The Cruise of a Schooner

by Albert W. Harris

I knew they could not start the wagon again alone on that grade so I told Bob I thought if we put Dixie on ahead, the three of them could do it, but they didn’t. Dixie with her sore neck refused to pull after she had tried it once, and so, admitting I was stuck and needed help, we all went at it and lightened up the load. We carried it up the hill, and then with Doc and Bob pushing, we got the wagon up and were soon in camp at a water-tank.

The place was called Crescent; at least, a sign board on the railroad near the tank had “Crescent” on it, but the sign and tank were all there was to the place. We had a good place to camp here, getting a supply of good water from the tank, and a couple of trees near by gave us a place to tie the horses, as there was no grazing near and we did not want them to stray off. We had some hay so we thought they were better off tied up with that to eat.

It still looked like rain so we slept in the wagon again. When we woke up it was raining hard. “At last we are being rained on proper,” Bob said, and when I looked out I could hardly believe my eyes--everything was soaked. The horses were standing up to their knees in a miniature lake; the harness under the wagon was wet; and the rain was coming in the end of the wagon on the Doctor’s head.

I put on my boots and rubber coat and got out and rescued the horses from their predicament, moved the wagon around so the rain would not beat into the front, and we stayed inside all the morning. We had a cold breakfast, except for our oatmeal, which came hot out of the fireless cooker, but at noon we got dinner in the wagon over our kerosene stove, the heat from which dried us out, and at 2 P. M., the rain having stopped, we started on.

The roads were very heavy and slippery and the little gullies we had to cross were washed out, and we had great times getting over them. One place we had to build a bridge, which we were able to do out of railroad ties that had floated down from the track in a gully near at hand. A mile or two farther on we came to a wash we could not cross except by cutting down the bank, but we had nothing save an axe to do it with.

We had needed a shovel badly all the afternoon, but here we must have one. We could see the station of Thompson about two miles beyond and, concluding there must be a shovel there, I crossed the wash on Dixie, and made a run for it to Thompson so as to get there and back before dark. Fortunately there was a shovel to be had. There were two in town and I got back with one in time for us to get across the wash and into Thompson by 7 P. M. Here we bought hay, bacon, and the shovel I had borrowed, and drove on to the top of a hill where we camped and prepared our supper by lantern light.

We were tired out, but had only six miles to show for the day, half of which had been spent in the wagon during the rain, and the balance mostly in digging and in building a bridge. It had been cloudy and cold, and to-night we got out our overcoats to keep ourselves warm. Two days of the six were gone and only thirty-one of the one hundred and twenty miles were covered. It didn’t look as though we would have much time to spare, but we expected better conditions from here on, now the rain was over, and felt we could easily reach Grand Junction some time on the third of July.

The next morning, June thirtieth, we were late in starting, having been up late, for us, the night before, and it was eight-thirty before we broke camp. The same clay ridges and washes were in store for us, however. The trail was bad enough at best, running at right angles to the clay ridges, but the rain had done the rest and, as no team had been over the trail since then, we were in for a hard day’s work with axe and shovel. That shovel was worth everything to us to-day.

By way of variety we saw several coyotes and had our first breakdown. Again Doc tried to console me by asking, “You didn’t expect to get through without a breakdown, did you?” But while I expected it some time, it surprised me when it came, and also made me mad at myself, as it was simply carelessness. I had been dropping down into washouts all the morning and pulling out again without any trouble, after the boys with the axe and shovel had made it possible. In fact, I was so used to making the hard ones that I slid carelessly down into a little one, let the brake loose just a fraction of a second too quick, hit the opposite bank, and the front wheels rolled out from under the wagon, and I walked out behind the horses and left Doc sitting on the seat alone. The reach or coupling pole had snapped about eighteen inches behind the front axle. An investigation showed we had pole enough left and if we had a brace, and a three-quarter-inch bit, we could soon make repairs. While our tool box contained almost everything else we had needed heretofore, from horseshoe nails up, we did not have a brace and bit, and we sat looking at the wreck and trying to devise ways of getting the proper-sized holes made in the reach. Doc suggested making a fire and heating a bolt and burning a hole, but there was no wood and our kerosene stove would not answer for that sort of a job.

We could see in the distance a section house on the railroad and Bob thought the section men would surely have a brace and bit, and so, to save time, the boys volunteered to unload the wagon, pull out the reach, and have lunch ready by the time I had ridden over there and back. We could return the tools as we drove by.