"We've got some food," said Miranda. "You might fetch along some canned stuff if you've any handy. Ed, you sure you got plenty ile, gas an' water? Better look her all over."
With orders to Buck, with some provisions, ammunition and a few tools, the hurried start was made. Mormon clambered to the front seat beside young Ed, Miranda Bailey sat between Sandy and Sam. Whatever lack of energy the lank Ed Junior displayed on his feet, he eliminated as a driver. The springs creaked, chirpings arose from various parts of the car as it ran, but he coaxed the engine, performed miracles at bad places in the road, nursed the insufficient radiator surface and kept the "kittle" at a simmer.
He judged grades, rushed them, conquered them, sometimes at a crawl, slid and skipped and jumped down slopes, negotiated curves on two wheels and brought them triumphantly through White Cliff Cañon, over the malpais belt, up and across a mesa and so to the far brink of it an hour before dawn without puncture, without a broken leaf in the springs, with shock absorbers still on duty and the cylinders performing full service.
Cold and raw as it was, the engine was hot and they halted to cool it. They could see a light or two glimmering at the foot of the mesa, something that had not shown in the deserted mining camp for many years. Miranda Bailey shivered as she got stiffly from the car.
"I've got some powdered coffee an' some solid alcohol," she announced. "We can all have somethin' hot to drink anyway. It won't take but a minute. Here's some cold biscuits we can warm up on that radiator. It's nigh as good as a stove."
The trio watched interestedly the capable way in which she got together the meal, adding sugar and evaporated milk to her coffee. Sam picked up the tin of solid alcohol after it had cooled off.
"It's too bad they can't fix up the real stuff that way," he said. "It 'ud sure make a hit. Canned Tom-and-Jerry, all ready for heatin'."
"And you called Soda-Water Sam," said Miranda Bailey.
"That title was give me in derision," replied Sam. "Me, I don't hesitate to say I like my licker. Likewise I can do 'thout it. They claim that I used to leave nothin' but the sody-water inter a saloon once I'd entered it. Which same is a calummy. Gittin' light in the east, ain't it, folks?"
Coffee-comforted, they made the down-road as the sun rose above the rim of the eastern range, so jagged it seemed trying to claw back the mounting sun. Ever in view below them lay the intermountain valley in which the camp had been located. Its floor was jumbled with hard-cored hills. There was little greenery. A few cottonwoods, fewer willows along the deep bed of a scanty stream. Under the sunrise the whole scene was theatrical with vivid light and shade. The crumpled ground, the deep-ridged hills, all seemed unreal, made up of papier-mâché, crudely modeled and painted, garish, unfinished. The effect was enhanced by the appearance of the one main street of the camp and the few scattering cabins on the hills, the ancient dumps in front of the lateral shafts where the weathered timbers sagged.