men alike, as we crawled laboriously out of this canyon and went on to ether canyons of rock and sand. But fate had decided to smile on us at last. We continued on and on until in the late afternoon we crested out on the last ridge. The blue-gray top of Navajo Mountain was there before us, across a long, narrow valley of hills, sandy stretches, and other smaller canyons. But it was much nearer now, only about twenty miles. Optimism was rife in the camp that night, and early morning saw us headed out through the last of the piñons, into cedar-studded flats and rocky ridges. We kept going on steadily, and, late that afternoon, we camped at the foot of Navajo Mountain, a tired but happy group. The next day, we toiled up the slopes to the base of the mountain, where a group of springs gurgled out from the high, rock walls. Here we made a camp and took stock of the situation. "It's always this way," said Uncle Hubert, sitting cross-legged in front of the campfire that evening, "Someone has to break the trail into new country, and the going is rough. But once you get there and build a little post, things get better until after a few years you wonder why somebody didn't try to get in long before you did." The next day they left us there, my father, John Daw, and I, and we watched them go with a kind of "long-gone" feeling in our hearts. But then we set to work and refused to think about the long miles between us and the nearest trading post, sixty-five long, weary miles. In the next two weeks, we built a small rock house, and with the few Navajos that straggled into our camp from the nearby canyons, we worked on the road along the slopes to the valley. Each day there was something done to show for our work, and we took satisfaction in that. But it was two long weeks before another truck managed to get to us. "That durn road," my uncle cursed, as he got out of the truck. "You can't find it half the time. Liked to never have made it up here again, but I think I've got an idea. Going to hire a wagon freight outfit for awhile, until we can put a crew of Navajos on the road to work over the worst places. Then we'll see." All that summer and until the winter closed down, work went forward on the road. The freight wagon, pulled by six mules, made several trips over it, but each one was an adventure in itself. In the meantime, we had built more permanent quarters at Navajo Mountain.
The three of us had two tents and the use of an abandoned Navajo log hogan. During the daylight hours we built road, and in the evening we sat about the campfire wondering how long it was going to take us to get on the other side of the canyons and to Navajo Mountain. Sometimes we played a game at guessing the number of days, and John Daw was the most optimistic. "Tomorrow," he would say before turning in for the night, and his smile would be as broad as his face. But John always liked an implied joke, and his sense of humor was such that tomorrow to him meant almost any day in the future. It was over a week before the trucks and the other car returned, and, in the meantime, we had built the road ahead of us for a couple of miles. It wasn't much, but at least a car or a truck could go over it. Our first question to those who came back was, "How is the road behind us? Any better now with so much travel over it?" "Well, I'll tell you," answered Hubert, the uncle, "some of it is pretty good, but I'll be danged if we could find a few parts of it!" He grinned and went on to explain that even the tracks across some of the sandy stretches had been lost - completely erased. "As a permanent road," he added, "it presents some difficulties!"	Bright and early the next morning, we cleared our campsite and headed north over the new stretch that we had built the past week. All went well until we reached the end of it. Then, less than a mile beyond, we came to a sandy bluff that broke abruptly downward into the bed of a steep canyon. John Daw and I walked down and took one stunned look at the opposite canyon wall where the road had to go out. The others filed silently up behind us and stared in dismay. "That," said a voice behind me, "looks like the end of the line." But John Daw was already scrambling down into the canyon bed. A moment later he called back to us. We followed his tracks. Believe it or not, we found a road down there on the side of that north canyon wall. Some Navajos had built up a part of that wall with interlocking rocks until it was wide enough for a wagon to cross. We tested it, and then decided that, if we could get down this far, we could cross on it. Everyone set to work with pick and shovel. Two hours later, we went down and across this rock wall and got safely to the other side. Someone remarked in a doleful voice that he hoped he didn't have to come back this way! It was a pessimistic crew that manned the trucks and cars, Indian and white

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