The Cruise of a Schooner

by Albert W. Harris

At Hesperia, which is on the railroad, we filled our water barrels and camped alongside of the trail, about a mile from the station and eight miles from Victor. As near as we could figure we had driven twenty-five miles, which we considered a very good day’s work in view of the long climb we had made.

CACTI FOREST

The next morning we were up at four-thirty and off at six-forty-five, arriving at Victorville at eight-thirty. The first person I saw as we drove into the little railroad town was the young man who had driven the auto we had helped out of the sand the day before. He hailed us gayly and insisted on our climbing down and “going inside,” which we promptly did. Later we repaired to the general store, where we purchased a canteen, having accidentally run the wagon over ours the evening before, and also some baled hay and grain. Then we mailed our letters and half filled our water barrels before starting on to Daggett, forty miles away over the desert.

As we understood there was a good water hole and camp site about half way, we thought it unnecessary to take any more water. We reached the water without difficulty by 6 P. M., although we met no one on the trail and were in doubt once or twice as to which fork to take. We found it a good place to camp on account of the water, but that was all. There was just a small covered tank over a spring in a bare little desert valley, without even a tree or a bush in sight. It had one advantage over previous camps, however. Doves by the hundred came here to drink and in a short time we shot all we wanted for breakfast.

The next morning we had a comparatively easy road down grade into Daggett, twenty-two miles, where we arrived at 11:30 A. M.

There was nothing especially interesting about these towns through which we had passed; Hesperia was merely a handful of people; Victorville had a few more and seemed quite prosperous. It is on the banks of the Mojave River, which at this point is fully a hundred yards wide, but shallow and muddy, with a considerable fringe of trees in places along the banks. At Daggett, however, the river had about disappeared, and a few miles farther east was entirely lost in the sand.

Here at Daggett we decided to rest our horses and take stock, so to speak. We found among our luggage a tent and two cots which we apparently would have no need of until we reached Grand Junction, Colorado, where we expected to have an addition of four to our party, so we decided to send them on to this point by freight and thus lighten our load by seventy-five pounds.

Having put our horses and wagon in a corral, we began to make inquiries regarding the road to Las Vegas, Nevada, but could get no definite information. We were told we could not cross the desert directly, but would have to go around the south end. This meant going in a circle and, as the line we had drawn on the map went straight, we declined to go around, and were conferring with some old prospectors on the feasibility of crossing the desert when we heard of a man who had just come in from Las Vegas. We did not bother to make any more inquiries then and decided to interview the man from Las Vegas the first thing in the morning. I slept in the wagon at night, but being in town the Doctor and Bob thought it would be a good idea to try beds, to see if they were softer than the sand, but the next morning they pronounced them not much of an improvement.

We found the man we were looking for shortly after breakfast at the corral, where we had left our horses. He told us his name was Knowles. He certainly looked as if he had been through something strenuous. His eyes were bloodshot and he was a nervous wreck. He said he had come from Las Vegas and had driven across en route to Los Angeles. He had a good team, a light farm wagon, but nothing in it save a water barrel, some bedding, and a dog. He seemed so mixed in his dates that it was hard to get any reliable information from him. He said it was just an accident he had got through. He had been lost and stuck in the sand and forced to abandon his load, when by good luck he came to the Salt Lake Railroad. Here the sand was so deep that his horses could not pull the empty wagon, so he drove up to the railroad track, and, as there were no trains running (the road having been washed out for eighty miles above Las Vegas early in the Spring), he drove on the track until he reached Daggett, a distance of about sixty miles. He did not dare to leave the railroad for fear that he would get lost, and he found water at the little deserted section houses he passed every twenty or thirty miles. He said that with a big wagon and load we could not get through, and advised us not to try.