There was a pleasing young woman with him, who said she was a teacher, ordered to report to the Agent at Keams Cañon. Our meeting-place was about thirty miles from the last post-house, and quite ninety miles from the [[289]]railroad. I can imagine how strange and timid one feels under such conditions. It had been a bleak day, and a keen night was coming on. My auto would reach the Agency hours before those two weary bronks could plod in; so I introduced myself, and said she would travel quicker to the Agency with me. She looked me over: dingy hat, rusty puttees, red nose, everything—and decided to remain with the voluble Mexican.
I can remember leaving Chin Lee one winter’s night, black shadows on the snow-covered desert and a razor-edged wind coming straight out of that huge funnel, Cañon de Chelly, to go seventy-five miles to Kayenta, the most isolated post-office and trading-post in the United States. I had been bluffed into it by my friend, the Water-Witch, who wanted to save the morrow’s daylight.
“Can you stand an all-night hike?” he asked, solicitously. “Sing out if you can’t. There’s a good bed here, and—”
“I’m game for it, if you are,” I said, but without enthusiasm.
The engine of his emaciated Ford clucked, and the snow crunched under its wheels. For the first hour a brisk conversation kept us illuminated and fairly warm. Then it grew deadly cold, with that relentless, piercing cold to be experienced only at night in those cruelly bleak, windswept, desert wastes. I bit down on my pipe to prevent my teeth castanetting. I felt of my face to be sure it had not cracked off. And we rode on and on, paralleling the dim Black Mountain barricade. Finally, with bitter exasperation, the Witch called out: “Dammit all! ain’t you cold?”
“Froze,” I gasped.
“Well, there’s a trading-post hiding in this side cañon, [[290]]if I can find the road to it. You’ll never sing out. I give up. Let’s make for camp before we both perish.”
I uttered choking sounds of thanksgiving. And it drearily seemed, for a space, that he would not be able to find the trail. The snow was unbroken in the hills. Then we caught a gleam from the black, gave a hail, and found a cedar-fire welcome.
Those are Arizona adventures.
One may encounter them in boggy flats, or in blinding snowstorms; in seeking to cross a river in springtime without too much knowledge of the ford; in facing the hot sand’s lash that stings as powdered glass; with exhausted horses and far from the town, on hearing the crunch of a drive-pinion twenty miles the wrong side of home; at nightfall; at midnight, noon, or dawn. The blush of morning on snow-encrusted cliffs, the wistful mysteries of summer twilight, the burnished glories of an autumn sunset, have no appeal then. Simple struggles with the elements and distances of the lonely Desert, when tired out, cold, hungry. They are the day’s work, hard, exhausting work. And one does not record such things in Annual Reports.