Westward hoboes

Toby’s real name is Katharine. Her grandmother was a poet, her father is a scientist, and she is an artist. She is called Toby for Uncle Jonas’ dog, who had the habit, on being...

There were, we found, three ways to transport an automobile from New York to Texas; to drive it ourselves, and become mired in Southern “gumbo,” to ship it by rail, and become b...

Two days of downpour greeted us at Galveston while we waited for our car to arrive. It was the climax of three months of rain which had followed three drouthy years. The storm s...

Socialists and horse-thieves we did not encounter; it must have been the Baptists, then, who were responsible for the law putting citizens who purchase gasoline on Sunday in the...

Visiting an ostrich farm is as thrilling as going in wading, but to be thorough, we did our duty by San Antonio’s plumed and gawky giants before starting again on our well-nigh...

Every thriving Western town, if its politics are right, looks down on its hotels and up to its post-office. Del Rio was no exception; her granite post-office, imposing enough fo...

Along a macadam road fringed with bright painted little Mexican taverns and shops, toward mid-afternoon we threaded our way, still defenseless “ladies,” tempting fate. I mention...

What school child reading of the Pilgrim’s landing, of Montcalm’s Defeat, and the Revolutionary War, but thinks he is learning the whole of America’s colonial history? Studying...

Complications arose when we reached Tucson. We planned to see endless places but most of them, at an altitude of a half mile to a mile and a half, could be reached only by roads...

Fearing the wrath of John, we made a guilty start in the freshness of the next morning. But when we paid our bill and left, John was still heavily under the influence of vanilla...

Three days earlier, on reaching Globe, we learned we could not take the direct road to Santa Fe without chartering a steamer to ferry us across the untamed Gila. Most roads in A...

We had trailed spring up from Texas through Arizona, timing our progress so cleverly that it seemed as if we had only to turn our radiator’s nose down a desert path for blue lup...

Nowhere else did we find spring as lovely as at Santa Fé. Here, a mile and a half above sea level, was a crystal freshness of atmosphere, through which filtered a quintessence o...

As the spring sun daily pushed the snow line higher up toward the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo, and the time approached when we must leave Santa Fé, Toby and I grew sad at hear...

In spite of Toby’s making the slight error of driving fourteen miles with the emergency brake on, we seemed to have placed misadventure behind us for a brief season at least. We...

A glittering day, cool and sweet. Long shadows slanted through the scented Coconino Forest. The Gothic silences of the woods were clean of underbrush as an English park. Endless...

“Williams,” said the Old-Timer to us, as he directed us to that progressive but uninteresting little town, “when I first came west was a typical shoot-’em-up town, with thirty-s...

In starting for Hopiland, that little island set in the ocean of the Navajo’s country, we had anything but a definite idea whether we should arrive at our destination, but we ho...

Forty-second street and Broadway is probably the most crowded spot in the United States. The least crowded is this region of the Four Corners, where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico a...

It was as exciting as a well-fought football game to watch the horses, when at last they straggled down from Oljeto, to be cajoled and subsequently roped. Having spent the winte...

We had been pulled out of difficulties by donkeys, men, autos and pulleys. It remained for Kayenta to show us a new way out. When a terrific thank-you-marm jolted off our power,...

I can still, by shutting my eyes, see thousands of vistas,--little twisting roads clinging tightly to cliffs, tangles of cactus, gray cliff dwellings, pregnant with the haunting...

Nothing fit to print can be said of the Yellowstone Trail, advertised by various and sundry people as a “good road all the way,” with the freedom people take with other people’s...

Babb proved as short of population as of syllables. We went the length of the town, and encountered only one building,--the postoffice and store. That its populace was treated m...

At Santa Fé we had a worn tire retreaded. “It may last you a thousand miles,” said the honest dealer. At the end of the thousand miles, the tire was in ribbons. We put it on the...