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Peterby Paul did have good reason for calling her a 'Whosis'." Mr. Peterby Paul appeared after a short time striding down the wooded hillside balancing a five-gallon gasoline can in either hand. "I reckon you can get to Ridgeton on this here," he said jovially. "Guess I'd better set up a sign down here so's other of you autermobile folks kin take heart if ye git stuck."
We covered the distance in something less than six hours. The next morning, in a drizzling rain, each packing a five-gallon can of gasoline and some provisions, we set out for the Ferry; and it was a sorry, bedraggled trio that limped up to camp eight hours later. We did little more than creep the last five miles. And all for a spiteful little engine that might prove ungrateful in the end!
The plaster, discolored by the steam of many wash-days, was crisscrossed with cracks from the big earthquake of the previous spring. The floor was ridged, wide-cracked, and uneven, and in front of the stove it was worn through and repaired with a five-gallon oil-can hammered flat and double. A sink, a dirty roller-towel, several chairs, and a wooden table completed the picture.
There were frozen foods and soft drinks as well as dairy products among their supplies, packed in dry ice in the Water Witch's food locker; the refrigerator would be cold enough for the supplies by the time the boat arrived. For bathing in fresh water there was an outdoor shower, a shower head rigged to a five-gallon drum and supported on a frame of two-by-four wooden members.
He was generally musical when amusing himself in this fashion, and Emmeline, waking up during the night, heard his voice borne through the moonlit cocoa-nut grove by the wind: "There were five or six old drunken sailors Standin' before the bar, And Larry, he was servin' them From a big five-gallon jar. "Chorus. Hoist up the flag, long may it wave! Long may it lade us to glory or the grave.
At the next village we found all we needed. When we returned through Herkimer some weeks later nearly every store had gasoline. If hotels, stables, and drug stores, wherever automobiles are apt to come, would keep a five-gallon can of gasoline on hand, time and trouble would be saved, and drivers of automobiles would be only too glad to pay an extra price for the convenience.
Cowboys, swinging five-gallon oil-cans, picked up from scattered sheep camps and carried many a weary mile for just such an emergency, were charging the bunch intrepidly. Others made shift with flat sirup-cans with pebbles inside. A few, like Pink and the Silent One, flapped their slickers till their arms ached.
For the next ten minutes the gang of roadsters paid their undivided attention to the supper. In an old five-gallon kerosene can they had cooked a stew of potatoes, meat, and onions, which they partook of from smaller cans they had found scattered about the vacant lot. Whistling Dick had known Boston Harry of old, and knew him to be one of the shrewdest and most successful of his brotherhood.
This allowed them a pretty fair drink, though not a circumstance to what they would have swallowed. They fed a little, while we remained here. The day was warm enough. The two five-gallon kegs with water we hung in the branches of a tree, with the packsaddles, empty water-bags, etc. of the other two horses.
"There's no use for me to say what the desert is. If you ever come back you'll bring her. Yes, you may go. It's a man's deed. God keep you!" Hare spoke to no other person; he filled one saddle-bag with grain, another with meat, bread, and dried fruits, strapped a five-gallon leather water-sack back of Silvermane's saddle, and set out toward the river.
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