NOTES ON A JOURNEY
53
in the newspaper concerned the shooting of a sheriff upstate and the posse's
pursuit-aided by Lem So-and-So in his cabin monoplane.
That night we stayed in Kearney and in the morning at breakfast
encountered pancakes one foot in diameter.
That morning we crossed the North Platte River. It had no water in
it. As we drove on southwest into western Kansas we hit bad lands, the
most gullied and gutted we had ever seen. The few fields of corn looked as
if a blowtorch had been taken to them when the stalks were two feet high.
The land darkened and widened to an immensity of brown, treeless hori–
zon. Our hearts sank. Our cat, who had taken with resignation his first
couple of days in the automobile, woke up with dust in his nose and
began to yip.
It was surprising here again to find towns leafy and unstricken, though
by
DO
means such belles as we had seen in Nebraska. At a filling station
in Oakley (named for Annie?) we heard that last Sunday had been as
warm as this and Monday night it froze. Yes, sir, the wind was a-blowin
and she went right down. We discovered that we were already 3,000 feet
above sea-level: higher than any of those mountains in West Virginia. In
the afternoon we were going straight west on U.S. 40 and then we knew
we were climbing. I have seen no writing that did justice to the gradual
tremendous tilt that becomes perceptible here and ends in the continental
divide. Soon it was not so much bad lands as open range on which the
horizon acquired rim beyond rim of blue distance wherein cattle appeared
like tiny spillings of black birdshot. The sky, which had been clear and
hot, filmed over in the northwest but the cloudfilm missed the sun and
again we drove against the glare. In Colorado, a little beyond a town
called First View, we sighted the mountains.
Drinking cokes at Kit Carson we
wert~
fastened on by the storekeeper,
who wanted a political discussion. Colorado, he said, was swinging to
Willkie, "especially since this conscription yesterday." Yes, sir, that was
what did it with a lot of folks. He had a square, meaty face and hard grey
eyes and spoke very repressedly in modified journalese. His composure
and grammar alike cracked a little when he spoke of the Communists who
had taken over the New Deal.
He had read a book called
The Fifth Column
by someone named
Camp wasn't it who had made a lifelong study of subversive organizations.
This book had the Dies list of Communists in high places in the govern–
ment and it had this fellow's own list, right up at the front of the book.
He sure wished he had that book to show us, because it wouldn't have
taken only a glance for us to get the drift of it. Where had he got it? Fellow
brought it around. Fellow took it away again or else he'd like to show it
to us. Now a book couldn't be published like that and not tell the truth,
could it?
We were in a hurry to get to La Junta for the night.
I began to feel as if I were being invited to show my colors.
