Our trip through Castle Valley was over, and we were once more in a railroad town, so we decided to stay a couple of days and give the horses the rest of which they were much in need.
Chapter X—Green River to Grand Junction
Sunday, June 26, we stayed in camp; that is, the horses did, but we explored Green River and the surrounding country, took a bath in the river, did our laundry work, and tried to catch some fish, but didn’t get a bite.
On one of our rambles we crossed the river and went about a mile south to a ranch house which we found deserted; the fruit trees were all dead and the alfalfa had been overflowed and killed out in places. It was an ideal place for a house here on the river bank with big cottonwood trees all around, giving plenty of shade. The house was made of cottonwood logs; in fact, almost all the ranch houses in this country are made of logs; near the river they are of cottonwood, and near the mountains of cedar or pine logs. We noticed a great number of dead orchards which were being cut out.
At noon we went uptown to a restaurant for our dinner. It is not much of a town, and most of it is new. They seem to be trying to raise fruit here, but apparently with poor success. The successful people evidently are the ones who can sell the land. The roads are very dusty and the land seems burned up. They have had no rain here in months, and we go back to our wagon feeling that it is the dryest looking country we have ever seen, and that there must be something wrong with the people. With a river flowing right by the town there should be better use made of it, but probably they do not know how. The people are not Mormons; they are newcomers and hence what might be called “tenderfeet.” They will learn, and some day Green River will be a beautiful little city, but to-day it lies bare and dusty and new, baking in the sun.
Monday, Doc and I went on an exploring trip down the river and Bob stayed about the camp. We climbed up on top of a bare, ragged mountain to see what we could of the country and the river, but with not much success. The river runs through a canyon and can not be seen, and the country is much the same south of us,--hard, ragged desert buttes. This is evidently the beginning of the formation which later, at the Grand Canyon, is so wonderful a sight. Just below here is where the Green and the Grand Rivers come together, forming the Colorado, and from there on, I imagine, the canyon grows in depth and desolation, until near Williams it is twelve miles wide and over a mile deep.
Returning from this trip on foot we look over the horses very carefully to see what improvement they have made in the two days they have had to rest. We find they have had all they could eat and drink, and Bess seems to be in her usual good condition. Doc says she is the most wonderful horse to work and keep it up without wearing out he ever saw. She has so far been in harness every working day, against Kate and Dixie in turn, and does not seem to be as tired or sore as either of them. Dixie’s neck is still in bad shape and Kate, while apparently looking good, is really “dead on her feet,” to use a slang phrase. She has never had a chance to recuperate from that setback she had in the Mojave Desert when she went blind and bled at the nose, and so in looking them over Doc says, “Well, Kate will never get to Grand Junction.” He had said before that she would not get to Green River, but she was here, and apparently in pretty good shape, so I could afford to laugh and tell Doc that Kate would go as far as either of the others.
It is a hundred and twenty miles from here to Grand Junction and this is the twenty-seventh of June. When I left home I made arrangements to have Mr. Bradley and his son Norman, of Rockford, Illinois, and my son, Norman, join us at Grand Junction, Colorado, on July fourth, and go with us through Colorado. It had seemed a little foolish, sitting comfortably at home in Chicago, to say, “I will meet you at Grand Junction on July fourth.” There had been a good many times since when I had thought it better to send word to them that we could not reach Grand Junction at the time I had promised, but as we seemed somehow, in spite of the many difficulties, to keep up to schedule, I had refrained from changing the date. Now that we were within one hundred and twenty miles of there, with six days in which to make it, I felt so confident that we would have no trouble in getting through a day or two ahead of time, that I sent them a telegram that we would be at Grand Junction and ready to leave July fourth. When we returned to our wagon after sending the telegram it looked like rain; in fact, we were so sure it would rain that we put down the wagon sheet and slept in the wagon. That night was the second time we had slept in the wagon since starting, six weeks before, from Los Angeles.
When we awoke the next morning we found it had rained some during the night and was still cold and cloudy. We were quite elated and as we had not had any experience with rain since leaving Los Angeles, we started off very joyously, thinking the dust would be laid and water would be plenty, but we were hardly under way before we discovered our mistake. The roads were sticky, the country was nothing but bare clay hills, and it was hard on the horses. As they were in better condition on account of their rest, we made twenty-five miles and thought we had done wonders, although we did not get into camp until late because, just before we reached the place we had picked out to camp, we stuck in the bottom of a wash and had to unload most of our stuff, including our water barrels. This was the first time I had been stalled and I was quite chagrined to think I had got into a place I could not pull out of. Doc said there had to be a first time, and that we couldn’t expect to go through without getting stuck a few times, but I got some experience here and never did it again. The boys thought I was too much “sot up” over my driving and, I think, enjoyed seeing me stuck, even if it did make us all do some hard work for a short time and delayed us half an hour in getting into camp. This is the way it happened:
We had come to a wash, down which the water was rushing over the rocks, and the trail dropped nearly straight into it. Bob rode Dixie down and then rode up stream looking for a way out on the other side. A hundred yards above and around a bend the trail led up and out, and without thinking to walk up on my side and take a look at it myself, as soon as I saw Bob’s head coming up around the bend, I dropped right down into the stream and drove up over the boulders and, when too late, found I didn’t dare to stop on account of the sand, and brought the team around at a hard angle to climb almost straight up a slippery bank. They were winded and, with wet hoofs, had just managed to pull the wagon up out of the sand and water when they both lost their feet, but hung on until I put on the brake and let them get up and recover their breath.