We got off the lake bottom and on towards Jean, Sunday morning, May twenty-ninth. We had made thirty miles Saturday, but that was an easy day, which, with the level lake bed to walk over in the evening, was like driving on Michigan Avenue. No such good fortune awaited us from now on. It was up grade and hard pulling all the way to Jean, but here we got grain and wheat hay, so, pulling out from the store about a mile, we fed grain and hay, and then turned the horses loose to graze until they were completely filled up before we started on.
Kate’s shoulder is better and her cracked heel is about well. The film is going off her eye and I think very soon she will be able to take her place with Bess again and let Dixie pack the saddle. Dixie has pulled her end so far very well, although not being used to a collar her neck is getting sore, and I can see Kate will not be well enough to wear a collar any too soon.
At night we conclude we have made about twenty-two miles up grade, and at a guess figure we are twenty-three miles from Las Vegas, mostly a downhill pull, so we think it will be an easy trip for the morrow.
It had not been unbearably hot up to this time and the nights were simply glorious--clear and cool--and we were congratulating ourselves on having such fine traveling weather. My memorandum book notes a change in the weather the next day, May 30, Decoration Day, and I give my memorandum here verbatim:
“Started from camp at 5:45 A. M. for Las Vegas, the last lap of our first real desert experience. We have been ten days in crossing from Daggett, California, to Las Vegas, Nevada, probably one hundred and fifty miles, so we have averaged fifteen miles, including stop of a day at Kelso and going up to Lake Crucero by mistake, which put us back two days, so we could have made it in seven days if we had not got lost and pulled down the team in getting out. We drive up dry rivers and down dry rivers, over sand and rocks, mostly up hill, because the sand is usually so deep the wagon pulls on the team going down grade. We have found no cows and believe, with the old pioneer, that this country contains more rivers and less water, and you can see farther and see less, than any other part of the United States.
“Coming into Las Vegas this morning we saw our first artesian well, forty inches, and learned they were now going to have one on each section of this desert slope. Some time we are going back to see if they do and how much good it does them. The soil looked too full of alkali to suit me. However, while this well made quite a stream, it mostly evaporated or sunk into the ground, as it seemed to do very little good.
“We reached the end of the down grade part of the trip at 11 A. M., stayed near this well for lunch, and then at 1:30 made a start on the eight-mile pull up through the sand, arriving at Las Vegas at 4:45 P. M., after the hardest eight miles we ever made, on account of heat. The wind was in our faces, but how hot it was we did not know. It most blistered us--probably about 115 to 120 degrees, as we found it 107 in the hotel after we arrived.
“It certainly was hot. We took a drink every fifteen minutes and watered the horses every hour, besides putting water on Tuck’s head and back to keep him from being overcome. We put team in shed of livery, the only one in town, and went to a hotel.
“No mail, as Decoration Day was a holiday and postoffice closed.”
The above memorandum says nothing about scenery, nothing about Las Vegas itself, and nothing even about the road, so I guess we were not long on enthusiasm about that time. We slept in beds that night, but hot ones, and we laid the heat to the town and the hotel. The next day we got our mail, wrote home, and after getting off all the letters we went over and, as Doc said, “patched up the horses.” We got a hose and soaked their feet, and after a general clean-up I think they felt better. It was no cooler, however.