A GLIMPSE OF THE WEST THAT WAS
We might have been taking an unconscious part in some vast moving picture
production, or, more easily still, if we overlooked the fact of our own
motor car, we could have supposed ourselves crossing the plains in the
days of the caravans and stage coaches, when roads were trails, and
bridges were not!
To Pueblo by way of Canyon City and over the Royal Gorge loop, you go
through great defiles between gigantic mountains, then out on a shelf
road overlooking now vistas of mountains, now endless plains, now hanging
over chasms two or three thousand feet deep, now dipping down, down to
the brink of the river tearing along the base of the canyon walls. All
of the mountain roads of Colorado are splendidly built—even though some
of their railless edges are terrifying to anyone light of head, and by
no means to be recommended to an inexpert driver. One famously beautiful
drive has a turntable built at an otherwise impossibly sharp bend.
After Pueblo—which by the way is not in the least quaint or Indian
as its name promised, but a smoky and smeltering industrious little
Pittsburgh—you come out upon the plains, plains that look as you
imagined them, on which cattle and cowboys ranged and prairie schooners
came slowly over the horizon. A few miles beyond Pueblo, exactly like a
scene in the moving pictures, we passed three of the white-topped wagons,
their hoods rocking and gleaming in the sun and little burros with
saddles on them trotting on either side. A man walked at the head of the
caravan and two others walked behind. One wagon was driven by a woman,
while a man slept, and two children peered out at us from within. A young
man drove the second wagon; by his side was a young woman holding a baby.
All that was needed to make a frontier drama was a band of befeathered
Indians on the warpath.
A little way farther we saw a cowboy galloping over the plains swinging a
lariat. He laughed when we came up to him, as though he had been caught
doing something foolish. In the next few miles we passed another caravan
and through a herd of cattle driven by three cowboys, but not a sign of
our friend, the Englishman, with whom we had planned to lunch. He, having
taken the direct road, which was about sixty miles or so shorter than
ours, had agreed to select an attractive spot and wait for us. We had
about decided that he had either been lost or overlooked, when we saw a
team coming toward us and behind it, being towed, his nice, new, little
car. He had come to a ford through a wide, swift river which he so
mistrusted from the start that he made his valet wade across it first.
But as the water came up only to the man’s knees, and the bottom was
reported to be firm and pebbly, the Honorable Geoffrey plunged in—and,
bang! she blew up! The water flooding his carburetor sucked into the hot
cylinders and was changed so violently into steam that it blew off the
cylinder heads!
[Illustration: HALFWAY ACROSS A THRILLING FORD, WIDE AND DEEP, ON THE
HUERFANO RIVER]
Mixed with our very real sympathy with the Englishman was not a little
doubt as to whether we had better risk a like fate. The driver of the
team, seeing our doubt, explained: “The river’s a mite high just now, but
when you come to the bank, just go in slow and steady, and if the water
comes up too high, stop your engine quick, and fire a revolver! See! I’ll
hear you and send someone to pull you through!”
The thought of luncheon had vanished. We parted with our unfortunate
friend and approached with not a little trepidation the rushing waters
that had wrecked him. The river looked formidable enough; wide, swift,
bubbling, and opaque—like coffee with cream, exactly. We remembered that
it had a gravel bottom and that its greatest depth was very little over
the drenched valet’s knees.
We went in very cautiously, very slowly, the water came up and up, almost
to the floor boards. The rest of the story is perfectly tame and flat;
our car went through it like a duck!
Further on, we came to several fords, all small and shallow, and we
splashed through them gleefully. We passed great herds of cattle and any
number of cowboys. We saw hundreds of gophers, ran our wheels over two
rattlesnakes, and escaped—one skunk.
In Trinidad we ran across our first companion motor tourists. “Kansas
City to Los Angeles” was written in letters six inches high with an
American pennant on one side, and the name of a popular machine on the
other. Another car, a Ford, announcing that it was bound from Lincoln,
Nebraska, to San Francisco, had enough banners to decorate the room of a
schoolboy. The owners of these two talked volubly on touring in general
and the roads ahead in particular. The owner of the Ford, adjusting the
vizor of his yachting cap and pulling on his gauntlets, looked at us
doubtfully.
“Well,” said he, “everyone to his own liking! I myself prefer a shorter,
lighter car!”
“Are you going to try to take that machine down the Bajada?” asked the
other. “I’m glad I haven’t the job of driving her even over the Raton!”
“My, but she’s a peach!” exclaimed an enthusiastic mechanic. “Don’t you
have no fear, mister!” he whispered to E. M. “The stage coaches they used
to go over this road to Santa Fé; if they could get over, I guess _you_
can!”
It had never occurred to us that we couldn’t, but the reminder of the
lumbering caravans was comforting, and we started tranquilly to climb
the Colorado side of the Raton divide. We passed first one, and then
the other of the two cars, whose owners had little opinion of ours. Did
they believe their ugly snub-nosed tin kettles, panting and puffing and
chug-chugging up the grade, like asthmatic King Charles spaniels, better
hill-climbers than our beautiful, big, long engine, that took the ascent
without the slightest loss of breath even in the almost nine thousand
feet of altitude? We had looked at the two machines in much the same way
that passengers in the cab of a locomotive might look at a country cart
trundling along the road, for we had pulled smoothly by them in much the
same way that the locomotive passes the cart.
We have all heard the story of the hare and the tortoise, and the old
adage, “He who laughs last——” It was all very well as long as we remained
in the state of Colorado! But the instant we crossed the Divide, our
beautiful great, long, powerful machine lay down perfectly flat on its
stomach and could not budge until one of these despised snub-nosed
spaniels heaped coals of fire on our heads by kindly pulling us out.
Because of their highness—one of the chief attributes of their
ugliness—the other two cars could under the present conditions travel
along without hindrance, whereas we discovered to our chagrin that we had
far too little clearance, and the first venturing into New Mexico ruts
held us fast.
The road over the Raton Pass, by the way, was originally built by a
famous character known as “Uncle” Dick Wooten. Having defrayed all the
expenses out of his own pocket he established a tollgate so that he might
somewhat reimburse himself. The American traders paid the toll without a
murmur; the Mexicans paid only through the persuasion of a revolver, and
the Indians would not pay at all. After going over the road we agreed
with the Indians.
The rest of our story all the way to Santa Fé is one long wail. But in
justice to the roads of New Mexico, it is necessary to go into some
explanation of the wherefore of our particular difficulties. In the
first place we went out there in the very early spring after the worst
of the thaw, but before any repairs, which might have been made for the
summer season, had been begun. As for equipment, ours could not by any
possibility have been worse.
With a wheel base of one hundred and forty-four inches, our car has a
center clearance of only _eight_ inches! Furthermore, we have a big steel
exhaust pipe that slants from ten inches above the ground under the
engine to eight and one-half inches above the ground where it protrudes
behind the left rear wheel. Therefore, where shorter, higher cars can
go with perfect ease, it requires great skill and no little ingenuity
for a very low and long one to keep clear of trouble. For instance, over
deep-rutted roads we have to stay balanced on the ridges on either side,
like walking a sort of double tight rope; if we slide down into the rut,
we have to be jacked up and a bridge of stones put under to lift us out
again. On many of the sharp corners of the mountain passes we have to
back and fill two and often four times, but our real difficulties are all
because of that troublesome exhaust pipe.
[Illustration: A GLIMPSE OF THE WEST OF YESTERDAY]
Out on the cattle ranches they build a great many queer little ditch
crossings; two planks of wood with edges like troughs, and a wheel-width
apart. They are our particular horror. Again, right wheels went over
perfectly, but the only way we can get the left ones over is to build up
the hollows with pieces of wood—some barrel staves we found by luck and
that we now always carry with us.
Another particular joy to us is sliding down into and clambering out
of arroyos, on the edge of which the car loves to make believe it is a
seesaw. Our only good fortune seems to be in having plenty of power, and
the carburetor high enough not to be flooded—as yet—by any streams we
have gone through. Once, in order to find a bank that we could crawl up
on, we had to wade up the stream, with the possibility of quicksand, for
nearly half a mile.
After three days of this sort of experience, you can’t help wincing at
the very sight of ruts or rocks or river beds, in exactly the same way
that you wince at the close approach of dentist’s instruments.
Between Trinidad and Las Vegas we were overtaken by a blizzard. It
rained, hailed, and finally snowed; and it all passed by us in less
than an hour. But in the midst of it we lost our way and wandered for
miles across the prairie. Finally, at the end of about twenty miles we
saw an open wagon and two men resting under it, but they spoke only
Spanish and we understood their directions so vaguely that when our road
disappeared into hilly, roadless prairie, and we came to a new bridge
without any tracks leading to it, and apparently uncrossable between it
and us, it was snowing again, there were no shadows to tell the points
of the compass by. As E. M. drove on at a snail’s pace, wondering which
direction to turn, two Indians on ponies appeared over the edge of a
nearby hill.
Again we had no language in common. But we repeated, “Las Vegas,” and
they, gravely motioning us to follow, led us through a labyrinthian path
between the hillocks to the mesa from which the bridge started. Although
they helped us with greatest willingness, and accepted a coin with grave
courtesy, their faces were as expressionless as wood-carvings and neither
uttered a sound nor smiled.
Finally, because we were hungry and not by reason of any inviting charm
at that particular point of the earth’s most dreary surface, we stopped
for luncheon. We had just about spread out our food paraphernalia when,
turning at the sound of a galloping hoofed animal, we saw a horseman
tearing across the plains toward us. He rode as a brigand might, and as
only a Westerner can. Standing in his stirrups rather than sitting in his
saddle, and seemingly unaffected by the rocking motion of his mount, his
body was poised level with the horizon.
Was he a highwayman, one of those notorious bad men that the Southwest
is said to be infested with, or was he just a cowboy? His outline
fitted into any sort of a part your fear or delight might imagine. The
wide-brimmed hat, bandanna handkerchief around his neck, leather cuffs
on his shirt and murderous-looking cartridge belt and revolver, suited
equally a make-up for good or bad.
My heart thumped with the excitement of a possible hold up, and yet I was
far too fascinated to feel either fear or inclination to escape. As he
came nearer, he came slower, and when quite close he brought his horse
to a leisurely walk that had no longer any hold-up suggestion in it and
I took a bite out of my hitherto untouched sandwich. When almost beside
us, he leaned a little sideways in his saddle and glanced at our State
license number, and then at us, with a manner as casual and unconcerned
as though we might have been an inanimate hillock of the landscape.
Then, “Howdy, strangers!” he said. The tone of his voice was friendly
enough, in spite of his taciturn and utterly unsmiling expression. It
has struck us all through the West how seldom anyone has smiled.
“How are you!” echoed E. M., matching manner for manner. His tone, too,
had a friendly ring, but he went on opening a tin of potted meat as
though no one else were present.
“Come all the way from back East in that machine?” the Westerner asked,
with a little more interest. “How long you been comin’?”
E. M. glanced up from his tin-opening and the two exchanged a few remarks
on the subject of roads and horses and motors and then, as nearly as I
can remember, the Westerner said:
“It’d be a mighty long ride on a cayuse! Which them machines shorely
disregards distance a whole lot.”
E. M. asked the Westerner, “Won’t you have some lunch with us? Awfully
glad if you will!”
“Thank _you_,” but he moved a little away from us, as though for the
first time embarrassed. “Thank YOU!” he said again. “I et dinner ’bout an
hour ago!”
“We have only cold things,” I explained, not only thrilled at an
encounter with a real live cowboy but attracted by his distinctly
pleasing personality. He had no manner at all and yet in his absence of
self-consciousness there was very real dignity. And in contrast to the
copper-brown of his face his unsmiling eyes were so blue that their color
was startling. I had been wrapped in admiration of E. M.’s color, which
I thought as brown as sun could make a man, but beside this other of the
plains, E. M. looked almost pallid.
“I don’t aim to have you deny yourself nothin’ for me!” he hesitated.
“Oh, we have _lots_ of food!” said Celia. “Cold food, though, you know;
nothing hot.”
For the first time his eyes crinkled into a half smile:
“The grub we get is _hot_, which is most of the virchoos you can claim
for it.”
Meanwhile E. M. had proffered an open box of eggs and sandwiches. The
other dismounted, threw the reins forward over his horse’s neck, and
accepted our hospitality. He turned a paper plate and a thin tin spoon in
his hands as though dubious of such flimsy utility until he discovered it
was to be used for ice cream. Hard frozen ice cream under the midday sun
and fifty miles from where it could be bought, interested him.
“I’ve seen bottles for liquids, but I’ve never seen one like that for
solids. It sure is cold!” he said. And with its coldness, he quite
thawed. He did not look more than thirty, yet talked quite a while about
the old times that he himself remembered, generalities for the most part,
but with a lingering keenness in describing the qualifications that men
on the range used to have.
Also he told us a string of yarns—that may have been true—or they may
have been merely the type of divertissement whereby Westerners love to
entertain themselves at the expense of Eastern credulity. One amusing
story, at any rate, was of the hold-up of a passenger stage by a single
masked man. Afterwards when the sheriff and his men followed his horse’s
tracks, they suddenly disappeared as though the earth had swallowed them.
It had. They found the thief’s buried boots with horseshoes nailed on
them on a path that had too many footprints to single out one to follow.
He added quite regretfully that cow-punching was not what it used to be.
Cattle were getting tame and the ranches were enclosed in wire fences and
life was so soft and easy, that cattle raising was no more exciting than
raising sheep. Finally he volunteered:
“I’ve got folks in Massachusetts; my brother Sam’s in Boston.”
When E. M. told him that he had come from Boston, as he was still a
student at Harvard, the Westerner could neither understand how it was
that E. M. did not know his brother, nor that a man of such an age and
size could still be getting an education.
“Book learning” was a good thing, he thought, but twenty years of age
was too late in his opinion to be still acquiring it. He himself had run
away from home at the age of eleven. Not because of ill-treatment, but
merely that it seemed the manly thing to do. In his opinion a boy was a
no-account specimen who would stay past his twelfth year “hangin’ round
his womenfolks.”
To run away and never send a word home seems to be the commonplace
behavior of Western boys. “I don’t know how your mothers stand the
anxiety,” I said aloud, “not to know whether their sons are even alive.”
“I reckon that’s so. I never showed up nor wrote for six years. One
evening I walks in on the old folks, and they didn’t recognize me; the
old woman went plum’ over backwards when she saveys it was me. That was
some years ago and I haven’t been back since.”
Having finished luncheon E. M. cranked the car, and our guest gathered up
the trailing reins of his patiently standing horse. Once his rider was
in the saddle, however, the broncho, as though to show what he could do,
gave quite a gallery display of bucking, while his rider gave no less
an exhibition of Western horsemanship, rolling a cigarette in tranquil
disregard of his pony’s hump-backed leaps, which, however, soon settled
down into a steady gallop that carried our friend across the plains. On
the top of a nubble he waved to us and we waved back as we continued, on
our side regretfully, our separate ways.
We have passed any number of little Mexican, or Indian, adobe villages.
One house was surrounded by a picket fence painted bright laundry blue.
Several had blue door and window frames. The houses were all one-storied
and the people looked more Mexican than Indian.
When we finally arrived, without further difficulty, at Las Vegas, it
seemed rather questionable whether we would be able to go on next day
or not. The barometer was down, several other motorists doleful and the
outlook very glum.
“What did you start so early in the season for?” we heard one driver ask
another.
“Well,” said the second, “I don’t mind a little speculation as to what
you’re going to run into. If you know the road ahead of you is all fine
and dandy, what’s to keep your interest up?”
* * * * *
Leaving Las Vegas early the next morning, we encountered the same erratic
weather that we ran through the day before. When we happened to be
under an unclouded area, we could see that all about us were separate
storm clouds, black smudges against an otherwise clear sky. As we drove
beneath one of the black areas, we were deluged with rain, or hail, or
snow, and through it came into sunny weather again. It was the most
curious sensation to run into a blinding storm, and being able to gauge
beforehand how long it would take us to pass through it.
As we approached a ford some Mexicans standing beside it motioned us
to make a wide sweep; it landed us in deep soft sand up to our hubs.
Whereupon they attached their horses to us and pulled us through.
[Illustration: YOUR ROUTE LEADS THROUGH MANY MEXICAN AND INDIAN
VILLAGES]
“Do many motors have to be helped?” I asked.
“Every one, all same!” they replied.
We had passed two cars, so I held up my fingers. “Two more are coming!” I
said.
They immediately broke into a broad grin.
I rather wonder do they make all cars drive in that large circle to
_avoid_ the sand pile!
Between Las Vegas and Santa Fé, the going was the worst yet.
Washed-out roads, arroyos, rocky stretches, and nubbly hills. We just
about smashed everything, cracked and broke the exhaust, lost bolts and
screws, and scraped along on the pan all of the way.
And yet the dread Bajada Hill, in which we are to drop nine hundred feet
in one mile and long cars are warned in every guidebook of the sharp and
precipitous turns, is still ahead of us. One thing, if it is worse than
from the top of the Raton we might as well be prepared to leave all that
is left of us scattered in odd pieces along the road.
The next time we motor the trail to Santa Fé we are unanimously agreed
that it is going to be in a very different type of car—or best of all, on
the backs of little sure-footed burros!