“Yes ma’am. It’s a good town. Twice a year on Gawge Washin’ton’s birthday and the Fo’th we hold a barbecue an’ everyone in the county comes. I’m right sorry I cain’t take yo’ ladies along; I’m sure I could show yo’ a good time. Whiskey flows like water, we roast a dozen oxen, and sometimes as much as fifteen thousand dollars will change hands at one crap game. We whoop it up for a week, and then we settle down, and mind the law again.”
Under the guidance of our kindly passenger, we learned a new technique in driving. In first gear, avoiding the deceptively smooth but slimy roadside, we made for the deepest ruts, racing the engine till it left a trail of thick white smoke behind, clinging to the steering wheel, while the heavy car rocked and creaked in the tyrannical grip of the ruts like a ship in the trough of the waves. Without our friend, we never should have got through. He walked ahead, selected the impassable places from those which merely looked so, and beamed, when rocked and bruised from the wheel I steered the good car to comparatively dry land. A little further, where the barbecue began, he bade us a regretful farewell, and requested us to look him up when next we came to Texas.
“I sure would ’a liked to have went to Boston,” he added, “but I aint sure ef I had ’a went theah, whetheh I could ’a understood their brogue.”
Since Houston we had learned the full meaning of Texas optimism. “Roads are splendid, ma’am. I think you’ll git through,” we mentally labeled as “probably passable.” But when we heard, in the same soft, gentle monotone, “Pretty poor roads, ma’am; I think yo’ll boag,” we knew we should “boag”—bog to the hubs in a plaster of Paris cast. At Richmond, where they told us that the roads which Houston had described as “splendid” were quite impassable, we sadly learned that to a Texan, any road twenty miles away is a “splendid road,” ten miles away is “pretty fair,” but at five, “you’ll sure boag.”
Again we faced the probability of progressing only a few miles further on Texas soil, but the town flocked to our aid, told us of two alternate roads, and promptly split into two factions, each claiming we should “boag” if we took the road advised by the other. A friendly soda clerk gained our confidence by asserting he never advised any road he had not traveled personally. He was such a unique change from the rest of Texas that we took his advice and the East Bernard road to Eagle Lake. It was only the fourth change from our original route planned when overlooking the asphalt of New York, and each detour decreased our chances of getting back to the highways. But there was no alternative. The soda clerk as he served us diluted ginger ale, reassured us. “It’s a pretty good road, and ef yo’ don’t boag, I think yo’ll git through.”
We bogged. We came, quite suddenly to a tell-tale stretch of black, spotting the red-brown road, and knew we were in for it. At each foot, we wondered if we should bog in the next. Eliza must have felt the same way, crossing the ice, especially when a cake slipped from under her. As directed, I kept to the ruts. Sometimes they expanded to a three-foot hole, into which the car descended with a heart-rending thump. Once in a rut, it was impossible to get out. The mud, of the consistency of modeling clay, would have made the fortune of a dealer in art supplies. At last, a wrong choice of ruts pulled us into this stiff mass to our hubs, almost wrenching the differential from the car, and we found ourselves stopping. As soon as we stopped, we were done for. We sank deeper and deeper.
We got out, sinking ourselves halfway to the knees in gumbo. We were on a lonely road in an absolutely flat country, with not a house on the horizon. We had no ropes, and no shovel. We looked at the poor car, foundered to her knees in sculptor’s clay, and wondered how many dismal days we must wait before the morass dried.
And then came the first manifestation of a peculiar luck which followed us on our entire trip. Never saving us from catastrophe, it rescued us in the most unlikely fashion, soon after disaster.
Along rode a boy—on horseback—the first person we had seen for hours. We stopped him, and inquired where we could find a mule, a rope and a man. Having started out to make the trip without masculine aid, it chagrined us to have to resort to it at our first difficulty, but we were not foolish enough to believe we could extricate the car unaided from its bed of sticky clay. The boy looked at us, looked at the imprisoned machine, and silently spat. Texas must have a law requiring that rite, with penalties for infringement thereof. We never saw it broken.
The formality over, he replied, “I don’t know.” We suggested planks,—he knew of none. We put him down, bitterly, as an ill-natured dolt. But, as we learned later, Texans move slowly, but their hearts are in the right place. He was only warming up. Finally he spat again, lighted a cigarette, got off his horse, silently untied a rope from his saddle, and bound it about our back wheel, disregarding calmly the mire sucking at his boots. I started the engine. No results. All three watched the fettered Gulliver helplessly. Then, while Toby and I lifted out heavy suitcases and boxes from the seat which held the chains, he watched us, with the mild patience of an ox.