Asleep, Early Morning, on the Painted Desert.
A few years later I was again at Oraibi, and strangely near the same camping place. This time my companions were W. W. Bass, whose early adventures have been recounted in my "In and Around the Grand Canyon," a photographer, and a British friend of his who had stopped off in California on his way home from Japan. Mr. Britisher had contributed a small share towards the expenses of the expedition, but with insular ignorance he had presumed that his small mite would pay the expenses of the whole outfit for a long period. It must be confessed that we had had a most arduous trip. The Painted Desert had shown its ugly side from the very moment we left the railway. Four miles out we had been stopped by the most terrific and vivid lightning-storm it has ever been my good fortune to witness and to be scared half out of my wits with. At Rock Tanks we had another storm. We had been jolted and shaken on our way out to Hopi Point of the Grand Canyon, and had come so near to perishing for want of water that we fell on our knees and greedily drank the vilest liquid from an alkali pool, a standing place of horses, on our way to the Little Colorado. At the old Tanner Crossing of that stream we had had another rain and lightning-storm near unto the first in fury, and in which our British friend had been caught in his blankets and nearly frightened to death. In the Moenkopi Wash he was offended because I left the wagon to ride to the home and accept the hospitality of the Mormon bishop, which he interpreted again with insular ignorance to mean a palace, a place of luxury, exquisite restfulness, good foods, and delicious iced wines, while he was left to beans, bacon, flapjacks, and dried fruit, and a roll of blankets on the rough and uneven ground. (It didn't make any difference that I explained to him next day that I had slept on a grass plot with one quilt and no pillow, cold, shivering, and longing for my good substantial roll of Navaho blankets, left for him to use if he so desired, and that our "banquet" had been coarse bread and a bowl of milk.) Then we had had another storm at Toh-gas-je, which I had partially avoided by riding on ahead in the light wagon of the Indian agent who piloted us, while he—Mr. Britisher—was in the heavier ambulance. The next night we camped, attempting to sleep on the stony slopes of the hillside at Blue Canyon in wretchedness and misery, because it was too late when we arrived to dare to drive down into the canyon. The next day we drove over the Sahara of America, a sandy desert which even to the Hopis is the most a-tu-u-u (hot) of all earthly places. That noon we camped in the dry wash of Tnebitoh, where we had to dig for water, waiting for it slowly to seep into the hole we had dug. It was a sandy, alkaline decoction, but we were glad and thankful for it, and the way the poor horses stood and longingly looked on as we waited for the inflow was pitiable. At night we camped some twelve or fifteen miles farther on, without water, hobbling the horses and turning them loose. I had engaged an Indian to go with us from Blue Canyon as helper and guide, so I sent him, in the morning, to bring in the horses. Two or three hours later he returned, with but one of the animals, and said he had tried to track the others, but could not do so. Imagine what our predicament would have been, in the heart of the desert, without horses and water, and many miles away from any settlement. There was but one thing to be done, and Mr. Bass at once did it. Putting a bridle on the one horse, he rode off barebacked after the runaways. Knowing the character of his mules, he aimed directly for the Tnebitoh. When he arrived at the spot where we had watered the day before, he found that, with unerring instinct, the horses had returned to this spot and had dug new watering places for themselves. Then, scenting the cool grass of the San Francisco Mountains, they had aimed directly west, and, hobbled though they were, the tracks showed they were travelling at a lively rate of speed. Knowing the urgency and desperateness of our case, Bass followed as fast as he could make his almost exhausted animal go, and after an hour's hard riding saw, in the far-away distance, the three perverse creatures "hitting" the trailless desert as hard as they could. Jersey, a knowing mule, was in the lead. He soon saw Bass, and, seeming to communicate with the others, they turned and saw him also. Jack (the other mule) and the horse at once showed a disposition to stop, but Jersey with bite and whinney tried to drive them on. Finding his efforts useless, he stopped with the others, and, when Bass rode up, allowed himself to be "necked" (tied neck to neck) with the other two. Horses and man were as near "played out" as we cared to see them when, later in the day, they returned to camp.
It does not do to go out upon the Painted Desert without some practical person who is capable of meeting all serious emergencies that are likely to arise.
The next day we drove on to Oraibi, in the scorching sun, over the sandy hillocks, where no road would last an hour in a wind-storm unless it were thoroughly blanketed and pegged down. We were all hot, weary, and ill-tempered. Thinking to help out, I volunteered to walk up the steep western trail to the mesa top and secure some corn at Oraibi for our horses, so that they could be fed at once on reaching our stopping place on the east side. When we started I had suggested the hope that we might be able to stop in the schoolhouse below the Oraibi mesa, as I had several times done in times before; but when the wagon arrived there, and I came down from the mesa, it was found to be already occupied by persons to whom it had been promised by the Indian agent. Camping, then, was the only thing left open to us, until I could see the Hopis and rent one of their houses. Down we drove to the camp, where alone a sufficiency of water was to be found. This explains our close proximity to the camp of the earlier year. We were just preparing our meal when a fierce sand-storm blew up. Cooking was out of the question; the fire blew every which way, and the sand filled meat, beans, corn, tomatoes with too much grit for comfort. This was the last straw that broke the back of Mr. Britisher's complacency. He had bemoaned again and again the leaving of his comfortable home to come into this "God-forsaken region," in a quest of what our crazy westernism called pleasure, and now his fury burst upon me in a manner that dwarfed the passion of the heavens and the earth. While there was a refinement in his vituperation, there was an edge upon it as keen as fury, passion, and culture could give it. I was scorched by his scarifying lightnings, struck again and again by his vindictive thunderbolts, tossed hither and thither by his stormy winds, and lifted heavenwards and then dashed downwards by the tornadoes and whirlwinds of his passion. It was dazzling, bewildering, intensely interesting, and then fiercely irritating. I stood it all until he denounced my selfishness. There's no doubt I am selfish, but there is a limit to a fellow's endurance when another fellow claims the discovery and rubs it in upon you until he abrades the skin. So I raised my hand and also my voice: "Stop, that's enough. Dare to repeat that and I'll tie you on a horse and send you back to the railway in charge of an Indian so quickly that you'll wonder how you got there. Selfish, am I? I permitted you to come on this trip as a favor to my photographer. The paltry sum you paid me has not found one-fourth share of the corn for one horse, let alone your own food, the hire of the horses, wagon, and driver. To oblige you I have allowed you the whole way to ride inside my conveyance that you might talk together, while I have sat out in the hot sun. If any help has been needed by Mr. Bass in driving, I have willingly given it instead of calling upon you. I have done all the unpacking and the packing of the wagon at each camp, morning, noon, and night. I have done all the cooking and much of the dish-washing, and yet you have the impudence and mendacity to say I have been selfish. Very well! I'll take myself at your estimate. In future I'll take my seat inside the ambulance; you shall do your share of helping the driver. You shall do your share of the packing; and if you eat another mouthful, so long as you remain in my camp, you shall cook it yourself. I have spoken! And when I thus speak I speak as the laws of the Medes and Persians, which alter not, nor change!"
The Colorado River at Bass Ferry, the Vampire of the Painted Desert.
"Well, —— says you are selfish!" burst out the somewhat cowed man.
"Then I put him on the same plane as I put you; and if ever either of you dares to make that charge again, I will—"