“Oh, asylum,” I said. “Yes, I dare say they have; it’s quite a city.”
He moved out of the way so that I might start, and then I noticed that he limped.
“Is South Hawkeye, or whatever you call it, far?” I asked him.
“Whatcher call far, mebbe no,” he said, which was not altogether enlightening. “Like on ten mile,” he added after a pause.
“Well,” I said, “that’s nothing if we can get there by a road. I can have you there in half an hour. Climb in if you’re going home. Where is South Hawkeye anyway? I’ll shoot you there quicker than you could foot it.”
He climbed in and sat beside me without any polite hesitation or superfluous acknowledgments. He glanced at me with a fixed, shrewd, inquiring gaze. I had an uncomfortable feeling that he was not so astonished at the wonderful speed and convenience of a car as at my use of the word shoot. I think it amused him. He looked me all over and I fancied he was of the opinion that such a person as myself couldn’t possibly shoot. He was right at that, for I never shot anything in my life except a game of pool.
CHAPTER IV—The Obscure Trail
I had seen something of Interstate Park and now I was to have a glimpse of the old life which had been there before the region was set aside; the life and times which had caught my imagination.
Long Buck Sanderson lived in the country south of the road which is the main artery through the reservation. By his advice I returned along this road until we came again to Kanawauke Lakes where the Scout Headquarters are located. Here he directed me into a country road which ran south and we followed this for two or three miles till we came to a sort of hamlet with a tiny primitive schoolhouse and a horrible gasoline station. Of all the atrocities committed by the automobile, the killing of children, the maiming of pedestrians, this was the worst. It would have been the quaintest little hamlet in the world, but for that ungodly gas station. Sandyfield is the name on the schoolhouse.
This place was Buck Sanderson’s market town. He lived in a remote suburb, as one might say, and that was at a place another couple of miles south called Rattlesnake Gulch. To reach Rattlesnake Gulch you must leave your car to the tender mercies of Sandyfield, but you could almost carry Sandyfield away in a Ford. From this sequestered hamlet you have to hit the trail southwest for Rattlesnake Gulch. There is really no visible trail most of the way. And Rattlesnake Gulch has no other habitations except the primitive cabin of Buck Sanderson; or rather, I should say, had none, for even that homely abode is no more.