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Show First we saw a red log cabin, red because rains had washed red soil off the pole-and-clay roof to paint the pine log walls. . .then a little field cleared of brush and junipers, the farmhouse and tumbledown barn. As we crossed the last freshet-eroded gulley misfortune hit us. The "radius rod" from the front axle to the mid-portion of the car jerked loose. I tried to conceal my alarm, to act like a brave frontiersman. But this might be disaster. We continued on foot and found another disappointment. The spring I had seen years before had vanished. There was, a little farther up the draw, a waterhole with numerous hoofprints around it but the water was foul and slimy. We could drink from our canteens and the can of water I'd brought. But that wouldn't last long. The car radiator leaked too. Then I made my bride feel proud of my ability to defeat misfortune. Down the wash I dug a foot-deep pit in the gravel and found good cold water. For I knew that springs in gravelly washes sometimes "hide under their beds" in dry weather. I walled our "well" with an old cylindrical stove that had lost top and bottom but still kept its sides. Between the junipers we stretched a piece of canvas for a shelter. I cut pine boughs for our mattress. Now the most critical problem^the car. I found that our trouble stemmed from the loss of a bolt from the socket that held the radius rods together. We searched back along the trail but failed to find it. But good'luck helped me again. In the old rusty farm machinery buried in weeds back of the barn I found a bolt that could be forced into the vacant hole, even though the threads didn't quite match. So Edna felt renewed faith in her new frontiersman husband. We could set up camp without gnawing doubts about being stranded. |
