"I think," she said, "that it is the wildest and loneliest place of all. Nobody goes there except your prospectors, and you say they are all dead. Think of the gold and jewels they did not find lying around everywhere. Think of the hotness and brightness. It must be an awful, lonesome, sparkling place."
It must be! Those reasons appealed to me, but the idea was a bit upsetting considering that we had started for a happy-go-lucky vacation, a little like playing with a kitten and having it turn into a tiger. Mojave was like a tiger, terrible and fascinating. From the windows of the Santa Fé train it was a savage, ruthless-looking country, naked in the sun. It repelled us and held us, we could not keep our eyes off it. They ached from straining to pierce the distances where the beckoning roads were lost in brightness. Mountains and valleys full of outdoors, nothing but outdoors! What was the feel of being alone in the sagebrush? How free the sweep of the wind must be, how hot the sun, how immense the deep night sky!
Thus the wild and lonely place was selected. A strange outdoors for a holiday truly, and we had an adventure with it.
II How We Found Mojave
When the automobile was delivered into our hands at Los Angeles we wanted to turn around immediately and drive back through the Cajon Pass into the Mojave Desert, but our inquiries about directions met with discouragement on every side. It seemed to be unheard of for two women to attempt such a thing; the distances between the towns where we could get accommodations were too great and the roads were apt to have long stretches of sand where we would get stuck. Our friends drew a dismal picture of us sitting out in the sagebrush beside a disabled car and slowly starving to death.
"You could not fix it," they said, "and what would you do?"
We suggested that we might wait until somebody came along.