Into The Desert

Apr. 2.

Up at 7 A.M. Fine & sunny snow going fast. Fixed up tent & cleaned up
generally. Alkali flat a lake, can't cross till it dries. Stock some
scattered, brought them all together.

Apr. 3.

Up 7 A.M. Clear & bright. Snow going fast. All creeks flowing. Fine
sunny day.

Apr. 4.

Up 6 A.M. Clear & bright. Went up on divide, met 3 punchers who said
road impassable. Saw 2 trains stalled away across alkali flat. Very
boggy and moist.

Apr.5.

Up 5 A.M. Clear & bright. Start out, on Monte & Pete at 6. Animals
traveled well, did not appear tired. Feed fine all over. Plenty water
everywhere.

Not much like Bud's auto stage, was it? But the very novelty of it, the
harking back to old plains days, appealed to him and sent him forward
from dull hardship to duller discomfort, and kept the quirk at the
corners of his lips and the twinkle in his eyes. Bud liked to travel
this way, though it took them all day long to cover as much distance as
he had been wont to slide behind him in an hour. He liked it--this slow,
monotonous journeying across the lean land which Cash had traversed
years ago, where the stark, black pinnacles and rough knobs of rock
might be hiding Indians with good eyesight and a vindictive temperament.
Cash told him many things out of his past, while they poked along,
driving the packed burros before them. Things which he never had set
down in his diary--things which he did not tell to any one save his few
friends.