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The route Jaeger took yesterday, when he hiked from the well in the mountains to Interstate 8, followed the course of the San Cristobal Wash. For him it was a difficult trail to follow on foot, and you soon discover that it is an even harder one to negotiate in a pick-up truck. The broken ground is deeply rutted and littered with boulders, and it takes more than an hour to make the fifteen-mile climb to the well.

The well itself is located at the bottom of a bowl-shaped gully, shaded from the sun by two peaks of the Mohawk Mountains. A pump house stands beside the bore-hole, to which is affixed a sign that reads:

You park the pick-up beside the pump house and Jaeger helps you unload the containers. ‘I had to draw the water up by hand yesterday,’ he says, nodding towards the bore-hole, ‘ ’cause I couldn’t get the pump to work. I reckon it’s OK—jus’ needs some gasolene, that’s all. Maybe if we could siphon some fuel from the truck we could get its engine running. It’d save us a whole lotta hard work.’

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