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Show 79 The power of water was again demonstrated, because he relented- not enough to go with her, but to let her go without him. A team of sorts was raked together: Old Dan, too old to work, and Prince, who was afraid of his own shadow, having been ruined when Papa was breaking him by Jeff Carter sneaking up behind him on a motorcycle, letting it out into a roar which catapulted the horses into a runaway and strung gear all the way to town. Prince bucked when Papa tried to ride him, snorted and sat down frequently in harness. Eldon was let off from tromping and we fixed the wagon up with bows and a cover, filled the back end with hay, loaded our grub box and bedding in, our changes of clothes and took off on the three-day journey one hundred miles northwest through the Pahvant hills. We nooned at Richfield on a sheltered side-road, but a car came by and Prince nearly choked himself to death backing away from it. Eldon had to have help from a farmer nearby. We climbed back into the wagon, our lives thus far spared by no less than a kind providence. Grant developed a sore throat and fever next day, but never got sick enough to relinquish the lines to Mama or Eldon. We stopped the first night at "Wilier Bend" (Grandma always said Willow Bend) at the home of one of Mama's friends and she took us upstairs into an awesomely clean bedroom, showing us the way by candle light, but picking bedbugs off daintily when she turned the bed down. Mama reacted to bedbugs like a cow to loco weed, and spent the night striking matches and swiping bedbugs bloodily across both sheets and whitewashed walls. |
