Evening star., 1925-10-25

Arms ana shoulders ISlt aHTe.
He whetted duSt-caked lips.
$50 this" he sighed wearily, lis the
desert"
He rode alone in the heavy machine.
camping accouterments barnacled on
running boards and bumpers. Relax
ing his grip on the big scalloped wheel
rim. he pushed up the rakish hand
kerchief that bound his forehead and
surveyed the eXpanSe of Sun-baked
immensity stretching off into haze.
He had reached the edge of a cedar
mesa. Below him western Arizona had
become a universe with it's ceiling
melted off. The suns rays poured
into a world of torturous aridity, of
sand and laVa-ash. yucca and cacti,
seemingly without a sieve of interven-
ing ether to mitigate the soaring re
fraction. AS far as his eye could dis
cern, the Santa F'e trail narrowed to
pair of drunken wheel-tracks, hub
deep In sand curying down the near
by grade and off into gridiron distance
For twenty miles he could see it
ahead-as though some capricious
deity had scratched the burned
Drowned surface of things with a
sharp knife point and the earth bled
yellow gravel.
1t was desert with a vengeance. The
tourist searched a vista built on two
planes only, vertical and horizontal
Nowhere else in the world did the sky
lift so high or the panorama open SO
wide. The serried SUBMITS of lava
mountains far to south and north re-
sembled the backs of titan elephants
herded motionleSS in distance through
the cons.
Not even one lone buzzard tapped
up in that measure!ess vault; not
sign of human life lay disclosed on all
that eXpanSe spread below. Once, an
mountain with scrub cedars dotting it
like olive polka-dots on dun-colored
fabric, Bob thought he diScerned an
other car, not unlike his own, crawl
ing miles and miles on ahead like an
ant. But he had lost sight of it long
since. Now he had the earth to him
self
And 1 must cover all that" he
groaned. before 1 can get more grub
or water,' He looked at his wrist
watch. Thirteen minutes to 3. Two
hours more and then sunset. He
would try for the public camping
ground at kingman before calling it
Il day.
The thought of his own Green
Mountains of Vermont as he screwed
the cap back on his smaller canteen
and rolled fortifyirg cigarette. He re-
called cool rillS, mosSy ravines, invit-
ing openings into green pastures and
along still waters where a supper
trout might rise TO a fly. That was
Gods country.
He fell to wondering how Mary
would react to such blistering dis
tance hour after hour: day after day.
She had never been keen about tour
ing; his message that he intended to
drive his machine across America
and persuade her to end her Cali
fornia visit as something other than
a friend had met with lukewarm re-
sponse.
Wonder if I'm making the mis-
take of my life?" the man had asked
himself a hundred times on that lone
ly trek. Il like this sort of thing.
She thinks it's barbaric. If I'm
worried about her endurance on
20-day journey in car as COM
Portable as this coupe, what am
letting myself in for for life? Oh well,
he laughed. they're all alike; only
their names are different
Despite the hundred and eighty
miles he had driven since morning,
he knew he could not tarry longer.
His starter whined; his motor sprang
alive, and the car moved forward
down the grade.
There just below him on those
scorching reaches his great adven-
ture lay in wait.
I. X X x
TICADAS kept up an incessant
~ sizzling as though the desert floor
We're strewn with millions of invisible
rattlesnakes. their sinister tails all
swapping in chorus. The coupe,
caught in those resilient sand-tracks.
remained in them like fianges Bob's
only control of his machine he main
tained with one cramped lnstep
against the accelerator.
After travelling through four or five
miles of yucca, greasewood and
Needles of the Lord he came suddenly
upon an impossible barricade. The
trunk of a dead yucca tree had been
dragged out across the trail. Against
this log" a board had been leaned.
On 1t We're red-chalked letters: Turn
here and an arrow pointing south
ward.
Bob Hobart swore. Such a circui-
tous route meant additional miles of
driving before he could reach the
days destination. Nevertheless, glanc-
ing back to make certain no tourist
car followed into which he must crash.
the Vermonter reversed his gears and
churned in retrograde to a place al
lowing him to mount out of the