It was in a dusty town where everyone rushed in to make quick money and
never mind about the main street even if they did have to plough through
dust to their knees. Then one day a heavy rain came that made the street
one slough of soft oozy clay which no one could cross.
Then enters the hero. Even while they stood dismayed, gazing at each
other across the clay, he appeared with a mud sled and took them all
across for 50 cents a passenger and $1 if you had a bundle.
Now, I believe it. Didn't I see the man who had been there and paid his
four-bits to cross? Imagine, if you can, though, trying to make those
Yankees around the corner store believe that there was a town where one
had to pay 50 cents to cross a narrow country road in a mud sled.
I believed a man who told me a story down in Kern County last summer. We
were riding over the desert and I asked the stage driver the name of a
low yellow bush that grows down there. He was an interesting fellow,
that stage driver, who had been a buccaroo all his life and apparently
knew all about the sage brush country. And when he didn't know he was
not lacking in an answer. I like a man like that. Answer, I say, whether
you know or not.
He said with great assurance that the little, low, yellow bush was
"Mexican saddle blanket" or "Tinder bush," this last because it burns
like tinder in the fall of the year.
Pages:
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96