Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
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<p>He tried so to time his progress that he might always be from three to five miles behind Claire—distant enough to be unnoticed, near enough to help in case of need. For behind poetic expression and the use of forks was the fact that his purpose in life was to know Claire.
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<p>Mr. Boltwood could not be coaxed to play with the people to whom his Minneapolis representative introduced him. He was overworking again, and perfectly happy. He was hoping to find something wrong with the branch house. Claire tried to tempt him out to the lakes. She failed. His nerve-fuse burnt out the second time, with much fireworks.
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<p>She turned up the collar of her gray tweed coat, painfully climbed out—the muscles of her back racking—and examined the state of the rear wheels. They were buried to the axle; in front of them the mud bulked in solid, shiny blackness. She took out her jack and chains. It was too late. There was no room to get the jack under the axle. She remembered from the narratives of motoring friends that brush in mud gave a firmer surface for the wheels to climb upon.
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<p>"I'll beat it out and see." When she brought them, she put a spoon in Claire's saucer of peas, and demanded, "Say, you don't wear that silk dress in the auto, do you?"
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<p>Claire, and indeed her father and Mr. Jeff Saxton as well, had vaguely concluded that because drummers were always to be seen in soggy hotels and badly connecting trains and the headachy waiting-rooms of stations, they must like these places. Milt knew that the drummers were martyrs; that for months of a trip, all the while thinking of the children back home, they suffered from landlords and train schedules; that they were Claire's best allies in fighting the Great American Frying Pan; that they knew good things, and fought against the laziness and impositions of people who "kept hotel" because they had failed as farmers; and that when they did find a landlord who was cordial and efficient, they went forth mightily advertising that glorious man. The traveling men, he knew, were pioneers in spats.
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<p>Fluid the world flowed under us: the hills,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"> Billow on billow of umbrageous green,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"> Heaved us, aghast, to fresh horizons, seen</span><br />
One rapturous instant, blind with dash of rills<br />
And silver rising storms and dewy stills<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"> Of dripping boulders, then the dim ravine</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"> Drowned us again in leafage, whose serene</span><br />
Coverts grew loud with our tumultuous wills.
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<p>Then all of nature’s old amazement<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"> Sudden to ask us: "Is this also Man?</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"> This plunging, volant land-amphibian—</span><br />
What Plato mused and Paracelsus dreamed?<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"> Reply!" And piercing us with ancient scan,</span><br />
The shrill primeval hawk gazed and screamed.
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<p>Nor speech is close nor fingers numb, <br />
If love not seldom has received <br />
An unjust answer, was deceived. <br />
I, decent with the seasons, move <br />
Different or with a different love, <br />
Nor question overmuch the nod, <br />
The stone smile of this country god <br />
That never was more reticent, <br />
Always afraid to say more than it meant.
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<p>From the very first coming down <br />
Into a new valley with a frown <br />
Because of the sun and a lost way, <br />
You certainly remain: to-day <br />
I, crouching behind a sheep-pen, heard <br />
Travel across a sudden bird, <br />
Cry out against the storm, and found <br />
The year’s arc a completed round <br />
And love’s worn circuit re-begun, <br />
Endless with no dissenting turn. <br />
Shall see, shall pass, as we have seen <br />
The swallow on the tile, spring’s green <br />
Preliminary shiver, passed <br />
A solitary truck, the last <br />
Of shunting in the Autumn. But now <br />
To interrupt the homely brow, <br />
Thought warmed to evening through and through <br />
Your letter comes, speaking as you, <br />
Speaking of much but not to come.
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<p>Having come in to Elizabethtown through a hole we went out over a cloud. There are no other ways. The mountains surround it. The Indians call this pass “arrow stick in pole," it is so steep. Once at the summit, twisting and bending like a floundering whale, the car coasted down to the irrigated plain of Taos, where Indians, resting on their hoes, eyed us silently, and Mexicans saluted gracefully. Three miles beyond we swooped suddenly down upon the settlement of five-story, terraced houses of the Red Willow Indians. In their gaudy blankets they swarmed to the earthen housetops and watched us silently. But when, after much coaxing, we crowded the car with redskins and sent it dashing up and down at breakneck speed there were such war-whoops as city dwellers never hear.
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<p>We had a plunge in the Las Vegas Hot Springs and started north again along the old Santa Fé trail, meeting few people and seeing little that was new. One begrizzled old man, at an isolated shack, watched us so wistfully as he brought us some water that we half wanted to take him into the car and drive him into civilization, but he is probably happier as he is. From Raton it is back, over the same way we came, to Colorado Springs and home.
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<p>Romance is fast being crowded out of the life of the pioneer; once he depended upon his own sturdy legs, or those of his broncho or burronow he may, if he like, ride in an automobile, the latest pathfinder of the plains. The machine has its thrilling side, too.
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<div class="poem">
<p>From Taos we pushed through sand for many miles. The only living thing we saw was a gray coyote. But the desert is clean and sunny, which is something. At last we reached harder soil and green things growing. Indians greeted us on the way, and finally we came to the cliff dwellings of Pajorito Park, one of the many ruins of the great centuries-ago cities of the Southwest. One of the localities showed that 250,000 people lived there in houses, some of them five stories, or about seventy-five feet high. Irrigation, agriculture, industries and arts were all parts of their daily life.
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<p>It took us two hours to run from Colorado Springs—our starting point—to Pueblo, past Pike's Peak and Cheyenne Mountain, most of the way over hot alkali plains, furrowed deep by cloud-burst and spring freshets. From Pueblo, taking supplies for the machine, we struck south across country. We were soon out of the world, drifting across a roadless land made more weird by the light which the moon threw over it. We were trying to locate the main highway to Walsenburg. For a time we crawled along where lines showed teams had once gone, until we came to a Mexican ranch of adobe houses; but the three big headlights on the machine discovered no one and we crept slowly away from the corral, the machine thudding sullenly under us. Then suddenly we blundered into the roadway and away we went at a rate of thirty miles an hour, transfixing with wonder a few Mexicans who were camping near by.
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<p>Running in to Santa Fé we passed wagons crowded with Indians, gorgeous in color, from bullet-headed papoose to squaw and buck. They all watched us stolidly, while the bronchos reeled and jumped with fright until we were out of sight. Then the bronchos probably received some attention.
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<p>To climb mountain passes with a thirty-per-cent grade, to coast down rocky roads with only a few feet from wheels to the edge of an abyss of picturesque wonders, to swing along southern paths made famous by the Indians and pony express riders of only a few years ago, and along which a motor-car had never before been seen, this is an automobile trip that has exploring and sight seeing, and excitement enough to suit the most adventurous spirit. Such a journey I took this spring with Mr. W. W. Price, who has, with an automobile, re-discovered many a Western cañon, pass and desert.
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<p>These Indians believe that the Great Spirit has guided them to this promised land. They wandered here from the north, and we listened, standing with bare heads in an underground council chamber, to the recital in Spanish of the story of their faith. They are a fine example of the early American aristocracy at its best. They have some lessons for modern American society. In Taos, too, lived and lies Kit Carson, the hunter and trapper, scout and soldier.
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