“P-perhaps,” I said weakly. “Besides if we are starting early I’d better go in and see about ordering provisions and things.” Which last remark, I think, quite saved my face—at least it was meant to.
I did, of course, want to see Acoma, that exaltedly perched city of antiquity. I did want to get at least a glimpse of the Painted Desert, but my bravery of spirit was of a very halting quality. The only thought that bolstered me up was the possibility that I was really very brave, because I was not telling anybody but myself that I was scared to death at the thought of a night of homelessness in the middle of an Indian reservation. When we started the next morning I thought Celia looked less sturdy than usual. She said, “We are not going to spend the night anywhere, are we?”
And I said with my best effort at spontaneous gladness, “No, won’t it be fun!”
Celia looked exactly as a beginner who is told to jump head foremost into the water in his first attempt to dive. E. M.’s attention was as usual entirely upon the car, and the probabilities of twistings and bumpings that the unknown roads might inflict upon his cherished engine. The question of nowhere to sleep was of little interest—still less importance. At all events we have seemingly enough provisions for ourselves and the machine to carry us to Alaska. Without doubt we can get motor supplies somewhere, but that is the one risk E. M. refuses to take and so we are starting off like a young Standard Oil agency, with forty-five gallons of gasoline, thirty-five in the tank and ten extra in cans. Also extra cans of oil. We have plenty of water for ourselves and some, too, for the car although we doubt whether alkali which ties the human stomach into a hard knot of agony at a taste would give the radiator a pain.
Our idea is to go, if we can, as far as Winslow. It seems rather funny that we, who nearly failed to stay intact over the well-worn Santa Fé trail, are branching into the unbeaten byway of the desert! We have taken our battered exhaust pipe off, and shipped it to Los Angeles, and our sensation without it is one of such freedom that we feel we can surmount all obstacles.
CHAPTER XXIV
INTO THE DESERT
What has this land lived through? What sorrows have so terribly wasted, what cataclysms rent it, what courage exalted it! Stupendous in its desolation, sublime in its awfulness, it mystifies and dumbfounds at every turn. Smooth plains fall into an abyss, or rise in bleak rock spires. Firm, pebbled river-beds suddenly shift to greedy quicksands; pools that look cool and limpid are boiling, or poisonous alkali. It suggests a theme of sculpture conceived by an Olympian Rodin, splendidly and gigantically hewn and with all the mystery of things not brought to a finite shaping.
But like the Sleeping Beauty in the fairy-tale, the beauty sleeping in the Southwest is surrounded by a thorn hedge of hardships and discomfort that presents its most impenetrable thicket and sharpest spines to the motorist. To see this wonderland intelligently or well, you ought really to be equipped with a camping outfit and go through on horseback. However, if you are willing to turn away from the main travel and strike west from Albuquerque, you can get a few compensating glimpses.