Building a road into the southwestern backcountry to establish a trading post in the early 1920s was a task filled with one marvelous setback after another. But if you were diligent, had a strong back, and a stronger sense of humor, chances were that when it was all done, you'd probably find that what you had created was not the super highway you had in mind but...

"We're going to build a road to Navajo Mountain," we said, but the old Navajo only stared back at us in puzzled wonder, at my father, my uncle, and then at me. "It's sixty-five miles from here to Navajo Mountain," my uncle explained patiently, "and a lot of people would like to go there, but there is no road. We're going to build one, just a small one at first, but it will grow into a good road." "But roads don't grow," protested the old Navajo. "Not out here. You make a road for a little way and that is good. But it doesn't grow. When you come back to it later, it is gone. Atteen utten. . . the road runs away!" The old man shook his head sadly, but wisely, and then he plodded slowly away. We laughed and then went back to our cars and trucks. In the distance, sixty-five miles away, loomed the ghostly outline of Navajo Mountain, but sooner or later we would be there, and behind us there would be a road. Other cars and other trucks would travel over it, and in a year or two the road we were going to make would be a thing of respectable proportions. We had a lot of confidence in that. We climbed up on the seat of the old stripped-down Dodge, John Daw and I, and I looked at him and smiled. Behind us the others waited for us to go ahead. Big, broad-shouldered John Daw was our Navajo Indian guide. Ex-army scout and policeman, John knew a lot about white men as well as Indians, and he knew this country well. "You just point out the best way to go and we'll go there" I said. "And when we get there - there will be a road behind us!" He gave me a broad smile in return, but the word he said was "Datsie!" In English it means perhaps or maybe; in Navajo it can mean a lot of things. The implication may be yes and then it may be no. But we went on just the same, and John Daw enjoyed every minute of it. It became a game with him to find out which was the best way to go. When there was any doubt or the going got a little too tough, he would hold up his hand, and then climb down from his coffee-box seat beside me, and go ahead at a dogtrot. In a few minutes he would be back, grinning broadly. We would turn here, go around a huge pile of sand, a group of tall, slanting sandstones, or take another way out of a long, deep wash. That first day in 1924, we made about ten miles, over a sandy waste and across dry washes and up over tiny

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