Off Again
We leave town early with a new arrangement of horses--Dixie beside
Bess, and Kate walking behind. Doctor questions how long Dixie, who is
so much smaller than Bess and not of the work-horse type, will be able
to pull her end, but we leave that question; in fact, we haven’t
decided it yet. We are off for Las Vegas, Nevada. We have a road to
follow among desert hills and valleys, up and down hill, but find no
water except at a railroad water car or cistern. The first day we pass
Cima, where we got a bale of wheat hay and water. We make about
twenty-two miles, which seems more like progress, especially after
using up six days to come eighty miles. Here there are more rocks in
the hills and more vegetation. Forests of Joshua Palms (giant cacti)
grow on the higher slopes on the north side. We never saw them growing
on land sloping to the south or at low altitude.
Our first camp was among the giant cacti, which we used as hitching
posts for the horses while feeding. That night we heard a mountain
lion squall, but Tuck evidently did not think he was near enough to
worry about. Tuck is getting to be an ideal camp dog. He can be
trusted to stay around camp and will not leave the wagon on any excuse
if we are not about, so we feel perfectly safe, no matter where we
are, in the belief that our tools, harness, and odds and ends (so
essential to us on this sort of a trip) will not be mislaid by
visitors or stolen.
The next morning we were at Leastalk, thirteen miles, by 9 A. M., and
Kate was feeling so good we let her pack the saddle and Bob rode her.
Here at Leastalk we got half a sack of grain (all they had) and
started up the Ivanpah Valley to Ivanpah, seven miles. We reached
there at noon. How any one can reach a place that isn’t, I can’t say,
but as I said before, we got to the place which, on the map, said
“Ivanpah,” but which there, said nothing.
On looking at the map I saw that a railroad track ran from here by
various crooks and turns to Bengal on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa
Fe Railroad. We finally discovered the track, and also a few work
cars, and met the foreman and his crew of Mexicans working on the
right-of-way.
[Illustration: JOSHUA PALM OR GIANT CACTUS]
“What are you going to do?” said I to the foreman, thinking he might
be the forerunner of a building gang who were to build a town here or
extend the railroad.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Don’t know? Haven’t you any orders?” I asked, surprised.
“Won’t get any until they pull me back to-morrow. This is the end of
the road, isn’t it?” he asked.
I was about to remark, “It certainly is,” when it occurred to me that
I wasn’t supposed to know as much about a railroad as a real railroad
man like the foreman of a gang of Mexicans, so I replied cautiously,
“Well, I don’t know. I thought this might be the beginning of a
railroad; if this is the end of one, what was the use of building it?”
He looked at me curiously for a minute. It certainly was hot there in
the sun and he had no way of knowing we had just been to water, so he
said, “You had better take a drink. You can have what you want from my
tank car; and you had better fill your barrels too; no knowing when
you will get any more.”
After filling our barrels we ate lunch and tried to get a shot at a
coyote that had crossed the trail just below us, but we would have
been cooler if we had let him go without trying. From about noon to
four o’clock it is pretty hot in the sun, but we were now where we
could ride,--Doc and I and Tuck in the wagon under the canvas top, and
Bob on Kate. Sometimes during the middle of the day we would all ride
in the wagon, and at other times would take turns riding the saddle,
so as to make it easier on the team horses.
We had come twenty miles before lunch so did not start very early.
When we did, however, we headed right northeast for Dry Lake and got
nearly across before we decided to camp, Kate having lost a shoe. We
saw another coyote just before reaching the lake, but as usual our
30-30 wasn’t handy to the fellow who saw him first, and that is
sufficient explanation in that country where everything is the same
color as the coyote and little draws and gulches are handy.
This Dry Lake was just that and nothing more. At times during the
year, or some years, there must be water here, but I guess it is not
often. It was really a wonderful place to look at, flat as a floor,
almost as smooth as a tennis court, hard as a board, creamy white in
color, and I should say seven miles long and about two and a half
miles across at the widest part, surrounded by sage brush and
grease-wood. I should hate to cross it in the middle of the day--it
must be awfully hot; but at night it would make a racecourse for
horses or automobiles, if one could only scrape up an audience.
We camped at 6:30 P. M. that evening on the lake bed, where it was
smooth and cool. Our coal oil stove was proving a great success in a
land without wood, and even where there was any, it saved time, as did
our water barrels, and our fireless cooker saved coal oil, and gave us
better oatmeal, prunes, and rice than we could have had at home.
The next morning before starting we put a new shoe on Kate; that is,
Doc blacksmithed an old one we had on hand and I nailed it on, and the
surprising thing about it was that it stayed on.
We got off the lake bottom and on towards Jean, Sunday morning, May
twenty-ninth. We had made thirty miles Saturday, but that was an easy
day, which, with the level lake bed to walk over in the evening, was
like driving on Michigan Avenue. No such good fortune awaited us from
now on. It was up grade and hard pulling all the way to Jean, but here
we got grain and wheat hay, so, pulling out from the store about a
mile, we fed grain and hay, and then turned the horses loose to graze
until they were completely filled up before we started on.
Kate’s shoulder is better and her cracked heel is about well. The film
is going off her eye and I think very soon she will be able to take
her place with Bess again and let Dixie pack the saddle. Dixie has
pulled her end so far very well, although not being used to a collar
her neck is getting sore, and I can see Kate will not be well enough
to wear a collar any too soon.
At night we conclude we have made about twenty-two miles up grade, and
at a guess figure we are twenty-three miles from Las Vegas, mostly a
downhill pull, so we think it will be an easy trip for the morrow.
It had not been unbearably hot up to this time and the nights were
simply glorious--clear and cool--and we were congratulating ourselves
on having such fine traveling weather. My memorandum book notes a
change in the weather the next day, May 30, Decoration Day, and I give
my memorandum here _verbatim_:
“Started from camp at 5:45 A. M. for Las Vegas, the last lap of our
first real desert experience. We have been ten days in crossing from
Daggett, California, to Las Vegas, Nevada, probably one hundred and
fifty miles, so we have averaged fifteen miles, including stop of a
day at Kelso and going up to Lake Crucero by mistake, which put us
back two days, so we could have made it in seven days if we had not
got lost and pulled down the team in getting out. We drive up dry
rivers and down dry rivers, over sand and rocks, _mostly up hill_,
because the sand is usually so deep the wagon pulls on the team going
down grade. We have found no cows and believe, with the old pioneer,
that this country contains more rivers and less water, and you can see
farther and see less, than any other part of the United States.
“Coming into Las Vegas this morning we saw our first artesian well,
forty inches, and learned they were now going to have one on each
section of this desert slope. Some time we are going back to see if
they do and how much good it does them. The soil looked too full of
alkali to suit me. However, while this well made quite a stream, it
mostly evaporated or sunk into the ground, as it seemed to do very
little good.
“We reached the end of the down grade part of the trip at 11 A. M.,
stayed near this well for lunch, and then at 1:30 made a start on
the eight-mile pull up through the sand, arriving at Las Vegas at
4:45 P. M., after the hardest eight miles we ever made, on account
of heat. The wind was in our faces, but how hot it was we did not
know. It most blistered us--probably about 115 to 120 degrees, as we
found it 107 in the hotel after we arrived.
“It certainly was hot. We took a drink every fifteen minutes and
watered the horses every hour, besides putting water on Tuck’s head
and back to keep him from being overcome. We put team in shed of
livery, the only one in town, and went to a hotel.
“No mail, as Decoration Day was a holiday and postoffice closed.”
The above memorandum says nothing about scenery, nothing about Las
Vegas itself, and nothing even about the road, so I guess we were not
long on enthusiasm about that time. We slept in beds that night, but
hot ones, and we laid the heat to the town and the hotel. The next day
we got our mail, wrote home, and after getting off all the letters we
went over and, as Doc said, “patched up the horses.” We got a hose and
soaked their feet, and after a general clean-up I think they felt
better. It was no cooler, however.
In the afternoon I took all the horses around to be shod. The
blacksmith said if I would help him, he would shoe them, but not
otherwise, as it was too hot. I told him it was not very hot, but I
would help him just the same, so we went at it. Before long the
canteen ran dry, so I went and filled it and hung it in the shade in a
handy place. The blacksmith kept complaining about the heat. He said
it was just as hot every year there, but hotter when you had to work.
He wanted me to go into the next building and look at a _spirit_
thermometer and let him know how hot it really was. I did go, and
looked at the thermometer, but when I found it registered 126° over
there in the shade I concluded I best keep it to myself or the
blacksmith would quit work, so when I got back I said, “Well, it is
pretty hot; it is 120.”
He didn’t say anything for a few minutes, but finally as he held a
shoe in a tub of water to cool he looked over at me and said, “Guess
this country is getting me down. I didn’t use to mind 120 before. When
it gets up to 130 and 135 I just lay off. About 120,--well, I guess I
will take a drink and go look at that thermometer.”
I could see myself finishing that job alone and watched him narrowly
as he went over to take a look at the thermometer. On his way back I
could see he was not feeling as bad as I had expected he would, and
was surprised to hear him say, in a more cheerful tone than I had been
able to get out of him before, “Well, I thought it must be over 120;
why, it is 126--no wonder I was hot. Guess you can’t fool me on
weather in this country. Now let’s finish this job before it gets any
hotter. I bet I don’t work to-morrow.” And we kept at it until all the
horses were shod.
Doc came over for a few minutes to see how we were getting on. He
picked up a horseshoe from the floor with his bare hand, and dropped
it as if it were red hot. He seemed to think we were putting up a job
on him, and when I said it was a cold one he said I was joking, but
after testing a few more he said that a blacksmith shop was no place
to loaf in, and started back to the hotel. We finished the shoeing and
returning to the hotel talked over things, especially the heat, and
decided we had rather be out on the desert than in town. We concluded
it must be cooler at night out there and not so dusty during the day.
Las Vegas ordinarily would have about fifteen hundred people when the
railroad is running, but now, I should say, had only about eight
hundred. They have a nice railroad station, but that is about all. The
stores are not especially interesting and the whole town is on the
main street, facing the railroad station, and one other street running
at right angles to it.
Through the ownership of the old Stewart Ranch the railroad company
owns the water and all the irrigatable land about Las Vegas, except
what may be developed from a recent discovery of water, eight miles
below town, by sinking of wells. This, however, I don’t have much
faith in as being of sufficient flow to any more than raise garden
truck, but why anybody should want to live in a place that on
provocation can get as hot as 135 degrees in the shade (and no shade),
simply because they could possibly raise garden truck, I am unable to
see.
We have decided to start out again. We have our grub box filled, and
our oil can; also grain for the horses and some alfalfa hay. It did
not cool off much last night and is still hot to-day, a good stiff
breeze blowing, but in spite of the breeze, it is 105 in the shade
and, if you open your mouth, it dries out before you get a chance to
close it. We have faith that the desert is better than the town, and
not knowing the character of the country ahead (no one being able to
enlighten us), we take a chance and start, leaving town at 3 P. M.,
June 1, having spent practically two days here. We are bound for
Bunkerville by way of Moapa.
[Illustration: WE STOP FOR WATER]