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From Off the Road Database
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C
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<p>Near Dos Palos, where we were delayed one evening by a stoppage in our gas line, we saw a beautiful sight. The honking of wild geese attracted our attention, and we saw flock after flock coming through the air like black clouds, alighting to feed in the marshes nearby, then rising and going on while others came to take their place.
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<p>We never hurried the next morning after we had driven late the night before, so after breakfast we chatted about our trip and I enthused over the distant views, pure air, and delicious odor of the sagebrush after the rain. Then our hostess said, "I'll tell you now why we didn't want to keep you overnight. We have had so many easterners coming here late at night who were rude and disagreeable, cussing the roads, the climate, the people and everything in the state that we said we would never take in another traveler, but you are different and like it here." I had, unknowingly, won them over by my appreciation of some of the beauties of their locality. The couple ended by wanting us to stay a few days and go antelope hunting with them. It was with real regret that we could not accept their invitation, for they were fine people and we never have forgotten their hospitality during the storm in the first stages of our trip.
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<p>Although he was alone, everything was spic and span. His wife was coming from Kansas City the following week, and he had everything shining. He served us a meal, even making hot biscuits, which we enjoyed greatly after our cold day. He built an extra fire in the front room of the good-sized house so we could dry our clothes, but he had no bed for us. We had to sleep on the floor in our clothes, but our host brought out some new wool blankets to soften the floor. In the morning, Fred remarked that there were a lot of wrinkles in the Trinkles.
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<p>So I had good news for Fred when he awoke. After breakfast he put the car into commission and made the only tire change on the trip. We were just ready to start when a covered wagon appeared carrying three young men going prospecting. They stopped to find out what we were doing there and after hearing our story, one of them said that evidently the man at Lucin didn't believe our car could climb the hill and we would have to come back, when he would have the laugh on us and then put us on the right road in the valley. The young man said there was nothing, not even water, for more than a hundred miles the way we were going, and that probably we would have lost our lives.
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<p>From Colorado Springs, at an altitude of about 7,000 feet, Fred and his photographer drove to Manitou where they bought a hand ax, a shovel, and about 100 feet of rope. Then they drove to Cascade, where they had an early lunch. Here they were directed to follow the canyon road a mile and a half, where they could see a dim road turning to the left, and a small wooden bridge across a creek; there they turned immediately and started a stiff climb on a shelf road dug on the side of the mountain and ending directly over Cascade.
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<p>The factory wired us $500 to outfit and start, with more to be sent when and where we ordered. We were told to spare no expense and to send tires, gasoline, and spare parts ahead for use wherever we thought best. Briscoe never had been West, but he knew that few cars ever had crossed the continent and that we would not have a pleasure trip, to say the least. Since I had previously lived in Nevada and California, it seemed like a homecoming for me, or I might have taken the trip more seriously.
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<p>Luck had favored us here, for a train had left the three cars the night before, and the cars would be moved the next day. These people refused to take any money for entertaining us, as others had done, but Fred always left some money on the table. They were wonderful to us and to find food and shelter, far from any habitation, on a cold night was a blessing, and we were only too glad to pay for it.
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<p>At a banquet the evening before the start, each of the drivers was called on for a speech. When Fred's turn came, he told the crowd he could not make speeches, but he could drive a Brush Runabout and that, when he reached Kansas City, he would ask permission to drive on to Denver, climbing Pike's Peak on the way. After the applause had subsided, all forgot about the boast except Fred and Briscoe.
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<p>We met the family in the morning. They were curious about us and the car, and four bright-eyed little boys and their timid mother had their first automobile ride before we started. We thought it would be a good advertisement for the car, but the four pairs of brown eyes were sad when we left; it was just the plaything they wanted.
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<p>As soon as the Runabout was in commission that night, they started for Denver, two very tired men anxious to get home. I was wakened by a noise to see a man standing in the bedroom door about four o'clock in the morning. I thought it was a burglar with a brown mask over his face, with eyes looking like two burned holes in it, but Fred's grin relieved me of my fears and a bath brought out the original man.
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<p>There was utter silence between us as we started down the steep road in Currant Creek, and when we dared look at each other, we saw that each was white as a sheet. We passed one house on our way down into a level valley which had a hazy mountain range on the farther side. That day we saw only one man, and he was raking rocks out of the road. He seemed quite out of place, but we decided he had come from a mine in the hills. We stopped to ask him directions and, as we were eating fruit for lunch, we gave him an apple. He asked more questions than we did, but he told us to keep straight down the valley until we came to a road that turned directly toward the mountain, fifty miles across the valley, and that by going across this valley we could come to Twin Springs ranch, where we could stay for the night.
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<p>I sat on the further bank, cold, discouraged and hungry, looking at the river and hearing it gurgling around our few belongings in the car. It was nearly dark when a team appeared with a man riding one of the horses, and Fred waded into the water again, fastened the team to the car and it was soon on dry ground. Fortunately the water had not reached our luggage. It was a frosty night, so Fred had to open his suitcase and get into dry clothes before we could proceed.
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<p>If the unwary motorist stopped at a farmhouse to ask directions, the farmer invariably would direct him through some mud hole or over some steep hill to be sure the car got stuck. Then in the evening at the corner store the farmer would brag to his cronies how he had sent that "buzz wagon" down the wrong road, and all would be merriment.
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<p>We left the road and drove over the magic bridge, eventually coming to the little town of Carter, where we got a room at what seemed like a hotel. It was so late we didn't dare ask for a meal, so we lunched from our hamper and dropped into bed worn out.
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<p>There was no room for a camping outfit, and we were forced to run the risk of finding accommodations along the way as best we could, though we carried an emergency hamper containing bacon, skillet, canned meat, crackers, coffee, chocolate, raisins, matches, medicines, and other items.
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<p>In Kansas City he received instructions from Briscoe to continue to Denver with the Brush, look over the possibilities of a Pike's Peak climb and report if it would be feasible. Fred soon found bad roads all through Kansas, and driving was strenuous work. Beyond Dodge City, he stopped to speed up his engine in the heavy mud and in starting, the chain jumped off the sprocket teeth. This had happened before, as the chains and corresponding teeth had become worn in the steady drag through the mud. He tried to flip the chain on while the engine was running, his usual custom, but in a moment of carelessness he caught his hand between the chain and the teeth of the sprocket, stalling the engine and trapping him as completely as though he were in a bear trap. He couldn't move to reach the gear-shift lever.
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<p>We spent Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, and Fred sold the new car to Fred Ingersoll, a mail carrier in Pasadena who had written the factory. He was one of the first mail carriers to use an automobile in his deliveries, and eventually drove the car enough miles to have circled the earth several times.
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<p>That night I received a wire from the Pike's Peak telegraph station, highest in the world, that Fred was safe at the top and would come down next day. To Briscoe in Detroit he wired,
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<p>He built a box on the back of the car which would carry oil, ax, tools, tires, rope, block and tackle, suitcases, spare parts, and the like. Then he put endless interliners in each tire so we could wear the tire through to them, then take them out and put them into new tires. Once we cut one tire badly on a rock, exposing the interliner and making a tire change necessary, but the other three went all the way to San Francisco with Denver air in them.
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<p>Fred brought in our two canvases and put them on the bed for sheets—the woman had given up her bed to us, sleeping in the bunkhouse with the workmen. In the morning we left her well paid, but as soon as possible we threw away the thick coffee and hunk of bread she was determined we were to take for lunch.
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