Completely shot, the leaf-springs in the old pick-up majorly squeaked every time the old man drove over a rock in the road or struck a hole in the middle of the ruts left by years of worn travel back and forth from the mine. He drove without a care as he explained what Gilroy’s duties were for the next four-months in the Nevada desert.
Tired of hitching rides, Gil, as he like to be called, longed to settle down for the summer and perhaps winter if he could find a job that would last that long. The last several hundred miles as seen some change from the hot dustiness of Death Valley to the cooler climate of Sierra Mountains.
From the back of a truck hauling chickens to Reno, Gil had watched and enjoyed the change in the land he was seeing. He decided that Carson City was as far as he’d go after nearly an entire day’s travel breathing in the less-than-delicate odors of chicken feathers and droppings.
Before he pulled away, the truck’s driver told Gil of a possible job. “You jus’ head up the street there and you’ll see a stone wall. That’s old man Smith’s and he’s lookin’ for some help out at one of his mines.”
“Some 80 miles out in the middle of nowhere,” Smith stated. “You sure you can handed bein’ alone? Last feller didn’t even last two weeks. Up and walked away, leaving’ everything behind, includin’ what I owed him for his time.”
Gil nodded, acknowledging that he was listening, knowing the old man wasn’t really looking for answer. As he did so, he also studied the terrain, what road they turn of off and on the dirt track they were following, the flatness of the hard, white playa and the mountains that still seemed impossibly distant but towards they sped.
“It’s jus’ a few hundred yard’s outside the boundary of the Walker Rez. So don’t be surprised if you see an injun or two wandering about the hills. Mostly harmless, save for One-eyed Jack. He thinks everyone’s out to jump his claim and he’s always got a hog-leg on’em,” Smith continued.
He suddenly slowed to make a sharp bend in the roadway, barely avoiding a large rock that jutted up from the sun-baked and cracked earth. “Easy to go around, than to move,” Gil thought.
A few minutes more, Smith slowed the truck to a stop and without a word got out. He pulled a large half-rusted tin with a heavy piece of twine tied through a hole in it, from the bed of the truck and walked out into the desert.
Gil was quick to follow. Hidden between clumps of creosote bushed and smallish sand dunes, was a hot springs, that Smith proceeded to dip the can into.
Still hot he set it on the ground beside himself and pointed, “Don’t go trying to get a drink or bathe from one of these hell-holes, son. They’ll boil yer meat right off yer bones in a minute.”
He picked the cooling tin up out of the sand, by the thick string tied too it, and headed back across the desert, through the scrub to the waiting truck. After a few more minutes and after having consumed a ‘roll-yer-own,’ Smith popped the cap off the radiator and emptied the tin’s content into the belching chasm of the trucks’ belly.
Less than a minute later, they were back in the truck bouncing farther and farther from civilization. And Gil was wishing the trip was over.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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