It does not do to go out upon the Painted Desert without some practical person who is capable of meeting all serious emergencies that are likely to arise.
The next day we drove on to Oraibi, in the scorching sun, over the sandy hillocks, where no road would last an hour in a wind-storm unless it were thoroughly blanketed and pegged down. We were all hot, weary, and ill-tempered. Thinking to help out, I volunteered to walk up the steep western trail to the mesa top and secure some corn at Oraibi for our horses, so that they could be fed at once on reaching our stopping place on the east side. When we started I had suggested the hope that we might be able to stop in the schoolhouse below the Oraibi mesa, as I had several times done in times before; but when the wagon arrived there, and I came down from the mesa, it was found to be already occupied by persons to whom it had been promised by the Indian agent. Camping, then, was the only thing left open to us, until I could see the Hopis and rent one of their houses. Down we drove to the camp, where alone a sufficiency of water was to be found. This explains our close proximity to the camp of the earlier year. We were just preparing our meal when a fierce sand-storm blew up. Cooking was out of the question; the fire blew every which way, and the sand filled meat, beans, corn, tomatoes with too much grit for comfort. This was the last straw that broke the back of Mr. Britisher's complacency. He had bemoaned again and again the leaving of his comfortable home to come into this "God-forsaken region," in a quest of what our crazy westernism called pleasure, and now his fury burst upon me in a manner that dwarfed the passion of the heavens and the earth. While there was a refinement in his vituperation, there was an edge upon it as keen as fury, passion, and culture could give it. I was scorched by his scarifying lightnings, struck again and again by his vindictive thunderbolts, tossed hither and thither by his stormy winds, and lifted heavenwards and then dashed downwards by the tornadoes and whirlwinds of his passion. It was dazzling, bewildering, intensely interesting, and then fiercely irritating. I stood it all until he denounced my selfishness. There's no doubt I am selfish, but there is a limit to a fellow's endurance when another fellow claims the discovery and rubs it in upon you until he abrades the skin. So I raised my hand and also my voice: "Stop, that's enough. Dare to repeat that and I'll tie you on a horse and send you back to the railway in charge of an Indian so quickly that you'll wonder how you got there. Selfish, am I? I permitted you to come on this trip as a favor to my photographer. The paltry sum you paid me has not found one-fourth share of the corn for one horse, let alone your own food, the hire of the horses, wagon, and driver. To oblige you I have allowed you the whole way to ride inside my conveyance that you might talk together, while I have sat out in the hot sun. If any help has been needed by Mr. Bass in driving, I have willingly given it instead of calling upon you. I have done all the unpacking and the packing of the wagon at each camp, morning, noon, and night. I have done all the cooking and much of the dish-washing, and yet you have the impudence and mendacity to say I have been selfish. Very well! I'll take myself at your estimate. In future I'll take my seat inside the ambulance; you shall do your share of helping the driver. You shall do your share of the packing; and if you eat another mouthful, so long as you remain in my camp, you shall cook it yourself. I have spoken! And when I thus speak I speak as the laws of the Medes and Persians, which alter not, nor change!"