Education Of a Wandering Man (1990) (9 page)

Near Drinkwater Spring there was an old cabin, so it might be a place to stop during the worst of the day's heat. My walking pace was roughly three miles an hour, and after a good long drink at the Owl Holes, I started down that road to the southwest, walking steadily.

It was a few minutes after six when I left the Owl Holes. I was guessing I could continue walking until ten o'clock, when it would be wise to find shade, if any, and wait out the day. In walking west I knew I would be walking parallel to the road that ran east, but cutting across country is dangerous, as one has no idea how many gullies one will have to climb into and out of. I held to the trail and the tracks of the old man's car.

It was flat desert, scattered with rocks and creosote. When I reached the turning point, I was feeling good and checked my time. The sky above was impossibly blue but that would not be for long. Soon the heat would turn it to brassy white and the sand beneath my feet would grow hot. I knew that temperatures at this time of year could run well over one hundred degrees in the shade, and there was no shade.

I did not worry. I did not think. I simply walked, putting one foot ahead of the other and holding my destination in mind.

Soon I would have the Granite Mountains to my south and the Avawatz to the north, both well back from the road on which I walked. The tracks of the old man's car, coming and going, were plainly visible. There were no other tracks.

Desert nights are cold, but with the coming of day the cold disappears quickly and the heat is with you until sundown.

My shirt was soaked with sweat from walking but it had a pleasant, cooling effect. At the point where I must turn to the footpath that led to Drinkwater Spring, I hesitated. Leaving a known road is always a risk, and moreover, if the old man was driving out today, he might well pass by while I was off the road.

Nevertheless, the water was there and I needed water, desperately. As near as I could figure, the cutoff must be eight or nine miles until it intersected with the road on which I was traveling.

My situation was serious. I had no means by which to carry water, and irritably I thought back to so many movies where, when a canteen is empty, it is thrown away. I can think of nothing more incredibly stupid. If the man comes upon water, how will he carry it? Yet the scene is repeated over and over.

It was after eleven before I reached water. It was a small pipe leading from the spring to a trough in an old corral. Cupping my hands, I drank, and drank again. Then I splashed water on my face and on my shirt. The old cabin was not far off and I walked over, dropping down in the shade.

Grateful for the respite, I leaned my head back and slept. It was all of an hour before I awakened, and then only to move into deeper shade. After a bit I walked to the pipe from the spring and soaked up some more water.

Some blue quail came out of the brush and gathered around water trickling from the trough, and later a jack rabbit hopped slowly by, unaware of me, and obviously unafraid.

I slept again, awakened, drank, then dozed for a while. From time to time I glanced at my watch. I would wait until four, I told myself. If possible, I wanted to be back on the familiar road while it was still light. Otherwise I might miss it entirely.

At a rough guess I had covered something more than twenty miles that morning, but the worst stretch would be at the end.

Thinking of that, I bathed my feet in cool water from the trough, dried them, and prepared myself to move out. I had far to go and was impatient to get on with it. Despite that fact, I enjoyed my brief stop at Drinkwater Spring, and am sure had I stopped the night I would have seen some bighorns, for their tracks were all about.

Obviously they watered here.

Beckoning signs invited me down all sorts of roads. The signs to Randsburg made me hesitate. Was it close? But when I got there I would still be far from Barstow, where my payoff awaited me. Of course, I might hitch a ride into Barstow. Yet the only road I knew and the only one I could be sure of was the one I was following.

Now, having spent much time in the Mohave and Colorado Deserts, I know what my options were, yet given the circumstances, I probably did the right thing. At the moment I could not be sure.

Shouldering my small pack, I set out along the dim trail that should intersect with the road I needed, and roughly two hours later, it did.

If I recalled correctly, and I had learned to pay attention, the road that lay ahead was not only straight but flat, hard-packed sand for the most part, and at least ten miles to Garlic Spring. With luck I could make it during the cool hours of the night. By day that road would be pure hell. Temperatures in September often soared as high as 120 degrees, and down there on the desert flat where my feet were, it would be even hotter. Already that day I had walked farther at one stretch than ever before in my life, although days would come when I would walk much farther.

When I reached the main trail and started south for Garlic, a lot of the spring had gone from my step. The sun dropped from sight beyond the western mountains and the air grew cool. I walked steadily, only at a slower pace.

The stars appeared, incredibly bright in that clear, cloudless desert air. Constantly I looked for some rock large enough to sit down upon, but saw nothing. Getting up from the ground would not be easy, so I hesitated, at that time, to attempt it. I was very much afraid that if I sat down I would not have the strength to get up.

On I walked. Occasionally I sang, which was enough to protect me from anything predatory. The only persons who ever enjoyed my singing were myself and my kids, before they became old enough to know better.

Crossing an old desert road that came in from out of nowhere, I came upon a collection of broken wood that might have been the tailgate of a truck. There was other debris around, too, and so I stopped, gathered sticks together, and built a fire. What the hour was I no longer remember, but it was probably about 2:00 A. M. It was cold--cold as only the desert can be where there is nothing to hold the heat of the day. I dug out a hollow for my hips and settled down beside my small fire to rest, and sleep.

Wind rustled the brush, stirring mysteriously in the smaller plants, rattling seedpods still clinging from another year. I did not remove my boots. If my feet should swell, as they almost surely would, I would not get my boots on again.

In the first faint blue light of dawn, with stars still hanging in the sky, I awakened, shaking with chill. My small supply of fuel was gone, so I tightened my bootlaces and started walking myself warm.

It actually felt good to be moving, but I was worried. The terrain ahead was flat and offered no promise of shelter from the sun when day came. Yet there was a black shadow ahead and slightly to my left, and I remembered that near Garlic Spring were the Tiefort Mountains, such as they were, so there might be a chance of some hole I could crawl into out of the sun.

At Garlic Spring, I opened my can of pears. They were half pears and I took them into my mouth, holding them as long as I could before they gradually almost melted away. I sat on the ground, resting and taking my time with the pears.

A good third of the can was juice, for which I was grateful, and I took my time with that, too, and carried the empty can with me when I walked away. A sign near the spring warned me it was more than thirty-five miles to Barstow. Before leaving the spring I filled the can with water. It was difficult to carry but might help a little, yet when I had walked only a short distance I saw among the scattered rocks two that had fallen together to make a small cave, open on both sides. Carrying my can of water, I went down over the rocks and crawled in out of the sun.

It was early to stop, yet thirty-five miles without more water than I had, on the open desert, was insanity. I would simply wait out the day and try to make most of that distance during the night to come.

Hunched in my small shelter I leaned a shoulder against the brown rock and tried to sleep.

From time to time I sipped water from the pear can.

The cool hours of morning slipped easily away and it became hot. Suddenly, my eye detected movement. At the back opening of my shelter was a stretch of baked white earth and crossing it toward me was a good-sized desert rattler, obviously heading for the shade I occupied. He was still some distance off, so I gathered a handful of sand and threw it at him.

He stopped, head up, tongue flicking.

I threw another handful and he coiled but did not rattle. It was still not hot enough to kill him out there, but soon would be, and a rattlesnake cannot stand long exposure to the hot sun.

I threw another handful with some larger rocks this time, and he came out of his coil and started to crawl away. Satisfied that he was no longer planning to share my shade, I let him go.

Nothing else stirred. It was a long, slow morning and afternoon. I dozed, awakened, dozed again. My ears were always attuned to the hoped-for sound of a motor, but luck failed me, as it often has. In the distance, down the way I would go, but probably farther out, I could see a brief shower falling, a rarity at that time of year. Several times I saw dust-devils, those miniature desert whirlwinds that spring up suddenly, travel briefly, then die.

Somewhere along the line I fell asleep and slept as if drugged, awakened only when the coolness began to come. It was after 5:00

P. M. when I refilled my can at the spring and started once again. The water at Garlic Spring had not been particularly good, but it was water. The only other water I knew of was Paradise Spring, which the old man had mentioned, and it was more than a mile off the road, which meant perhaps three miles extra added to my hike.

Was it worth it? I did not know.

And what had happened to the old man?

Suppose he had died? Would I ever get paid?

The night was cool, and I walked steadily.

I was very tired, and occasionally I stumbled. The road turned left down a wash and followed it for a short distance. It was an effort to climb out.

I sipped a little of my water and decided I had to make the side trip to Paradise Spring. It was in a box, he'd said, set down in a patch of grass.

Finishing the little water I carried, I refilled at Paradise Spring, but by the time I got back to the road I was dead tired.

I sat down on a low bank of sand piled by the wind around some brush. How long I sat there I do not know, but the realization that I must get as far as possible before the sun came up got me started.

My mouth was dry, my lips cracked. My face felt hot despite the coolness of the night. As I had on several previous occasions, I put a pebble in my mouth to ease my thirst.

A few miles farther along I finished the little water in the can and must have dropped it. That I do not remember. I do remember sipping some milky water from a rut in the road, probably left by that brief shower I had seen from a distance.

The town was suddenly there, and I remember crossing a bridge into town and walking up the street to a caf`e. I dropped down on a stool and asked for a Coke.

The waitress said, "Man, you look like you've been through it. What happened?"

The Coke bottle felt cold and wonderful in my hand and there was ice in the glass. "I just walked in from Death Valley," I said.

A man on a stool near me turned and stared. "You walked in? You got to be crazy."

When I found him, the old man was ill, sick in bed, but his daughter paid me the $150.

"Sorry, boy, I'm real sorry.

Planned on pickin' you up."

I explained about the car. "Well, she's no loss. Never was much account, anyway."

My next stop was Los Angeles, and then San Pedro and a ship.

An idea upon which attention is peculiarly concentrated is an idea which tends to realize itself.

--Charles Baudouin When first I arrived in Los Angeles, I was hitchhiking a ride on a truck. By the time I bought a suit of clothes and other necessaries, there was not too much money left.

No doubt I should have begun hunting a job at once, but I was hungry for books, anxious to be learning, so I rented a room in a small hotel close to the library and divided my time between it and the shelves of second-hand bookstores close by.

In those days one could buy a meal ticket, which was punched out as you ate, and I bought two.

First, I attempted to get a job on a newspaper, but I had no experience and had not graduated from any school, so I got nowhere.

A few attempts in other directions were equally unsuccessful. Many commented that they were laying off help rather than hiring.

Browsing through the shelves in bookstores or libraries, I was completely happy, dipping into a book here, another there, tasting, savoring, learning. Many books I would not read for years I first examined at this time.

On the Death Valley claim I had read Byrne's Messer Marco Polo, a very pleasant little book but not at all what I wanted. It was years later that I found it, and years more before I owned it, but what I really wanted was the two-volume work on Polo with notes by Cordier and Yule, which far surpassed anything else in the field. That book was to lead me to Yule's Cathay and the Way Thither, which was a real joy.

It would be impossible for me to explain my early fascination with Asia, although it could well have sprung from reading a child's version of The Arabian Nights. Years later, when I acquired the full set in the Sir Richard Burton translation, I was content that I had the best. Burton's knowledge of the Arabic language, of the customs and mores of Near Eastern and African peoples, made his comments and notes a rich entertainment and an introduction to many aspects of the life not touched upon elsewhere. The only comparable collection, of similar but different stories, is The Ocean of Story in the Penzer and Tawney edition.