. And knowing nothing of the back-country, and
especially being ignorant of an Indian Service mess, he embraced the
opportunity to sign up for a desert cruise. It was necessary for him to
pack his belongings, the most precious of which were a trick dog and a
phonograph, together with one record entitled: “She Is the Ideal of My
Dreams”; and this he insisted would occupy him several days. I arranged
for him to meet a team at the Agency freight-station, and next day he
assisted me in the purchase of supplies for the coming month. We bought
nearly a ton of foodstuffs. My vehicle was one of those light spring
wagons, a “desert hack,” rated to carry about one thousand pounds. Like
an Indian freighter who loads pig lead, we never tallied the dead
weight, but piled it in. The wagon groaned in its every joint under the
load; and so I began the return trip.
One could not miss the right direction, for there were the distant
mountains to point it, with the river as an eastern boundary. So long
as one remained west of the river he must arrive somewhere. True. But
for that river, and my sensible determination not to cross its half-dry
bed, I might still be en route.
The roads of the desert are many, and all converge toward a settlement.
Proceeding to town is very simple. But on leaving it the roads begin
diverging in a most puzzling fashion, and there is a decision to be
made at each departure. Of course the main-traveled road is usually
plain and definite—usually. About half way to the Agency I was deceived
by ten yards of bunch grass at a road juncture, and blithely accepted
the branch leading to a river-ford. Nearing sunset, I had reached the
river,—which was no place to be at that time.
“If alone, always tie the horses to the wheel.”
There isn’t anything else in the Desert to tie them to. So I did it,
and started on foot for the nearest rise to make a reconnaissance. The
scene of empty desolation, blurring in the first grays of twilight, was
not inspiring. The scarlet and gold of the sunset behind the ’Frisco
Range did not awaken poetry within me. I was thinking about something
else, and joyfully I hailed a faint gleam on the far middle-distance,
the last rays gilding the Agency tank-roof.
Between my position on the river, and that haven of rest, as the crow
would negotiate it, stretched at least five miles of the Desert. So
short a distance caused me to snort at my former fears. I went back to
the wagon and found that the impatient horses had wound the lines
around that wheel until they resembled a chariot pair reined in at the
finish of an exciting race. With some difficulty I managed to release
them, and climbed in as they plunged off seeking their feed.
The shortest distance between two given points is a straight line, or
so the books have it. I followed my early schooling, and headed
straight for the tank.
The shortest distance between two points in the Desert is not a
straight line. I there and then learned this lesson. Between that
river-ford and the main road, meandering somewhere to the left, were at
least a thousand different obstructions, skillfully concealed by
Nature, deceptive in the half dark, and treacherous traps when night
came on: sand dunes that were as bogs; wide, shallow arroyos; scrubby
slopes cut by wicked little gullies, all flanked and faced by other
sand-meshes. In and through all this the team tugged wearily, at times
stopping of themselves for breath, at times plunging desperately. A
dozen times I lashed the horses to the wheel and went ahead to plot the
way; a dozen times I returned to find them wound back on their
haunches, in their efforts to free themselves from the overloaded wagon
and the fool that had come out of the East. About midnight, after
traveling to every point of the modern compass, I tried a last rise,
determined, if this failed, to unharness and ride in, trusting to the
horses to find their oats. And topping this little ridge was an old,
half-hidden road. It angled away from the river toward the place where
a real road ought to be. We swung down it, and an hour later, at an
easy jog, the axles holding- and groaning-out to the last, we reached
the Agency gate. The sleepy barn-man, an Indian, came out to meet me.
“Where you been?” he asked, with that innocent curiosity his tribe is
noted for. “Have trouble findin’ the road?”
“No,” I told him, feeling a confidence born of relieved anxiety. “Nope!
just started from town late.”
There is nothing like assurance after a distressing evening. And too,
had I not landed a cook? I could not spoil such a triumph by admitting
that I had been lost.
V