Cabin Fever, B. M. Bower [ereader ebook txt] 📗

I shall skip a good many days, of course—though the diary did not, I assure you.

First, there was the outfit. When they had outfitted at Needles for the real trip, Cash set down the names of all living things in this wise:

Outfit, Cassius B. Markham, Bud Moore, Daddy a bull terrier, bay horse, Mars, Pete a sorrel, Ed a burro, Swayback a jinny, Maude a jack, Cora another jinny, Billy a riding burro & Sways colt & Maude colt a white mean looking little devil.

Sat. Apr. 1.

Up at 7:30. Snowing and blowing 3 ft. of snow on ground. Managed to get breakfast & returned to bed. Fed Monte & Peter our cornmeal, poor things half frozen. Made a fire in tent at 1:30 & cooked a meal. Much smoke, ripped hole in back of tent. Three burros in sight weathering fairly well. No sign of let up everything under snow & wind a gale. Making out fairly well under adverse conditions. Worst weather we have experienced.

Apr. 2.

Up at 7 A.M. Fine & sunny snow going fast. Fixed up tent & cleaned up generally. Alkali flat a lake, can't cross till it dries. Stock some scattered, brought them all together.

Apr. 3.

Up 7 A.M. Clear & bright. Snow going fast. All creeks flowing. Fine sunny day.

Apr. 4.

Up 6 A.M. Clear & bright. Went up on divide, met 3 punchers who said road impassable. Saw 2 trains stalled away across alkali flat. Very boggy and moist.

Apr.5.

Up 5 A.M. Clear & bright. Start out, on Monte & Pete at 6. Animals traveled well, did not appear tired. Feed fine all over. Plenty water everywhere.

Not much like Bud's auto stage, was it? But the very novelty of it, the harking back to old plains days, appealed to him and sent him forward from dull hardship to duller discomfort, and kept the quirk at the corners of his lips and the twinkle in his eyes. Bud liked to travel this way, though it took them all day long to cover as much distance as he had been wont to slide behind him in an hour. He liked it—this slow, monotonous journeying across the lean land which Cash had traversed years ago, where the stark, black pinnacles and rough knobs of rock might be hiding Indians with good eyesight and a vindictive temperament. Cash told him many things out of his past, while they poked along, driving the packed burros before them. Things which he never had set down in his diary—things which he did not tell to any one save his few friends.

But it was not always mud and rain and snow, as Cash's meager chronicle betrays.

May 6.

Up at sunrise. Monte & Pete gone leaving no tracks. Bud found them 3 miles South near Indian village. Bud cut his hair, did a good job. Prospector dropped into camp with fist full of good looking quartz. Stock very thirsty all day. Very hot Tied Monte & Pete up for night.

May 8.

Up 5:30. Fine, but hot. Left 7:30. Pete walked over a sidewinder & Bud shot him ten ft. in air. Also prior killed another beside road. Feed as usual, desert weeds. Pulled grain growing side of track and fed plugs. Water from cistern & R.R. ties for fuel. Put up tent for shade. Flies horrible.

May 9.

Up 4. Left 6. Feed as usual. Killed a sidewinder in a bush with 3 shots of Krag. Made 21 m. today. R.R. ties for fuel Cool breeze all day.

May 11.

Up at sunrise. Bud washed clothes. Tested rock. Fine looking mineral country here. Dressed Monte's withers with liniment greatly reducing swelling from saddle-gall. He likes to have it dressed & came of his own accord. Day quite comfortable.

May 15.

Up 4. Left 6:30 over desert plain & up dry wash. Daddy suffered from heat & ran into cactus while looking for shade. Got it in his mouth, tongue, feet & all over body. Fixed him up poor creature groaned all evening & would not eat his supper. Poor feed & wood here. Water found by digging 2 ft. in sand in sandstone basins in bed of dry wash. Monte lay down en route. Very hot & all suffered from heat.

May 16.

Bud has sick headache. Very hot so laid around camp all day. Put two blankets up on tent pols for sun break. Daddy under weather from cactus experience. Papago Indian boy about 18 on fine bay mare driving 4 ponies watered at our well. Moon almost full, lots of mocking birds. Pretty songs.

May 17.

Up 7:30 Bud some better. Day promises hot, but slight breeze. White gauzy clouds in sky. Daddy better. Monte & Pete gone all day. Hunted twice but impossible to track them in this stony soil Bud followed trail, found them 2 mi. east of here in flat sound asleep about 3 P.M. At 6 went to flat 1/4 mi. N. of camp to tie Pete, leading Monte by bell strap almost stepped on rattler 3 ft. long. 10 rattles & a button. Killed him. To date, 1 Prairie rattler, 3 Diamond back & 8 sidewinders, 12 in all. Bud feels better.

May 18.

At 4 A. M. Bud woke up by stock passing camp. Spoke to me who half awake hollered, “sic Daddy!” Daddy sicced 'em & they went up bank of wash to right. Bud swore it was Monte & Pete. I went to flat & found M. & P. safe. Water in sink all gone. Bud got stomach trouble. I threw up my breakfast. Very hot weather. Lanced Monte's back & dressed it with creoline. Turned them loose & away they put again.

Soon after this they arrived at the place where Thompson had located his claim. It was desert, of course, sloping away on one side to a dreary waste of sand and weeds with now and then a giant cactus standing gloomily alone with malformed lingers stretched stiffly to the staring blue sky. Behind where they pitched their final camp—Camp 48, Cash Markham recorded it in his diary—the hills rose. But they were as stark and barren almost as the desert below. Black rock humps here and there, with ledges of mineral bearing rock. Bushes and weeds and dry washes for the rest, with enough struggling grass to feed the horses and burros if they rustled hard enough for it.

They settled down quietly to a life of grinding monotony that would have driven some men crazy. But Bud, because it was a man's kind of monotony, bore it cheerfully. He was out of doors, and he was hedged about by no rules or petty restrictions. He liked Cash Markham and he liked Pete, his saddle horse, and he was fond of Daddy who was still paying the penalty of seeking too carelessly for shade and, according to Cash's record, “getting it in his mouth, tongue, feet & all