The Cruise of a Schooner

by Albert W. Harris

The next morning, Wednesday, June 8, Bob woke us up and said, “Tuck is sick.” I was up immediately and wanted to know where he was. “He has gone,” said Bob, “just wandered off sick.”

“But a sick dog does not wander off,” I said. “Tell us if you know anything; he surely isn’t here.”

Then he told us that he had wakened up early and not seeing Tuck curled up at my feet as usual, had thought something was wrong with the camp, and jumped up and dressed. It was just getting light, and looking around he saw all the horses and no sign of trouble, but no dog. Then he thought the dog might have gone for a drink and so now that he was up he would go and see. Looking down into the draw he saw Tuck lying by the pool of water covered with mud which had dried in his hair, and apparently asleep. He managed to coax him out and up to him, but said the dog didn’t seem to know him, acted afraid, and looked sick. He coaxed him along over to the wagon and then it occurred to him that the dog might have had a fight with some animal at the water hole, and so he went back and climbed down and looked the ground over, but found no sign of anything except the dog. When he came back to the wagon, the dog had disappeared. He found his tracks where he had wandered off down the trail, but could not overtake him or catch sight of him, and so he came back and awoke us. “He is scared and sick, and hardly knew me,” he repeated, “and now he has wandered off. He must be crazy.”

The doctor said “rabies,” and I threw the saddle on Kate, put my gun in my belt and started down the trail. I soon found Tuck and as he didn’t know me and looked so miserable, I pulled out my gun and left him there. No one asked any questions when I returned, and we ate breakfast in silence. Starting on, Bob went ahead, and the next time I saw him I envied him his tears. I knew I should have felt better if I could have cried. We were quite a solemn party for several days.

We had a very hard road to-day; it was hilly, rocky, and sandy, and we made only fourteen miles. We drove through Leeds and camped about four miles south of Belleville, in a gravel wash by the side of Ash Creek. We met a couple of fellows who lived at Torqueville, going by our camp on their way to Cedar City, about four miles from where we were camped. They had a horse and mule hitched together and were leading a black bronco colt which, when it saw me, promptly broke the rope, but on a second look allowed me to catch him. They expected to go to Belleville before dark.

Doc and I then concluded we would try Ash Creek for a bath, but the water and night were so cold we made short work of it. Later it got colder and the wind blew quite hard, and we needed all our bedding to keep warm, and a few hitches to keep it from blowing away.

The next day the road grew worse,--it really was the poorest excuse for a public road I ever saw, and I have seen some. The four miles to Belleville was all up grade and full of rocks that had to be literally climbed over.

Before reaching town we met a young man freighting. He had a fine big team, and thirty-eight hundred pounds, he said, on the wagon. His off mare had pounded her leg up so on the pole that he had changed her to the nigh side. We fixed up her leg as best we could for him, while he used all the words in the English language to describe the road and what he thought of it. This helped us some and we started on, feeling we were probably justified in some of the remarks we had been making.

We went through Belleville (you could scarcely notice it), and on up to Kanarville, five thousand feet elevation. We had Kate in harness this morning, but put Dixie back again this afternoon, as we don’t want to give Kate too much work too soon. The day has been very cool. The roads were bad and dusty, but we made twenty miles and camped not far from Cedar City in Rush Lake Valley.

The next morning we were up a bit late; it was cold and we were chilly, and on the mountain side were patches of snow, and we realized we had gotten into a new climate. We rode with our coats on until the sun was an hour high. We met two boys taking a bunch of cattle from around Belleville to the Cedar Mountain Range for the summer. I understand the cattle from all over this desert country are pastured here in the summer, and this bunch was only one of many that are driven up in the spring and down in the fall.