Another neighbor took me in hand. The odor of gasolene about him—it was even more pungent than the fumes of other liquids, taken internally—proclaimed him an auto driver.
"If you don't know where to go, let me show you," was the offer of this would-be guide and philosopher—I assume him a philosopher on the ground that any pilot in Central Oregon in those days must be one.
In answer to my inquiries he bade me hie straight to Harney County. It was two hundred and fifty miles away. But I lost heart, stuck to my original half-resolve, and declared Bend my objective point. In later experience it was borne home to me that those pioneer auto men of Shaniko always sang loudest the praises of the most distant point; their rate was ten or fifteen cents per mile per passenger, and on the face of it their business acumen is apparent!
One hundred miles of staging—five hundred and twenty-eight thousand feet of dust, if it be summer, or mud, if it be winter; Heaven knows how many chuck holes, how many ruts, how many bumps! The ride, commencing at eight one evening, ended about six the next. No early Christian martyr was more thoroughly bruised and stiffened at the hands of Roman mobs than the tenderfoot traveler on the memorable Shaniko-Bend journey! And there were so many rich possibilities—nay, probabilities—of diversion. Winter blizzards on Shaniko Flats were to be expected, while after thaws the heavy stages "bogged down" with aggravating regularity. The steep villainous road of the Cow Canyon grade upset many a vehicle, and well I recall one January night, when a two-day rain had turned to snow, when the air was freezing but the mud was soft, how the up-stage and the down-stage met in the awful hours where there was no turning out: clothing was ruined that night, and dispositions warped beyond repair, while passengers labored and swore and labored again until at last one stage had been snaked out of the way on a hand-made shelf, so to speak, and a passing effected. Later, we, who were Shaniko bound, were capsized in the mud. Half-frozen, wholly exhausted, we finally reached the railroad one hour after the day's only train had departed! But those were incidents of the road.
I think I never before saw a man lose his eye and recover it. Yet that was the optical antic played by my companion "inside." He was a horse buyer, and I attributed his leer to a cast of character one naturally connects with horse-trading, until all at once he was groping on the floor.
"Lost something?" I inquired politely.
"My eye."
On bank holidays I have heard 'Arry say that to 'Arriet at 'Ammersmith, but as an exclamation, not an explanation. "My eye, he's lost something valuable, and is British in his expression," thought I innocently. So I inquired if I could help him in the search.
"And er—what was it you lost?" I added.