CHAPTER XIV
SAYING GOOD-BY TO BILL
AS the spring sun daily pushed the snow line higher up toward the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo, and the time approached when we must leave Santa Fé, Toby and I grew sad at heart. We knew we must begin to think of saying good-by to Bill.
For Bill was Santa Fé’s most remarkable institution. He was surgeon general to all maimed cars in a radius of twenty miles. We had encountered mechanics competent but dishonest, and mechanics honest but incompetent, and were to meet every other variety,—careless, sloppy, slow, stupid, and criminally negligent, but to Bill belongs the distinction of being the most honest, competent and intelligent mechanic we met in eleven thousand miles of garage-men. Hence he shall have a chapter to himself.
When we discovered Bill, we permitted ourselves the luxury of a complete overhauling, and he, after one keen non-committal glance at our mud-caked veteran, silently shifted his gum, wheeled the car on to the turntable, got under it and stayed there two weeks. Three months of mud, sand, and water had not crippled the valiant “old lady,” but had dented her figure, and left her with a hacking cough. Her dustpan had been discarded, shred by shred, three spring leaves had snapped, the gear chain, of whose existence I learned for the firsttime, rattled; the baking sun had shrunk the rear wheels so that they oozed oil, the batteries needed recharging, the ignition had not been the same since the adventure of the mud-hole, and there were other suspected complications. Besides which, all the tires flapped in the breeze, cut to shreds by frozen adobe ruts, and a few tire rims had become bent out of shape. A thrifty garage-man could have made the job last a year.
Now Bill had two signs which every good mechanic I ever knew bears,—a calm manner, and prominent jaw-bones. Whenever, during our hobo-ing we drove into a garage and were greeted by a man with a grease smudge over his right eye, and a lower jaw which suggested an indignant wisdom tooth, we learned to say confidently and without further parley, “Look the car over, and do anything you think best.” It was infallible. Nor was our confidence in Bill’s jaw-bone misplaced, for at the fortnight’s end, Bill rolled her out of the garage, shining, sleek and groomed, purring like a tiger cat, quiet, rhythmic and bursting with unused power. He had taken off the wheels, removed the cylinder heads, repaired the ignition, put in new gear chains and spark plugs, adjusted the carburetor to the last fraction, loosened the steering wheel, removed the old lady’s wheeze entirely, and done the thousand and one things we had repeatedly paid other garagemen to do and they had left undone. He had finished in record time, and my eye, long practised in the agony of computing the waste motions of mechanics, had noted Bill’s sure accuracy and unhurried speed. Not content with this much, he sent in a reasonable bill, in which he failed to add in the date or charge us for time of his which other people had wasted. Infact, nobody dared waste Bill’s time. Over his workbench hung a sign, “Keep out. Regardless of your personality, this means YOU!” We took a trial spin, up a cork-screw and nearly vertical hill, the local bogey, and made it on high. I thanked Bill almost with tears, for being a gentleman and a mechanic.
“I always claim,” answered Bill, modestly, “that a man aint got no right to take other people’s money, unless he gives ’em something in return. When I’m on a job, I try to do my best work, and I don’t figure to charge no more than it’s worth.”
Ah, Bill! If every garageman in this free country adopted your code, what a motorist’s Paradise this might be! Almost weeping we said good-by to Bill that day—our last but one, we thought, in Santa Fé. We would have liked to take him with us, or at least to have found him awaiting us at each night’s stop, and Bill was gallant enough to say he would like to go.
With two friends, we had planned an excursion to Chimayo, where in the Mexican half of the town are made soft, hand-woven rugs, famous the world over. On the way, we stopped at Pojoaque, for the purpose of seeing the old road-house made famous by old M. Boquet of fragrant memory, when Santa Fé was an army post, and officers rode out to lively supper parties here. A tangled orchard and flower garden, a well renowned for its pure water, and the quaint little Spanish widow of M. Boquet are all that is left of what was once a ship-shape inn where people loved to stop. The rest is cobwebs and rubbish. But any spot where gaiety has been enhanced by good food is always haunted by memories of former charm.
At the sleepy Indian pueblo of Nambé, now fast diminishing, we forded a trickle of a stream, hardly wide enough to notice, which sported down from the hills. Then out into a sandy waste, surrounded by red buttes, we drove. And then we drove no further. On a hilltop the car gently ceased to move, even as it had done outside of Chandler. For a hot hour we examined and experimented, till we finally fastened the guilt on the ignition. We were ten miles from everywhere, and which were the shorter ten miles we were not exactly sure. Like the hypothetical donkey, starving between two bales of hay, we wasted time debating in which direction to go for help. An Indian riding by on a scalded looking pony we interrogated, but like all of his race, the more he was questioned the less he contributed. Much against his will, we rented his pony, and while the man of our party rode bareback to Pojoaque and the nearest telephone, we coaxed the pony’s owner from his sulks with sandwiches. Would that we had saved them for ourselves!
Two hours later, Bill rattled up, in a car shabby as a shoemaker’s child’s shoes, and as disreputable as the proverbial minister’s son. Remembering our premature farewell, he grinned, lifted the hood of the car, nosed about for a moment, called sharply to his ten-year-old assistant for tools, and in two minutes the engine was running. Smiling just as cheerfully as if his farewell appearance had not cost us twenty dollars, Bill started his car, and wished us good luck.
“I wish we could take you with us, Bill,” I said.
“I sure wish I could go,” said Bill.
“Well, good-by, Bill.”
“Good-by, and over the top,” said Bill, driving off.
“I hate to say good-by to Bill,” said Toby and I, to each other.
Thus delayed, it was twilight when we reached the old Sanctuario, famous as the Lourdes of America. Inside, its whitewashed walls displayed crutches and other implements of illness, as witness to the cures effected by the shrine. The interior as of most Mexican churches, was filled with faded paper flowers and tawdry gilt pictures of saints. Outside, twin towers and a graceful balcony, and a walled churchyard shaded by giant cottonwoods gave the church a distinction apart from all its miracles. At a brook nearby, a majestic, black-shawled Mexican madonna filled herolla, mildly cursing us that the fee we gave for opening the gate was no larger, lest we should realize it had been too large.
Across the plaza stood a fine example of a built-up kiva orestufa, and nearby we dared a glance, in passing, at a morado. But we had come to see and perhaps buy rugs,—those woolly, soft blankets at which the heart of the collector leaps. During the day, however, the Santa Cruz, which divides Mexican from Indian Chimayo, had risen from the melting of snows in the mountains, and we could only feast our eyes on the lovely hill-lined valley, with its greens and mauves, its cobalt hills and blossoming apricots. There was positively no way to cross. I remembered that Bill said he too had been delayed at Pojoaque by swollen streams. But the idea of hurrying home did not occur to us, as it might have to a native. We communicated our interest in rugs to little Indian boys and handsome swart Mexicans, who stripped the floors and beds of their great-grandparents,learning that we sought antiques. We soon had a choice of the greasiest and most tattered rugs the town afforded, but nothing worth purchasing. We were on the wrong side of the river, and out of luck. Relinquishing the idea of seeing rug-weaving in process, we at last turned homeward, with a new moon menacing us over our left shoulder.
Passing through a beautiful little canyon, over a road which tossed us like a catboat in a nor’easter, we again came, at dusk, to sleeping Nambé, and the brink of the stream. Toby, who was driving, plunged boldly in, without preliminary reconnoitre. We afterward agreed that here she made a tactical error. The trickle of the morning, had risen to our hubs. To make matters worse, the stream ran one way, and the ford another. We all hurled directions at the unhappy Toby.
“Keep down stream!”
“Follow the ford!”
“Back up!”
“Go ahead,—go ahead!”
Toby hesitated. Now in crossing a swift stream, to hesitate is to lose. The car struck the current mid-stream, the water dashed up and killed the engine, and the “old lady” became a Baptist in regular standing. Toby saw she was in for it, I could tell by the guilty look of the back of her neck. She tried frantically to reverse, but no response came from the submerged engine.
“Toby,” I cried in anguish, “start her, quick!” And then I regret to say I lapsed into profanity, exclaiming, “Oh, devil, devil, darn!”
In a moment, everyone was standing on the seats, and climbing thence to the mudguard. Our cameras, coats,pocketbooks, and the remains of some lettuce sandwiches floated or sank according to their specific gravity. I plunged my arm down to the elbow, and brought up two ruined cameras, and a purse which a week later was still wet. Meanwhile the others had climbed from the mudguard to the radiator, fortunately half out of water, and thence jumped ashore. Before I could follow suit, the water had risen to the back seat, and I scrambled ashore soaked to the knees. We were on the wrong side of the stream from Nambé, and the river was too deep for wading. Finally the man of the party risked his life, or at least the high boots which were the joy of his life, and reached the opposite shore, where lay the pueblo. After a long interval he returned with two Indians who led a team of horses across.
Trained as I have said poor Lo, or Pueb-Lo, to make a bad pun, is in matters of the spirit, in mechanics he has not the sense of a backward child of three years. These two attached a weak rope to the car, where it would have the least pulling power and the greatest strain, drove the horses off at a wrong angle,—and broke the rope. For two hours, with greatest good nature and patience, they alternately attached chains and broke them until we had exhausted the hardware of the entire town. It was now long after midnight. Having reached the point where we hoped the car would sink entirely and save us further effort, we accepted the Indian’s offer of two beds for the ladies and a shakedown for the man, and went weary and supperless to bed. Toby and I were used to going supperless to bed, but it was hard on our two friends to whom we had meant to give a pleasant day.
As we entered the bedroom into which the Indian proudly ushered us, I exclaimed “Toby!” The room contained two large beds, a piano between them, some fearful crayon portraits of Nambé’s older settlers, and a scarlet Navajo rug. Nothing remarkable about the room, except that the piano and the two lace-covered beds denoted we were being entertained by pueblo aristocracy. But on that morning, being one of those people who do not start the day right until they have unloaded their dreams on some victim, I had compelled Toby to listen to the dream which had held me prisoner the previous night. In it, we had started off into the desert with the “old lady,” and traveled until we found ourselves in a sea of sand. Then, for some reason not clear when I woke, we abandoned the car, and set out afoot over wastes of sand, in which we sank to our ankles. All day we walked, and at night exhausted, found shelter in a crude building. Presently, the men in our party returned to say they had found beds for the women, but must themselves sleep on the ground. Then they led us into a room. And in this room were two beds, a piano, some crayon portraits with gimcrack ornaments on the wall, and on the floor a brilliant crimson rug. The arrangement of the furniture in the real and the dream world was identical. In my dream I also had a vivid consciousness of going to a strange and uncomfortable bed, tired and hungry. Now a psychoanalyst once told me that science does not admit the prophetic dream as orthodox. Yet our little excursion, ending so disastrously, had not been planned till after I told my dream to Toby. My own firm belief is that our guardian angels were violating the Guardian Angels’ Labor Union Laws,working overtime to send us a warning. Would we had taken it!
This night, however, our dreams were broken. Indians are the most hospitable people in the world, especially the Pueblos, long trained to gracious Spanish customs. These simple hosts of ours had made us free of all they possessed. We could not properly blame them if their possessions made free with us. Their hospitality was all right; just what one would expect from the Indian,—grave and dignified. But their Committee of Reception was a shade too effusive. They came more than half-way to meet us. Perhaps in retribution for her imprudent dash into the river, its members confined most of their welcome to Toby, with whom I shared one bed. She woke me up out of a sound sleep to ask me to feel a lump over her left eye.
“I would rather not,” I said, feeling rather cold toward Toby just then. “I prefer not to call attention to myself. Would you mind moving a little further away?”
“I must say you’re sympathetic,” sniffed Toby.
“If you had looked before you leaped, you wouldn’t be needing my sympathy.”
It was our first tiff. A moment later she jumped up as if in anguish of spirit.
“I can’t stand this any longer,” she said, referring not to our quarrel, but to a more tangible affliction, which we afterward named Nambitis,—with the accent on the penult,—“I’m going to sleep on the floor.”
“Perhaps it would be as well,” I answered.
Toby made herself a nice bed on the adobe floor with old coats and rugs, and we went to rest,—at least ninety-five out of a possible hundred of us did. For some reasonwe sprang gladly out of bed next morning, to find that our hosts had taken the trouble to prepare us a liberal breakfast. The lump over Toby’s left eye had spread, giving her a leering expression, but otherwise she was again her cheerful self. The rest of the party suggested it was hardly tactful for her to show herself wearing such an obvious reproach to our hosts on her countenance, and advised her to forego breakfast. Toby rebelled. She replied that she had only eaten two sandwiches since the previous morning, and was faint from loss of blood, and was going to have her breakfast, lump or no lump. Toby is like Phil May’s little boy,—she “do make a Gawd out of her stummick.” I on the contrary can go two or three days without regular food, with no effect except on my temper. So we all sat down to a breakfast neatly served on flowered china, of food which looked like white man’s food, but was so highly over-sugared and under-salted that we had difficulty in eating it.
Our host informed us the river had been steadily rising all night. He doubted whether we should see any signs of our car. His doubts confirmed a dream which had troubled me all night, wherein I had waked, gone to the river, and found the old lady completely covered by the turgid flood. I dreaded to investigate, for when one dreams true, dreams are no light matter. Somewhat fortified by breakfast, we went to view the wreck. With mingled relief and despair, we found my dream only about 80 per cent true. The radiator, nearest to shore, lay half exposed. The car sagged drunkenly on one side. The tonneau was completely under water, but we could still see the upper half of the back windows.
While others rode eight miles to telephone, we stood on the bank, breathlessly watching to see whether the water line on those windows rose or fell. The Indians told us the river would surely rise a little, as the snow began to melt. But Noah, looking down upon fellow sufferers, must have interceded for us. Inch by inch, the windows came into full view. The worst would not happen. A chance remained that Bill could rescue us before the river rose again. Bill was our rainbow, our dove of promise, our Ararat.
An hour later, he rattled up to the opposite bank, threw us a sympathetic grin, and got to work. It was a pleasure to watch Bill work. It is a pleasure to watch anyone work provided one has no share in it oneself, but some people weary one by puttering. I could watch Bill on the hardest kind of job, and feel fresh and fairly rested when he finished. He always knew beforehand what he intended to do, and did it deliberately and easily. He first drove two stakes into the ground, some distance apart, attached a double pulley to them, and to the front bar of the car, the only part not under water, and he and his assistants pulled gradually and patiently till from across the river we could see the sweat stand out on their brows. In ten minutes, we were astonished to see the half drowned giant move slightly. Hope rose as the river fell. Bill took another reef in his trousers and the pulley, then another and another, and at last the old lady groaned, left her watery bed, shook herself, and clambered up on dry land.
carTHE CAR SAGGED DRUNKENLY ON ONE SIDE.
THE CAR SAGGED DRUNKENLY ON ONE SIDE.
riverFORDING A RIVER NEAR SANTA FE.Crossing fords, to our hubs, which yesterday were mere trickles and to-morrow wouldbe raging torrents.
FORDING A RIVER NEAR SANTA FE.
Crossing fords, to our hubs, which yesterday were mere trickles and to-morrow wouldbe raging torrents.
jackON THE WAY TO GALLUP.Jack and all sank in the soft quicksand beneath the weight of the car.
ON THE WAY TO GALLUP.
Jack and all sank in the soft quicksand beneath the weight of the car.
We crossed on horseback to the other side and waited with a sick internal feeling, while Bill removed the wheels and examined the damage.
“Everything seems all right,—no harm done,” remarked Toby, with hasty cheerfulness, emerging from the taciturnity resulting from one closed eye and a general atmospheric depression among the rest of us. Her remark showed that she now expected to assume her usual place in society.
“If anything,” I answered bitterly, “the car is improved by its bath.”
The poor old wreck stood sagging heavily on one spring, two wheels off, the cushions water-logged, and a foot of mud and sand on the tonneau floor and encrusting the gears. Maps, tools, wraps, chains, tires and the sickly remains of our lunch made a sodden salad, liberally mixed with Rio Grande silt. Sticks and floating refuse had caught in the hubs and springs, and refused to be dislodged. A junk man would have offered us a pair of broken scissors and a 1908 alarm clock for her as she stood, and demanded cash and express prepaid. I think Toby gathered that my intent was sarcasm, for she relapsed into comparative silence, while in deep gloom we watched Bill scoop grit out of the gears. I braced myself to ask a question.
“Can you save her, Bill?”
“Well,” Bill cast a keen blue eye at the remains, “the battery’s probably ruined, and the springs will have to be taken apart and the rust emoried off, and the mud cleaned out of the carburetor and engine, and the springs rehung, and if any sand has got into the bearin’s you’ll never be through with the damage, and the cushions are probably done for,—life’s soaked out of them.”
As Bill spoke, the Rainbow Bridge, for which we had planned to start in a few days, became a rainbow indeed,but not of hope. The Grand Canyon, the Hopi villages, Havasupai Canyon, Yellowstone, Glacier Park! Their red cliffs and purple distances shimmered before our eyes as dear, lost visions, and faded, to be replaced by a heap of junk scattered in a lone arroyo, and two desolate female figures standing on the Albuquerque platform, waiting for the through train east.
“Well, Bill, will you make us an offer for her as she stands?”
Bill squinted at her, and shook his head, “Don’t think I’d better, ma’am.”
The day shone brilliant blue and gold, and the valley of cottonwood sparkled like emeralds, but all seemed black to us. Toby looked almost as guilty as she deserved to look, and that, though unusual and satisfactory, was but a minor consolation.
“Too bad,” said Bill, sympathetically, “that you didn’t sound the river before you tried to cross.”
“It was indeed,” I said, without looking at anyone.
“I didn’t hearyousuggest stopping,” said Toby. One would have thought she would be too crushed to reply after Bill’s remark, but you never can tell about Toby.
We watched Bill methodically and quickly replace the wheels, shovel out the sand and mud, put the tools in place, wipe the cushions, and put his foot on the starter, the last as perfunctorily as a doctor holds a mirror to the nostrils of a particularly dead corpse. Instantly, the wonderful old lady broke into a quiet, steady purr! A cheer rose from the watchers on the river bank, in which ten little Indian boys joined, and Toby and I embraced and forgave each other.
We did not say good-by to Bill. We had a rendezvouswith Bill at the garage for the following morning. Fearful lest the engine stop her welcome throb, we jumped into the car, and drove the sixteen miles home, up steep hills and down, under our own power. Fate had one last vicious jab in store for us. Five minutes after starting, a thunder cloud burst, and rained on us till we turned into our driveway, when it ceased as suddenly as it started.
What was left of the car, I backed out of the garage next morning. Toby stood on the running board, and directed me how to avoid a low hanging apricot tree, her eye and her spirits as cocky as ever.
“All clear!” she called. I backed, and crashed into the tree. A splintering, sickening noise followed. The top of the car, the only part which had previously escaped injury, showed beautiful jagged rents and the broken end of a rod bursting through the cloth.
For three days, Toby discoursed on photography, sunsets, burros, geology and Pima baskets, but nobody could have guessed from anything she said that automobiles had yet been invented. At last she gave me a chance.
“In driving over a desert road with sharp turns,” she said confidently, “the thing is to——”
“Toby!” It was too good an opening. “As a chauffeur, you make a perfect gondolier.”
Bill presented us at the end of a week with a sadder but wiser car, a little wheezy and water-logged, but still game. When we steered it out of the garage which had become our second home in Santa Fe, we did not say good-by to Bill. We couldn’t afford to. On reaching Albuquerque safely, we sent him a postcard.
“Dear Bill:—The car went beautifully. We wish we could take you with us!”