By noon we were in sight of the railroad, feeling as if we had found a long-lost friend. A freight station, some oil-tanks, a few shanties, and a lodging-house for the men, where we got some food—that was all. We filled up with water, and on we went. A wind had come up and the sand blew in eddies, almost blinding us. The Nevada roads were no improvement on Idaho, and the trail was obliterated many times by the swirling sand, making the going almost impossible. Before reaching Montello, a real desert sandstorm so covered us with sand that the car looked white; our clothes and our eyes and ears were full of it. We thought the top was coming off, or the car would turn over, and it was difficult to see the road, much less to keep in the trail. By crawling, we reached the town and stopped in front of the first building and got out. We were blown off our feet. We staggered and waded through the sand, hardly seeing where we were going, until we reached a door; then we were blown in! After we recovered our breath and had shaken off a little of the sand, we watched the storm, which by this time was a howling gale and the sand so dense that you could hardly see fifty feet.
“Just suppose this had happened out there?” pointing back of us.
“Don’t think of it. Come and get some ice cream.”
I had not noticed that we were in a small café, with drinks, ice cream and cakes, etc., for sale. The ice cream washed down the sand and cooled our dry throats. A nice little woman ran the place, and she gave us this information: There was a Southern Pacific railroad hotel in the town, but, owing to hundreds of men being idle on account of the strike, the place was full, and it was the only place to get lodgings. It was a hundred miles and more to Elko, where the next hotel could be reached. We inquired if the way to that town was as bad as the roads we had come over that day. “Worse,” was the reply; “you are foolish to attempt it.”
As soon as the storm let up we went across to the hotel, only to be told that there was not an empty bed or a cot. We canvassed the town with the same result. So there we were, worn out, dirty, hungry, and feeling “all in,” with the cheerful prospect of sleeping on a pile of sand in the car or trying to drive across more than a hundred miles of desert to find a bed that night. Here is where I “struck.”
“I am not going another mile,” I declared, with a finality in my voice that spoke volumes.
“What do you wish to do?” asked a weary husband.
“Ship the car to Reno, and take the train.”
Our watches said five o’clock, and the Overland Limited was due at 6:15 P. M. Husband hunted up the freight agent. “Oh, yes, you can ship the car; but—” The first “but” was that the car was too large to get through the freight-shed door. We must leave it on the platform or in a garage until an “automobile car” came through Montello, and that might not be for several days. Besides, the agent said he could not give us a bill of lading if the car was not in the shed. It was out of the question to leave it on the platform, and to put it in a strange garage, with no one responsible for it, was taking a long chance that we might never see it again, or that it would be used or damaged or detained indefinitely. Here friend husband asserted himself.
“I am not going to leave that car here unless it is locked up in the freight-shed and I have the receipt for it. You take the train and I will drive the car to Reno.”