Westward hoboes : $b ups and downs of frontier motoringDixon, Winifred Hawkridge
General
Westward hoboes : $b ups and downs of frontier motoring
Dixon, Winifred Hawkridge
Automobile travel; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
A momentous pause. “If I had a girl I liked real good, I’d give her
that hoss and saddle.”
We had nearly reached the top of the trail.
“I’d kinder like an Eastern girl that could ride a hoss good.”
And then the approach direct.
“Onct I had a diamond neck pin. I aint got it now. I pawned it. But I
got a picter of myself wearin’ that pin you could have.”
That night, he sauntered to the hotel, and leaned against the door, and
looked at the moon, which was full.
“A great night,” he said. And a pause. “One of these here nights when a
feller just feels like----”
I thought he had stopped, but sometime later he resumed, still
regarding the moon.
“Like kinder spoonin’.”
[Illustration: BLACKFEET INDIANS AT GLACIER PARK, MONTANA.]
But it takes a moon to bring out the softer side of the guide nature,
and they waste little time in thoughts of “kinder spoonin’” when they
have a party on a difficult trail. There they are nurse-maids, advisers
and grooms, entertainers and disciplinarians, all in an outwardly
casual manner. As they swing in their saddles up the trail, what they
are thinking has much to do with whom they are guiding. We saw all
kinds of “doods” while at Glacier, and some would have driven me mad,
but I never yet saw a guide lose his temper.
“Honest,” confided Johnson,--Johnson is an old timer who limps from an
ancient quarrel with a grizzly, and wears overalls and twisted braces
and humps together in the saddle,--“honest, there’s some of them you
couldn’t suit not if you had the prettiest pair of wings ever was.”
There was the gentleman who appeared in very loud chaps and bandana
and showed his knowledge of western life, regardless of the fact that
Toby’s horse and mine just behind him were showing a tendency to buck,
by shouting, “Hi-yi” and bringing down his Stetson with a bang on the
neck of the spiritless hack the guides had sardonically bestowed on him.
There was the fond mother who held up the whole party to Logan Pass
while she pleaded with her twelve-year-old son to wear one of her
veils to keep off the flies. Poor little chap! His red face showed the
tortures he endured, and the guide turned away and pretended not to
hear.
There was the old lady and her spinster daughter from Philadelphia
who took a special camping trip high into the mountains where crystal
streams start from their parent glaciers, and insisted on the guide
boiling every drop of water before they would drink it. And when they
left they sent all the saddle bags to be dry cleaned, thereby ruining
them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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