Passing through a beautiful little canyon, over a road which tossed us like a catboat in a nor’easter, we again came, at dusk, to sleeping Nambé, and the brink of the stream. Toby, who was driving, plunged boldly in, without preliminary reconnoitre. We afterward agreed that here she made a tactical error. The trickle of the morning, had risen to our hubs. To make matters worse, the stream ran one way, and the ford another. We all hurled directions at the unhappy Toby.
“Keep down stream!”
“Follow the ford!”
“Back up!”
“Go ahead,—go ahead!”
Toby hesitated. Now in crossing a swift stream, to hesitate is to lose. The car struck the current mid-stream, the water dashed up and killed the engine, and the “old lady” became a Baptist in regular standing. Toby saw she was in for it, I could tell by the guilty look of the back of her neck. She tried frantically to reverse, but no response came from the submerged engine.
“Toby,” I cried in anguish, “start her, quick!” And then I regret to say I lapsed into profanity, exclaiming, “Oh, devil, devil, darn!”
In a moment, everyone was standing on the seats, and climbing thence to the mudguard. Our cameras, coats, pocketbooks, and the remains of some lettuce sandwiches floated or sank according to their specific gravity. I plunged my arm down to the elbow, and brought up two ruined cameras, and a purse which a week later was still wet. Meanwhile the others had climbed from the mudguard to the radiator, fortunately half out of water, and thence jumped ashore. Before I could follow suit, the water had risen to the back seat, and I scrambled ashore soaked to the knees. We were on the wrong side of the stream from Nambé, and the river was too deep for wading. Finally the man of the party risked his life, or at least the high boots which were the joy of his life, and reached the opposite shore, where lay the pueblo. After a long interval he returned with two Indians who led a team of horses across.
Trained as I have said poor Lo, or Pueb-Lo, to make a bad pun, is in matters of the spirit, in mechanics he has not the sense of a backward child of three years. These two attached a weak rope to the car, where it would have the least pulling power and the greatest strain, drove the horses off at a wrong angle,—and broke the rope. For two hours, with greatest good nature and patience, they alternately attached chains and broke them until we had exhausted the hardware of the entire town. It was now long after midnight. Having reached the point where we hoped the car would sink entirely and save us further effort, we accepted the Indian’s offer of two beds for the ladies and a shakedown for the man, and went weary and supperless to bed. Toby and I were used to going supperless to bed, but it was hard on our two friends to whom we had meant to give a pleasant day.
As we entered the bedroom into which the Indian proudly ushered us, I exclaimed “Toby!” The room contained two large beds, a piano between them, some fearful crayon portraits of Nambé’s older settlers, and a scarlet Navajo rug. Nothing remarkable about the room, except that the piano and the two lace-covered beds denoted we were being entertained by pueblo aristocracy. But on that morning, being one of those people who do not start the day right until they have unloaded their dreams on some victim, I had compelled Toby to listen to the dream which had held me prisoner the previous night. In it, we had started off into the desert with the “old lady,” and traveled until we found ourselves in a sea of sand. Then, for some reason not clear when I woke, we abandoned the car, and set out afoot over wastes of sand, in which we sank to our ankles. All day we walked, and at night exhausted, found shelter in a crude building. Presently, the men in our party returned to say they had found beds for the women, but must themselves sleep on the ground. Then they led us into a room. And in this room were two beds, a piano, some crayon portraits with gimcrack ornaments on the wall, and on the floor a brilliant crimson rug. The arrangement of the furniture in the real and the dream world was identical. In my dream I also had a vivid consciousness of going to a strange and uncomfortable bed, tired and hungry. Now a psychoanalyst once told me that science does not admit the prophetic dream as orthodox. Yet our little excursion, ending so disastrously, had not been planned till after I told my dream to Toby. My own firm belief is that our guardian angels were violating the Guardian Angels’ Labor Union Laws, working overtime to send us a warning. Would we had taken it!