Читать книгу The Cruise of a Schooner - Albert W. Harris - Страница 6

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Tuesday, May seventeenth, our first morning in a real camp “away from anywhere,” as the Doctor said, was started in true camping style. We were up at four-thirty, each busy at his particular work, Bob getting breakfast, the Doctor packing the wagon, preparatory to starting, and greasing the axles (this was done regularly every other day), and I had the horses to look after. Then came breakfast, and after that, while the dishes were being washed and odds and ends put into the wagon, I harnessed the horses, hitched them to the wagon, put the lead harness on Dixie, and we were ready to start.

We had been traveling east, but here we were to turn north across the mountains, through Hesperia and Victor to Daggett. As yet we had not had the harness on Dixie, although we had been assured that she was broken to drive, but whether she would work in the lead and pull was a question which was soon to be answered. Climbing into my seat and picking up the lines, I let off a whoop and the brake at the same time, while the Doctor let fly a handful of pebbles, and we were off. We got into the road safely and by the time we had made a few miles up the mountain trail we concluded our lead horse would do.

The road followed a mountain stream, winding ever upward, sometimes on a level with the stream, but usually cut out of the side of the mountain. Behind us we caught glimpses of mountains and valleys, and realized we were climbing up rapidly, but finally we got so far into the mountains that we could see very little, and our attention was given up entirely to the road and the horses. Bob and the Doctor walked ahead to lighten the load and signal back if any teams were coming down, so that we could pick out a safe place to pass. Noon brought us to a sandy place beside the stream, here only a rivulet, where we stopped for lunch.

While smoking our pipes in the shade, an automobile went by, going up. The ladies waved their handkerchiefs at us and, as they disappeared around a bend in the road, some one remarked, “That looks easy; I guess the road ahead must be good.” We promptly forgot the incident until the Doctor said, “I can still hear that machine. I wonder why they are not farther away by this time.” After listening a few minutes we decided something was wrong with the machine, so we all went up the road and soon found the party in the sand, where the auto had stuck in crossing the stream, and they were unable to get it up the bank. As we came up we found all four of the ladies pushing and the man working with the engine, while a baby was peacefully asleep in the tonneau. We went promptly to the rescue and after a few minutes had them out on solid ground again. The man then asked us how much he owed us. The Doctor told him in his dry way, “About a thousand dollars, but if you do not happen to have anything as small as that about you, you can settle the next time you see us.” The expression on the young man’s face for a minute was quite laughable, but he seemed to sense the situation finally, for a smile broke over his face, and with many thanks and “Good luck!” from everybody they were off.

We went back to the wagon, and, the horses having had sufficient rest, started on with all three of them in harness, and reached the summit at 3:30 P. M. Here we had a magnificent view of the mountains, some of which were snow-capped, and after a few minutes we started on again, driving down to Hesperia, through a miniature forest composed of giant cacti and juniper. On the way down we saw several pair of valley quail, some doves, and a few rabbits, which was all the game we had seen.

At Hesperia, which is on the railroad, we filled our water barrels and camped alongside of the trail, about a mile from the station and eight miles from Victor. As near as we could figure we had driven twenty-five miles, which we considered a very good day’s work in view of the long climb we had made.

CACTI FOREST

The next morning we were up at four-thirty and off at six-forty-five, arriving at Victorville at eight-thirty. The first person I saw as we drove into the little railroad town was the young man who had driven the auto we had helped out of the sand the day before. He hailed us gayly and insisted on our climbing down and “going inside,” which we promptly did. Later we repaired to the general store, where we purchased a canteen, having accidentally run the wagon over ours the evening before, and also some baled hay and grain. Then we mailed our letters and half filled our water barrels before starting on to Daggett, forty miles away over the desert.

As we understood there was a good water hole and camp site about half way, we thought it unnecessary to take any more water. We reached the water without difficulty by 6 P. M., although we met no one on the trail and were in doubt once or twice as to which fork to take. We found it a good place to camp on account of the water, but that was all. There was just a small covered tank over a spring in a bare little desert valley, without even a tree or a bush in sight. It had one advantage over previous camps, however. Doves by the hundred came here to drink and in a short time we shot all we wanted for breakfast.

The next morning we had a comparatively easy road down grade into Daggett, twenty-two miles, where we arrived at 11:30 A. M.

There was nothing especially interesting about these towns through which we had passed; Hesperia was merely a handful of people; Victorville had a few more and seemed quite prosperous. It is on the banks of the Mojave River, which at this point is fully a hundred yards wide, but shallow and muddy, with a considerable fringe of trees in places along the banks. At Daggett, however, the river had about disappeared, and a few miles farther east was entirely lost in the sand.

Here at Daggett we decided to rest our horses and take stock, so to speak. We found among our luggage a tent and two cots which we apparently would have no need of until we reached Grand Junction, Colorado, where we expected to have an addition of four to our party, so we decided to send them on to this point by freight and thus lighten our load by seventy-five pounds.

Having put our horses and wagon in a corral, we began to make inquiries regarding the road to Las Vegas, Nevada, but could get no definite information. We were told we could not cross the desert directly, but would have to go around the south end. This meant going in a circle and, as the line we had drawn on the map went straight, we declined to go around, and were conferring with some old prospectors on the feasibility of crossing the desert when we heard of a man who had just come in from Las Vegas. We did not bother to make any more inquiries then and decided to interview the man from Las Vegas the first thing in the morning. I slept in the wagon at night, but being in town the Doctor and Bob thought it would be a good idea to try beds, to see if they were softer than the sand, but the next morning they pronounced them not much of an improvement.

We found the man we were looking for shortly after breakfast at the corral, where we had left our horses. He told us his name was Knowles. He certainly looked as if he had been through something strenuous. His eyes were bloodshot and he was a nervous wreck. He said he had come from Las Vegas and had driven across en route to Los Angeles. He had a good team, a light farm wagon, but nothing in it save a water barrel, some bedding, and a dog. He seemed so mixed in his dates that it was hard to get any reliable information from him. He said it was just an accident he had got through. He had been lost and stuck in the sand and forced to abandon his load, when by good luck he came to the Salt Lake Railroad. Here the sand was so deep that his horses could not pull the empty wagon, so he drove up to the railroad track, and, as there were no trains running (the road having been washed out for eighty miles above Las Vegas early in the Spring), he drove on the track until he reached Daggett, a distance of about sixty miles. He did not dare to leave the railroad for fear that he would get lost, and he found water at the little deserted section houses he passed every twenty or thirty miles. He said that with a big wagon and load we could not get through, and advised us not to try.

We concluded that if he had got through alone we could go through, even with a heavier load, and in return for the questionable information he had given us we told him how to get to Los Angeles, and assured him that his troubles were over. He gave as much heed to our directions as we gave to his, as we afterwards found out, but we parted without disclosing our incredulity to each other.

The Doctor and I rode a freight train down to Barstow to get our mail and a few provisions that we could not get at Daggett, and while there who should we see driving up the main street but Knowles, our desert traveller! We hailed him and asked him why he had come to Barstow. He seemed quite ashamed at being discovered, but reluctantly admitted that he had intended heeding our instructions and had followed the road along the railroad track as directed, until he came to the left-hand fork which went south over the desert hills to Victor. He could not, however, trust himself to leave the railroad track for fear of getting lost again and perhaps running out of water. He said that he knew the railroad went to Victor and he had decided finally to follow it even if it was a longer route. We saw our word wouldn’t go so we called some natives into the conference, and they assured him we were right. They told him he could not follow the railroad as there was no wagon bridge across the river except at Victor, and that even if he could get across here at Barstow he would have a long weary route ahead of him, and would not reach Victor for at least two days. So he reluctantly turned about and went back to the south fork in the road, and we presume he went that way as we never saw him again, but it must have taken a great deal of fortitude on his part. Lose a man in the desert and, I imagine, he won’t want to try another stretch of desert in the same week, especially alone; so we did not blame him very much for insisting on following the railroad track.

We got back to Daggett shortly after noon on a passenger train and hunted up the old prospectors again. They were the sort who had always been in the desert and knew all about it, to hear them tell it, but for the past twenty years had probably sat around the corner store and saloon and told stories to tenderfeet about its mysteries. When we told them of Knowles’ experience and asked their advice they looked very solemn, and each in turn took refuge behind the other by asking him which of the many routes we ought to take, until they had gone the rounds and got back to the first old party again, who in desperation referred us to some one else who wasn’t there.

This was so amusing that we forgot we were wasting time and went prospecting around town for the man who knew, and finally located him and told our story. He assured us Knowles had taken the wrong road; he should have stayed away from the railroad because it went through the worst sand and had no feed anywhere along the line. He then drew a diagram showing how we should go east through the Mojave Canyon, then northeast and skirt the foot of the Soda Mountains to a spring on Soda Lake, and then follow the old prospectors’ trail east to Good Springs, from where we could follow the railroad to Las Vegas, Nevada. He said we could not lose the trail and that it had several springs and water holes, so that we could get through safely. He wound up, however, by saying that he had not been over this trail for ten or fifteen years, but that it was a good trail the last time he went over it.

This information, while not especially reassuring, we thought sufficient to at least make a start, as we would no doubt find some one on the trail who could put us right if we went wrong, so at 3:30 P. M. we hitched up and started on a leg of our journey that came near being our Waterloo.