nia 
 
 NINA 
 WILCOX 
 PUTNAM
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 EDWIN CORLE 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 JEAN CORLE
 
 WEST BROADWAY 
 
 NINA WILCOX PUTNAM
 
 WEST BROADWAY 
 
 BY 
 
 NINA WILCOX PUTNAM 
 
 AUTHOR OF "IT PAYS TO SMILE," "ADAM'S GARDEN," 
 
 "THE IMPOSSIBLE BOY," ETC. 
 
 NEW XBJT YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1921, 
 B* GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 WEST BROADWAY 
 
 2037594
 
 TO MY PUBLIC, WHICH ON SCREEN OR STAGE, IN" 
 CABARET OR PARLOR ACT HAS BEEN SO KIND TO ME 
 
 DEAR PUBLIC: Deep in every persons 
 mind is the idea that they could write a book 
 if only they was to take the trouble and the 
 time off, and motion-picture actresses are no 
 exception to this great general human weak- 
 ness. 
 
 So I have written this book. Not alone for 
 the publicity, but to express something that 
 was in my heart, and because my manager 
 asked me to write it. It is the story of how 
 I bought a dictionary and discovered Amer- 
 ica; of how I went out to teach and of what I 
 learned instead. Please excuse mistakes in 
 spelling, grammar, and ectera. There are no 
 mistakes in what I have to tell you about your 
 country. It has been like trying to write the 
 Bible, and having to do it in slang. 
 
 Yours resp' fully 
 
 MARIE LA TOUR. 
 December 28, 1920.
 
 WEST BROADWAY 
 
 AFTER a severe attack of thinking I have come to 
 realize how true is the poet's word, A Little Educa- 
 tion Can Start a Hell of a Lot of Trouble. Do you get me ? 
 Like a dose of medicine it has got to be measured right to 
 have a real desirable effect. Take too little and it only sort 
 of makes you sick ; take too much and you will be worse off 
 than before. And I have come also to realize that what ails 
 a good part of this country to-day is a little education. We 
 got a small dose and it ain't working either one way or 
 another, which is maybe rather a rough thing for one which 
 is at once a lady, a mother and a admittedly great actress 
 like myself to say, but then all great truths are more or 
 less rough. 
 
 Anyways, it is a clear, general statement, which is a 
 dangerous thing to make, and I wouldn't make one that 
 was not based on personal observation, and this one is based 
 on several weeks of it. 
 
 Yet believe me I don't intend to knock education too 
 severe; not by a long shot, I don't; and it was feeling my 
 own lack of it that sent me out on the trip which furnished 
 what the scenario department calls the meat for this script. 
 I am perfectly willing to admit that some brands of educa- 
 tion are all right in their way and are undoubtedly respon- 
 sible for the invention of the telephone, massage creams, 
 motion-picture cameras and important things which I per- 
 7
 
 8 West Broadway 
 
 sonally myself would find it hard to get along without. The 
 kind of education which has got me worried is that old 
 soldier General Education who has gone and pinned an 
 alias on himself of Culture. Culture is right that's what 
 they call one of those high-priced operations where they 
 graft on a piece of somebody else's skin do you get the 
 idea? Well, keep hold of it then while I tell you what 
 started me on the road to this profound conclusion, and 
 like most troubles it centered about the home my home 
 in this particular case, and Al Goldringer trying to pry 
 me out of it; and, of course, I being a perfectly normal 
 woman was delighted to be pried, only not quite in the way 
 he wanted. 
 
 You see, considering the amount of money which has 
 passed between Al and I since first he begun making pic- 
 tures with me, we are really remarkably friendly, and no 
 other producer could tempt me away from him at twice 
 the salary, even if they had the money, which of course 
 they haven't, and everybody knows that Goldringer 's Kos- 
 mic Krackerjack Releases are the biggest money-makers 
 on the market to-day, even if their ads do admit it. 
 
 Well, anyways, Al and I are, for manager and star, on 
 the best of terms ; but I always get the terms down in black 
 and white over his signature just the same, which is maybe 
 one reason why we continue friendly. Believe me, it's a 
 poor thing to do business with a friend ; but a friend which 
 you make through doing business is quite another matter, 
 and one of the best kind you can make, and Al is one of 
 those. And so naturally when he rang up and said that if 
 I was to try and force my way into his office he'd be there, 
 why, I said all right I 'd make the effort, and he says when, 
 and I says two o 'clock prompt, and he says alright he would 
 expect me by five, sure, and hung up. 
 
 When he had done so I went and put a marker in the book 
 which I was reading to improve myself for Junior's sake.
 
 West Broadway g 
 
 It was by a bird named Charles Lamb and was called the 
 Essays of Elia, and believe me it was a job I was not alto- 
 gether unwilling to lay off of. One thing I will say about 
 that book, however the one who wrote it will never be able 
 to sell the picture rights, I don't care if it is famous. I 
 may not know much about art, but I know what will screen 
 and this fellow Lamb don't. "Well, anyways, I put a marker 
 in it, because otherwise I would never of found my place 
 again, and then I went and gave myself a careful inspection 
 in the mirror and near-privacy of my boudoir. I never get 
 a call but that I rush for the mirror right afterward to see 
 is my face still there I mean still good for the silver sheet ; 
 and any actor or actress will know how I feel, and this lack 
 of full confidence in myself is probably what makes me the 
 great artist that I am. 
 
 Well, I pulled up both the window shades and made 
 the examination thorough, but without disastrous results, 
 or in other words, a single line anywheres, and found 
 myself still perfectly good for a full close-up in spite of a 
 six months' old baby and a husband that was working with 
 another woman. And while I was examining my front teeth 
 in walks ma without knocking, and that's all the privacy I 
 get, and you know how it feels when anybody catches you 
 doing a thing like that which is one of the disadvantages 
 of relatives. 
 
 ' ' Ma Gilligan, ' ' I says, turning on her in my pink kimono 
 and a good deal of annoyance "Ma Gilligan, how many 
 times have I told you that this is my room?" 
 
 "Well, dearie," says ma, "I ain't going to take it away. 
 I only want to tell you that nurse of yours is putting your 
 child outdoors to sleep in the rain." 
 
 ' ' Well, what of it ? " I says. ' ' You know he always sleeps 
 out. How many times have I told you she's a trained nurse 
 and not to interfere with her?" 
 
 "Well, I don't know who trained her," says ma, very
 
 1O West Broadway 
 
 indignant. "But I never raised you any such crazy way. 
 Trained! Huh! Trained monkey!" 
 
 "Now, ma, just you keep your mind off your past," I 
 says. "This is no circus, but a modern New York home," 
 I says, "and what is more, I'm running it." 
 
 ' ' That 's right ! Lay onto your poor old ma which don 't 
 know anything ! ' ' says she. ' ' It ain 't my flat and I wouldn 't 
 interfere for worlds ! What you do ain 't none of my busi- 
 ness. Are you goin' out?" 
 
 "Yes," says I, taking down a pussyfoot-silk street dress 
 with no neck or sleeves or very much skirt, but the latest 
 effort of Paris, Broadway & Co. 
 
 "Where you goin'?" says ma. 
 
 "To the studio," I says brief. 
 
 There was no reason why I shouldn't of gone into details 
 except that she was my relation and living with me, and 
 anybody who has the same conditions will understand. 
 You just got to keep something to yourself, whether it's a 
 secret or not. 
 
 "Well, what for?" says ma. 
 
 "I don't know," I says, exasperated with home life and 
 lying unnecessarily. 
 
 "When will you be home?" ma goes on. 
 
 ' ' I don 't know that either ! " I snapped. ' ' Can 't I do any- 
 thing except under a magnifying glass?" 
 
 "Leave me tell you, Mary Gilligan Smith La Tour," says 
 ma, putting her hands on her hips in her no-nonsense man- 
 ner "leave me tell you that ain't the way to talk to your 
 mommer ! You 're getting too big in the head, you are, and 
 I've a good mind to turn you over my knee and hit you 
 a few licks where it would do you the most good. ' ' 
 
 And with that she turned away and marched out of my 
 room, which was what I wanted, only it left me no chance 
 to answer. But it being by then ten minutes to two o'clock 
 and Al's office more than half an hour away, I stopped not
 
 West Broadway 1 1 
 
 to heed her, as the poet says, but slipped and struggled into 
 the pussyfoot, a sweet little costume the color on the word 
 of the saleslady of elephant's breath; added a ostrich 
 feather toque which looked like a big yellow chrysantheum 
 that somebody had sat on, and being then arrayed in that 
 latest cruelty of style known as a robe pneumonia, I went 
 down and humped myself into a corner of the waiting 
 limousine which was also of the low-necked or pneumonia 
 type, and remained lost in thought while we stuttered 
 through the traffic. 
 
 Among other things, I thought how uneducated ma is, 
 and felt sorry for her as only a daughter could. Among all 
 the daughters who have regarded their ma with sorrowful 
 kindly pity, I probably was as condescending and sympa- 
 thetic as any. Of course, I fully appreciate ma and her 
 good sense on all the subjects which I agree with her on, 
 and she certainly done a fine job with me, and only for 
 her I would not be where I am to-day. But ma had a lot 
 of weak points which was not her fault but her misfortune, 
 and for all my love, nobody appreciated them better than I. 
 
 For one thing, she was awful out of date and showed no 
 signs of wishing to catch up. And for another, she was 
 dreadfully uneducated her grammar was certainly some- 
 thing fierce ! This worried me a lot, because in about a 
 year and a half Junior would be talking, and when he 
 learned I wanted to learn him to talk right, and ma sure 
 did promise to be a awful influence. I had never noticed 
 ma's talk in the old days before the baby come, except to 
 realize that it didn't have quite the pep that it might of. 
 Nor did I think much about education either for her or Jim 
 or even for myself, except along the lines of my own work 
 on the stage or screen. But now I realized more every day 
 that one of the hardest things about having a child is that 
 it takes you for an example, and as a rule it is mistaken un- 
 less you make it come true. And I realized more than ever
 
 12 West Broadway 
 
 that I must improve myself for Junior's sake and pry off 
 a little culture so's it would eventually rub off onto him, 
 and make Jim do the same so the boy need never be ashamed 
 of his parents or pity them or think them old-fashioned. 
 And then I thought of Mr. Chas. Angora Lamb and decided 
 I'd read that book through if it killed me, for my dear 
 son 's sake, and then I was brought back to earth by arrival 
 at Al's office at only a quarter to three, which is prompt- 
 ness itself as time is counted in the motion-picture world. 
 
 Well, I needn't of hurried so much, because when I got 
 there Al himself was up in the projection room looking at a 
 picture which is how they generally keep a appointment in 
 this man's business. But after two boys had one after 
 another been sent to tell him, why, he remembered his date 
 with me and come down, cigar and all. 
 
 "Well, kid, I got a picture for you," he says, shaking 
 hands. ' ' Park yourself in the comfy chair and leave us row 
 over it." 
 
 "All right, Al," I says. "Spill the story I hope it's a 
 good one." 
 
 "It's great!" says Al. "High-class script, but snappy 
 and with a swell bedroom scene in it." 
 
 "You know I don't make that kind of stuff, Al," I says, 
 "so keep the rest of it to yourself." 
 
 "Hold on, don't go!" says Al. "This is a classic. It's 
 called let me see" he give a look among the papers 
 "the title is Romeo and Juliet." 
 
 "Oh!" says I. "By William Shakspere?" 
 
 ' ' That 's him ! ' ' says Al. ' ' That 's the bird ! Well-known 
 English playwright, but the scenario department says he's 
 been dead a long time, so there's no copyright on it, and 
 we can jazz it up a lot to make it screen good." 
 
 "Al Goldringer," I says, "where is your education?" 
 I says. "Don't you know Shakspere is a great 
 poet?"
 
 West Broadway 13 
 
 "Will we be able to make onr titles from the bookT" 
 says Al. 
 
 "Probably," I says, very much disgusted with his 
 lack of culture. "But what's the use picking on you be- 
 cause you ain't literary? I bet you never read a line of 
 Shakspere in your life!" 
 
 "No, I didn't!" says Al with a grin. "Did you?" 
 
 "Well, no," I had to admit. "But I know what his 
 leading parts are Hamlet, Othello, Rosalind, Juliet, Ed- 
 ward the Seventh and and Ivanhoe. All the old stars 
 play them for Art's Sake about the time they can't put 
 popular stuff across any longer." 
 
 "Aw, restrain yourself, Marie!" says Al. "I know 
 Shakspere is a classic, and that while he may be old 
 on the stage, it's new stuff for the silver sheet, and it's a 
 big thing for you I'm not fooling. We are going to 
 spend five hundred thousand if necessary on this produc- 
 tion, and if it's as good as I think it will be we'll do a 
 series of 'em. Bring Shakspere to the people, see? How's 
 that for an idea, eh?" 
 
 "Al," I says solemnly, "it's a bird, and as you say, 
 a wonderful chance for me. How did you come to think 
 of it?" 
 
 "The scenario department thought of it," says Al. "I 
 only O. K.'d it." 
 
 "Well," I says, "it's the best news I've heard in a 
 long time, and fits right in with my ambitions, because no 
 passee actress could get away with Juliet on the screen, 
 and I'll be the first young one on record. Al, I'm going 
 to say a prayer or two for you." 
 
 "Better say a dozen for me," says Al with a grin. 
 "And now let's get down to brass contracts. I suppose 
 you think you want some real money for making this." 
 
 "Oh, no!" I says.. "I'm willing to sacrifice a lot for
 
 14 West Broadway 
 
 Art's Sake. Ill take fifty thousand flat and a piece of 
 the picture say ten on the net royalties." 
 
 "You're crazy like a fox," says Al. 
 
 And then we was off, Al leading at the post, and for 
 half an hour the storm raged, but in the end we compro- 
 mised on fifty thousand and a ten per cent, royalty. Al 
 is always like that he's got to do his regular exercises or 
 he don't feel healthy. And when it was all settled we 
 come down to the cast. 
 
 "Now about Borneo, " says Al. "At the contract you're 
 getting you ought to throw in Jim's services so I can bill 
 a double-header." 
 
 "Play opposite my husband when he could be making a 
 separate picture at the same time and twice the money?" 
 I says. "Not much!" I says. "And what is further, Al, 
 for over a year now he's been working with that woman 
 Ruby Boselle, and if you think I'm going to pass up the 
 chance of playing Juliet to the Romeo of some handsome 
 stranger you got to think again. ' ' 
 
 "You ought to keep your domestic affairs out of our art, 
 girlie," says Al. 
 
 "Not in the pictures," I says quickly. "It wouldn't 
 be natural." 
 
 "Well, then, well use Roman Egler," says Al. "He's 
 kind of a Dago type. When can you be ready to start for 
 the coast?" 
 
 Believe me, that was a bolt from the well-known blue I 
 I had never made a picture on the coast in my life, and the 
 suggestion was certainly bad news to me. 
 
 ' ' The coast ? What d 'yer mean coast ? " I says. ' ' What 
 ails the Atlantic Coast all of a sudden?" 
 
 "We got absolutely no room to make it here," says Al. 
 "Besides, we can do a lot better job at Hollywood. I 
 thought you'd just love to go to sunny California."
 
 West Broadway 15 
 
 "Have a heart, Al!" I says. "What do I want with 
 going out to a jay place like that?" 
 
 "How do you know it's a jay place?'' says Al. "Ever 
 been there?" 
 
 "No," I says, "and I don't want to go. I want to stay 
 right here in civilized little old N. Y." 
 
 "But you'll like the coast," says Al. "Have you been 
 anywheres besides this man 's city ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' Sure, I have ! " I says. ' ' Ain 't I played the Audubon 
 Circuit in my past Rochester, Buffalo, Toronto? And I 
 been in Boston, Trenton and as far south as Philly. I've 
 traveled a lot, Al, and I know there's only one place in 
 America worth living in, and that's the famous village of 
 Manhattan. You can't tell me!" 
 
 "I don't attempt to tell a woman anything," says Al, 
 "unless she's working for me. And this picture is going 
 to be made out West." 
 
 "Then get somebody else to make it!" I says. "What 
 d'you think I am, a hick? Why, I couldn't stand any place 
 but New York, Al! I got to be at the source of things 
 to get any inspiration for my work. There's only one 
 New York, Al, and I've got to work here. Why, that 
 fillum will take a couple of months to make, and what 
 would I do evenings way out there?" 
 
 "Say, where was you born, Miss Broadway?" says Al. 
 
 "Bridgeport," I says, "where the circus was when 
 the stork out of the menagerie strolled over to ma's quar- 
 ters; but I was raised on Avenue A and raised is right. 
 I raised myself from there to Broadway and Riverside 
 Drive and you know it ! " 
 
 "I ought to I helped just a little to put you there," 
 says Al. "And so you ought to realize it's to your ad- 
 vantage to go to the coast." 
 
 "Coast!" I says, fed up with the word. "The coast 
 is right here, Al Goldringer you ought to realize that
 
 16 West Broadway 
 
 the only coast that counts, at least. And I 'm going to stay 
 right on it! I'm not going to be parked any place for 
 three months with the engine shut off and get rusty and 
 let my battery die for you or anybody else. Where would 
 I get any new clothes? I 'd die, that 's what ! No, sir, not 
 to speak of the trip out and back! Why, I wouldn't 
 take that trip for worlds ! ' ' 
 
 "Lots of folks take it for less," says Al. 
 
 "But not sister!" says I. "No, Al, if it means leaving 
 the one real town it's all off." 
 
 And I got up to go, leaving plenty of time to urge him 
 over to my side between my chair and the door in the true 
 womanly way. But for once I planned in vain. 
 
 "Well, don't say that, Mary," says Al firmly. "It's 
 a big proposition don't turn it down so easy. I give you 
 one week to decide, and the contracts will be ready to sign 
 any time after to-morrow. And when you decide to go 
 give me a call." 
 
 "I won't go!" I says. "Certainly not at the money." 
 
 "I'll pay expenses," says Al. 
 
 "Well, I won't go anyways!" I says. "New York is 
 America so far as I'm concerned, and I want to stay in 
 it. But I'll think it over and say no again at the end of 
 a week if it will make you feel any better." 
 
 Well, then I went out of the private office and through 
 the crowd of admiring stenographers, office boys and 
 would-be picture stars who were waiting on the mourners' 
 bench, and was shot down in the elevator to the street 
 level, my mind all scrambled like an egg and hardly know- 
 ing what I did want to do anyways. So when I got out 
 onto the street, which was West Fortieth and Sixth, I de- 
 cided to combine slimness and pleasure, and so I told Rollo 
 the chauffeur, to take the pneumonia car home for a rest 
 and I would walk. 
 
 It was the first day of September, but cool and sparkling
 
 West Broadway 17 
 
 like a new-style-cut-five-carrot diamond or, in other words, 
 as only little old New York can sparkle. Of course there 
 was some dust and some papers flying around, but in spite 
 of the wind it sure was a grand afternoon; and when I 
 looked at my almost native city through eyes which had 
 just been requested to go away and leave it I seen plainer 
 than ever that there would be nothing stirring, or at least 
 that I would not stir out of it any further than to maybe 
 a road house with a few friends now and then. 
 
 Of course, I will say of New York that the administra- 
 tion is fierce, and they say there's lots of graft going onj 
 but that don't affect the wonderful department stores any, 
 does it? And while the pavements on many streets is a 
 disgrace, it's hard to beat Central Park. And no matter 
 what you say against the empire city, you got to admit 
 also that there's only one New York. 
 
 "Well, anyways, I felt kind of uplifted, and my feet felt 
 almost like they was dancing, and I sure was glad I had 
 decided to stay. I felt I liked everybody and wanted to 
 be kind to them, and when, as I was crossing Bryant Park, 
 I seen a cop chasing some kids off the grass I felt like 
 chasing him for it, but didn't. I only walked on feeling 
 good because it had occurred to me. Do you get me? 
 
 Then when I got to Fifth with all the handsome cars 
 and bum old taxis crawling on it, and the people darting 
 in and out between them with no regard to the traffic 
 laws the way they do, and all the general excitement, I 
 decided I would prolong the pleasant agony of a walk on 
 the Avenue by dropping into a bookstore I had seen along 
 there somewheres and buy a couple more pages of con- 
 densed culture, because I was getting awful tired of Lamb 
 and kind of hankered after a little mint sauce or currant 
 jelly, or maybe there might be some other animal I could 
 switch to for a change. 
 
 So I walked along in the crowd, not meeting even one
 
 i8 West Broadway 
 
 person I had ever seen before, and ain't it the truth this 
 happens most times when you take a walk in New York? 
 But looking at the shop windows as I went and seeing all 
 the smart things in them was a pleasure in itself, and I 
 also realized, of course, I would never see these things in 
 any other city, nor any such buildings either, nor so many 
 of them. New York is a he-city, where the original inven- 
 tor of pep and jazz was born or no, maybe not quite that 
 or he wouldn 't of been a real New Yorker, but come there 
 young and adopted the burg, and anyways the town seemed 
 to me like it owned a little over fifty-one per cent of the 
 snap in the whole U. S. A. And that poor fish Al Gold- 
 ringer wanted me to move out where I could watch the 
 pansies grow ! I was fond of Art and anxious to improve 
 mine, and it would be swell to make a production like 
 Juliet and Romeo, because naturally they would have to 
 bill it that way if I was to play the lead, and anyways 
 I never saw a book yet which you couldn't improve on 
 the title of it for picture purposes. And then I got to 
 thinking what a good part it would be for me, and began 
 to feel sort of sick at having to give it up, because I knew 
 Al wouldn't compromise with me about making it at 
 Yonkers, because he runs his business and never lets any- 
 body assist him at it, especially stars. I can get him to 
 change his mind about money, because he always starts the 
 argument all prepared to change it at the right moment 
 that comes to him natural on account of his pa once 
 running a two-price clothing store down on Grand Street. 
 But on running the studio nix! He's got the capacity 
 worked out like a freight agent, and you couldn't change 
 his plans with dynamite. 
 
 And so I seen my chance to realize the ambition of 
 every actress from sixteen to sixty, make a beautiful fade- 
 out and dissolve into a long-shot of Marie La Tour sitting 
 at home and minding ma so that the trained nurse would
 
 West Broadway 19 
 
 be left free to mind the baby, and the way I felt about it, 
 the footage on this scene was a great deal too long. I 
 got fed up with it, even if I had the feature part. And 
 just as I had myself worked up to a high stage of peevish- 
 ness and irritability because Los Angeles wasn 't in Harlem 
 I come to that bookstore that I had remembered noticing 
 which wasn't where it used to be, but a candy store was 
 there instead, and the bookstore was five blocks further any- 
 way, but I had walked that far, so that was all right. And 
 the bookstore had shoved its way into the front of a old 
 private brownstone house the way they do on the Avenue, 
 so that the street level was all plate glass and condensed 
 culture but the upper part still plain private brownstone, 
 the same as most of our fine shops. Not that it matters, 
 because no New Yorker is supposed to rubber at the upper 
 part. Only the hicks do that. 
 
 "Well, anyways, I went in, and it was the first time I 
 ever went into a bookstore, and judging by the absence of 
 customers I expect I am one of the very few who has had 
 this experience. Far from being like a drug store, which 
 as everybody knows has everything but drugs, this place 
 looked like a regular public library. I'll say it did! Not 
 that I ever was in one myself, the front steps of it during 
 a Liberty Loan being as near as I ever come to one. But 
 what I mean to say is there was no need to go searching 
 at the back of this store for a perscription counter. 
 
 And as for the clerks, I '11 tell the world they had a hard 
 life! One was giving heavy thought to whether he'd get 
 a manicure or not, and the other two was talking over last 
 night's poker game or national politics or something in a 
 far corner, but not loud enough for a person to hear which. 
 And did they rush up and cover me with attention ? They 
 did not ! They left me roam about helplessly, and after I 
 had picked up several of the samples that was lying about, 
 beginning with South Sea Sobbings and ending with Dot-
 
 20 West Broadway 
 
 tie Dimple at School but none of them appealing to me, I 
 commenced to feel sort of scared and hopeless, because 
 I could see it would be impossible for me to read even one- 
 half of what was in that store. I had commenced too late 
 in life, and I could see plainly that a person was supposed 
 to go all the way from Dottie to Darwin, a writer which 
 was on another table. 
 
 But finally I decided, why be scared? It's only a shop, 
 for all they try to make it look like a cross between a tomb 
 and a church, and if it was the Paris Intime and no pink 
 camisoles in sight, why, what would you do ? And so hav- 
 ing realized this, I acted accordingly, and asked the gentle- 
 manly clerk with the finger nails if he was busy. He right 
 away laid off them and was all politeness. 
 
 "At your service," he says, real cultured. "Can I help 
 you in any way?" 
 
 "I don't know but maybe I'm beyond help," I admitted. 
 "You see, I want to pry a little general culture off the 
 shelf, and I ain't been able to find anything I can under- 
 stand or that interests me so far, except a cookbook, and 
 we got one of them." 
 
 "I see," says the young man. "Now if you will tell 
 me a little more of what your plan is perhaps I can help 
 you out." 
 
 "Well, it's like this," I began. "You see, I am a act- 
 ress by profession, and making fair to middling good at 
 it, which has kept me too busy to get a great deal of book 
 education." 
 
 ' ' I see, ' ' says the bird, taking real notice, and not merely 
 professional notice now. 
 
 "And so long as I had no kid it didn't matter much," 
 I went on. " As a matter of fact, I never give it a thought. 
 But now I realize I got to jazz up my mind on the kid's 
 account get some general culture and everything stuff 
 down a little information, and so forth, so's he won't
 
 West Broadway 21 
 
 think I'm a dead one. And so far I ain't had much luck. 
 I found a book by a fellow named Lamb in a cupboard ma 
 bought secondhand for the kitchen. Also two by Thoreau 
 and some poetry by a kind of a nut named Browning. But 
 either they are dead from the neck up, or I am, because 
 I can't find any pleasure in them." 
 
 "Well, I'm not altogether surprised at your not caring 
 for them," says the bookkeeper. "You find those old 
 fellows dull because they are dull." 
 
 "Then maybe I'm not such a simp as I thought. Can 
 you give me the works of some live wires and if possible 
 in pink bindings so's they'll go good in my boudoir after 
 I'm through with them?" 
 
 "Well, I'm not so sure about the bindings," says the 
 print hound, smiling gently in such a way he let me know 
 I'd made a break there. "But I certainly can give you 
 some fine, live modern reading. Why go back to the Vic- 
 torians?" he goes on. "Read the things of to-day vigor- 
 ous real things. By Jove, that 's what a real man or woman 
 wants! No wonder you got discouraged. Now, will you 
 really let me help? I'll be only too happy to make out a 
 list if you will let me." 
 
 "Go to it!" I says enthusiastically. "Only break me in 
 kind of easy. I'm in your hands." 
 
 "Good!" says the Spelling Book Binder. "This is a 
 great privilege Miss La Tour, is it not?" 
 
 Whatter you know about that! Of course, I melted 
 entirely then, just like any other well-known personality 
 who of course cares nothing for fame. And so I modestly 
 admitted that it was really me, and then the big selection 
 commenced. 
 
 "Now, what you want is some Russian stuff," he began. 
 
 "Hold on!" I says. "No Russian stuff for mine!" 
 
 "Oh, but really," says he, "you must read Prince Mud- 
 gaard's Prunes! It's wonderful simply wonderful!"
 
 22 West Broadway 
 
 "All right, 111 read it," I says, "if it's the thing to do." 
 
 "And then we'll have Gogol's Dead Souls and a Dun- 
 sany play or two. You'll love Dunsany! For poetry, I 
 think Amy Lowell will do for a beginning. And you 
 simply must have a copy of Karl Westman's new book 
 Arise America!" 
 
 "Sure, give me that!" I says. It listens the best of the 
 lot to me ! ' ' 
 
 "It's a wonderful book simply wonderful!" says the 
 brainy young thing. "Mr. Westman comes in here often. 
 I know him rather well." 
 
 Somehow that name of Westman sounded awfully fa- 
 miliar to me, but I couldn't just think why at the time. 
 So I just says "Oh, yes, how interesting!" in a tone like 
 I knew all about him. Also I looked hard at the book he 
 had written a neat and harmless-appearing cover was on 
 it, all pale gray like a gift book. So naturally I didn't 
 feel any impulse to open it. 
 
 "Personally I believe he's one of the most important 
 writers in the country to-day," went on the Bookworm. 
 
 ' ' Of course ! ' ' says I, my mind like a new vacuum cleaner 
 but not willing to admit it. 
 
 "And by Jove, here he comes now!" exclaimed my 
 guide, philosopher and salesman brightly. "What luck! 
 He runs in nearly every day to see how his book is going. 
 Will you let me bring him over?" 
 
 And then, without giving me a chance to vote, off jumps 
 that culture fiend toward a man who had just come lan- 
 guidly in, and left me standing sort of paralyzed and 
 wishing I was on location or at home or any place where 
 they have to telephone up before they can get in. Not 
 that a well-known person like myself is unaccustomed to 
 meeting people, but an author is a different matter, and 
 not exactly human, and by the way I felt while the sales- 
 man was bringing him over I begin to understand why
 
 West Broadway 23 
 
 authors are called Lions. It's the way you feel when you 
 meet them, and when a kid with the circus I, of course, 
 saw a lot of real ones, only they was always in a cage, 
 and Madame Leonine was no faker either. 
 
 Well, anyways, they was fast approaching and I had 
 no way out, and when we were introduced I was glad I 
 had remained at the hitching post. 
 
 "Miss La Tour," says Westman, "I can't tell you how 
 delighted I am at this opportunity ! I Ve wanted to know 
 you for a long time. Do you know, you are one of the 
 few stars I ever go to see?" 
 
 "Pleased to meet you," I says. "And I may add you 
 are one of the few authors who's books I buy." And I 
 waved it at him, being fortunately caught with the goods. 
 
 "You've actually read my stuff then?" says the hand- 
 some author. 
 
 "Yes, all of them, and I think they are simply wonder- 
 ful ! " I says, and God forgive me for the lie I don 't sup- 
 pose anybody ever told one like it before. But I got away 
 with it all right, as he didn't ask me any questions like I 
 was afraid he would, but only beamed and swallowed not 
 only what I said but what I implied. 
 
 "Miss La Tour," says Mr. Westman, shaking his curly 
 locks, "I have discovered the incredible a motion-picture 
 actress who belongs to the Intelligensia. " 
 
 "Oh, but I don't!" I says. "I only belong to the Red 
 Cross and the White Kittens Theatrical Ladies' Associa- 
 tion." 
 
 Mr. Westman seemed to think this was funny, and he 
 didn't hesitate to say so. 
 
 ' ' A wit as well ! ' ' said he. " Keally, my dear young lady, 
 I 'm not going to lose sight of you ! I Ve got some scenarios 
 that I think you'd be perfect in, and I want you to see 
 them. How about a little dinner to-night?" 
 
 "Well," I says, a good deal impressed by a real, genuine
 
 24 West Broadway 
 
 author wanting to write especially for me, "I don't know 
 is my husband free. But we might phone to the studio 
 and find out is he going to get through or will he have to 
 work to-night, and if he can accept why, we would be 
 charmed, I'm sure." 
 
 Well, Mr. Westman was game, even though I am happy 
 to say he looked disappointed about the husband, and long 
 may men look at me so, if you get me ! And I went and 
 phoned to Jim, and he said who the devil was Westman, 
 but all right if I wanted to; and I wanted to all right, 
 because I intended to take a script off this great author 
 if it was any good ; or maybe the picture rights to America 
 Arise, which was a pretty good title if you put Miss before 
 it. Only, of course, I did not tell Mr. Westman right off 
 the reel, because that would of been bad business, but 
 expected to spring it on Al and make it in the East when 
 there was room. 
 
 "That will be delightful," says Mr. Westman when I 
 told him what Jim had said, omitting the part which was 
 fit only for wifely ears. "How splendid! Now I'll tell 
 you what we'll eat at the Mocking Turtle, a little place 
 I know of down in Greenwich Village. It'll be a change 
 for you, Miss La Tour, and we are almost certain to meet 
 some interesting people. Shall we say at seven ? ' ' 
 
 So I said seven, and Mr. Westman went away to a meet- 
 ing, very full of business, but so plainly tickled that I 
 commenced to wonder wasn't I the lion instead of him. 
 It give me a real thrill to feel myself associated with the 
 highbrow world like that, and naturally I wanted to be 
 primed for it right. 
 
 "Look here, captain!" I says to the sales gentleman 
 when Mr. Westman had gone. "Look here tell me a little 
 something about the Great Man, will you? So I can talk 
 intelligently, you know. I noticed his hands looked awful 
 rough for a writer."
 
 West Broadway 25 
 
 "Well, no wonder!" says the book herder with a deep 
 sigh of near-sympathy. "They put him on the rock pile 
 at the penitentiary, you know." 
 
 "What?" I says, thinking there must be some mistake. 
 But there wasn't. The bird only gives another sigh and 
 shook his head as much in pride as in pity. 
 
 "He's only been out two months," he informs me.
 
 A GOOD time to tell a husband anything that can be 
 argued about is while he is fighting his way into a 
 dress shirt, or maybe with his mouth full of tooth paste, 
 which gives him time to think twice before coming back at 
 you. By a long wifely experience I have learned this, 
 and so that evening when I got home I waited until Jim 
 was at the shirt stage before breaking the whole truth to 
 him. He had got back from the studio late, and com- 
 menced flinging off his coat and hollering for his dress 
 suit almost before he was properly inside the flat, and you 
 would of thought it was my fault he was late, and he al- 
 ways pulls the first holler, and if he keeps it up long 
 and loud enough he gets away with it; and I sometimes 
 think maybe I am to blame because he missed the ferry or 
 the car broke down or whatever was the cause of the delay. 
 
 And any other wife will confess to the fact that hus- 
 bands have an awful mysterious way of putting you in 
 the wrong for something they have done their own selves, 
 and the easiest way to restore peace is to let them get away 
 with it. 
 
 Well, anyways, this evening I was home and waiting in 
 a snappy black taffeta resterant frock and Maison Rosa- 
 belle had charged me twenty dollars extra for calling it a 
 frock instead of a dress. Well, anyways, I was home 
 waiting in it and a sort of calm excitement over being 
 about to burst into highbrow society, and also a new hat 
 with a tulle crown and a fur brim to keep my brains warm 
 in case the company was cold to me, when in bursts Jim, 
 his latchkey going wild and not working, the way they 
 always act when you are in a hurry. 
 26
 
 West Broadway 27 
 
 "Well, kid, I hope you are all ready," he says before 
 I could say it to him, "because we are late now," he says. 
 "Got my things out?" 
 
 "They are," I says, "on the bed, and I been dressed 
 for an hour." 
 
 "Oh, you would, of course! Come on in while I jump 
 into the soup-and-fish and tell me where is this we are 
 going that you was so excited about it on the phone." 
 
 So I come in, and while Jim dug among his collars and 
 swore at his studs and snortled into the washbowl and 
 peered at me over the top of the towel he was drying his 
 face on, and generally going through the charming, dainty 
 routine of husbandly dressing, why, I managed to slip in a 
 few pills of information here and there, and then bet 
 with myself as to whether he was listening or not. 
 
 "Who's 'is feller Westman?" says Jim, feeling did he 
 need a shave or not and eventually persuading himself in 
 the mirror that he didn't. "Some big bug?" 
 
 "He's a great writer," I says impressively "a real 
 one with books on the market and a thin goatee and mus- 
 tache," I says. "And he wants to write a picture for 
 me. He's a real highbrow, Jim," I says. "I could 
 tell it on him at a glance. And we 're going to have dinner 
 in Greenwich Village with him and a lot of genuine artists 
 and writers no fake stuff, but the real inside circle." 
 
 ' ' Know anything else about him ? ' ' says Jim. 
 
 "Well, he belongs to a club called the Intelligensia, " I 
 says. 
 
 "Never heard of it," says Jim through his undershirt. 
 "Now, if it was the Pineapple Social Outing or the Actor's 
 Equity I might find out something about him," he went 
 on, emerging through the neckband. 
 
 "You don't need to," I says, very indignant. "He's 
 a very famous person, and has opinions."
 
 28 West Broadway 
 
 "What are they?" says Jim, diving into his open-faced 
 shirt. It was then that I sprung the Big Fact. 
 
 "I don't know," I says. "But he's been to jail for 
 them." 
 
 Jim made some queer snorts inside the bosom, but I 
 went on quickly before he could get out. 
 
 "At any rate, it's the first chance we've had to meet 
 any people with brains and culture, and we are not going 
 to miss it," I says. "Jail or no jail, we are going to 
 keep that date." 
 
 And then Jim appeared, red in the face and gasping 
 for breath. 
 
 "Jail?" he says. "For the love of Lulu! Say, I'm not 
 going to eat with any boarder from Sing Sing!" 
 
 "Now, James Smith," I says, "you listen to me, and keep 
 your shirt on!" not meaning that he was actually taking 
 it off again, because the dress ones are too difficult for 
 hasty action, but you get me and so did he. "Now, James 
 Smith, you listen to me and tuck away a little information. 
 I got my reasons for going downtown to-night, and one 
 of them is that I want to be informed. My mind enjoys 
 working, and it don't get much exercise at home. I got 
 a strong hunch it'll be an interesting party, and after all 
 we don't know what it was Westman was jugged for. I 
 got a suspicion the same as you have it was some radical 
 opinions, but leave me tell you, Jim, radical opinions can't 
 be ignored entirely nowadays. We are living in a world 
 which is very much jazzed up in its mind, what with the 
 income tax and the high cost of food and the terrible con- 
 fessions of profiteering which we read in the advertising 
 pages of the newspapers every day. Only a fool will pre- 
 tend there is nothing the matter with the world and that 
 things is the same as they used to be. That ostrich stuff 
 won't get you anything except maybe a wallop on the
 
 West Broadway 29 
 
 part which ain't stuck in the sand. So, I say, let's go 
 down and listen. Maybe we will learn something." 
 
 "Well," says Jim, and I'll say he was pretty patient 
 to hold out that long, "if you say so, Baby, we'll go. Only 
 if I have to start something don't say I didn't warn you." 
 
 "You'll start nothing!" I says firmly. "These are 
 brainy birds, and we are going to enjoy a little exchange 
 of ideas. And now leave that tie alone it's all right. 
 And come on, we're late." 
 
 Well, all the way down from Riverside to the Mocking 
 Turtle, which was on West Fourth Street, I didn't say 
 anything about the offer Goldringer had made me or how 
 I had at least temporarily refused it, but sat in a daze, 
 being kind of scared about who would I meet and what 
 would I say to them, but real pleased to have the new 
 experience and wondering would I get by without giving 
 away how little culture I had. Because, of course, I re- 
 alized that money is not everything in life and that educa- 
 tion is a awful precious thing, and that one who has it can 
 make one which has it not feel cheap, no matter how much 
 money you have and they haven't. Do you get me? And 
 believe me, on that ride downtown I would of exchanged 
 my five-carrot diamond ring for a college education in a 
 minute if I could of! But never mind, I thought, I am 
 willing to learn, and a open mind is above rubies or five- 
 carrot diamonds either, as the poet says, and I have got 
 one. 
 
 And so while Jim kept up a line of talk about the studio 
 and what a rotten director Art Wentz was and how the 
 lights give out and no extra fuses in a great big studio 
 like that and so forth and ect., and perfectly content with 
 my wifely "Indeed, dear?" every now and then, I kept get- 
 ting more trembly inside me the further downtown we 
 went, and wondering could I remember the names of the 
 books I had bought that afternoon so's to mention them
 
 30 West Broadway 
 
 carelessly throughout the meal, and then at last we ar- 
 rived at the Mocking Turtle. 
 
 Well, believe me that cafe reminded me of the Ritz it 
 was so different ! It had once been a barber shop, but the 
 barber had taken away all his sanitary fixtures when he 
 left, and now there was an elegant cheesecloth drapery in 
 the window and some paintings on the glass which I would 
 of taken to be amateur if I hadn't known they were ar- 
 tistic. Hollo, our chauffeur, who is sort of a formal bird, 
 looked worried when Jim told him ten o'clock would be 
 the limit, and watched us into the artists' resort with a 
 anxious eye. But though I hated to worry him, in we 
 went, and there inside was Mr. Karl Westman, goatee and 
 all, and he had dressed for dinner by the simple process 
 of adding a new black ribband to his eyeglasses. 
 
 "Ah, Miss La Tour!" he says, coming forward eagerly, 
 sort of surprised like he had been afraid we wouldn't 
 show. 
 
 "This is my husband, Mr. James Smith," I says, intro- 
 ducing Jim. 
 
 And the two shook hands like I had said "both members 
 of this club," but it went no farther, and then we sat 
 down at a table without any wasteful laundry work on it 
 and commenced to wait for the others, as Mr. Westman 
 explained. 
 
 Inside, the Mocking Turtle was one of those restaurants 
 where you have to talk in a whisper or not at all, unless 
 you hire the whole place or don't care who hears you. 
 Mr. Westman didn't care he mad,e that plain 'right 
 away. 
 
 "I've brought you a copy of my paper, The Arm of 
 Labor," he says, giving it to me with a something on the 
 cover which I thought at first was meant to be cut out with 
 the scissors and put together right to amuse the little 
 ones, but which had "Dance of Spring" printed under it,
 
 West Broadway 31 
 
 which I read just in time to avoid a break. "And here is 
 a pamphlet I wrote on Lenine. I'm sure it will interest 
 you." 
 
 "Thank you," I says. 
 
 "But the main thing," says Westman, "is the picture 
 possibilities of Arise America. Have you thought about it 
 at all since this afternoon?" 
 
 "Not beyond the title, which is great," I says. "Do 
 you think it would be a good picture?" 
 
 "Magnificent!" says Westman. "It could be built up 
 in such a way as to carry the real message to the people." 
 
 "That's swell!" I says. 
 
 And then before we could talk about it any further the 
 distinguished company began to come in with a eager 
 air, but whether to meet me or a square meal I don't care 
 to say in writing. And such a lot of well-known names 
 among them! At least, each time I got introduced I had 
 the feeling that my not knowing the name was my own 
 ignorance, and I felt a mere siphon beside them. 
 
 Among the real invited guests at our table was a lady 
 named Rosa Gratz and her husband, Mr. Crabtree Bett. 
 I thought at first she was professional on account of being 
 Miss and a different name to her husband's, but it seems 
 she was just a professional Miss, and that keeping her own 
 name was all the profession she had in life. He was the 
 man who had amalgamated the Sausage Stuff ers' Union 
 or something. Anyways, he was very important, and wrote 
 plays between strikes; and none of the movie rights to 
 them was sold, as he cared nothing for commercialism, 
 or so he told me ; but I was welcome to see them if I wanted 
 to, because he understood I was Liberal. He himself was 
 a philosophic Anarchist, and was free all day to-morrow 
 if I cared to have him read those plays to me. And just 
 as I was going down for the third time my life was saved 
 by the arrival of Lu Wildhack, which was not a Chinaman,
 
 32 West Broadway 
 
 but a girl who had robbed a tortoise of his eyeglasses, and 
 she was evidently Mr. Westman 's Sweetie and awful afraid 
 somebody would fail to realize that they were not mar- 
 ried, and was maybe a little disappointed in me because of 
 I not being more shocked. But in ten years on Broadway, 
 why, you see a lot of poor things in the same fix, and I 
 long ago realized it was not always their fault, but a in- 
 competent mother's and the hard time they have to get 
 along is really punishment enough. And after her came 
 Mr. Westman 's brother, a quiet young chap who just sat 
 and said nothing. 
 
 Well, our invited company consisted as listed above, 
 information drawn from sources which we believe to be 
 reliable, meaning our own eyes and ears. But the table 
 which had once worked in a boarding house could hold a 
 lot more than six, and did, because practically the entire 
 intellectual lower world, meaning that part which is situ- 
 ated south of Fourteenth Street, come over to the table 
 and sat there during the evening, and by the time we had 
 got to what I took to be filet of sole leather I had eight 
 disinterested parties who never went to the pictures be- 
 cause they was so vulgar and so hopelessly bad offer me 
 really good scenarios. The altruistic spirit of that Cave of 
 Culture was a beautiful thing, and I '11 say those highbrows 
 didn't care any more for breaking into the despised pic- 
 tures than they did for their right arm. But anyways, I 
 was learning a whole lot, though not exactly what I had 
 expected to, and at any rate there had so far been nothing 
 for Jim to kick about except the meal. 
 
 But after we had eat the trouble began. One of the 
 symptoms of Bohemianism is to hang around the table 
 after you are through eating, and this is what we did, 
 talk being a inexpensive form of entertainment, and our 
 host had plenty of it. And what is further, that was just 
 what I had come for, and so I was perfectly agreeable
 
 West Broadway 33 
 
 up to a certain point. I felt all set for a heated intellectual 
 discussion as I sat there amidst the smoke screen sent up 
 by the cigarettes which everybody but me was smoking and 
 watching the others enjoying some boot licker that one of 
 the crowd had brought and refraining myself, not because 
 of moral reasons but on account of thinking more of my 
 Art than I do of my stomach, and it 's the truth, they got 
 more to do with each other than a person would suppose. 
 
 Well, anyways, I felt about fifty per cent more intel- 
 lectual than ever before, although whether it was because 
 of my dinner didn 't set very well, or not, I can 't be sure ; 
 and so I thought, now I will start what I came for, and 
 so I says, "Mr. Westman, don't you think all this talk 
 of the Soviet spreading over the world is more or less the 
 bunk?" I says. 
 
 "Westman opened his little eyes very wide at that. 
 
 "My dear lady," he says, "the International is not a 
 theory any longer it is a fact! Look at Russia! Look 
 at Italy ! England will be next and then France, and by 
 that time America will be ready if she has not already 
 come in!" 
 
 He says this with such a sure kind of manner that I 
 couldn 't come back at him the way I wanted to quick and 
 snappy. I could only look at him stupidly while my mind 
 searched around for what I wanted to say next. 
 
 "But why should anybody in America want to revolt?" 
 I says, and everybody at the table stopped to listen. West- 
 man give a bitter laugh. 
 
 "Why?" he asks. "You ask me why?" 
 
 "I do!" I says firmly. "I'm not such a fool as not to 
 read the papers, and of course I see a lot of pieces where 
 the country is full of strikes coal strikes, garment strikes, 
 even milk strikes and lockouts, whatever they are. And 
 yet we certainly got a rich and prosperous country where 
 everybody seems to have plenty of money to spend. Why
 
 34 West Broadway 
 
 would we want a revolution here? What is it you be- 
 cause I suppose that's what you was in jail for want to 
 change ? ' ' 
 
 "Now look here, my dear young lady!" says Mr. West- 
 man. "That is a big order for a single evening. But I 
 can tell you a few things that you are going to see changed. 
 You are going to see the people the common people 
 come into power, first of all, and the power of the capi- 
 talists taken away from them." 
 
 "But most of the capitalists I know are awful common 
 people," I says, and this got a laugh, although that was 
 not what I had intended. "What I mean is that they 
 mostly come from the lower East Side in the first place, 
 and was maybe a newsboy or some such thing to begin, 
 with poor but by no means necessarily honest parents. 
 But their willingness to work and save and use their brains 
 have got them where they are to-day." 
 
 "Social justice is based on fairness to the average man, 
 and not on the exceptional, Miss La Tour," says Westman. 
 
 "But how are you going to stop the good ones?" I says. 
 "They'll always get on top." 
 
 "It may be necessary to kill off all of those who refuse 
 to put their services at the disposal of the proletariat," 
 says Westman, his face getting sort of ugly and purple. 
 "I am convinced that direct action is the only solution 
 in many of the problems of social readjustment." 
 
 This got me sore and a little scared. 
 
 "But do you think you've got any real backing in this 
 country for that sort of thing?" I says, real quiet on the 
 surface, but nearing the boiling point inside. 
 
 "I've got practically the whole country," says West- 
 man grimly. "There's an immense organization in exist- 
 ence which will show its hand at the proper time. It has 
 given warnings before now, and when it declares itself the
 
 West Broadway 35 
 
 entire country will arise from its misery and follow the 
 new leaders to freedom." 
 
 There was a short pause after this, and I for the first 
 time really noticed Westman 's brother, Tom, who had been 
 sitting in silence all evening. What caught me now was 
 the anxious way he was watching Karl. The kid's eyes 
 was half shut and two lines had come into his face deep 
 lines of worry and he had turned a sort of ashy color 
 like he was sick. He didn't say nothing at all, but I 
 couldn't help wondering about it. 
 
 Then Rosa Gratz spoke up. 
 
 "Miss La Tour," says she, "you ought to be in a posi- 
 tion to know something of the truth about the condition 
 of the people the vast downtrodden mass of the people 
 in this country to-day and to sympathize with them. 
 You are of the people yourself." 
 
 "You said a mouthful!" I replied. "I was raised on 
 Avenue A and in the dressing rooms of circuses and cheap 
 theaters all my young life," I says. "And I hated it, 
 and made up my mind to fight my way out of it," I says. 
 "And by a lot of hard work I've done so," I says. "But 
 nobody ever tried to keep me down," I says, "nor deprive 
 me of a living or a fair show. I've always been well paid 
 when I could deliver the goods, ' ' I says, ' ' and so has every- 
 body else who has done the same." 
 
 "But you had the goods, as you call it, to deliver, Miss 
 La Tour, ' ' Miss Gratz goes on. ' ' Suppose pardon my be- 
 ing personal but just suppose you hadn't been so pretty. 
 Would you have been so successful?" 
 
 Well ; that was a mean question, and pretty near a knock- 
 out, because a face which is easy to look at on the screen is 
 certainly the one which gets there, only that ain't all there 
 is to it. But it's awful hard to make one who is not 
 familiar with a studio understand that pictures is real work
 
 36 West Broadway 
 
 and that the money in it has to be earned the same as 
 any other money. 
 
 "About the East Side you are right," I says. "There 
 are plenty of horrors in it almost as bad as what I 've read 
 about what is going on in Petrograd since the revolution 
 took place." 
 
 "You mean what you've read in the capitalist press 
 about Petrograd," Mr. Crabtree chimed in. "You don't 
 know the truth and even if it isn't perfect, the result 
 in Russia has proved sufficiently interesting to spread 
 through the workingmen's organizations all over the 
 world by no means excepting America." 
 
 "But if the people here are really as discontented as you 
 say," I says, "why don't they take more interest in poli- 
 tics! They got a vote, you know. I personally myself 
 think they got a pretty good machine with which to ex- 
 press theirself right now." 
 
 Suddenly Karl Westman got excited. He got on his 
 feet and hit the table a wallop. His brother, with his face 
 whiter than ever, half got up, too, but sank back again, still 
 silent. 
 
 ' ' Express themselves express themselves ! ' ' Karl 
 shouted. "God help them much good their expressed 
 wishes do them ! Look at the miners, at the longshoremen 
 look at all the industrial slaves of this country and then 
 ask me why they don 't express themselves ! Politics are a 
 rotten, filthy mess democracy a rank failure! We are 
 through with them, I tell you! We want action direct 
 action war if you like war with the rich, with the smug 
 bourgeoisie with their fat little savings and their stupid 
 content, and we'll put an end to their dull tyranny if we 
 have to blow them to hell to do it !" 
 
 ' ' Karl ! ' ' says young Westman suddenly, and his voice 
 was like a whiplash. "Sit down and shut up!" 
 
 And abruptly Mr. Westman sat down. Everybody was
 
 West Broadway 37 
 
 talking at once, then, Miss Gratz about the West Virginia 
 miners, Mr. Crabtree shouting something about the ex- 
 pressmen's strike, and a perfectly strange female who had 
 got in with our bunch someways or another had Jim col- 
 lared and he couldn't strike her, no matter what she was 
 saying, but looked as if he wished she was a man. I turned 
 to young Westman, who had moved over into the seat next 
 to me, while his brother whispered to the Wildhack lady. 
 
 "Say, brother," I says to him, more to find out could 
 he talk than anything "say, bo," I says, "are you with 
 this bunch on this Great American Revolution thing?" 
 
 "I don't know," he says slowly. "Sometimes when I 
 see the poverty of the slums and then suddenly the wealth 
 on the Avenue I'm with the revolution heart and soul. 
 When I see the misuse of power by the officials of the 
 great cities, the diversion of the public funds, the neglect 
 of the public 's interests, yes, I am for it ! When I hear 
 my brother Karl there talk, with his conviction, his fire, 
 and realize that he has given his whole life to this work 
 even gone to prison for the sake of his convictions 
 then I believe in the revolution. And his following is a 
 powerful thing." 
 
 "Just what is his following?" I says. 
 
 "Any number of union leaders," said Tom Westman. 
 ' ' Karl can swing their men any way he wants to, and they 
 know it." 
 
 "How can he get the time," I says, "from his work?" 
 
 "It is his work!" says Tom in some surprise. "The 
 Internationalists support him, you know." 
 
 "I didn't know," I says shortly. "Do you believe in 
 this direct action stuff, too?" 
 
 Young Westman give a crooked little smile at that. 
 
 ' ' I saw enough of the results of direct action in the Red 
 Cross service for two years," he says, "to think much of 
 unnecessary killing. But it's true I've come back to find
 
 38 West Broadway 
 
 a lot of things I don't like cheap skates that made a pile 
 while the boys was fighting, and all that. Yes, sometimes 
 I think a revolution a clean sweep is the only way. ' ' 
 
 "I don't!" I says hotly. "There must be some other 
 answer. There's a lot about our Government I don't like 
 myself, especially the income tax, and I don't care for this 
 Blue Sunday idea. Sunday is the only day for we actresses 
 to get a little pleasure. But I'm not going to throw any 
 bombs about it." 
 
 Young Westman give a jump at that. 
 
 "Don't !" he says, laughing a little in not quite a healthy 
 way. "I don't like that sort of talk either. But if 
 the country wants a revolution it will have it, you can 
 depend on that!" 
 
 "If this whole United States of America is as sick as 
 you people make out," I says, "I ought to know the facts 
 and help call in the doctor. I 've heard a lot of wise cracks 
 and long words here to-night, and it's got me worried. 
 You people down here can write and talk a lot better than 
 most of us, and educated people ought to know what they 
 are talking about." 
 
 Karl Westman heard this and turned around to me 
 again. 
 
 "We do know what we are talking about, Miss La Tour," 
 he says awful solemn and impressive. "Soon very soon 
 you will see action. Remember what I say, when you 
 read of it! The poverty and oppression in this country 
 are no idle theories but a grim reality, and before long 
 you will see a concrete demonstration of our impatience 
 with it." 
 
 Well, these words give me an awful sickly feeling, but 
 before they had time to sink in we got a concrete example 
 of direct action right then and there in the Mocking 
 Turtle Cafe, and Jim did the directing, but his fist did the 
 action. He had been put at the far end of the long table,
 
 West Broadway 39 
 
 but I had for some time realized that all the argument 
 had not been cooped up at my end, and Jim's voice had 
 got into it stronger and stronger, and now he landed with 
 his right on Mr. Crabtree's jaw, but the jaw not being 
 made for anything but talk and to hold up a beard, he 
 went backwards over the table. 
 
 Well, I don't know just how to tell what happened then, 
 but for a few minutes it was a riot, only quite a little of 
 the company left in a hurry without saying good night or 
 anything, and finally when Jim was pulled off what was 
 left of Mr. Crabtree, why, we said good night, or at least 
 I remembered to, and that we would like to pay for the 
 chairs that was broke, and any china, and then we some- 
 how got out to the limousine and into it, and I turned on 
 my husband and give him what Mr. Crabtree had been 
 unable to a good licking only I, being a lady, did it 
 with words. 
 
 "The idea!" I says. "Such a low-life performance! 
 Can't a person have a little intellectual conversation on 
 the questions of the day without pulling any rough stuff? 
 Suppose we don 't agree with them. We ain 't in their revo- 
 lution yet time enough to lick the pants off 'em when 
 they try to start it," I says. 
 
 "Revolution?" says Jim. "I didn't hear anything 
 about any revolution! I hit him because he says motion- 
 picture actors was cooties."
 
 m 
 
 WHAT?" says I. "He says actors was cooties?" 
 "Well, he says they belonged to the parasitic 
 class," says Jim, "and that highbrow language didn't get 
 by me and me having signed a contract this very day 
 to go to the coast and make a serial with more he-man 
 work in it than he ever did in his whole entire life ! ' ' 
 
 Wouldn't that jolt you? I'll say so! Why, I just sat 
 there with the wind taken out of me, and for a moment I 
 was wordless, though a wife. But not thoughtless, I'll 
 tell the world! Because while I sat there like a boob a 
 real idea was coming to me a big idea that gave me a 
 wide-open feeling like clean air was blowing through my 
 brains and made my heart leap and handed me the first 
 real emotional excitement I had had since the baby come. 
 All of a sudden them books I had bought and those high- 
 brows I'd been out with seemed stuffy and smelly and 
 kind of unreal. Maybe they had told the truth, but any 
 one person can only tell a little part of the truth because 
 the truth has many sides to it ; and I felt in my heart that 
 I knew something that those highbrows didn't, and that I 
 would and could tell my side. Tell it to the people ! All 
 the people all the way across the country ! If those darn 
 Reds had a right to go out and tell the world one thing, I 
 had as good a right to tell them different, and I would 
 do it! I would tell my side to my suffering, downtrodden 
 country; tell 'em that all they needed to do to be pros- 
 perous and happy was to work I would say that to them 
 I, the living example of that it can be done ! 
 
 Did the big thought lift me up like religion? I'll say 
 40
 
 West Broadway 41 
 
 so! I felt pure and washed, sort of, and it certainly was 
 a pleasant feeling. But I didn't try to explain it to Jim. 
 There is no use trying to explain your emotions to your 
 husband. I found that out long ago. So all I says out 
 loud was, "Jim," I says, "forget them literary nitwits. I 
 got a wonderful plan. Goldringer wants me to go out to 
 the coast too. I was going to talk to you about it to-night. 
 What do you say if we take the old bus and drive the whole 
 way?" 
 
 Jim turned to me with a look like I ain't seen on his 
 face since I said "Yes." 
 
 "Kid," said he just too sweetly for words "kid, you 
 got brains all over your body ! ' ' 
 
 The next morning I woke up early, about ten o'clock, 
 with the feeling that something had happened and some- 
 thing else was going to, only I didn 't know what, but only 
 a sort of flutter in my middle. Then all at once I remem- 
 bered I was going to drive to California ! 
 
 And when Musette, my personal maid, come in with a 
 light breakfast of only coffee and serial and eggs Benedic- 
 tine, which means married eggs well, anyway, only that 
 and a little French toast and jam why, I could hardly 
 made a dent in it because of the excitement I was in over 
 my plan. 
 
 There was also some letters on the tray, and the morning 
 papers, and when I had found that Jim was already gone 
 out on a early location on Brooklyn Bridge and ma and the 
 nurse and baby was also on location somewheres in the mar- 
 keting district, I though, well, here's my chance for a 
 little peace and privacy and I can think out a few things 
 without some loving member of my family nagging me to 
 know what am I thinking about, or where will they send 
 the laundry this week, or please let me have a dollar forty- 
 five for the boy from the drug store or some such intrusion 
 on a married artist's privacy.
 
 42 West Broadway 
 
 Well, anyways, when I had pecked at my food until it 
 was all gone and meanwhile thought over last night and the 
 sort of half-real, half "Welsh-rarebit-dream people we had 
 been with, which it's the truth; they kind of seemed to 
 belong to a race of their own, not pure anything do you 
 get what I mean? but about one-third white, one-third 
 Bed and one-third tortoise-shell, and yet were the ones in 
 this country who were doing all the talking and getting no 
 end of publicity for it well, the more I thought of them 
 the madder I got, and the more I was determined I would 
 go and do a little shouting on my own. Here these parrots 
 kept up their yell of Red, Bed, Bed, and nobody answered 
 them back ! But I would ! Just how I didn't know as yet, 
 but I would tell the hicks throughout this fairly broad land 
 something about Americanism. 
 
 And finally I had myself so worked up I was mentally 
 running around in circles. So I says to myself, "Here, 
 Mary Gilligan Smith La Tour, keep your boudoir cap on! 
 Maybe the members of this Intelligentzia Club are all 
 right. Maybe they got the right dope about the Great 
 American Bevolution being a sure thing. But if they are 
 there is no use you going crazy too I Get your bean clear 
 and then get a little action!" 
 
 "All right!" I answered myself. "Then I'll just calm 
 down, read my mail and the papers and then get busy 
 with my preparations." 
 
 So I got out of bed and into a negligee and took my 
 literature into my boudoir, which I had recently done over 
 in period furniture but do not like it much. I don't know 
 why they call it period furniture unless because somebody 
 put a stop to it a long time ago which makes it hard to get 
 and expensive. Well, anyway, I've got some of it now 
 because all cultured people do, and I settled myself in 
 a Tudor armchair which was very valuable it was the 
 original model for the Electric chair but fortunately
 
 West Broadway 43 
 
 had some La Tour lingerie cushions in it, and then I com- 
 menced my reading. 
 
 There was nothing in the mails to take my mind off the 
 Eevolution, however only a bill from Maison Rosabelle 
 for a couple of negligees but with nothing negligee about 
 the price, the notice of my income-tax installment and a 
 form letter asking me to contribute to the defense fund 
 of a couple of Boston wops who it seemed hadn't done any- 
 thing in the world but kill a special officer and a paymas- 
 ter and get away with eighteen thousand dollars in an auto- 
 mobile. And now, the letter went on to say, the corrupt 
 police had the nerve to capture these poor friends of the 
 common people and had them in the cooler, and as nobody 
 had seen them do the killing would I please send a few 
 berries at once to prevent this outrage upon the personal 
 liberty of our citizens, because they were undoubtedly 
 being railroaded by the cruel capitalists who couldn't see 
 the justice in this cute little performance. 
 
 Well, of course, I don 't see how this got by the using-the- 
 mails-to-obtain-money-under-at-least-doubtf ul-pre tenses 
 law. But it did back up what Westman had said 
 about the organization of radicals. It was a printed letter, 
 and a printed folder went with it a expensive sort of 
 advertising, and I wish Al Goldringer would do as much in 
 his motion-picture business. Only a rich organization 
 could put stuff like that out. And it was not the first letter 
 of the kind I had received, as I then also realized. I tore 
 it up in little pieces and put a period to that in the period 
 wastebasket and turned to the newspapers. 
 
 Now you can't hardly call the regular New York news- 
 papers in good standing radical. As a matter of fact, 
 Mr. Westman had called them something which no lady 
 would repeat, but which meant that they were distinctly 
 on the other side from him. And yet out of eight headlines 
 across the front page here is what I read:
 
 44 West Broadway 
 
 1. Coal Strikers Refuse to Arbitrate. 
 
 2. Dockmen Declare War to Finish. 
 
 3. Thirty-four Robberies, Three Murders, Ten Hold- 
 
 ups, Two Shootings City Record Last Week. 
 
 4. Riots in Belfast, Ten Killed. 
 
 5. Mrs. MacSwiney Greeted With Cheers. 
 
 And if that isn't giving all the news space to the Reds, 
 what is? I went wild when I read them, and commenced 
 searching through the inside pages for something pleasant, 
 and way down under the theatrical ads I found a little 
 piece one-tenth of a column long which says, "Biggest 
 Crops Since 1905 Promised for this Year." 
 
 Can you beat that? I lay back as far as I could in 
 the torture chair, fairly sick with the condition of 
 my country. This was serious. If all that stuff was so 
 much more important than the good news, we as a nation 
 was in a bad way, that was clear to any fool. I could read 
 the evidence, plain as the print it was in, but somehow the 
 inside of me my heart if not my mind says to me there 
 was a catch some place. It couldn't be as bad as it 
 seemed. 
 
 Yet day after day the papers was printing that sort of 
 stuff. 
 
 If it was true every decent American ought to act and 
 act quick before it was too late. But it couldn't be too 
 late. I wouldn't leave it be. A wave of excitement swept 
 over me, but I didn't let it go at that. There's no sense 
 in having a strong feeling unless you put it to work. 
 Emotion is not a end in itself, and the way to get action 
 out of an emotion is to pledge yourself so 's you can 't back 
 out when you cool down. So I threw away my conserva- 
 tive newspaper and grabbed hold of the telephone. And 
 after only the delay a person would expect I had Al on 
 the wire. 
 
 "Hello, All" I says.
 
 West Broadway 45 
 
 "That you Mary?" says Al. "How's the world treat- 
 ing you?" 
 
 "It ain't treating me," I says. "I have to buy my 
 own," I says. "Which at the present prices, Al, means 
 I'm going to work," I says. 
 
 "That picture is going to be made on the coast," says 
 Al. 
 
 "I admit it," I says. "But I'm going to drive out in 
 the Colby-Droit." 
 
 "What?" says Al. "Driving? Can't you see enough 
 from a train that I got to pay expenses on a car? Say, if 
 I was to offer you the Singer Building you would want me 
 to throw in the Metropolitan Tower!" 
 
 "Never mind expenses!" I says. "I'll be reasonable 
 on that." 
 
 "But it will take such a time!" says Al. "I got a wire 
 from Rosin this morning saying they will have space in 
 three weeks for a big feature." 
 
 "Tell him one month from next Tuesday," I says, "and 
 shoot the contract around for me to make my mark on." 
 
 "Well, have it your own way," says Al as if he was 
 giving me something new. "Anyways, that auto trip will 
 be good publicity." 
 
 "Not on your life!" I says. "I'm going on business of 
 my own as Mrs. James Smith," I says, "and I don't want 
 the country all jazzed up to meet me. I want to catch 
 it as it really is, with its kimono on and its hair in curlers. ' ' 
 
 Well, right away we had a fight on that, but I won, be- 
 cause the telephone operator give me the last word, and 
 naturally I didn't try to ring him back. 
 
 Instead I got up and dressed, because I had left myself 
 under a week to get ready, and realized that it's the 
 woman has always to get things done before any trip 
 or they are not, and that Jim would be busy up to the last
 
 46 West Broadway 
 
 minute, but was fortunately only working on some retakes 
 now, his serial having finished the week before. 
 
 Well, the first thing I done was break the news to ma 
 that she would have to take care of the baby and bring him 
 and the nurse on by train, because even then I realized 
 a open car and a trip like that wouldn 't do him any good, 
 with no milk on the desert and all. And instead of raising 
 a kick, a fearful look of cunning come into ma's face ex- 
 actly like the heavy in a melo when he sees that at last he 
 can have his will, and I could fairly see her feeding that 
 young one sausage to keep him quiet, and picking him up 
 when he yelled and rocking him to sleep and all those 
 good old-fashioned methods, which my generation grew up 
 in spite of. But then on the other hand I knew Miss 
 Barker, the nurse, wouldn't leave her do it, because she 
 always prevented me, and I had first claim on him. 
 
 Of course, I hated to leave my baby, and it was the only 
 real drawback to the trip. But it was like the girls 
 making me take my wedding ring off right after I was 
 married. They said it was better, because in case I ever 
 had to later I wouldn't feel so bad about doing it. And 
 a professional woman who is a mother has to do the same 
 with her child; and I might have to go to Cuba on a 
 location or Mexico or anywheres, so why not get the agony 
 over at the start? And aside from that the prospect of 
 having no family but Jim for a while was a kind of a relief. 
 A child and your mother is something no woman would be 
 without, but to be without them for a week or two is some- 
 times just as well, and after all I was going primarily for 
 my country 's sake, and I was sort of sorry I had only one 
 family to give to it. There is a lot of difference between 
 having the house quiet and making a lot of noise yourself, 
 if you get me. 
 
 Well, anyways, I left ma gloating over her plans, and 
 taking the bunch of books I had bought only the day
 
 West Broadway 47 
 
 before, but which seemed like years ago, I went back to 
 the store where I had bought them as a good beginning. 
 The same bright baby that I had bought them of was there, 
 and he seemed real surprised to see me. 
 
 "Good morning," he says. "My, but you are a fast 
 reader! What would you like to-day?" 
 
 "I'd like to exchange this junk for a copy of Romeo and 
 Juliet, a pocket dictionary and a English grammar," I 
 says. "I appreciate your helpful suggestions, but I guess 
 I'd better get educated in my own way." 
 
 "By Jove, I don't know but you are right!" says Stu- 
 dent Willie. "How about Westman and Arise America? 
 Are you going to make the picture?" 
 
 "I am!" I says. "But not out of his book. Thank 
 God he couldn't copyright that title!" 
 
 Well, the bird laughed at that, and exchanged the books 
 like I wanted him to, and as it had run to quite some 
 money the day before, I got a copy of the play that give 
 me real pleasure to handle something I never expected 
 to get from a book. 
 
 "By the way," says the book hustler as he give me my 
 new package "by the way, I heard a very curious thing 
 about Westman this morning. It seems he's disappeared. 
 He had a definite engagement late last night with the chap 
 that told me Crabtree who was in this morning with a 
 black eye. Seems he went to keep the date, and Westman 's 
 room had been stripped clean. Did you dine with him?" 
 
 "Yes, we did," I says. "I bet the bulls are after him. 
 We left early, thank heavens!" 
 
 "Well, it's an odd story," says the young fellow. "But 
 perhaps there's nothing in it." 
 
 "Probably not," I says, paying really very little atten- 
 tion, because I was interested in my own plans. ' ' Can you 
 tell me where to get a good automobile road map?"
 
 48 West Broadway 
 
 "Why, at the A. A. A., I guess," says he. "Going 
 far?" 
 
 "Just to California," I says. And then I thanked him 
 and walked out, little dreaming that I had passed up st 
 piece of information that was of the greatest importance.
 
 IV 
 
 nnHE only thing I thought of as I walked out onto the 
 JL Avenue was that I was going to take a tour which 
 practically nobody had ever done, and that it must show 
 on me. I had an idea that everybody who looked at me 
 must know where I was going and what perils and adven- 
 tures I was about to face. I felt like a mixture of Sir 
 Guy the Crusader and Christopher Columbus, and some- 
 how, while I didn't really expect perfect strangers to 
 point at me and say "There is a woman who is motoring 
 to California shortly," I certainly did feel apart from the 
 common herd which hadn't been any further than from 
 the Battery to Harlem. I felt important and expected to 
 be treated accordingly, and so I went into the A. A. A. 
 all prepared to hand them a big surprise. I guess I must 
 of forgot I was in New York. Naturally I went first to 
 the plush offices on the Avenue, and they was nearly as 
 handsome as Goldringer's downtown place, and almost as 
 full of eager seekers, only of course they were not actors 
 but autoists. 
 
 Well, after I had sat there for maybe twenty minutes of 
 my valuable time, nursing Shakspere and the dictionary 
 while six people ahead of me was told no, the road from 
 New York to Philadelphia hadn't been mended yet, and 
 you better take a train, a nice but exhausted young fellow 
 lifted his eyebrows at me and I sprung my bomb only the 
 moment after I done so I saw it was a dud. 
 
 "I'm driving to California next week," I says impres- 
 sively, "and I think I better get some information from 
 you about roads and hotels." 
 49
 
 50 West Broadway 
 
 "Which way are you going?" says the young man like 
 water off a duck's back. 
 
 "Is there more than one way?" I says, flat as a cake on 
 a cold griddle. "I want the best paved way." 
 
 The young man give a mysterious smile at that, which 
 I didn't then understand. And a good thing we don't 
 always understand what is ahead of us or we'd never go 
 any place ain't it the truth? 
 
 "At this time of year I would go by the southern route," 
 he says. ' ' Take the Santa Fe trail. There might be some 
 snow on the Lincoln Highway by the time you'll strike 
 the high places, and you'd be playing safe by going the 
 southern way. If we can help you in any way, be sure 
 to let us know." 
 
 "Is it much of a trip?" I says casually. "Dangerous, 
 and all?" 
 
 "Not a bit, not a bit ! Hundreds of people making it all 
 the time!" says he. "Gas stations every seventy-five 
 miles nothing to it!" 
 
 "Thank you," I says, unconvinced. "Then there's 
 nothing special I ought to know. Will we have to camp?" 
 
 "Not unless you want to," he says. 
 
 "I don't," I says hastily. "I'm in the theatrical line, 
 and hotels have nothing to teach me in the way of horrors. ' ' 
 
 "Well then, there's really nothing especial to tell you," 
 says the feller. "You'll need a tow rope. Better take 
 along an ax and a desert water bag, of course; and you 
 will probably have to adjust the carburetor in high alti- 
 tudes; and take a collapsible bucket to fill the radiator 
 fill every chance you get, whether you need it or not." 
 
 "Hadn't I better take some pemmican and a couple of 
 guns?" I says, kidding him back. But he never smiled. 
 
 "Might be a good idea," he says seriously. And then 
 he turned to a man who was tugging at his elbow im- 
 patiently. "Yes, sir," he says to the man, "splendid
 
 West Broadway 51 
 
 road all the way to Canada, but it's dry now, you know." 
 
 Well I got up and got out at that and went on uptown, 
 wondering all the way just how much the fellow was 
 kidding. I don't mean about dry Canada; I mean about 
 what I ought to take. Of course I expected to take along 
 a few conveniences, but not to have to break the wilder- 
 ness. However, the biggest shock was to have my news 
 taken so calmly. 
 
 The young lady at the stationers where I went to buy 
 a map didn't die of excitement at my trip either. She 
 and a blonde was deep in their own affairs when I come in, 
 my self-importance somewhat restored by then, and she 
 was saying something about "and I says she knew all 
 along he was married, and all the sympathy I got for her 
 could be parked in a eye dropper, ' ' and the other one says, 
 "Well, you ought never to trust a man till you get it on 
 paper," and then I come in. 
 
 "I'm going to California," I says, "and I'd like a road 
 map," I says. 
 
 But the first girl, far from realizing the strangeness of 
 my remark, went on talking, but reached languidly over 
 with her right hand without even looking and drew one 
 from a pile "So, I says, 'Are you sure he is married and 
 it ain't just an alibi?' I says. Two dollars, please" only 
 this was to me. 
 
 Well, I gave her the two and took the map, and went 
 out wondering when she had got back from her seventh 
 transcontinental trip. 
 
 And, believe me, this was some map ! During lunch, 
 which I had by myself, I gave it the double ; and, as the 
 poet says, a world of romance commenced to spread before 
 me, and at the same time a slight tendency to coldness of 
 the feet; but I put that right out of my head in favor of 
 the excitement and adventure I saw there before me in red 
 and blue lines. I'll tell the world this was the first map
 
 52 West Broadway 
 
 I ever took any real interest in or cared where was the 
 boundary line of anything, or how many miles there was 
 in it, or any of those things which going to school had given 
 me a natural hatred of. But, believe me, a map of some 
 place you are going to is something different yet again 
 from a map you got to study in school for no apparent 
 reason. 
 
 As I commenced reading the names on it I got more and 
 more excited. There was St. Louis, Kansas City, Dayton, 
 where the aeroplanes come from, the Mississippi River, 
 where the coon songs come from, and the Rocky Mountains ! 
 Why, we would have to go over 'em! And the Grand 
 Canyon! They began to be places instead of names. 
 When I showed the map to Jim that night we rolled these 
 names about in our mouth like gum or something and 
 chewed on them. But Jim didn't appreciate the map the 
 way he ought to of. That was because I had bought it. 
 
 "Are you sure this is the right one?" he says, turning 
 it over and examining it to try and find something wrong. 
 
 "It's official," I says. 
 
 "Well, it's not so bad," he had to admit at last. "But 
 I think we ought to take the Lincoln Highway, at that. 
 It's the best known." 
 
 "And miss the Canyon?" I says indignantly. "Not 
 much! And, anyways, it's full of snow, or will be." 
 
 ' ' In this heat ? ' ' says Jim. ' ' Nonsense ! ' * 
 
 Then the bell rung and we went at it for three rounds, 
 which ended by compromising on the Santa Fe, Jim having 
 been out by train that way, and I suppose giving in because 
 he would be able to tell me what was coming next before 
 we got to it, and no husband could be expected to resist 
 that chance. But the way he handled that map drove 
 me nearly wild. Before the end of the session you would of 
 thought he had invented it and I had never seen it before. 
 
 "We'll go from New York to Pittsburgh," he says.
 
 West Broadway 53 
 
 "And then do we make Chicago? Let's see no, too far 
 north. That's the Lincoln. Columbus, Ohio, would be 
 better." 
 
 ' ' Let 's go by Philly and Baltimore, ' ' I says. ' ' I played 
 Pittsburgh once, and I want to see some place I ain't 
 been." 
 
 "Well, Baltimore, then. We may as well go through 
 as many states as possible," he agreed. 
 
 Then he commenced recognizing the names of some of 
 the stations he had stopped at; and, like a man, that was 
 where he wanted to go some place he had been ! But as 
 it was all new to me, I should worry ! 
 
 "There's a wonderful hotel at Albuquerque right on 
 the desert the best thing in the town," he says. "And 
 where was it I seen the Indians was it Flagstaff? And 
 wait until you see the jack rabbits in Kansas, and the 
 grades we have to take in in I think it was Illinois." 
 
 Of course I couldn't check him up then. I believed 
 every word he said the way you have to if you ain't been 
 a place yourself. But I got a good memory, and Jim 
 ought to of known better than to tempt it. 
 
 Well, by about nine-thirty we had a route to Los Angeles 
 all doped out, via Kansas City, Las Vegas and San Ber- 
 nardino. And when this was all settled we discovered the 
 Yellowstone way up north, and started in all over again 
 on a different line. 
 
 ' ' We don 't want to miss that ! ' ' says Jim, and I agreed 
 with him. 
 
 So by ten-fifteen we had the northern route all arranged 
 for and then we remembered the snow, which was hard 
 to keep in mind at seventy with the windows open. 
 
 "I don't know but that the old Spanish trail would be 
 better than either of them," says Jim. "Lookit, kid, San 
 Antonio is on it, and El Paso. We could slip into Mexhic-co 
 and find out what a highball looks like, eh! Of course it's
 
 54 West Broadway 
 
 a little longer, but what's a few hundred miles out of three 
 thousand?" 
 
 "We'd have to take the boat to Jacksonville to do it," 
 I says. "But that would be sort of good fun." 
 
 Well, at that we was off again, and by eleven o'clock we 
 had seen New Orleans, the Eio Grande and was ordering 
 a second round at Tia Juana. 
 
 "How long will it take?" I says, meaning the trip, not 
 the drinks. "About two weeks?" 
 
 "I know a feller with Biolock Motor Company done it 
 in five days," says Jim. "Only we don't want to hurry 
 that much." 
 
 "We'll say a month or three weeks," I says. "I don't 
 want any of this keeping on a schedule, Jim, and I won't 
 do it. If you're going to be a timekeper on this trip I 
 won't make it, that's all. I want to stop off when I see 
 some place I like, and not be hauled away from Pike's 
 Peak or something just because you have calculated we'd 
 be in the next town four hours from then." 
 
 "Well, if you don't want to make a time record we'd 
 better not go that extreme southern way," says Jim. 
 "After all, I'm not so sure but that we'll see the most on 
 the Santa Fe, and I'm at least sure it's interesting." 
 
 And so, having shown our independence of the A. A. A. 
 advice by flirting with our own ignorance, we come back 
 to the Santa Fe by twelve midnight, and having by now 
 made a total of over nine thousand miles, with a few side 
 trips thrown in, we was pretty well exhausted and ready 
 for bed. 
 
 "I hope the old bus will make it," says Jim, standing up 
 and yawning. "I wonder if we really had ought to try 
 it?" 
 
 "James Smith, we are going to make that trip if we 
 have to buy a new car to-morrow to do it!" I says hotly.
 
 West Broadway 55 
 
 "We got this far, and now nothing would make me back 
 out of it." 
 
 But for the next few days, which was one wild rush to 
 get ready, I had several times when I would of backed 
 out almost. The first time was when I met Maison 
 Rosabelle. She was, as usual, dressed in a ad of her 
 shop, giving the appearance of a little child of forty-five 
 or so, with a short dress but really not sufficient justifica- 
 tion for it. I met her in the Paris Intime, where I was 
 getting a few handkerchiefs for the trip in case I ran 
 short and couldn't buy any. I always use a particular 
 kind of handkerchiefs, you know, and I was afraid I 
 wouldn't be able to buy them West. 
 
 Well, anyways, there was Maison getting a few prac- 
 tical Georgette winter weights, and of course I mentioned 
 casually that we was going to the coast. But did she drop 
 dead? She did not! 
 
 "Is that so, dearie?" she says. "You will find it real 
 interesting, only the roads is awful. We went out last 
 year, you know." 
 
 "Oh," says I kind of flat, "is that so?" 
 
 "Yes, indeed," she says. "And let me tell you, what- 
 ever you do, be sure and take a big piece of canvas to put 
 under the front wheels in case you get stuck in the sand 
 and their ain't any brush around to cut. And another 
 thing, if you come to a big washout, go down real slow, 
 and then step on her quick the very minute you reach 
 the bottom. Otherwise you'll run the car's nose into the 
 sand and be stuck. Never try to rush a washout going 
 down." Then she turned to the saleslady. "Any wash- 
 satin petticoats?" she says. 
 
 Maison ! Can you beat it ? I was so stunned you could 
 of knocked me down with a drop of a hat! 
 
 "Did you really drive?" I says humbly enough to suit 
 even a woman friend.
 
 56 West Broadway 
 
 "I sure did!" says Maison. "I and Rollo done it in the 
 flivver. It's a bird of a trip, dearie, and be sure to take 
 four pair of chains with you you'll need 'em in Illinois 
 and be sure to put 'em on if it even starts to rain. Them 
 roads are worse when it rains a little than when it rains 
 real bad." 
 
 "How about clothes?" I says, gasping and looking at 
 this new Maison. But look as I might, she seemed just 
 the same as ever make-up, extreme clothes and all. I 
 could hardly believe her, and yet she was as casual as if 
 speaking of seeing a new fillum or something. 
 
 "Oh, clothes!" says our leading Snappy Ladies' Gowns 
 and Modes. "Oh, clothes get some old khaki thing!" 
 
 Well, I walked out on her at that! Of course if she 
 chose to drive to the coast in a flivver and dress like a 
 bum that was her own business, but pretty poor business, 
 it seemed to me. I intended to be comfortable and attrac- 
 tive; of course taking no more than was necessary only 
 a few bags and hatboxes and maybe one small trunk. I 
 intended to dress smart but suitable, and of course her 
 comparing her flivver to our Colby-Droit was all jealousy. 
 
 Well, Maison wasn't the only one give me a jolt. Be- 
 cause hardly had I left her when I ran into a friend of 
 ma's, Mrs. Boyd, and her husband, which used to run the 
 boarding house in Rochester where I have many a time 
 stayed when on tower. Now, I thought, I will get a rise, 
 and at least somebody will be surprised over my trip. But 
 nothing stirring. When we had exchanged healths and 
 so forth and ect. I dropped California on them. But they 
 stood the shock surprisingly. 
 
 "Well, well! Now ain't that nice!" says old Mrs. Boyd. 
 "You'll enjoy it real well, dearie. Only be sure and take 
 plenty of warm clothes, and see that Jim has his winter 
 underwear. There will be plenty of cold mornings in 
 Colorado and New Mexico when you will be glad of them. ' '
 
 West Broadway 57 
 
 "And always carry a five-gallon can of gas and a gallon 
 of oil," says old Mr. Boyd. "We found that very impor- 
 tant on our first trip. If I was you I 'd go right to Bush- 
 man 's to the sporting goods department and get your stuff 
 there. They know just what you need to take." 
 
 When I had got my breath I said good-by and beat it in 
 confusion. I began to feel that if I wanted any distinction 
 or class I had better remain the only one who had never 
 driven to California. 
 
 And so I was more or less prepared for what I found at 
 Bushman's sporting goods department, because I did go 
 there. In fact, I almost ran there, because I began to 
 realize I was as green as a new extra having a test made 
 for the pictures. I was on my way but I had no ticket ; I 
 was headed for a strange country and I didn't know the 
 language. What I didn't know about this trip I was 
 about to pull off would fill all my suitcases and then some. 
 And it being the age of specialists, I determined to allow 
 the specialist on Bushman's top floor to practice on me 
 and pull my ignorance out by the roots. 
 
 Well, anyways, I hurried over, and there for once I 
 found somebody who was at least professionally interested 
 in my trip. This was a fine-looking, athletic young man 
 who had grown hale and hearty in the breezy atmosphere 
 of the sports-goods department, what with living among 
 the canoes and tennis nets, croquet sets, bicycles and 
 sweaters day after day. At least that was what I thought 
 at first, but after I had talked to him a little and told him 
 where I was going I seen he was the real thing and no 
 bluff but did really go out-of-doors a lot in the summer, 
 and so forth, and actually had used personally himself 
 the line of goods he was selling, and 1 11 say that is a type 
 of man which will go far. What is further, he hadn't 
 been to California by motor, but wanted to some day, and
 
 8 West Broadway 
 
 in the meantime he had fitted out over two hundred people 
 for the trip. 
 
 "Going to camp?" he says. "No? Sort of a pity. 
 It's the real way to enjoy it. But, of course, if your time 
 is limited well, you must have an ax, a good, practical 
 one, a collapsible water bucket, and of course a desert 
 water bag. Five gallons will be big enough for you 
 people, I guess." And then he showed me something 
 which looked like what potatoes come in by the bulk, and 
 how any water was to stay in it had me guessing, but he 
 said it would. Then he sold me a tow rope and the canvas 
 thing called a tarpaulin, the one Maison had talked about, 
 and it seems Mr. Hiyou, the salesman, agreed with her 
 about it. Then he sold me a suitcase which turned out 
 to be a kitchen cabinet when you opened it up, with dishes 
 and knives and forks and a vacuum bottle and everything 
 but the kitchen stove in it, and then he sold me the kitchen 
 stove in condensed form. But the cutest thing he sold me 
 was called a Puller. 
 
 When I seen it first I thought a steel derrick had had 
 kittens and that this was one of them. It was made up of 
 boy's-size steel cables and a couple of jiggers like the deuce 
 of spades which you was supposed to stick in the ground 
 and then hitch the hook part to the car and turn on the 
 handle, and there you were! I mean, you were supposed 
 to be out of whatever you was in when you started. It was 
 the kind of thing you see advertised as being worked 
 by a sweet young bride in a Marcel wave, a spotless gift 
 apron and a permanent smile. I bought it, because by 
 that time I was in a sort of daze and would of bought 
 anything he told me, and feeling kind of depressed because 
 of the constant trouble we were expected to have. So 
 finally I says, "Look here, brother," I says, "can't you 
 sell me something cheerful?" I says. "All you done so 
 far is load me up with stuff for trouble. It looks like
 
 West Broadway 59 
 
 you expected us to have a pretty poor time of it. How 
 about the pleasure aspects of this trip?" 
 
 "You'll find them along the route," he says. "I 
 haven't seen them myself. But good heavens, think where 
 you are going the prairies, the Rockies, the Canon ! And 
 besides," he says, and it was the best mouthful so far 
 "besides," he says, "a lot of people go the whole way 
 without any trouble at all. Why, I had a feller in here 
 the other day went all the way without changing a tire! 
 These things you are getting are like carrying an umbrella 
 to keep it from starting to rain. By the way, what are 
 you going to wear?" 
 
 "Why, clothes motor clothes," I says, "with lots of 
 linens and a bathing suit for when I get to the coast." 
 
 "Well, if I might suggest it," says he, "take riding 
 clothes. You will wear them continually west of the 
 Eockies." 
 
 Well, that sounded like good sense to me, so I thanked 
 him and went off to do what little shopping I had left, 
 which was merely a dust coat, a rain coat, goggles, a 
 camera so's I'd be able to get even with some of my 
 friends when I got home only, of course, I decided we 
 would not take pictures of each other and of the car, 
 which is all the kind of subjects anybody ever seems to 
 bring back from a trip with them and says "Here is ma 
 in Colorado Springs," but ma is hiding the Springs 
 entirely, and you wouldn't even know it was her, only 
 they told you so, but say "Oh, yes, how interesting!" 
 so as not to hurt their feelings. 
 
 So having suffered a lot, I intended we would snap 
 only the most interesting things and afterward paste the 
 pictures in a book for a kind of record of the trip to 
 show to the people who really liked us and to the ones 
 who would not otherwise go home early. 
 
 So I bought the camera and a sweater and a couple of
 
 60 West Broadway 
 
 new bags, because of course we had none of the right 
 size in the house, and a person never does have the right 
 size bag for the place they are going to this time. And 
 when I had this all done, and refrained from again 
 mentioning California to any of the salespeople for fear 
 of hearing about their own trip out, I took the precaution 
 to go to the drug store and buy a few emergency things 
 to carry in the bus. 
 
 I didn't want to load it up more than I had to, because 
 the advice printed on the map said to load the car light. 
 And so I only bought iodine and cholera remedy in case 
 we drank bad water, and first-aid stuff, and a lot of soap 
 and two tubes of Jim's shaving cream and four of tooth 
 paste, which was a good idea, only in the end I forgot 
 the tooth pastes and took the cream and forgot his razor, 
 and it seems half a tube of shaving cream lasts him a year. 
 But that, as the poet says, is getting ahead of myself. 
 And then I bought a book which I found on the drug- 
 store table which was called Transcontinental Tours full 
 of photos of cars stuck in mud, but it was highly recom- 
 mended by the drug clerk, who had used it on his own 
 trip. And then I was through and went home. 
 
 On the front steps of our elegant limestone front, lemon- 
 backed apartment I at last got one satisfaction for which 
 I had been looking for two whole days. Coming down 
 the steps was Mrs. Ellen O'Rourke, the lady who has our 
 limousine take our wash around to her place every week. 
 I had only been her acquaintance a little while, but I liked 
 her real well. She was, aside from the limousine stuff, 
 a quite old-fashioned lady. I think she was Irish too. 
 So when I met her this night coming out from a visit 
 with our janitor I stopped to speak. 
 
 "Mrs. O'Rourke," I says, "have you ever motored to 
 California?" 
 
 1 ' Indade and I have not ! " says she. ' ' Glory be to God,
 
 West Broadway 6l 
 
 don't be after tellin' me yer going all that way in an 
 
 auttermobile ! ' ' 
 
 "I am!" I says in triumph. 
 
 "Saints presarve us!" says she, flinging up her hands 
 in excitement. "What a marvelous thing to be doing! 
 I never heard the like!" 
 
 "Bless you for them words!" I says, and I kissed her 
 on both cheeks and rushed into the house, happy at last 
 that someone was as surprised as I was over my going. 
 
 Well, when I got upstairs the things from the stores 
 had beaten me home and was heaped in the middle of our 
 period drawing-room making it look like the period in- 
 tended was the Middle Ages, and a fair to middling repro- 
 duction of a torture chamber at that. And there looking 
 down at the pile of chains, pulleys, axes and buckets, 
 sweaters, medicines and so forth and ect. was Jim smoking 
 a cigarette in his shirt sleeves, his hair as smooth as patent 
 leather, but his temper all mussed up and wore out and 
 his nerves frazzled by the hard day 's shopping I had done. 
 He at once started picking on me, which is the normal 
 husband's way of showing appreciation of a good wife. 
 
 "Say, for the love of Alaska, where do you think we 
 are going?" he says the very minute I got in the door. 
 "What is all this junk for? When do you intend for 
 us to use it?" 
 
 "I haven't bought a thing except absolutely necessary 
 ones!" I says indignantly. "We will need every one of 
 them just you wait and see!" 
 
 "Wait my eye!" says Jim. "If we are going to need 
 all them things on this trip I 'm not going on it ! Where 
 are we going to sit with all this stuff in the car tell me 
 that?" 
 
 "The Colby-Droit is a four-passenger sports model, 
 ain't she?" I demanded. "And there will only be the 
 three of us, counting Rollo," I says. "We got all the room
 
 62 West Broadway 
 
 in the world. Besides, I'm only taking a suitcase and a 
 bag, a dressing case, a hatbox and three pillows, besides 
 my golf clubs and camera. There'll be lots of room to 
 spare." 
 
 "Hell!" says Jim to show he was a man. "I've a good 
 mind not to take Hollo!" 
 
 "What do you know about car anatomy?" I says. "A 
 swell time we'd have in the middle of the desert if she 
 busted! It's all right to bluff to your friends, but not 
 to your wife on a trip like this. We can't go without 
 a mechanic, and you know it." 
 
 "Well, I suppose that's the truth," he says. "Of 
 course, I can do any ordinary thing to the boat, but there 
 had better be two of us men in case of anything serious 
 going wrong." 
 
 This was the fourth time we had settled this question 
 since the trip was thought of, and so we went on to fights 
 we had had only two or three times, like what to carry 
 or about getting everything arranged for ma and the baby. 
 And I made no further remarks about taking the chauf- 
 feur, but was determined we would do so. Somehow or 
 other I never feel I really trust Jim about the car, either 
 in driving it or in fixing it, and I would no more of made 
 the trip without a mechanic than I would of made it 
 barefoot, and I knew perfectly well that Jim wouldn't of 
 either. 
 
 And so, believe me, when after one week of struggle, 
 of packing the suitcases and unpacking them again and 
 repacking them so's we could take out what we would 
 want in the different climates we expected to find without 
 disturbing the rest, and then forgetting something and 
 having to do it all over again; and after paying our bills 
 and getting travelers' checks and saying good-by to every- 
 body well, and so, believe me, when the day before we
 
 West Broadway 63 
 
 was to start Rollo the chauffeur give notice that he wasn't 
 going with us, well, that was some blow! 
 
 At first we thought it was a hold-up for a raise, but 
 money was no object, and he also claimed love had nothing 
 to do with it at least not love of any woman. It was 
 the city he couldn't leave it. 
 
 "I just can't do it," he says. "I can't leave little old 
 New York for those jay burgs. I tried to make up my 
 mind to it, but nix! I'm real sorry, folks, but I'm not 
 going!" 
 
 And after all we'd done for that man! There's the 
 servant problem for you! It certainly got my goat and 
 had me worried, because of what I have said about the car 
 and Jim. And Jim was worried sick too. 
 
 Well, we telephoned every place, but to no avail. It 
 seemed like nobody with a reference wanted to leave the 
 city. And we was due to start next morning at nine A.M. 
 I couldn't wouldn't wait a day or two, because by now, 
 of course, our contracts was signed and we had to be in 
 Los Angeles by October tenth. It meant go without a 
 mechanic or give up the trip, and I was not the one to 
 do it with my things all packed. And then at two P.M. 
 Rollo come around with the limousine to take me on one 
 or two last errands while Jim was over to the employment 
 agency on a last hope and said the speedometer on the 
 Colby was broken. I stood looking at him too deeply 
 peeved for tears. He had it with him, having taken it 
 out of the other car. Of course, the speedometer was 
 busted! What was a person to expect? Huh? That's 
 what I thought, or as much of what I thought as is fit 
 to repeat. What I said aloud was, "Well, Rollo," I says 
 calmly, "there is only one thing to do. Drive me right 
 up to the speedometer place and I'll wait there until they 
 fix it." 
 
 Well, Rollo says all right, he knew where the place was,
 
 64 West Broadway 
 
 and I got in to be absolutely sure it was done, and we 
 went on uptown, I boiling with rage but determined now 
 to start to-morrow as per schedule if I died for it. And 
 when I come to sufficiently to look around the limousine 
 had stopped in front of a tall garagy-looking building up 
 in West Sixty-seventh Street. It was a part of the city 
 that is all like that big ten-story garages, supply places 
 and what not, with any number of tough-looking motor 
 pirates hanging around, and no end of cars of every kind. 
 Rollo left the engine running, jumped down and stuck 
 his head in the door. 
 
 "I'll just go in and get the man to take a look at it if 
 he's here, Mrs. Smith," he says, the brute, and then he 
 shut the door and faded into the building. And I waited, 
 huddled up in a corner of the back seat and as sulky and 
 mad as they make 'em. But I didn't have to wait long, 
 and what happened was done so quick I could scarcely 
 take it all in. 
 
 Down the block a police whistle blew, and one second 
 later a well-dressed perfectly strange young man sprang 
 onto the front seat of my limousine, threw it into gear, 
 the car lurched forward and in another instant we were 
 moving off down the street at top speed.
 
 BELIEVE me, with that car of mine shooting down 
 towards the Hudson, driven by a crazy man or a thief 
 and a perfect stranger to me, I was in a worse fix than 
 even when I made that famous eighteen-part million-dollar 
 serial, The Perils of Palmetta, because of course this time 
 it was real, with a police whistle blowing instead of a 
 camera clicking behind us. But for three blocks, which 
 we covered them in under two minutes, I could hardly 
 realize that the director would not yell for us to come back 
 and that I was actually being kidnapped and no fillum- 
 flam about it. 
 
 When this horrible fact finally did register with me, 
 however, I commenced a sort of weaving back and forth 
 on my seat like a blind puppy, making little noises. I was 
 so scared I couldn't make any louder sounds. And then 
 I began to remember the pieces I had lately seen in the 
 papers about murder cars, bond thefts and pieces of bodies 
 of the female sect being shipped away in trunks or fished 
 out of the river and so forth and ect. like a drownding 
 person is supposed to during their last moment. Only one 
 sane thing stood out real clear in my mind, and that was 
 my diamond bar pin and my five-carrot ring, and I decided 
 I would save them at all costs except my life, and by some 
 feminine instinct I slipped them off and tucked them 
 down the side of the seat under the upholstery. I done 
 this like an automat, and then as we took a sudden swing 
 southward on Ninth Avenue I was thrown violently across 
 the seat, and there was a traffic cop on the crossing. 
 
 "Help!" I yelled, plunging toward the window. 
 65
 
 66 West Broadway 
 
 But what do you know? The cop thought I was flirting 
 with him, smiled and waved back at me, and let my new 
 chauffeur dart through ahead of the rest of the traffic ! 
 As he did so I realized that in falling forward I had 
 grabbed hold of the speaking tube so that when I yelled 
 it had been covered by my hand. And at the same 
 moment it come over me that the thief didn't know there 
 was anybody inside the limousine! He wasn't kidnapping 
 me, because he didn 't know that I was there ! 
 
 Right away I set out to cure that, and pounded on the 
 glass with all my might. The thief was a good driver, 
 I'll say, because, while it must of scared him half to death, 
 he only swerved a little escaped an elevated pillar and 
 darted around two trucks before he turned his head. He 
 give me one swift look his mouth wide, his eyes staring, 
 his whole face like a Japanese mask with astonishment. 
 Then he turned back to the wheel, and instead of stopping 
 stepped on her good and hard, and commenced a drive the 
 like of which would of made a picture's fortune in the old 
 pie-comedy days, darting across one street and back again 
 up another shooting along down a avenue and winding 
 in and out among drays and trucks, pushcarts and delivery 
 wagons at about forty miles a hour, but without even 
 nicking one of them. The car, which Hollo was always 
 kicking about, was smooth as butter in this guy's hands. 
 I had to notice it, even at this time. 
 
 But I wasn't sitting still all this while admiring the 
 bird's driving not exactly! I was raising the very devil 
 and all, but apparently it meant nothing in his desperate 
 young life. He never even turned to look back again, no 
 matter how I pounded on the glass or yelled into the 
 speaking tube that I was Marie La Tour and I couldn't 
 disappear without it being noticed and my husband would 
 kill him and my cousin was a police captain and would 
 hare him pinched and a lot more. He never seemed to
 
 West Broadway 67 
 
 hear me, but just hunched his shoulders and kept his mind 
 on his business, whatever it was. 
 
 Was I scared? Oh, boy! But by now I was thinking 
 clearer, and I realized this trip couldn't last forever. As 
 we got further downtown we was bound to run into a 
 traffic jam, and all I would have to do was open the door 
 and step out. We were coming down Tenth Avenue to- 
 ward Fifty-ninth Street now, and there was certain to be 
 crosstown traffic and a cop there. And I was right a 
 block away I could see street cars going over. But the 
 devil was with my driver, because at that very minute 
 the whistle blew and we sailed by that crossing without 
 even a hesitation, much less a stop, and at the same time 
 I suddenly realized there was windows to that bus of 
 mine which could be let down, which only goes to show 
 what a boob a person can be not to of thought of this 
 before. 
 
 But when I did remember, it took me several minutes 
 to open one, because they are the old-fashioned kind that 
 work on a strap, and you have to tease them down even 
 in calm weather, and at the rate we was traveling it took 
 longer than per usual. 
 
 My efforts got some results, just the same, because the 
 driver evidently saw what I was up to and decided it was 
 time to quit. At Fifty-seventh Street he turned west off 
 the roaring Avenue into the comparative quiet of the side 
 street, and to my astonishment parked smoothly at the 
 curb in front of some quiet-looking brownstone apartments 
 where only a few kids was playing on the sidewalk, jumped 
 down from his seat, opened the door and stuck his head 
 in with a grin. 
 
 "It's all right, Miss La Tour," he says calmly. "I 
 guess we gave them the slip. Where shall I take you to 
 now?"
 
 68 West Broadway 
 
 And I fell back on my seat without for a moment a 
 word to say. The man was young Tom Westman. 
 
 "You!" I says, completely taken off my feet, or would 
 of been, only of course I was already sitting down. "Mr. 
 Westman!" 
 
 "Correct!" he says briskly. "May I come in a minute 
 and sit down? We can talk more convenient and less 
 conspicuous. ' ' 
 
 Hardly knowing what I was about, I moved over and 
 Tom Westman got in and shut the door. 
 
 "Whew!" he says, taking off his hat and wiping his 
 forehead, which was damp with excitement. "That was 
 a narrow thing! Miss La Tour, first of all, I owe you 
 an apology. Lord, how scared you must have been! 
 Can you forgive me?" 
 
 "Forgive you?" I says, bewildered. "Young man, is 
 stealing cars your business, or did you know this was 
 mine?" 
 
 "No to both questions," he says. "Miss La Tour, 
 don't get scared again, but I'm a desperate man. I'm in 
 a lot of trouble, and I 'd have taken any car that happened 
 to be there. I had to, that's all! I'd have left it some 
 place and telephoned the police where it was later if it 
 hadn't happened by a miracle of good luck to have you 
 in it. At least I suppose that was in the back of my 
 mind when I did this." 
 
 "But what have you done?" I demanded to know. 
 "What have you done outside of pinching my car?" 
 
 "I can't tell you," he says grimly enough now, and 
 peering out of the window to be sure no one was after 
 us yet. "I can't tell you a thing, Miss La Tour, except 
 that I haven't committed any crime except stealing or 
 borrowing you and your limousine. I swear by all that 
 I hold sacred, that is the truth ! But if I was to be caught
 
 West Broadway 69 
 
 right now I couldn't prove it to save my life. And 'my 
 life' is right it might easily mean that." 
 
 "But what are you running away for if you are so 
 innocent?" I says. 
 
 "I tell you it was necessary absolutely necessary!" 
 he exclaimed. "Can't you won't you believe me?" 
 
 I was watching his troubled young face real close while 
 he talked, and there was something about his eyes the 
 same thing which I had noticed that night when I had 
 talked to him down at the Mocking Turtle that made me 
 inclined to believe in him. 
 
 "Ill keep your secret," I says doubtfully. "But I 
 do think you owe it to me to let me in on it." 
 
 "I owe it to somebody else not to tell!" he says des- 
 perately. "To somebody who is very dear to me. It 
 means everything in my life can you get that ? And it 's 
 only for to-night I need your silence. I'll I'll have to 
 leave town to-morrow to-night, if possible and you 
 won't be troubled by me again. I swear I'm not a crook. 
 You can look up my record in the Red Cross and as a 
 mechanic too. I've been a steady worker always. Believe 
 me, I am doing this for reasons you couldn't help having 
 sympathy over if you knew them." 
 
 There was a ring to his voice which listened to me like 
 the real thing. I remembered how well I had liked him 
 the time before, and somehow, in spite of my good sense,, 
 I decided he was telling the truth. After all, hadn't I 
 seen hundreds of pictures with this very idea of a innocent 
 crook at the bottom of them? Besides, if he wasn't on 
 the level, why hadn 't he run away after he parked instead 
 of wasting all this time talking, or why didn't he hold me 
 up or something? 
 
 I decided to ask anyways. 
 
 "Why didn't you beat it," I says, "when you got down 
 off the front seat?"
 
 7O West Broadway 
 
 "Because when I saw it was you," he says, "I wanfed 
 to explain. And I was sorry for frightening you. We 
 are safe for a minute or two, and I wanted to be sure you 
 was all right. And now shall I drive you home, or would 
 you rather I just left you here and went away? I'll do 
 just as you tell me. This is a big city, and it's perfectly 
 possible that I can do it safe enough, although by now 
 your driver will have given the cops the license number. 
 What do you want me to do?" 
 
 Well, I just sat for a moment and thought hard. 
 
 "What did you say would happen if you was caught?" 
 I says at last. 
 
 "They'd let me go," he replied, which was not at all 
 what I expected. "They'd let me go. But somebody else 
 the one I told you of would suffer." 
 
 "But what did you mean then by talking about your 
 life being in danger?" I says quick, and watching him 
 very sharp. 
 
 "I meant my life in the other sense," he says simply. 
 And there was something in his voice decided me. Maybe 
 I was a fool, but a person has to take a chance once in a 
 while as they walk through life, and the same is true of 
 motoring through it. 
 
 "See here, Tom Westman," I says slowly, "I believe 
 you, and I 'm going to take a chance on you. You are in 
 a hole and so am I. To-morrow morning at nine o'clock 
 my husband and me are leaving for California by auto- 
 mobile, and we haven't got any chauffeur. Do you want 
 to go?" 
 
 Well, I guess that handed him as big a surprise as he 
 had handed me that afternoon, all right, all right. He 
 looked like he thought it was just too much luck, and he 
 was pretty near right. 
 
 "Do you mean that?" he cried. 
 
 "I sure do!" I says. "Always providing Jim hasn't
 
 West Broadway 71 
 
 got the place already filled from the agency. You see, 
 I look at it this way: Whoever he hires on such short 
 notice we will be taking a terrible chance on, and I don't 
 know but that I'd rather know in the first place that the 
 chauffeur was in the habit of stealing the car, kidnapping 
 people and dodging the police. At that, you probably got 
 a cleaner record than a whole lot of drivers." 
 
 "You can look me up have your husband do it," he 
 says earnestly. "Ask the people I'll send you to anything 
 you wish. But don't, please, tell them why you want to 
 know." His face was all lighted up like well, like a 
 church. And then he got a thought which switched the 
 current off. 
 
 "But everyone will know you folks. Why, you will be 
 in the spotlight the whole ways to the coast, and they'd 
 nick me in a minute ! " he says. 
 
 "Nothing of the kind!" I says, getting more interested 
 all the time. "We are going without any trumpets at all 
 for reasons of my own," I says. "And being spotted will 
 be the least of your worries," I says. "Just so long as 
 you are absolutely sure you ain't murdered anybody or 
 anything ! ' ' 
 
 "I swear!" he says solemnly. 
 
 "Well, then," I says, "let's go! Hollo's other uniform 
 was on its way to winter quarters. It's in that box. Put 
 on the coat and cap and let's go home and talk Jim into 
 doing a little telephoning." 
 
 "Oy, gewicht!" said the boy. "You will never regret 
 *this. By my mother, I swear it!" 
 
 And then he done like I told him with the coat and ect. 
 and actually on my word we got home to Riverside Drive 
 without a hitch. And when we arrived it was by then 
 dark. I told young Westman to leave the bus and come 
 up with me, and he did, and there was Jim, waiting with
 
 72 West Broadway 
 
 all the patience and good humor of a wild animal in a 
 strange cage. 
 
 "Well, did you get a chauffeur?" I says gayly coming in. 
 
 "Yes, I did not!" says Jim. "And how you think 
 
 we are going to start without Hello, who have we with 
 
 us?" 
 
 "The chauffeur I so effectively, though a mere woman, 
 have engaged, ' ' I says. ' ' Come in, Tom, and get the razoo 
 over with!" 
 
 And razoo was right. When Jim was wised up to the 
 facts he hit the ceiling so hard he should of made a dent 
 in it. But when we commenced talking references, and 
 one of them was a agent Jim knew real well, why, he kept 
 his feet on the orientals long enough to use the phone, 
 and presently come back twenty degrees cooler to say 
 Kaufman says the boy is O.K. and he recommends him 
 highly. 
 
 "Well," says Jim at length, "I suppose we aren't taking 
 any more chance than we would be with a perfect stranger. 
 But just put this in your bank and draw on it, Westman 
 we are trusting you about this mystery thing, and heaven 
 help you if you get us any sour publicity ! ' ' 
 
 Well, Westman promised and went away, after agreeing 
 he would come back at eight-thirty prompt next morning, 
 because we wanted to get a early start and make Baltimore 
 by night unless he was arrested in the meanwhile. 
 
 Well, then I went down and got the diamonds I had 
 parked in the upholstery, and then to save trouble Jim 
 took the car around to the garage and paid off Rollo, who 
 turned up there, and the next morning he went around 
 again and got the Colby-Droit, which by now had the 
 somewhat mended speedometer in it, and brought it to the 
 house. And Tom Westman wasn't pinched overnight, but 
 showed up on time with a neat suit and one small bag 
 and a face that in the clear daylight didn't look like he
 
 West Broadway 73 
 
 and crime had the least thing to do with each other, and 
 also he looked the engine over voluntarily while we was 
 getting in the bags. 
 
 Well, I will say we got started without any unnecessary 
 fuss and nonsense. My bag didn't have to be opened for 
 the last time more than three times, and I only went back 
 five times to kiss my baby, which was pretty good for a 
 mother who was leaving her child to the mercies of its 
 grandmother. And then when Jim had strapped the 
 small bags on the running board and taken them off again 
 and strapped the big ones in their place and undone the 
 straps again to cover them with the tarpaulin and re- 
 strapped them he come up and got the rest of the things. 
 
 We really took very little stuff with us, having only two 
 big bags and the Puller on one running board, the tool box 
 on the other, my dressing bag, Jim's ditto, the four chains 
 in a sack, the ax, the water bucket, the lunch wagon, the 
 vacuum bottle, camera, our two sets of golf clubs just in 
 case, Tom's bag, three pillows, a cardboard hatbox with 
 my other hat in it, and Welcome, our doormat dog one 
 of these Sealyhams that is so fashionable, and I wouldn't 
 leave him behind for worlds, even though ma, now that she 
 was sure I was on my way and couldn't turn back, kept 
 muttering insults about women which left their child but 
 took the hound, which had just enough truth in it to hurt, 
 but I would not give her any satisfaction by showing it. 
 
 Well, anyways, when all this stuff was in the bus you 
 could see we was going some place. I thought it looked 
 real snappy sort of Far and Wide and Westward ho! 
 But to Jim it looked like a good subject for complaint. 
 
 ' ' What do you want them cushions for ? " he says. ' ' We 
 look like the King and Queen of the first of May," he says. 
 ' ' And that hatbox ! Let 's can some of this junk ! Any- 
 body would think we was going to Alaska!" 
 
 "Better take them," I says. "Here we been waiting
 
 74 West Broadway 
 
 half an hour for you to get that car packed, and now you 
 wanner unpack it again. Leave it alone ! We '11 never get 
 started at this rate!" 
 
 "Well, all right! Just wait for one more thing," says 
 Jim. "Just hold on until I set the speedo blank, and we 
 are on our way!" 
 
 ' ' Oh, and I forgot the lap robe ! " I says, starting to get 
 out of the front seat after just having got into it. 
 
 ' ' Oh, to hell with it ! " says Jim, climbing in back with 
 the other luggage. "What do you want to delay the game 
 for any more? We'll get to Baltimore after the town is 
 closed, anyhow, at this rate!" 
 
 "Who's delaying the game?" I says indignantly, but 
 getting back again into my seat next to the driver. "All 
 right, we'll buy another one if we need it shoot her, 
 Tom!" 
 
 And young Westman, who was giving a first-class imita- 
 tion of a stiff-necked chauffeur, but anxiously watching 
 the street out of the corner of his eye, stepped on her, and 
 by the Great Night Lights of Broadway we was off! 
 Actually on our way! 
 
 Words cannot picture the queer thrill it give me to 
 know in my heart we was all set to do in luxury that which 
 some of our ancestors had done with ox carts and sheer 
 will power. Of course, we was yet right in the same little 
 old Manhattan streets that was so familiar, and still and 
 all they didn't seem the same I'll say they didn't ! They 
 had a kind of magic to them as I set there on the front 
 seat with a heavy chiffon veil and a dust coat over my oldest 
 suit, the dog in my lap and the blue-book in my hand. 
 I felt like it couldn't be true, and yet there we was, the 
 top down and the clear September sun shining on us 
 dazzlingly, the air just full of pep like it sometimes is 
 in New York. I felt like I could sing. But instead, as 
 we was crossing on the Twenty-third Street ferry to
 
 West Broadway 75 
 
 Hoboken, I turned to Jim and says softly, "I found your 
 toothbrush in the bathroom and put it in, dear," I says. 
 
 And Jim give me a peach of a smile. 
 
 "Thanks, cutie," he says. "Say, isn't this fun?" 
 
 " I '11 say it is ! " I says, smiling back. 
 
 And so we both realized we was still quite fond of each 
 other, and it was like two sweethearts meeting at the old 
 mill stream after being in a crowd for weeks and weeks, or 
 the beginning of a honeymoon. And yet we hadn't even 
 got as far as Hoboken! I felt soft and generous and 
 didn't want to leave anybody out, so I turned to young 
 Westman. 
 
 "Seems hard to realize we are really on our way," I 
 says. "Will it be new to you?" 
 
 "I've never been anywhere in America more than a 
 hundred miles from New York," he says. "Will we see 
 any Indians, do you think?" 
 
 He was just like a twelve-year-old kid. 
 
 "Ill say we will!" I says. 
 
 "Oy, gewalt!" says Tom enthusiastically. 
 
 "I feel free from every care," I says. "Why, I haven't 
 even seen the morning paper, and I don 't want to ! I 'm 
 going to see America, and, believe me, that's all the news 
 I want!" 
 
 Westman made a funny sound at that, but at the time 
 I scarcely noticed it, because a minute later we shot out 
 onto the Hoboken Cliff Road, and I settled back to the 
 observing which was the main object of my, as the poet 
 says, sentimental journey. 
 
 It has always been my way, when starting off to any 
 place I haven't been before, to look for things which will 
 be strange and new, even before I come to them. I get all 
 set like an eager camera to snap the first out-of-the- 
 ordinary thing I bump into, and while, of course, I couldn't 
 rightly expect to see anything real Western for some little
 
 76 West Broadway 
 
 time yet, I was on the key five, as the French say, right 
 from the drop of the rope. And so I didn't hesitate about 
 taking in facts and impressions of my dear country begin- 
 ning with the direct route to Philadelphia. 
 
 That is to say, I would of begun my observations on it, 
 only the road was giving a imitation of a shell-shocked 
 battlefield, and so most of my observation had to confine 
 itself to which part of the car to hang onto and where it 
 was safest to land when I hit the seat again. I don r t know 
 is that road left the way it is all concrete waves and un- 
 finished artesian wells as a kind of preliminary training 
 for the transcontinental tourist, but I guess it must be for 
 that reason, and it 's the truth that while we later saw some 
 fierce roads we saw absolutely nothing any worse for paving. 
 
 Under these conditions most people would of been blind 
 to what they was passing through except in the sense of 
 bodily torture, but being as I was, out to see my National 
 Real Estate, I managed to realize that we went through a 
 lot of factories whole towns of them and a person would 
 hardly believe it, but some of them buildings actually 
 covered acres of ground no kidding ! And it was kind of 
 a shock to see how much stuff that a person only thinks of 
 as sort of growing on a store counter is actually made. 
 We felt quite excited whenever we recognized the home of 
 a brand of anything, especially if we used the article our- 
 selves. It seemed sort of funny, someways, to see the place 
 where flivvers was assembled or rubber bands come from, 
 or so forth and ect. It wasn't pretty, not after we left 
 Newark, with its lovely park and artistic buildings around 
 it, and got onto the main-traveled line, following the 
 Lincoln Highway. It was sure a grim, smoky stretch, but 
 pretty near everything in the world seemed to be made 
 there, and Jim and young Westman kept pulling statistics 
 about costs and capital on each other about these concerns 
 which would make your hair stand on end; and of course
 
 West Broadway 77 
 
 they may not of been correct, but it give them pleasure 
 and sounded terrible wealthy, and we didn't stop to check 
 up on the companies' books as we went by. However, 
 right or wrong, there sure was money tied up there; but 
 what it had done to the landscape was a crime until we 
 left Trenton, which was not full of colonial uniforms as I 
 had sort of expected, because of always thinking of Gen. 
 Geo. Washington being there, but which was full of fac- 
 tories instead. 
 
 Here the houses commenced to be a different style, and 
 pretty soon we begun to go through these Jersey truck 
 gardens you read about big farms, they are, not auto 
 factories as you might think from the name but farms 
 with celery you could smell a long ways off, and peach 
 trees turning pale yellow and pink and lovely advertising 
 signs as the principal crops. The closer we come to Philly 
 the better the roads got, and the prettier the houses lots 
 of them was of stone a sort of yellow color, with high 
 roofs, and looked like they had been built forever, but 
 custom built, and would last as long again, and a good 
 example of the great truth that economy is the road to 
 ruin, if you get me. 
 
 Well, Philly was no news to me nor to Jim either on 
 account of we had often played it, and so after we had 
 eaten a deservedly well-known fish blue-plate luncheon 
 by mutual agreement, because soon we would be going 
 inland to where the lobster was not and the oyster lan- 
 guished in the can; and taking turns, he and I going in 
 first while Tom sat in the open car to watch the bags, and 
 then we sat in it while he ate, and for the first time the 
 fact occurred to us that all those things we had brought 
 was going to be as Jim put it a hellova nuisance, be- 
 cause we couldn't possibly check them every time we ate, 
 and we couldn't leave them either. 
 
 Well, anyways, we ate and beat it, and done our best
 
 78 West Broadway 
 
 getting out of the Quaker City, because some of the streets 
 have numbers and some have names, and I notice it's 
 the same with all cops and all natives in that place or any 
 other they think you are a boob if you don't know just 
 where Hoosis Street is, and they say, why, it's just beyond 
 Whatyoucallit Avenue, and when you own up to not 
 knowing where that is, either, they look at you like they 
 neither pitied nor hated you, but condescended to help 
 your ignorance with a contempt too deep for words. 
 
 But after a while we found our way south in spite of 
 directions, and started off sort of sick about would the 
 road be as rotten going out as it was coming in. And I '11 
 say right now that one of the peculiar things about a long 
 trip is the-worst-is-yet-to-come feeling you get about the 
 roads. You always expect the next to be like the last one, 
 and it generally is, only more so. But for once this didn 't 
 go, and after half an hour we found ourselves actually 
 floating along over a boulevard that wound around and 
 over the prettiest hills you ever want to see small, friendly 
 hills one much like another, covered thick with tame trees 
 and with kind-looking farms tucked away in unexpected 
 places like a Merry Christmas card without the snow, and 
 you sort of expected to see a motto at the foot of each 
 grade, but you hardly saw even a billboard, and I sort of 
 missed them at that. It was like riding through the same 
 country over and over again, and I got kind of drowsy over 
 it and took to listening to a slap which had come into the 
 engine. Next day I noticed Westman had taken it out, but 
 he didn't show it to me the way they did with my appendix. 
 
 Well, anyways, these Pennsylvania hills was very pretty, 
 but just about like a lot of country I had seen before, and 
 it was not until we crossed the Susquehanna on a long 
 bridge that I felt we had commenced to get into the wilds. 
 I don't really know just why that word "Susquehanna" 
 stands out so sharp in my mind; but it does, and I always
 
 West Broadway 79 
 
 see the vision of a statue of General Sherman when I hear 
 it. Somehow this river looked the part. It would make a 
 swell location for a melo it is so wild and fierce, full of 
 stones and little shaggy islands and great gloomy Xmas 
 trees climbing up the hilly banks like proud soldiers in 
 retreat. I made the boys stop on the far side while I took 
 a long look at the melancholy, wild grandeur of the river 
 raging down to the Chesapeake. Gee, I'd sure like to play 
 a mountaineer's daughter or something in that location! 
 And it is already historic in the life of the camera, because 
 here is where Jim committed his first crime against the 
 art of photography a new vice in him, and one which 
 alas! grew worse as the weeks went by. 
 
 But did he take a picture of that wonderful river? He 
 did not ! He took one of me and the dog and Tom Westman 
 sitting in the car. 
 
 "You got to have people in a picture," he says, when I 
 complained, "to give it any human interest. Besides, the 
 river looks like nothing at all, in the finder!" 
 
 Well, we got into the city of Baltimore late that after- 
 noon, and went to see a show that night, and I must say 
 I was disappointed not finding the town more shabby and 
 quaint and kind of run down and everything like you are 
 led to expect a Southern city to be. It was far from it, 
 being much like a little piece of upper New York say 
 Madison Avenue at Fifty-ninth Street, only bigger and 
 noisier and about as quaint as Wall Street. I and Jim 
 walked around for two solid hours looking for the pictur- 
 esque poverty of the ruined South, but to no avail. The 
 nearest approach to anything old-fashioned we found was 
 a cafe where we went in the swellest taxi I had been in 
 to date, we having let Tom take the car, and where we 
 had even better sea food than in Philly, and served in a 
 dining room with a black-and-white marble floor and a 
 coon waiter who said thank you for a four-bit tip. I
 
 8o West Broadway 
 
 thought this must be the best food in the world, because 
 I never ate any so good in a N. Y. cafe, but I didn't know 
 the half of it nor learned as yet that New York knows 
 less about what is good food than any town in the U. S. A., 
 but that is again getting ahead of myself. We were to 
 eat and learn, as the poet says, or maybe it was the copy 
 book poets and eating don't seem quite right someways. 
 
 Well, next morning we went to a big fancy grocery a 
 branch of the one where we deal at home and bought 
 'some chocolate and biscuits and oranges, "Because," says 
 Jim, ' ' we are now really starting West, and we don 't know 
 will we be able to buy them before we come to the desert, 
 and may need them." 
 
 Actually! He said it, and I didn't know it was a joke, 
 and neither did he ! That 's all we knew about the West. 
 We was always talking about the desert, too, from the very 
 start. It kind of hung over us with desperate excitement 
 fear and joy well shaken up with a little ice, if you get 
 me. Maybe it was having the desert water bag and never 
 knowing where to put it when we repacked the car kind of 
 kept it in our minds. We often spoke of Indians, jack 
 rabbits and prairie dogs and the Grand Canyon, too, but 
 mostly of the desert, each trying to kid the other into 
 believing it would be a mere nothing but thereby confess- 
 ing their own fear that it would be something fierce. For 
 a sample, every time we come to a bad road we would say, 
 "I guess this will seem like nothing when we get to the 
 desert," and that was intended to be cheering. 
 
 Well, anyways, we bought our iron rations, as we called 
 them, at the big grocery which made one more thing to 
 carry. And then we got down all the bags and the golf 
 clubs and pillows and hatbox and so on, because this being 
 our first night out we had no better sense than to take them 
 all up to the room with us. And when it was all in the 
 car we managed to squeeze ourselves and Welcome into it
 
 West Broadway 81 
 
 as well, and started on our way again, taking the National 
 Old Trails road and quarreling violently among ourselves 
 over who was responsible for getting started so late and 
 where is that road map and why did the garage man tell us 
 to take that short cut and what color bands to follow on 
 the telegraph poles and other early morning courtesies of 
 a pleasure trip by motor. 
 
 "There, damit," says Jim when we was about thirty 
 miles out of town, "I forgot to get the morning paper!" 
 
 You would of thought it was his pocketbook. But Tom 
 Westman came to the rescue kind of. 
 
 "I got one here," he says, fishing it out from under him. 
 "It's not much good, I'm afraid, because I used a piece to 
 clean off the step, but here it is! There wasn't much on 
 the part I used, anyways," he says, and hands it to me 
 and I handed it back to Jim. 
 
 Almost all the front page was gone, and Jim swore at 
 this and didn't speak again while we rolled along through 
 a unfinished-looking farming country, passing load after 
 load of corn on the ear being dragged to market by horses 
 no flivvers or trucks seemed to be around. We didn't 
 pass a single farmer driving one, but lots of buggies and 
 heavy teams. 
 
 And then all at once, while I was thinking where would 
 I begin spreading my anti-Red propaganda, and why 
 hadn't I worn my other suit, and what made me marry, 
 anyway, and other feminine thoughts, we rounded a curve 
 and come onto what I first took to be a big set for a cos- 
 tume picture, but which was actually the town of Frederick, 
 Maryland. Jim spotted it as soon as I did, and we stopped 
 the car to look around, and, believe me, that little town is 
 as beautiful as a dream. 
 
 Nothing seemed to of been changed since the Year One. 
 The main streets was paved with cobbles and climbed a 
 steep hill with brightly colored little houses huddling one
 
 82 West Broadway 
 
 above the other. There was funny little shops with small 
 windowpanes and hound dogs lying lazily in the sun. 
 Halfway up was the place where Barbara Frietchie's house 
 had been. We saw the plate a sort of tombstone for the 
 building. 
 
 ' ' Who was Barb ? ' ' says Jim. * ' I think I heard of her, ' ' 
 he says. 
 
 "Didn't she invent the American flag?" I says. 
 
 "No, she didn't," says Westman. "Don't you know 
 the poem about who harms a hair on yon gray head?" 
 
 "Dies like a dog! March on, he said!" says Jim and 
 I together, and then we laughed and marched on back to 
 the bus after I had snapped Jim standing by the cross 
 what marked the spot. And then Jim drove for a change, 
 and we kept on endlessly sliding over perfect roads and 
 wooded hills. 
 
 I'll say the main roads of Maryland are something to 
 dream about. I had never seen anything so perfect. The 
 one we was on lay like a black satin ribbon over hill and 
 dale such steep hills and such brief dales that it was like 
 the Coney Island roller coaster. It was like flying, and 
 with no traffic cops and apparently no speed limit Jim just 
 stepped on her, coasting down one grade at sixty miles a 
 hour and halfway up the next before he had to go into 
 gear. It was a regular game, and I soon seen I had brought 
 the wrong kind of hat for that wind, because it kept getting 
 tore off my head and ruining my hair net. By the time 
 we had shot through Hagerstown, a place noticeable for the 
 fact that I saw a hat there exactly like what I had on 
 and had bought on Broadway and Forty-seventh Street, 
 N. Y. C., which was particularly snappy and, I had sup- 
 posed, exclusive. 
 
 Well, after this the hills began getting higher and higher, 
 and finally we come to one which I thought we would 
 never get to the top of it, but we did, with a boiling
 
 West Broadway 83 
 
 radiator, and stopped at a place marked "Summit," after 
 Summit, N. J., I guess. It wasn't a town, though, but 
 only the top of a mountain, with a view which would of 
 been wonderful, only you couldn 't see it because it was by 
 now commencing to rain. 
 
 Just the same, we all got out while the radiator cooled 
 off and stood on the edge of the view which was full of 
 fog and wet pine trees further down below than you would 
 of believed possible a real neat, made-to-order, picture- 
 book mountain landscape, it was. 
 
 Several other cars had developed asthma or appendicitis 
 or high blood pressure on the way up, and so we had to 
 share the parking space and view. There was three motor- 
 cycles with side-car wives all from the same place Jack- 
 sonville, Florida, it was and, believe me, you can't tell 
 me the South is slow after that, because these folks was 
 neither toughs nor sports nor yet idle rich, but perfectly 
 good members of the middle-aged middle classes, and it 
 astonished and fascinated me to see them. It seemed to me 
 there must be a mistake some place. I was dying to ask 
 where they were going in khaki bloomers at their time of 
 life, but didn't dare, and was kind of floored to think 
 they had got that far. 
 
 Up to now we had been the only tourists we had met 
 we'd had the transcontinental trip to ourselves and it 
 give me an awful queer, not altogether gracious feeling 
 to meet up with this bunch. 
 
 There was a cheap little Climber roadster coughing and 
 panting on the resting park, and across its shabby back 
 was written in chalk "Connecticut to California," and 
 the owners was standing enjoying the place where the 
 view was on fine days, all dressed like a field army. They 
 was a couple of fellows who might of been mechanics. 
 And then there were the Peterkins. Of course, I didn't 
 know right off it was them that come later. But never
 
 84 West Broadway 
 
 will I forget my first seeing that family. There was eight 
 of them, and on my word of honor as a actress, they was 
 traveling in a fliv! 
 
 There was pa to commence with a big, fat man almost 
 bursting out of his khaki overalls and ma, a smiling little 
 fatty with a three-year-old in her arms. Then there was 
 a real pretty girl of maybe nineteen, the oldest daughter. 
 Next come Grandma Peterkin, with no teeth except at 
 meal times; Aunt Susie, who might of been ma's useful 
 old-maid sister; and two medium-sized youngsters, a boy 
 and a girl. 
 
 There was a spring and mattress fastened above the 
 spares on the back of their boat, and hanging below that 
 was a bucket, ax, two water bags and a tow rope. Both 
 running boards was shut in with a sort of wicket gates 
 like they use on elevators between floors, and the space 
 between them and the actual car was packed to the extreme 
 limit with bags and bundles of every kind, and from the 
 ceiling, or framework of the top, hung paper hat bags, 
 mysterious-looking packages and different odds and ends, 
 while both front mud guards was simply stuffed with tent 
 poles and canvas. The car had a New Jersey license. 
 
 But they was not gypsies; they was American whites, 
 and under their sunburn and blowzyness real decent look- 
 ing the girl in particular, whose glorious hair blew about 
 her face like wisps of sunshine and whose eyes seemed to 
 be laughing at the rain. 
 
 But they were a queer-looking bunch the first of the 
 kind we had met, and I thought ain't that the absolute 
 limit to let yourself get all untidy that way and wear 
 bum clothes and not care how you look or wash the car 
 or anything, and I didn't see how they could do it, and 
 decided I would never let myself go like them no, not on 
 ten thousand trips!
 
 West Broadway 85 
 
 Well, by that time the car was cool enough, and so we 
 got in, very superior because it was a Colby-Droit, and 
 slid down to Cumberland for luncheon. 
 
 Slid into was more nearly right, because the grades 
 was by now not only slippery but far steeper, and some 
 cheerful goof had painted little mottoes of encouragement 
 on all the bad turns where there w r as a cliff or a big 
 bowlder. "Prepare to meet thy God" was at the top 
 as a general thing, and ' ' Where will you spend eternity ? ' ' 
 at the bottom. And, believe me, they was all too nearly 
 appropriate to be comforting! 
 
 "Say, these must be mountains," I says at last. "They 
 are too big to be hills." 
 
 "Part of the Alleghanies, " says Westman, going into 
 low and narrowly missing an, oncoming truck. "The 
 Cumberland Mountains. ' ' 
 
 "You know a lot about your country," I says. "More 
 than I could of told." 
 
 "I read a lot when I first come over," he says. 
 
 "When you first came over?" I says. "Where from?" 
 
 "Russia," he says. "Didn't you know? I was ten 
 years old before we come to this country." 
 
 "But the name of Westman?" I begun. 
 
 "We took it," he says. "Gee, but this clutch is slip- 
 ping! I'll have to put some fuller's earth in at Cumber- 
 land. As I was saying, our real name is too hard to 
 pronounce over here Miscoijskojki how's that?" 
 
 " It 's fierce ! " I says. ' ' Are you a citizen, Tom ? ' ' 
 
 "First papers only," he says. "That's how I come to 
 be in the Red Cross instead of going to France. I'm 
 twenty-one last month." 
 
 Well, this give me quite a lot to think over so much 
 so that I hardly paid any attention to Cumberland City 
 with its smart hotel and bright streets or to Jim's state- 
 ment about the tires they make there. It was still on my
 
 86 West Broadway 
 
 mind as we went shooting out of town over more and even 
 higher mountains, back into Pennsylvania, where the lovely 
 hillsides was all blacked by the smoke from coke burning 
 and the trees poisoned and stark, and everything dying 
 and blackened wherever the wind carried the fumes, and 
 it wasn 't until we descended into Uniontown that I got my 
 poise again, what with piecing facts about Karl Westman 
 and his doctrines together. 
 
 And I don 't know that the whole country which we had 
 gone through since lunch helped me any a land of sub- 
 terraneum dungeons, of fair hills with black holes in them, 
 and men with blackened faces and little lamps on the 
 front of their hats, of grim women fighting to make homes 
 amidst the filtering soot. So this, I thought, is the coal 
 country, where the miners live and we get sore at them 
 when they strike. But look at where they live and what 
 is around them all the time! Only a poet could keep 
 the vision of the industrial prowess of the country of the 
 steel hearths and of the home fires, as things which must 
 be kept burning, before his eyes in this place. 
 
 I wanted to stop and get out and talk to these fellows. 
 I wanted to tell them about those great wonderful factories 
 back in Jersey that I had just seen only yesterday, and 
 how they, the miners, was the men behind them, and that 
 they must do their share in our big one-for-all-and-all-for- 
 one job of making America. But I didn't dare. They 
 scared me, they looked so powerful, so sullen and so 
 dirty! Besides, it was raining harder than ever. And 
 also I was tired. It takes time to get used to these long 
 rides. And then just when I got to the point where I 
 felt I couldn't go even one step further, and we were still 
 almost fifty miles from Wheeling, the car give a snort, 
 snuggled down at the roadside and died. And just as she 
 done so another car containing three men with guns drew 
 up beside us and gave us a hail.
 
 VI 
 
 IN the rapidly gathering twilight one of the men in 
 the strange car leaned forward over the barrel of his gun 
 a fierce-looking bandit he was and spoke to Jim. My 
 heart nearly stopped. 
 
 "How far to Uniontown?" he says. "We been out 
 hunting, and I guess we lost our way." 
 
 Well, can you imagine the relief of that? I'll say you 
 can't! So we told them how far, and the mighty hunters 
 went on their way, leaving me rejoicing that they were 
 not revolutionists or something, because by that time I 
 was tired enough to imagine any nonsense. 
 
 And then both the boys got out and commenced to look 
 under the hood at what was the matter with the car, but 
 couldn't find it, while tourists happy tourists with noth- 
 ing the matter with them or their autos scooted by us 
 in the dusk. Even the three side-car cycles from Jackson- 
 ville went by us, and the two boys from Connecticut, and 
 these last yelled could they help, but we yelled no thank 
 you, and so there we stayed, proud but stuck, and the rain 
 getting heavier all the time. I begun to realize what a 
 wicked woman I was ever to of left my home and baby, 
 and then when the boys had pretty near give it up I looked 
 at the speedometer and seen we had run over two hundred 
 and fifty miles that day. 
 
 "Say, you wise birds," I called out, "when did you 
 fill the tank last time?" 
 
 "Why, nonsense," says Jim instead of answering me, 
 but speaking to his conscience instead "why, nonsense! 
 It was filled only this morning." 
 87
 
 88 West Broadway 
 
 "But we don't generally run over two hundred miles 
 since morning!" I wailed. "I bet we haven't got a drop 
 of gas!" 
 
 But they didn't put up a cent on it, and a good thing, 
 too, because that's just exactly what them two experienced 
 motorists had let happen, and maybe I didn't rub it in 
 about old Mr. Boyd having told me always to carry a 
 five-gallon can oh, no! And now didn't they wish they 
 had listened to me in the first place, and so forth and ect. 
 with true wifely helpfulness! 
 
 Well, they had no comeback to that, but Tom Bygoshski, 
 or whatever his real name was, turned out to be a good 
 sport and not ashamed to be ashamed if you get me. 
 
 "Well," says he, "I'll go back with the next feller that 
 passes to Uniontown for gas," he says, "and hop a ride 
 back." 
 
 Well, he did that, and meanwhile I and Jim sat in the 
 car in a silence which fell upon us as soon as we had called 
 each other all the names we could think of, and it's the 
 truth that by five o'clock each night all the way out we 
 was generally not speaking, but at five A.M. next day we 
 was so. Well, anyways, we sat there for what seemed 
 like hours while Tom went away in a side car and finally 
 come back with the juice in a five-gallon can and a chari- 
 table flivver. By that time I ached in every bone, both in 
 my body and in my head, and my temper was badly bent. 
 Why anybody ever wanted to do such a crazy thing as 
 drive to California was more than I could see with a peri- 
 scope, and I expressed my opinion pretty free opinions 
 being the only things which can be expressed free nowa- 
 days. But they put the five gallons in the tank and we 
 slid along, hoping to pretty soon come to a town where 
 a gas station was, but the further we drove the further off 
 the town any town seemed to be. I actually got an 
 idea it was moving away from us on purpose.
 
 West Broadway 89 
 
 "The map says forty -five miles," says Jim, "but there 
 must be something wrong we must of gone fifty by now ! ' ' 
 
 "Forty, by the speedo," says Tom, cheerful as a duck 
 in the rain. 
 
 "Well, 111 bet we been fifty just the same I" snaps Jim. 
 "That speedometer is no good anyways!" 
 
 "Well, we crept on and on, and still ho town, and by 
 now it was absolutely dark, and what with wondering had 
 we taken the wrong turning and would the gas hold out, 
 we were certainly having a pleasure trip I '11 say we were 
 not! 
 
 "We'll have to keep on to Wheeling," says Jim, "be- 
 cause we got rooms engaged there. I'd a whole lot rather 
 keep on and get in late to a good hotel than take a chance 
 on a place we don't know about, wouldn't you?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't mind if the rest don't!" I says, trying 
 to be a sport, but willing they should draw any conclusions 
 they wanted from that remark. And then at last we see 
 a town ahead! Such a beautiful town with lights and 
 houses and everything! I admit that the next morning 
 the buildings seemed to me to be not quite so lovely as I 
 had at first thought, but coming into Washington, Penn., 
 at nine-thirty and as yet no dinner well, in my eyes the 
 grandeur that was Rome had nothing on it! 
 
 Because we stayed. I'll say we did. When we had got 
 gas our lights give out halfway across the railroad tracks, 
 and with a sigh of relief we give up being good sports 
 and decided the management at the Wheeling hotel would 
 have to bear the disappointment the best way they could. 
 I personally myself would of gladly slept in the car if 
 permitted. But I didn't. I slept on the crease in a 
 davenport sofa in a rooming house right over the nice 
 choo-choo trains, because, believe me, it had rained not 
 alone the gentle stuff from heaven as the poet says, but 
 tourists from all over creation as well, who had the same
 
 90 West Broadway 
 
 bright original idea of staying right where they was for 
 the night instead of going on, on account of the wet, but 
 had decided it several hours earlier than we did. 
 
 Just the same, I wasn't really sorry, but ate a T-bone 
 steak at a hashery just like the old days on the Small 
 Time when Jim and I was dancing for a bare living, and 
 also it give me some interesting dope on where some of 
 the new wealth in the country has come from. I found it 
 out next morning when we paid three-fifty for the accom- 
 modations which in the old days would of been worth fifty 
 cents a head. 
 
 "I make a pretty fair living," says the landlady, "since 
 the tourists started coming through last year. My beds 
 ain't been vacant more than a night a week since last 
 April. I was pretty near at my wits' end before that. 
 And now I don't need to worry. I certainly do appreciate 
 the man who invented touring cars!" 
 
 And I'll say the old lady has sisters in every state! 
 Which was the most important thing about that Eown 
 excepting that the jars my and other cold cream comes 
 in are made there. Ain't it remarkable the things this 
 country produces? 
 
 Well, when we left there I was still looking for my hick 
 town. Because in the ones I had seen so far there was 
 the very same goggles for sale that I had got on Fifth 
 Avenue, and drug stores which put the one where I had 
 got my first-aid stuff to shame. But I, of course, realized 
 we was still pretty far East and sort of unconsciously 
 hoped for the worst. 
 
 Well, it was still drizzling rain when we started out at 
 about the same time as not more than fifty other tourists, 
 all apparently going the same way and most of them 
 with banners and California or Bust or some such motto, 
 and mostly in khaki and looking like a bunch of bums that 
 enjoyed it, and I didn't see how they could let themselves
 
 West Broadway 91 
 
 go that way, especially if women, because I had not got 
 to feel that way as yet myself. 
 
 But the weather being so bad, I decided to put away my 
 hat, which I did, and tied up my head in a veil, and the 
 hat was never the same again, because Jim didn't notice 
 when Welcome went to sleep on it in the tonneau. 
 
 "I told you we was starting too late in the year," Jim 
 kept muttering all morning. "We'll hit the California 
 desert just in the rainy season you'll see! Good night!" 
 
 Well, I didn't come back at him, because we was on 
 our way and what was the use ? And besides that, the sun 
 come out every once in a while and we would put the top 
 down because we wanted to be hardy guys, and then it 
 would commence raining again and we would put it back. 
 
 By this time I had come to realize that there was nothing 
 peculiar about the fellow and sister tourists that I had 
 at first taken for strange specimens. Every mile we went 
 we met more of the same kind cars hung with junk, 
 crowded with everybody and their dog and most of 'em 
 camping along the way and seeming to enjoy it. We had 
 all of a sudden come upon them in bunches just as if 
 when we left the shore road for the National we had turned 
 out of a quiet street into a busy avenue and joined the 
 California Pilgrims, which are a kind of modern Canter- 
 bury Pilgrims. 
 
 I seen a set of post cards of these Canterbury Pilgrims 
 one time, and it seems Canterbury was in England, and 
 going there had religion at the bottom of it, only you 
 would hardly notice it, they had such a gay time, meeting 
 up with each other and stopping at the same hotels or 
 camps and exchanging the latest prohibition and flivver 
 stories, and maybe getting to be such good friends that 
 they slipped each other a little nip off the hip and told 
 how they got stuck in the mud near London and how the 
 landlord at Ye Boars Hedd Inn stuck you five berries for
 
 92 West Broadway 
 
 a room without a bath, and how gas was sixty cents on 
 the Oxford road and how they was obliged to travel all 
 Saturday night on account of ye highwaymen, and so was 
 two weeks without a bath and so forth and ect. But 
 enjoying it all, including their troubles after they was 
 over, at least. 
 
 Well, such was the Canterbury Pilgrims, who was the 
 fathers of the Pilgrim Fathers, I guess. But a few 
 generations make a lot of difference, and we have grown 
 a good ways beyond Plymouth Rock I'll say we have! 
 Several miles! And the California Pilgrims was again a 
 friendly people. First thing I knew we was waving to 
 some of the ones we had passed, or which had passed us 
 yesterday, or been at the same restaurants or something, 
 like they was old friends. 
 
 Just outside of Wheeling there was an awful stretch 
 of wet clay road, and Tom was driving real well, but 
 skidding because of being too proud to put on the chains, 
 when we skedaddled backward a little and bumped some- 
 one that was trying to pass us, the fresh nut, and a regular 
 chorus set up, and there was the Peterkins family fliv, 
 which had thrown a loving front wheel around our hind 
 one. 
 
 "Hey! Who's road do yer think this is?" says Pa 
 Peterkin. 
 
 "Why don't you look where you're going?" says Jim. 
 "Back up, can't you?" 
 
 "My engine is willing, but my wheels is sleek," says Pa 
 with a grin. "Go on ahead yourself." 
 
 Well, by that time about twenty cars of every denom- 
 ination had appeared from nowheres and started giving 
 advice at the same time we started our engine. But we 
 had to stop again and stop quick or we would all of been 
 over the bank.
 
 West Broadway 93 
 
 "This mud shimmies too fast," says Jim. "We got to 
 get out and lift her over, that's all!" 
 
 And that is what they did just got out and lifted the 
 flivver out of the way Pa Peterkin, Jim and principally 
 Tom. Anyways, I think Tom principally did, because 
 when he come back there was a marigold missing off the 
 front of the oldest Peterkin daughter 's dress and one grow- 
 ing in his buttonhole. 
 
 There was one big stiff in a golf suit and a new Colby- 
 Droit a newer one than ours who had stood around 
 most helpfully while the other boys was working, and 
 when it was over seemed to think he had done it all. He 
 spoke to me as he waded back to his bus sort of as if he 
 and us was the only speaking-terms people in the bunch 
 on account of our mutual car, if you get me. 
 
 "That's the way to do it, eh?" he says. "I could have 
 told them to lift it in the first place." 
 
 And then the blockade was broken up and we all started 
 off again. 
 
 ' ' They are going to the coast too, ' ' says Tom as the 
 Peterkins passed us. "He's a merchant on a much-needed 
 vacation. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, I thought she was a mighty snappy doll myself," 
 I came back at him. 
 
 "Well, he didn't reply to that, but stepped on the bus 
 and off we flew, leaving the calico sunbonnets of Maryland 
 and Western Pennsylvania behind, and skimming over 
 more wet mountains, all with them terrible religious signs 
 on them, only now somebody had also painted "Boner for 
 Coroner" on the bad curves as well, and finally come 
 dashing into Wheeling. That kid sure drove fast ! 
 
 "Go slow and see our city go fast and see our jail, 
 Tom," I says, and he slowed up. 
 
 I could control him a little, but not much, and he did 
 quiet down enough to let us grab a few sandwiches to take
 
 94 West Broadway 
 
 along from a pretty little hotel near a river, and then 
 we crossed the river. 
 
 Having dashed through fifty miles of West Virginia 
 and I was glad, of course, to get this glimpse of the dear 
 old South we horned into Ohio and at last I felt we was 
 really on our way West; only, also, as if I had been on it 
 three weeks instead of three days. 
 
 Then Jim took the wheel, and naturally, he being my 
 husband, I had no influence over him at all, and he drove 
 so I thought we would be killed any minute. 
 
 "Aw, shut up or drive yourself!" he says finally, and 
 of course I had no intention of driving down them terrible 
 grades in wet weather, and so I shut up, except for 
 begging him to go into low going down hill, which he 
 wouldn't do because he never had to before, and shrieking 
 at him to please stay next to the cliff and to blow the horn 
 when we come to a curve; and, believe me, I mentally 
 drove every inch of the road with him at sixty miles an 
 hour from Zanesville to Columbus, especially when he 
 nearly sideswiped a big Munson which darted around a 
 curve and tried to bite us. And to this day I believe it 
 was Jim's fault. 
 
 "Why, you let that kid drive anyway he wants to with- 
 out letting out a yip ! ' ' says Jim peevishly after this 
 escape. "And yet you pick on me unless I drive like I 
 was going to a funeral." 
 
 ' ' Going to a funeral will be right unless you go slow on 
 these grades," I says, and then we was in low but out of 
 speaking for a while. 
 
 And now, I thought, we are getting to the farm country, 
 the beginning of the great agricultural belt where the 
 hicks are, where the crops of corn and chin whiskers are 
 to be found, and so I started in to look for them. I may 
 as well add sooner or later that I am looking yet. I saw
 
 West Broadway 95 
 
 the cultural part of agriculture but hicks? Gone are 
 the hicks! All gone! But there was lots of pigs. 
 
 I can't, since driving past Ohio, see why bacon is so 
 dear. I'll bet that between Wheeling and Columbus I 
 personally myself saw over one million pigs. Not in styes, 
 but running around in ten-acre lots. 
 
 I never was so well acquainted with pigs before. I 
 would not of thought that there was room in the entire 
 U. S. A. for the number of pigs I seen in Ohio alone. 
 Also we come by field after field of bright green stuff that 
 they eat, and this was the first time I knew that alfalfa 
 wasn't a college fraternity. There seemed to be no end 
 to the fields of pigs and clover and farm-houses and cows ! 
 Oh, my mother, how many cows I seen! 
 
 Finally it commenced at last to dawn on me that this 
 was a great country a wonderful country where there 
 was no horns on the cows, but where they grew their own 
 barbed-wire fences out of a stuff called osage orange. 
 God made this land and made it for farming. What is 
 more, He divided it up awful even. Why, a mere hick 
 from the city like myself couldn't help but notice how 
 nearly of the one size them Ohio farms was enormous 
 compared to the East, but size and size alike; and the 
 houses on them the same good substantial houses set in 
 shade trees and one no bigger than the other. I couldn't 
 see, myself personally, how a soviet could divide them any 
 better, and I wondered how Mr. Karl Westman intended 
 going to work out here. I wondered if he had ever even 
 seen the place and had any idea what he was up against, 
 because where everybody has a good house and lot, what 
 are you going to offer to make them give 'em up? And 
 in the whole time I was traveling through this part of 
 the country, meaning from Ohio to Kansas, it 's the honest 
 truth I didn't see but two farms that was for sale. 
 
 And here's another thing: We practically never seen a
 
 96 West Broadway 
 
 farm without at least one car parked in the yard. I '11 tell 
 the world that from Zanesville on there begun to creep 
 over me a kind of secondhand pride in these farms that I 
 can't explain exactly, but which I felt all right, all right; 
 and I begun to get a little realization of the fact that this 
 is a mighty big country, a thing I have many times said 
 at Liberty Bond drives without knowing what I was 
 talking about, but now began to see for myself that it was 
 so darn big that I would have to grow some to be equal 
 to the responsibility of belonging to it in the right way. 
 Say, here we had been traveling steady for days, and when 
 I looked at the map I give a gasp, because I see that we 
 wasn't even started! 
 
 Well, the farms I had been sort of prepared for, but the 
 cities I was not. There are no towns west of the Alle- 
 ghanies. They are all cities. And if they don't always 
 have a city population to start with, why, they take no 
 chance about what may happen in the future and start 
 right in to have all the fixings, pavings, artistic street 
 lights that would put your eye out five lights to a post 
 often ; a bank, at least one hotel, and shops like Broadway ! 
 
 At first I just simply didn't get it, and waited for the 
 next one to be a jay village. But it didn't come along. 
 I saw cootie coops and spit curls on the chickens which 
 had come in off the farms in all four states, and heard the 
 latest jazz on the drug-store records. "But wait," I says 
 to myself, "this can't keep up. Pretty soon now we will 
 hit the haystacks." But by night, when we hit the hay 
 of a standardized mattress in a standardized hotel which 
 might as well of been the Biltmore for all you could tell 
 the difference in Columbus, Ohio, the simple little vil- 
 lage had not yet walked onto the part of the map we was 
 traveling across. 
 
 Anybody would expect Columbus to be a big city and a 
 live one, but you don't realize until you go out there it
 
 West Broadway 97 
 
 has kittens all over the state. And this went for the next 
 day's travel, too, when we hiked along through farms and 
 farms and pigs and Springfield, and then suddenly no 
 Springfield, but just pigs and pigs and pigs and farms, 
 and got diverted off the main route into Dayton by a flood* 
 
 The rain had by now all cleared out of the sky, but it 
 hadn't left us by any means. It was right with us on the 
 floor of Ohio and nobody wHo hasn't sloughed through it 
 in an underslung car can appreciate the emotions you get 
 by wading through Ohio. We had all unknowingly kissed 
 paved highways good-by for a long time at dear old Chris- 
 topher's home city, and most of the bridges ahead of us 
 had heard we was coming and left before we got there. It 
 seems it had been raining for a month in these here parts, 
 and parts was all that was left for us to see, and only 
 the parts that was floating at that. In our ignorance we 
 thought it was real mud we was going through, but that 
 was, as the map shows, before we got to Illinois. 
 
 Well, anyways, I didn 't mind the detours much, because 
 we seen the back country that way, whether we wanted to 
 spare the time or not. But my good nature made no im- 
 pression on Jim. Having nothing else to pick on me for, he 
 tried to start something because of my not complaining. 
 
 "Say, you're a funny bird!" he says. "If I was to 
 take you on five miles of road like this back home you would 
 throw a fit, and here you stand fifty of it without letting 
 out a yell!" 
 
 Well, what was the use explaining that there was no 
 object in trying out back roads at home, whereas there 
 was a big Purpose behind this trip, and every bit of road 
 was a link in the chain, as the poet says ? He wouldn 't of 
 understood my emotion, but only passed remarks on the 
 pancakes I had eat for breakfast, which is his idea of what 
 makes a person soulful. 
 
 Well, anyways, we went through the smiling city of Day-
 
 98 West Broadway 
 
 ton, and aeroplane factories have a more uplifting effect 
 on a city than other industries, and no kidding intended 
 the town does look that way. It 's a beauty ! And pretty 
 soon it was lunchtime, and we was in Richmond, Indiana, 
 and I seen an Indian doll in a window, and so we got out 
 And I sent the doll to Junior from the wild and woolly 
 West, which wildness had so far consisted of smart little 
 Main Streets full of snappy shops with plate-glass win- 
 dows and at Richmond actually another hat like mine in 
 the lace-trimmed milliner's window. 
 
 I don't know did anything on the whole trip impress 
 me deeper than finding that ultra-smart model all along 
 the line. It might not at first seem to be important; but 
 when you look behind the hat and the fact that Jim 
 ould of bought his favorite collar or gloves in pretty near 
 any town I mean city let we went through you can begin, 
 if you let your bean work, to get some notion of the breadth 
 of our civilization. And seeing them little things impressed 
 me more with our high standard of living than any amount 
 of Board of Trade statistics. 
 
 Another thing which struck me a blow in the precon- 
 ceived notions was the eats. All of a sudden it come to 
 me how well we was eating, and no kidding we could 
 seldom eat over half a dollar's worth. I don't mean be- 
 cause it was poor, but because it was cheap. In Rich- 
 mond it occurred to me to check up the menu, and on my 
 word the food ran from ten to fifty cents a portion, and 
 this was no greasy vest, but a snappy little f umed-oak tea 
 room, and tea rooms in the West is not the last resort of 
 incompetent gentlewomen, but live business propositions 
 and run by women who deliver the goods as well as the 
 manners. 
 
 Listen ! Fifteen cents for real he-bean soup in an art 
 bowl ! Twenty-five for roast chicken. It 's the truth ! And 
 filowly I begun also to realize that we had been getting
 
 West Broadway 99 
 
 steadily better and cheaper food ever since we crossed the 
 Twenty -third Street ferry. Tom Westman was eating with 
 us now, sort of as a matter of course, in the small places 
 especially, and he couldn't get over the prices. 
 
 ' ' Why, you couldn 't eat on Second Avenue for that I ' ' 
 he says when he seen the check. 
 
 "Sure you couldn't!" I says. "And yet us New York- 
 ers like to speak of the crude Middle West ! Say, what 
 would your brother Karl think if he saw this menu, eh? 
 He couldn't kick on the cost of the poor workingman's 
 food out here, could he ? Can he show me a Russian menu 
 with prices like that on it what ? And remember, we are 
 in the swellest joint in town!" 
 
 "Well, I'll say I'm surprised!" says Tom, looking over 
 the menu interestedly. "And another thing I notice that 
 is awful strange: The people out here talk friendly 
 notice? No chips around their shoulders." 
 
 "They don't need to hafto," says Jim. "The big ma- 
 jority stand on their own feet out here." 
 
 And that ain't very clear, but we knew what he meant, 
 and so will any intelligent reader. And then we started 
 off again, traveling all afternoon over what we in our still- 
 Eastern inexperience thought was very bad roads, and 
 through more model citylets, to Indianapolis, which might 
 of been Bridgeport, only it was more so, where I at once 
 fell into bed and into one of the joggling, rumbling, mov- 
 ing dreams which a person gets when they are too tired, 
 and in which they sway with the car all night through 
 rivers and over the backs of thousands of pigs and through, 
 millions of avenues of five-pointed arc lights in the latest 
 art model. 
 
 And then all of a sudden I woke up, and there was 
 Jim in his dressing gown, but all washed, his hair wet and 
 brushed sleek the way I love it, and a cup of hot coffee, 
 which I also loved, in his hand.
 
 1OO West Broadway 
 
 "I thought I'd let you catch up on your sleep," he says. 
 "And here's your coffee and the morning paper. Take 
 your time with them while I do the packing." 
 
 And I did, and these are the little tender things which 
 keeps a man and wife together and one of them on Jim's 
 part will last me for weeks. 
 
 Well, anyways, I drank the coffee and opened the paper 
 the first I had seen except little local sheets since we had 
 left New York. And when I done so I let out a holler 
 that brought Jim hopping to my side. 
 
 "What is it scald yourself?" he says. 
 
 "I don't know but maybe I have!" I says. "Look at 
 that ! ' ' and this is what we read : 
 
 BROADWAY BOMB EXPLOSION 
 
 NOW LAID TO REDS 
 
 NEW YORK POLICE LOOKING 
 
 FOR RADICAL LEADERS
 
 VII 
 
 OUTSIDE the window the Indianapolis street cars 
 roared and jolted past with protesting shrieks, and 
 the hoarse, confused murmur that belongs to big cities 
 could be plainly heard in the silence which fell between I 
 and Jim as we looked at that terrible piece of news from 
 home. "Read it!" says Jim. "I'll bet your highbrow 
 friends of the Intelligencia gang are back of it!" 
 
 Well, I let that pass, because I wasn't so sure but that 
 they was. And so all I done was read, and this was what 
 the piece says: It seems that on the very day that Tom 
 Westman kidnapped me just two hours earlier, in fact 
 a terrible explosion had happened on lower Broadway, 
 killing ten people. At first it had been supposed that a 
 wagon with dynamite for blasting had been accidentally 
 hit, but now the cops thought it was the Reds, and not 
 only the Reds, but that the whole thing had been guided 
 by a master mind. Of course, I at once thought of Karl 
 Westman. Anyways, he had disappeared the day before 
 we left I knew that and although no names were men- 
 tioned by the paper, he flashed into my mind right off. 
 And here in the confusion of getting away from home 
 we had not even heard of the explosion. Ain't that New 
 York for you though? 
 
 Somehow the whole thing, terrible as it was, seemed 
 awfully dim and unreal to me; even that night at dinner 
 in the Mocking Turtle, with Karl 's ugly purple face gleam- 
 ing through the haze of smoke while his thick lips shouted 
 that the capitalist ought to be blown to hell that it was 
 the only way to teach them. It all seemed like a queer, 
 
 101
 
 1O2 West Broadway 
 
 unhealthy dream to me, it was so far away from the clean, 
 fine country we had been riding through day after day; 
 the calm country with its rich wide fields, its busy, clean- 
 cut people, its bright prosperous young cities. In reading 
 that paper I felt like I was looking at New York, and espe- 
 cially at radical New York, through the wrong end of the 
 telescope, and it appeared like a small glowing coal at the 
 far end of a long, cool, green valley. It seemed like the 
 beginning of time since I had been back there listening 
 with a real disturbed heart and mind to those queer people, 
 shut up in their smoky cafe and talking, talking, talking 
 about a revolution in a country they had never even seen ; 
 that since then I had been traveling for years through a 
 land of peace and plenty. I felt so safe, so secure up to 
 now that I had pretty near forgotten what I had come 
 for to spread Americanism and all at once I realized 
 that what I had actually been doing was absorbing that 
 very thing myself. It had come into me naturally out 
 of the very air I'd been breathing. And if I had read 
 that newspaper in any place but the first big industrial 
 city we had hit I don't believe I would of paid half the 
 attention to it that I did. 
 
 ' ' Damn those crooks ! ' ' says Jim. ' ' We ought to deport 
 the whole crew these fellers that love revolution so. Why 
 don't they go back to their native Russia, or wherever 
 they come from, where they can have a fight every morning 
 before breakfast if they want it? I'm fed up with this 
 straddling one foot in America and the other foot back 
 home ! ' ' 
 
 "And it isn't as if they was all direct from the other 
 side either," I says, glad for once to agree with my hus- 
 band. "The ones which get my goat are the second and 
 third generation ones who still love the old country so 
 that they are willing to do everything for it except go 
 live there."
 
 West Broadway 103 
 
 "You said a hors d'over!" says Jim, lacing his older 
 boots briskly because of having decided they was good 
 enough for the car. "You said a pickled herring it'll 
 keep ! But what I wonder is, did them highbrow members 
 of the Intelligencia gang have anything to do with this 
 business, eh? First thing you know, Tom '11 be running 
 us off a cliff and wrecking the car just to show us where 
 we capitalists get off." 
 
 "That very thing oozed through my own bean," I says, 
 putting on the same waist as yesterday because the laun- 
 dry was commencing to pile up something terrible, and 
 as we had forgot a laundry bag, what to do with our 
 dirty linen unless we washed it in public was getting to 
 be one of the most important things in life. Well, any- 
 ways 
 
 "I did think of it, but I canned the thought," I says, 
 * ' because I 'm not going to frisk myself of a perfectly good 
 chauffeur until I got some reason I can put my teeth into," 
 I says. 
 
 And Jim agreed with me, but just the same when Tom 
 come up and knocked on the door, not expecting anything 
 worse than the usual morning bags and ecteras, we give 
 him the paper to read and watched him like a pair of cats 
 while he done so. A drawn look come into his face which 
 had up to now been growing younger every day, making 
 him look still young, but faded, the way he had been 
 that first night when we talked about bombs across the 
 dirty dishes. 
 
 "I've seen it!" he says very quietly. "It seems like a 
 nightmare, don't it?" 
 
 Well, what could a person say to that except you bet 
 or something? So that was all we did say, and as soon as 
 possible set off West again, glad to leave Indianapolis, for 
 all its noisy prosperity, because in the great manufacturing 
 towns somehow a person could feel the disturbing, clutch-
 
 104 West Broadway 
 
 ing unrestful hands of the East, and oh, well, what's the 
 use trying to explain it? I don't know what is the matter 
 with industry, but I do know that industry is one of the 
 things that is the matter with the country. And that the 
 farther West you go the less industry in a factory sense 
 you see and the more sane you feel. 
 
 At any rate, when we started the sun was shining in a 
 blue sky that looked as if it had come to stay, and it was 
 real warm over seventy even then so I took off my 
 coat and wore only a duster, because after all it didn't 
 matter in the car, and also took off my hat to let the sweet 
 moist air blow my troubles out of my brain, and so it did 
 after a few miles. 
 
 There is something so kind of big and endless about 
 driving across America that it gives a person a sense of 
 having been cut loose from time and place; it rests you 
 the way nothing else can. You are a kind of atom or 
 something, traveling free from the maddening bill collec- 
 tor and under no obligation to get anywheres on time, 
 because how could you promise faithfully about a car? 
 No mail can reach you up to a certain point, and if the 
 cook at home leaves or the house burns down or the ice 
 don't come or they raise your taxes you should fret. You 
 don't even know about it, and if you don't like one place 
 you can easy move on to another. You are the freest you 
 are ever likely to be, and if you add trouble to the other 
 baggage in the car you got nobody to blame but your 
 own self, and anybody which don't leave old dog Trouble 
 Ever Faithful checked at the home station don't deserve 
 to make the trip. Just remember what the Hints to 
 Tourists on the back of the map says "Load your car 
 light!" 
 
 Well, anyways, I did feel happy this morning in spite of 
 the thermometer going up and up in company with the 
 moisture out of the ground. Because, believe me, the
 
 West Broadway 105 
 
 Ohio flood, which we had thought fairly wet, was only 
 damp compared to Illinois, and anybody which has crossed 
 that state after a seven weeks' rain will understand me 
 perfectly. And also it was this morning that I learned 
 a brand-new truth about garage men, which is to say 
 they had a brand of wickedness up their sleeve which I 
 had not suspected before, and I'll say I had suspected 
 quite a few and actually known of even more; and this 
 new vice was giving directions to innocent strangers about 
 pet short cuts of their own. Tom sprung one as we was 
 putting Indianapolis behind us. 
 
 "The feller at the garage was telling me," he says, "that 
 the national road is in bad shape from here on, and to go 
 north by Montezuma and keep on the Ocean-to-Ocean trail 
 as far as Springfield." 
 
 "All right!" says Jim, and off we started, thinking how 
 kind and helpful these garage men are. And kind he was, 
 because pretty soon we found out that this knowing piece 
 of information was perfectly correct, because there was 
 a big sign across the road which says the National was 
 closed to all except swimmers and no boat traffic allowed, 
 and so we steered north, taking the gentle hint of a detour 
 sign in letters not over two feet tall, and pretty soon we 
 was riding along one of the backest back roads I ever 
 hope to see, with corn ten feet tall growing like a forest 
 on the both sides of us in cute little fifty-acre fields. I 
 expect this was what they call intensive cultivation it cer- 
 tainly was intensely large. And there not being anything 
 else to look at, why, of course, we took in every little thing 
 about it, from how big the ears was to how black the earth 
 was like chocolate frosting it looked. That's another 
 remarkable thing about this trip it forces you to notice 
 a whole lot of things you would never notice any other 
 way. Imagine me noticing fields of corn, for a sample!
 
 io6 West Broadway 
 
 But out in this part of the country you just got to notice 
 'em, because they are every place you look. 
 
 Well, after a while we come to a little group of houses 
 which was Montezuma, and there ahead of us in deep dis- 
 cussion with the boys who was holding down the post- 
 office steps who would we see but the new gray Colby- 
 Droit, the one which had been so proud back in West Vir- 
 ginia on the wet clay. When he saw us he started to 
 speak like we had just left off talking the minute before. 
 My but that guy hated himself! 
 
 "The road ahead is impassable!" he says. "Three cars 
 tried to get through to Springfield yesterday and had to 
 turn back. You'd better go down to Terre Haute and 
 take the main line. That's what I'm going to do. Our 
 cars will get through all right, I know. I've had a lot of 
 experience motoring." 
 
 Well, believe me, having one state road closed because 
 of mud and repairs and the other one closed because of 
 mud and no repairs gives you a kind of feeling like the 
 camera man had turned sixty feet without opening the 
 shutter in other words, perfectly blank. But if a person 
 is stopped by little things or big things either they might 
 better stay at home and make their thirty-five hundred 
 miles register riding round and round Central Park in- 
 stead of driving from coast to coast. 
 
 "We got to get to St. Louis to-night, that's all!" says 
 Jim. "If we turn back we may be stuck a week. But I 
 got no intention of going over a road that's marked 
 'Closed,' " and he looked off after the other Colby, which 
 was by now heading back the way it had come, lickety-split, 
 or as liekety-split as the road would allow of. 
 
 "There ought to be some other way," says Tom. "Let's 
 ask the natives." 
 
 And with that he hopped out and was met halfway 
 by a nice old bird in blue jeans and a black felt hat, while
 
 West Broadway 107 
 
 we sat in the car at ninety in the shade, only we was in 
 the sun, and pretty soon back come Tom with a few notes 
 on the back of a envelope. 
 
 "He says he'd go back if he was us," he announced. 
 "Because his wife's cousin's been trying to get through 
 for a week, and he's boarding free with them yet. But I 
 got the dope on a middle road, and I'm game if the rest 
 are." 
 
 "We got to be," says Jim. "The hellovit is we haven't 
 time to lay off until the world dries up. We got to get 
 through, that's all." 
 
 "Sure we have!" I says. "Put on the chains and go!" 
 
 "We don't need chains!" says Tom scornfully. "They 
 don't do no good. "Why, I've drove all over New York 
 without chains!" 
 
 "Well, I wish you'd put 'em on just the same," I says. 
 "The book says put them on." 
 
 And with that off we started, innocent and gay, glad 
 of the blue sky, the beautiful friendly fields and the coun- 
 try, which at last was beginning to look a little different 
 from home ; and if we had a picture of muddy roads ahead, 
 why, we supposed of course they would be only pretty bad 
 like, say, the Boston Post Road detours that was fully 
 capable of splashing up the car enough to make a wash 
 necessary in St. Louis, but not so bad as the Ohio flooded 
 ones, because nobody round here had said anything about 
 that Noah stuff, even though it had been raining for days. 
 But ye gobs and little fishes! We was to learn the real 
 truth about why a car is called a boat! It was nick- 
 named so by an Illinoisan, I '11 gamble, and nicked is right, 
 because beneath the underdone mud are holes large but 
 unseen and nicked is what your boat pretty soon is. I 
 personally myself can testify that after the seventieth 
 wallop in the sixty miles through Terre Haute to Paris our 
 tire bracket had a nervous breakdown and the tires had
 
 1O8 West Broadway 
 
 to be sustained with the tow rope that Jim had given 
 me the merry laugh for bringing. And when they was all 
 bound round with that hangman's handy tool we looked 
 about as much toured against as touring. 
 
 But there was one comfort in the bus being covered with 
 mud and rope, and the dog having put mud all over the 
 bags with his dirty paws we could let down a little more 
 about our personal appearance, and I even went so far as 
 to borrow a cap off of Jim, because a person has to shade 
 their eyes, no matter how it looks; and anyhow, I didn't 
 know anybody in Paris, Illinois. Besides, comfort is some- 
 thing you simply got to have on a trip like this. 
 
 "Well, anyways, I was glad to see Paris, Illinois, because 
 of all I have read about it, and also because of a girl I 
 know in the dressmaking business who calls herself Estelle 
 Modes, Paris, and she comes from this town, but allows 
 the public to infer anything they like. And it's a good 
 town, and I personally myself would just as soon admit the 
 Illinois part of it after I once seen it, even if you do come 
 into it out of absolutely nowhere and go right back into the 
 void ten minutes after leaving. It was the most surprising 
 citylet we had come on so far, because while it was as 
 perfect as any courthouse, traffic cops, street lighting all 
 complete, and a ladies ' dressing room in the big garage that, 
 no kidding, beat the Ritz for space, cleanliness and little 
 comforts well, while this was true, we come on it out of 
 a wilder wilderness than any we had been through before, 
 and in all these places I and Jim both passed the remark 
 many times how strange it is they have absolutely no sub- 
 urbs no scattered house lying around on the outside 
 of the town and getting thicker as you get nearer, but 
 you plunge all at once without any warning into the heart 
 of the Metropolis, as the newspapers say. And this true 
 fact never ceased to get a rise out of us all the way from 
 Ohio clear through Kansas. The citylets of the Middle
 
 West Broadway 109 
 
 West are in a unique class by theirself, and the more of 
 them I see the more I wondered what ever started that 
 N. Y. idea that they was jay. 
 
 Well, anyways, when we had admired Paris and admired 
 in particular a fifty-cent dinner we had there of only soup, 
 fat broiled chicken and candied sweet potatoes, two vege- 
 tables, ice cream, coffee and pie, we dashed down to the 
 abrupt ending of Main Street, taking the road which the 
 garage man, which it 's a fact he was stronger on plumbing 
 than directions, had told us to take, with the pleasing re- 
 sult that presently we was completely lost. We tried 
 to turn round and go back to Paris and was shortly even 
 more lost, and the only signs on any corner was Chew 
 Cub Plug and Whatsis, or some place we never heard of 
 before, fourteen miles. 
 
 And what is further, we never struck a farmhouse on 
 any corner. They seemed to build them in the middle of 
 the block, if you get that, so's to be as far away from 
 each other as possible, when wouldn't' you think they would 
 make it on the four corners so they could at least fight with 
 each other, and for the further convenience of tourists? 
 But they don't not out West and I would think they'd 
 die of a lonesomeness that could easily be avoided, especial- 
 ly as lots of that land is taken up in quarter sections, which 
 means the four corners often do come together. 
 
 Well, anyways, we was lost all right, and so I says the 
 next farmhouse we come to we will stop and ask, and we 
 went on and on and still yet again on. Somebody had 
 to live some place pretty soon, we knew that, because 
 somebody must of planted all that corn we were going by 
 unless it really grew wild. And meanwhile we were doing 
 our daily stunt of desperately trying to beat the sunset to 
 our hotel, but with St. Louis still the other side of Jordan. 
 
 "Say, do you realize we are not only sluing from side 
 to side up to our hubs in goulash," I says at length, "hut
 
 no West Broadway 
 
 that we are only making fifteen miles an hour at that?" 
 
 "I was thinking," says Westman, who was wrestling 
 with the wheel, which tugged him about like it was alive 
 and mad at him and trying to pull his arms out by the 
 roots "I was thinking," he says, "of the pioneers who 
 come through the mud out here on ox carts," he says, 
 ' ' and how there must of been times when they didn 't make 
 over fifteen miles a day. ' ' 
 
 He said this so serious that I shut up and only looked 
 at him with sort of new eyes. It was strange to have this 
 kid foreign born think of that before I, a born Ameri- 
 can, did. But I passed no comments on it, feeling it better 
 to let the country do its own propaganda without any 
 interference from me in this case, and then pretty soon we 
 actually come in sight of a farm, and as there didn't seem 
 to be nobody round but one lone woman, I says I would 
 get out and ask. And so I threw my main supports over 
 the door, and following them went up and said hello, 
 would she tell me the road to St. Louis. It sounds like a 
 simple question, but you don 't know the half of it, or what 
 I had started. 
 
 This lady was a good substantial one. She sort of re- 
 minded me of ma, a white American woman in a clean 
 gingham and starved for a gabfest like a suburban wife 
 for a matinee, only a hundred per cent worse. There was 
 a talk-hungry look in her faded eyes, and the way she 
 stalled to keep me almost made me cry. She took in my 
 clothes one by one, and I could see she was disappointed 
 they wasn't better. 
 
 "Where you from?" she says first of all. "New York? 
 My heaven, all the way in that car? Where you going 
 ter? What? California? You don't say! There was a 
 lady and gentleman through here last month, but they was 
 only going far as Kansas. I got a cousin in Kansas near 
 Cottonwood Falls. Ever been there? No, not yet, of
 
 West Broadway ill 
 
 course ! Well, you was asking about St. Louis. Well, you 
 might take your right no, your left down to Shelbyville 
 and go crost to Vandalia. I know a man works down to 
 Vandalia and he says it 's on the main road to St. Louis. ' ' 
 
 "Then we better take that," I says, starting to go. 
 "Thank you a lot." 
 
 "Well, I don't believe I'd take it this time o' year," 
 says the lady. "I hear there's a bridge gone down that 
 way. Better keep on through Hillsboro and Staunton. 
 How far did you say you was going?" 
 
 "California," I says again. 
 
 ' ' Wisht I could go ! " says she. ' ' I never get to go no 
 place. They always got some other use for the flivver. 
 Sometimes I feel like if I ever once got off this farm I 
 wouldn 't never come back to it outside of a coffin ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' Why, what 's wrong with it ? " I says. 
 
 ' ' Lonesome ! ' ' says the woman, her lips shutting into a 
 thin line. "And besides, I ain't needed here." 
 
 "Not needed?" I says. "Why, who would do the house- 
 work?" 
 
 ' ' Oh, a camp cook can always do that ! ' ' she says bit- 
 terly. "Women ain't actually needed on a farm. The 
 menfolk could get along just as good without us. Now in 
 the cities, that's different. I often think of being a sales- 
 lady or clerk or a cook, even. But I'm too old to com- 
 mence again. Lots have, though. Three out of every four 
 families hereabouts has moved to the cities these last ten 
 years." 
 
 "Say," I says, "you are quite a thinker! What makes 
 'em go? I would think a swell farm had it all over the 
 city unless you are real rich." 
 
 "Think?" says the woman. "Of course, I think! I got 
 nothing else to do except when I 'm working, and you don 't 
 have to keep your mind on my kind of work, so I think 
 then too. And I'll tell you, young woman, no modern,
 
 112 West Broadway 
 
 up-to-date girl will stay on a farm if she can get often it 
 and no wonder ! She'd rather marry a soda clerk in a town 
 than a fine young feller that owns his one hundred and 
 sixty acres of good farm land. And I don't blame her, 
 nuther!" 
 
 "I'll say that's real radical!" I says. "You talk like 
 you wanted a soviet!" 
 
 "What's a soviet?" says the woman suspiciously. "If 
 it's one of them newfangled reaper machines or a motor 
 plow I don 't want even the name of it ! Everything on 
 this farm has been for the farm see? and I'm sick of 
 it! Every penny that goes for improvements goes for 
 farm improvements, and not a nickel for me not a dollar 
 for the farmhouses or us farm women. And let me tell 
 you, young lady, the farmhouse is the heart of the farming 
 business, and until the farmers their own selves understand 
 this the young girls will refuse to tie theirselves up in 
 marriage to farmers. Until they get improvements elec- 
 tric washers, lights, decent houses they can take some 
 pride in, and then get some freedom from drudging about 
 with old-fashioned inconveniences they are going to pre- 
 fer city boys. I know what I'm talkin' about. I got two 
 daughters married in the city, and a son gone and left us 
 too!" 
 
 ' ' Gee, that 's rough ! " I says, real interested by now. 
 
 "Farm labor?" says the woman. "Who wants to be a 
 farm worker in the kind of homes we got far off, no pic- 
 ture shows, nothing but work ? Why, there 's no law in this 
 country against children working on farms, and a mother 
 hates to see her kids done up with chores yet the father 
 always wants 'em to ! Women hate farms ! I hate this 
 one ! I '11 tell you, young woman, the farm-labor problem 
 is going right qn the way it is until the farm women get 
 something better in the way of living than they got now. 
 For every tractor, a equal new household equipment*
 
 West Broadway 113 
 
 that's my motto! My land, but don't I wisht I was going 
 along with you folks!" 
 
 Jim was by this time honking badly, so I had to go. 
 
 "Maybe you'll get away soon," I says, shaking hands 
 with her, and she give an awful funny answer. 
 
 "I wisht he'd buy a phonographt ! " she says. 
 
 But I understood. And when I had given Jim the direc- 
 tion and got back in the car again I kept looking back at 
 her and waving as long as I could and wishing I had 
 thought to ask her name so's I could send her a picture 
 postal. And the last we seen of her I think she was still 
 talking, and so was Jim about how it was getting dark 
 and all my fault for delaying the game like that, and 
 meanwhile we was going on and on without meeting a 
 town anywheres. 
 
 I begun to think all the towns had been drowned in the 
 mud, and the old familiar ache of utter tiredness was 
 creeping over me, and we all had the usual evening edge, 
 not meaning in any liquid sense, because liquor and us had 
 been strangers since the start of the trip, and nobody in 
 the places we had been seemed either to have any bootlegs 
 or to want any well, anyways, I mean edge to our tem- 
 pers, and the daylight had no consideration for us, but 
 just went on giving out regardless and finally went alto- 
 gether, leaving us soshing and struggling along over a 
 road which was ruts and mud and mud and ruts and 
 washouts on either hand lots of times when we would 
 come to a hill. The only way to drive at all was to keep 
 in the shallowest of the ruts and pray to heaven. And 
 then, with Jim driving, we went over a little bridge, shot 
 up a incline, skidded to one side and stopped dead, our 
 differential snuggled down deep into the lovely Illinois 
 blue gumbo. 
 
 "I guess we're stuck!" I remarked as if I needed to call
 
 114 West Broadway 
 
 their attention to it. "And in all this wet! Say, Jim, 
 didn't all this part of the world used to be an ocean?" 
 
 "What d'yer mean, used to be?" growled Jim savage- 
 ly, climbing into not over two feet of earth that hadn't 
 jelled. "Get at that wheel and spin her around Tom, 
 while I cut some brush." 
 
 Well, Tom spun her, and around went the wheels all 
 right. They could easily, because the car was resting on 
 the pan, which left the wheels entirely free there was no 
 bottom to the ruts. I though about chains and how some- 
 body or another meaning me had several times sug- 
 gested putting them on when the car got up and dressed 
 in the morning. I say I thought it, but I kept my thoughts 
 to myself. I had no wish to be murdered by two strong, 
 angry men on a dark and lonesome back road, and I was 
 taking no chances. So I merely switched on the dash light, 
 put the three cushions on the floor, and realizing that this 
 was the first evening since we started out that I'd had a 
 chance to read, or hadn't been so sleepy I couldn't, got 
 out Shakspere. 
 
 "What are you doing?" says Jim when he saw me. 
 "Reading when we got all this work to do?" 
 
 "Well, you say there's nothing I can do to help," I says, 
 looking up at him over the top of Romeo from my harem 
 seat. 
 
 "Well, you might at least stand around and watch!" 
 he says. 
 
 "I can see very good from here," I says. 
 
 And then he went off awful mad, to look for brush that 
 wasn't there. Literally there wasn't any not a handful 
 except of briars, nor a fence they could pull down nor any- 
 thing, and they had to go looking for it with the pocket 
 flash at that. Finally Jim come back from the bridge 
 behind us with one loose board he had caught, and threw 
 it behind the left hind foot of our churchyard rabbit,
 
 West Broadway 115 
 
 giving meanwhile a exhibition of some of the language he 
 had learned in the pictures pure Studioese of the strong- 
 est kind. And when the stick proved a mere nothing he 
 and Tom got out all them things they had kidded me so for 
 buying the shovel, the ax, the puller and so forth and 
 commenced to play with them. And while they done so for 
 two hours I read the script of Romeo and Juliet and had 
 a real good time, once in a while stopping to hand them 
 a plier or something, and showing almost superhuman 
 self-control in never once saying "I told you we would 
 need them," and a good thing, too, because the puller 
 broke on the first pull; but that was before we found out 
 that the wheels was going around merely in space and 
 no purchase nearer than China. 
 
 "Better walk back to the nearest farmhouse and get 
 someone to come pull us out," says Jim at length when 
 they had for over an hour mined with the ax and pick and 
 shovel and cetera all around the bus, but only got her in 
 a little deeper by doing it. "I hate to do it," he says, "be- 
 cause I Ve heard these Illinois farmers is a bunch of hold-up 
 men when it comes to pulling a car out, but I don't know 
 how we can help it." 
 
 "Well," says I, "don't give 'em a nickel over twenty- 
 five dollars," I says. 
 
 ' ' I won 't ! " says Jim. ' ' They better not try to rob me ! 
 But we can't stay here all night." 
 
 "I'll go back," says Tom. "I saw a place about two 
 miles down the road." 
 
 Jim went through the motions of protesting, but Tom 
 wouldn't listen even. 
 
 "I don't mind a bit!" says he, lying cheerfully. "And 
 I'll bring help if I have to use a gun!" 
 
 He grinned at us, struggling into his sweater under the 
 headlights, and with a wave of his hand vanished into the 
 darkness, leaving I and Jim to wait without speaking for
 
 n6 West Broadway 
 
 a time that seemed longer than the whole rest of my life 
 put together. And then, just as we had about decided he 
 had been drowned in the mud or maybe murdered in the 
 lonely farmhouse, we heard a car and his voice calling, 
 "There she is right beyond the bridge!" 
 
 Now I've heard a lot of good music in my time we got 
 a two-hundred-dollar phonograph, for one thing and I've 
 had the best orchestras always when doing my society 
 dances in the old vaudeville days, and once Al give me two 
 seats to hear Caruso in person and I didn't want to waste 
 them. But never no, never on my word of fair-to- 
 middling honor have I heard any music as sweet and 
 beautiful as the engine of that car, excepting maybe that 
 of our own car when it got pulled out and was running. 
 
 As for the two he-farmers who had come out at nearly 
 ten P. M. in their Sunday clothes, they were without doubt 
 two of the handsomest men I ever seen, and real Ameri- 
 cans, too, of the first water and no German accent or any- 
 thing, or mean like you read about keeping mudholes as a 
 source of income. Why, from their talk you would of 
 thought it was a pleasure to help us, and the most remark- 
 able part yet they wouldn't take a cent! Not a cent! 
 Not even one of Jim's cigars, though I don't know that I 
 blame them for that, he having kept his small-time-salary 
 taste in tobacco. But anyways they wouldn't hear of 
 money. 
 
 "When somebody else is in trouble you'll help them," 
 says the biggest, handsomest farmer. "That's the way to 
 pay such things." 
 
 And then we shook hands all around and gathered up 
 the mining outfit and chased the dog, which of course took 
 that minute to run off, and finally got in and was on our 
 way. 
 
 Oh, the heavenly relief of it ! Believe me, if you want 
 the most exquisite sensation of pleasure, go get stuck in
 
 West Broadway 117 
 
 the Illinois gumbo for two hours and then get out of it. 
 I'll tell the world that never no, not even when I got my 
 first good press notices did I have a sensation like the one 
 I had when that bus give a lurch, come clean out of the bog 
 and stood purring and ready to go on her way. The joy of 
 feeling her move is something no poet can tell about and 
 get away with. It's one of them things which has got to 
 be experienced to be understood. 
 
 "Follow the heavy electric cables when you come to 
 them," says one of the Angel Farmers, "right into Hills- 
 boro. Good luck!" 
 
 And then we was actually off, driving for miles and 
 miles, Jim at the wheel and trying to make time in spite of 
 I begging him to be careful. But he was nervous and 
 tired, and the more I asked him to be careful the more he 
 wouldn't, but took corners in a simply crazy way, and 
 when I thought the road must be washed out in the dark- 
 ness on either side my hair stood on end, or would of only 
 for my cap. 
 
 "Jim, you nut," I says, "have a heart! Let Tom drive, 
 please ! Oh, Jim, you make me so nervous ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' Shut up ! I won 't ! " says Jim. ' ' I know how to drive 
 this bus! I've drove it all over New York City!" 
 
 "But this ain't New York!" I wailed but to no avail. 
 
 And then what I had been expecting but yet not really 
 expecting, if you get me, happened. We dashed down a 
 grade where a rickety little bridge showed fantastically 
 ahead in the spotlight, slued violently to the right in the 
 treacherous mud, missed the bridge and went over the 
 bank. For one awful moment I thought "I'm going to 
 die ! Oh, Jim, I told you so !" and then my head hit some- 
 thing with a noise like a battlefield, everything went black 
 and I knew no more.
 
 vni 
 
 WHEN I come to I imagined that the whole entire 
 world including its excess baggage, had fallen on 
 top of me, with apparently no intention of getting off. I 
 thought my head was ruined and my legs was all broke and 
 that my screen value was gone forever. Also that it was 
 really unnecessary for Jim to put his foot in my face, but 
 that's a husband for you no consideration in little things! 
 
 However, I after a moment realized it was not Jim's 
 foot, but the heel of a suitcase from the back of the ton- 
 neau, and that Jim was under me and pinned down tight. 
 
 I couldn't believe it had happened, or if it had that it 
 must be on a location and pretty soon the whistle would 
 blow, but it didn't; and instead came not the director's 
 voice but that of young Westman, who had been flung clear 
 of the car and was already on his feet and busy at some- 
 thing or other, I couldn't tell what. To hear the two 
 voices of he and Jim you would of thought they was con- 
 tinuing a calm gabfest that had been going on in a private 
 smoking den or something for maybe a hour or two. 
 
 "I think I'm only caught,' 7 Jim was saying. "Will 
 she hold if I move?" 
 
 "The top saved her from going completely over," says 
 Tom's voice, "and there's a fence holding below. I'll have 
 her up in a minute. Wait till I lift her off you." 
 
 And this time it was me he meant by "her," and some- 
 how or another he got me out, first removing a couple of 
 bags off my face, and then the golf clubs, and then by 
 sheer strength pulled me through the wind shield, and 
 would of helped me to sit down, but I found a young tree 
 and held onto it. 
 
 118
 
 West Broadway 119 
 
 "Jim!" I says. "Get Jim!" 
 
 Well, I don't like to dwell on the rest of it too much. 
 Because, believe me, I dwelt one thousand years in twenty 
 minutes at the time, and that is enough. But I do want to 
 go on record with a few things about Tom Westman, and 
 what he did was according to him nothing at all, but the 
 true facts are that Jim was caught with one foot under 
 the car and only held about an inch from being crushed 
 by a combination of lunch box and twisted left fender ; and 
 that Tom somehow found a plank where there wasn't any 
 and jacked that bus up all alone so's Jim could pull out 
 his leg unharmed and get free also through the wind shield, 
 and that the car lay such a way that only for Tom's being 
 on the job so quick and not losing his head Jim would of 
 at least had one less leg to-day. 
 
 Well, anyways, after Jim was out and my heart had com- 
 menced to beat again and my head begun to figure out that 
 the trip was ruined and we would have to go on by train, 
 provided we could ever get to some place where trains 
 passed, and that now Jim was alive and safe and nothing 
 broken but his sense of humor, why, then of course I also 
 begun to realize it had all been his fault and his deliberate 
 carelessness, and even the fact that I would from now on 
 always have something to throw up to him for which he 
 would have no comeback failed to comfort me. 
 
 And here was where Tom, who seemed to have the 
 strength and cheerfulness of a team of oxen, showed us 
 different. For he and Jim got the puller and hitched it to 
 a tree and this time it did pull, and pretty soon lifted 
 mostly by sheer strength of language, I guess, only of 
 course under the circumstances I pretended not to hear 
 it that car stood upright on the road, uninjured except 
 for a broken wind shield, cracked radiator shell and 
 crumpled left mud guard. And I was so happy over it 
 that I never passed a single remark about how they had
 
 12O West Broadway 
 
 laughed at me for bringing it when they took the two 
 gallons of extra oil and put it into the of course empty 
 crank case ; and when Tom got in and stepped on her and 
 after a heart-cracking sigh of hesitation the engine actually 
 turned over I wanted to pray in thankfulness. 
 
 You know the way a person first naturally makes a lot 
 of rash enthusiastic promises in the gratitude of the mo- 
 ment, and, believe me, Tom would of got his if he would of 
 let us, which he would not, and somehow made us shush, 
 as he put it, we hardly knew how. He was a better gentle- 
 man than either of us, I'll say that; but just the same Jim 
 and I kept reservations in our mind about what we would 
 do for him in increase of wages and a car of his own 
 when he least expected it, and I personally myself decided 
 to surprise him at Christmas with a diamond-mounted 
 watch, and was determined not to cool down to a post 
 card with greetings by the time the holiday season actually 
 come around, as is often the case. 
 
 "I'll never forget what you done for us," says Jim as 
 we come at length limping into the next town, the most 
 beautiful town I ever saw that night in my life, if you 
 get me ! ' ' I '11 never forget it, * ' says Jim. ' ' And I '11 prove 
 it if ever I get the chance to do something for you!" 
 
 * ' Oh, shush ! ' ' says Tom. 
 
 Now far be it from me to say anything against this 
 town or any other part of Illinois or its people, except 
 of course their so-called roads, and why be in a hurry to 
 criticize even them, because maybe nobody ever called 
 the natives' attention to the condition of their roads, 
 and perhaps if they read this they will notice the roads the 
 next time they are trying to go some place, and then maybe 
 the roads will be improved and become as the poet says, 
 worthy of the towns they run up to and the farms they 
 lead to; and when this is accomplished, why it will be 
 easier to keep help that has seen Paree, because the help
 
 West Broadway 121 
 
 will not be so constantly reminded of the battlefield mud, 
 which they have also seen, remember! Also social calls 
 between farm ladies will be easier, and the heart of the 
 farm problem, which, like pretty near any other national 
 problem, it seems, lies in the home, will be a little solved 
 by making the great farms more accessible, and farmers 
 are social human beings like anybody else, or would be 
 if possible ; and it 's a shame that hell is paved with good 
 intentions when the apparent lack of even the intentions 
 is making hell out of such a lot of good farm country. 
 
 I don't know how a person does it, even after having 
 done it myself, but once you get your mind made up to 
 drive from coast to coast you get a kind of extra strength 
 that comes partially, I guess, from your mental workings 
 and the utter freedom from all ties. But however the scien- 
 tific facts are, I know that a person can and does fall 
 into bed at night with every bone and muscle aching like 
 you had the flu or something, to say nothing of the ache in 
 your temper and the pain in the small of your disposition. 
 And yet you wake up next morning before the roosters do, 
 all full of pep, and would have to look in your notebook to 
 remember how you felt last night. A kind of urge to get 
 along to be on your way gets to you, and by the time 
 you are in the Middle West the Far West starts calling 
 like mad, even if you ain't ever seen it before. It's like 
 getting religion or something. It's like hearing the voice 
 of somebody you love, faint and clear and insistent in 
 your brain. You actually get homesick for the West that 
 is in your brain, and you feel you got to hurry toward it 
 or be sick. I don't know why this is true, but it is. You 
 are like the little girl in the fairy story where the magic 
 lady kept leading her from field to field where each new 
 place had bigger and brighter flowers than the one before, 
 until she was a very long, long ways from home and glad 
 of it. Can you get that at all? It's magic, all right, that's
 
 122 West Broadway 
 
 what and the thrill begins with the very word "West." 
 The farther you go the bigger the flowers are in the next 
 field just beyond, and I know this sounds sort of silly 
 you get greedy for beauty and more of it. 
 
 And those fields of flowers are not all flowers of speech 
 on my part either. Because after a day of repairs at the 
 town, during which time our dramatic night of horrors and 
 heroic rescues come down to earth as a plain hellova nui- 
 sance and delay well, after that day we plunged down 
 into fields of golden flowers all right; acre after acre of 
 clear yellow blossoms that would put your eye out, and 
 each field more lovely than the next, although I expect 
 a mere weed to the farmers. 
 
 Down, down we plunged out of the hilly country and 
 "plunged" is right through lakes that had once been 
 roads, with the blue sky reflected in them and the curses 
 of the tourists drowned in them, and all the while the 
 fields growing flatter and more golden ; but I did sure won- 
 der where the tourists who was camping done so ; perhaps 
 they carry rafts as well as tents while passing through 
 this country, which, I must add, grows wonderful water- 
 melons and why not? 
 
 At last the map showed we was on the Mississippi bot- 
 toms, and I showed off a little of my education to Jim, 
 which it was about time I done so, because he, having seen 
 the West by train, was forever pointing out things we was 
 coming to but never did. 
 
 "Say, this Mississippi River is what made Mark Twain 
 and Frances White famous, ain't it?" I says "besides 
 several other great song writers?" 
 
 "I don't know," says Jim. "But I know St. Louis is 
 the place so many head waiters was named for." 
 
 Well, the comedian having pulled the cue, I sat back 
 and waited for the black-faced chorus in red-and-white 
 stage calico to cross our path with a patter dance and a few
 
 West Broadway 123 
 
 jazzy stanzas about down the Mississippi where we all go 
 dippy underneath the ragtime moon, and waiting for 
 maybe even the lighting to change and the silvery moon to 
 come up at 4.30 p. M., I having the thorough N. Y. con- 
 ception of the daily life of the Mississippi Valley so realis- 
 tically put before me for years by Broadway managers. 
 
 And it's the truth, the average New Yorker and re- 
 member there are over six million of them, or anyways five 
 million six hundred thousand, and the rest of them are a 
 little above the average, including ourselves well, as I 
 was saying, it's the truth, their whole idea of America is 
 what some smart young stage manager who has never been 
 west of Hoboken has put before them on the stage, and 
 shouted himself hoarse for the girls to put a little pep into 
 it. And even I personally myself used to be half convinced 
 that Indians was mostly blond chickens with feathers on 
 their heads and very little else except the jewels their rich 
 uncle had give them, and that cowboys walked with their 
 hands on their hips and always as a background to a tenor. 
 Do you get me? And New York is perfectly satisfied 
 with its ignorance. 
 
 Well, all I got to say is that I learned and that it is 
 time the East Coast woke up to the fact that, Shakspere 
 to the contrary notwithstanding, where ignorance may be 
 bliss you are a darn fool not to get wise, and coming into 
 St. Louis and finding it and surrounding country no 
 nonsensical bunch of coon jazz, banjos and cheap senti- 
 ment, but a wonderful, rich, hardworking, nonradical unit 
 of the U. S. A. put me in mind of a waiter I once met, 
 and this is a true story, and he was one of them Louies 
 from St. Louis, too, only they call it "Lewis" out there. 
 
 Well, anyways, this horrible example of what the West 
 thinks of N. Y. come back to me at this time and I under- 
 stand it now, though I didn't at the time it happened in a 
 Sixth Ave. restaurant where I and Jim had gone to get our
 
 124 West Broadway 
 
 supper after the show we was playing at the Colossal, 
 where we was appearing for ten minutes and a thousand 
 dollars in person this week only. 
 
 Well, this waiter was a stranger to us, and Jim says, 
 "Where is Joe who used to be at this table?" And the 
 waiter says, "When?" And Jim says, "Oh, about two 
 years ago. ' ' And the waiter says, * ' Oh, I wasn 't here then ! 
 I was in America." Well, we took notice of that, because 
 this was Sixth Avenue. 
 
 "Well," says Jim, "where was that?" 
 
 "West of the Mississippi River," says the waiter with 
 a snort, and walks away. 
 
 Well, I personally would say he was too rough on 111., 
 Ind. and Ohio and ect., but it's a fact the Eastern States 
 are getting a whole lot too foreign for their health, and 
 undoubtedly that waiter was only talking about as much 
 of the country as he had actually seen. He had also said 
 when we questioned him, "What's the use in me trying to 
 tell you about this country buy a ticket, that's all just 
 go buy a ticket ! ' ' And it wasn 't until I started traveling 
 that I got him right at all. New York is the spoiled Rich 
 Man's daughter. She's a beauty, and she has got every- 
 thing in the world she wants, including foreign company 
 with fancy names and highbrow ideas. But she sometimes 
 forgets it's Poppa and Momma who gives her most of what 
 she's got, and that their name is Mr. and Mrs. West. I 
 hope they won 't let her marry a foreign title particularly 
 not a Russian one. That waiter had the dope 1 11 suggest 
 he did. It's practically impossible to tell New York's 
 friends about her parents. You got to buy 'em a ticket 
 that's all! 
 
 I realized this anew as I passed through that Mississippi 
 Valley, which was literally and actually flooded with gold, 
 and it being toward sunset when we passed through it, the 
 sky was also gold, so that a person could hardly say where
 
 West Broadway 125 
 
 the fields of blossoms ended on the horizon and the sky 
 begun. We rounded a bend in the so-called road, and there 
 seated on a stone and in passing, let me say it was the 
 only stone we had seen since leaving Ohio well, anyways, 
 seated on a stone on a little rise of ground was a girl sil- 
 houetted against the blazing sky of which her maze of yel- 
 low hair seemed to be a part, her feet buried in the carpet 
 of gleaming yellow daisies. 
 
 Just beyond her the smoke of a camp fire arose on the 
 still, hot air, as hesitating and graceful as a cheesecloth 
 dancer's scarf, and a tent a funny tent that let down 
 from the roof of a flivver was pitched. You could smell 
 bacon frying and a woman's voice not a young woman's 
 but a sweet woman's was singing: 
 
 Weep no more, my lady, 
 Oh, tum-de-tum-tum-day ! 
 
 And just as I was thinking "What a pretty scene! I 
 wish we could politely stop and look at it," something 
 went wrong with the car, and we did. And not until I 
 had accepted Tom Westman's statement to the effect that 
 it was the wiring did I realize that the campers was the 
 Peterkins. 
 
 Well, I am not so old but that when I see it was Alma 
 Peterkin who was mingling her hair with the sunset I 
 had a little sympathy, and left her and Tom to fix the 
 car between them, because without lifting the hood I knew 
 it was going to be a long job, and I took Jim with me, 
 because men are so dense, and we went over and talked 
 with pa and ma and auntie and grandma and the kids, and 
 Welcome come over, too, and talked to their spitz-found- 
 land. 
 
 "Well, of aU things, if it ain't the Colby-Droits ! " says 
 Mr. Peterkin, putting down an ax and greeting us like
 
 126 West Broadway 
 
 we was English nobility by that name. "Well, well! In 
 trouble? Can I help?" 
 
 "Oh, no!" I says hastily. "The boy can do it." 
 
 "I suppose so!" says Mr. Peterkin but didn't mean 
 what I meant. And then out come Mrs. P. from the depths 
 of her canned-goods box and welcomed us over the tinned 
 cow. 
 
 "Why, if it ain't you folks!" she says. "Sit down I 
 don't know where, but do!" 
 
 And I'll be dog-goned if in three minutes we wasn't 
 chewing the rag like old friends who had been separated 
 long enough to have something to talk about! 
 
 "You see," pa was saying, "we all was living a tight 
 little life back East, centered around the store general 
 merchant, I was and finally the profiteers drove me out 
 and I thank God for it I do, that ! First it was the 
 
 commission houses Why, man, it made me sick to 
 
 charge thirty cents for potatoes worth five, but how could 
 I help it if I was going to live? And then the landlord 
 started after me. By gollies, it's done my heart good to 
 see all these building fellers getting theirs if they ever 
 actually do go to jail and the landlord too ! We stood 
 for it for over two years four raises, that was what he 
 pulled on us ! And then I got this idea. We didn 't own 
 our own house, but we did own our car. What's the an- 
 swer that we are here, paying rent to nobody ! And we 
 are not the only ones making our car our home, and it's 
 no longer where we hang our hat, but where we park the 
 bus." 
 
 "But how about a little work?" says Jim. "Or have 
 you saved enough for the rest of your life?" 
 
 "I've saved enough to last until we find a place we'd 
 like to locate better than where we was in Jersey," says 
 pa. "I'll tell you the way of it: One day I decided that, 
 in spite of appearances around home, this was still a free
 
 West Broadway 127 
 
 country at least the roads were free. Ma thought I was 
 crazy, but ip. the end decided she 'd be game and that maybe 
 living out of doors would be as good for the kids as school 
 until we found a home we liked. Then there was Alma 
 my girl. Well, Alma, she's a stenog, and she thought 
 somebody else's typewriter out "West would be as good as 
 the one she was working on at the time, and so she just 
 up and quit." 
 
 "And she can get a job anywhere," says her ma, "be- 
 cause she's real good at it." 
 
 "And my wife's mother here, and my sister," says 
 pa "well, it seems they had both all their lives wanted 
 to see California. So had we all of us, for that matter, 
 and well, we had a session on it and come to the conclu- 
 sion that the only thing in life a person need be afraid of 
 is being afraid, and that we would just up and go. I sold 
 out, and here we are ! ' ' 
 
 "And do you like it?" I says to ma. 
 
 "Well," says she in her comfortable manner, which re- 
 minded me a lot of my own ma "well, I always like it in 
 the mornings after we get started. Sometimes at night 
 I must say my own regular kitchen would look good to 
 me. But a person gets tired after traveling so much and 
 seeing such a lot. Are you camping?" 
 
 "No," I says, half sorry. "We have to be in Los An- 
 geles a certain date and was afraid we wouldn't have 
 time." 
 
 "It's nice to be independent of hotels," says ma. "I'd 
 begrudge them the money, even if we had it. My, when 
 we first got that flivver I never thought we'd go this far 
 in it ! Funny thing about a car, the way it opens up the 
 world. First off you just go for rides. Then maybe you 
 go to Boston overnight, and it seems like a great big dan- 
 gerous journey. And gradually you come to realize that 
 roads go right on beyond any place you ever been, and that
 
 128 West Broadway 
 
 you got a car! Why, we had ours two years before we 
 realized we could see America in it ! Say, are you going to 
 the Grand Canyon?" 
 
 "Yes, indeed!" I says, feeling less like the supposedly 
 privileged rich every moment. 
 
 "And take a run down into Mexico!" ma went on. 
 
 "I hadn't thought of that," I says, very humble. 
 
 "I think we might," says ma, "and that I would pass 
 on the idea. It was given us by three maiden ladies from 
 Maine who was driving themselves in an old Innerland. 
 They said they thought the gambling and murders and all 
 down in Mexico would be real interesting to see ! " 
 
 Well, we left them after that. What else could a person 
 do? But feeling we had made new friends, and somehow 
 getting closer to these real people out here under the open 
 sky without any trammels of civilization than we ever 
 would of at home, where we would of been merely grocer 
 and customer, and had no chance to find out that we were 
 friends real actual friends, with tastes and plans that 
 was just alike, and although all members of the Republican 
 Party, democratic in our hearts. I mean in the real sense. 
 And it was the simplicity of our background had brought 
 us so close. 
 
 "Close" is right too. Because when Tom finally decided 
 the car was physically able to proceed and had got into the 
 driver's seat and I sat beside him and we was on our way 
 again I noticed he had a yellow flower in his buttonhole, 
 which was all right, and maybe he had put it there him- 
 self, but there was also a yellow hair parked near it, and 
 oh, well, probably he put it there himself as well, if you 
 get me. 
 
 St. Louis was the first city we had struck that was a 
 real city without being in any way a imitation of the 
 East. You would think it had set out to make a pattern 
 for cities on its own, and done a pretty good job, and I'll
 
 West Broadway 129 
 
 say the ladies' clubs, of which there are not over half a mil- 
 lion of them there, had quite a hand in doing it, because 
 they are a bunch of live wires, and at once discovered who 
 I was, and I had to make seven speeches while the rest 
 of the crowd ate seven banquets, and me having coming 
 West without a single decent dress, because I thought I 
 wouldn't need them and that the cities would all be hick 
 towns and any old thing would do ! And here I, Marie La 
 Tour, the best-dressed woman on the silver sheet, was the 
 rag bag of the party ! Actually I commenced to long for 
 the place where I could put on my riding clothes, but in the 
 meanwhile was heavily entertained by smart, snappy wom- 
 en who constantly assured me it didn't in the least mat- 
 ter what I wore, which is a sentence that can come only 
 from females who positively know they are O. K. in ap- 
 pearance their own selves, and that you are not quite. 
 
 St. Louis is full not alone of women's clubs, fine old 
 French manners, people who live on the interest of their 
 incomes and hardly show it, dramatic movements, little 
 magazines and the Davis Cup, but of automobile factories, 
 people who will tell you how to make gin out of sweet 
 spirits of niter, and the homes of near-beer and symphony 
 societies and milliner shops, where I bought a couple of 
 hats to make me feel better groomed, but Jim kicked at 
 the extra hatbox. Well, it has all these and many other 
 attractions, but the morning we was to make our exit was 
 the best one to me, because my circus blood, I guess, was 
 simply by then aching for the open road, which we under- 
 stood would be opener than those we had just swum 
 through. 
 
 And so when the bags had all gone down to the car and 
 the last bell boy had got his, and I was all ready to start 
 at 7 :30 A. M. of a fine morning, it was no pleasure to have 
 Jim come into the room, not to see had he left his shaving
 
 130 West Broadway 
 
 brush as was natural, but to wave the morning paper at 
 me. 
 
 "Kid," he says, "there is serious news. The New York 
 police have pinned that bomb explosion onto Karl West- 
 man's crowd, and they are looking for him and for gee 
 whiz! They're looking for Tom as well!"
 
 IX 
 
 1 HATED to believe my husband, but it was true. I 
 read the piece in the newspaper with my own eyes, and 
 there could be no doubt but that the case against both 
 Westmans was pretty strong, though entirely circum- 
 stantial. 
 
 It seems that a certain car known to of been used by 
 "Westman had been near the place of the explosion just 
 before it occurred; and that also, from fragments of the 
 murder car, the police had been able to prove it was the 
 same. Whether the Westmans' disappearance, which now 
 came out, had been caused by the explosion or not, there 
 was no evidence to prove and of course we had one of 
 the evidences, meaning Tom himself, right along with us, 
 so we knew he, at any rate, hadn't been blown to samples. 
 
 It looked mighty funny, though funny in the most 
 serious sense, I mean to say, and yet no one had actually 
 seen either of the Westmans in the explosion car that day. 
 
 "It's hard to think that kid is a criminal," says Jim, 
 walking up and down the hotel bedroom and waving his 
 paper in genuine and not silver-sheet-plated distress. 
 "Lookit how he's been with us close day after day, and 
 never showed on him!" 
 
 ""Well, James Smith," I says, "criminal or not, don't 
 forget we owe our lives to him, for the Colby would surely 
 of crushed us both only for his prompt action." 
 
 "That's true!" says Jim. "Another minute and she'd 
 of turned turtle, and then good night! But what 11 we 
 do, with the bulls trying to find him ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' Keep them from doing it ! " I says. ' ' The kid is a good 
 kid, or I miss my guess, and an eye for an eye and a tooth 
 131
 
 132 West Broadway 
 
 for a tooth you know the Bible says it, and 1 11 say that 
 covers the whole insurance policy. We owe him a life 
 for our life ! Besides, he may be innocent ! ' ' 
 
 "Then why does he hide?" Jim comes back at me. "How 
 about it?" 
 
 "Well, why not ask him?" I says. "We believed him 
 in the first place, when we left New York with him under 
 peculiar circumstances. So why not now? Have him 
 up and have it out." 
 
 "All right!" says Jim, and goes to the phone. "Send 
 up my chauffeur, please," he says, and pretty soon Tom 
 appears, suspecting nothing worse than an extra bag or 
 package. 
 
 "Good morning, Tom," I says. "Did you see the pa- 
 pers yet?" 
 
 Well, Tom's face went white under the sunburn at that, 
 which was enough for Jim. 
 
 "Shut the door!" he says, but doing it himself. "Look 
 here, Westman, ' ' he goes on, ' ' what do you know about the 
 Broadway bomb explosion back in New York?" 
 
 There was a short silence. Then Tom looked Jim right 
 in the eyes head up and everything not a bit like either 
 a crook or a boastful Bed. 
 
 "I left New York because of it, Mr. Smith," he says 
 quietly. "And yet I had nothing to do with it. If you 
 wish, I will give myself up to the St. Louis police, but they 
 will let me go again and nothing will be gained for 
 justice; that I swear!" 
 
 "Humph!" says Jim. "You had nothing to do with it, 
 eh? Then why are you hiding?" 
 
 "I can't tell you," says Tom. "I'm doing something 
 I can't explain. I can only ask you to trust me and 
 that's asking a good deal, I know. But you trusted me 
 once." 
 
 "And you saved our lives!" I broke in hotly. "Jim,
 
 West Broadway 133 
 
 I'm willing to go on betting on him. He's not a Red are 
 you, Tom?" 
 
 "I My ideas on that have got badly disturbed since 
 
 I've been on this trip seen the country," he began, sort 
 of hesitating, his brown eyes reminding me of a troubled 
 hound. "A month ago I would have said yes, I am a 
 radical! But there was a lot I didn't know hadn't seen. 
 I'm not one to throw the teachings of a lifetime over in a 
 week or two, Miss La Tour, nor to pretend to do so in order 
 to get help and protection from you folks. But no matter 
 what I may feel about social justice, I am in no way re- 
 sponsible for that bomb plot, I swear!" 
 
 "And your brother?" says Jim doubtfully. 
 
 ' ' What about your own brother ? " I snapped. ' ' Suppose 
 everyone was to have their families' doings fastened on 
 to them, what kind of a world would it be? You don't 
 approve of your brother being a acrobat, but how can you 
 help it ? What I say is, let's stick by Tom until he's proved 
 guilty. I guess I know a real person when I see it, and if 
 he says he's got a decent reason for what he's doing I'm 
 going to take a chance on helping him. The law can't jug 
 us any harder for helping a supposed criminal escape to 
 California than to New Jersey, and so I say we keep on 
 escaping, that's all!" 
 
 Well, after that we shook hands all round. I don't know 
 just why, and I hadn't spilled my real reason, which waa 
 that no matter what Tom had been no matter how red, 
 short of murder when he crossed the Twenty-third Street 
 ferry going West he was outgrowing it without knowing it, 
 the same as if his radicalism was a woolen union suit that 
 had gone to the wash. His redness was fading and shrink- 
 ing while he didn 't know it, and I had a hunch he was go- 
 ing to arrive on the coast a pretty good American if noth- 
 ing particularly cops come up to interfere in the mean- 
 time. But of course I wasn't going to be such a boob 88
 
 134 West Broadway 
 
 to mention this and get him to fighting his unconscious 
 education. 
 
 Well, anyways, we went downstairs, Jim having actually 
 found his toothbrush was as usual forgotten but put it in 
 his pocket, and made for the car, which I hardly recog- 
 nized, because it had been washed washed with a pickax, 
 hose and time and a half for overtime, and still you could 
 hardly see it, and it seems a waste on those muddy roads, 
 but if you don't do it, actually that clay packs tight and 
 the wheels wouldn't turn round, and that is no joke except 
 on the ones who don't believe it and let it go dirty. 
 
 Well, anyways, as we were passing through the lobby 
 after our usual breakfast in the all-night lunch, which is 
 where you have to eat if you want to make a early start, 
 most dining-rooms not getting up until seven-thirty or 
 eight well, as we was passing through the lobby I seen 
 two mashers watching me, and I'll say it takes the West- 
 erners to get at it that early in the morning. 
 
 One was a fat man with a round baby face, and the 
 other a little bird with spinach, French style. I noticed 
 them particularly, while pretending not to, because they 
 went as far as the door and stood behind it while we got 
 in the car. But I said nothing to Jim, because if I had of 
 we would never of got started, and he had already made 
 us late with his toothbrush and bad news and not being 
 able to find the dog. 
 
 But at last, the usual morning fight about why did you 
 bring all this junk and so forth being over, we drove off, 
 finding our way out of the city with only the usual num- 
 ber of wrong turns and inquiries, and at last I took a 
 deep breath of pleasure, for we was, after two long days 
 of restless rest, on the broad highway again and Westward 
 ho! and everything. 
 
 I now feel that I want to pass a few remarks upon and 
 about Missouri, and the first of them is that Jim kept
 
 dway 135 
 
 me in a state o^cfread because Kansas was now more 
 or less directly ahead. 
 
 "Kansas is flat as a pancake," he says. "And I warn 
 you you will get awful bored going through it, because 
 there is nothing to it but wheat. I been across twice in 
 the train, and I know. "Wheat, wheat jack rabbits 
 nothing else! But you got to stick three days of it." 
 
 Well, after more than two years of married life I should 
 of been on my guard, but he had been there and I hadn't, 
 and so I fell for it. But with a mental reservation that 
 was justified, because after we had actually crossed Kansas, 
 and it proved to be quite to the contrary notwithstanding, 
 I never believed one word Jim Smith said about what was 
 coming next, and even he had to confess that he must of 
 been thinking of some other fillum, and this plot just 
 reminded him, if you get that. 
 
 Well, meanwhile Missouri was full of beet sugar, and a 
 person certainly had to wonder where the shortage come 
 in after seeing actually miles of beets, which ain't a par- 
 ticularly inspiring sight unless you can see 'em in terms of 
 candy shops, homemade desserts and thriving canneries. 
 Believe me, I took them for turnips, and was greatly 
 worried to think who would eat them all, buttered or not. 
 
 Also, it seems that it's real work to cut them, and after 
 you plow 'em up you got to smack off the top with a knife 
 and pile 'em up, and then a person would say throw 'em 
 in the garbage if you were to go by their looks. 
 
 But the farms where they grew were even bigger than 
 any we had passed back East, as we now commenced to 
 call Indiana and Ohio. Also, as the farms grew bigger the 
 farmhouses got smaller, and often it would be only a mere 
 shack, but with some big whale of a car parked in the yard 
 without exception. It was in Missouri that I first began to 
 realize that the farmers had so much to do taking even 
 part care of all that land that they hadn't had time to
 
 136 West Broadway 
 
 even think about their house. But they had a car, every 
 time. 
 
 Well, for a long ways it was just the same roads, dry 
 now, and might of been made of granite. Then all of a 
 sudden a little jewel city let with perfect pavings, ect. 
 Then out again into the wilds, where we saw our first 
 unfenced cattle just wandering around free and Western, 
 and the sight of them gives a person a deep feeling of the 
 beginnings of excitement; a sort of now-we-are-coming- 
 to-it sense, as also do the hound dogs. Because Missouri 
 hound dogs are one thing no West Thirty-ninth Street 
 song writer has exaggerated, and they are actually more so. 
 And ponies too. Only it 's farmers, not cowboys, that ride 
 them when the roads are too bad even for flivvers, which 
 sometimes they actually are. Three ponies and four hound 
 dogs waited outside the butcher shop in Wenzel, where we 
 ate our lunch with the Peterkins, of sausage, near-beer 
 and mince pie, but it tasted like New York only better. 
 After which we started out again, making fifteen miles an 
 hour, which was our average all the way across that state. 
 
 But take it all in all, Missouri was to our trip like the 
 part in the picture where you are waiting for something to 
 happen. And yet it's a funny thing, but in pretty near 
 every one of the Missouri towns there lived a man whose 
 name was known all over either a highbrow or a writer 
 or a scientist or something, names I had seen in the papers 
 and would naturally of supposed they came from New 
 York. "Came from" is right came from a perhaps 
 yearly visit there! 
 
 Of course, it was kind of disappointing not to find any 
 place that seemed like it needed to be enlightened on my 
 great subject of Americanism. But, I thought, Kansas is 
 coming, and the Wicked Wild West, and I'll surely get a 
 chance to spill some dope out there. 
 
 I didn't try to do it but once in Missouri, and when I
 
 West Broadway 137 
 
 did it come about this way: We had struggled over bad 
 roads all day, and about nine o 'clock at night the soldering 
 on the radiator shell went blooey again, and of course no 
 garage much less a town in sight, when all of a sudden 
 out of nowheres we stumbled on a broad, well-lighted 
 street with lots of cars parked down the middle, lovely 
 public buildings and oh, heavenly sight a hotel, a neat, 
 up-to-date, clean hotel, sophisticated enough to call it- 
 self a tavern. And thus, as the poet says, we came to 
 Columbia. 
 
 Well, we was all so cross from trying to be decent to each 
 other, and so tired and so hungry, we decided then and 
 there that Columbia was the Gem of Missouri. And the 
 funny part is that next morning when we got up and 
 looked around we still thought the same, which is not 
 always the case, as pretty near any town looks good when 
 you are tired, but only like a good place to start from, 
 in the morning. 
 
 But start is just what we didn't do. The radiator 
 wouldn't let us, and I wouldn't go so far as to say that 
 Tom done it on purpose, but it's the truth that the 
 Peterkins hadn't caught up to us yet. 
 
 Well, anyways, while we waited we went out and took a 
 look at what turned out to be a college town. And with 
 no male monopoly on the place either, and I had always 
 rather thought the rah-rah stuff was confined to boys, 
 having often in the old days played New Haven, Boston 
 and Trenton. 
 
 But here it was different. Young girls and young 
 fellows both was there hundreds of 'em and a fine- 
 looking lot there were, walking about on a campus with 
 six great vine-covered columns standing on it, and it would 
 make a beautiful location for a heart picture, only hard 
 to get to for the footage you could make use of in it. 
 
 Well, anyways, I thought here is a good place to talk
 
 138 West Broadway 
 
 to the youth of the country and instill good anti-red stuff 
 into their head, because in New York there are a lot of 
 redlets among the college students, and catch 'em young 
 is my idea. 
 
 Well, the more veil drawn over that speech the better. 
 I had a big audience, 1 11 say that. And I talked this and 
 that for nearly an hour, arranged by one of the teachers, 
 and at the end I says, "Are there any questions? I would 
 be glad to answer them. ' ' And what do you think I got ? 
 One boy says, "Are you a picture actress, Miss La Tour?" 
 and another says, "Miss La Tour, what is a Bed?" And 
 by this I do not mean they were simps, but that they had 
 never heard of either of us! And what is further, when 
 I explained, I myself was the only one of the two they 
 seemed much interested in. 
 
 I realized also, with a shock, that of course the people 
 round this country would not know about me or about the 
 Beds, though they had heard of Bolshevikis in a dim, far- 
 off sort of way, because the newspapers we had been seeing 
 didn't give any space to them, but to things like crops and 
 ect. In other words, they were advertising the good things 
 we had, such as the best and biggest harvest in fifteen 
 years, instead of the things the Beds thought and did; 
 and it's the Eastern newspapers gave them that snappy 
 title of Beds that's so easy to remember, and you know 
 the advertising value of a good trade name. 
 
 As for myself, why, I guess it was just a accident, that 
 boy never having heard of me, but good for my vanity 
 or rather I should say good for what ailed it, but you know 
 what I mean. 
 
 Well, anyways, the next morning after my educational 
 speech on who I was and so forth the Peterkins family 
 reached town, and so our radiator shell healed up at the 
 sight of them, and pretty soon we set off out of the Gem of 
 Missouri and continued our way through the first state
 
 West Broadway 139 
 
 which had lived up to stage-manager specifications, looking 
 for our way to Kansas City and more places which was 
 named after Daniel Boone. 
 
 I'll say this Daniel was some animal tamer, the best 
 known story about him being the time he went into the 
 lion's den. But there are plenty of others told on him 
 around the Missouri Eiver, including one about a bear's 
 den also, and how he tamed the wild Indians. And it 
 seems he run several hotels as well, or at least we passed 
 them with his name on them, besides a ferryboat which 
 took us across the river from Boonville, a town that was 
 also named for him the old original ferryboat I guess it 
 was, with a sort of bustle or egg beater or something on 
 behind to make it go, and a whistle like an old maid calling 
 for help. 
 
 Yes, I'll twitter that was some boat. Flat-bottomed, 
 it was, too, or would of been, only it was humped up in the 
 middle and also sort of slanting to one side. Jim said it 
 was listed to the left, but I had a strong feeling it would 
 be listed among the missing before we got to the other side 
 of the river. It had what I supposed was a donkey engine 
 in it, because it had a kick like a mule but never got any- 
 wheres, and the smokestack looked like the rest of the 
 boat ought to of wore starched ruffles and trousers 
 strapped under its boots if you get me. You seen pictures 
 where the atmosphere crowd wears that kind of silk lids. 
 But this was not by any means a property boat. I would 
 of trusted it a whole lot more if it had of been, because 
 Goldringer always takes good care of his stars, and doubles 
 them in all the really dangerous bits, even if he does carry 
 a heavy insurance on them made out in his own name. 
 
 No, this was a real, genuine old antique called the 
 Daniel Boone after the first owner and I could see how 
 the natives felt about how safe it was, because a young 
 feller with a horse and something which I took to be an old
 
 140 West Broadway 
 
 translation from the early English for buggy got on board 
 with a bunch of lilies in his hand. I, of course, pointed 
 that out to Jim as the ferry trembled gently away from 
 shore and commenced to float kind of aimlessly up and 
 down between the chalk cliffs. But Jim says it is Sunday 
 he is probably taking them to his best girl. But I knew 
 better. 
 
 "He's probably a decent young Christian," I says, 
 "and don't want to die, even by drowning, without some 
 of the usual formalities." 
 
 But we had quite a good time on that journey by water 
 kind of & desperate good time because of realizing it might 
 be our last. 
 
 The Peterkins was already aboard when we got there, 
 in the strange, mysterious way a camping flivver has of 
 beating a big car that uses the hotels to it nearly every time. 
 
 Well, the Peterkins were there, all eight of them, and 
 the young man and his river horse and seagoing low-cut 
 barouche, or whatever it was, the captain with his cap on 
 so you could tell him from the crew who wasn't allowed 
 a cap ourselves and dog. And as it took pretty near 
 half an hour for Daniel to make up her mind which part 
 of the other chalk bank to hit, or to remember where she 
 had berthed last visit, we had lots of time to enjoy the 
 novelty of crossing the river in 1841 or less and to take 
 each other's picture. I took Jim sitting in the car, and 
 then we took Tom and Welcome on the running board, 
 and then they took me, and we took the Peterkins and they 
 took us, so we would have the snaps as souvenirs of this 
 experience, even if you couldn't see any of the ferryboat 
 or the river in the finder, but hoped in our hearts that 
 when they were developed we would mysteriously see the 
 whole Missouri, Daniel and all, in the way a person does 
 kid theirself over a camera. 
 
 It was just beyond here that we come to the first place
 
 West Broadway 141 
 
 in eighteen hundred miles that I could really call a hick 
 town. It was hardly a town at that, and for two reasons 
 besides again needing gas we stopped there. 
 
 For the first one, there was a country fair going full 
 time, and it was also time to eat we could tell it the 
 minute the smell of hot Hamburger and sizzling dogs hit 
 us. Funny thing, but when you are on a long trip almost 
 any time is lunch time; but this really was, and by this 
 stage of our journey we had learned to eat when we saw 
 it and run no risks. 
 
 Well, that fair was just what I had been looking for all 
 the way, and at last I seen it full of vegetables of both 
 sexes, and fruit and homemade-pie contests and patch- 
 work quilts and I got out to laugh. I didn't get out to 
 preach Americanism. I was not such a simp even then but 
 that I knew that was one thing I didn't have to preach to 
 the farmer. Having his hands and his money in the actual 
 physical country itself, patriotism was something he would 
 already have a faint suspicion of, and could literally give 
 me cards and spades on it well, spades anyways. But 
 I did get out to laugh. 
 
 Well, never in my life or the place where we deal on 
 Eighth Avenue did I see the fruit and vegetables I see 
 here. And I was admiring them and listening in on the 
 hicks and feeling awful superior when Jim, who has the 
 real masculine lack of shame about asking questions when 
 he don't know something, started shooting me a few. 
 
 "Say, what are them things like big eggs?" he says. 
 
 "Why, eggplant!" I says very shortly. And I wish you 
 could of heard the big hick standing beside me let out a 
 roar. 
 
 "Excuse me, miss," he says, "but them are cattle 
 squash." 
 
 "Well, there is such a thing as a eggplant," I says, 
 feeling very cheap.
 
 142 West Broadway 
 
 And then all of a sudden I realized an awful truth. 
 Out here I was the hick ! No joke it was a fact. Maybe 
 the big friendly giant in the snappy red tie snappy in 
 the sense of being snapped onto his collar button with a 
 rubber band couldn't recognize spinach a la renie if he 
 seen it at the Ritz, or eggs Benedictine; but, by heck, 
 out here I couldn't recognize raw spinach or eggplant! 
 So I seized, as the poet says, opportunity by the forelock 
 and decided right on the spot, which was a spot marked 
 by a dropped tomato, that here was my chance to learn 
 something, and not miss a single scrap in the great big 
 interesting jig-saw puzzle which, if I could ever get it 
 fitted together, would mean my dear country and give me 
 a real picture of the whole of it. 
 
 "Say, mister," I says, smiling up at the kind strong 
 face and keen blue eyes above that innocent red tie, and 
 using the sweet appealing look which has won me a million 
 friends from the magic of the screen "say, mister, we 
 don't know a darn thing about this stuff. Would you 
 kindly wise us up as to the names of some of it?" 
 
 Well, he did. And again I had perhaps best draw a veil, 
 because in five minutes I found that the only vegetables 
 I knew in their native state was potatoes, corn and onions. 
 On my word! And here is another thing, too that big 
 farmer didn't laugh at my ignorance again. He was 
 kinder to me than I had intended being to him, and I come 
 away from that town humble. I had seen a hick village 
 yes with the sunlights and the footlights and the spot all 
 turned on it at once. And all I could think of was that 
 I myself was kind of cheap and temporary, and that the 
 farmers weren't very funny, after all. There was some- 
 thing deep behind them that I hadn't understood. 
 
 Honest, I know it sounds simple to be made to feel 
 religion by a potato, but it can happen, I know it was 
 done to me. I was made to feel eternity in a cabbage.
 
 West Broadway 143 
 
 And when I realized how all this stuff come out of the 
 earth and that these simple people done it well, it's the 
 only time vegetables ever brought tears to my eyes except 
 once when I tried to peel an onion. 
 
 But I 'm not kidding don 't get me wrong. The festival 
 I saw there, with fruits of the earth and of the hands of 
 women, with basket lunches and hot dogs to grace the 
 festive literal board on two trestles, was more of a feast in 
 the truest sense than any fifty-dollar-a-cover Thanksgiving 
 party yet given on Broadway. 
 
 I carried the memory of it in my heart all through the 
 bumpy, washed-out Missouri roads, over long, pretty 
 dreary detours, down to the point where on a high plateau 
 outside of Kansas City we said good night to the Peter- 
 kins, who stopped to camp beside the schoolhouse, where 
 already there were two other evening fires gleaming 
 which meant that there was water and no "Forbidden" 
 signs. I sort of envied them that they could stop off there. 
 The other cars looked friendly a Climber from West 
 Virginia with a mother and two fine big sons, and a motor- 
 cyele man and wife from Nebraska. It seemed like we were 
 to be suddenly torn away from the free magic of the road, 
 while it would sleep with them through the night ; that the 
 spell of their adventure would keep up like a lovely play 
 with no acts and no final curtain. But we had to put on 
 our hats and come out into the street of Civilization, and 
 it made me sad, although I knew we would return to the 
 road next day to say nothing of how sad it made Tom, 
 although Alma gave him a look to put under his pillow. 
 I felt that they had something we weren't getting some- 
 thing we lacked to make our journey all of a piece, as ma 
 says. And then I got a comforting thought. We would 
 have something that they would lack and which looked 
 mighty good to me meaning a warm bath. 
 
 So we waved to them and swirled down into winding,
 
 144 West Broadway 
 
 new, prosperous Kansas City golden with its promise for 
 the future, startling in its present achievement, and full, 
 to me, of the excitement that comes of the name it justly 
 give itself the Gateway to the West! Beyond Kansas 
 City lay all the dime novels of my youth and Jim's, riding 
 clothes for me, unknown dangers, undreamable beauties 
 the Thing, big, hard to put into words, which I now realized 
 I had been unconsciously hurrying toward all this time. 
 Up to now I had been interested intensely but I had 
 been willing to go fast fast as we could. And now I 
 wanted to go slow, to make the journey last, like a kid 
 with a lolly pop. 
 
 Well, anyways, when we got into the hotel I ran down- 
 stairs for a moment to get a paper of face powder. I went 
 alone, Jim having started to clean up, and I needed it. 
 And as I crossed the lobby and went out who would I see 
 but one of the mash birds which had hung around the 
 hotel in St. Louis! 
 
 Of course there was nothing strange in this. We was 
 often by now running into the same tourists again and 
 again. But when we did as a rule they smiled but this 
 one did not. Neither did he try a mash. Instead when he 
 caught sight of me he deliberately tried for me not to catch 
 sight of him! He pulled his cap down over his eyes and 
 sank out of the way, putting up a newspaper in front of 
 him. And that was not all. No sooner was I in the drug 
 store than he followed along the street and looked in 
 through the window. My back was turned, but I could see 
 him in a small shaving mirror on the counter, and there 
 was no doubt but that he had followed to be sure it was 
 really me ! 
 
 All the time while I bought my powder and chinned with 
 the girl I was thinking fast. We hadn't seen these birds 
 all day. It seemed as if they might have come on by 
 train. Was he really spying on me, and if so, why?
 
 West Broadway 145 
 
 Why did he first hide from me, and then follow me ? And 
 then I got a glimmer. It was just a chance, but I ought to 
 make sure, because he couldn't be following me. He must 
 be following Tom!
 
 IT is a terrible thing to be a picture actress in a desperate 
 situation with no director to holler out what to do next 
 or say go home now we will shoot the rest to-morrow. 
 
 And yet that is just where I found myself at the end of 
 the fourth reel, with a mysterious stranger spying on me 
 through the window very uneasily, and no Jig Wells to yell 
 at the camera man that will be enough, Billy ! The only 
 thing that flashed through my mind with any comfort was 
 that we were registered as plain James Smith, wife, chauf- 
 feur and dog, or something. And then I realized maybe 
 it only looked like a cheap alias to that sleuth, who had 
 "bull" written all over him as plain as print, and that he 
 had probably already recognized my face. In that case it 
 might be he was simply registering interest in a famous 
 artist and yet, no, that didn't hold water, because if his 
 reason was innocent curiosity why would he try to escape 
 my notice the way he had? He had me guessing, all right; 
 and when, after I had paid for my stuff and walked boldly 
 out of the shop and he had ducked again, I thought, well, 
 I will play this bright young feller a trick, and so I instead 
 of going into the hotel walked down the block where there 
 was a garage with two entrances, but not the one where 
 we had left our bus. Well, I walked into the office and 
 When the polite young feller that run it was asking what I 
 wanted I slipped my handkerchief under the telephone 
 book that was laying on the desk. 
 
 "Would it be possible for me to hire a car by the week 
 from you?" I says convincingly, not being for nothing an 
 actress since birth. 
 
 146
 
 West Broadway 147 
 
 "Why, surely!" says the poor fish, seeing a dream of a 
 good deal. "Dream" was right. 
 
 "Well," says I, "then we won't need to send for our 
 own car. I will come back to-morrow and make arrange- 
 ments. ' ' 
 
 Well, he bowed me out, and I walked around the corner 
 and came in the other entrance after a minute, and there 
 was the bull, just as I had expected, asking what lady was 
 that and did she have a gray Colby-Droit with a young 
 Jewish chauffeur! 
 
 "Oh, you little Curlylock Holmes!" I says to myself. 
 ' ' Why was you wasted on the mere art of the silver sheet ? ' ' 
 
 And then old beef face went out, and the young manager 
 spied me. 
 
 "I forgot my handkerchief," I says. "I think I laid it 
 on the desk." 
 
 And sure enough I had whatter you know about that ? 
 After which I run home to the Muehlebach as fast as my 
 French heels would carry me and broke the news to Jim, 
 who the barber had just cleaned so 's you could see his face 
 for the first time in nearly two weeks. 
 
 "The bulls are after Tom and also probably us!" I 
 says. "Oh, Jim, what will we do?" 
 
 My heart was nearly stopped as I said it, not alone on 
 account of Tom, but also for what the newspapers might 
 do to us if we were caught, because when a person's selfish 
 interest is at stake they are apt to change their minds, and 
 Jim is only human. But he didn't. He stopped with both 
 brushes suspended in midair and his suspenders heaving 
 with emotion. 
 
 "They shan't get him!" he says excitedly. "The kid's 
 too good for 'em, and we'll put one over, that's what!" 
 
 ' ' But how ? " I says. ' ' They will trace him easy enough. ' ' 
 
 "Just you listen in on this telephone call!" says Jim.
 
 148 West Broadway 
 
 "I may not be the sleuth you are, but in me there has been 
 lost a great scenario writer!" 
 
 And at that he went to the telephone, and pretty soon, 
 for their system ain 't like the N. Y. one, he had Tom on the 
 wire. 
 
 "Say, Westman," says Jim, "do you remember where 
 the Peterkins are camping to-night ? I thought you would. 
 Well, just take our car with all the stuff in it and go this 
 minute and camp with them. Say you want a night in the 
 open. Sure they are. The missus just spotted one half 
 an hour ago, and they'll pinch you sure. We will hire a 
 bus in the morning and join you at five o'clock the sun 
 is up by then at the end of the Boulevard, where it turns 
 back into the Old Trails road. I get you! Sure I can 
 manage the small bags ! Hustle now ! Good luck, and see 
 you at sunrise ! ' ' 
 
 And to think I had pretty near come to believe Jim had 
 outgrown his sense of romance ! And after this he put in 
 a early call, and then we hastened to put in a little early 
 sleep. 
 
 And I'll say a little sleep is just what it felt like when 
 the telephone bell rang at 4 :30 or the middle of the night, 
 but the clerk assured us it was what the doctor 'd ordered. 
 We simply could not get out of bed, but did, not believing 
 or caring that we had been asleep since nine o'clock the 
 evening before. Also, I couldn 't for the first few minutes 
 mind much if Tom was arrested or murdered or the hotel 
 was on fire or want anything except to go to sleep again. 
 After another five minutes that clerk, who had experienced 
 tourists before, rang again, and so we actually did come to 
 life this time, and our semiconscious condition gradually 
 changed to excitement and pep, and I at last climbed into 
 my riding clothes that I had been looking forward to for 
 so long but hadn 't up to now felt Western enough actually 
 to do it.
 
 West Broadway 149 
 
 Then, shivering and yawning, we stole down to the all- 
 night lunch room as per usual for our breakfast, and 
 twenty minutes later we was in the hired car and the 
 glorious fresh morning that was all lit as though with 
 ambers rushing down the endless, winding boulevards of 
 the city, the lights still twinkling wanly below us, and 
 telling each other how glorious it was, and what boobs 
 people are to sleep late, and why don't everybody always 
 get up at dawn, and they don't know what they're missing 
 by not, and let's us always do it the rest of our life, even 
 after we get back home, and actually meaning it at the 
 time. And then before long we come to the Peterkins' 
 camp where it lay by the schoolhouse, tucked into the elbow 
 of a little hill, the camp fire already smoking and Tom in 
 the act of frying the family bacon. Alma was laying the 
 table on the running board, and at the sound of our 
 arrival ma stuck first her head and then the rest of her 
 out of the tent. 
 
 ''My sakes!" she says, evidently real glad to see us. 
 "You folks have come just in time to eat!" 
 
 "We already have," I says. "And we got to be on our 
 way soon." 
 
 Jim had meanwhile paid off the hired car and took out 
 the bags. 
 
 "I think it was real generous of you to let Tom camp 
 out with us last night," says ma in her innocent way. "I 
 know how boys do love it. And he's been that useful! 
 Wouldn't let me or Alma touch the supper dishes! And 
 such pleasant company too! We're real sorry to let him 
 go." 
 
 "Well," I thought, "I hope you would feel the same 
 if you knew all " 
 
 And then, Tom having taken from Alma a quick cup of 
 coffee and a slow good-by, we caught Welcome and got in 
 our own bus and waved so long, we will see you all real
 
 150 West Broadway 
 
 soon and so forth and ectera, and started out with the 
 law behind us but the wilds before us. 
 
 Oh, the comfort of wearing pants on this kind of a trip ! 
 Or any other place, for that matter. For the first time in 
 my life I commenced to see Dr. Mary Walker's point, and 
 that pants is still another thing men have that is better 
 than women, and one of the reasons why they feel so free. 
 You will notice if you look in history books that back in 
 old times before even men had a vote they wore skirts, 
 and the early English kings and Roman emperors wore 
 negligees no kidding, they really did! Long ones that 
 dragged around on the floor. And I have no doubt that 
 in those days the kings set the styles just as the motion- 
 picture actors do now. "Well, they wore not alone Mother 
 Hubbards, or at best knee-length dresses, much like those 
 of the modern women, but also long hair and lace guimps 
 and a lot of other junk which kept their minds off the 
 serious affairs of the world, and I notice that the more 
 free they got from clothes the more votes and ect. they 
 got too. A mere ride in the park gives a woman no idea 
 of breeches, but let her once wear r em in a car and the 
 free West for two weeks and she will have learned some- 
 thing it will be hard to make her forget. 
 
 Also, you can't imagine the comfort of being dressed 
 like a bum, and Jim the same, and the car not washed, 
 but the stuff tied on good and secure with lots of rope 
 and let 'em think what they like. Putting on my riding 
 pants seemed to cut me loose from civilization in the sense 
 that I had up to now understood it, and I felt more free 
 and natural than ever in my life, all but for the possibility 
 of them cops getting on our trail. But presently we forgot 
 even that, having to keep our minds first of all on getting 
 clear of Kansas City, which is practically all boulevards 
 that go around and meet themselves and are so beautiful, 
 not to say complicated, that the visiting stranger can
 
 West Broadway 151 
 
 literally hardly steer themselves away. But at last we 
 shook them, headed for Emporia and Hutchinson, and 
 sincerely hoping to see every part of both cities except 
 their jails. 
 
 Now it's a funny thing, but true, that a place seldom 
 looks the way a person expects it to, and the more you 
 have heard about it and the greater the number of details 
 that have been stuck into the description the less it is like 
 that when you get there. 
 
 When we struck into Kansas all I knew about it was 
 that we had to cross it, except for Jim's descriptions which 
 had left a very definite still in my mind of fields of jack 
 rabbits who wouldn't wait to be looked at, and a lot of 
 perfectly flat space growing wheat, with flour sacks be- 
 tween the rows to put it into by modern machinery, and 
 grain elevators which I supposed would be like hotel 
 elevators, only of course not gilded, at the E. R. stations 
 to take the sacks up high enough to dump them into the 
 trains. And outside of that nothing, for day after day. 
 
 Well, see your oculist and then see America, because 
 you got to take a film off the eyes of the mind to see it 
 right. The great oculist, Experience, had shown Jim and 
 I how to look these past few weeks, I guess, for certainly 
 Jim didn't see Kansas right when he saw it the first time 
 from the train. It goes through the flat part of the state, 
 probably, because that is where a sensible train would. 
 But take it free gratis, Kansas is not flat. 
 
 All the way from Kansas City to Hutchinson, where we 
 spent our first night in a Harvey Hotel and was so green 
 we didn't know what that meant,' we was going over hills 
 and across washes. As for the wheat, it was all cut and 
 taken away some place, bags and all, and nobody can tell 
 me those were wheat fields anyways. They were counties, 
 not fields. Nobody need tell me a field can be that big 
 no, not even after I've seen it with my own eyes.
 
 192 West Broadway 
 
 But through these endless stretches of stubble, which 
 looked like somebody was growing the world supply of 
 hairbrushes on 'em, the roads begun to be better, giving 
 such ease to our motorists' hearts as only another motor 
 nut can understand; and we begun also to see another 
 kind of field, by which I mean to say oil fields, almost as 
 big and generous as the wheat ones, but not so famed in 
 song and guidebook, as the poet says. It sure does give a 
 person a funny feeling to see miles upon miles of oil 
 derricks against the sky line. They look like somebody 
 had decided to build a whale of a big city, got as far as 
 the steel construction, and then quit. 
 
 Also, we saw one jack rabbit. 
 
 We slept, as I say, in Hutchinson, finding room for our 
 bus with some trouble on account of the thousands of 
 cars that had come in for the state fair. I didn't suppose 
 there was as many automobiles of the fifteen-hundred to 
 three-thousand-dollar class in the whole United States as 
 I seen parked in Hutchinson 's main street that Saturday 
 night. And though I would of loved to stay for the fair, 
 still we thought we better not, on account of the law, 
 which, although we had by now apparently given it the 
 slip, we felt we'd better continue, so we went on our way, 
 after our first Harvey breakfast, for which a person cannot 
 be too early. 
 
 And anyways, I had nothing to say to Kansas. Why 
 should I stop to talk anti-soviet in a place where they have 
 already got for themselves all the very cooperative stuff 
 that the soviet has to offer, and managed to get it done 
 tinder our crude, cruel and miserable democratic form of 
 government ? Believe me, after I learned what their grain 
 elevators really meant, and heard about the jointly owned 
 harvesting machinery, and the direct marketing methods, 
 I thought if only Trotzky could see this, wouldn't he feel 
 cheap ?
 
 West Broadway 153 
 
 It was about this point that I laid off trying to reform 
 the West and commenced frankly learning from it and 
 enjoying it, for I realized that the translation from the 
 Russian of workingmen's council meant nothing in the 
 world but our old-fashioned town meeting! 
 
 Here is another thing: All through Kansas we saw no 
 poor. Nothing or nobody upon which professional mil- 
 lionaires could ease their conscience, and so far as I 
 could tell no blatant millionaires either. What I mean 
 to say is, there was no mean little hovels, no slums, nothing 
 that looked poor. Sometimes there would be a tiny shack 
 set high on a windy brown-and-gold plateau in the middle 
 of a big ranch, or on the edge of a great stretch of wheat 
 stubble; but these looked striving, not poor, and that is a 
 very different thing. In fact Kansas is populated by a 
 vast, superior bourgeoisie and again that is very Russian, 
 because no matter how they may yell against the bour- 
 geoisie over there, the net profs of their plans, if they 
 was ever actually to be carried out, would result in a 
 bourgeoisie. You can't have equality of distribution and 
 get away from it. Well, anyways, that is what Kansas has. 
 
 Further, Kansas farmers have got the most sense of 
 any farmers I seen yet, because they have pretty near 
 solved the farm problem, and also it is a Russian method, 
 only again they and Lenine don't know it. 
 
 What I mean to say is, they solve the farm problem by 
 not living on their farm, but by living together in ideal 
 little cities with good hotels, snappy no kidding real and 
 genuinely snappy stores, both department and specialty, 
 a real picture house or two, drug stores that are finer than 
 anything we have in the East, and by commuting to their 
 farms instead of living on the farm and commuting to the 
 city. 
 
 It is so simple and so wise that I wonder I didn't think 
 of it myself. I mean to say it is one of the most important
 
 154 West Broadway 
 
 things in America, what is happening on those Kansas 
 farms, and here it goes on record that I hope a few other 
 states will take notice the way I did, and learn. I am 
 talking from what I seen with my own eyes, and as one 
 town is a fair average example of the whole state I will 
 set it down just as it unrolled itself before me like a seven- 
 reel feature, and hope it may prove of benefit to the 
 oncoming generation or something, as the high-class 
 writers say. Only please kindly remember that this is all 
 truth, and no exaggeration. I will now begin with my 
 sample town and how we come into it. 
 
 Well, back East in Missouri, Illinois and so forth, the 
 country had been like home a good deal, as I guess I have 
 said the same sort of thing like you see when you take a 
 ride outside of Boston or New York or Philly, only richer, 
 bigger and more fertile. 
 
 But when we struck into Kansas we begun to feel a 
 change subtle at first, but growing stronger and stronger 
 rapidly, like a band of martial music swinging down the 
 street. And a person, meaning me, began to recognize 
 this country as part of what I had been unconsciously 
 hurrying toward the big, rich, wide, varied and un- 
 trammeled America. 
 
 Well, we come into this town I 'm telling you about over 
 a series of rolling hills smooth, rounded hills without any 
 trees on them, but carpeted with close-growing flowers of 
 purple and gold, like our aster and goldenrod, only so 
 short-stemmed that they was actually like one of these 
 bright, old-fashioned worsted rugs my grandma used to 
 make, only big enough to cover as far as you could see, 
 and tempting you to walk over the world. 
 
 Then all of a sudden we would plunge down an incline, 
 with terrifying but dramatic washouts on either side of 
 the narrow road, and there, like a cluster of schoolgirls 
 hiding and twittering among themselves, would be a grove
 
 West Broadway 155 
 
 of cotton-wood trees nestled in between the soft bosoms of 
 the hills. Then again there would be wide stretches of 
 stubble where wheat had been sometimes lying on the 
 flat top of an immense plateau that fell suddenly to the 
 dry bed of the Arkansas River. Then the road would 
 twist away on a ledge of land that faintly foreshadowed 
 the mesas we was to see later, and we could look down 
 on the dry river bed a mere streak of gray sand across 
 a narrow, crumbly looking stretch of burned prairie grass 
 where cattle who seemed entirely out on their own wan- 
 dered aimlessly about or nibbled at the bark of the droop- 
 ing trees along the sandy bank far below. 
 
 Then we would travel over a desolate rolling prairie 
 waste with more oil wells pointing to heaven and smelling 
 to heaven, too, decorating the sky line, where the clear 
 sky comes down like a circular drop, well lighted. And 
 then more intimate rolling billets carpeted with coarse 
 bright flowers, dry and brittle with the hot sun when you 
 got out to pick them. Then without any warning of a 
 town as usual we slid into a triple colonnade of old 
 cottonwoods a cool, green-and-yellow cathedral, so shady 
 that the mud of weeks ago had not dried on the narrow 
 double roadways, and in a few minutes we come onto 
 Main Street, and five minutes later we found the right 
 front spring was busted on our car. "Which is how we 
 come to be in Garden City two whole days. 
 
 Also, it is how I come to be able to realize what I now 
 know about Kansas farms, because I stayed in the heart 
 of several hundred of them right in that very town, which 
 but for that spring so luckily breaking we would of dashed 
 through without understanding. 
 
 Well, now here is the idea : On the surface Garden City 
 didn't have some of the trimmings of the other small 
 places we had been, but the first thing we noticed was 
 that it had eleven garages, which for a burg of about fire
 
 156 West Broadway 
 
 thousand people is going some. But do you suppose it 
 was the tourists that pour through which supported them? 
 Yes, you do suppose so. And so did we, and the both of 
 us are wrong. The farmers support them, because pretty 
 near every farmer there has two cars and a truck, whether 
 he is a truck farmer or not. 
 
 Now some more. Pretty near every storekeeper and 
 business man in that town is also a farmer ! 
 
 There! How do you like that? Pretty good, eh? 
 Well, one of the big troubles with farming specialties like 
 wheat and so forth, especially on a big scale, is that it is 
 what the fellow that told me this called seasonal work, 
 which leaves a long quiet season on the farmers' hands. 
 So the rest of the time, why not run a drug store, like 
 old Doc Burns, or a picture theater or a haberdashery or 
 a restaurant? They can run out to the farm in their car 
 every day, and they do that as well. I know it sounds 
 like a pipe dream, but it isn't. I seen it myself. Some- 
 times a farm will be run by two fellers on shares, and they 
 spell each other staying on the farm, which gives the other 
 a chance to see and know the folks in town. And speaking 
 of fellers, meaning mere men, you don't know the half of 
 it, dearie! 
 
 I went into a department store in this town to buy a 
 pair of gloves I saw in the window a pair of standard 
 make of the same identical brand I would of asked for 
 on the Avenue at home, and I got talking with the girl 
 which sold them to me. She was a pleasant-faced, quiet 
 girl not a chicken, but fresh and attractive, and with 
 her hair done in the regulation cootie coops. I saw them 
 cootie coops the whole ways across the country, by the 
 way, and they give me a jolt of surprise every time. Well, 
 anyways, I got acquainted with this girl, and what do you 
 think she and two girl friends which was also working 
 as clerks in that same store was doing?
 
 West Broadway 157 
 
 They had each of them taken up a quarter section of 
 grazing land ten miles out of town that is to say, a 
 hundred and sixty acres apiece, adjoining ground, had 
 put up a frame house where the three corners come to- 
 gether, so that they could all three live on their land as 
 the law requires, yet live together, and they commuted 
 to work every day. They had recently proved claim, and 
 already one girl had been offered three thousand dollars 
 for her property. 
 
 Now that's American womanhood, enterprise, courage 
 and opportunity for you! Beyond them few well-chosen 
 words I personally pass no comments or remarks upon it. 
 Pass them for yourself, but whatever you say, remember 
 it 's a true fact ! And what is more, it is not unique. 
 There is other Western girls got property that way in 
 other towns. I am merely giving you a sample. Yet I 
 can 't help contrasting it with a girl I know back home who 
 was so relieved when she paid the last installment on her 
 Liberty Bond, because now she could sell it and pay the 
 last installment on her fur coat! 
 
 Main Street in Garden City and a dozen others like it 
 is as wide and as well paved as Fifth Avenue. At one 
 end is a park. The people own this park, and they know 
 it and enjoy it and use it. They go out there and lie on 
 the grass. They take a book or a paper out there to read. 
 There are no Keep-Off-the-Grass signs in the public parks 
 west of the Mississippi. The folks don't need 'em. But 
 if they use their parks they are pretty fair about not 
 abusing 'em, too and they sure are pretty, I mean the 
 parks are. Generally there is a courthouse in the middle. 
 The courthouse and the schoolhouse are certain to be 
 really fine buildings in any small town in the Southwest, 
 no matter what else they may have forgotten to build. 
 But I love their parks. It gives such a pleasant, easy
 
 158 West Broadway 
 
 feeling to your heart to know you can pull your bench 
 any place you want to in it. 
 
 And the folks! When I think 'of Kansas folks I want 
 to cry and laugh and my heart swells all up. Because 
 they are so kind, so warm and friendly so alive. And, 
 oh, how tall ! Really it 's the truth, I saw more tall people 
 there than anywheres in my life before. I won't forget 
 in a hurry the three six-foot, chestnut-haired, deep- 
 bosomed beauties who waited on table at that Garden City 
 Hotel. And speaking of hotels, most of these towns need 
 good ones, and the man who builds a chain of them from 
 Ohio to New Mexico will make a fortune off the tourists. 
 The town folks are home people and don't need or want 
 hotel life, which is why the hotels are so poor, I guess. 
 
 Well, anyways, these Kansas girls were the very biggest, 
 handsomest and quietest I seen anywheres. They would 
 be no good in musical comedy they are too big. But 
 they just naturally go grab off quarter sections of land 
 you can tell they would by looking at them. And the men 
 the same. I don't know does the big farms make the big 
 people or the big people the big farms, but I know that 
 they are, if you get me at all. And their hearts are big 
 as the rest of them. Oh, I love Kansas I love it ! I '11 
 always want to go back there! 
 
 Well, on the second day of our breakdown I was sitting 
 in the park at noontime with the thermometer ninety in 
 the shade and the temperature of the book I was reading 
 something over a hundred and twenty, because it was the 
 bedroom scene in Juliet and Romeo, which I was taking 
 this opportunity to read some of it, and also to study up 
 a little in my grammar and dictionary, because I am very 
 imitative and I was already talking like Kansas folks, and 
 I realized my Newyorkese was pretty well nicked, and in 
 self-defense I had better learn a little standard stuff. 
 
 Well, anyways, I was sitting there reading and dream-
 
 West Broadway 159 
 
 ing, and Jim was over across the street looking to be sure 
 the bus wasn't ready yet, which of course it wasn't, when 
 who would drive up in a big car but old Doc Burns, who 
 had helped me get hep to the town such a lot when we got 
 acquainted in his drug store which he ran on the side of 
 a few hundred across of wheat in his idle moments. And 
 whatter you know if he didn't have a bag of golf clubs in 
 that car when he stopped it at the curb ! 
 
 ' ' Hello, Mrs. Smith ! " he says. ' * You and your husband 
 care to run out to the country club and go around once? 
 I generally put in my noon hour like this. 
 
 Can you beat it ? Here was my wild and woolly "West 
 my uncivilized, wide prairie town that I had left N. Y. to 
 inform about things in general! To see the doc beaming 
 over the edge of his big bus, a black ribbon hanging from 
 his eye glasses, you would of thought he was the editor of 
 a highbrow magazine out for a little recreation. Mentally 
 I threw up my hands. This was the last thing I had 
 expected. 
 
 But of course I said yes, and went across to get Jim, who 
 was standing watching Tom help the blacksmith with the 
 spring and wearing a cow-puncher's hat he had bought 
 that morning with a collar on it that would do for Welcome 
 when Jim got tired of the hat. Well, I told Jim of the 
 invitation we had and he nearly dropped dead. 
 
 "Have they got a country club here?" he says, thanking 
 the doc. 
 
 "Well, we've got no clubhouse yet, but we got a nine- 
 hole course," says the doe, "and the clubhouse will come 
 along soon." 
 
 Well, in the meanwhile we came along, digging our 
 clubs out from under everything in our car, because by 
 now we never took anything out of the car at night that 
 we didn't actually need, but left it in the garage, hoping 
 the darn stuff would all be stolen by morning, but it
 
 160 West Broadway 
 
 never was not even when we left it on a street and went 
 in to eat. 
 
 Well, we put ourselves and clubs into the doc's car, and 
 then, believe me, he showed his Western blood, because he 
 drove that bus like it was a mean hoss, and off we went 
 into the flower-carpeted hills, turning abruptly from the 
 road into a prairie and there we was, on the golf course I 
 
 At least so the doc said, and gradually we seen it was, 
 although there wasn't much to distinguish it from the 
 surrounding hills except the greens, which was made of 
 white sand. Otherwise it was prairie! 
 
 Well, I and Jim had learned the motions of golf in order 
 to do a society country-life fillum, but the doc played it 
 because he liked it, and what he did to us was a crime. 
 He beat us eight down or up, whichever is correct. Of 
 the actual game the less said the better, but of the course 
 the score was about like this: 
 
 First hole: Two prairie dogs beat us down it. 
 
 Second hole : Jackrabbit crossed in haste. 
 
 Fourth hole : Jim and the doc killed a rattlesnake right 
 by the pin. 
 
 Sixth hole : Doc pointed out dead rattler he had killed 
 there yesterday noon. 
 
 Seventh hole: Gopher started to watch the putting but 
 changed its mind and beat it before we really got started. 
 
 Eighth hole: Two lizards went down it hurriedly. 
 
 Ninth Green: Completely destroyed by prairie dogs 
 overnight. 
 
 Now this is a true story, or as near true as a mere woman 
 can get, and if anybody thinks I am telling it to make fun 
 of that golf course they got another guess coming. I tell 
 it because of how it shows what these Westerners will do 
 in the face of the wilderness. 
 
 The doc knew what the place lacked as good as we did 
 he was no fool. But he also knew that great things could
 
 West Broadway 161 
 
 be accomplished, and we believed him. And he is, after 
 all, only a good sample of many another such spirit in many 
 another such town in this broad land. I only cite him 
 because I knew him. 
 
 We talked of the future and saw visions of it through 
 his eyes as we walked back toward his car hoping for no- 
 more rattlers and grateful for high boots. And as we 
 walked and talked a second car drove in and parked, and 
 from it got a tall, lean man a man with a flannel shirt, 
 wide-brimmed hat, high boots and a gun on his hip the 
 real Western figure at last! He came directly toward us 
 a handsome man with a clean-cut Yankee face but at 
 the doc's words my heart froze. I seemed to know what 
 they would be almost before he spoke them. 
 
 "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," says the doc, "this is our 
 sheriff, Mr. Bird the best six-gun man in the county 1"
 
 XI 
 
 THE sheriff gave a little Hitch to his gun belt, removed 
 the broad-brimmed hat and acknowledged the intro- 
 duction with a keen glance of his blue eyes that seemed 
 to go right through us and see Tom Westman hiding 
 behind us. 
 
 ''I've been trying to meet you people ever since I heard 
 you were in town," he said evenly. "And what I came 
 out for was something special." 
 
 Well, do you get how I felt when he pulled that line? 
 You do not! Not unless you been recently evading the 
 law. And, believe me, when a remark like that is made 
 by a regular Western he-sheriff with a gun on him there 
 is a lot of extra feeling comes natural to you. But this 
 sheriff turned from us to Doc Burns. 
 
 "I came out, doc," says the sheriff, "to see how you 
 liked that new bunker of mine I been building?" 
 '" He pointed with pride to a ridge of earth right behind 
 us, and we turned to admire, the doc perfectly sincerely, 
 but as for me, all I could think of was a sigh of relief that 
 the bunker was what he had come for. At the same time 
 there was a dash of disappointment at finding the first real 
 Wild Western sheriff I had seen absorbed in improving a 
 golf course of which, it turned out, he was vice-president ! 
 
 ' ' There goes the old West ! " I thought to myself. ' ' We 
 have, alas! no more of it outside of what Bill Hart does." 
 
 But I thought too soon. It seems this Sheriff Bird was 
 good. He could play both parts without being doubled. 
 Because when we was driving back to the city the doc 
 mentioned casually that the sheriff had the week before 
 taken a lunatic single-handed off a train. 
 162
 
 West Broadway 163 
 
 "This nut had a gun," says the doc, "and had held up 
 four passenger coaches. When the train stopped to let 
 Bird on he was going to get Bird, too, but Bird shot the 
 gun out of the feller's hand and took him easily. Bird, 
 he's the best six-gun man in the county, I'm telling you!" 
 
 Well, I was glad he was, because here I seemed to see a 
 new sort of ambidextrous West, if you can get the idea; 
 a West which could at once be wild and tame hold-ups 
 or golf-links, they took 'em as they come. But then again 
 I would of felt less restless if I could of been sure that 
 sheriff was exclusively interested in his Wild West combi- 
 nation menagerie and golf course. It was plain the sleuth 
 I spotted at Kansas City had either lost us or shot by us, 
 never dreaming we would stop off in such a small place, 
 and not thinking of repairs, and apparently having said 
 nothing to Bird. 
 
 But having seen that keen-eyed sporting sheriff, I didn't 
 feel any real sorrow when we got back to the hotel and 
 Tom told us that the bus was ready and packed. So I 
 took a photo of Jim and the doc and Welcome standing in 
 front of the car, and then Jim took one of me and the doc 
 and Welcome standing in the same place, so we would 
 have something to remind us of Garden City, and then 
 the next thing we took was our departure. 
 
 It's a funny thing, but from here on I find myself kind 
 of up against it when I try to tell about what I seen I 
 mean, saw. I wish, and wish hard, somebody had given me 
 a grammar at the date they give me my first automobile 
 meaning myself, for I have bought most of my own presents 
 with my own money, which is more often the case with 
 stage and screen girls than the public seems to think, and 
 it's the form of investment they make especially the 
 jewelry and fewer managers do personal favors than do 
 sound business. 
 
 Well, anyways, I wish that I had bought myself a little
 
 164 West Broadway 
 
 education the time when I bought myself that diamond 
 bar-pin with the first bunch of kale I earned that didn't 
 have to be planted in the home yard. Then I could put 
 down my thoughts on America better. Because writing a 
 piece about the country up to where the real West com- 
 mences is like writing about business, and it is pleasant, 
 but concerns everyday things things it is easy to speak 
 about. Trying to write about the Far West is like trying 
 to write religion. You can't do it. And yet if you have 
 seen that part of the country you have to try. There are 
 deep things in my heart as I look back on the trip, but 
 how can I tell them on paper? How could I, even if I 
 knew the words? I keep, in my mind, going back to that 
 waiter on Sixth Avenue, and like him, think there is no 
 way to tell the ones which haven't seen this country what 
 it is like. "Buy 'em a ticket." By gosh, that waiter said 
 a mouthful! 
 
 Well, anyways, out we went from Garden City early in 
 the afternoon, humping along a pretty rotten road to a 
 place in the middle of Nowhere called Syracuse, where we 
 found a hotel like a stage one, only real, with a bath, good 
 food and everything, and so we thought we would hold 
 that hotel right down and not let it get away from us or 
 be lost on the prairie. 
 
 This hotel had tiled private baths, art furniture, silver 
 and linen like a private home, and fresh white carnations 
 on the tables with food to match, I may add. It was 
 some hotel, to be all by itself, I felt, like it had been 
 dropped out of heaven onto the prairie. A Harvey House 
 it was, and you got to hand it to them Harveys Moe 
 Harvey, that advertised and give his name to the desert, 
 and his brother Fred, who put private baths onto it! 
 
 Well, that night we stayed there, sitting out under the 
 vine-covered colonnade, Welcome laying peaceful and ex- 
 hausted at our feet, and feeling a strange new sense of
 
 West Broadway 165 
 
 space space of the world having no edge to it, of there 
 being no horizon out there ahead of us in the violet night, 
 but only a great big Promise. 
 
 Well, next morning we started out to look for it, and 
 headed for La Junta, and don't ask me what it means, I 
 forgot to ask the hotel clerk. And I never did know what 
 them foreign names meant, because Jim's Spanish turned 
 out to be the kind you sing a naughty song in after making 
 sure there is nobody in the room will understand it for 
 fear they will be shocked, of course ! 
 
 Anyways we headed for La Junta, which from the name 
 whatever it means, sounds like it ought to be in Mexico, 
 but actually is in Colorado. Coming out of Syracuse, we 
 crossed a high plateau, and before we had gone a very long 
 ways lit into a sand storm, most of the sand coming from 
 the bottom of the Arkansas River. We had to put up the 
 curtains, and that give the wind such a hold on us that I 
 thought my child would be an orphan and ma could forever 
 bring him up wrong, for we would soon be blown off the 
 edge and into an arroyo, which is Spanish for place-where- 
 a-river-ought-to-be-and-sometimes-is. At least I called the 
 first two we crossed that, but later learned to refer to it 
 properly as a wash. 
 
 Well, pretty soon the thing which was supposed to be a 
 road took a turn and with a sudden dip, with, of course, no 
 danger or caution sign, as that is one thing the West does 
 not as yet grow well, the road took it, and down we went 
 into not alone a wash but into a flock of not over five or six 
 thousand sheep, including a black one. No, I don't mean 
 hundred, I mean thousand. They filled that wash from 
 edge to edge. They stood on places that couldn 't be stood 
 on ; they blocked the road and filled the sky line and baa-ed 
 in every voice from the big buck's tenor to the deep bass 
 of the infant sheep. And they had no sense, but run in 
 front of us, or up out of the way over places that was so
 
 i66 West Broadway 
 
 steep you would of thought they was flies. On the top of 
 the wash stood the shepherd, his cloak sweeping forward in 
 the wind, his head bent, his staff held like oh, just like the 
 pictures in the Bible ! There was all about us a storm not 
 only of wind and sand but of sheep sheep, sheep every- 
 wheres! And yet they say there is a shortage of wool. I 
 don't believe it! I believe they are leaving it stay on the 
 lambs for higher prices, that's what! 
 
 Then as suddenly as we had plunged into the crowding 
 confusion of that first deep wash we plunged out, leaving 
 the herd behind, a melting mass of shapeless objects that 
 in the distance looked as if the round dried bushes of the 
 plain had come to life and started revolving. And the 
 storm died down, too, as if a window had been shut on it, 
 and at the same time we struck Lamar and realized that 
 we was in Colorado. 
 
 We realized this principally because of being suddenly 
 upon a concrete example of what a road should be. I mean 
 to say, it was a concrete road and a bear ! We could hardly 
 believe it. It didn 't seem right, somehow, to ride so smooth 
 and easy and fast. It wasn't natural to go over fifteen 
 miles a hour, and we kept grinning at each other and say- 
 ing how long will it last? Don't crow too soon, kid, this 
 must be a dream what is this, a road ? And so forth and 
 cetera, kidding each other along and never dreaming it 
 would last. 
 
 But it did. It lasted so well that we got into this La 
 Junta place, which was not, as I had expected, made up of 
 cigarettes, patios and guitars, but a big railway junction, 
 at noon time. So we spotted a come-and-get-it shack, and 
 having got it, started for the country where the grades and 
 the price of gas at the same point begin to get steep. 
 
 All the hot afternoon we traveled, passing principally 
 prairie dogs, which are hard to pass at first because they 
 are so cute and tame. And they are tame because they
 
 West Broadway 167 
 
 know darn well you can't catch them, even if they let you 
 come real near. They are like little decent humans, so 
 respectable and prosperous and inquisitive. I would of 
 loved to take one home for a pet to Junior, but gave it 
 up after the fifth attempt, and realized it would be more 
 worth while to take him something he could really use 
 and have in later life, and was easier to catch, like a 
 Indian blanket or something. 
 
 "Well, on and on we rode through herds of prairie dogs 
 and herds of cattle, and what they eat is a mystery, or 
 drink either, for you can't see a thing. But they must, 
 because they are all fat and healthy. But no food was kept 
 for them in the ranch houses that 's a cinch, because these 
 were so small the rancher could just about get in himself, 
 and that was all. All until late in the afternoon I looked 
 across the nothingness and saw what I thought was a 
 gigantic cloud resting on the edge of the earth. It didn't 
 shift the way a cloud does, but the nearer we come to it 
 the larger it grew, and other shapes sprang up like ghosts 
 behind it. Then the sun reached a long finger through the 
 clouds and touched the top of the first gigantic shape, 
 turning it red gold. I give a kind of gasp inside myself 
 and seized Jim's arm, the electric thrill going from my 
 hand into him, too, I guess, for he made a funny little 
 sound. 
 
 ' ' The Rockies ! " I says. ' ' Oh, lookit ! ' ' 
 
 And I was right. We got out the road map, and sure 
 enough they were ! You could tell by the markings where 
 it looked like a woolly caterpillar had been walking around 
 the names of some of the places Thatcher Erie Trini- 
 dad. Then we could see three sister peaks, lower and nearer 
 than the others, but high enough, goodness knows, and 
 making me laugh when I remembered the Alleghanies. 
 
 "Jim," I says, "have we got to cross them?"
 
 168 West Broadway 
 
 "You said it!" says Jim. "Unless you want to turn 
 around and go home ! ' ' 
 
 "But we can't cross 'em!" I says, feeling weak in my 
 middlex "Nothing could cross 'em they're too high! 
 Suppose the bus won't take the grades!" 
 
 "Oh, I think it will," says Tom. And somehow I had 
 more confidence in his opinion than in Jim's. It seemed 
 more professional, and, besides, I wasn't married to him 
 and any married woman will know the feeling. 
 
 "Well, I don't know that I mind going up," I says. 
 "But think of coming down! Do you believe the brakes 
 will hold? Oh, just suppose they don't!" 
 
 ' ' They won 't ! " says Jim, and for once Tom agreed with 
 him. "Can't use the brakes at all on the sort of stuff we 
 will find over there." 
 
 "That's right!" says young Westman. "And probably 
 we'll have to readjust the carburetor to get through the 
 altitudes." 
 
 ' ' Can 't we go around them someways ? " I says anxiously. 
 
 "Nope!" says Jim with a strange relish and I'll tell 
 the world it 's his actually liking to take risks is what makes 
 him screen so well in them. But not so sister! 
 
 "Oh!" I says. "And I thought this was going to be a 
 pleasure trip!" 
 
 "It is, but it's not a kindergarten outing," says Jim. 
 "Believe me, crossing this man's country is no hardship, 
 but it's no cinch, neither!" 
 
 And at that time I didn't, as the poet says, know the 
 half of it ! All I thought was that somebody had ought to 
 of invented asbestos brake bands, or some kind that would 
 not burn out, no matter where a person took their car, 
 and that I would wait to cross the continent a second time 
 until they had been invented, and also self-adjusting 
 carburetors and automatic accident preventers of some 
 kind. But in the meanwhile all these thoughts of mine,
 
 West Broadway 169 
 
 including best wishes for the future and dreams of home, 
 baby and ma, and a solemn wonder as to why had I wanted 
 to Americanize the country anyways when I couldn't find 
 anything to work on and ectera, didn't keep them moun- 
 tains from coming nearer or rather from our coming 
 nearer to them. 
 
 Yet it's a funny thing, but in a way the further we 
 drove according to the speedometer the further away those 
 Trinidad mountains seemed to be. No matter how we 
 twisted back and so forth, over hill and down ditch, through 
 ranches with trees on some of them now, and trees we 
 could recognize almost; Christmas trees, and I think 
 maples, but I don't know is that really the right name, 
 never having, like a boob, taken trouble to learn these 
 things at home. 
 
 But we got a more homey feeling here, for all of that, and 
 the grandeur of the mountains that was so impressive when 
 we saw them a long ways off lessened as we actually got in 
 among them we couldn't see the mountains for the hills, 
 as somebody has so truly said. But to sniff in the air was 
 like drinking wine. It made you tingle all over, and im- 
 patient because the bus didn't go faster. And then we 
 started going down. Not such a steep incline, but a end- 
 less one, going around and around in circles, like we were 
 slowing up on the inside of a vast autodrome. The night 
 came down upon us as if somebody had turned off the 
 switch the sudden way it does out there in the Rockies. 
 And far below us the lights of Trinidad twinkled, as distant 
 and apparently as unreachable as a perspective city on the 
 back drop of a stage setting, the great electric sign with the 
 city's name in letters of fire blazing now above us, now in 
 front and again behind us as we dropped down and down 
 to the city itself only in the end to get there after all the 
 American-plan dining-rooms was closed, and we had to eat
 
 170 West Broadway 
 
 at one of those places where they have what are called 
 short orders but which take so long, if you get me. 
 
 After which there was nothing to do except buy twenty 
 post cards of Kit Carson's statue, mail them to the folks 
 as a quietus to the conscience for being too sleepy to write 
 a real letter, and able to think of nothing to put on the 
 postals, either, except "Lovely weather here, fine trip, 
 wish you were with us," which we had already written to 
 them on the soldier's monument of about ten other places. 
 And while Jim and myself were doing so in a drug store, 
 which also supplied ink, in came Tom, and I noticed he 
 picked out not Kit Carson nor even a Wild Buffalo, but 
 a card with a blue butterfly sitting on a gloved hand with 
 also some silver snow and To My Fair One on it; but of 
 course I passed no remark, because I was getting real fond 
 of the boy. 
 
 And so Jim and I merely said: "Six sharp to-morrow 
 morning, Tom, because we want to surely get started by 
 nine. This time you won't have to wait for us. Good 
 night." And so to bed. 
 
 Next morning we were up early and started almost on 
 schedule a thing which a person who has made this trip 
 will have a hard time to believe, but it is true just the 
 same, and partially due to the climate which had filled us 
 full of pep. You got to hand it to Colorado on roads and 
 pep, two things which goes well together compliment 
 each other, as my synonym book says. And by the way, 
 until I bought that book I always thought that a synonym 
 was a Jewish church. Gee, but I 'm getting educated a lot ! 
 
 Well, owing to the above-mentioned pep and good roads, 
 I decided that this was a swell day for our little mother 
 to drive, I having done nothing so far in that line except 
 sympathize. So I hopped into my riding clothes and also 
 the driver's seat, and allowed Mister Fixit, the smart- Aleck 
 in the new Colby-Droit, to dash off ahead of me from in
 
 West Broadway 171 
 
 front of the same hotel, where he had told Jim in the barber 
 shop he had arrived a day ahead of us. So I let him keep 
 that way, as each time we had met him he had been a road 
 hog, and would edge you off the ocean in his boat if he 
 could, and why not let him go if it gave him any satis- 
 faction, because anybody knows that while these new 
 Colby-Droits are very snappy they undoubtedly made a 
 better bus back two years ago when we bought ours. 
 
 "Well, anyways, I let him go, and also a family of two 
 sons and their mother which we had become intimate with 
 through having waved several times on the road since 
 leaving Thatcher, and we now felt them old friends; but 
 we must part, because they were going northwards to 
 Pueblo and Pike's Peak. So we waved them farewell, 
 wishing it was possible to have Pike's Peak and El Paso 
 thrown into our own route, because a tourist's eyes are 
 always larger than his allotted mileage, if you can under- 
 stand what I mean. And then at length, having stalled 
 all I could, and having no excuse left for not starting off 
 down that terribly steep street, and a little nervous, I threw 
 off the brake, and without stepping on her teased gently 
 into second, and we was off for a pass called Raton but 
 pronounced Batoon. 
 
 Well, up to this I had an idea that a pass was some- 
 thing that the railroads had stopped issuing. But it seems 
 there is still another kind left, and that this was one of 
 them. Though where they get that pass stuff is more than 
 I know, because pass is about all two cars can do on it, even 
 though the pavement is simply elegant. But a pass ought 
 to mean a place which is cut through like a open tunnel 
 a place to pass through a opening, or cleft, as the book 
 says, not a roller coaster without fences and a drop of 
 thousands of feet or maybe miles, for so it looked, on one 
 hand or the other, depending on whether you are coming 
 lip or going down.
 
 172 West Broadway 
 
 It was beautiful, though, and looked dangerous more 
 dangerous than it really was. You shoot up into it directly 
 out of Trinidad's steep and shining streets, and right away 
 the evergreen trees begin and the sudden, abysmal views, 
 if you are a good enough driver to be able to look at them. 
 The earth seems to be split apart for miles deep and the 
 opening powdered with the evergreens, which way down 
 there look like tiny ferns. The cliff is most of the way 
 on your right going up, and naturally the person on that 
 side has a right to hug it to stick right by while the 
 poor devil that is coming down has to take the outside 
 edge by the sheer drop into lots and lots of view. I guess 
 those views are inspiring. I heard afterward they was, but 
 at the time I didn't really know; I was too busy with the 
 bus and trying to keep from sliding off into one of them 
 fair landscapes. I know it was like all the picture post 
 cards of it, and then some ; that you could see practically 
 all the U. S. A. from the top, but it meant nothing in my 
 young life. All I thought of was, is the edge really as far 
 away as I know it is, and can I behave accordingly? 
 
 Of course, the boys asked was I nervous and wouldn't 
 I let them drive, and I said no, not going up. I was all 
 right going up, but at the summit I would let Tom take it, 
 and I would then admire the view coming down the view 
 of my future life. And just after I said this, believe me, 
 something happened! 
 
 We were nearly at the top, and had come to the only 
 part of the road which wasn't in perfect repair. Maybe 
 there had been a landslide or a strike among the road 
 barbers, I don't know which; but I do know we come to 
 a stretch that was rough and very narrow. Two cars 
 could barely have passed without one of them backing up 
 or down, as the case might be, and waiting for the other. 
 I was driving close to the cliff, approaching a curve and
 
 West Broadway 173 
 
 thinking my heaven what would I do if somebody comes 
 around it when they did! 
 
 It all happened so quickly that it couldn't happen any 
 other way than it did. Without blowing their horn, 
 around the curve on the wrong side of the road and hugging 
 the cliff came a big red car with two men in it the two 
 bulls to whom we had given the slip at Kansas City. The 
 man driving give a yell and threw his hands in the air off 
 the wheel, while the other one stood up with something, 
 I don't know what, in front of him. Their car was com- 
 pletely out of control. There was only one thing left for 
 me to do and I done it. 
 
 I stepped on the accelerator as hard as I could, and with 
 a strength I didn't know I had swung my car across in 
 front of them toward the outer edge of the chasm.
 
 XII 
 
 THE bird who said nothing is impossible said a mouth- 
 ful, because it was impossible for me to pass that big 
 red car on the left without going over the cliff and yet 
 I did! 
 
 Speed was what done it, sheer speed and a good steering 
 knuckle that let me swing by that other bus and keep 
 going. I swear that our two left wheels was on a piece 
 of ground of an angle of about sixty degres for nearly two 
 seconds, and then somehow my heart was back in place, 
 and so was the car by a miracle. I don't want to be any 
 nearer to death than that, however, until I get ready to die. 
 Talk about drowning showing up your past well, it has 
 nothing on skimming the top of the Raton Pass on the 
 wrong edge. You see things in your mind that you haven't 
 thought of for years, and hoped you had forgotten. 
 
 Well, we got back on that road actually got back and 
 for a while it was only a few minutes, I guess, but I 
 couldn't possibly tell how long, because it seemed like years 
 all I could do was keep on driving like a crazy person, 
 reaching the summit and diving down the beginning of 
 the descent. 
 
 "Holy Barney Oldfield!" I heard Toft. Westman yelling 
 from the back seat, but it seemed like a voice from some 
 place in another world. 
 
 Close to my ear Jim was saying something very cool 
 and steady, and, thank heaven, not losing his head and 
 trying to grab the wheel or anything. 
 
 "Good girl!" he says. "Good girl! Take your foot off 
 tihe accelerator now and try if you can go into low!'* 
 J74
 
 West Broadway 175 
 
 "I can't!" I gasped, wishing I had only had the sense 
 to stop on the level summit, but like a regular female, while 
 I had been O. K. in the actual emergency, I was now 
 thoroughly scared and come pretty near to losing my head. 
 If only I had stopped back up there! But I didn't think 
 quick enough. And now we was going downhill like a 
 crazy thing, with that heavy car, of course, gaining speed 
 from its own weight every moment. 
 
 "You must go into low!" says Jim's voice in my ear 
 again very quiet and compelling, like my conscience was 
 speaking to me. "You must!" 
 
 Well, I tried sort of automatically while we flew 
 around curves the like of which I had never before even 
 dreamed of. And "dreamed" is right that's what it 
 seemed like, for the road begun to twist and double on 
 itself and loop around as though it had been laid out for a 
 grim joke only now it was smooth and broad and clear. 
 
 "Well, listening to Jim, I tried to go into low. But at 
 first all I succeeded in doing was to get into neutral, and 
 then of course we was coasting. The brakes might of been 
 made of water. 
 
 "You must!" says Jim again, and by some miracle, his 
 will helping me, I did actually get into low. We com- 
 menced to slow down, and then just at the foot of that 
 awful mountain, on the outskirts of the little town of 
 Eaton, I managed to stop, and trembling and damp all 
 over put my head on Jim's shoulder and cried and felt 
 better and let him take over the wheel. 
 
 "I guess," I says, "that is all the driving I will do for 
 to-day." 
 
 "I guess so too!" says Jim and a lot of nice things as 
 well about how good I was. And never mind them; what 
 I done was more instinct than brains. 
 
 "I wonder hadn't we better go back and see are those 
 fellows all right ? ' ' Jim says.
 
 176 West Broadway 
 
 "Not much!" I says. "There's nothing wrong with 
 them. There was nobody behind me, and they had the 
 whole advantage on their side. All they had to do was 
 keep on going, and if we go back we will only be inviting 
 ourself to jail!" 
 
 "Good Lord, was it them bulls?" says Jim. 
 
 ' ' I '11 say so ! " says Tom and me in a chorus together. 
 
 "Good night!" says Jim, and with that he stepped on 
 the Colby's tail and we took a jump due west without 
 further hesitation. 
 
 Well, off we went then, through the view that we ought 
 to of been looking at from the top of Raton but had no 
 time for. Somehow I could now look at it with sharper, 
 keener eyes because of having so nearly fallen into it, and 
 of course I would then have missed it entirely, if you get 
 me. So I sat close to my husband, still pretty shaky, and 
 feeling mighty close to him in the other sense, too, the 
 way a woman does to her man when they have just shared 
 a danger or paid a big bill, or some such crucial thing. 
 And while he drove I relaxed and admired the great gray- 
 and-purple mountains which loomed up on either side of 
 the wide, wide valley such a wide one that some of the 
 cattle ranches in it have aeroplanes to do their fence 
 ranging in no kidding, the ranches are that big and that 
 modern. Well, the mountains looked bigger and more 
 beautiful than I had expected and I had expected a lot at 
 that! But somehow they hardly seemed real. 
 
 Neither did these big ranches I am telling you about, 
 because they was so vast and endless that you would 
 never take them to be ranches at all, but only great plains, 
 until once in a while you come to a place where there was 
 a funny combination gate in a fence that stretched across 
 the road ; one part that had to be opened for horses and the 
 other part open all the- time, but with iron bars across 
 the bottom of a deep trap that I guess cattle would not
 
 West Broadway 177 
 
 cross of their own free will any more than a lady will cross 
 a similar place over a cellar in a N. Y. sidewalk, especially 
 if in high heels, and I expect hoofs have the same effect. 
 
 Well, anyways, we just went on and on through these 
 ranges endlessly, the color on the high points of the 
 Eockies changing with the sun in the beautiful, unreal way 
 they do, and their tall shadows reaching out over the 
 parched pasture lands where once in a while you could see 
 a big herd of cattle like a rust patch on a far part of the 
 distance. 
 
 The road was awful to begin with, but got steadily 
 worse all the way through New Mexico, which we were by 
 now in that state. One place we didn't know which way 
 to turn because three equally bad roads forked away with 
 a look of all of them leading to the jumping-off place. 
 And so Jim stopped the bus and I got out to take a look 
 at a funny sign I saw that was shaped like a bell. 
 
 "El Camino Real," it says on the bell, and then a little 
 inscription below on a plate. It made me quite breathless 
 to read it, and I scrambled back beside Jim all excitement. 
 
 "To the left, ' ' I says, "by that bell. Say, Jim, this road 
 was built by the Spaniards over three hundred years ago ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' So that 's what ails it ! " exclaimed Jim. ' ' Caramba ! 
 It's time it was rebuilt!" 
 
 "Well, besides those vast, wonderful mountains which 
 you could admire when you didn't have to keep your eyes 
 on the road, the most noticeable thing in this part of New 
 Mexico was the price of gasoline. It was undoubtedly 
 affected by the altitude. Anyways, whether that's scien- 
 tific or not, it's a fact that gas jumped from thirty-four 
 cents at Raton to forty-five at Las Vegas, New Mexico, 
 and it went higher farther on. 
 
 Outside of the near-accident on the pass, it was a kind 
 of uneventful day until we reached a place called Wagon 
 Mound, and there we bought gas again, and paid forty -one
 
 178 West Broadway 
 
 cents for it. What is further, we bought it off an old man 
 who had come that far from Maine in a oxcart train years 
 ago. I guess the wagon he was in dropped to pieces there 
 and a mound had grown over it, and that's how the place 
 come by its name. He told us in a real Yankee voice that 
 he had come to find gold. Well, he was finding it now all 
 right, all right. We give him some of what he was looking 
 for, and so did I am glad to say that Smart Aleck in the 
 new Colby-Droit, because as usual, though he had dashed 
 ahead, we had caught up to him by now, as also had the 
 Peterkins, who, even though they was eight of them, 
 seemed to make awful good time in that flivver, and really 
 if I was going across again I believe I would go in one of 
 them instead of in a car! 
 
 Well, anyways, we left Wagon Mound together, Mister 
 Fixit dashing ahead of us as usual, and us allowing him to, 
 and he as optimistic as ever. And then we and the Peter- 
 kins set off together, all unsuspecting of what lay ahead. 
 
 One thing we did ask them, and that was did they see 
 anything of the big car on the Eaton, and it seems they 
 had met it back in Trinidad, where one of them had told 
 Pa Peterkin all about the narrow escape they had. He 
 didn't know, however, was they coming along on or not. 
 We told him nothing about who they was or anything, 
 except, of course, about how it was us that nearly hit 
 them. But while I wished them bulls no good, still at the 
 same time it was a relief to know they hadn't been hurt 
 except in their nerves, and it had rather been on our con- 
 science, not going back and seeing if there was any pieces 
 to pick up. 
 
 So we set off quite cheerful, including Tom, who some- 
 how just couldn't seem to make the Colby go fast enough 
 to get away from Alma, and if ever a girl was well chaper- 
 oned I'll say that one was, especially as they had by now 
 found a stray cat somewheres and added it to their flivver,
 
 West Broadway 179 
 
 because I suppose they discovered they had a little room 
 some place and naturally didn't know what to do with it. 
 
 Well, for the first few miles we only struggled through 
 mud two feet deep along the railroad track, which was 
 nothing to speak of, because, believe me, by now our 
 middle name was Mud, and we snuggled right down into it 
 and wrestled along like the couple of experts we was; not 
 even minding when a freight train on the Santa Fe tracks 
 come along and raced us up a big grade. We raced, I say, 
 but the same as a couple of turtles in the old story, with 
 the engineer leaning out of the cab window and kidding us. 
 
 Well, that was all right; but when we left the mud and 
 pools of old rain and struck, as it were, inland oh, my 
 gosh ! Up to then I thought I had seen bad roads, and so 
 I had, it's the truth ! But here all of a sudden was no road 
 at all. Actually it is a fact ! From Springer on, for fifty 
 miles, it is positively the truth that there is no road only 
 a rolling country covered thick with what looks exactly 
 like coal-black petrified sponges, but is actually lava rock, 
 and you have to go over a extinct volcano by a mere trail 
 that you can hardly see. 
 
 Listen, boys and girls! There is volcanoes on North 
 America ! There ! I betcher you didn 't know that before ! 
 And I didn't know it either until I bumped into one and 
 then bumped over what it had once spit up, which is the 
 aforesaid petrified sponges. 
 
 As for which way to go across this awful but still some- 
 how wonderfully impressive wilderness, why, only for the 
 sun and once in a while a Santa Fe trail marker you 
 wouldn't actually know which way to go, much less dare 
 turn and try to go back. And all of this in a heat of 
 goodness knows what temperature, but it was enough 
 I'll say it was boiling 1 
 
 "Say, Jim," I says at last, "where are we headed for 
 across this no-man's land?"
 
 180 West Broadway 
 
 "Las Vegas," says Jim. 
 
 "Lots vaguer!" I says. "This is vague enough for me 
 I don't want it any vaguer!" 
 
 But we had to keep on going there was nothing else to 
 do. And when you got used to it you begun to see a 
 strange beauty in it, too, especially in being so fearfully hot 
 yet seeing the snow-capped Sangre de Cristo range of 
 mountains far away in the distance, with that queer near- 
 farness or far-nearness that mountains have out there. 
 
 And then around four p. M., when we had just about 
 decided we was lost in a part of the world that God had 
 forgot to finish or had been too tired to bother with late 
 Saturday night, another tourist actually come in sight 
 I mean coming towards us. He was a fierce man with a 
 athletic mustache that jumped around when he talked, 
 and a tired wife, and lots of bundles and et ceteras and a 
 Dakota license in a little old roadster. 
 
 He give us a hail, and we stopped for one of them ex- 
 changes of gab that get to be the regular custom among 
 us new sort of gypsies. 
 
 ' ' How 's the road ahead ? " he says, leaning anxiously out 
 over his steering wheel. 
 
 "Watter you mean, road?" says Jim. 
 
 "Oh! So it's as bad as that?" says the bird. "Well, it 
 couldn't be worse than what is ahead of you folks. There 
 is a hellofa canyon and some big washes look out for the 
 one just beyond Canyon Diablo the bridge over the river 
 is pretty near gone and one car was stuck there when I 
 come by!" 
 
 "Thanks!" says we. "Good luck!" And he says the 
 same, but neither of us seriously hoping for it, and off we 
 went again, with Grandma Peterkin, that was kind of 
 feeble-minded, starting to cry. 
 
 Well, Devil 's Canyon was a good name for that place all 
 right. It come without warning. The surface of the tree-
 
 West Broadway 181 
 
 less plain just stopped, that's all, and we went helter- 
 skelter down a steep, winding grade covered with loose 
 stones, and with the rocks above and below us jutting out 
 in strange shapes, like fantastic buildings had been started 
 there and then been left half finished and forgotten. Out 
 we dashed again, leaving the terrible volcanic rock behind 
 now, and coming onto something that faintly resembled a 
 road. But such a road! Evidently it had been raining 
 ahead of us again, and gullies that looked as if they had 
 been put there on purpose crossed it, and we was supposed 
 to cross them on little bridges, which we did by rushing 
 them, but they hardly held us. Believe me, it was some 
 exciting ride! 
 
 Then we plunged down into a second canyon a smaller 
 one this time, with a few tortured, twisted evergreens try- 
 ing to grow in it, and there we seen what Dakota had 
 meant. The earth around the approach to the bridge on 
 our side was pretty nearly washed out. The Peterkins, 
 who was ahead of us, didn't realize this, however, but 
 made a rush for it and got stuck halfway sort of with 
 their forepaws resting on the bridge and their hind quar- 
 ters on the road, if you get me their differential having 
 come into argument with a plank and refusing to go. 
 
 Well, we waited behind them, while they buzzed and 
 buzzed and tried to back off and couldn't. And so finally 
 they all got out and just simply lifted the flivver back 
 where it belonged on the road. But none of us cared to try 
 that bridge again, and so we took the ford instead, there 
 actually being water in this river for once, and Tom was 
 real brave and walked across first to see how deep was it, 
 and found it wasn 't, and that the bottom was all rock. So 
 then, as I say, we done our first fording and got quite a 
 kick out of it, I '11 say and when we had got on the other 
 side Ma Peterkin held us all up. 
 
 "Wait!" says she, and so we waited, and ma went
 
 182 West Broadway 
 
 around to the other side of her car and took off her red 
 flannel petticoat, not alone on account of the heat, but so 
 as to pin it onto that dangerous bridge, which she done 
 with two safety pins she found some place on the kids, 
 and the handle of a busted jack made a pretty good pole. 
 
 Then Jim took the lid off my hatbox, which was busted 
 anyways, and with a little axle grease wrote a sign ' ' The 
 River is Safe to Ford" and stuck it where it would do 
 the most good, and then we went on our way rejoicing, and 
 feeling my, how considerate we was and what a lot of 
 good we done for humanity you know the feeling con- 
 sequently in a very good temper. 
 
 Also, the road got slightly better, or at least recognizable 
 as such, and led us down into a beautiful oasis all willow 
 trees and fertile fields, with a ranch house as pretty as a 
 set, built years ago by Mormons, and the ranch belonging 
 to it had seventy -five thousand acres! Think of it! It's 
 true! And then when we had a drink of water there we 
 passed along out of this miracle of green coolness and 
 come into Las Vegas, a big mining town, where I again saw 
 the exact hat I was wearing in a milliner's window, and 
 where we spent the night. 
 
 I mean we spent it in the town, and in also as good a 
 hotel as we had struck so far out of Kansas City, and 
 we had struck all of them that lay to the east of us. But 
 Tom said no he thought he would not eat with us to-night. 
 He had some place he wanted to go, and it was to the 
 municipal camping grounds; and of all things, he took 
 Alma to see a picture of me that was then showing at the 
 Gem! 
 
 But Jim and I didn't go into the theater. Instead we 
 took a look at the shop windows, where he bought a couple 
 of his favorite collars, and if I seem to keep repeating that 
 you can get anything you want any place in America it 
 is merely to point out that we have no downtroddenness
 
 West Broadway 183 
 
 nor real poverty, or why should there be the demand and 
 supply of these things from one end of the country to 
 the other? And no matter what day of the year Mr. 
 Trotzky was to come over here, it would always be the 
 first of April for him! 
 
 Well, anyways, nobody tried to pinch us here, and so 
 next morning early we stopped by the free camping ground, 
 where dozens of cars was huddled together much like the 
 old wagon trains must of at night, and picked up the Peter- 
 kins, because we was by now getting used to them, and Ma 
 Peterkin had invited us to lunch in the public park at 
 Santa Fe. 
 
 Well, we had the appetite for it, all right, when we got 
 there, for it is some ride through the mountains and the 
 Santa Fe Canyon to the ancient town of that name ! Wild, 
 and just nothing but mountains, mountains all the way 
 twisting, turning and always climbing, endlessly going up 
 on a gravelly, awful dangerous road that certainly had 
 ought to be a one-way affair, especially as there are three 
 roads going from Las Vegas to Santa Fe, and all of them 
 bad and steep, and you got to watch your engine and your 
 step. 
 
 But it was almost the most beautiful country yet, with 
 forests of these here strange twisted, stunted cedar trees 
 all over it, and growing in loose gravel that didn't look 
 like anything could live in it ; but these trees did, and also 
 big flocks of fat goats, and also even fatter prairie dogs 
 by the million, and it's a mystery how they do it on the 
 diet and remain so stout. 
 
 Jim stopped to ask the goatherder why, but he only spoke 
 Spanish, and didn 't savvy, and Jim said no wonder, he 's a 
 Mex ! And Jim, it seems, speaks only a pure Castile Soap 
 Spanish unfamiliar to the unwashed Mexican. 
 
 The grades was awful, and twice we had to stop and help 
 the Peterkins lift their fliv over a thank-you-ma 'am at the
 
 184 West Broadway 
 
 top of a mountain, but by noon we really did come into 
 Santa Fe an old, old, beautiful town, a wonderful loca- 
 tion for a costume picture, and if we had realized how 
 interesting it was going to be we would have fixed it so 
 we could of stayed there longer. We come into it down a 
 narrow, cobbled street with high old garden walls made of 
 adobe on either side, and old churches that look like they 
 had been there since the Year One, and some of them have 
 been since 1582. Then we come to the square where there 
 are more old, old buildings, one of which was the Spanish 
 White House in the early days before this part of New 
 Mexico decided it would like to take out its first papers. 
 Jim thought these buildings was awful cheap to be palaces, 
 and why didn 't our present Government put up something 
 dizzy and new instead of copying the old styles which, it 
 seems, were invented by the Indians. But I didn't feel 
 like that at all. To me they were beautiful like a rich, 
 plain dress made without any regard to fashion on a vivid 
 woman, they fitted this vivid land and became it as nothing 
 else could. They belonged. And when you feel a thing 
 belongs it's O. K., and don't start trying to improve it. 
 
 In a way, it was hard to realize this really was in Amer- 
 ica, what with palm trees, strange flowers and prickly plants 
 falling over the plastered garden walls and spreading 
 gorgeously in the park, where we ate Ma Peterkin's very 
 good lunch shamelessly from a basket. The crooked streets, 
 the vivid yellow adobe houses, the hot, clear sun, the mules 
 and the signs in Spanish it was all foreign and queer. 
 And the only thing made you realize it was America was 
 the American Indians, of which quite a few was around 
 and acting perfectly natural and as if there was nothing 
 queer about their being there at all, but the green beholder 
 feeling it mighty queer for all of that. 
 
 I think these was Prehistoric Indians, because we heard 
 there was some awful interesting Prehistoric Indian dwell-
 
 West Broadway 185 
 
 ings just outside of town; but I don't know, they might 
 of belonged to some other tribe. Anyways, we bought some 
 post cards of them in the drug store, and wrote fine trip 
 wish you were along and mailed them, and then we had 
 to get started, because we had wired Albuquerque for 
 rooms that night, and we would be behind our schedule if 
 we didn't put some pep into it, and I hated to delay, be- 
 cause once I make up my mind to make a place I want to 
 make it. But even so, we was sorry to leave that enchant- 
 ing, impossible Santa Fe town and I'll say that if we 
 had known about the La Bajada grade we would of been 
 even sorrier. 
 
 Well, that grade was all right when it was built way 
 back in Archaslogical times, which are of course times that 
 date way back to the Ark. Because in those times moun- 
 tains was for Arks to land on, not for cars to pass over. 
 Also it was 0. K. for the Spaniards to tease a mule or so 
 up and down it just after Columbus discovered America 
 and before America had discovered cruelty to animals. 
 Well, believe me, the La Bajada grade is something that 
 if you come out of it alive you are entitled to refer to it 
 as a experience. Coming up to it from Santa Fe is all 
 right. You are merely climbing a mountain with lots of 
 Indians in wagons and other curiosities to divert your at- 
 tention. But coming down oh, boy! 
 
 I will give you a cold fact. In a sharp descent of one 
 and one-half miles it was over seven miles going up 
 there are eighteen hairpin turns on a 30 per cent grade and 
 no side walls. 
 
 No, that's no use! I can't convey it! But how'dja feel 
 if your car'd got a long wheel base and was too heavy for 
 brakes, and the turns, hanging over the sheer edge of 
 nothing, were so sharp you couldn't round 'em, but had 
 to stop and back and try again on every single one ? View ? 
 Who cares for views! The only view interested me was of
 
 186 West Broadway 
 
 myself in La Bajada village on the nice smooth level plain 
 below and of landing there by way of the road and 
 intact! And somehow we did get there safely. 
 
 Now we begun to pass little Indian farms, with funny 
 flat adobe houses, white-washed and with strings of bright 
 red peppers hanging outside the door just like it had been 
 done to please the picture post card man, but real, not 
 fakes, and the way those Indians live every day. Then we 
 went through a pass that really was a pass because it 
 was a actual cut through some high, granite-looking moun- 
 tains. We could see it from afar, as the poet says, like a 
 giant gateway, and we come to it over a series of broad 
 washes that would of been impassable if wet. But they was 
 sandy instead, so that was all right. And when we dived 
 into this giant canyon that might of been made by God 
 with one blow of a superhuman ax I got a leave-all-hope- 
 behind feeling, but quite unjustly, for before long we had 
 passed through it over excellent paved roads, just like 
 Baton, and wound our way down into Albuquerque. 
 
 Now it is a funny fact, but sometimes when things seem 
 to go the most wrong it is all for the best. Probably some 
 other writer has said this before me, but it is just as true 
 as if it was new, and that is how things turned out about 
 the fact of in spite of our telegram our not being able 
 to get into the big hotel and having to go to the American 
 House. Jim grumbled at it, and I was fed up with him 
 the way a woman generally gets with her husband at the 
 end of a long, hard day's trip. So we sat in our room 
 and fought over which route would we take next day the 
 north one through Laguna, Grant and Gallup, where the 
 interesting things are, or the south one, where the roads 
 was said to be better. And we fought so hard and the night 
 was so hot that even after a walk around the beautiful 
 railroad station with its dozen of Indians and its marvelous 
 shop full of Indian treasures, where for once we bought
 
 West Broadway 187 
 
 something besides post cards, and Tom bought a blue al- 
 leged tourquoise necklace from a squaw, although for whom 
 I could give but one guess, and they do go well with red- 
 gold hair well, I couldn't sleep very good, and so it hap- 
 pened that I got up early next day, before Jim did, and 
 I was mad at him because he had sent a telegram to Gallup 
 to hold rooms for us there and I still wanted to go by the 
 southern route. 
 
 "Well, I got up and dressed, and while he was in the 
 bathroom, but I with my things all on and it's the truth, 
 I never kept him waiting the whole trip except a few times 
 well, anyways, while waiting for him I stood looking out 
 through the Nottingham lace curtains, and there what did 
 I see but the big red car with the two bulls in it, exhausted 
 and dusty and seeming to of been on the road all night, 
 drive into the garage across the way which was not, I may 
 mention, the one where our bus was. 
 
 Then they left their car and staggered over to the other 
 hotel! 
 
 Well, I just stood at the window frozen for a minute 
 while I tried to think what to do. And then when I made 
 sure those tired cops wouldn't be back for a little while 
 I did what I had thought of. Saying nothing to Jim, I 
 left the room and walked straight to that garage. There 
 was nobody around but one man, and so I spoke to him, 
 meanwhile spotting where the red bus was parked in a 
 near-by stall. 
 
 ''Any cars to hire?" I says. The man shook his head. 
 
 "Nope," he says. "There's a fair over at Laramie, and 
 you can't hire a car in this man's town for love nor 
 money. ' ' 
 
 "Too bad!" I says. "But maybe you got some platinum 
 magneto points. They would help me just as good." 
 
 "Nothing doing!" says the bird. "Feller here waiting
 
 188 West Broadway 
 
 for them now none in town. We don't handle that sort 
 of thing have to send clear to Indianapolis for 'em." 
 
 "Shucks!" says I. "Then would you mind phoning to 
 the depot for me and seeing what train accommodations I 
 can get to Las Vegas?" 
 
 Well, he fell for it, and while he was up in the office 
 doing it I lifted the hood of that big red Mouser and pulled 
 its teeth quietly, quickly and effectively. In other words, 
 I removed the magneto points, slipped 'em into my sweater 
 pocket and strolled out of the garage at my leisure, after 
 thanking the obliging garage boy for information that 
 I didn't need about the 10 :15. 
 
 "There !" I thought. "It will take 'em quite a while to 
 find out what ails that bus, and another spell to get the 
 cure!" 
 
 And then I rushed for the hotel and give Jim the razoo. 
 
 "Shake a leg!" I says. "And make it snappy! We 
 are leaving this man's town inside of twenty minutes, and 
 we're going by the southern route, where there are no 
 railroads I"
 
 XIII 
 
 IT is true that willful want makes woeful waste on most 
 occasions, especially in the big cities, but willfully want- 
 ing to get out of town in a hurry wasted none of our time 
 as we shot out of Albuquerque bound for Socorro, 111 
 tell the world! There was only one serious question in 
 my mind as we left, which question was, Why hadn't these 
 bulls telegraphed ahead to the local authorities and had 
 us nipped, as it were, in advance ? And then it come over 
 me that there must be a reward out for catching us a 
 money reward which they would lose or have to split with 
 the natives, or something like that. 
 
 I felt we would be safe so long as we wasn't in danger 
 of being recognized by any local authorities in the places 
 we stopped at. The birds with the red car would only 
 ask for help as a last resort, being fairly certain to figure 
 on catching us their own selves sooner or later. Later 
 was what I hoped for, and when I thought of the session 
 they would have when they tried to find out what was the 
 matter with their car I had to laugh, because a car is not 
 like a person, and when it has a strange ailment you don't 
 generally look at the appendix first. I only wished I could 
 of seen their faces when they at length discovered what was 
 gone, and I was betting with myself they would take half 
 a day at least to get to it on account of naturally think- 
 ing of everything else except magneto points. 
 
 Well, anyways, having settled that for the present, and 
 
 being perfectly willing to live in the present, as the girl 
 
 said when her uncle slipped her into a diamond ring, why, 
 
 those bulls was easily dashed out of my mind by our dash- 
 
 189
 
 West Broadway 
 
 ing across the Rio Grande unexpectedly, and what it was 
 doing up there I don't know, as it ought to of been down 
 guarding the Mexican border. But there it was, having 
 perhaps switched up that way after some bootlegger or 
 something, because they do say it changes its course very 
 easily, and that is not surprising, because it is mostly 
 Mexican, after all. 
 
 Well, anyways, we crossed it, or rather the wet spot 
 where it would be after the rains, and I will say that what- 
 ever else the Westerners have that's good, they have no 
 rivers, and they ought to see our Hudson or Connecticut 
 or Delaware even just once. It would knock 'em dead ! 
 
 Across the Rio Grande we come into Isleta, a real, genu- 
 ine Christianized Indian village, with a old adobe church 
 that has the original, ancient fifty-cent admission charge, 
 whitewashed houses with bright blue doorways with red 
 peppers hanging beside them; and in spite of the color 
 scheme it is much more Spanish-looking than American- 
 looking. 
 
 Well, Jim got all excited, and also got out the camera 
 and snook up behind a Indian dame with her young on her 
 back and a blanket on her front and everything, he think- 
 ing to tactfully snap this free uneducated daughter of the 
 wilds in her native state and costume all but the shoes, 
 which was tan laced ones, and not let her know it or wound 
 her shy, sensitive, free, wild spirit or anything. And he 
 didn't wound it not even a little bit! Because when he 
 had snapped the shutter and was tactfully turning away 
 she let out a holler at him. 
 
 "Hey, you!" she says. "That'll be fifty cents!" 
 
 "Can you beat it?" says Jim after he had paid her, 
 climbing back into the car. "She's got not only cooties, 
 but gimmies!" 
 
 And then we showed we could beat it by doing so out
 
 West Broadway 191 
 
 of town before any he Indian was to come up and charge 
 us for looking at the view. 
 
 I never expected we would cross the Rio Grande at all, 
 but we done it three times in that one morning, on narrow, 
 wooden, rickety bridges with Indians half -tamed ones 
 coming over at the same time with carts and horses. And 
 I'll remark right here that I never once seen an Indian 
 driving a car of any kind. They like to see their horse 
 power in terms of actual horses, I guess. 
 
 Well, anyways, we kept ducking back and forth over 
 the big river, into and out of mean little Indian villages, 
 over shale roads and between stunted trees. I suppose 
 they call them stunted, because that's what it looks like 
 they were doing stunts with their arms and bodies all 
 twisted out of shape. Also it is some stunt, believe me, 
 for a tree to grow in that rock with no water! But the 
 Indians manage to get a little corn out of the ground as 
 well, although not over two feet high, and this shows that 
 there is good in that ground, when stuff will grow in it 
 under the worst possible conditions; and if the w. k. Gov't 
 would give these Indians a little water they would be 
 prosperous farmers. 
 
 Well, then we come to a place called Los Lunas, which 
 I guess is Spanish for The Looneys, or Nuts. It is the 
 forking-off place for the two routes the northern one by 
 Laguna and Gallup and the south one which we was tak- 
 ing, and if a person was to read all the conflicting signs 
 which the chambers of commerce of the towns on the rival 
 routes have put up you would go nowheres but crazy and 
 start running around in circles. 
 
 Right opposite to each other are two signs, each one of 
 which says the other way is rotten, with bad roads and 
 bum hotels and dangerous passes, but that their way is 
 perfect and goes through the most interesting places. And 
 the two routes is about a hundred miles apart, and how
 
 192 West Broadway 
 
 a woman driver can ever decide which way to turn there 
 is more than I know, because Jim was driving at the time, 
 and he and the police had my mind made up for me. 
 
 So we give ourselves a shove to the left down through 
 Belen. and started south over a wild, rugged country 
 where the mountains were like jagged teeth against the 
 sky and the parched plain was strewn with the bleached 
 bones of automobiles a wheel here, a fender there, or a 
 rib of chassis drying grimly in the sun. I suppose they 
 was the skeletons of cars which had got stuck there 
 when it was all mud during the rainy season. At least I 
 hope they was, because that would be the only excuse for 
 them untidy tourists leaving all that truck laying around 
 behind them. Honest, the worst thing I got against tourists 
 is the way they act like they thought they would be the last 
 person going over a trail or through a forest and so it 
 didn't matter what tin cans and even worse ecteras they left 
 behind them, because of course nobody would ever see them. 
 And if they would only have eyes in the back of their head 
 they would see a big procession behind them that the land- 
 scape is ruined for, practically, or would be except that 
 Nature fortunately made mountains bigger than tomato 
 cans and prairies larger than newspapers. But there is 
 no sense in throwing rubbish in the face of Nature. It 
 don't improve it any more than it would any other face, 
 and the Government is not yet in a position to provide a 
 corps of facial massagists for the whole entire map to clean 
 up after campers. 
 
 If I personally myself was running Washington I would 
 see to it that all parties about to cross the continent from 
 either side by motor was put through a strict examination 
 to find out did they have decency and intelligence enough 
 always to go to the little trouble that it is to leave a clean 
 camp to respect the forest's fire-insurance policies, and 
 not to cut down and pull up plants for no reason. And
 
 West Broadway 193 
 
 for the ones which was found guilty of violating their oath 
 of outing the punishment would be that they would have 
 to walk all the way from the court where they was tried 
 to Arizona or New Mexico or wherever they left the mess 
 and clean up after themselves ! Ma used to punish me that 
 way on a small scale when I was young, and believe me, 
 having to do it even once will learn you, and I am laying 
 in wait for Junior with that same golden ruler ! 
 
 "Well, anyways, these high windy plains with their skele- 
 tons of dead autos, and also with here and there a dead 
 steer thrown in to make it look natural, was cold as the 
 mischief, although the southest we had been yet. The 
 noons was hot, but, oh, you night and morning ! Actually 
 we would put on our winter you-know-whats and a coat 
 and sweater, beginning with the next day when we left 
 Socorro, a pretty little town with hot springs and a hot little 
 hotel and a hot couple of Hopi chickens in cootie coops 
 and ten-cent pearl earrings and regular Broadway clothes 
 who waited on the table there. Cute ? I '11 say they were ! 
 And even Tom Westman passed a few remarks, which is 
 quite enough to say of them, because he was technically in 
 love, and so, according to the books, he hadn't ought to of 
 noticed. 
 
 What a cold, well-aired morning it was, coming up out 
 of Socorro through a high, dangerous mountain pass 
 called Blue Canyon ! Up and up we went, but I more ac- 
 customed to it now and able to look back at the view with- 
 out wanting to jump into it. And it was a peach of a view 
 all barren, jagged mountains, very steep and sharp 
 pointed and filled with blue haze in the hollows. The con- 
 tinental divide, it was. 
 
 Say, did you ever see a golden eagle? I don't mean a 
 five-dollar gold piece or one sitting in tragic quiet in a 
 cage at the zoo. I mean on the loose where it belongs. 
 Well, I have. Floating over Blue Canyon, where the sun
 
 1Q4 West Broadway 
 
 caught under his almost motionless, outspread wings the 
 finest sight you can think of. He really is pure gold when 
 he's flying overhead in the sun. Funny thing that look- 
 ing at a mere bird can give you a choke in the throat like 
 that. My heart sort of stopped with awe as I lay back 
 and watched it out of sight. I never thought a bird would 
 make me feel religious, but he did. I seen why we chose 
 him for our national emblem. He is so calm, free, majestic 
 so sure. Oh, gosh, words is so cheap ! 
 
 But I'm glad he was chosen, anyways. Because you 
 know what committees to choose things are. Wouldn't it 
 of been awful if they had chosen a canary ? 
 
 We had a lot of adventures with animals around here, 
 although one of them we didn't know about until long 
 afterward. Jim had been trying ever since Kansas to get 
 a photograph of a prairie dog, but with no success. Well, 
 this day while we ate our lunch and cleaned up the pa- 
 pers after us he went out and set the camera for a time 
 exposure over around a turn where a dog colony was, and 
 left it there while we ate. Then he went back and got it, 
 and marked on the fillum number what it was, and when 
 that fillum came to be developed it was the picture of a 
 bear! 
 
 Well, not to get too far ahead of ourself , we stayed that 
 night at Magdalena, a real mining town, with Magdalena's 
 face two miles long on the side of the mountain if you 
 got a good imagination. And from there we went on 
 through more and more mining countiy, with holes in the 
 hills where miners or bears had made them, but very dif- 
 ferent from the Penn coal district, although coal was here, 
 too, and zinc and copper. And so on through Datil Forest, 
 all tall pine trees fox-trail pines, they call them and 
 again it was awful cold. Then down into Quemado, where 
 gas cost us sixty cents. It was just a little place sort of 
 post-office center for a lot of big cattle ranches, and a big
 
 West Broadway 195 
 
 ice-cream saloon which had seen stronger days, but not 
 in a financial sense, because it seemed pretty well pat- 
 tronized by cowboys, of which any number was standing 
 around outside at ninety-two in the shade. And they 
 do really wear high-heeled boots and big hats and have no 
 end of impudence, but of a awful attractive kind, and I 
 had a perfect right to notice them after the way Jim had 
 remarked about those Hopi chickens and pretending it 
 was a purely geographical interest! Oh, baby, they was 
 some boys! A cowboy has to be a awful lemon not to at- 
 tract a woman. And by gollies, don't they know it, just? 
 
 Well, anyways, at Springville that night in a clean 
 little tavern run by a German woman who learned her 
 business off of Harvey himself, we had, in the heart of the 
 steak country, a steak that sticks in my fond memory yet. 
 It was not over three or four inches thick, tender as the 
 words of love, cooked to perfection, and as it only weighed 
 around four pounds and was served for three, cost two 
 dollars delivered and war tax paid ! This is a great 
 country, and I can prove it, and while there is steaks like 
 that in it there is also hope. 
 
 Tom, for one, got a revelation from that steak, and it 
 was a beautiful sight to see him sitting there across the 
 table from us, so melancholy and love sick and lonesome 
 for Alma, who must of taken the northern route, that he 
 couldn't eat over half of the whole entire thing. He just 
 kind of absorbed it, as though half unconscious of what he 
 was doing, and then went out to look the public camping 
 ground over just to make sure the Peterkins were not there. 
 
 I followed after a while, just to hang about and watch. 
 The camps in the towns was so interesting, and the further 
 west the more so. Beginning in Kansas, this free-camp-life- 
 in-the-open-air stuff was absolutely canned by mutual con- 
 sent of all parties, and at dusk they would huddle into 
 not alone the towns, but into camp yards, which was not
 
 196 West Broadway 
 
 beautiful wooded dells where the solitary camper's fire 
 winked back at the stars, like you would suppose, but a 
 wooden den, a sort of roofless garage, where often and often 
 the busses would be parked as close as in a regular garage, 
 and everybody camping promiscuously and so close to- 
 gether I should of thought they would be embarrassed to 
 turn over during the night. However, towns and supplies 
 and of all important things water was very infrequent 
 and far apart out there, which is probably the reason for 
 this enforced chumminess. 
 
 But oh, such a strange mixture would be in those camp 
 yards ! 
 
 Some were just plain tramps, some were workers travel- 
 ing from place to place and picking up an odd job. Then 
 right along next to them some nice ladies, all alone together. 
 Then a sick man and his wife and baby, living out for their 
 health. Then a big, expensive new car with a family that 
 was just too plain mean to pay hotel charges, though well 
 able to afford it. 
 
 Such a jumble, such a crew ! There was only two kinds 
 of people who always seemed self-sufficient and never come 
 into these camps but stayed lonely out on the open prai- 
 rie keeping themselves to themselves, as ma says. One 
 of these kind was gypsies the genuine Egyptian gypsies 
 that thought the rest of us was lowlifes and who wouldn't 
 stoop so low as to associate with mere Christians. And 
 the other was homesteaders with oxen or horses and prai- 
 rie schooners, of which there are indeed many left, and 
 a lot of them are Mormons looking around for new lands to 
 take up. And whatever you many think of their mar- 
 riages, you got to hand it to them on their ability to im- 
 prove real estate. 
 
 When you see one of these birds camping at nightfall on 
 the prairie or the desert, his horses hobbled, his wagon 
 looming up kind of ghostly, his fire beginning to leap,
 
 West Broadway 197 
 
 yellow in the gray dusk, a woman, or sometimes two or 
 three, flitting silently about, you have a hard time to 
 realize this is 1921 and not '49. And then you see, like we 
 did the next day, a thriving, exquisitely beautiful town 
 like St. Johns, Arizona, a garden town all a-flutter with 
 cottonwood trees, and beautiful, high-class houses, and 
 you realize this is a Mormon town, and that men like that 
 lonely but not too lonely camper, come out years ago 
 and caused the desert to blossom like the rose and that he 
 will do the same if you just give him time, why, you com- 
 mence to tone down your opinions of Mormons that is, 
 you do if your opinions was anything like what mine was. 
 
 I was glad even after I seen this further link in the 
 wreath of beautiful little cities that stretches from coast 
 to coast I was glad that Jim was not a Mormon. I 
 wouldn't take a chance on any man not using the excuse, 
 no matter if they do say that is all over with now. It was 
 a great way of developing real estate, but not of develop- 
 ing domestic bliss. 
 
 Did you ever notice how religion, no matter of what 
 flavor, will bring worldly results if it is sincere and prac- 
 ticed by a group ? Look not alone at the Mormons, but at 
 Christian Scientists, New Thoughtists, ect., and the prop- 
 erty they own. Think it over. There's something worth 
 considering. It even works out with plain common every- 
 day Christians if they remember that God helps those who/ 
 help themselves ! 
 
 Well, anyways, out of St. Johns we struck into a country 
 that got bigger and bleaker by the minute, causing me to 
 feel full of pep and adventure and also to sing my favorite 
 song that I and Jim used to sing before our dance in the 
 old small-time days, and he now joined me at the top of 
 our voices, as often before on this trip, because that is how 
 the air makes you feel:
 
 198 West Broadway 
 
 I am a little prairie flower, 
 Growing wilder every hour 
 
 "We were doing a little close agony over it when Jim 
 interrupted himself abruptly. 
 
 "Holy cats, what is that?" says he, taking one hand off 
 the wheel to point, although going down grade, the care- 
 less way he will, although I have told him one million times 
 that I don't like him to do it. But husbands have these 
 blind spots in their minds. Jim has also got one about 
 lobster a la Newburg, which in all the time I have known 
 him he has gone on suggesting for supper and I have to 
 again remind him that I hate it. But as long as he had 
 pointed, anyways, why I looked, and then I echoed his 
 surprise, although in more refined language. 
 
 For there ahead of us was a series of smooth cone- 
 shaped mounds that were too high for real mounds and too 
 low to be hills. They looked more like enormous ant hills 
 than anything, only the ants would of had to be about the 
 size of automobiles to of made them. And then up spoke 
 Tom out of the depths and mazes of the road map a 
 junior road map we had bought off a recent garage. 
 
 ' ' Say folks, it 's the petrified forest ! " he says. ' ' I thought 
 we was going to miss it coming this way." 
 
 And he and the road map both was right, because pretty 
 soon, at the foot of one of them queer, nightmarish, ice- 
 cream-cone ant-hill formations was a sign, just as casual 
 and common as you please, and the sign says: 
 
 TO THE PETRIFIED FOREST 
 
 A person gets kind of a shock to see a plain, ordinary 
 black-and-white sign with an arrow on it saying such a 
 thing. It was like seeing one that read ' ' Free Beer ; Come 
 In" on Sixth Avenue, it was so entirely improbable. Of
 
 West Broadway 199 
 
 course I knew there was a petrified forest, but somehow or 
 other I hadn 't actually believed it, and that neat little sign 
 made a wonder of the world seem so casual. But then, 
 judging from many of the ads I've seen, I suppose sign 
 painters get hardened to anything. 
 
 Anyways, we followed it, and for a few minutes we 
 couldn't, as the poet says, see the woods for the trees. 
 Because they was all laying down, and of course we was 
 looking for something that stood up, and not for a cross 
 between a lumber yard and a stone quarry. 
 
 When we seen that the things lying around us was fallen 
 trees made out of jade and amethyst and coral, or anyways 
 ihat looked like it, believe me, we hopped out of the old 
 bus and give it the double o ! 
 
 "Petrified is right!" says Jim, fingering the bark which 
 looked just as natural honest, you would of thought it 
 was real! 
 
 "What petrified it fright?" says I. 
 
 "Don't it look as if it was done on purpose?" says Tom. 
 
 "It's got those imitation-flower places on the Avenue 
 skun a mile ! ' ' 
 
 "It was made by a better concern!" I says. "I wonder 
 are we allowed to take a piece for a souvenir?" 
 
 "As there seems to be several thousand acres of the 
 darned stuff," says Jim, "I think we might take a chance. 
 Only leave us take pieces that are already broken off." 
 
 Well, we says all right we will, but the trouble was to 
 make up our mind which ones to decide on, because the 
 ground was all over stone chips and twigs, and you keep 
 picking them up and then throwing them away, after, be- 
 cause you see a better one, and so on indefinitely. But at 
 last we thinned our selection down to not over half a ton 
 of the very choicest of our choice, or at least as fine a col- 
 lection as our time would permit if we was to reach Wins- 
 low that night and a lucky thing we put that time limit
 
 2OO West Broadway 
 
 on ourselves or we might of been running around that 
 place yet yelling, "Oh, look what I found!" In other 
 words, it was like eating peanuts in a peanut factory, it 
 you get my idea. 
 
 But finally we got our souvenirs well hid in the bottom 
 of the boat in case anybody was to see them and take them 
 away from us on the way out, and then we left that strange 
 petrified world behind us, climbing through Holbrook and 
 getting into the town of Winslow, Arizona, early enough 
 so's we could get a wash in one of Thoughtful Fred's 
 bathtubs before eating. 
 
 And when we walked into the hotel, all keyed up and 
 looking forward to it and everything, who would we see 
 to our surprise but Alma Peterkin sitting all alone by the 
 door watching it! When she lamped us she jumped to 
 her feet and hurried ovier to us, her face pale under the 
 gold of her sunburn. Bather to my surprise, it was to 
 me she come first. 
 
 "Miss La Tour," she says, speaking low, "I've been 
 waiting to catch you before you could register. I came in 
 here three hours ago to find out if you people had got 
 here yet. And while I was standing at the desk, before 
 I'd got a chance to ask, a boy gave the clerk a telegram. 
 I couldn't help seeing it, and it read: 'Detain Marie La 
 Tour and party.' I thought you ought to know."
 
 XIV 
 
 A FRIEND of mine that 's in the pictures told me about 
 what Al Goldringer says the first time he seen Ni- 
 agara Falls. It seems they were up to Niagara on a loca- 
 tion, and Rosco, that 's my friend, led Al to the edge of the 
 big shower and started telling him about it. I don't recall 
 the exact statistics he used, but his line of talk went 
 something like this: 
 
 "There's so many millions of gallons of water goes over 
 these falls every day/' says Rosco. "And they weigh this 
 many tons. The force could drive this number of trucks 
 around the world so many times and it furnishes that many 
 units of electrical power, and the falls are cutting back so 
 many feet a year." 
 
 And so forth and ect. for a long spell while Al listened 
 without a word. Then when Rosco got all through the only 
 thing Al says is, "What's to prevent it?" 
 
 Well, believe me, that is the way I felt when Alma sprung 
 her glad tidings. I could just see the cops coming over 
 like a avalanche and no stopping them, and the well- 
 known words of the poet also came to mind, ' ' What to do ! 
 Oh, what to do ? " I felt like the sow of despond, I '11 say 
 I did! 
 
 "So you told her?" I says to Tom, and the kid nodded 
 at Alma. 
 
 "I wanted to start clear," he says. 
 
 "I see!" says I. "But what will we do? We hadn't 
 ought to stay here, that's a cinch!" 
 
 "If only there was some place you could disappear to 
 for a few days!" says Alma wistfully. "I think I could 
 
 201
 
 2O2 West Broadway 
 
 head those fellows off. I 'd watch for them and spread the 
 news that you had gone on ahead of us. Then eventually 
 Tom could get over into Mexico if he absolutely has to." 
 
 "He won't have to," says Tom himself. "If I can just 
 keep them birds busy until I reach Los Angeles I will be 
 perfectly satisfied!" 
 
 Well, I give him a look then a question about why 
 was that so arising to my lips but stopping there. Besides, 
 I was getting the first feeble glimmering of an idea. 
 
 "Say, I got it!" I says. "Do you boys realize we have 
 come all this way without seeing a Indian pueblo? And 
 that if we go on from here we will lose our last chance 
 to?" 
 
 ' ' Girlie, gimme that road map ! ' ' says Jim. ' ' I believe 
 we could go to that one which was the big reason for my 
 wanting to come here by way of Gallup! What was it 
 called?" 
 
 "Oraibi," I says, remembering the name very well on 
 account of the fight we had about the route "where the 
 snake dance was!" 
 
 "That's it!" says Jim. "It would be a swell place to 
 disappear to, and disappear is probably what will happen 
 to us if we get lost on that territory." 
 
 "Where would we stay?" I says, doubtful yet interested, 
 because, believe me, to see all the kind of towns there are 
 in America except the old original native ones would be 
 pretty poor. 
 
 "Oh, I got all the dope at Albuquerque," says Jim, 
 ' ' when I expected to go out. You stay at a trading post or 
 camp out." 
 
 "Well, we can't camp," I says. "We got nothing 
 to do it with. But I'll say I'd like to kill two purposes 
 with one side trip!" 
 
 ' ' Oh, do go ! " says Alma eagerly. ' ' And leave the rest 
 to me ! I '11 manage, really ! And we will wait for you at
 
 West Broadway 203 
 
 the Grand Canyon. By the time you people catch up to 
 us I'll have those men well on their way to the coast." 
 
 "What say?" says Jim. "I'm game if the rest are." 
 
 "Well, I'd sure like to go out and see the noble red man 
 nobleing a little," says I. "Because so far I've only seen 
 him half baked by civilization." 
 
 Tom went through a few feeble motions of protest about 
 the trouble he was to us until he seen that it was something 
 we really wanted to do. And after a little session about 
 its being impossible to start out that night, and equally 
 impossible to stay at the hotel, we got Alma into the 
 Colby with us and went to where the Peterkins were camp- 
 ing for the night not in the regular public camping 
 grounds, thank heaven, but a little ways out of town where 
 they had found a spring. 
 
 Well, we put up the curtains and slept in the car. And 
 if you have ever slept in one you will know how glad I was 
 to get up at dawn and make an early start. 
 
 Ma Peterkin, who had been merely told we couldn 't get 
 in at the hotel, because why worry her, was heavenly to us, 
 and give us the two swellest meals you'd want to see, and 
 how she done it on a camp fire and a gasoline stove is 
 more than I could say, but it would of greatly interested 
 my own ma, whose middle name is Cooking. And while 
 not wishing to slight her food in any way, I will say that 
 eating your breakfast at dawn of a fine morning on the 
 edge of the Bad Lands and the edge of a running board 
 does add a lot to the flavor and you even get a sort of 
 glad, free feeling over being frankly not washed and ect. 
 
 Well, anyways, Jim had got some dope on the road from 
 a garage the night before, and so we started right out 
 northward as the sun comes up with a shout of light, and 
 Alma rode with us a little ways so as to talk freely. 
 
 I gave her a full description of how the bulls looked, 
 and she promised to send a wire to Winslow addressed to
 
 204 West Broadway 
 
 Mr. Henry Brown as soon as it was O. K. for us to come 
 along to the canyon, and we would probably find her 
 wire when we come back to Winslow. Then we stopped the 
 bus and she got out, taking Welcome with her, because 
 he didn't speak Hopi and I didn't want him to get into 
 any Irishman's argument with the Indian dogs and maybe 
 get us scalped or something. 
 
 So we said so long and started off, and a good thing 
 that Jim was driving, because Tom couldn't seem to get 
 his head turned around to the front, but kept looking 
 back at the bob of sunshine that was Alma's hair until 
 he could see it no longer or got a crick in his neck or 
 both. 
 
 Now I have written some about the East Coast and the 
 reds that bloom there in faint shades of pink like a dye that 
 hasn't taken very good except in a few weak spots. I 
 have wrote, too, of New York City, that great big over- 
 grown jumble of beauty and ugliness, of riches and pov- 
 erty. I set down some things about its love of show and 
 ignorance of values, and knocked it a good deal the way a 
 loving relation has a right to. I have said a most inade- 
 quate mouthful about the magnificent strength of the 
 Middle West, and I have hinted at religion in the grand 
 panoramas of the Far West. But now I realize that I 
 have got to spill a little about art. And I am up against 
 it, because I don't know anything about art. As the poet 
 or somebody says, I know what I like. Also I got more 
 than a suspicion that art and religion have got a close con- 
 nection to each other in some way. 
 
 And by religion I don't mean the early cathedrals and 
 enlarged colored photographs of saints. I mean that the 
 kind of instinctive feeling that come to me just west of West 
 Broadway, and which I call religion, had a ditto mark 
 in the art field. In other words, I saw something in these 
 three days which we spent out on the Bad Lands that
 
 West Broadway 205 
 
 I knew that I liked ; and if you know that strongly enough 
 about anything, that thing is art, take it from me! Art 
 for you, at any rate. I decided this before I found out 
 that a whole lot of the best brush chasers in the country 
 agreed with me about the Hopis and their reservation. 
 
 Well, anyways, this was how I felt from the very mo- 
 ment we got clear of Winslow on our way to see Lowe, 
 the poor Indian, and Behold, his wife. And I'll say the 
 feeling was a surprise to me, because I hadn't expected a 
 place called the Bad Lands to be beautiful. But it was, 
 in a strange way, different from anything I ever saw 
 before. 
 
 Now the feller at the garage had told Jim there was no 
 regular road out to Oraibi, but only a trail, and that no 
 whites had been over it in a month, so far as he knew. 
 Not encouraging exactly, huh? Ill say it wasn't! But 
 that shows how much you can tell in advance about these 
 desert trails, which is absolutely nothing, because, like 
 European politics, they change while you are telling about 
 them. 
 
 So the garage wizard having foretold that the road 
 would be rotten at best, he was of course all wrong. While 
 it was a mere pair of wagon tracks between the brush, it 
 was hard and firm and smooth, one of the best pieces of 
 traveling we had had so far, with of course the usual bad 
 spots here and there. And while on this subject let me 
 add for the benefit of those who have not traveled over 
 desert roads that the truth about them is that they are good. 
 Unless it is the rainy season, gravel or volcanic cinders, 
 once they are packed down, make swell traveling, and you 
 can go any place on them that is often called and certainly 
 would seem to be impassable. I hate to make this admis- 
 sion, because I feel about the Hopi country much as I 
 feel about my favorite little, as yet undiscovered, new 
 restaurant or about my pet seamstress. I don't want to
 
 206 West Broadway 
 
 tell the common herd about how comparatively easy it is 
 to get there for fear that they will rush in and abuse the 
 place, and teach Lowe to overcharge and to wear denim 
 pants and other crimes of civilization. 
 
 And now for the art part. At least for Chapter One 
 on it, which begun as soon as we were well out of town, 
 and the light of the sun behind us began to feel its way 
 in among the stubby round bushes that were growing 
 about two feet apart all over everywhere on the flats, to 
 where the plain ran abruptly into a monumental set of 
 high mesas far to the east on the one hand, and into the 
 slope of snow-crowned 'Frisco Peaks way off to the west, 
 or ahead of us into a nothingness which we could not imag- 
 ine, but which we were going into just the same. 
 
 A person would not think there would be color in a 
 enormous stretch of dried bushes growing in otherwise 
 barren, sandy ground I mean barren except for rattle and 
 other snakes, and kangaroo rats, gophers and prairie dogs. 
 But you don't know the half of it! When the sun strikes 
 it slantingly those dry bushes look like the Bad Lands had 
 been powdered with opals pink, blue, lavender, sage green 
 as light as layers of tulle on a ballet skirt ! As you come 
 up close this color moves away from you, but always it 
 lies just beyond. It hypnotizes you, sort of, and you ride 
 along in the intense heat that is so dry that you don't 
 mind it, and look out over that sea of opal to 'Frisco Peaks 
 with the snow on them, and you wonder how come it is 
 really you doing it. 
 
 Once in a while a Indian, riding silently and sort of 
 drooping on a unshod horse, would pass us and look at us 
 as if we was the curiosities and not him Navajos, these 
 were, and didn't we get stuck on ourselves for knowing 
 the difference between them and the Hopis ? I '11 smy so ! 
 And then after a while we saw a startling sight a roof ! 
 after more than a hour's driving. Not much of a roof,
 
 West Broadway 207 
 
 but still one, and when we come up to it we seen it was a 
 white man's building with windows and a chimney and a 
 nice young man and a funny old Navajo chinning on the 
 steps. I'll say that white boy was glad to see us! He 
 jumped up almost before we stopped, and come down to 
 chin with us for a pleasant change. 
 
 "I'm looking for Wilson's Trading Post!" says Jim. 
 "This it?" 
 
 "No, this is Blackman's," says the boy, a little disap- 
 pointed, I thought, that his fellow citizens was about to 
 move on so quick. But he pointed the way real kindly, 
 and consulted with the Indian in a soft, strange language 
 when we asked the question that is ever nearest to the 
 motorist 's heart : ' ' How is the road ? ' ' 
 
 "Go along the main trail," he says, "until you come to 
 a fork. One says to Leupp. The other one is to Wilson's. 
 Then Bill he '11 tell you how to go from there. The bridge 
 is down, but you can ford the Little Colorado a wagon 
 did it yesterday." 
 
 Believe me, that made me feel real Wild Western all 
 right, as we filled our desert water bag and set off again ! 
 That and the scurrying kangaroo rats, with black and white 
 fur ; and even in that heat I couldn 't help but think, ' ' My, 
 wouldn't a muff of them look good with a black velvet 
 dress!" 
 
 Well, anyways, off we went again into the nowhere, and 
 stayed there, traveling under a sun which gradually toward 
 noon dried the color out of the brush, until we come to 
 the fork, and acting as directed took the right and pres- 
 ently were on the banks of the Little Colorado. 
 
 Well, I'll tell the world I never thought we could do it 
 when I saw that ford ! Down the steepest, muddiest bank 
 probably in the world, and over a sort of double river, 
 with apparently no bottom to it, except where it humped 
 up into a sand bar that we also had to cross. The only
 
 2C>8 West Broadway 
 
 thing give us any courage was that there was wheelmarks 
 on the other bank. This was no fake like the other rivers 
 we had met, and had not alone water in it, but muddy 
 water. 
 
 "Oy, gevalt! We'll have to rush it, that's all!" says 
 Tom, who was by now being let drive again. And so we 
 sat tight, and I closed my eyes in the true womanly way 
 and we rushed her. I won't forget the gurgling sound 
 the old bus made going through that river in a long time ! 
 But we made it, and after a struggle we got on the 'trail 
 again, and I was free to look around for more art. 
 
 And I saw it! Out of the horizon line had sprung an 
 endless red mesa; a solid wall, hundreds of feet high and 
 the color of old-fashioned fuschias magenta. The opal 
 plain led up to it in a subtle wave of color that I haven't 
 got words to tell about. But I can tell this much: No 
 picture you'll ever see of the Bad Lands can be a exaggera- 
 tion of its colors, nor yet a true representation of their 
 vivid delicacy. 
 
 A person could drool along about it by the hour. But 
 they don't not if they want to keep their friends. Even 
 friends to the contrary notwithstanding, though, it's an 
 awful temptation to go on. Only, go on is what we didn 't 
 do. Because pretty soon we come to Bill Wilson's place 
 a long, narrow shack completely surrounded by nothing. 
 
 I'll bet there are not over six trees on the reservation, 
 and none of them less than twenty-five miles from Bill Wil- 
 son's place. There it sits soaking up the sun until it has 
 soaked clean through the roof and into the heart of that 
 man. 
 
 When we saw him first he was standing outside the 
 door feeding watermelon to the chickens. He looked up 
 when he heard us coming, but he didn't hurry away from 
 what he was doing. He never hurried, Bill didn't; yet he 
 was one who got countless things done. He was never
 
 West Broadway 209 
 
 surprised either; yet he was always open-minded. He 
 had that look of seeing great distances in his eyes that 
 men get out there and nowheres else. The heart of a 
 dreamer showed through them the heart of a dreamer and 
 the .shrewdness of a Yankee. 
 
 " Howdy," he said. And we said it, and then we asked 
 the way, and he told us in his slow, mellow accents. With 
 the store behind him, hung with bright beads, guns, 
 tinned goods and so forth, I felt like I was seeing a picture 
 or something. 
 
 "How far to Oraibi?" says Jim. 
 
 "Oh, about sixty miles," says he. No surprise, see? 
 
 ' ' Good road ? ' ' says Jim. 
 
 "You can make it," says Wilson noncommittal. 
 
 Then he offered us watermelon with the same generous 
 impartiality with which he had give it to the chickens, 
 while his pretty wife, a cozy middle-aged woman, come out 
 and listened while he told us how to go. 
 
 "Better take along a melon," he says when he was 
 through. And he gives us one a gift ! 
 
 I can't hardly tell you how this trader, even after these 
 few words, made me feel ; but it was a little the way I felt 
 when I saw the golden eagle. 
 
 We left them, then, thinking not to see any more of 
 them. But that's all a person on a journey knows! For 
 hardly had we got two miles away when all of a sudden, 
 without warning we was stuck hard and fast on the adobe 
 shores of a dried-up lake ! 
 
 Well, it was Illinois all over again, only this time under 
 a early afternoon sun, forty miles from any place and 
 wild Indians all around. All around is right. For pretty 
 soon they actually were, having apparently sprung up out 
 of the sand, horses and all, until ten of them was sitting 
 in a circle watching the Colby sinking deeper and deeper 
 into the mud, and don't tell me Navajos have no sense of
 
 21O West Broadway 
 
 humor, for they certainly appreciated our efforts to dig 
 out. But appreciate is all they did, for not one of them 
 even offered to lend a hand. They were a bunch of loafers 
 with fine teeth, but all they gave us was the hoot, and 
 when we asked them to help they wouldn't leave us touch 
 their horses and didn't even answer us back no, not al- 
 though when English failed us Tom tried a little Yiddish, 
 but to no avail. I found out then why they call that place 
 the reservation. It is because the Indians is so reserved. 
 
 Well, when we was just about exhausted, who like a 
 couple of angels in a flivver should appear but Pop Wil- 
 son and his son. They had seen us in trouble with a tele- 
 scope from their roof and come out to help ! 
 
 I don't want to say anything more about them folks 
 except this: That I never had help handed out to me 
 before with such quiet generosity; that they unmired us 
 and invited us to stay overnight; they give us bed and 
 board and oil and gas and help and a mighty pleasant 
 visit. And wouldn 't take a cent for any of it ! 
 
 Can you beat that ? No, not outside of America ! And 
 we was so green, so used to paying through our nose for 
 everything we got, whether satisfactory or not, that at first 
 we couldn't understand it when we left next morning 
 early, and they were genuinely hurt when we tried to pay. 
 We hadn 't yet learned that there is still a big piece of this 
 man's country where people help you just because you are 
 in trouble, and where if there is no inn the stranger is 
 the native's guest. It is a kind of customary investment 
 that they make against their own need. Bread upon the 
 desert sands. Do you get it? We did after a while. But 
 it wasall done for us in such a fine, unconscious manner 
 that it took a good while to sink in. 
 
 And as we drove off with waving and shouting and 
 promises to stop in on our way back I thanked God for 
 Americans like them, and turned my face toward the great
 
 West Broadway 211 
 
 curve of the Red Mesa, along whose base we were to 
 travel into the land of sky cities. 
 
 On and on we went under the burning sky, past little 
 Navajo tepees, past picturesque Indian camp fires smolder- 
 ing along the way, surrounded by pale-face soup cans 
 quite, quite empty! For, believe me, the tourists have 
 nothing on the Navajos for messiness, and heaven help 
 a landscape if the both of them get into it ! 
 
 Past wagon loads of Navies we went, and out along the 
 dangerous edge of the deep Oraibi wash, stopping to eat 
 Ma Wilson's beautiful lunch at Little Burro Springs, 
 where in the shade of three lonesome cottonwoods the water 
 flies out of the rock into what might of been Rachel's well, 
 and where a Navajo woman with three naked babies and 
 a loafer of a husband was weaving a bright blanket, just 
 like the railway prospectus says they do. 
 
 Then out of the sharp cool of the shadow once more, and 
 into the blazing sun, along parched ways, where sheep 
 corrals were built into the sides of the yellow cliffs and the 
 stunted farms of the Hopis began. Then the Third Mesa 
 raised its towering head out of the horizon and we sped 
 on to meet it, flinging past a wagon train and through the 
 loose sand that means a village is near, and arrived in 
 midafternoon before the palace of Lorenzo the Magnificent. 
 
 I don't need to give any other name. Anybody who 
 ever went near Oraibi will know it, and the ones who 
 haven't been there will get a good idea of what he is like 
 from what I call him. He is the man who has the local 
 trading post, and there was a famous Italian named the 
 same. This Lorenzo's got a dash of Latin blood, too, that 
 makes him all the magnificenter. And when he heard our 
 car he come out of the palace and greeted us. And when 
 we told him who we was he right away invited us to stay 
 overnight or as long as we wanted to and believe me 
 we took him up on that !
 
 212 West Broadway 
 
 I'll never forget Lorenzo as I seen him first a stout 
 young man with a largeness that was more than his physi- 
 cal largeness about him, his eyes black as sloes, his color 
 high, his poise superb. Living on the desert does one of 
 two things to a man : It makes him mean or it gives him this 
 wonderful bigness, this peculiar brand of poise. And the 
 Magnificent One had it. 
 
 His palace was strewn with rugs, the finest I have ever 
 seen. They was on the walls, on the sofas, on tables and 
 on the railings, as well as on the floors. Baskets and pot- 
 tery were piled in corners, buffalo robes, guns, blankets 
 dangled from the rafters, and in the long dim shop was a 
 treasure-trove that the old Dago Lorenzo had nothing on 
 no kidding thousands of dollars' worth of turquoise 
 and corals and silver jewelry, made also by the Indians, 
 were there. And gawdy velvets and plushes and calicoes 
 and heavenly pink pop in shining glass bottles, and to- 
 bacco and umbrellas and every darned thing you can 
 imagine was also there, all in an ordered disorder that was 
 gorgeous and interesting beyond anything you could think 
 of. I almost hated to leave when Lorenzo told us to. 
 
 "I will wait supper for you," he says. "You folks go 
 along now and see Oraibi the old one on top of the mesa 
 and then go along over to Hotevilla. It is the most 
 primitive village in America just like they were in pre- 
 historic times. It's worth seeing." 
 
 Well, I give one look up at that mesa which has about 
 seven thousand feet elevation but no elevator, and I won- 
 dered how could anybody speak of going up there in that 
 casual manner. I wondered all over again when we 
 started, too, because beside this trip La Bajada Pass was 
 mere infant's work. Over there we at least had grades, 
 while here the road, or what was called a road, just went 
 straight up, and nobody had worked out their taxes on it 
 recently either.
 
 West Broadway 213 
 
 How can I describe old Oraibi or Hotevilla to you? Or 
 will I just lay off it? No, I can't do that, quite, because 
 these cities are as much a part of the wonder of our broad 
 land as Chicago is. 
 
 Just imagine, then, a city hung high in the clear air 
 and built out of the yellow rock, so that from below, in 
 the valley, you can hardly tell it from the mesa on the top 
 of which it stands. Really beautiful houses, they are, 
 piled one upon the other, with ladders made of tree trunks 
 with notches cut in them leading to the upper ones; with 
 dried meat and peppers flaming by the doors, vivid, yellow 
 peaches spread to dry upon the roofs, the beautiful people 
 oh, my heavens, but they are beauties, especially the 
 young women the people dressed in a bit of bright rag 
 or blanket, for, thank heaven, overalls haven't reached 
 here yet, and the folks mostly go about as is. Then there 
 are sacred turkeys wandering all about the place and Jim 
 says, "Ain't it strange that they think turkeys is sacred?" 
 And I says, ' ' Not much ! Remember what we had to pay 
 for ours last Thanksgiving? Of course they are sacred!" 
 
 At Hotevilla we stood in one spot on the edge of the 
 mesa where the foot trail leads into the valley, to which 
 the Hopis go every day to work in their fields. To my 
 right was a donkey corral made by the simple method of 
 building a fence on two sides, the house made the third 
 and the sheer drop of the cliff the fourth ! 
 
 On my left was the head of the trail that wound down 
 to the spring, halfway below, in which one old bird with 
 white hair was calmly and without any embarrassment or 
 bathing suit taking a cold tub. On a projecting rock just 
 below me a woman was taking out the inner workings of a 
 goat with no intention of putting them back. I '11 say that 
 goat will never be the same again! And just like the 
 Hanging Gardens of Babylon, all down the face of that 
 great cliff, wherever there was even a foothold, were little
 
 214 West Broadway 
 
 gardens beautiful little gardens, some only about as big 
 as a clothes basket, but well planted and beautifully cared 
 for, and how the folks ever got to them without breaking 
 their neck is a mystery. To see the Indians toiling up the 
 long narrow trail past the little hanging gardens, the old 
 man at the spring, the women bringing up water in jars 
 on their heads, and the sunset over all of it well, oh boy, 
 it was an eyeful, 1 11 tell the world ! 
 
 Now what I have put down is, of course, something you 
 have often seen on picture post cards and ect. Probably 
 there is nothing new to you in what I have told. But I am 
 now about to shoot something which had ought to get 
 President Harding '& immediate attention, along with the 
 not over seven million other things which also need attend- 
 ing to at once. 
 
 We have in our midst, or to be exact, in our Southwest, 
 a people who had ought to be preserved intact as a national 
 monument. "We talk a lot about our national parks, and 
 God knows they should be preserved. But when it comes 
 to our national peoples, why don 't we try to preserve them ? 
 We try to change them, to reform them! It's like trying 
 to bring the ancient temples up to date with sanitary 
 plumbing, elevators and other improvements, and just as 
 sacrilegious. Here we got a perfect specimen of Life as it 
 was in Bible times, and so far nobody but me seems to of 
 realized that they, the Hopis, should be preserved in their 
 own customs, habits, way of living and dressing, without 
 any interference, except maybe a doctor once in a while 
 to keep down trachoma, which is almost the only disease 
 they ever get. They should be preserved a/id protected as 
 a work of art, so the other, newer Americans can see and 
 know them and benefit by the beautiful pottery and bas- 
 kets they make. 
 
 Now lookit! There are only about a thousand of the 
 Hopis left on their three high mesas. They are hard-
 
 West Broadway 215 
 
 working, happy, thrifty and beautiful. They are absolute- 
 ly friendly except when the boneheaded Government sends 
 soldiers in to take their children away to school by force 
 to a school, mind you, that they don't like or believe in 
 nor need ! If they was mischievous like the Navajos, -why 
 that would be something different. 
 
 But they are not. They have their own religion, a wor- 
 ship of air and sun and rain and fertility. Why not leave 
 them have it? They invented it a long time before our 
 religion, and they think it good. And if they think it 
 good and it harms no one, why not leave them be? 
 
 Now another thing. Why take the young ones by force 
 away to school? What does it get them? The girls get 
 taught cooking and sewing! My heavens, they can learn 
 it better on the mesa ! The boys get everything except 
 agriculture. Just think of the stupidity of not teaching 
 a Hopi agriculture a Hopi, who for thousands of years 
 has made stuff grow where nothing could ! What do they 
 want to learn to read or write for? They mostly go right 
 back to the mesa, anyways. They need reservoirs for irri- 
 gation far more than they need schools. 
 
 What's the good of teaching the girls to cook if they 
 don't give the boys the water with which to raise some- 
 thing to eat? 
 
 We got a grand chance to do something no other nation 
 has done if we would only jump in and make a national 
 monument of the Hopis. It's not too late yet. But we 
 ought to get action soon make it snappy. 
 
 The Hopi cuts his hair like a Greenwich Villager, but 
 that is the only radical thing about him. If I was running 
 Washington I would certainly preserve him in his natural 
 state at least as much as the wild game is preserved in the 
 Yellowstone. He is quite as important and a darned 
 sight more interesting and productive ! 
 
 Well, anyways, we talked this all over and got it settled
 
 216 West Broadway 
 
 coming home over the mesa, from which in the sunset the 
 Oraibi Valley looked like a huge hollow of molten gold. 
 Driving down into it was like entering an immense bur- 
 nished opium bowl. And that night Lorenzo the Magnifi- 
 cent talked the idea over with us, and agreed we had the 
 right dope, and he, being out among these people for two 
 generations, meaning his father before him, and they all 
 love him, ought to know. 
 
 "We sat in the moonlight and talked. And then after 
 a while we just sat, because the full moon on the desert is 
 like no other moon, and you want to sit in silence and look 
 at it. Such whiteness, such shadows, such a silver radi- 
 ance the moon herself seems bigger on the desert. To 
 stand in it is to be bathed in quicksilver. That 's how you 
 feel. 
 
 I wanted never, never to go home. And the Magnificent 
 One, with his limitless kindness and hospitality would of 
 let us stay on and board free with him forever, I guess, 
 if we had said so. 
 
 But like any perfect thing, our stay back in the simple 
 early ages of the world had come to an end, and eventually 
 we had to beat it, hoping most sincerely we can some day 
 go back. Actually as we drew near Winslow I began to 
 understand what Bill Wilson, who lived thirty miles out 
 on the desert, meant when he told us that on his vacation 
 he was going back into the mountains to do some shooting 
 and get away from civilization. And I thought it still 
 when Tom come out of the Winslow telegraph office with a 
 message in his hand and shouting. 
 
 "It's all right!" he says. "She's wired that they left 
 the canyon yesterday. Hurrah! Now we can go on!" 
 
 And even while he was speaking I saw the big familiar 
 red automobile easing down the street towards us.
 
 XV 
 
 I WAS glad that the auto is so mobile that it could take 
 me places where the railroads couldn't, and when I saw 
 that big red bus coming at us my first thought was well, 
 let us turn around and beat it back to Oraibi, and on the 
 lonely desert sands let the best car win if they follow us, 
 and if we scalp them out there in the silent spaces, why it 
 will be blamed on the Navajos. 
 
 But like most fears, mine got busy too soon, because when 
 the red car come abreast of us, by gollies, it wasn't our red 
 car at all but a much newer model, with a bunch of duck 
 hunters in it on their way to Red Lake out on the reserva- 
 tion, where, strange as it may seem, there are no end of 
 ducks. 
 
 And these hunters had with them some stuff which had 
 been perhaps bottled in bond and was rapidly being unbot- 
 tled in bondage, and it 's a wonderful thing, but fishermen 
 and hunters still manage to get it. I have noticed that a 
 good many times. 
 
 Well, these birds, far from pinching us, passed right 
 along by singing that well-known old Italian song, "My 
 Marie Hooch, she taka steamboat she sail away!" 
 
 And while they was an interesting sight out in these dry 
 and arid regions, we didn't want to catch them; but with 
 Jim for some reason singing If a Wish Could Make it 
 So ! we started carefree and happy toward what had from 
 the start been the real heart of our trip the Grand Can- 
 yon. 
 
 It is a mercy that it is led up to gradually. If a person 
 was to have the canyon sprung on them all of a sudden 
 217
 
 218 West Broadway 
 
 they might die of it. I personally myself don't see how 
 the ones that come on the train from Williams and walk 
 carelessly up to the parapet in front of the hotel stand 
 the shock. It ain't right to ask a person to look into God's 
 studio without preparing them first. 
 
 Fortunately for my heart trouble, which I haven't got 
 except when I can't manage Jim any other way, we come 
 by car from just east of Flagstaff through a endless yellow 
 pine forest that was like an ancient temple you know, 
 one of those temples that you see pictures of in the almanac 
 seven-wonders-of-the-ancient-world stuff only this tem- 
 ple was alive. Well, anyways, it give me a sort of proper 
 religious feeling to drive all day between these pine-tree 
 columns, so straight and clean and high, with between them 
 here and there groups of young oaks, their leaves turned 
 to a fluttering mass of bright clear yellow that made them 
 seem just as if jagged handfuls of the sun had been torn 
 off and dropped down into the forest gloom. 
 
 Well, this got our mind sort of calm and cooled off and 
 well, sort of ready. And then, as if to break the news 
 to us gradual, the road left the forest for a while and led 
 across a plateau over the far edge of which, very distant 
 and unreal, we could see the Painted Desert. The chief 
 thing about the Painted Desert is that you don 't believe in 
 it, even after you've seen it. Perhaps a person does if 
 they actually go so far and far is right, it is quite 
 some distance from wherever you happen to be well, if 
 you go so far as to actually get on it. But to us, trying to 
 reach the El Tovar Hotel before sunset and traveling fast, 
 about thirty miles or so in the distance the Painted Desert 
 was like a mirage, which means something which ain't 
 there except in your own imagination like, say, the repeal 
 of the Eighteenth Amendment. 
 
 It was a beautiful mirage, though, and we got quite 
 a kick out of it. It lay way over there to our right, like a
 
 West Broadway 219 
 
 lake of pale opal, with cliffs of pale opal and the milky 
 white jade rising out of it a dream desert, as delicately 
 lovely and as deadly treacherous as a professional vamp. 
 But seeing first the forest and then this wicked beauty was 
 like walking up steps of expectation, if you can savvy what 
 I mean with the canyon still ahead of us at the top. 
 Only, of course, when we got there it was way at the 
 bottom. You know, it's a hole, not a mountain. 
 
 Well, anyways, we left the mirage and dashed into a 
 royal forest again over perfect roads like a superb private 
 park, the sun getting lower by the minute, and my mind 
 with it, because I wanted to see the canyon for the first 
 time with the sun in it. And then all of a sudden we come 
 on one of them ever-strangely-out-of-place-looking signs 
 which always made me feel that the wilderness was so thor- 
 oughly Americanized that it just naturally grew signs in 
 correct language well, anyway, here where it had appar- 
 ently grown wild was a sign which says To Grand View. 
 So we went there, and it was. 
 
 I will never forget seeing that canyon at sunset from 
 Grand View. But I can't tell you about it. Like my re- 
 ligion, it is none of your business and a private matter of 
 my own. I do think, however, that Jim expressed all our 
 feelings and the feelings of the average person under the 
 same experience when he stood beside me and looked down. 
 
 "Holy mackerel!" was what he said. And if you have 
 been there you will know all that he meant by it. If you 
 haven't been, there is no use in my trying to explain 
 buy a ticket! That's all I can say, except that that's 
 where the saying "A picture no artist can paint" origi- 
 nated. 
 
 Well, I don't mind giving out the dope on this place, 
 because no tourists can spoil it. They are just plain swal- 
 lowed up by it. Let 'em come, the canyon won't even no- 
 tice it ! What is further, it is the one place in America
 
 22O West Broadway 
 
 that it is the solemn duty of every American to see. It 
 will sort of fix up and adjust their mental carburetors so 
 that their brain gets the right mixture. It will show them 
 exactly what size they are, and just how big they can grow 
 to be if they are willing to try. If they got any sense of 
 proportion at all it will give them a standard of measure- 
 ment for a big part of life including the size of our great 
 country and of their own real-estate holdings, and by no 
 means excluding their immortal soul. 
 
 Most out-of-door places which are good for your heart 
 and mind are uncomfortable for your body. The canyon 
 is not. You can enjoy the music of the canyon's silence 
 as comfortably as you can enjoy the music of New York's 
 grand opera. And I'm not at all sure but what you get 
 the full benefit of both when your body is so comfortable 
 that your mind is free to pay no attention to it. 
 
 Not that my body was comfortable every day of the four 
 we stayed there, however. Said body was all right as long 
 as I had sense enough to remain on the top edge of that 
 big hole and hang around the beautiful gardens and Fred's 
 best hotel, where he has outdone himself and it don 't look 
 like a hotel at all, but like the private hunting lodge of 
 the King of Whatsis in a feature I once made called An 
 American Queen. Some hotel! The only rough thing 
 about it is the logs it is built out of and the sturdy life in 
 the wilds you live there is accompanied by a crude Western 
 sort of service and meals such as you might expect at the 
 Ritz. 
 
 Well, anyways, as long as I remained on the top and run 
 no greater danger than what the near-Hopi House offered 
 to my pocketbook, where I almost bought ma a tomahawk 
 and then decided a blanket was safer with her tempera- 
 ment, and a silver ring for the nurse and a rattle for 
 Junior and a string of wampum for Al Goldringer and 
 about two hundred post cards to write pleasant trip wish
 
 West Broadway 221 
 
 you were with us on. Well, so long as I did this and hung 
 around and watched the professional Indians shimmy for 
 the tourists after supper, and looked at the canyon every 
 once in a while to make sure it was really the way it is 
 and that I hadn't dreamed it why, as I say, I was all 
 right and perfectly comfortable. 
 
 Things were going nicely in every way. We had seen 
 the Peterkins, who were camping, of course, and Alma 
 told us how the bulls had come by the camp in the big 
 car and seen our hound and stopped, and how she said 
 yes, we had gone on by to Los Angeles two days ago, but 
 lost the dog and they had fallen for it. So everything was 
 fine. 
 
 But could I leave well enough alone? Answer: I am 
 a woman an admittedly womanly woman. And so of 
 course I had to go and get mixed up with those darn 
 scenery-going mules. 
 
 Now the rim of the Grand Canyon is not all there is to 
 it not by any means. There is the below part, and the 
 average, sane tourist enjoys looking at it and gets a lot of 
 satisfaction out of admiring its beauties the brown snake 
 at the bottom which they tell you is the Colorado River, 
 the Temple of Isis where they get the ice from, the Battle- 
 ship which you can see as such if you got a marine imagina- 
 tion, Thor's Hammer, which looks like it might throw 
 itself any moment, and so forth. But there is always a 
 mad minority that ain't content with using opera glasses 
 or the pieces of yeggman's lead pipe that are set about 
 here and there as sort of Nature's telescopes or something, 
 and these minorities have a craving to go down and mingle 
 with the scenery instead of merely looking at it from a 
 respectable distance. 
 
 Actually it is the truth that the big and most debated 
 question out there is will we go down the trail or will we
 
 222 West Broadway 
 
 not go down the trail? All over the place you will hear 
 lines of talk like this being pulled perfectly seriously. 
 
 "I'm crazy to go down, but I'm afraid for my heart. 
 My doctor has told me I got to be awful careful." 
 
 "Oh, nonsense! I ain't a bit afraid, but I'm not sup- 
 posed to do any riding." 
 
 "I'd go down in a minute if only I'd thought to bring 
 my riding clothes. What's that? You can hire them from 
 the hotel? Oh, but I'm sure they would never have any 
 to fit me." 
 
 And a lot of bunk like that. The truth is, you are kind 
 of ashamed not to go down and at the same time scared to 
 death of going. Which to do, go down or stay up, eats 
 into your bean. It's a big question. 
 
 "Don't you want to go down?" says Jim with a touch 
 of scorn that hit me right on the raw vanity. Of course 
 I wasn't scared. That wasn't why I had been hanging 
 back. I wasn't scared for myself, but I couldn^t help 
 thinking of my duty to my baby and my public. 
 
 "Sure, I want to go down!" I says with a sort of forced 
 gayety that I hoped looked natural, but which probably 
 looked it the way a corpse does. ' ' Sure, I want to go down ! 
 Leave us go over and talk to the mule clerk about it." 
 
 This was in the late afternoon, see, and they date you upi 
 in advance. And when we got to the desk who would be 
 there but a charming young widow that I had been 
 noticing Jim noticing, and she had been so far the only 
 drawback to the canyon. And now it seems she was going 
 down and that she and him had already spoken! So he 
 introduced me. 
 
 "Meet my wife, Mrs. Miller," says Jim. "Shake hands 
 with Mrs. Miller, Marie." 
 
 "So pleased to meet you!" says this blond cat. "I 
 think your husband is such a nice man!"
 
 West Broadway 223 
 
 "That's what strangers always say of him/' I says very 
 cool. "Are you going down into the canyon?" 
 
 "Yes, to-morrow," says Mrs. Kitty Miller, "and I'm 
 scared almost to death. I hope there will be a strong, 
 brave man in the party." 
 
 And she give Jim a clinging-ivy glance and the poor fish 
 swelled out his chest under it the way they do. Then she 
 slid off and left us exposed to the humor of the mule clerk. 
 
 "How about a little death daring for to-morrow?" says 
 Jim, trying to hide his fears under a bright exterior and 
 I devoutly hoping the party was all made up and no mules 
 left for us. But no such luck! 
 
 "Sure!" says the clerk. "Hermit or Bright Angel?" 
 
 "Which is the best trail?" says Jim. 
 
 "Well, the Hermit is sixteen dollars a head and the 
 Bright Angel is five, ' ' says the clerk. 
 
 "Gimme three Bright Angels," says Jim. "I'd rather 
 be scared to death for five dollars than for sixteen." 
 
 "Is it really awfully dangerous?" I says, just for the 
 comfort of having him contradict me. 
 
 "Not a bit!" says the mule clerk. "We haven't kiUed 
 anybody now for over three weeks!" 
 
 "Huh!" I snorted. "The time limit must just about be 
 up by now!" 
 
 And then I walked away, because I seen the widow sail- 
 ing up, and I left Jim have her, because interfering never 
 does any good during these temporary aberrations, which 
 occur in all normal families ; and anyways, I wanted to go 
 and get a good look at the beginning of that trail all by 
 myself. 
 
 Well, when I stood there and looked down it I see at once 
 why it was named the Bright Angel. It was called so be- 
 cause that was undoubtedly what the first man that went 
 down it saw when he woke up. I give one good look at
 
 224 West Broadway 
 
 it and then went right back to the hotel and give the mule 
 clerk some further instructions about my mule. 
 
 "I want a good steady family mule," I explained to him. 
 "One which has made the trip often not more than 
 eleven or less than thirteen times," I says. "And for 
 preference one that has just finished its latest trip," I says, 
 "so it will be too tired to feel gay, yet not so depressed as 
 to be considering suicide. In other words, I want him to 
 be just right. Not that I'm at all afraid," I says. "But 
 I got my public to consider." 
 
 "All right," says the mule clerk. "What flo ,you 
 weigh?" 
 
 "A hundred and thirty," I says. 
 
 "Then we'll give you Napoleon," says the brave mule- 
 teer, or whatever his official name is. 
 
 And then I went off kind of worried, because his asking 
 my weight was sort of a bad sign, and I wondered how 
 much the average person lost by the end of the trip. But 
 I wasn't through with my precautions not by a darned 
 sight ! 
 
 The next thing I done was to get the head waiter to let 
 me have two nice red juicy apples the handsomest, tasti- 
 est fancy table apples, they was. Not that I believe in 
 bribery, but still it does a person no harm to have a friend 
 in the right quarter in time of need, so I took the apples 
 over to the stable and had a quiet personal interview with 
 my mule. I felt it would be a good thing for me in the 
 morning if we had met before and he had got a pleasant 
 impression of me. So I got one of the mule punchers in 
 charge to show me which was Nap and then I and he had 
 a little heart-to-heart talk, during which I slipped him the 
 apples in a unobtrusive way so as not to hurt his finer 
 feelings or make him feel that I was trying to buy his 
 interest. 
 
 "Mule," I says to him when sure that we was alone at
 
 West Broadway 225 
 
 last "mule, I want to talk to you as two equals you 
 and me. I know you ain't a parent, but I am; and just 
 because you are a natural-born bachelor is no reason why 
 you can't respect a mother's wishes. I'm going to depend 
 on you, Nap, to take me down and bring me back whole, 
 and I hope you are going to act like a good sound American 
 he mule and treat me like a gentleman and not pull any 
 of the rough stuff that your famous namesake was noted 
 for with women." 
 
 And then when I hoped I had impressed this on him 
 thoroughly but was by no means sure I had, for all he eat 
 both apples without remark, I left him to see could I buy 
 me a couple of rabbits left hind feet in the Hopi House 
 and also if possible a pair of handcuffs to cuff my feet to- 
 gether under the mule's belly. But was in both cases 
 unfortunately out of luck. So I bought a pin and a In- 
 dian vase tnat looked like some Indian had sat on it while 
 it was still soft, instead, because I never could get out of 
 that place without spending some money. And then I felt 
 better. It's a funny thing, but whenever I am kind of 
 tired and nervous if I spend a little money I feel better 
 right away. 
 
 But just the same I didn't sleep very good that night. 
 The canyon sat on my chest like a welsh rabbit, if you get 
 the idea, and I kept tossing around and wondering in the 
 wild way a person does in the dark of a sleepless night 
 whatever possessed me to say I would do such a thing. 
 But I wasn 't as glad when morning come as a person gen- 
 erally is after not being able to sleep. But of course there 
 was no getting away from morning, and so when heavily 
 urged by Jim I got up finally and put on my riding clothes 
 which I had up to now swaggered around in them a good 
 deal. And then I added my false and hollow cheerfulness 
 to his ditto and we went down to breakfast, which I ate
 
 226 West Broadway 
 
 recklessly because of realizing it might be my last meal 
 on earth. 
 
 Well, then we went out and got our tickets off the cashier 
 and was politely requested to pay for them in advance. 
 When the trip was over I realized why. It is because they 
 would rather be sure of the cash than be sued for dam- 
 ages, including loss of use of a person's seating capacity, 
 if you get me. 
 
 Well anyways, we got and paid for those tickets to 
 eternity, and pretty soon Tom Westman come up, because 
 he was determined to die with us, and he and Jim actually 
 pretended they was looking forward to it. Well, looking 
 forward is what you have to do. There is no use looking 
 back, once you get started on the blame trip. 
 
 By now the mule clerk had put on a cap like a ship's 
 first officer and stood at the gangway to the corral with a 
 women-and-children-first expression on his face, and com- 
 menced to shove us ruthlessly over to where the mules was 
 waiting with a bored expression on their faces, which was, 
 however, no comfort to me. I give the crowd the once- 
 over and then I got at least one satisfaction. That nasty 
 widow, Mrs. Miller, had on a costume which looked like 
 something the plumber had left the last time he fixed the 
 leak in the boiler. Also, there was Alma in what his 
 helper had left, and a fat middle-aged Irishwoman, 
 Lady Bridget Something, who was all dressed up in the 
 plumber's grandfather's outfit and protesting a lot about 
 it too. Jim had the real costume, and the other men 
 Tom, a silent fellow with an inquisitive, active camera that 
 never stopped working all day, and of all the people, 
 Mister Fixit, real name of Jones, the 1921 Colby-Droit 
 party well, they had on merely borrowed putties, being 
 by nature provided with garments that would ride astride 
 of a mule. But of all the women, I was the only one had 
 proper riding clothes, and by that I mean proper in the
 
 West Broadway 227 
 
 sense of being correct, but not too proper to be snappy. 
 
 For a moment this went to my head, and I thought gee, 
 lookit Mrs. Miller, ain't she a sight beside me? And then 
 a horrible realization come over me and I went right over 
 to the guide, a young cow-puncher by the name of Slim 
 with a pair of female pink satin garters on his sleeves 
 and hair on his chaps but none on his upper lip. 
 
 "Say, brother," I says, "don't get me wrong because 
 of these clothes. I got the costume, but I don't know the 
 part. Don't ask me to do any daring feats of muleman- 
 ship, will you?" 
 
 Well, he give me a slow, amused smile at that and 
 answered in the slow, soft way these roughnecks have. 
 
 "Say, marm," he says, "we long ago learned to know 
 that clothes don't make the rider. A guide in charge of 
 one of these parties don't fall for that mistake but once." 
 
 "Well, the fatal hour had struck, and with, I confess, 
 a beating heart I walked over to Napoleon, a sickly smile 
 of greeting on my face. But all the brute give me was a 
 glassy stare. He didn't even bow I didn't get even a 
 smile of recognition out of him, or anything. Anybody 
 would of thought we was meeting for the first time. But 
 there was nothing for it except to risk his temperament, 
 because the folks was already riding out of the corral and 
 I at least done honor to my pants by getting onto Nap 
 alone. No sooner had I done so than I was on my way. 
 I hadn't touched the reins nor made a single remark to 
 that animal beyond good morning, but off he went. 
 
 ' ' Leave the reins loose ! Don 't try to guide your mules ! ' ' 
 shouted Slim. "Leave them alone! They will bring you 
 down safe ! Leave them do it all ! " 
 
 Behind me, as we trotted out, I could hear Lady Bridget 
 complaining. 
 
 "But I must have a sidesaddle!" she was insisting. "I
 
 228 West Broadway 
 
 don't wish to ride astride. I'm perfectly accustomed to 
 an English sidesaddle!" 
 
 Can you beat it? 
 
 "No sidesaddles, marm," says Slim firmly. "This here 
 mule wouldn 't know what to make of it. Can 't you ride ? ' ' 
 
 "Of course I can ride!" says Lady Bridget. "I have 
 ridden every kind of creature all my life including camels. 
 But I always use a sidesaddle. It is the correct way to 
 ride." 
 
 "Well, I don't know what Slim answered when he was 
 told how to ride, for by now we was trotting ruthlessly 
 to our fate, the narrow top of that trail getting nearer and 
 nearer, and I quickly realized there would be no use trying 
 to persuade Nap to stop or even to hesitate. Where the 
 other mules went, there he was going, too, and I was in 
 the middle of the bunch. Nap was a social animal. He 
 liked to keep up with the crowd. Indeed, sometimes he 
 liked to try and pass them on a curve, which certainly 
 shows nerve at any rate. Also, it takes nerve on his rider's 
 part. 
 
 Closer and more fatally we come to the beginnings of 
 the Bright Angel, and never, believe me, did the canyon 
 look as deep or the walls as steep or the rim so good as at 
 the moment when the mule ahead of me just naturally 
 vanished around the first turn and mine followed without 
 hesitation. 
 
 "Oh, why did I ever leave the church f" I thought as I 
 plunged to my death over the edge of that two-foot-wide- 
 trail. Only of course I didn't plunge to it at all, but 
 rounded the corner alive and, still moving. Then we 
 rounded another corner, with Nap 's head sticking out over 
 the edge of about five thousand feet of nothingness, his 
 hoofs slipping and his differential sort of loose-sounding. 
 I hung onto the pummel and shut my eyes, leaving go 
 of the reins entirely, and now I lay me down to sleep,
 
 West Broadway 229 
 
 my country 'tis of thee flashing through my Ibrain. And 
 then I opened up again, and saw that we had stopped to 
 get our photograph taken for the home folks to remember 
 us by; and we stopped just in time, as far as I was con- 
 cerned, because Napoleon had parked himself with his 
 head and one front leg hanging over the cliff. And there 
 I sat with nothing between me and my Maker but a mule, 
 and no wonder I looked like I did in the still the photog- 
 rapher took, and it's the first time I ever had one that 
 I wasn't unwilling should be retouched. 
 
 Well, this photographer, which it seems to me he took 
 quite a risk for the money, coming down the face of the 
 cliff to get us, pulled a line of humorous talk about how 
 we was the first party ever went down and so forth, but 
 I was in no frame of mind to see humor in anything. 
 
 And when the guide, who took the whole thing with 
 the most amazing calm, says "Yup!" and the mules 
 yupped along again, I don't know did I feel relieved or 
 not. 
 
 For one thing Napoleon's wheel base was so long that 
 a part of him always hung out over the cliff on a turn, 
 and the more he done so the less I got used to it. Also, 
 he had some private quarrel with the widow's mule which 
 was just ahead, and kept biting it on the knees. Of 
 course, under any other circumstances I would of been 
 glad, but as it was, for all our sakes I wished he would 
 lay off until they got home to the barn. 
 
 The widow kind of liked it, though she kept giving little 
 professional squeals of fright and appealing to the great 
 strong men to help her. Help her, my eye! A mule 
 couldn't scare that female. But he could me. Especially 
 when we rested and Napoleon would lean deliberately way 
 over the edge to see was there any pills on the quinine 
 bushes that grew almost out of his reach.
 
 230 West Broadway 
 
 After a few turns, Lady Bridget, the camel rider, give 
 a shriek. 
 
 "I've got to get off and walk!" she says. "I must get 
 off and walk!" 
 
 "Ho!" says Slim, and we hoed while he helped her 
 down. 
 
 "The mule won't guide," says Lady Bridget. "And 
 I'm not afraid it's all this miserable saddle. I'd be all 
 right on an English saddle." 
 
 "Don't try to guide your mule!" says Slim as patient 
 as a kindergarten teacher. "I told you not to try to 
 guide him. Just let the reins lie loose. You've been 
 holding up the whole party by keeping your reins tight 
 well, all right, walk then!" 
 
 And we commenced going along down slowly, Lady 
 Bridget ahead of the party and prolonging the agony for 
 all the rest of us, but not giving a darn so long as she 
 had her own way. 
 
 "Say, Slim," I yelled as Nap for the third time tried 
 to brush me off on a convenient bush, showing no grati- 
 tude for past favors like most bribe takers "say, Slim, 
 how much further to the halfway house?" 
 
 1 ' About three miles ! " he yells back. ' ' Getting scared 1 ' ' 
 
 "Oh, no, I am happy as a bird!" I says, and just to 
 show how brave I was I commenced singing that well- 
 known and appropriate ballad: 
 
 There's a long, long trail a-winding 
 I'm going to see it in my dreams! 
 
 "I want to get back on my mule!" called Lady Bridget. 
 And we got her back somehow no easy job it was, either. 
 And she pulled the reins up tight again. 
 
 "Don't do that!" yelled Slim. 
 
 "It's the proper way to ride!" retorted Lady Bridget
 
 West Broadway 231 
 
 firmly. "Young man, I have ridden all my life and I 
 ought to know!" 
 
 "Well, do you see that heap of stones?" says Slim 
 grimly pointing to one the trail menders had left. "Well, 
 that's where we buried a cow-puncher that tried to guide 
 a mule." 
 
 "My word!" said Lady Bridget, impressed for the 
 moment. "Why didn't you bring the poor fellow out and 
 bury him properly in the cemetery?" 
 
 ' ' Oh, we never pack 'em out when they die down here, ' ' 
 says Slim carelessly. "We just bury 'em where they 
 fall!" 
 
 "Tut, tut!" says Her Ladyship over and over again, 
 full of concern. But I noticed she left her mule be after 
 that. 
 
 Well, just as I had found out how to stick onto Nap, 
 which was by holding the pummel tight with both hands, 
 they made us get off and walk. Then I seen why the 
 mules slipped so. In fact I also slipped, and there was 
 nothing to hang on to. Then we got mounted again, and 
 I suppose we went through a lot of handsome scenery, 
 but believe me, the finest part of it to me was a couple 
 of brass beds out in the yard at the halfway house. Also 
 a beautiful bubbling spring down there and a handsome 
 dipper to get cold drinking water out of it with. 
 
 Well, after a few minutes of personal liberty that 
 heartless cuss Slim herded us onto the mules again and 
 cut us a new lot of switches. Although why in heaven's 
 name them guides give you switches for them mules when 
 brakes is what you most desire is more than I can say. 
 And when we was back in the saddle, which by now felt 
 exactly the way a new shoe does when you put it on 
 again in the morning after the first blister has broke, we 
 set off over the misleading plateau, all unsuspecting the
 
 232 West Broadway 
 
 Devil's Corkscrew that lay ahead, Jim and Tom actually 
 enjoying it, and I and Alma in silent misery. 
 
 From now on the party was only delayed now and then 
 to pick up the camera fiend, whose camera would get out 
 of control and stop to take a picture, or to let Lady 
 Bridget walk, or demonstrate the way to ride sidesaddle, 
 because she was that kind of a nature. She had started 
 out to ride side, and believe me, she actually ended by 
 doing it ! 
 
 And after we had gone down to the river over a abso- 
 lutely impassable place that you couldn't go over without 
 losing your life but did, why we forded three clear-as- 
 crystal streams to the muddy Colorado River, and at length 
 had a chance to admire the grandeur of the scenery and 
 also the grand box luncheon. 
 
 There is no use talking, you can't beat the Grand 
 Canyon. It is the only seventh wonder of the world that 
 is absolutely sure to be better than represented. To me, 
 sitting there on the fine white sand of the river's edge 
 and aching all over, it still seemed the gigantic symbol of 
 our national spirit a perfect monument to our national 
 ideals, and I got an endure-forever feeling out of it that 
 neither I or the dictionary have words to express, but 
 that must be in the heart of every native son that sees 
 the place, and that like understanding can be mutually 
 felt without having to be put down in black and white. 
 
 Well, anyways, going up the Bright Angel a person is 
 not so much scared any more, and can look at the views. 
 Also you are slanting forward instead of slanting back- 
 ward in your saddle. We was all more peaceable going 
 up, and sort of drawn close by our mutual dangerous 
 experience, and real friendly, although previously perfect 
 strangers, and this went even for the camera fiend. But 
 tired? I'll tell the world! Near the top Jim, who was 
 riding behind me, leaned over real kind and tender.
 
 West Broadway 233 
 
 "How does the top look to you, old dear?" he says. 
 
 "Well," says I, "I always expected to go to heaven, 
 but I never thought I'd do it on a mule." 
 
 Pa and Ma Peterkin had come a timid ways down the 
 trail to meet us, but when we actually got on the rim 
 again I didn't stop to brag or for any conversation either. 
 I had several personal things to attend to, not having 
 ridden before in some months, and up in our room at 
 the hotel Jim and I had a swell time comparing our 
 wounds. 
 
 I personally myself felt like I had been hung over a 
 picket fence and walloped with a tent pole. You see, 
 during the ride you hold onto your pummel and after the 
 ride the impulse is to hold onto your seating capacity. 
 But in spite of mere passing bodily ailments, my soul felt 
 well exercised and strong, and I thought with a big sensa- 
 tion of pride and superiority of the poor boobs that would 
 fall for that ride to-morrow. 
 
 "I don't care if I am a little sore it was great!" says 
 Jim from the depths of a warm bath. "I wouldn't of 
 missed the Bright Angel Trail for anything, would you?" 
 
 "I would not!" I says truthfully. "Because, believe 
 me, if I had missed it ever so slightly, kid, I wouldn't be 
 here now!"
 
 XVI 
 
 A COUPLE of years ago Jim and I was resting, and 
 one night when we didn't have anything else to do 
 we went to see a opera called Le Propheteer. It was sung 
 in some foreign language, but we could tell what it was 
 about, all right, because a fat man with nothing on but a 
 shirt come out and put up a awful holler, and judging by 
 the hand he got for it it was a complaint about how the 
 Propheteer had taken everything but the shirt away from 
 him, and the audience was in thorough sympathy. And if 
 that was not a true understanding of the piece, why then it 
 took its name from the price of the seats. 
 
 Well, anyways, what I am driving at is that this opera 
 had one set in it that looked a whole lot like the country 
 we commenced to get into shortly after we left the Grand 
 Canyon big, square, canvas-covered-looking mountains 
 and barren rocky plains. In other words, the kind of place 
 the stage manager thinks locusts and wild honey grows 
 in. And I'll say I had an awful fluttery feeling in my 
 middle, because the desert, which had been more or less 
 hanging over us the whole trip like an investigation over 
 a Tammany administration or a sword over a Damocles, 
 whatever it was, had now come to be a reality instead. 
 
 A night in a tiny little town on the beginnings of the 
 real rough country, but with private tiled baths as per 
 usual, and a dead robber lying where the sheriff had shot 
 him down, which was luckily at the undertaker's shop, 
 where he had been caught in the act of breaking in. did 
 nothing to calm my fears; the more so as we had a blow- 
 out and got into town at midnight, which is a spooky hour, 
 234
 
 West Broadway 235 
 
 anyways. But Jim says don't be a fool, his ghost can't 
 walk yet, because this is where you turn back your watch 
 one hour and it is only eleven in this burg. 
 
 Well, I want to say one thing about this town we was 
 in and all these other little railroad towns out in the far 
 places, and that is, I wish Trotzky, Lenine and our parlor 
 pinks could see just once the way our poor downtrodden 
 railroad workers live in them, with private baths in a 
 waterless country where it has to be brought for hundreds 
 of miles, and food at ten to fifty cents a portion that is 
 too good to set before a king and almost suitable for a 
 chorus girl 's supper ! And how these poor toilers own their 
 own homes along the line a house and three or four acres 
 and often a share in a ranch, too, with real-estate values 
 going up every month. 
 
 Everybody out in these parts is at one and the same 
 time a worker, a capitalist and a bourgeoisie literally 
 everybody. Why, even most of the Mexis that work on 
 the roads is landholders! It does seem strange to me 
 that when the newspaper editors and the highbrows start 
 talking about the workers of America no mention is ever 
 made of the fact that so much of the country lives under 
 circumstances as per see above. I just don't understand 
 the omission. You would think that they would first of 
 all mention these remarkable truths; but no, they love to 
 wring agony out of some exception that they take as prov- 
 ing a standard instead of proving the rule. But leave me 
 go on record as stating the true fact that if modern plumb- 
 ing is, as I believe it to be, a fair gauge of industrial health, 
 this country is from coast to coast in a remarkably sanitary 
 condition. City papers please copy. 
 
 Well, anyways oh, boy, wasn't it warm when we come 
 over the naked mountains to Peach Springs, and Lord 
 knows why they call it that when there is neither a peach 
 or a spring in sight and water for your radiator is twenty-
 
 236 West Broadway 
 
 five cents! And then through a burning land where the 
 sun is busy fusing the rocks under the barren earth into 
 gold and silver, to Kingman. 
 
 Of course I like to look decent and all that, and I had 
 washed the night before, and only wore my waist two days, 
 but when I got the first breath of the old desert, believe me, 
 I just resigned all pretending to keep my make-up on, and 
 when a woman which is accustomed to wearing it in all 
 weather leaves her face run around undressed, without 
 even a kimono of powder on it, you may know conditions is 
 unusual, and that I had by now become a thorough tourist. 
 At least I thought I had until I saw the four flivvers. 
 
 We was coming over a bed of volcano cinders, Tom 
 driving and I and Jim busily and openly rubbing our sun- 
 burned noses with cold cream to keep them from getting 
 any worse, although we felt that worse was really impos- 
 sible, because we now knew how a lobster feels when he is 
 boiled alive. And we was also feeling that now we was 
 completely demoralized and to hell with appearances we 
 must have our comfort and that we had descended to the 
 lowest depths of personal carelessness, when, as I say, we 
 saw the four flivvers ahead, and learned that no matter 
 how low a Colby-Droit outfit could sink, the inhabitants of 
 flivvers could go them one better, and again I had to in a 
 way envy them because of this. 
 
 You see, the further out in the West you get the longer 
 the stretches are between places, and so a sort of mutual-aid 
 society springs up among the camping tourists. They get 
 to traveling together in groups of two to even six or eight 
 cars, so that if anything happens to one bus, why the others 
 all get out and help. Which is a fine thing, especially fifty 
 miles from the nearest garage. 
 
 Well, these four flivvers ahead of us was such a mutual- 
 benefit volunteer society, and just as we come over the 
 ridge the first one got stuck in the sand. Bight away I
 
 West Broadway 237 
 
 learned what comfort and back to Nature was, because in 
 another moment there was a nightgown party in full 
 swing in the middle of the public road. From every car 
 boiled out two or three women in nightgowns carrying axes 
 or hatchets and men in undershirts and pants and nothing 
 else, except also a weapon. I'll tell the world it was some 
 sight, and at first we thought a private war had been 
 declared, but the brush was all that they attacked, and 
 did it with a right good will, with the thermometer at 
 no kidding one hundred and ten above zero. 
 
 "Well," says Jim as we passed them, there is advantages 
 in being unknown to fame! Gee, I'd like to wear pa- 
 jamas ! ' ' 
 
 "Ain't it strange to see people acting natural?" I says. 
 And the bunch having refused any help from us, we went 
 on our way, and by noon, at one hundred and fifteen above 
 in the shade, we come into Kingman, a big mining town 
 on the far edge of Arizona, and I want to make a few re- 
 marks about it. I don't know did anything or any place 
 give me a stronger sense of how closely linked up this 
 vast country really is, for all it is spread over such a lot 
 of ground. 
 
 We come into it out of valleys where the heat haze floated 
 like a veil between the bleak mountains-country that looked 
 like it had nothing in it. But, say, it has gold and silver 
 and copper and even diamonds in it ! Only you would 
 never guess it from the outside, and believe me, the man 
 who ate the first lobster had nothing on the bravery of the 
 first prospectors who thought there might be something 
 worth having in those mountains, and went out and looked 
 and found they was right. And you also got to hand it 
 to the fellows who are out there right now working those 
 mines. I don't care how many modern machines and so 
 forth they have, they are a brave and strong-hearted race. 
 It takes a he man to do a job out there yet.
 
 238 West Broadway 
 
 When you leave Kingman you get into even more desert 
 country. But Kingman itself is in hourly touch with Wall 
 Street, New York. Why, when I went into the big cool 
 cavern of the hotel there I had forgotten there was a 
 Wall Street ! Never having done any gambling in it, but 
 always buying outright and preferably Liberty Bonds, at 
 that, why, 111 say I was never so interested in that well- 
 known street as I was while in the Kingman hotel. 
 
 There in the lobby was a big blackboard with a feller 
 reading a ticker and chalking up prices, and a bunch of 
 others hanging around watching just like a New York 
 broker 's office. The only thing different was that in King- 
 man they had a long counter with generous specimens of 
 the actual ore out of the actual mines, whereas in New 
 York, well, you know, it's like choosing a candidate because 
 you heard he was a blond. Still it gave me a thrill and a 
 real we-are-together feeling to get that actual touch of the 
 big town way out here on the desert. And it sure seemed 
 strange, too, to think that all this had to be done before we 
 could have money for the banks. A person walking into 
 a big Fifth Avenue bank and asking the bird in the gilded 
 cage for some kale, and getting it in fresh green bank notes 
 don't often think of the boys that dig out the actual gold. 
 No, nor do the ones who buy a vanity or a cigarette case, 
 either. All they think of is to kick about the price. I, 
 however, for one, will never forget that brave little city of 
 people who were wresting riches out of the jealous earth. 
 Nor will I ever forget the perfect apple pie I had at lunch- 
 eon there, either, which was good in itself, but when I had 
 them a-la-mode it, oh, boy ! 
 
 Well, I got one thing against that town, however, and 
 that was the short cut which a garage guardian told us to 
 take by way of Oatman, where not oatmeal but gold ore 
 comes from, and Goldroad, where believe me the roads 
 may be made of gold, but if so it is still in the rough
 
 West Broadway 239 
 
 in other words nine-tenths is of worthless rock of no value 
 except to the tire and spring manufacturers. Heaven is 
 also advertised as being paved with gold, but if it is paved 
 with gold in the same way as Goldroad, Arizona, believe me, 
 I would rather go to the other place and ride over good 
 intentions. However, in a way it was interesting. The 
 towns looked exactly like they had been put up for a set 
 and then just left to the wind and weather to pose in after 
 the picture was made. I had to keep my mind tight onto 
 the fact that these strange, bleak mountains were full of 
 kale and berries to keep from being depressed by the fact 
 that there was no other growth on them, because this part 
 of the country is more interesting than beautiful while you 
 are in among it. 
 
 But when we ferried the Colorado River and come in 
 towards Needles, past Indian hogans, and I suppose they 
 make the Indians live in them as a just punishment for 
 having started the bead-necklace epidemic well, anyways, 
 after we crossed the Colorado River and looked back at 
 those black mountains, behold in the sunset the gold was 
 shining clear through them! They were no longer dark 
 and threatening, but bright, burnished yellow, alluring, 
 dazzling and showing for a few moments the full measure 
 of their promise. Even the bowl of Oraibi Valley was not 
 so golden as those towering peaks in the sunset, and I 
 thought by heaven ain't that strange, here the very min- 
 ute we set wheel base on California soil, or rather sand, 
 the world turns golden, just like the ordinarily unreliable 
 real-estaters say. And beautiful oasis that Needles turned 
 out to be, with palm trees and green grass and buganvilla 
 and everything. I could not look at it while the light was 
 on those mountains. I felt truly what the old poet in the 
 Bible meant when he talked about lift up mine eyes unto 
 the hills from whence cometh my strength. Only in this 
 it was not only a spiritual beauty that a person could
 
 240 West Broadway 
 
 get out of the hills, but something mighty substantial as 
 well, which is true of a lot of American scenery. 
 
 Well, at the commencement of this trip I had got a pretty 
 fair picture in my mind of what the desert the well- 
 known Moe Harvey was going to be like. I may not of 
 started out in life with a whole lot of education, but I got a 
 little rubbed off onto me in Public School Number Six, and 
 some of it come off the geography book. So I knew that the 
 prohibitionist symbol was a product of the desert, the same 
 as the Republican was the product of Africa and the Demo- 
 cratic the product of their own state of mind. Not that I 
 seriously expected to see many camels on the Moe Harvey, 
 because I supposed they was probably mostly killed off 
 by now the same as the buffalo. But I did think I might 
 see one or two maybe, on the distant sand dunes. 
 
 Also I expected sand. I don't mean bushes sage and 
 mesquite and Russian thistle and cactus, but regular sand 
 like the beach, only more so, and how the underslung, four- 
 thousand-lb. Colby was going through it I didn't know. 
 When the Peterkins come into town shortly after dark I 
 envied them their bus, even though they had to put it in 
 the hospital directly and then commence a several days' 
 wait hanging around to find out the result of the operation. 
 When they would again be ready to go on they would 
 have a cinch, while with us well, all I could hope was 
 that some friendly prospector would come prospecting 
 along and brighten our prospects with a little water be- 
 fore we died of thirst up to our hubs in the burning knife 
 cleaner. 
 
 When I first left home I also expected maybe we would 
 see a few American Arabs and maybe see a real original 
 shimmy in the cool shade of some grove of palm-leaf fans 
 on a oasis. I expected I would see skeletons both human 
 and animal scattered along the toilsome way, little knowing 
 at the time that the only skeletons we would spot was
 
 West Broadway 241 
 
 skeletons of canned peaches and the empty, dying bodies 
 of pop bottles. As for the Arabs and shimmies well, we 
 had to hit the coast for that, and by "coast" I mean Bar- 
 bary, San Francisco, and the old town isn 't as dead as they 
 let on. I afterward spent long minutes watching just that 
 stuff. California minutes are longer than Eastern minutes, 
 you know bigger minutes watch 'em grow! 
 
 Well, anyways, these are a few of the terrors and 
 pleasures which I had fully expected to find on Moe 's reser- 
 vation, and when we started out from Needles next day 
 after saying to the Peterkins good-by we will see you in 
 Los Angeles, I hope your carburetor is better soon, why of 
 course we expected to have in plain Esperanto a hellofa 
 time, and for a few miles out our fears come true. And 
 after that there was a paved road. 
 
 Just give a look at that sentence, will you, and leave it 
 digest ! And when it has sunk in thoroughly I will admit 
 that the road had also sunk in in spots, or rather not so 
 much sunk in as been sanded over by sand storms. Don't 
 get away with the idea that the going was perfect, because 
 it was not. Every now and then, but more often now, 
 the sand would be well blown over by the wind, and get- 
 ting the car through this was like digging little Arthur out 
 from under the nice sand castle that has fallen on him, and 
 doing it with a hairpin. But the big thing to remember 
 is that across that vast desert, which is a real genuine 
 desert all right, even if there are no camels on it and it 
 has stuff growing over most of it, the big thing is that 
 there should be a road of any kind, much less a paved one ! 
 We were in California now, and I guess the Southern Cali- 
 fornia Automobile Club meant we should know it. And 
 we sure did. They tried to work a miracle, and they have 
 pretty near done it. 
 
 But outside of this streak of civilization the desert was 
 as deserted as you please. Even the prairie dogs
 
 242 West Broadway 
 
 laid down on the job. Time hangs waiting over this 
 desert like a veil that may some day be lifted. I personally 
 myself hope not. That is, not all of it. I got to hand it 
 to the dry farmers who are blossoming it like the rose. But 
 oh, I want a lot of it left barren and untouched except for 
 a good road, just the way it is ! I want those mountains on 
 either hand to go on in an eternal demonstration of how 
 they were since the flood receded, so that people, including 
 myself, can go there and drink in the air of big untamed 
 spaces and grow strong-hearted doing it. I want to keep 
 untouched the long valleys filled with faint colors and 
 the living ghosts of dead ages, where nothing built by man 
 stands to remind a person of how very little man knows, 
 and where the soul can go out through the eyes and grow 
 big wandering down this wide corner of the virgin world. 
 And a lot of queer things like that that may be slush but 
 are true and important. 
 
 There are two kinds of people who cross the desert. The 
 ones who immediately fall for it and never recover, and 
 the ones who never fall for it and want to get off of it im- 
 mediately. And these two classes hold each other in equal 
 contempt. 
 
 As was to be expected in man and wife, we took sides, 
 I and Jim, just naturally falling under these two heads, 
 he on the con and I on the pro side. To say he hated that 
 desert is to put it into the only language fit for a lady to 
 use, and I'll tell the world he did not let it go at any 
 such mild expression. 
 
 "Jim Smith, I don't see how you can feel that way 
 about it ! " I says as we skimmed along the edge of a brown 
 mesa with a violet valley stretching out below. "Why 
 you got no sensitiveness at all ! Now when I get home I am 
 going to be lonesome for this desert. ' ' 
 
 "Sensitive?" says Jim, pointing at a huge old volcano 
 crater as black as ink with also inklike bowlders laying all
 
 West Broadway 243 
 
 around it for miles. "Sensitive? Lonesome for that? 
 Say, listen, kid, when I get lonesome for the Moe Harvey 
 desert at home I'm gonner put on my smoked glasses, go 
 down in the cellar and get the furnace man to shake me 
 around on the cinder shaker while I throw lumps of coal 
 around and holler 'Ah, Moe Harvey!' ' 
 
 Which is all the vision some people have got ! 
 
 Tom didn't say much, but I got a feeling he sort of 
 sided with Jim. I suppose it kind of reminded Tom of the 
 lower East Side, it was so different. But I felt never mind 
 whether he likes it or not, he is seeing it, and the mere 
 size of it will register in his mind if nothing else does, 
 along with the other eyefuls of IT. S. A. units that he has 
 now been for weeks going across, and it will impress him, 
 whether he knows it or not. And just while I was thinking 
 this in the late afternoon, and we still on the desert east 
 of Barstow, my mind all at ease and yet feeling a little 
 sad, because with any kind of luck to-morrow would be our 
 last day, and then we would be in California and I got 
 by now a sort of feeling like I could go on driving in the 
 Colby forever with no amen. The sort of feeling you get 
 when you have been driving a car for hours and hours. 
 You get a kind of second wind. Your hands are glued 
 to the wheel, your feet are frozen to the pedals with fa- 
 tigue ; you feel like you had grown to the seat yet you get 
 a strange sort of second strength that makes you want to 
 keep on and on and then some. 
 
 Well, I was having this same sensation about our jour- 
 ney, only more in my brain than in my body, when all at 
 once I looked back and saw a red car almost a mile away, 
 but traveling fast and gaining on us every minute. Now 
 I had just naturally got to have a hateful, suspicious feel- 
 ing towards every red car that come into sight, but also 
 I had come to realize that as a rule it was a false alarm, 
 and so when this far-distant one crawled over the edge of
 
 244 West Broadway 
 
 the pass and started down the trail toward us I says to 
 myself, now don't be a fool. It is probably only two old 
 maids from Oshkosh or a bride and groom from Florida 
 touring out here where it is cooler. Tom was driving and 
 I sitting next to him, with Jim and Welcome in back. 
 
 Ahead of us, lay, if not camels, at least a long rolling 
 series of camel 's-hump hills with deep washes and sandy 
 going in between. Not a building of any kind or even 
 another tourist had been in sight for over an hour when 
 I spotted that red bus. But instead of mentioning it I 
 just turned my head back. 
 
 "Tom," I says, "if you don't step on her a little I ex- 
 pect we are going to sleep in the open." 
 
 "And if I step on her too much on this stretch we are 
 going to be mere canyon fodder, ' ' says Tom. 
 
 "It's a good joke I was always fond of it," I says. 
 "But I'd like to get to Barstow to-night, just the same." 
 
 I don't know what I hoped for out of Barstow, but I 
 had a feeling we might be safer there. I had a uneasy 
 hunch that the bus might prove our finish this time. And 
 don't tell me woman's intuition is always pure nervous 
 imagination, because in another minute Jim, who had been 
 dozing but was woke up by our talk, stirred around to 
 change his position among the uneasy bags and curse be- 
 cause the golf clubs had hit him a wallop, and in doing so 
 took a slant through the place where the back window in 
 the top had been before the isinglass fell out. 
 
 ' ' Beat it ! " he yells. ' ' There are those cops ! ' ' 
 
 "Are you sure?" I says. 
 
 "Oy, gevalt!" says Tom, very low-voiced, but from his 
 heart. 
 
 "Sure I'm sure!" says Jim, watching still. "And be- 
 lieve me, they are getting nearer every second! Step on 
 her, Tom, you poor fish, step on her!" 
 
 "What's the use?" says Tom, but stepping on her just
 
 West Broadway 245 
 
 the same, and at that minute the red car commenced honk- 
 ing for us to stop. 
 
 But we didn't not then. Tom hunched down at the 
 wheel and opened her up wide, me driving with him in 
 spirit, every nerve working overtime and not daring to 
 look back. But a few hundred feet was all that this lasted. 
 When the bulls found that honking was no good they got 
 earnest, and suddenly the vast silence was broken by a 
 revolver shot. 
 
 " It 's no good bucking that ! ' ' says Tom grimly, sluing 
 in the sand to an abrupt stop. "The jig is up, I guess!'' 
 
 And at that minute Jim got to his feet with a yell. 
 
 "Look, look!" he hollered. 
 
 With my knees sort of gone to jelly, I climbed out of 
 the front seat to see, expecting murder at the very least. 
 But what I seen was more of a shock yet. 
 
 The red car had stopped twenty feet behind us, and it 
 was our red car all right, and it had the same two fellers in 
 it all right, the big one with the red face and the little 
 one with the spinach. This small bird was the driver, and 
 the other one was standing up in the car and he was 
 shooting. Shooting right at me! Shooting a perfectly 
 good motion-picture camera! 
 
 "Hold that on the step !" he yelled as I started to move. 
 "Keep that surprise! Hold it! Hold it twenty-four, 
 twenty-five, twenty-six that'll do, thanks! Much obliged!" 
 
 And then he left off grinding and got out of the car, 
 coming forward and mopping his face with a big silk hand- 
 kerchief, while I just stood numb with surprise. 
 
 "Well, Miss La Tour, you folks sure have given us some 
 chase!" said he. "But believe me, we got footage of you 
 that you are going to like ! That narrow escape on the Ra- 
 ton is a bear ! Released yesterday, it was, and Al wired us 
 that it went over big!" 
 
 "Who and what are you?" I says weakly.
 
 246 West Broadway 
 
 "Yes, who?*' says Jim. 
 
 "Henry Lock!" says the big bird. "Gonner shoot your 
 Shakspere script for you, Miss La Tour. And this is 
 Mr. Williams, my driver. Pleased to make your acquain- 
 tance!" 
 
 "Then you're not a bull?" says Jim, sort of feebly. 
 
 "Not by any means!" says Mr. Lock, looking at me 
 queerly. 
 
 "And you never were a cop?" I says, hardly able to 
 believe my own ears. 
 
 "Never!" says he. 
 
 "Then meet my friend Mr. my chauffeur," I says, re- 
 lievedly introducing Tom. 
 
 ' ' Pleased to meetcher, ' ' says Lock. ' ' Say, Miss La Tour, 
 now we have caught up, we might as well work together on 
 the finish of this stuff, eh?" 
 
 "What do you mean?" I says. "Ill say there is an ex- 
 planation coming to me ! ' ' 
 
 "Well, no harm to tell it now, I guess," says Mr. Lock. 
 "You see, Mr. Goldringer thought that as long as he was 
 paying your expenses out on this trip he might as well 
 get something out of it. It was using up a month of 
 your time and a lot of his money, but he knew you had 
 objected strongly to any publicity on the trip, so he got 
 the idea of getting some pictures of you driving to the 
 coast to make Borneo and Juliet, or the Secret Marriage, 
 as I believe the screen version is to be called." 
 
 ' ' So you he they oh, it 's a outrage ! " I gasped. ' ' So 
 you been sneaking around making pictorial news out of 
 me and releasing the stuff without my consent!" 
 
 " 'Sneaking around' is hardly the word," says Lock. 
 "You led us the hottest chase I ever see! And, yes, the 
 stuff has been released in the news pictures and you won't 
 be sorry. Why, the first one they showed got the biggest 
 hand since the shots of Karl Westman being deported!"
 
 West Broadway 247 
 
 No kidding, wasn't that a bomb? I'll allow it was I 
 When it, as you might say, exploded in our midst the shock 
 left us helpless, and for a moment without a word to our 
 name. Then Tom come forward with another high-pow- 
 ered explosive. 
 
 " So it 's happened ! Thank God ! ' ' 
 
 "You knew it would?" says I excitedly. "You ex- 
 pected it?" 
 
 "I was the one material witness that could have saved 
 him from being deported," says Tom. "And I wanted 
 him to go. Without me, I knew they would get just 
 enough on him in connection with that explosion to send 
 him back to Russia. And I wouldn't help to keep him in 
 in my country ! We don't want men with ideas like his 
 over here ! ' ' 
 
 Well, at that something leaped up inside me my heart, 
 I guess, and I looked at Tom with it aU in my eyes. 
 
 "You did it!" he says, understanding without a word. 
 
 ' ' The country did it ! " says I. And then Lock butted in. 
 
 "Who is this guy?" he says, pointing at Tom. 
 
 "I'll tell you that," I says, remembering something, 
 "if you will tell me why you stopped us by firing a gun 
 at us?" 
 
 "Gun?" says Lock. "Gun? That wasn't a gunshot 
 ^-that was a blow-out!"
 
 xvn 
 
 A CCORDING to the wets, it is easier for a rich man to 
 JL\ pass through the eye of a needle than for a camel to 
 enter the kingdom of heaven. And if this is the truth, then 
 I am glad not to be a camel, because I would never of got 
 into California. Anyway, that's what I felt like at the top 
 of the Cajon Pass, beyond Barstow next day, when I 
 caught my first look at the lived-in part of the Golden 
 State and found the picture post cards had not lied to me. 
 
 You come to the top of this pass over a desert full of 
 strange cactuses that twist and yearn towards heaven, 
 but will never reach it. These are called Judas trees, and 
 Indians think they are the tortured souls of people who 
 have died. But I know different. They are just trees 
 that are tormented because they can 't get across the moun- 
 tain and into the San Bernardino Valley. 
 
 I am not going to hand you any description of Califor- 
 nia. They have got plenty of people out there who will 
 do that with very little urging, and you already know what 
 they will say, so all I will do is to add that no matter how 
 good it sounds, it's even better in reality. 
 
 I personally myself will say merely that the meat of the 
 trip across the country is not, surprisingly, the main 
 course, and California is the dessert. Coming into it is 
 just as if they suddenly brought on baked Alaska when 
 you were beginning to be afraid there wasn't going to be 
 anything more served. 
 
 And outside of that I have nothing to add except that 
 it's got the loveliest scenery, the best roads, the grandest 
 studios, orchards, architecture and anything else you want
 
 West Broadway 249 
 
 to name, and besides that the folks out there have got 
 the most contagious enthusiasm over living of any people 
 in the world. 
 
 All this and more I appreciated before I reached River- 
 side, with its flower-laden streets. 
 
 Also I appreciated that the light and the climate was 
 going to be ideal to make a early Italian picture of the 
 Shaksperean era in. And that it was a grand thing that 
 Tom should take out his second papers there and that Alma, 
 when she married him, would at once become one of those 
 typical big beautiful California girls that generally are 
 born in Maine. 
 
 I appreciated how my pink acquaintances back in pro- 
 vincial New York City, Miss Rosa Gratz and Mr. Crabtree, 
 her husband, and Lulu Wildhack was all not a real menace, 
 as I had set out supposing them to be, but only soiled pup- 
 pets that would break to pieces in this clean air, and 
 look pretty cheap and faded if they were brought out into 
 the sunlight. 
 
 I also appreciated what a big live wire of a town Los 
 Angeles is, and how pretty Hollywood is, with its houses 
 all built with a teaspoon and a bottle of vanilla extract. 
 But of all the things in California, I appreciated most the 
 fact that my baby was there waiting for me in a vanilla 
 house with strawberry trimming and that when we drove 
 up to it ma was standing on the top step holding him out 
 to me all fat and rosy and crowing. And he knew me! 
 He remembered me! Ill tell the world I forgot every- 
 thing but him when I took him to my heart ! 
 "Well, did you see America, dearie?" says ma. 
 
 * ' Oh, ma, I thought I did ! " I says over the kid 's shoulder 
 as I held him to me tight. "I thought I did; but now 
 oh, ma, here is America right in my arms! And believe 
 me, that's just exactly where it is, after all in every 
 American mother 's arms ! I don 't intend ever to leave him
 
 250 West Broadway 
 
 again, ma. I'll let Jim do the work from now on, and 
 put in my time raising this kid to be a fit citizen worthy of 
 the country I've just come across. I'll never leave him 
 any more!" 
 
 "Well, there's a telephone from the studio," says ma, 
 "saying please call up as soon as you get in and say 
 when will you go to work!" 
 
 "Go telephone them " I began, firmly at first, but 
 
 weakening even as I spoke, because work did listen good 
 to me. "Go tell them that I'll come to-morrow morning. 
 A contract is a contract. Americans need to remember that 
 just now more than ever. I guess maybe, after all, I've 
 got two contracts my baby and my job. And with God's 
 help I'll fill them both!" 
 
 "Oh, well, I'll help a little, dearie," says ma. 
 
 THE END
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 < ^ p| ^ lch * was borrowed -
 
 A 000034516 5