Ralph chose to sit on a box in the bed of the truck because, as he said frankly, “If I’m in the cab with the Chief, we’ll quarrel.”
Sandy joined the driller on another box that was scantily padded with a piece of blanket. Soon both of them were hanging onto the truck body for dear life as they bumped and blundered over a road that made previous ones they had traveled seem like superhighways.
Sometimes their way led through tall thickets of mesquite and briars that threatened to tear the clothes off their backs. Then they would ford a stream so deep that water splashed over them. The machine, though still fairly new, groaned and knocked like a Model T at the torture it was undergoing.
“This territory is what Australians call ‘back of beyond,’” Ralph shouted at one point as he dodged low-hanging tree branches. “We need a covered wagon.”
At another, when they all had to get out and push the machine from a gully into which it had slid, he made sarcastic remarks about the driving abilities of all unprintable Navajos.
Once he wiped the streaming perspiration from his face and neck, pointed to a mass of black clouds in the west and muttered, “Thunderstorm weather. A good day to lie under a tree and take siesta.” Mostly, though, the Ute gritted his teeth and kept silent as the pickup fought its lonely way across the fringes of the Painted Desert.
It was midafternoon and the sticky heat was stifling when they reached the great box canyon where the Hopis were supposed to be living.
“I don’t like the feel of this place,” Quail said as he stopped the truck on a high bank that overlooked the trout stream pouring out of a narrow cleft between two buttes. “Look at those thunder clouds piling up. I should not wish to lose my car in there.”
“We don’t matter, of course,” Ralph grunted. “How far is it to Ponytooth’s place?”
“About half a mile, I think,” the Navajo answered.