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Show Another Family Weekly Exclusive! A breath-takin- g remarkable, shocking, .... """' ' , accountthe Scott family's own story: H rn on UJ DK1 1TEK1E IS) How could they survive ' - - ' '. - - 'few ' ' tt ' Jt y(f Tr. ants in r J C O ' fj" --- v C .ri3 vi ItaMaiiMMfWP ; Passer-b-y snapped Scotts before ordeal. Bottom row (I to r) Leland, 4, Duwayne, 5, Bryan, 7. Middle row: Laurene, 10, Diane, 9, and Virlene, 12. Top row: Laura and Virl Scott. . iaiiniiirtidiiiHMli'ii1i'i nnn'ip '''liiriiriiTt"Tl f "i ifc W -- ii " ; . '3m Hi.iMtf' or unc" Laura Scott had called VV to her sister Barbara Prescott as the Ford, -. overflowing with children, pulled out of the Prescott driveway in Moab, Utah, that summer morning. visit Down from Salt Lake City for a week-en- d handwith the Prescotts were Virl Scott, a husky, some man in his middle 30s, Laura, his slight, blonde wife and their six children, three older girls and three younger boys, ranging in age from four years to 12. Right after breakfast they had set out for Dead Horse Point, a lofty bluff which affords a breathtaking panorama of the steep gorges and canyons of the Colorado River. By 11 a,m. the Scotts had admired the view, taken snapshots of the children perched on the Point's rocks and started back toward Moab. All about were scores of little roads made by the jeeps and trucks the prospect, of uranium and oil prospectors during ing boom which centered around Moab in the early 1950s. They appeared freshly traveled. Spotting one marked "To the Neck" the Scotts, eager for more. spectacular canyon scenery, followed it. Although the road descended into the canyon, they felt perfectly safe. No signs warned the unwary tourist that it might be dangerous. At any moment .they expected to come upon a sign pointing to the main highway. Actually the Scott family was on a road to nowhere. The Schafer Trail, on which they were descending into the canyon, leads only deeper into as wild, desolate and treacherous a region as exists in all of the United States. For thousands of square miles over southern Utah and into Arizona there is 1 1 where "the sun and heat are so terrific you don't find a living thing-h- ot a snake, not a rat, not a toad"? by Evan Wylie nothing but an unbelievable chaos of deep canyons, lonely giant rock towers, dry basins, crumbling plateaus and naked burning desert. Here man's enemy is not wild beasts but the sun. Blazing with a terrible ferocity, it sends temperatures soaring to above 125 degrees. In its searing heat human tissue dehydrates and shrivels in a matter of hours. In a short time the Scotts had dropped more than 2,000 feet to the bottom of the canyon and were far south of Dead Horse Point. Abruptly, a sharp metallic clash rang out. Leaping out, Virl Scott saw the car's radiator, bent backward by a rock and gashed by the blades of its fan, spurting antifreeze in a dozen miniature fountains. Before he could rip off a hub cap to catch the liquid, it had vanished. E LL BE BACK ,L Family Weekly, September 27, 1959 that blazing inferno Suddenly " aware of the frightful heat and strange silence of the canyon, Scott felt the f jrst fear grip him. Concealing his alarm, he said to his wife, "I think there's still some water inside the engine. It's too far to go back. We'll keep on and get out of here as fast as we can." He had made perhaps five miles when the car suddenly sank to its hubs in deep sand. Scott battled for more than an hour in the blinding sun before he tore the auto free. Dizzy with exhaustion, he hastily reloaded the children and managed another five miles of gulches and gullies. Then, with a teeth-rattlijolt, the car struck another rock, stalled and rolled backward down an incline. Laura Scott clutched her husband's arm and pointed to a trail of heavy black oil. The crankcase was punctured. So swiftly had events turned against them that ng Is? the Scotts' plight seemed almost unreal: without oil and water the car now could not be driven more than a few hundred yards; between them and Moab lay some 50 miles of burning desert; no one would know where to look for them. Steeling himself against the bewilderment in the eyes of his hot, dusty, thirsty children, Virl Scott spoke calmly: "Now Bryan ... Virlene . . . Laurene . . . everybody listen carefully to what I say. Our car is broken down and we're going to have to stay right here until Aunt Barbara and Uncle Bill send some people to get us. You must be very quiet and brave and do exactly as your mother and I say. For the rest of the afternoon the Scotts crouched in the meager shade of an overhanging rock, eyeing their car baking in the sun, realizing that whatever it contained might count toward their survival. As soon as a lengthening twilight shadow enveloped it, they ransacked the sedan. There was not a particle of food, not a drop of water. Nevertheless the Scotts got busy. As a full moon rose over the desert, Laura Scott used wire cutters from the tool box to cut two pink blankets into narrow strips. With them she fashioned the letters "S 0 S" in the sand. Virl removed the spare tire from its wheel, rolled it out onto the desert, mounted a pair of old galoshes on top to have a signal fire ready. He removed the back seat to use mirror and as a sunshield, unscrewed the rear-vie- w put it in his pocket, removed the hub caps and spread them about to catch the night moisture. The Scott children, with the obedience and discipline often found in large families, helped or sat quietly watching. Only Leland, just four and too young to understand, had begun to whimper, "Me want a drink ... me want to go home now." In Moab, Barbara Prescott had cleared away the Scotts' uneaten lunch, waited all afternoon with growing anxiety. "Bill," she told her husband when he came home from work at 5 pjn Tm scared. Something's happened to them. "Oh, honey, I'm sure they're all righC IVescott , |