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From Off the Road Database
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<p>Instead, we tamely drew up before a little brick station-house two blocks beyond. He did all he could, even offering to appear in court the next day and plead for us, but from what we now knew of his local record, it seemed wiser to meet the judge on our own merits.
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<p>His tone was so fatherly that I knew only gratitude for being saved from two months in a Texas dungeon.
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<p>But in the old French or Creole quarters you find all the storied charm of the city intact,—a bit of Italy, of Old Spain, of the milder and sunnier parts of France, jumbled together with the romance of the West Indies. In the cobbled narrow pavements, down which mule teams still clatter more often than motors, the mellow old houses, with iron balconies beautifully wrought, broad verandahs, pink, green or orange plastered walls, peeling to show the red brick underneath,—shady courtyards, high-walled with fountains and stone Cupids, glimpsed through low arched doorways, markets like those of Cannes and Avignon, piled with luscious fruits, crawfish, crates of live hens, strings of onions, and barrels of huge oysters,—oh, the oysters of New Orleans,—here lies the fascination of the town.
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<p>I will say that it is almost a pleasure to be arrested in Texas. Two merry motor-cops smiled at us winsomely. There was sympathy, understanding and good fellowship in their manner,—no malice, yet firmness withal, which is the way I prefer to be handled by the police. As officers they had to do their duty. As gentlemen, they regretted it.
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<p>Our own stout lady was particularly rare. She appeared coquettishly the first calm day off Florida, in a pink gingham dress, a large black rosary draped prominently upon her,—which did not much heighten her resemblance to a Mother Superior, owing to her wearing an embroidered Chinese kimona and a monkey coat over it, and flirting so gayly with the boys. On the Galveston train later, we heard her say helplessly, "Porter, my trunk is follering me to Galveston. How shall I stop it?" She could have stopped an express van merely by standing in front of it, but we did not suggest this remedy. The picture of a docile Saratoga lumbering doggedly at her rear was too much for words.
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<p>It was love at first sight—our map and us. Pima and Maricopa Indians, Zuni and Laguna pueblos, the Rainbow Bridge and Havasupai Canyon beckoned to us and hinted their mysteries; our itinerary widened until it included vaguely everything there was to see. We made only one reservation—we would <i>not</i> visit California. California was the West, dehorned; it possessed climate, boulevards and conveniences; but it also possessed sand fleas and native sons. It was a little thing which caused us to make this decision, but epochal. At the San Francisco Exposition, I had seen a long procession of Native Sons, dressed in their native gold—a procession thousands strong. Knowing what one native son can do when he begins on his favorite topic of conversation, we dared not trust ourselves to an army of them, an army militant.
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<p>The waiters at Antoine's are not hit-or-miss riff-raff sent up by a waiters' employment bureau. They are grandfatherly courtiers who make you feel that the responsibility for your digestion lies in their hands, and for the good name of the house in yours. Old New Orleans knows them by name, and recognizes the special dignity of their priesthood, with the air of saluting equals. Their lifework is your pleasure,—the procuring of your inner contentment. You could trust your family's honor to them, or the ordering of your meal. Only at Antoine's and in the pages of Leonard Merrick does one find such servitors.
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<p>The city, pleasant enough under the sun, had its usual allotment of boulevards, bronze monuments, drug stores, bungalows of the modest and mansions of the local plutocrats, but it had not the atmosphere of New Orleans. We were soon to learn that regardless of size, beauty or history, some towns have personality, others have about as much personality as a reception room in a Methodist dormitory.
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<p>Reinforcements came, a moment later, from a decrepit buggy, containing a boy and two girls. They consulted, on seeing our plight, and the girls, hearty country lasses in bare feet and sunbonnets, urged their escort, apparently to his relief, to stay the Sunday courtship and give us aid. Of more agile fettle than our first knight, he galvanized him into a semblance of motion. Together they gathered brush, and, denuding their horses for the purpose, tied bits of rope to the rear wheels. The engine started, stalled, and started again a dozen times.
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<p>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.
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<p>They hitched two Fords to the car, while eight men pushed from the back, but nothing came of the effort. A fine looking man named Sinclair, with gentle manners, was elected by the crowd to go for his mule team, "the finest pair in the county." An hour later he came back. He had gone two miles, changed to overalls, and hitched up his mules in the meantime, returning astride the off beast.
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<p>"The lady thawt yo' meant them fixin's for her, Charley, instead of fo' that mean speed-catcher."
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<p>What we planned to do was harder and less usual. We would follow the old trails, immigrant trails, cattle trails, traders' routes,—mountain roads which a long procession of cliff dwellers, Spanish friars, gold seekers, Apache marauders, prospectors, Mormons and scouts had trod in five centuries, and left as they found them, mere footprints in the dust. The Southwest has been explored afoot and on horse, by prairie schooners, burro, and locomotive; the modern pioneer rattles his weather beaten flivver on business between Gallup and Santa Fe, Tucson and El Paso, and thinks nothing of it, but the country is still new to the motoring tourist. Because a car must have the attributes of a hurdler and a tightrope walker, be amphibious and fool-proof, have a beagle's nose for half-obliterated tracks, thrill to the tug of sand and mud, and own a constitution strong enough to withstand all experiments of provincial garage-men, few merciful car owners will put it through the supreme agony. Had not the roads looked so smooth on the map we wouldn't have tried them ourselves.
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<p>"Sixty-three miles is about as fast as I've ever driven," I said in an off-hand way.
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<p>Our arrival caused a sensation. The police circles of Houston evidently did not every day see a Massachusetts car piled high with baggage driven by two women, flanked by a soldier on each running board. When we entered the sheriff's office, every man in the room turned his back for a moment and shook with mirth. They led me to a wicket window with Toby staunchly behind. The sheriff, in shirt sleeves and suspenders, amiably pushed a bag of Bull Durham toward me. I started back at this unusual method of exchanging formalities. A policeman, also in shirt sleeves and suspenders, a twinkle concealed in his sweet Southern drawl, explained,
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<p>"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."
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<p>"And carry a pistol?" asked Toby, eagerly.
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<p>"Yes, sir!"
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<p>Toby, chatting about aviation with the man on her running-board, was completely taken by surprise to hear "Ah'm sahry, lady, but we'll jest have to ask you-all to come along with us."
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<p>"This car," I explained, "won't make more than fifty. At fifty she vibrates till she rocks from side to side."
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