CHAPTER VI
“DOWN BY THE RIO GRANDE”
EVERY thriving Western town, if its politics are right, looks down on its hotels and up to its post-office. Del Rio was no exception; her granite post-office, imposing enough for three towns of its size, suggested Congressional sensitiveness to fences, while down street a block or two, the weather-beaten boards of “Frank’s,” with its creaking verandahs and uncarpeted lobby, printed the earlier pages of the little settlement, which, straddling the river from Mexico, had become the nucleus for frontier trade eddying to its banks.
It is true that other hotels, of the spick and span brick ugliness the New West delights in, flanked the motion picture houses and drug-stores, but we chose Frank’s, the oldest inhabitant,—a type of hotel fast becoming extinct. Downstairs, plain sheathing; upstairs the same. Our bedroom opened on a veranda which we had to traverse to reach the bath. It was a novelty to us, but the traveling salesman next door took it casually enough,—or else he had forgotten to pack his bath-robe.
Our hostess was the first of a long list of ladies young and old we were to meet, who knew well the gentle art of twirling a toothpick while she talked. Perhaps it is the badge of a waitress in these parts, like a fresh bush over ancient wine-houses, a silent, but eloquent testimonial to the gustatory treats of the hotel. I think wenever met, from now on, a waitress in Texas, Arizona or New Mexico, who was not thus equipped. Ours did not flourish hers in vain. The flakiness of the biscuits, the fragrance of the wild honey, and the melting deliciousness of the river fish, caught fresh in the Rio Grande an hour before, caused us to see Del Rio with happy eyes. To this day, Toby speaks of it as if it were the third finest metropolis of the West, which must be attributed entirely to the seven biscuits which floated to her hungry mouth. I might as well admit at once our tendency, which I suspect other travelers share, to grade a town by the food it served.
I suspect that Del Rio, to one unfed, would seem a commonplace hamlet, save for its interest as a border settlement. Mexico, three miles away, held out the charm of a forbidden land. We circled next morning to its border, past thatched shanties of Mexicans and negroes, and took a glance at the desolate land beyond, barren, thorny, rolling away to faint blue hills. A camp of United States soldiers lay athwart our path, and two alert soldiers with a grin and a rifle apiece barred our progress.
Toby had been keen to cross the line, but when she saw them she said characteristically, “Mexico seems to me vastly overrated.” So ignoring the khaki, of our own free will and choice we turned back. I confess I was relieved. Toby has the post card habit to such an extent that I was prepared to have to fight our way across the border, dodging bullets and bandits, so that she might mail nonchalant cards to her friends, beginning, “We have just dropped into Mexico.”
Our curiosity as to Mexico gave us an early start.Soon we were on a high plateau, all the world rolling below us. Soft brown hills led out to faint blue mountains outlined on the horizon. With a thrill we realized we were viewing the beginnings of the Rockies. For the first time in my life, I felt I had all the room I wanted. We basked in the hot sun, expanding physically and spiritually in the immensity of the uncrowded landscape. The air in this high altitude was bracing, but not cold. From time to time we passed prosperous flocks of sheep, spotted with lively black goats. Occasionally a lonely group of steers held out against the encroaching mutton. We shared with them the state of Texas. At Comstock, a flat and uninteresting one-street town, we lunched, forgetting entirely to make a four-mile detour to view the highest bridge in the world. All day, we bent our energies to covering another half inch on the interminable map of Texas. We passed our last stopping place for the night. There was too much outdoors to waste; we decided to make our first camp in a live-oak grove somebody had described to us.
With a sense of adventure, we purchased supplies for our supper and breakfast at a little town we reached at glowing sundown. The grocery was closed, but the amiable proprietor left his house and opened his store for us. Rumors of deep sand ahead disturbed us, and against the emergency we purchased for “seven bits” a shovel which came jointed, so that it could be kept in the tool box under the seat. The fact that it was so short that it could easily repose there at full length did not mar our delight at this novel trick. It had the elemental charm for us of a toy which will do two things at once,—a charm which in other eras accounted for the vogue ofpoison rings, folding beds, celluloid collars and divided skirts. It was a perfectly useless little shovel, which made us happy whenever we looked at it, and swear whenever we used it.
Thus fortified we sped on, and it soon became pitch dark, and a windy night. The country suddenly stood on end, and we coasted down a surprising little canyon, to emerge into a long black road tangled with mesquite on both sides. When we almost despaired of finding a suitable camp, we came casually on a snug little grove, and heard nearby the rush of a stream. The black sky was radiant with stars. Orion stood on his head, and so did the dipper, surrounded by constellations unfamiliar to our Northern eyes.
In the chill dark we felt for a spot to pitch our tent. Spiky mesquite caught and tore our hair nets. Texas’ millions of untenanted acres brooded over our human unimportance, till a charred stick or empty tin can, stumbled over in the dark, became as welcome a signal as Friday’s footprint to Crusoe. Jointing our useless little spade, we dug a trench in the soft sand for our hips to rest in, hoisted our tent-rope over a thorny branch, folded blanket-wise our auto robes, undressed and crept inside our house. The lamps of the car gave us light to stow away our belongings, and its lumbering sides screened us from the road. With a sense of elation we looked at the circling stars through our tent windows, and heard the wind rise in gusts through the bare branches. The world becomes less fearsome with a roof over one’s head.
Dawn is the camper’s hour of trial. I woke from adream that a mountain lion had entered our shelter, when Toby sat up excitedly.
“I just dreamed a bear was trying to get in,” she said. The coincidence was forboding, yet no menagerie appeared. Our aching hips, tumbled bedding and chilled bodies made us dread the long hours to breakfast. Toby hinted I had my share and more of the blanket. I had long entertained a similar suspicion of her, but was too noble to mention it. We portioned out the bedding afresh, vowed we never again would camp out, and in a moment it was eight o’clock of a cold, foggy morning.
Yesterday the sun had been hot enough to blister Toby’s cheek. Today was like a nor’-easter off Labrador. We were too cold to get up, and too cold to stay shivering in the tent. It seemed a stalemate which might last a life-time, when suddenly indecision crystallized, exploded, and we found ourselves on the verge of the ice-cold stream compromising cleanliness with comfort.
How different seems the same folding stove viewed on the fifth floor of a sporting goods store in New York, and in the windy open. Piffling and futile it appeared to us, its natural inadequacy increased by our discovery that our fuel cans were locked in our trunk, and the lock had become twisted. It further appeared that most of our cooking outfit was interned in the same trunk. Accordingly I tried to build a fire, while Toby took down the tent. Camp cooking is an art which I shall not profane by describing our attempts to get breakfast that bleak morning. The fire smouldered, but refused to break into the bright cheery crackle one hears about, and finally, untempted by the logs of green mesquite we hopefully fed it, went out entirely. We breakfasted onthe remains of last night’s supper, washed down with a curious sticky mixture made of some labor-saving coffee preparation. Realizing that it took more than the outfit to make good campers, we went our subdued way. Our water bag bumped on the running-board, falling off frequently, and once we retraced ten muddy miles to retrieve it.
It was not a lucky day. Our scant breakfast, lost waterbag and an unhappy lunch, our locked trunk and all, were but the-precursors of a worse afternoon. The air was thick with yellow dust, and the western sky, sickly green, showed columns of whirling, eddying sand to right or left of us. Though we followed the Southern Pacific with dog-like devotion we lost our way once in a crooked maze of wagon tracks which led us to a swamp, and had to drive back ten miles to the nearest house to ask directions. To make up for lost time, in the bitter, reckless mood every driver knows, when nobody in the car dare speak to him, I raced for two hours at forty-five, through sandy, twisting tracks, with the car rocking like a London bus, and Toby clinging to the side, not daring to remonstrate, for it was she who had lost us our way. Each turn was a gamble, but the curves were just gentle enough to hold us to our course.
fireOUR FIRST CAMP, TEXAS.“I tried to build a fire.”
OUR FIRST CAMP, TEXAS.
“I tried to build a fire.”
We had every chance of making our night’s stop before dark, when the air oozed gently out of the rear tire. Behind us a sandstorm rising in a shifting golden haze lifted twisted columns against the vivid green sky, over which dramatic dark clouds drove, while a spectacular sunset lighted the chains of cold dark blue and transparent mauve mountains on both sides. It was a glorious but ominous sight, and the tire meant delay. A flattire, however, acts on Toby like a bath on a canary. The jack holds no mysteries for her, and tire rims click into place at sound of her voice. And our peculiar luck had halted us within a few yards of the only house we had passed all afternoon. Having learned that frail womanhood need neither toil nor spin in Texas, I was for seeking aid, but Toby scorned help, and so painted the joys of independence that though it was hot and dusty and the sand storm threatened, I bent to her will. And the next moment, the key which locked engine, tool-box and spare tire, broke off in the padlock. As I had with unprecedented prudence bought a duplicate in New York, we were not completely stranded, but that, I mentioned bitterly to Toby, was no fault of hers. Only a cold chisel could release the spare tire, and we found we had none.
“I will now go for help,” I said to Toby who was defiantly pretending to do something to the locked tire with a hammer, “as I should have at first but for your foolish pride.”
As stately as I might with hair blown by the wind, yellow goggles, leather coat and a purple muffler tied over my hat, I retreated toward the ranch-house. In the kitchen I startled a grizzled old couple sitting near the fire. When I explained our predicament, and begged the loan of a cold chisel the old man asked, “You two girls all alone?”
When I admitted we were, he called to his son in the next room, “Horace, go see what you can do for the ladies.”
More bashful than most Texans, the lank Horace followed me in painful silence for a few yards. Then in a burst of confidence, he said, “When you come in justnow, I thought it was maw dressed up to fool us. Yes, sir, I sure did.”
My glimpse of his septuagenarian parent would not have led me to suspect her of such prankishness, but appearances are often deceitful. For all I knew she may have been just the life of the family, doubling up Horace and his paw in long writhes of helpless mirth at her impersonations. So I accepted the compliment silently and led our rescuer to the car.
Once more I triumphed unworthily over Toby. For she had hinted that my fast driving had flattened the tire, but investigation revealed a crooked nail,—the bane of motoring in a cattle country. Horace proved most business-like in handling tools. In less than half an hour, bashfully spurred on by our admiration, he had cut the lock and helped us change the tire. Then he saw our sign,—and said it. As if it were a thought new-born to the ages, he smiled at his own conceit, and remarked, “You’re a lawng ways from home!”
As Horace did not smoke, we drove away from the ranch-house eternally in his debt. We put him down to the credit of Texas, however, where he helped off-set sand-storms and mud holes, and added him to the fast growing list of cavaliers who had rescued us from our folly. The storm had died, and with it our bad luck had apparently departed, but when a day begins badly, it is never safe to predict until the car is bedded down for the night. According to a bad habit she has, Toby telescoped two paragraphs of the route card, skipping the middle entirely. Consequently we turned left when we should have gone right,—and found our front wheels banked where a road had been playfully altered by thewind to a mountain of sand. On all sides were waist-high drifts of fine white sea sand, from which the tops of mesquite bushes showed. We could not turn, so we tried running straight ahead,—and stuck. Twilight had fallen, and if there were a way out, it was no longer discernible. At what seemed a short half mile, a light gleamed from a house. Once more, I cravenly went for help, while the optimistic Toby began to shovel sand with our toy shovel. The half mile trebled itself, and still the house was no nearer. At last I came to the end, only to find that a wide canal separated us and the car from the road. I shouted across to two men in a corral, and at last they heard and came to the edge of the canal while I asked to borrow a rope. They debated a while, perhaps doubting my intentions, but finally threw a rope in the back of a little car, cranked it and, coming to the bank of the canal, helped me across. Unlike a Westerner who when he leaves a spot never fails to orient himself, I had not noticed in which direction I had struck out from the car. I fear my deliverers thought me a mild kind of incompetent when I confessed I had no idea where to find it: darkness and sand dunes completely hid it from sight. But after some skirmishing about canal beds and bridges, we reached the broad shape looming up in the dark, and found that Toby had dug the car out, wrapped an old tire about the spinning back wheel, and driven it on firm ground.
Our rescuers put us on the road to our night’s objective, and with mild patience told us we could hardly miss it, it being a straight road all the way. They did not compliment us too highly, for by the time Venus had risen we reached the hotel, kept by a sad, distrustfulone-eyed man from Maine, who in spite of twenty years’ residence still abhorred Texas as a desert. He fed us liberally with baked beans and apple pie before showing us to a bare, clean little room furnished with a tin basin and a patchwork quilt.
We were nearly dead. We had much with which to reproach luck and each other, but by mutual consent postponed it and sank into peaceful sleep in the lumpy bed.
As somebody said, luck is a fickle dame. Having flouted us to her heart’s content, she tagged docilely at our heels as we started for El Paso next morning. Two hundred miles away, the average run was ten hour’s time, but we made it in eight and a half. The garage-man’s wife’s cousin was a dentist on Huntington Avenue, and the extraordinary coincidence drew her to us almost as by the bonds of kinship. She hurried her spouse into mending our tires promptly, and speeding us on our way with valuable directions. It was ten when we left, but moving westward into Rocky Mountain time saved us an hour.
Once out of the village we encountered the enveloping desert again. Driving in those sandy tracks became a new sport,—we learned to make the sand skid us around corners without decreasing our speed; we could calculate with nicety when a perceptible drag on the wheels warned us to shift gears. And then they must be shifted instantly, for at a moment’s delay the car sank deep, and mischief was done which only shoveling could undo. Once we found ourselves facing another car blocking the road, and sunk in thick, unpacked sand. We could not turn out, and the instant’s stop put us in a like predicament.They wistfully asked us to pull them out, but as we were heavier than they, and would have made two obstacles instead of one in the road, we had to refuse the only help asked of us, who had so many times been the beneficiaries. We left them to an approaching mule team, after they had returned good for evil by pushing us out of the sand. For twenty miles we had hard going, but by spinning through the sand in low gear we escaped trouble.
We were still in the desert, but serrated peaks with lovely outlines and stormy, snowy tops marched beside us the entire day. The aspect of the country became semi-tropical. The single varieties of cactus and century plants were increased to dozens. The ocotillo, sometimes wrongly called octopus cactus, waved slender green fingers, on which a red bud showed like a rosy fingernail. The landscape warmed from lifeless gray to gold, mauve, blue and deep purple, and always on our left were the benign outlines of the blue Davis Mountains. We mounted higher and higher on a smooth orange road cut through the mountains and came out on a broad open highway with wide vistas. Close by, the mountains looked like huge heaps of black cinder and silt, but distance thinned them, as if cut from paper, into translucent lavender and blue, the edges luminous from the setting sun.
Thirty miles out of El Paso we were astonished to find ourselves on a concrete road in perfect museum condition, on which in dismal file many cars crept city-ward at the discreet pace of fifteen miles an hour. It was the first bit of good road Toby had encountered for days but an uncanny something in the self-restraint of the ElPasans on the only good road in Texas recalled Houston to us. We joined the funereal procession and arrived in the city without official escort.
Mexico in this southwest corner is merged with Texas, making gay its vast grayness with bright spots of color and slouching figures, and suggesting other-world civilization by its Spanish street signs, and the frankness with which the Latin welcomes the world to the details of his daily life. The outskirts of the town were lined with one story ’dobe huts, and even more fragile shelters made of wattled reeds and mud. Forlorn little Mexican cafés, with temperance signs brazening it out above older and more convivial invitations, failed of their purpose; their purple and blue doors were empty as the be-Sundayed crowds swarmed the streets.
El Paso has its charms, but to us it was too modern and too large to mean more than a convenient place to sleep, shop and have the car overhauled, and the gumbo of Texas, now caked until it had to be chipped off with a chisel, washed from its surface. “The old lady,” as Toby nick-named the car, was to leave Texas as she had entered it,—with clean skirts. Once more we viewed her gray paint, which we had not seen for many a long day. She seemed to feel the difference from her former draggle-tailed state; she pranced a bit, and lightened by several hundred-weight of mud, shied around corners. We gave her her head as we passed the great smelters on the western edge of the town, whose smoke stacks cloud the rims of the mountains they are attacking, and slowly, slowly eating into. A smooth macadam road led us,—at last!—out of Texas. We were not sorry to leave, hospitably as we had been treated. Ahead lay greatermiracles of nature than Texas could offer, and adventure no less. The great prairie of which in two weeks we had only nibbled one corner was behind us. We were fairly embarked on the main objectives of our journey.