I added an arrow to point the direction. And then, to make sure that my sign was noticed, I placed a few sharp stones in the ruts. These would probably puncture his tire, and in looking for the cause, he would observe our appeal and come to our rescue. It took a long while to collect enough white stones to make the sign, but when I had finished I felt much elated, and more kindly toward Toby for reading the guide book right when she should have read it wrong. It was cooler walking back, though my tongue was swollen with thirst. Our canteen had displayed a leak only yesterday, and we had tossed it into the sagebrush.
At the windmill I found the car partly jacked up, so that she careened drunkenly to one side, but her right dashboard was now above water. Toby’s skirt was caked with mud, and her shoes and stockings plastered with it. She seemed depressed. She explained she had slipped trying to balance on a plank, and had fallen in the chuck-hole.
“This pool is full of dead cattle,” she said, dolefully. “I just put my finger in something’s eye.”
About to take off shoes and stockings and wade into the pool, something gave me pause. Gingerly we stood on the brink, and poked planks where the mud was thickest, in the forlorn hope of making a stable bottom. Alas, they only sank, and vexed us by protruding on end whenever we tried to back the old lady. We knew the first step was to jack the rear wheels, but while we raised one wheel, the other sank so deep in the mud that we could get neither plank nor jack under it. After many embittered attempts we gave it up, and tried placing the jack under the springs. It worked beautifully; in a few seconds the body of the car was a foot higher, and seemed willing to continue her soaring indefinitely. We took turns jacking; still she rose. We were greatly encouraged. After several minutes Toby said, “The jack’s at the top notch,—what shall I do next?”
It was so easy we might have guessed there was a catch somewhere. To our astonishment we discovered that in rising, the body of the car had not taken the wheels with it. Two feet of daylight gaped between mudguard and wheels. A moment more, and the two would have parted company forever. Jacking is easy in theory, or in a garage, but the trouble with the outdoor art is that the car usually lands in a position where it has to be jacked up in order to get planks under it in order to jack it up. “Pou sto,” said Archimedes, defining our dilemma succinctly.
New Mexico boasts an inhabitant to every eight square miles, but the member for our district continued to ignore our invasion of his realm. Two fried egg sandwiches, consumed that noon, was—or were—our only sustenance that day. We were so hungry we sounded hollow to the touch. Our mouths felt like flannel, and our throats burned with thirst. Not forty feet away a stream of pure water ran from the windmill. But it ran from a slippery lead pipe which extended a dozen feet over a reservoir. The water was there, but we could not get at it without a plunge bath. Muddy and weary, we worked on without courage.
At sundown, from one of the other squares appeared the Inhabitant on horseback, driving some cows to our cattle-hole. He was a youth of sixteen, running mostly to adenoids and Adam’s apple, which worked agitatedly at sight of us, but his eyelashes any beauty specialist would envy. As to his voice, the strain of making it reach across eight miles to the next Inhabitant had exhausted it, or perhaps embarrassment silenced him; we could not get a word out of him till he had watered his cattle and started away. Then emboldened by having his back safely to us, he shouted that at a house, a “coupla miles southeast,” we might find a team,—and vanished into nowhere.
Toby had by this time managed to crawl out on the lead pipe, and after gyrations fascinating to watch, captured a pail of water. Drinking eagerly, we set out for the house the Inhabitant indicated, with the pail in our hands to guard against future thirst. Sunset was making transparent the low mountain range skirting our valley, when we left. The sand filled our shoes, and the persistent “devil’s claw,” zealous to propagate its kind, clung to our feet with a desperate grip. Our pail became heavy, but we dared not empty it. At last we reached the ranch. A half-starved dog sprang out eagerly to meet us. The house was deserted; there were no teams to pull us out, nor any food to give the poor, famishing beast. He watched us leave, with a hurt, baffled look in his brown eyes, as if patiently marveling at the inhumanity of man. From the ranch, we glimpsed another house, a mile further away, and again we started hopefully for it, while a horned moon circled up a pink sky. The desert from a barren, ugly waste was become unbelievably lovely in the transfiguring twilight.
The crescent moon brought us no luck, for we saw it over our left shoulders. It was still Friday the Thirteenth. The second house, even to the hungry dog, duplicated the first. It stood dismantled and deserted. We saw nothing ahead but a ten mile tramp to Rodeo in the dark, the poison green hotel, and “Lord help us!” whatever that meant.
Our flashlight was in the car. To return for it meant three more weary miles. Toby was for risking the road without it, but my sixth sense warned me to return, and I persuaded her to this course. As we crossed the desert the dim shape of our marooned machine loomed up in the dusk. And beside it—