The Cruise of a Schooner

by Albert W. Harris

I had a good long horseback ride in a very short time, but I didn’t get what I went after. Two Japs were all I found at the section house and they had a few crowbars and shovels, but nothing else. I asked how far it was to the next place where I could get a brace and bit and was told it was twenty miles to Cisco, but the foreman would bring one next week. I knew we could make those holes easier than by riding twenty miles and back, and quicker than by having the foreman bring us a brace and bit next week, so I thanked them for a drink and hurried back.

I found dinner ready, the wagon unloaded, and the reach ready to be repaired, and better yet, Bob had found a gimlet which we had overlooked before. It was a delicate tool to use in hardwood, but after lunch we managed to get the reach ready for use and were loaded up and off again at 3 P. M. We soon found we had our front stanchions on wrong and had to raise up the wagon and turn them, so that by the time we had this done, and had stopped at the section house for water, it was 4:20 P. M., and we were only ten miles from our morning camp. This was discouraging enough, but from here on the washes were not so frequent and, in between, the roads were good, so we made ten miles more before we camped.

We had made fifty-one miles in three days and there remained only three days in which to make sixty-nine miles, and we began to worry about the kind of roads we would find from here on, but we had met no one who could tell us. We camped near a section house called Whitehouse, but the man there didn’t know anything about wagon roads except that we were the first wagon outfit he had seen in some time, so we just hoped for better things and turned in.

“It never rains, but it pours,” some one has said, and that evidently was what happened between Whitehouse and Cisco, for we were until 11 A. M. getting there, only six miles. We filled washes, mended a bridge, and were tired enough when we pulled into town. A store and postoffice, the railroad station and corral, was every building there, but it looked large to us and we were able to buy some provisions of the canned order, get a bale of alfalfa, and the storekeeper gave me one-half his supply of oats, which was just a pailful.

Still sixty-three miles to Grand Junction and we are told the trail following the railroad is washed out and in the same condition as the one we have just come over. We are advised to try getting to Grand Junction over what they call the old narrow gauge route, or old grade.

On the theory that it cannot be any worse that way, we cross over the railroad tracks and go north. The road is bad, however, and mostly uphill this afternoon, and by 7 P. M. we figure we have made only eight miles, or fourteen for the day. The horses are tired and discouraged. We camp by a mud hole for water and turn the horses loose to graze. The country is mountainous and of clay formation, and, aside from a little bunch of grass here and there, is bare.

We began to be worried about getting to Grand Junction by the third and concluded we wouldn’t try. We had not agreed to be there before the fourth anyway, we said, and so after deciding not to get there before the fourth (which decision was especially funny because we knew we couldn’t possibly get there before and perhaps not then), we turned in. We were not a very hilarious party and I think the horses had begun to tire of life as well. They certainly looked dejected.

Saturday, July 2, was much like Friday, only, as some one remarked, “more so.” Our shovel was continually in demand. We had one very long hard pull after lunch which finished Kate up entirely, and at 5:30 P. M. we camped near a patch of grass, after making about fourteen miles, as near as we could guess, leaving us forty-one miles still to go. We crossed Cottonwood Creek about nine-thirty this morning and Westwater Creek at 4 P. M., and are probably about six miles from Bitter Creek. Cottonwood and Westwater Creeks both had the sandy side up, and we do not expect any better of Bitter Creek.

Kate is tired out and still I do not want to put Dixie into the collar yet, as her neck is nearly well, and I want it to get entirely well before I put her in to take Kate’s place. If Kate can only hold out until we get to Grand Junction, we can rest her there, and Dixie’s neck can then probably stand the collar again. Good old Bess, she never complains, but works every day. Luckily she has not been laid up at all as yet and apparently is made of iron. She goes on day after day seemingly just as fresh as when she started.

We have two hours of daylight left, so, as Bob volunteers to make camp and get supper, Doc and I take the rifle and climb up on a mesa, where we find small pine trees and big rocks, and from which we get a beautiful view of Mt. Wagg and Mt. Tomasaki. We have been in sight of Mt. Wagg ever since we left Green River. We sat there for a full half-hour and then returned to camp.