Being a light car in comparison, and having chains on, they fared better; but they could not pass. They offered to pull us back onto the road. Fortunately we had brought a wire cable with us. This was attached to both cars, and then both tried to back. Did we budge? No such luck! All hands got to work, sliding around like drunken sailors, and filled in back of our wheels with stones, sticks, cornstalks, and dry grass. After being stuck there just one hour, we got back onto the road and into the ruts, and slowly we crawled up to the top of a hill, where some guiding angel had scattered ashes and sand. We got to a dry, grassy spot, where a sadder and wiser driver put on the chains. How did we get there, Toodles and I? Those blessed Dodge people _invited_ us to stand on their running-boards while they crawled up the hill. Later we overtook them having tire troubles, and we were glad to be able to return their kindness. The next lovely job was to clean our shoes. Nothing can stick worse than gumbo, and we had been soaked in it. Needless to say that our shoes were ruined, but we were lucky it was not the car. So, with care, and crawling about five miles an hour, still slipping and sliding like eels, we covered the forty miles into Jamestown. The hotel dining-room was closed, and we had supper in a Chinese restaurant, then went to have our shoes cleaned in what had been before July 1st a typical Western saloon. It was filled with miners and cowboys playing billiards, and a villainous automatic piano playing rag-time. We sat up in the chairs while a “China-boy” dug at the gumbo, now hard as stone. One Westerner stood there taking us all in, and drawled, “You folks must have struck gumbo.” We had; but then again--“It might have been worse.” IX THE BAD LANDS--“NATURE’S FREAKIEST MOOD”